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Rivonia Trial
The Rivonia Trial took place in South Africa between 9 October 1963 and 12 June 1964, and led to the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the others among the accused who were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life at the Palace of Justice, Pretoria. Origins The Rivonia Trial took its name from Rivonia, the suburb of Johannesburg where leaders had been arrested (and documents discovered) at Liliesleaf Farm, privately owned by Arthur Goldreich, on 11 July 1963. Various people and groups, including the African National Congress and Communist Party of South Africa, had been using the farm as a hideout. Among others, Nelson Mandela had moved onto the farm in October 1961 and evaded security police while masquerading as a gardener and cook called David Motsamayi (meaning "David the walker"). "The Rivonia raid was a stunning and welcome development for most white South Africans—a major breakthrough in the nation's fight against terrorism." Men such as Walter Sisulu, G ...
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South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely Enclave and exclave, enclaves the country Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over Demographics of South Africa, 60 million people, the country is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, 24th-most populous nation and covers an area of . South Africa has three capital cities, with the executive, judicial and le ...
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Ahmed Kathrada
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (21 August 1929 – 28 March 2017), sometimes known by the nickname "Kathy", was a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist. Kathrada's involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the African National Congress (ANC) led him to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, in which he was held at Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison. Following his release in 1990, he was elected to serve as a member of parliament, representing the ANC. He authored a book, ''No Bread for Mandela – Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64''. Early life Ahmed Kathrada was born on 21 August 1929 in the small country town of Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal, Kathrada 2004, p. 373 the fourth of six children in a Gujarati Bohra family of South African Indian immigrant parents from Surat, Gujarat. Once in Johannesburg, he was influenced by leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress such as Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, IC Meer, Moulvi and Yusuf Cach ...
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Wilton Mkwayi
Wilton Zimasile Mkwayi (17 December 1923 – 24 July 2004) was an African National Congress veteran and one of the first six members of Umkonto weSizwe to be sent for military training. Early life Wilton “Bri-Bri” Zimasile Mkwayi was born in Chwarhu area near Middledrift in 1923. His parents were uneducated farmers. He was one of seven children. Mkwayi started school at age ten in a Presbyterian church building in Keiskammahoek. He had a rural childhood herding sheep and goats, and passing through circumcision school. Mkwayi became a member of the ANC at age 17, after his father, also a member of the ANC, gave him a membership card. He left school in 1943, while World War 2 was ongoing, to work at a dynamite factory in Somerset West. Mkwayi left Somerset West for Port Elizabeth in 1945 to work offloading large trucks and trains; he also worked at the docks. Political career On 1 May 1950, he participated in the ANC Youth League’s one-day general strike and stay away ...
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Alfred Nzo
Alfred Baphethuxolo Nzo (19 June 1925 – 13 January 2000) was a South African politician. He served as the longest-standing secretary-general of the African National Congress. He occupied this position (ANC) between 1969 and 1991. He was also the South African minister of foreign affairs from 1994 to 1999. He was also the first black health inspector in the country. The Alfred Nzo Award is now awarded to deserving health practitioners in South Africa. Political career He was sent off to the Eastern Cape to receive missionary education. After completing his matric, he enrolled for BSc degree at Fort Hare University in 1945. At Fort Hare he joined the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League and became actively involved in students politics. In his second year of study he left university and started work as health inspector at KwaDukathole in Germiston and was later transferred to the Alexandra health and community centre in 1951. As health inspector, Nzo developed much unde ...
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Joe Modise
Johannes "Joe" Modise (23 May 1929 – 26 November 2001) was a South African political figure. He helped to found Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, and was its longest serving Commander in Chief, deputised at different points in time by Joe Slovo and Chris Hani. Modise headed MK for a 25-year period, from 1965 to 1990. He served as South Africa's first black Minister of Defence from 1994 to 1999 and led the formation of the post-independence defence force. As a PUTCO bus driver from Sophiatown, Gauteng, he became interested in the struggle against apartheid at an early age. He at first chose only non-violent means, being arrested with Nelson Mandela and 154 others and tried for treason. All were acquitted. In the 1960s, the South African government were using increasingly violent means to suppress anti-Apartheid activists, and Modise became a guerrilla fighter. He organized resistance groups and trained many other guerrilla fighters. Mo ...
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Moses Mabhida
Moses Mncane Mbheki Mabhida (11 October 1923 – 8 March 1986) was a South African politician. Mabhida was leader of the South African Communist Party from 1978 until his death in 1986. Biography Mabhida was born in Thornville, Natal to a peasant family as the fourth of five children. Mabhida was drawn to trade unionism by the late Harry Gwala, then an ardent unionist and member of the South African Communist Party. Mabhida, too, joined the Communist Party in 1942. After many unionists were banned in 1952, his colleagues in the newly revived underground party urged Mabhida to undertake full-time union work. In the next decade, he organised scores of workers in Natal. He worked for the South African Railways and Harbours Union and was paid £25 a month – collected from political sympathisers, as the union had little money. He was a central participant in the development of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and was elected a vice-president at its first cong ...
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Joe Slovo
Joe Slovo (born Yossel Mashel Slovo; 23 May 1926 – 6 January 1995) was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Party (SACP), a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), and a commander of the ANC's military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). A South African citizen from a Jewish-Lithuanian family, Slovo was a delegate to the multiracial Congress of the People of June 1955 which drew up the Freedom Charter. He was imprisoned for six months in 1960, and emerged as a leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe the following year. He lived in exile from 1963 to 1990, conducting operations against the apartheid régime from the United Kingdom, Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia. In 1990 he returned to South Africa, and took part in the negotiations that ended apartheid. He became known for proposing the "sunset clauses" covering the 5 years following a democratic el ...
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Moses Kotane
Moses Mauane Kotane (9 August 190519 May 1978) was a South African politician and activist. Kotane was secretary general of the South African Communist Party from 1939 until his death in 1978.Tribute to Moses Kotane
South African Communist Party


