Raymond Mhlaba, who has died aged 85, dedicated his formidable talents to the struggle against apartheid. A member of the Rivonia group with Nelson Mandela, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but emerged to take office in 1994 after South Africa’s first democratic elections. His kindly manner brought him the nickname ”Oom Ray”.
Born in Mazoka, a village in the Beaufort district of the Eastern Cape province, Mhlaba was forced to drop out of Healdtown secondary school because his family lacked money. Working in a dry-cleaning factory in Port Elizabeth turned him into a committed trade unionist and political activist, initially as a leader of the Non-European Laundry Workers’ Union.
In 1943, he joined the South African Communist party (SACP), in which he was active until it was banned in 1950. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944. This was also the period in which he married his first wife, Joyce Meke, who was also from the Fort Beaufort area. In their 17 years together, before her death in a car accident in 1960, they had three children.
As chairperson of the Port Elizabeth ANC branch, Mhlaba was the first person to be arrested in the 1952 non-violent campaign against the apartheid laws. He achieved this distinction by leading a group of volunteers into the ”Europeans Only” entrance of the city’s New Brighton police station, an action that earned him the Xhosa nickname ”Vulindlela” — ”he who opens the way”.
After the ANC was banned in 1960, he went to China for military training. On returning to South Africa in 1962, he became a commander of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Following a raid by the security forces on the ANC’s underground headquarters at Liliesleaf farm, in Rivonia, northern Johannesburg, a year later, Mandela, Mhlaba and nine others — including Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki, the father of the current South African president Thabo Mbeki — stood trial for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government. In June 1964, eight of them were sentenced to life imprisonment, and all but the white Dennis Goldberg were sent to Robben Island.
Recollecting their quarter of a century incarcerated together, Mandela said of Mhlaba: ”I got to know him as the peacemaker. He spent a lot of time urging fellow prisoners to forget their differences and unite so that conditions for prisoners could improve.”
In 1986, Mhlaba was given special permission to marry his common-law wife Dideka Heliso, by then the mother of three more children. Mandela, a witness at the ceremony, had put out feelers to the apartheid government about negotiations, a move that met with controversy when he told his fellow prisoners about it. Mhlaba supported Mandela.
Released in October 1989, Mhlaba was elected, in 1991, to the ANC national executive and the SACP central committee. He became national chairperson of the SACP in 1995.
When, in 1994, the ANC swept to power in elections finally free of racial divisions, Mhlaba became premier of the newly created Eastern Cape province, where he faced the challenge of turning the corrupt bureaucracies of the Transkei and Ciskei bantustans, which had enjoyed apartheid-style independence, into an efficient civil service.
He was 74, and met with mixed success. Criticised from inside and outside the ANC, he stepped down in 1997 after serving only one term in office. He then served as South African high commissioner in Uganda, and ambassador to Rwanda and Burundi, until 2001.
Diagnosed with advanced liver cancer last year, Mhlaba is survived by his wife, three sons and five daughters.
Raymond Mhlaba, anti-apartheid campaigner, born February 12 1920; died February 20 2005 – Guardian Unlimited Â