With no plans to slow down just yet, Ahmed Kathrada has made at least 300 trips to Robben Island since his release after he was incarcerated as a political prisoner for decades of his life. This past Saturday, in Cape Town, a new book was launched by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. The book is titled Triumph of the Human Spirit and is a collection of photographs and notes that Kathrada took whilst taking visitors on trips to the island.

A few of these visitors included US president Barack Obama, Cuban President Fidel Castro and American performer Beyonce, but Kathrada said that his most memorable trip was taking Michelle Brits to the island. Michelle was 13 years old at the time of the visit and was diagnosed with leukaemia. She only had two wishes – one was to meet former president Nelson Mandela and the other was to visit Robben Island. Ahmed Kathrada made both of these wishes possible before the little girl died in 1998.

“Two years ago we asked Ahmed Kathrada how many trips had he made to the island and he said a lot. This is where we got the idea to document all the visits,” Neeshan Balton, executive director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation explained.

The foundation said the book took a while to complete because they kept discovering more and more details about visits that Kathrada made to the island whilst sifting through his diary’s and notebooks about his trips.

“This book was supposed to be produced for Mr Kathrada’s 85th birthday. He is now turning 86, so we missed the deadline by a year,” said Zaakirah Vadi, who worked on the book.

“We had to call up the Rockerfeller centre to ask for pictures of Kathrada and Beyonce’,” Vadi said jokingly.

Many people from the foundation worked day and night on this book and the book went for redesign three times, starting off in New Zealand, after that to Johannesburg South and then to the East Rand where it was finally completed approximately a month ago.

At the launch, Kathrada shared some memories from his time in prison on Robben Island and some memories of the visitors that he took to the island, laughing that the worst visitors were the “Saudi’s” who were jumping on everything.

Right now Kathrada is still busy with an application to be able to stay on the island. The book will also be launched in Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein in the coming weeks. VOC (Umarah Hartley)