OBITUARIES
Jack Henry Abbott (58), murderer whose letters to Norman Mailer became the best-seller In the Belly of the Beast, by suicide in prison.
Glen Adams (55), former Western Cape MEC for environment, of a heart attack.
Sabry al-Banna (65), international terrorist better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Nidal, in an apparent suicide.
Frances Ames (82), human rights activist and former head of neurology at the University of Cape Town, of leukaemia.
Hugo Banzer (75), former Bolivian dictator turned democratically elected leader, of a heart attack.
Mildred Wirt Benson (96), journalist and the first Carolyn Keene, writer of the Nancy Drew mysteries. She wrote newspaper columns for 58 years and was at work the day she died.
Paul Beresford (63), veteran South African broadcaster, of a heart attack.
Dave Berg (81), Mad artist of “The Lighter Side”, of cancer.
Milton Berle (93), comedian and one of the first TV stars.
Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein (82), one of the drafters of the Freedom Charter and Rivonia trialist.
Bill Blass (79), fashion designer, of throat cancer.
Joseph Bonanno (97), Mafia boss known as “Joe Bananas”.
Angelo Buono (67), the Los Angeles “Hillside Strangler” of the 1970s, in prison.
Harold Butler (87), former editor of the Cape Times.
Barbara Castle (91), British Labour Party grandee.
Mark Chavunduka (37), Zimbabwean journalist and publisher, whose arrest and subsequent torture helped expose his government’s increasing repression of dissent, of an undisclosed illness.
Eduardo Chillida (78), renowned Basque sculptor, of Alzheimer’s disease.
Prince Claus (76), consort to Holland’s Queen Beatrix, of Parkinson’s disease and pneumonia.
Rosemary Clooney (74), big-band singer from the 1940s, of lung cancer.
James Coburn (74), laconic star of The Magnificent Seven and other movies, of a heart attack.
Ray Conniff (85), trombone player and band leader, of head trauma suffered in a fall.
Bruno Corte (59), South Africa hotelier, shot in a botched supermarket robbery.
Wessel Johannes “Hansie” Cronje (32), disgraced former South African cricket captain, in a plane crash.
Marinus Daling (55), former Sanlam chairperson, of cancer.
Benjamin Oliver Davis Jnr (89), first black United States Air Force general who during World War II headed the Tuskegee Airmen, of Alzheimer’s disease.
Ted Demme (39), director of Beautiful Girls and Blow, nephew of Jonathan Demme, of a cocaine-induced heart attack.
Lonnie Donegan (71), father of skiffle, of a heart attack.
Adrian (AD) Donker (68), South African publisher, of cancer.
John Entwistle (57), bassist for rock band The Who, of a drug-related heart attack.
Denys Fisher (84), toymaker who created the Spirograph.
Laurence Foley (60), USAid worker, gunned down outside his home in Jordan.
John Frankenheimer (72), film director who made Manchurian Candidate and Ronin, of a stroke following spinal surgery.
Uziel Gal (79), former Israeli army officer who invented the Uzi 9mm submachine gun, of cancer.
Aleksandr Ginzburg (65), Russian dissident poet, of cancer.
Stephen Jay Gould (60), Harvard professor who championed evolution and baseball in dozens of books, of cancer.
John Gotti (61), Mafia boss known as the “Teflon Don”, in prison of throat cancer.
Robert Guei (61), installed as Côte d’Ivoire military ruler after 1999 coup (until 2000); killed during mutiny/civil war.
Ruth Handler (85), inventor of the Barbie doll and co-founder of Mattel, who later helped to develop a prosthetic breast.
Richard Harris (72), hellraising Irish film star, of Hodgkins disease.
Harry Hay (90), pioneering activist in the United States gay rights movement, of lung cancer.
“Bullet” Bob Hayes (59), an Olympic gold-medal sprinter who went on to an outstanding career as a receiver with the Dallas Cowboys, of liver and kidney ailments.
Ed Headrick (78), designer/inventor who popularised the Frisbee, of a stroke. He said: “When we die, we don’t do to purgatory. We just land up on the roof and lay there.”
Freddy Heineken (78), Dutch beer magnate, after a cerebral haemorrhage.
Rudolf Hell (100), German inventor who pioneered technology that led to the fax and the colour scanner.
Thor Heyerdahl (87), Norwegian explorer who crossed the Pacific on a balsa wood raft, the Kon Tiki.
Myra Hindley (60), guilty — along with Ian Brady — of the 1960s Moors Murders in England, of cancer in prison.
Henry Taylor Howard (70), father of the satellite television industry, in a plane crash.
Kim Hunter (79), actress best remembered for playing Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, of a heart attack.
Jason Mizell Snr (37), better known as rap group Run-DMC’s DJ Jam Master Jay, gunned down in his studio.
Rulon T Jeffs (92), leader of the largest polygamist sect in the US, who was rumoured to have 75 wives.
Waylon Jennings (64), hard-living country singer/songwriter, of diabetes complications.
Chuck Jones (91), animator who created Wyle E Coyote and the Road Runner.
Gene Kan (25), who helped write the Unix version of Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing program, by suicide.
Kirshnan Kant (75), Indian vice-president, of a heart attack.
Yousuf Karsh (93), photographer whose portraits of Hemingway and Einstein are classics.
Lady Ruth Khama (79), wife of the former and founding president of Bots-wana, Sir Seretse Khama, of cancer.