Biography


Early life

Kotane was born in in Maphusumaneng Section, Transvaal (now North West) to a devout Christian family of Batswana origins. He received l ...
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Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo (27 October 191724 April 1993) was a South African anti-apartheid politician and revolutionary who served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1967 to 1991. Biography Higher education Oliver Tambo was born on 27 October 1917 in the village of Nkantolo in Bizana; eastern Pondoland in what is now the Eastern Cape. The village Tambo was born in was made up mostly of farmers. His father, Mzimeni Tambo, was the son of a farmer and an assistant salesperson at a local trading store. Mzimeni had four wives and ten children, all of whom were literate. Oliver's mother, Mzimeni's third wife, was called Julia. Tambo graduated in 1938 as one of the top students. After this, Tambo was admitted to the University of Fort Hare but in 1940 he, along with several others including Nelson Mandela, was expelled for participating in a student strike. In 1942, Tambo returned to his former high school in Johannesburg to teach science and mathem ...
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South African Police
The South African Police (SAP) was the national police force and law enforcement agency in South Africa from 1913 to 1994; it was the ''de facto'' police force in the territory of South West Africa (Namibia) from 1939 to 1981. After South Africa's transition to majority rule in 1994, the SAP was reorganised into the South African Police Service (SAPS). History The South African Police were the successors to the police forces of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony in law enforcement in South Africa. Proclamation 18 formed the South African Police on 1 April 1913 with the amalgamation of the police forces of the four old colonies after the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910. The first Commissioner of Police was Colonel Theo G Truter with 5,882 men under his command. The SAP originally policed cities and urban areas, while the South African Mounted Riflemen, a branch of the Union Defence Force, enforced the state's w ...
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Harold Wolpe
Harold Wolpe (14 January 1926 – 19 January 1996) was a South African lawyer, sociologist, political economist and anti-apartheid activist. He was arrested and put in prison in 1963 but escaped and spent 30 years in exile in the United Kingdom. He was a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex between 1972 and 1991 when he moved back to South Africa with his wife to direct the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town. White rule ended three years later. He died of a sudden heart attack in 1996. Life Harold Wolpe was born in 1926 in Johannesburg to a Lithuanian-Jewish family. He graduated from the Witwatersrand University with a BA in social science and an LLB. He married AnnMarie Kantor in 1955 and they had three children - Peta, Tessa and Nicholas. He was a leading member of the struggle against apartheid and a friend of both Joe Slovo and Nelson Mandela. His legal work was centrally connected with the South African struggles u ...
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Elias Motsoaledi
Elias Mathope Motsoaledi (26 July 1924 – 9 May 1994) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and one of the eight men sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in July 1963 and paternal uncle to South African politician and minister Aaron Motsoaledi. The Elias Motsoaledi Local Municipality in Limpopo province was named after him. Early life Elias Motsoaledi was born on 26 July 1924, the third of eight children, in Phokoane in the Nebo District in Sekhukuneland, now Limpopo. He moved to Johannesburg at the age of 17 in search of work. His first brush with the law in Johannesburg was his arrest for failure to produce his pass book – he was sentenced to work on the construction of a road in Pretoria. Upon his release he got a job in a furniture factory. He married Caroline Motsoaledi and they had seven children. Role in Trade Union movement Motsoaledi joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1945 and then the African National Congress (ANC) i ...
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