Mbeki salutes Raymond Mhlaba
David Masango
22 February 2005
President Thabo Mbeki has saluted liberation struggle stalwart Raymond Mhlaba, who died on Sunday night after a long battle against liver cancer.
Saluting the former Eastern Cape premier, Mbeki said the country had lost "a member of a splendid, unforgettable generation".
He said Mhlaba, who was 85 when he died, had "endured a generation of incarceration under the apartheid regime ... and managed to play a valued public role as our democracy took root."
Mhlaba, an African National Congress (ANC) veteran and Rivonia trialist, was incarcerated for 25 years for his political activities.
Born in Mazoka village at Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape, Mhlaba attended school at Healdtown but was forced to drop out because of financial problems.
It was while working at a dry cleaning factory in 1942 that he developed his political views and commitment to the labour struggle. A year later, he joined the Communist Party of South Africa,
becoming secretary of the Port Elizabeth branch of the party until its banning in 1950.
Mhlaba was arrested during the Defiance Campaign at the New Brighton railway station in Port Elizabeth in 1952 and banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. In 1961 he went into exile for military training.
On his return in 1962 he commanded uMkhonto weSizwe until his arrest in Rivonia in 1963. He was found guilty on charges of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.
Mhlaba was transferred to Pollsmoor prison in 1986, where he stayed until his release in 1989 to join the ANC special executive committee that negotiated with the National Party government on the country's democratic future.
In 1991 he was elected into the ANC's national executive committee, and in 1994 became premier of the Eastern Cape. Mhlaba received the ANC's medal of Isithwalandwe, and served in 1997 as South African High Commissioner to Uganda.
Source: BuaNews
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