Ward Kimball (88), Disney animator who created Jiminy Cricket.
Esther Friedman Lederer (83), better known as advice columnist Ann Landers, of multiple myeloma.
Wolfie Kodesh (84), long-time South African Communist Party member.
Peggy Lee (81), sultry-voiced singer best remembered for Fever, of a heart attack.
Astrid Lindgren (94), writer of Pippi Longstocking and other books for children.
Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (30), singer in group TLC, in a car crash.
Ernest Mancoba (98), South African painter and sculptor.
Linda Boreman Marchiano (53), better known as 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace, in a car crash.
Walter Masemola (26), South African cricketer, of apparent heart attack in London.
Roberto Matta (91), Chilean painter and sculptor often described as “the last of the surrealists”.
Gordon Matthews (64), engineer who invented voicemail, of a stroke.
Shu Maung (91), better known as dictator Ne Win, who led Myanmar into a 26-year isolation under his “Burmese way to socialism”.
Leo McKern (82), English character actor, of complications from diabetes.
Arthur “Spud” Melin (77), co-founder of the toy company that introduced the world to the Frisbee, Hula Hoop and other fads, of Alzheimer’s disease.
Audrey Mestre (28), free diver attempting to set a new world record of 561 feet, drowned.
“Spike” (Terence Alan) Milligan (83), comic genius and the last surviving member of The Goon Show.
Marvin Mirisch (84), Hollywood producer of Oscar winners West Side Story and In the Heat of the Night.
Marubini Mogali (21), actress in Backstage, in a car crash.
Peter Mokaba (43), firebrand African National Congress MP infamous for the slogan “Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer”, of Aids-related complications.
Marion Montgomery (67), jazz singer, of lung cancer.
Dudley Moore (66), diminutive comic actor who starred in 10 with Bo Derek, of pneumonia/progressive supranuclear palsy.
Richard Mudd (101), the patriarch who led a family crusade to overturn the conviction of his grandfather, Dr Samuel A Mudd, for aiding Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.
Curnick Mzuvukile Ndlovu (70), ANC stalwart in KwaZulu-Natal, of cancer.
Bishop Reginald Orsmond (71), founder of Boys Town, after breaking his hip.
Louis Owens (53), a prize-winning novelist and leading scholar on American Indian fiction, of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Daniel Pearl (39), Wall Street Journal bureau chief, kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan.
Vladislas “Vlado” Perlemuter (98), pianist who collaborated with Ravel.
Gavin Pfuhl (54), South African wicketkeeper-batsmen of the isolation era, of complications after a heart transplant.
Julia Phillips (58), producer of The Sting, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Taxi Driver, and wrote the tell-all You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, of cancer.
William Pierce (68), US white supremacist who wrote The Turner Diaries under pen name Andrew Macdonald, of cancer.
Pieter Pieterse (66), prolific Afrikaans author and radio and television script writer, murdered in his home by intruders.
Chaim Potok (73), rabbi and author, of brain cancer.
Diane Pretty (43), sufferer of motor-neuron disease who fought an unsuccessful legal battle for the right to have her husband help her commit suicide.
Ralph Rabie (42), better known as Afrikaans musician Johannes Ker-korrel, by suicide.
Gordon Victor Richdale (94), former chairperson of among others, Rand Mines, Harmony and Hill Samuel.
Jonas Savimbi (67), leader of Angolan rebel movement Unita, in battle against government forces.
William Scholl (81), creator of Dr Scholl’s wooden sandals, of pneumonia.
Greg Smith (52), former Wallaby coach, of a brain tumour.
Sam Snead (89), golfer who won more PGA tour events than anyone else.
Layne Staley (34), grunge rocker and lead singer for Alice in Chains, of drug overdose.
Michalis Stasinopoulos (99), a legal scholar who challenged Greece’s 1967-74 military dictatorship and served as president after it collapsed,
Rod Steiger (77), Oscar-winning actor, of pneumonia and kidney failure.
John Thaw (60), English actor famous for his roles in Sweeney and Inspector Morse, of cancer,
Sir Reginald Garfield Todd (94), New Zealand-born former missionary who was prime minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1953 to 1958. His wife, Grace (90), died earlier in the year.
Steve Tshwete (64), minister of safety and security, of pneumonia and kidney failure.
Robert Urich (55), TV actor, of cancer.
Cyrus Vance (84), who resigned as then US president Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state over an ill-fated attempt to save American hostages from Iran, of Alzheimer’s.
Father Basil van Rensburg (71), crusading Catholic priest who gained international recognition for his fight against forced removals from Cape Town’s District Six, of complications from diabetes.
Bert Wessels (58), Toyota SA executive chairperson and son of the founder of Toyota SA, Dr Albert Wessels, of a heart attack.
Vera Winnifred Quick van Tongerloo (98), Titanic survivor.
Nolan White (71), who set the land-speed record for piston-driven cars at more than 644kph, of injuries sustained in car crash while attempting to break the record.
Billy Wilder (95), legendary director of classics such as Some Like it Hot.
Ted Williams (83), last US baseball player to bat .400 for a season, of a heart attack.
Elizabeth Angela Marquerite Bowes-Lyon Windsor (101), England’s Queen Mother, just six weeks after she buried her younger daughter, Princess Margaret Rose (71), who died of a stroke.
Percy Yutar (90), prosecutor who convicted Nelson Mandela of “sabotage” at 1964 Rivonia trial.