Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim

Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim OLG (1 July 19376 December 2021) was a South African anti-apartheid activist of Indian origin who was a member of the African National Congress's armed wing uMkhonto we Sizwe. He was tried in the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trials of 1963 and was sentenced to a 15-year imprisonment at the Robben Island Maximum Security Prison.

Popularly known as Ebie, he served as a lawmaker in the first democratically elected government of South Africa in 1994 and also served as the country's deputy minister for international relations between 2009 and 2014.

Early life Ebrahim was born in Durban in 1937 to parents, Hafeeza and Mohammed Adam Modan, of Indian origin. His father was from Gujarat and traveled to South Africa in 1933, while his mother was born in South Africa. His father took the surname Ebrahim from the family with whom he had traveled to South Africa.

Ebrahim's schooling was taken care of by his grandmother after the authorities denied him primary school admission, stating that schools for Indian students were full and could not admit him. This continued for five years until he was ten. He then joined a government funded school The Hindu Tamil Institute.

Ebrahim joined the anti-apartheid movement by joining the NIC in 1952 during the Defiance campaign.

He went on to become a member of the ANC armed wing Umkhonto We Sizwe in 1961 and was a member of the organization that carried out sabotage across the country. He would later say that the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, where 69 protestors were shot dead by the Transvaal police, changed his mind about peaceful means of protest and passive resistance, leading him to join the armed wing of the ANC. During the trial, a former Umkhonto we Sizwe operative turned state witness, Glory Sedibe (known in court as “Mr X1”), testified for the prosecution against Ebrahim and his co-accused in 1988. Ebrahim was released in 1991; the kidnapping was ruled illegal since it had taken place outside South African jurisdiction. As a mediator in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict he advocated for a middle ground between the multiple Palestinian organizations. He met the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in 2001 in the West Bank during this time. In 2002, he was part of a group of South Africans that called for a Palestinian boycott of Israel and called for sanctions against the Israeli state. In 2010, he had called for an end to the "cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem" noting that the "Israel and Palestine conflict (was) primarily about freedom to live in dignity".

He was appointed the deputy foreign minister in 2009 and served in the position for six years between 2009 and 2014. He also served as the member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress for over 26 years between 1991 and 2017.

Personal life Ebrahim, who was also known as Ebie,

Ebrahim was a fan of Indian film music, listening to singers including Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, and Geeta Dutt. It is noted that when he was underground on radio duty scanning radio stations, including Radio Moscow, Voice of America, South African Broadcasting Corporation, and the BBC, he would find himself tuning to All India Radio listening to Indian film music.