I remember the night we walked back from Barnet station to where I was living in Arkley and the laughs that we had. I liked the humorous, warm relationship that he and Lesley had as well. Lesley was the companion who I shared my flat with. I liked the way that he could joke with her and the three of us were happy there. If he could stay Lesley was happy to see him as well. So I like to remember the good things. I also remember the intensity of our feeling for one another. Those clichés about times when you’re walking on air – actually I remember a particular walk that we went on where I felt that that’s what I was doing. We were very happy walking in the countryside, just that sort of love and intensity of feeling for each other. There were some very good times with Ahmed.
I will remember him for his compassion and the values that he believed in. His compassion and empathy for other people, the easy and quick compassion that he had for them. His tenderness and his sensitivity. His lack of dogmatism.
There were sort of emotional values as well to do with politics and struggle that we shared. I think probably I read more after Ahmed left than I did during that time. But we shared a very strong sort of feeling of a sense of justice, a need for change and commitment to revolutionary change.
You have to admire that depth of commitment and intensity of feeling and if he could bring it to bear as he did in the struggle on South Africa he could obviously bring that to bear in relationships as well. Ahmed had a depth of feeling for people and intensity about him and that’s an unforgettable quality. His depth of commitment.
NEWSPAPER OF THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT, DECEMBER 1971 Ahmed was a teacher who was respected throughout the community for his dedication to his work and for the tremendous effort and sacrifices he made for his students and friends in every aspect of their lives.
From a very young age he involved himself actively in community affairs. He was always in the forefront fighting against the injustices perpetrated by the apartheid system.
Throughout his short life he worked for the ideal of a non-racial South Africa, based on the equality of all the people that lived in it.
Prevented by the system from advancing his studies and learning new educational techniques, Ahmed came to Britain in 1967. He taught in Slough and attended evening classes.
Those that had the opportunity of meeting him for the first time or of renewing old acquaintances, were impressed by his dedication and his abhorrence of injustice, whether it was in the UK or in South Africa.
He was a member of the National Union of Teachers and took an active interest in its activities. In his last year in the UK he worked among the immigrant community in Slough.
The demands of his ageing parents and the strong urge to be with the oppressed peoples of South Africa led him home in 1969. He immediately became involved with the problems of his students and his community.
Within two years of his return he is dead, killed because the vicious system of
apartheid cannot tolerate anyone demanding basic human rights.
Ahmed was only 29 years old. He paid the ultimate penalty for his beliefs, but the work he did will not be forgotten; and the spirit of what Ahmed stood for will never die in South Africa.
Once again the regime has taken the life of an individual, whose death is a loss, not only to his family and friends, but to the future of non-racial South Africa. No community, let alone South Africa, can afford to lose such men.
At the moment an unknown number of people are being detained; many have been subjected to torture; and every day new names are added to the list of people that have vanished without trace.
The greatest tribute we could pay to Ahmed would be to resolutely continue our struggle against the apartheid system. We must build a massive movement of solidarity with those detained, the millions of oppressed South Africans.
Our words must be transformed into action and we must give concrete material and other aid to the forces that are fighting the South African regime. It is this that will help ensure that Ahmed did not die in vain.
AMINA DESAI
Ahmed was a very congenial man. He was always good with the neighbours. He was not born an extraordinary figure. He was a diffident man. Ahmed displayed his heroism in the qualities of a very ordinary man. The freedom that we have today did not just come about. Ahmed had showed that an ordinary man could accomplish heroic measures to foster his beliefs. He was always kind and a nice young man.
The apartheid government made Ahmed a hero for the people. They created him. Ahmed gave his life for his people. The statement made by Ahmed during his detention indicates that he was a caring man who was prepared to sacrifice his life.
MEG PAHAD
Ahmed’s arrest and death devastated not only his immediate circle in West Kensington, but students from South Africa studying in the UK generally. Many thought: if they can kill Timol and at the same time slander the Communist Party and the ANC as devils and pigs, then I want to join these bodies. The event caused a huge outcry in South Africa, too; but in the internal conditions of repression the government was able, through media manipulation and tyranny, to obscure much of what was happening from the view of the populace at large. The situation abroad was different. The story came through more clearly, in Timol’s and other cases. The fact that Timol had spent time in London, getting to know a wide circle of people, sharpened the impact. It is in such crass ways that the white Nationalist government of South Africa played directly into the hands of the liberation movement, acting, as it were, as recruiting agent.
However apolitical people’s backgrounds were, Ahmed’s fate made them re- think their beliefs. This was particularly so among South Africans abroad. If someone like Ahmed was arrested and killed, it meant that others who suffered a similar fate must have also been good people. It is this ripple effect of the
martyrdom of Timol that gave so much to struggle in South Africa. It was a turning point in the allegiances of many people.
Today, in the remarkable conditions of peace and reconciliation that exist now, these factors require adequate articulation and commemoration, as part of the deepening and strengthening of our democracy.
Timol can be seen, in this sense, as a pillar of non-racial, democratic South Africa.