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FOUR years ago, Nelson Mandela died. South Africa was plunged into mourning, as did many pockets of the global family that had grown to know, in varying degrees, of a man who famously fought a racist system of discriminatory governance known as apartheid.

Apartheid is infamously synonymous with South African racists who ruled the country before “freedom” in 1994.

Or let’s say those who were politically dominant and exacting then.

It is a view shared by many that South Africa won political freedom, but has not managed to liberate the economy: the land, the banks and factories.

Mandela, it is felt, left some unfinished business and 1994 was not enough.

There are some people who feel so strongly that they call Mandela a sellout who capitulated and negotiated freedom on the terms of the white racists who continued to hold on to ill-gotten gains of colonialism and discrimination.

There is some truth in it, but also a ring of unfairness given the complexity of the negotiated settlement and the desire by forces in and outside South Africa to see a smooth transition and not plunge the country into chaos.

The success of the transition process was a relief to many well-meaning citizens of the world.

It was the triumph of Nelson Mandela for which he won global acclaim.

Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada shortly after their release from prison in 1990

As is common knowledge, he had spent a precious 27 years in apartheid prisons.

He remains one of the best known political prisoners of all time, and one can imagine that it is an honour that will be his forever.

One dark day in December 2013, Mandela died.

It is interesting to recall that the world had grown resigned to this eventuality and as the time drew near and ill health caught up, various media would lie in wait at his home and hospital to witness his death.

It came, eventually.

He was 95.

Predictably it was a global event as the former president departed the world leaving a huge legacy and fame.

Now, as we speak, South Africa is in mourning again.

One of Mandela’s contemporaries, and former Rivonia treason trialist, Ahmed Kathrada, died yesterday morning after protracted ill health occasioned by age.

He was 87 and, interestingly, what we witnessed in the past few days as media camped at his hospital where he was losing his battle with poor health after being operated on for ailments in the lung and a blood clot in the brain has been eerily similar to 2013.

Some strange fate has allowed me to witness these spectacles: journalists waiting like vultures or some such ravenous birds of prey.

Ready.

It sometimes appears unkind and unhealthy yet there is also money to be made in the business of selling news.

But these are important markers of history.

On another note, it is a celebration.

It is a special kind of celebration of the legacies of a generation that did a lot and is being pared away by time.

Mandela’s generation is at its very tail end. Kathrada, known as Uncle Kathy, was Mandela’s generation and a friend.

He is being celebrated.

Much more interesting, one may note, is that he was increasingly being critical of the present leadership of the ruling ANC, once calling for President Jacob Zuma to step down.

Let’s return to it promptly.

A small tribute to his place in history: according to SA History journal, he was born on August 21, 1929 and he began his political career in 1941, at the early age of 12 when he joined the Young Communist League of South Africa, distributing leaflets at street corners for the League.

In the 1940s, Kathrada first met African National Congress (ANC) leaders, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, I.C. Meer and J.N. Singh. At the age of 17, he left school to work full-time in the offices of the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council.

In the 1950s, he was involved in various resistance activities, participated in the crafting of the famous ‘Freedom Charter’ and was in 1956, among activists charged for High Treason. Although four years later he was acquitted along with Mandela and Sisulu.

Restrictions and house arrests intervened, critically following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, after which the ANC and PAC were banned and he went underground, but was eventually arrested in July 1963, at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, where he and other “banned” persons had been meeting. This led to the famous ‘Rivonia Trial’, in which eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour

According to the journal, this was Kathrada’s 18th arrest on political grounds.

“Although he was then no longer a member of the Umkhonto we sizwe (MK) Regional Command, he was tried with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki , Dennis Goldberg, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni. All the accused were charged with organising and directing MK, the military wing of the ANC, and were found guilty of committing specific acts of sabotage. In 1964, at the age of 34, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island where he spent the next 18 years with his colleagues in the isolation section, known as B Section, of the Maximum Security Prison . . . In October 1982, Kathrada was moved to Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in Cape Town to join Mandela, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni, who had been moved there a few months before. He was released on October 15, 1989, at the age of 60. On his release, Kathrada had spent 26 years and 3 months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island.”

Twenty seven years later, he is no more.

The eulogies have been pouring.

He may not be as global an icon as Mandela, but at home, he is not less glorious and tributes have been made to his ideas of multiracialism and love for people, and youths in particular.

His leadership acumen has seen him chastising present leadership, which is viewed in circles as falling.

(This is not to gainsay, though, that there is a good measure of intrigue around it in the ANC of 2017.)

Yet, after all is said and done, many journalists would count themselves lucky to record such history as this, what more with the tincture of nostalgia.