Aziz Pahad
South African politician
Aziz Goolam Hoosein Pahad (25 December 1940 – 27 September 2023) was a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist who was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 2008. He was a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress from 1985 to 2007.
Early life and activism
Pahad was born on 25 December 1940 in Schweizer-Reneke in the former Transvaal, but his family moved to Johannesburg in 1945. His parents were Amina and Goolam Pahad, activists in the Transvaal Indian Congress, and his elder brother, Essop, also became an activist. He matriculated in 1959 at the Central Indian High School in Johannesburg and then, in 1963, completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he majored in sociology and Afrikaans.
While a student, Pahad was active in the anti-apartheid movement, particularly through the Transvaal Indian Congress, and he was served with a banning order in 1963. The order restricted his movements and public activities, and he was arrested on several occasions. In 1964, after the landmark Rivonia Trial, he and Essop left South Africa and went into exile.
Exile: 1964–1990
In exile, Pahad spent some time in Angola and Zimbabwe but lived mostly in London, England. He completed a diploma at University College London in 1966, followed in 1968 by a Master's degree in international relations from the University of Sussex.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as south African politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2875166. VIAF identifies the subject as 316390539. The Library of Congress control number is n2015030250. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2023, 1994 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aziz Pahad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.