Dr Essop Pahad hosting Sussex colleagues at his home in Johannesburg, September 2018. L-R: Robert Yates, Dr Essop Pahad, Dr Marina Pedreira-Vilarino, Professor Rorden Wilkinson.

Dr Essop Pahad passed away aged 84 on Thursday 6 July in Johannesburg, South Africa. A Sussex alumnus, he was a freedom fighter, activist, politician and academic. Dr Pahad grew up in a family of activists who fought against apartheid. He was arrested in 1962 for organising an illegal strike, and in 1964 was banned from South Africa, along with his brother Aziz Pahad, for five years.

In the late 1950s, Essop became friends with Thabo Mbeki, who went on to become the second President of the Republic of South Africa. They were reunited when Essop arrived in the UK as an exile in early 1965. Essop subsequently enrolled at the University of Sussex in September that year and went on to complete both an MA and a PhD in African Politics. His younger brother Aziz Pahad, also enrolled at Sussex and completed a Masters in Politics and International Relations.

At Sussex, Essop and Thabo politicised students and the Sussex community to fight against apartheid. One evening in the Star of Brunswick pub in Hove, Thabo Mbeki introduced Essop to one of his Sussex friends, Meg Shorrock, an undergraduate studying English Literature. Essop and Meg later married, and Essop is survived by Meg, their two children and five grandchildren.

Following the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, Essop returned to South Africa held numerous political offices. From 1994 to 1999 he served in the Office of the Deputy President. Following the 1999 general election, he was appointed Minister in the Presidency with specific responsibility for the Office on the Rights of the Child, Office on the Status of Women and Office on the Status of Disabled People in The Presidency, as well as for the National Youth Commission and the Government Communication and Information System.

He stood down from parliament in 2008 and in retirement he founded the pan-African journal, The Thinker. The aim was to open up the space for public discourse, the clash of ideas, to stimulate intellectual debate and scientific discourse. The journal was acquired by the University of Johannesburg in 2019.

Her Excellency Ruby Marks, High Commissioner to Benin, IDS and Sussex alumna and former Mandela Scholar said: “I was always slightly in awe of this lanky, straight shooting, bold and uncompromising leader. And when he served as Minister in the Presidency responsible for our first Office on the Status of Women, he always impressed me with his support for women’s empowerment and gender equality. I think that many who did not know him, saw him as a most unlikely ‘midwife’ of our national office on women. But he led the charge on some of the path we had to bulldoze open at times.

“I found that under his gruff exterior, lurked a gentleness that was willing to guide and to mentor, but also equally willing to fight with an unmatched fierceness when it was required. Just before he resigned from the Presidency, he recommended to the Commonwealth that I serve as South Africa’s representative on their Peace and Security Working Group, which I did.

“I cannot claim any special friendship with him, but he was able to take your measure quickly and accurately, and push you further then you ever imagined for yourself. All that we can do now, is to bow our heads in respect to Essop Pahad, he passed amongst his loved ones, but what a life he lived.”

Dr Essop Pahad, 1939-2023.