Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. To Allah we belong, and to Him shall we return.
I received the news of the passing of Cde Moosa Kaprey with profound sadness. Another giant of our liberation struggle has departed. Another piece of our collective memory, of our youth, and of the extraordinary generation that helped shape who we became has gone.
There are people whose names belong in the official record of history, and there are people whose presence lives in the stories, opportunities and lives of those who came after them.
Cde Moosa was both. He was a man of public commitment, but also of deeply personal generosity. He was a comrade, an organiser, a mentor, a believer and, above all, a person who made things possible for others.
A mentor to young activists
When I think of Cde Moosa, my mind returns to the 1980s. Not first to the grand political gatherings or famous speeches, but to those formative years when we were young high school student activists, finding our political voices, discovering our courage and learning what it meant to stand up against apartheid.
Those were difficult, dangerous and defining times. We were young, angry at injustice, impatient for freedom and determined to challenge a system that had already decided what our futures should look like.
And then there were people like Cde Moosa Kaprey.
He believed in us before we had become anybody.
That is what I will always remember about him.
While we were organising students, mobilising communities, planning leadership camps and building the democratic student movement, he was one of those remarkable elders who took us under his wing. He understood that young people needed more than encouragement. We needed opportunities, resources, guidance and people who genuinely believed that our leadership mattered.
I remember him so fondly helping us raise funds for our student activities and leadership development camps. Whenever we needed assistance to make something happen, Cde Moosa was among those we could turn to.
Building the infrastructure of resistance
And he would help.
For a young activist, that kind of support meant the world. We did not have money. We did not have the institutional resources that organisations take for granted today. Much of what we did depended on ordinary people giving what they could, sharing what they had and finding ways to make the seemingly impossible possible.
Cde Moosa was an extraordinary resource mobiliser.
But calling him a fundraiser does not adequately capture his contribution.
He raised more than money. He raised possibilities. He raised confidence. He helped raise a generation of leaders.
Looking back, I realise that those leadership camps were much more than gatherings of young activists. They were places where we developed our political consciousness, built lifelong friendships, debated ideas, learnt organisational discipline and imagined the South Africa we wanted to build.
Behind so many of those opportunities were people like Cde Moosa, making sure that the work could actually happen.
A leader in the education struggle
This was his particular contribution to our liberation struggle. He understood the practical requirements of resistance. Political commitment alone was never enough. Organisations needed to be sustained. Young leaders needed to be developed. Campaigns needed resources. Communities needed to be brought together.
He knew how to connect people, build relationships, mobilise support and turn goodwill into practical action.
What strikes me today is how much of this work is forgotten when we tell the history of our struggle. We remember the speeches, the marches, the confrontations and the great political personalities. And rightly so.
But we sometimes forget those who worked relentlessly behind the scenes, whose contributions made it possible for others to organise, mobilise and lead.
Cde Moosa was one of those indispensable people.
His contribution was also far greater than my personal experiences.
A lifelong commitment to the movement
He was a significant leader in the struggle for people’s education, serving as the Western Cape chairperson of the National Education Crisis Committee during the turbulent 1980s. This was a period when schoolchildren, parents, teachers and communities challenged not only the injustice of apartheid education, but the entire political system that sustained it.
He stood firmly on the side of those demanding that education become an instrument of liberation rather than oppression.
He shared platforms with some of the outstanding leaders of our democratic movement, including Dullah Omar, Allan Boesak and others who helped give direction to the United Democratic Front and the mass democratic movement.
His commitment came at a personal cost. He experienced imprisonment at Pollsmoor in 1987 because of his anti-apartheid activities.
Yet his convictions endured.
His life reflected that extraordinary tradition of Cape Town activism in which community service, political resistance, religious conviction and human solidarity were never separate responsibilities. He was rooted in his community, grounded in his faith and committed to the dignity of every human being.
Born in India in 1943, he came to South Africa as a young child and built a life of service that stretched across generations. There is something deeply meaningful about a man who witnessed apartheid, resisted its injustices, helped prepare young people for liberation and lived long enough to reflect on the democracy he helped bring into existence.
A legacy carried by others
In 2023, at the age of 80, he published his autobiography, Verocity of the Tide.
Having read his story, I was struck again by the depth of the life behind the public figure. The autobiography does not merely record events. It opens a window into the relationships, convictions, sacrifices and turning points that shaped him. It reminds us that history is not made only in moments of public drama. It is also made in homes, community halls, places of worship, classrooms, meetings, prison cells and quiet conversations where people decide what they are prepared to stand for.
