Human rights campaigner and co-founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) Louise Asmal has died, her family have announced.
President Michael D Higgins has led the tributes in Ireland, saying she worked “tirelessly” alongside her late husband Kader Asmal to make the IAAM “one which could unite people from all walks of life against the inhumane apartheid regime which prevailed in South Africa”.
English-born Louise and South Africa-born Kader Asmal cofounded the IAAM in 1964. They were themselves excluded from entering South Africa at the time, as interracial marriages were prohibited and it was a criminal offence for them to cohabit. The couple spent 27 years in Dublin, having met while Kadar – a university professor – was working in Britain.
“Together Louise and Kader, with the support of their many colleagues, organised some of the biggest political marches in Ireland of the time. Appealing to a sense of common humanity and shared values, what emerged was one of the most organised action groups in the country,” Mr Higgins said.
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“For many of our generation, ending apartheid was the great defining moral argument of the second half of the 20th century,” the President said, adding that Louise Asmal was “to the forefront” of this.
The South African Bill of Rights was drafted at the home she shared with her husband in Deansgrange, Dublin.
In an interview with RTÉ’s Drivetime in 2013, Louise Asmal said when the couple first arrived in Ireland in the 1960s, “nobody knew very much about apartheid in South Africa ... So we had to embark on a campaign of raising awareness”.
She described the Dunnes’ Stores workers strikes as “a turning point in Ireland” in the 1980s.
Following the end of apartheid, Louise and Kader Asmal returned to Cape Town, where Kader served as a government minister under president Nelson Mandela, and Louise continued her work as a writer, researcher, administrator and activist.
She was also a board member for many years of South Africa’s Institute for Reconciliation and Justice.
In South Africa, tributes were led by Dr Mamphela Ramphele, chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust, who said Louise Asmal’s family should be “very proud of this modest, gracious, quiet heroine”.
Ms Asmal (née Parkinson) died peacefully following a long battle with illness, her death notice said.
She is survived by her sons Rafiq and Adam, her granddaughter Zoe, her sister Stephanie, and her wider family.
There will be a memorial in Cape Town, with the date to be confirmed, and her ashes will be scattered in the same place as her husband Kader, who died in 2011.
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