Gora Ebrahim (football)
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Ahmed Gora Ebrahim (29 May 1936 – 25 November 1999) was a South African politician and former
anti-apartheid activist Several independent sectors of South African society opposed apartheid through various means, including social movements, passive resistance, and guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with So ...
. He was the foreign secretary of the
Pan Africanist Congress The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, often shortened to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), is a South African pan-Africanist national liberation movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert So ...
(PAC) during
apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English:  , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...
and represented the party in the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...
from 1994 to 1999. Shortly after losing his parliamentary seat in June 1999, and shortly before his death in November that year, he defected to the
African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...
(ANC).


Early life and anti-apartheid activism

Ebrahim was born on 29 May 1936 in
Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...
in the former
Natal province The Province of Natal (), commonly called Natal, was a province of South Africa from May 1910 until May 1994. Its capital was Pietermaritzburg. During this period rural areas inhabited by the black African population of Natal were organised int ...
. He and his younger brother, Ebrahim Ismail, were both politically active in their youth, in his case in
Trotskyite Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
circles at
Natal University The University of Natal was a university in the former South African province Natal which later became KwaZulu-Natal. The University of Natal no longer exists as a distinct legal entity, as it was incorporated into the University of KwaZulu-Na ...
and the
University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...
. However, while his brother joined the ANC, he joined the PAC in 1957 and went into exile in 1963 after the party was banned. Over the next three decades, Ebrahim was a prominent representative of the PAC abroad, at different times serving as its chief representative in Egypt, in Iraq, in China, in Zimbabwe, and at the United Nations in New York. In 1969, based in
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Dar es Salaam (, ; from ) is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over 7 million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa by population and the ...
, he was appointed as the PAC's secretary for foreign affairs. He was also a founding member of the South African Non Racial Olympic Committee and served as its acting president when
Dennis Brutus Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 – 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid. ...
was detained, and during his five years in Iraq, he was editor of the ''Baghdad Observer''. He returned to South Africa in 1990, after the PAC was unbanned by the apartheid government, and he was a member of the PAC's delegation to the negotiations that ended apartheid.


Post-apartheid political career

In South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994, Ebrahim was elected to represent the PAC in the National Assembly. After a single term in the assembly, he lost his seat in the 1999 general election, in which the PAC performed poorly. In the aftermath of the election, media reports suggested that Ebrahim was on the brink of defecting from the PAC to the ANC, which had apparently offered him a diplomat post; he defected soon afterwards.


Personal life and death

Ebrahim met his French wife, Xaviere, in China, where she worked as a translator. They had two children, a son and a daughter, who were born in exile in Tanzania. Months after joining the ANC, Ebrahim died on 25 November 1999 at his home in Berea, Johannesburg after suffering a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
.


References


External links


Interview with Gora Ebrahim by Tor Sellström within the project Nordic Documentation on the Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa
- dated 22 July 1995 1936 births 1999 deaths Activists from Durban Politicians from Durban South African politicians of Indian descent South African people of Gujarati descent Politicians from KwaZulu-Natal South African anti-apartheid activists Pan Africanist Congress of Azania politicians Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 1994–1999 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ebrahim, Gora