He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, received a doctorate Honoris Causa from Queen's University Belfast (1996) and was a laureate of the 2000 Stockholm Water Prize.

[3] Asmal's political development first began in 1952 with the Defiance Campaign, when he was asked to become the secretary of the local rate payers' association.

That exposed him to the local Indian community's efforts at dealing with apartheid when the government tried to enforce the Group Areas Act in Stanger.

[5] In 1990, Asmal returned to South Africa[4] and shortly afterward, he was elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee.

[6] In 1996, World Wide Fund for Nature-South Africa awarded Asmal their gold medal for his conservation work.

[8] Among his initiatives as Minister of Education was the launching in 2001 of the South African History Project "to promote and enhance the conditions and status of the learning and teaching of history in the South African schooling system, with the goal of restoring its material position and intellectual purchase in the classroom".

One of his most controversial moves as Minister of Education was to threaten South African universities with quotas if they failed to apply affirmative action policies to their students and staff.

[1] On 5 October 2007, he severely criticised Robert Mugabe for the situation in Zimbabwe, lamenting that he had not spoken previously, at the launch of a book Through the Darkness – A Life in Zimbabwe, by Judith Todd, daughter of Southern Rhodesia Prime Minister Garfield Todd, an opponent of white minority rule under Ian Smith.

He felt it was a poor decision and that it was improper that politicians who had been investigated and found by the Scorpions to be engaged in corruption then took part in the vote to disband the organisation.