Former Labour Party leader and later African National Congress MP Reverend Allan Hendrickse died suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, his family confirmed.
Hendrickse’s son, Peter, also an ANC MP, said his father suffered a fatal heart attack at the Port Elizabeth airport at about 2pm on Wednesday.
He was on his way to Cape Town at the time.
In 2000, the Mail & Guardian reported that the Congressional Church minister and tricameral MP, who shot to prominence when he embarrassed his political masters by swimming at the then whites-only Kings Beach in Port Elizabeth, had returned to the pulpit after an action-packed political career.
He started out as a detainee following the 1976 riots, and then got a Cabinet seat in the tricameral system. Hendrickse ended up on an ANC ticket in the post-apartheid Senate chamber after his Labour Party backed the liberation movement in the constitutional negotiations preceding the 1994 election.
Hendrickse at the time told the M&G that he had no regrets about his role in apartheid institutions.
“My objective was to make the system unworkable from within,” he said.
He claimed that the “fruits” of his political labour were paid out when he accompanied Nelson Mandela to receive his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.