Kader Asmal RIP

I was most fortunate to have Professor Kader Asmal as one of my lecturers at Trinity College Dublin some years ago. His love for his students, and brilliant mind, combined to ensure some of the most stimulating lectures one could have attend. And he was in a faculty that also included other brilliant minds – such as Professor RFV Heuston (a great constitutional lawyer of the old school), and Mary Robinson (a leading campaigner for womens’ rights and subsequently President of Ireland).

A mark of his brilliance was that he taught us the whole International Law course using only one source text – namely the judgements of the International Court of Justice on South Africa’s illegal occupation of Namibia. And all his lectures were imbued with his strong sense of natural justice (or what one of my fellow students said was “justice according to one’s conscience” – a very Protestant concept in holy Catholic Ireland in the 1970s!). Natural justice – or what was known in Ireland as ‘constitutional justice’ – infers rights on the basis of the underlying ideas and intentions in a country’s Constitution. So one could infer, for example, that overt controls on the media, even if technically legal (or consistent in a narrow sense with the Constitution) or compliant with the rights of the legislature, could impinge on ideas of constitutional justice in South Africa as they are not consistent with the Constitutional intent behind Article 16 – that freedom of expression supports an idea of freedom for the media that may be stronger than the actual article itself. (Experts on constitutional law can please advise me if my understanding of natural or constitutional justice is flawed in some way…)

Perhaps one of the greatest tributes to the life of Kader Asmal would be the clear establishment of a significant concept of ‘constitutional justice’ in the South African legal system (without undermining at all, and indeed building on, some of the wonderful judgements of our Constitutional Court in recent years). But I am straying into territory that I am insufficiently qualified to comment on!

Of course, Kader and his wife Louise, were always focused on the struggle against apartheid, and Kader quickly recruited South Africans in Dublin into the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM). Run from their kitchen in Beechpark Road in Foxrock, the IAAM Executive brought together a range of disparate individuals – student activists, Labour party members, religious people, poets, musicians, communists and so on. Joan Burton was very prominent as a Labour Party member (she is currently the Irish Minister for Social Protection). We were involved in a wide range of activities – campaigning against John Robbie (then a fellow student of mine) from participating in the British Lions rugby tour of South Africa in 1980, lobbying for a complete boycott of South African goods and services, raising awareness of what was happening in South Africa etc.

Perhaps most inspiring was the faith and conviction that the Asmals always displayed, even in the very worst moments of apartheid repression, that South Africa would one day be free, and that it would happen in our lifetimes. I recall many discussions, often over the whiskey that was always available after the meetings were concluded, as to who would be the future Presidents of South Africa. The news of resistance in South Africa was always spoken of, even when these were but small chinks in the monolith, as further evidence that the regime was crumbling.

And of course, as well as working with politicians and trade unionists, Kader always understood the importance of the artists, musicians and poets in articulating the struggles of people. Regular art auctions were held to raise funds, with pictures donated by well-known Irish artists such as Michael Farrell. And we organised a major Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) concert in Dublin’s Liberty Hall, where he was supported by Rock Fox and his Famous Orchestra. We arranged interviews for the great South African musician (then living in exile), including a wonderful moment in Kader’s office in Trinity when a London-based journalist pitched up from the Cape Times and asked him when he was coming to play in South Africa. Without blinking, Abdullah assured her that he would be returning to play at a victory concert in Johannesburg. She had the naiveté to ask him if a date had been scheduled for the concert. He told her that it would be ‘soon’. End of embarrassing interview.

Kader’s rich contribution to public life in Ireland meant that his obituary notices in South Africa were mirrored by different obituary notices in the Irish media, recalling his significant work there, including his establishment of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and his support for human rights throughout the island of Ireland. He knew well that human rights are indivisible.

His concern for the people of South Africa as a whole also extended to the young exiled South Africans that found their way at a tender age to the freezing wet climes of Ireland. He supported them, often out of his own pocket and ensured that they would never be homeless or on the street, even if it meant camping on the floor in sleeping bags. Years later it has been good to reconnect with Zukile Nomvete and others from those days.

There is no need for me to repeat what has been recorded in the various obituaries to Kader. Enough to say that here was a giant of a man with a brilliant mind - someone who stood for substance over form, who tolerated no puffery, and who had no truck with the arrogance that sometimes comes with power. Widely cultured and literate, humorous and sensitive, he was, as the Irish say, ‘a gentleman, a scholar, and a fine judge of whiskey’.