Photos by Lee Thomas

On April 12, 2011 Mr. Ahmed "Kathy' Kathrada and Ms. Barbara Hogan came to the University of Kentucky and received honorary degrees commemorating their life works and achievements.

Ahmed Kathrada (commonly known by his nickname “Kathy”) joined the South African liberation movement as a teenager. Nelson Mandela was reluctant at first to accept the young Indian man as a fellow freedom-fighter, but they soon became strong friends and advocates for each other. Both men, along with many other prominent activists, were given life and hard labor and taken to the Robben Island prison. They were released after 26 years, bringing new hope to the anti-apartheid struggle. He and Barbara Hogan met soon after they were both released; he writes “we rapidly gravitated towards a romantic relationship, which still continues.” After the apartheid leaders abdicated a few years later, Kathrada and Mandela began to build a new South Africa. They started the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with past injustice and built the new South African government based on non-racialism.