Raymond Mhlaba was a stalwart of the liberation struggle whose life enriched all South Africans, President Thabo Mbeki said in a statement on Monday morning.
The African National Congress veteran and Rivonia trialist died on Sunday night at the age of 85.
”He endured a generation of incarceration under the apartheid regime, together with fellow heroes of our nation and he managed to play a valued public role as our democracy took root,” Mbeki said in a statement.
”The people and government of South Africa salute his memory as we recall his committed life endeavours.
”His death robs us of yet another hero — a member of a splendid, unforgetable generation.”
”Oom Ray”, who had inoperable liver cancer, was a son of the Eastern Cape, and spent 25 years in jail after being sentenced, along with Nelson Mandela, to life imprisonment.
Born in Mazoka village in the Fort Beaufort district on 12 February 1920, and educated at Healdtown Secondary School, his first job was at a laundry in Port Elizabeth.
There he was introduced to trade unionism through the Non European Laundry Workers Union.
In 1943, as his political awareness grew, he joined the Communist Party, and the following year became a member of the African National Congress.
It was at this time that he wed his first wife, Joyce Meke, also from the Fort Beaufort area, with whom he was to have three children. She died in a car accident in 1960.
As chairperson of the Port Elizabeth branch of the ANC Mhlaba was the first ANC member in the country to be arrested in the non-violent 1952 defiance campaign against apartheid laws.
He achieved this distinction — without realising it at the time — by leading a group of volunteers into the ”Europeans Only” entrance of the New Brighton police station in Port Elizabeth.
For this, he earned the sobriquet ”Vulindlela” — he who opens the way.
Mhlaba was district secretary of the Communist Party from 1946 until it was prohibited in 1950 under the Suppression of Communism Act. Two years later he himself was banned.
Though forbidden to attend any gatherings, he nevertheless continued his political activities.
After the ANC itself was banned in 1960 he joined other exiles doing military training in China, becoming, as he put it in his memoirs, ”a trained and handsome soldier”.
Returning in October 1962, Mhlaba took over command of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed wing, after the arrest of Mandela.
The following year he was detained along with other key MK members in a security police swoop on Liliesleaf farm at Rivonia in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was sent with Mandela and the other seven Rivonia trialists to Robben Island, off Cape Town.
In 1982 he was transferred to Pollsmoor.
In 1986, against a backdrop of indications that the government might be prepared to talk to the ANC about a negotiated settlement, he was given special permission to marry his common-law wife Dideka Heliso, who was the mother of three of his eight children.
After the ceremony, in the Pollsmoor prison commandant’s office, Mhlaba was legally permitted to touch Heliso for the first time in 22 years.
Mandela, a witness at the ceremony, had at this stage on his own initiative put out feelers to the government about negotiations — a move which met with mixed reaction when he told his fellow-prisoners about it.
However Mhlaba believed Mandela was correct.
”I personally had confidence that Mandela was doing the right thing in engaging in dialogue with Cabinet ministers,” he said afterwards.
Released in October 1989, Mhlaba was elected in 1991 to the ANC national executive and South African Communist Party (SACP) central committee. He became national chairperson of the SACP in 1995.
When the ANC swept to power in the first democratic elections in 1994, Mhlaba became premier of the newly-created province of the Eastern Cape.
There he faced the daunting challenge of turning the bloated and inefficient bureaucracies of the Transkei and Ciskei bantustans, which until then had enjoyed apartheid-style independence, into an efficient civil service.
He was 74 when he took on the task, a job which would have daunted a much younger man.
Attacked for his perceived failures from inside and outside the ANC, Mhlaba served only one term, quitting in 1997 to make way for the stronger personality of Makenkhesi Stofile.
”Some of my comrades criticised me for spending too much time consulting and for being indecisive,” he said of this period in his memoirs.
”However, whether I took decisions or failed to do so, they criticised me.”
Mhlaba was instead appointed High Commissioner to Uganda and Rwanda, retiring from the post in 2001, the same year his memoirs were published.
He made a foray into the business world as chairperson of a black economic empowerment consortium involved in the Coega port project, but suffered a stroke in July 2003.
In 2004 he was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, and in December doctors discharged him from a private clinic saying there was nothing they could do for him.
As the year drew to a close, he received a string of distinguished visitors at his Port Elizabeth home, including Mbeki and Mandela, who told reporters afterwards that Mhlaba had lived a full life.
Mhlaba received the ANC’s Isitwalandwe Award in 1992 for his role in the liberation struggle, and the Moses Kotama Award in 2002 for his contribution to the SACP. – Sapa