That decision to write his story says much about the man.
He understood that our history must be remembered, documented and passed on. Young people must know not only the names of our great leaders, but also the sacrifices, struggles, relationships and acts of courage through which freedom was achieved.
He understood, too, that the struggle was never the achievement of one individual, one community or one religion. It was the collective achievement of people from different backgrounds, united by a common belief in justice and human dignity.
In that respect, his autobiography is not only a personal testimony. It is an offering to future generations. It gives his own voice to a history that is too often simplified, and it allows us to encounter the person behind the positions he held and the causes he served.
That is what makes a life story so important. Cde Moosa’s story gives us more than a list of achievements. It gives us the texture of a life lived with purpose.
I was privileged to remain connected with Cde Moosa long after those early student activist years.
Treasurer General of the ANC Veterans League
When I served as Provincial Secretary of the ANC in the Western Cape, our paths continued to cross. The circumstances had changed. We were no longer the young schoolchildren of the 1980s. We carried different responsibilities and confronted different challenges.
But what remained was his enduring commitment to the movement, his willingness to contribute and his concern for the people and the organisation he had served for so many decades.
He went on to serve as Treasurer General of the ANC Veterans League, continuing the tradition of resource mobilisation and organisational service that had characterised so much of his life.
What I valued was the continuity of his commitment.
For Cde Moosa, serving the movement was not something confined to the extraordinary years of struggle. It was a lifelong responsibility.
Today, as we confront the many difficulties facing our country and our movement, I am reminded of the generation to which he belonged. They understood that commitment was measured not simply by what we said, but by what we were prepared to do for others.
They understood that leadership was about responsibility, sacrifice and service. And they understood that the real strength of a liberation movement came from its relationship with ordinary people.
There is a lesson in his life that we desperately need to recover.
A movement cannot survive on rhetoric alone. It needs people who organise, who give, who raise resources, who develop others, who honour their commitments and who remain faithful to the communities from which they come.
That was Cde Moosa Kaprey.
For me, however, his greatest legacy will always be intensely personal.
I was one of those young people whose political journey he helped make possible. He may never have known the full significance of the support he gave us. Perhaps we did not always have the words, as young activists, to express how much it meant.
But more than four decades later, I remember.
I remember the leadership camps. I remember the struggle to find the resources we needed. I remember the adults who believed in our generation when we were still finding our way.
And I remember Cde Moosa.
His generosity, his encouragement and his practical solidarity became part of the foundation upon which so many of us built our lives of public service.
There is no greater tribute to a person than to say that because they lived, other people’s lives became possible.
So today, I want to give Cde Moosa his flowers while he is no longer here to receive them. I want to speak plainly about the goodness of the man, the warmth of the comrade and the generosity of the human being. I want to honour not only what he did, but how he made people feel: supported, trusted, encouraged and capable of more than they had imagined.
To his beloved daughters, Shanaaz, Nasireen, Tasleema and Feroza, and the entire Kaprey family, I extend my deepest and most heartfelt condolences.
Today you mourn a beloved father, grandfather and family patriarch. We mourn a comrade, a mentor, a freedom fighter and a man whose life touched far more people than he could ever have known.
Thank you for sharing him with our movement and our communities.
I pray that the knowledge of the lives he influenced, the sacrifices he made and the good he brought into this world will provide some comfort in this moment of profound loss.
As we bid farewell to Cde Moosa, I am reminded that the measure of a meaningful life is not simply the years we have lived, the positions we have occupied or the recognition we have received.
It is what remains in others because we were here.
Cde Moosa leaves behind something enduring: generations of people who were strengthened by his kindness, his courage, his compassion, supported by his generosity and inspired by his commitment.
And I count myself among them.
May Allah (SWT), in His infinite mercy, forgive his shortcomings, accept his good deeds, illuminate and expand his qabr, grant his family sabr and strength, and elevate him to the highest ranks of Jannatul Firdaus.
Ameen, Ya Rabbal Alameen.
Shukran, Cde Moosa. For believing in us. For investing in us. For never losing faith in the struggle for a better South Africa.
You helped make so much possible.
We will remember.
Hamba kahle, Cde Moosa Kaprey. May you rest in eternal peace.
* Jacobs is the Former Member of Parliament and former ANC Western Cape Provincial Secretary