PRETORIA: Veteran South African anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg, who was tried alongside Nelson Mandela, has died at the age of 87.

As a member of the ANC’s military wing, he was convicted of armed resistance to white-minority rule and sentenced to four life terms in 1964.

He was imprisoned for 22 years.

Confirming the news of his death on local media, Mr Goldberg’s niece, Joy Noero, said he had been suffering from lung cancer.

He “died peacefully” at his home in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, just before midnight on Wednesday, she added, saying that he “never stopped believing in his ideals”.

Apartheid was a legalised form of racism in which non-white people were treated as inferior.

It governed every aspect of life in South Africa, and only while people were able to vote until the first democratic elections in 1994 when Mandela was elected president.


Share this article: