SOUTH AFRICA, WORLD MOURN LOSS OF GOVAN MBEKI

05 Sep 2001

DURBAN, South Africa--Govan Mbeki passed away Aug. 30, one day before the opening of the World Conference Against Racism. He was 91 years old. Mbeki was memorialized by mass rallies across South Africa, including at a huge amrch and rally by the Congress of South African Trade Unions here in Durban. Mbeki devoted much of his life to building the South African labor movement. His funeral wil be he held Sept. 8 in Port Elizabeth.

Mbeki, known as Om Gov by the South African people, was the father of South African president Thabo Mbeki. He was also a great leader of the struggle against apartheid. He was a founder of the African National Congress and a lifelong member of the South Afrcian Communist Party.

Born in Transkei in 1910, at the age of 15 he became active with the Industrial and Commercial Union, South Africa's first mass organization of Black workers. In his life he was a peasant organizer, a writer and an editor of the liberation newspapers New Age and Spark. In 1962 Mbeki was declared a "banned person" by the apartheid regime. Rather than remain cut off from the struggle, he went underground and helped organize the armed struggle against apartheid. He was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment along with Neslon Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Dennis Goldberg and other ANC leaders. He was imprisoned on Robben Island from from 1961 until the mass struggle won his release in 1987. Upon leaving prison, he immediately returned to the work of the ANC. He wrote several books, including South Africa: The Peasnts' Revolt. In 1980 the ANC conferred upon him the time-honored title Isithwalandwie.