What I'll be doing with this tape is transcribing it and putting it up pretty much verbatim, but also editing it to make it shorter and concise. Feel free to talk about whatever you want and expand on whatever you want as well. I'll probably be using little snippets for audio bites.
OK. A lot of people misspell my name. My name is Kahin Ismail — K-A-H-I-N, Ismail I-S-M-A-I-L. I'm 27 years old, and I'm from Ottawa.
Maybe you can tell me a little bit about where you were born and take us through a brief history of your life.
I was born in Somalia and we moved to Canada in about 1986–87 — the whole family basically moved to Canada at that point.
When I came to Ottawa in my first year of law school I got involved with CLAIRE, just as a volunteer. They have different projects going on there, and I got involved in a project called the Western Sahara Initiative — basically to make awareness of the issue of Western Sahara. I volunteered there from 1995 until I left.
Can you tell me about your work with the Western Sahara Initiative?
What that project entails is that there was a core group of us — about six or seven of us — and we would meet, we would do research. The way I got involved was that I was taking a course in international law, and the professor, Professor Macrae, was the chairman of the board of CLAIRE at that point. He invited us to write papers in our class on Western Sahara. So I did that paper, and CLAIRE used that paper as their research and published it in their political [journal].
When I graduated in 1998, I had decided not to go into articles right away. I had this opportunity. I was doing my Phase One of bar exams in June this year, and CLAIRE was publicising these internships to different countries. I applied — they gave me the interview.
Tell me about your work here.
Basically, the Karoo Mobile Law Clinic — the precise name is — it's a law clinic in effect. It takes clients on all kinds of issues. In my report I said that we take cases from dog bites to murder. And it's true, we get dog-bite cases here — it's very interesting.
Your personal perspective — when you're working in the townships and so on, how does it feel? What does it look like?
It's a pretty small town, so you stand out. Everybody knows you. You're the foreigner, you're the new face. But this is the third year that there's a Canadian intern in this office, so they're somehow used to the idea of getting an intern from Canada. They always ask me about Charmaine and Kahin — the previous two interns. I've met them, but I don't really know them well. They live in Toronto. So they kind of expect — and it's not totally foreign to them, the idea of having an intern from Canada.
Now, you're living in one of the townships?
Yeah, I am. I live in — it's called Goyasa Township. Basically, as you see, Colesburg is a one-street town with nice little houses fronting this one street. But this one street is flanked by the townships. There are two townships — a black township and a coloured township. As you know, people have been separated in that sense according to the apartheid system. So I live in the black township.
What are your reflections on this project and CLAIRE's involvement here, and how do you see it as beneficial? Do you think it should be expanded?
I see it as a two-way process. We interns definitely get an experience from this project, and at the same time we somehow contribute to the work of the clinic — seeing clients and so on. I see a definite plus in that, and I wish it was expanded or contributed [more].
Is there anything else, any other comments or thoughts that would be relevant to Canadian students who are going to be reading this — about South Africa, about your work here?
It's a very good experience — especially for Canadian students — coming to South Africa at this time, after the apartheid system has fallen. It's a very good country, it's very good people. There's a lot of interesting things — in terms of the law, in terms of social issues. So this is the best time to be in South Africa, I believe.
Great. Thanks, Kahin.
- CLAIRE — Canadian organisation sending law-student interns to South Africa, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and other countries; funded by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT); full institutional name to be verified
- Professor Macrae — chairman of the CLAIRE board during Kahin's law school years; taught international law at the University of Ottawa
- The Western Sahara Initiative — CLAIRE project that Kahin volunteered with throughout law school; concerned with monitoring the Western Sahara dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Front; the December [1998] referendum Kahin references was repeatedly postponed and as of 2026 has still not been held
- Goyasa Township — the black township adjacent to Colesburg, Northern Cape; spelling to verify (also rendered as "Kuyasa" or "Goyasa" in different sources)
- Andy — the paralegal at the law clinic who runs the public education component; full name not given on tape
- "A historic house — women's organisations used to meet during the struggle." Kahin's account of the house he was given to live in during his internship — a township house owned by an absent nurse, that during apartheid was a meeting place for women's resistance organisations. The literal continuity between the resistance infrastructure of one era and the foreign-intern hosting of another. A foreign Canadian law student housed by happenstance in a former safe house. The construction-and-continuity theme made specific.
- The two-perspective pairing with Interview 01. The Karoo lawyer (white South African, returned from exile, in the community for ten years) and Kahin (Somali-Canadian, third in a rotation, in the community for a few months) give parallel accounts of the same place from very different positions. Editorially, this is an excellent example of why Anabasis benefits from layered perspectives — one voice could not have given what these two together give.
- The funding observation. Kahin's call for direct funding to the clinic itself rather than just to the intern programme is a recurring problem in international civil-society support: foreign-funded participation programmes that don't strengthen the institutions they're being hosted by. Directly relevant to the studio's 2026 work — when foundations and ministries fund CEE democracy work, the same question arises about whether the money strengthens frontline institutions or just supports visiting foreign observers.