School teacher and political activist. Worked in the underground of the ANC until his arrest in 1964. Charged for sabotage and sentenced to eight years in prison which he served on Robben Island. Continued his activism on his release in 1972 and in 1977 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and returned to Robben Island. He was released early, in November 1988, as he was suffering from motor neuron disease, which had robbed him of the use of his arms. Elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC, 1991. After the election in 1994 he served on the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
Politician. Gusmao was a leader The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin). He was captured by invading Indonesian forces and sentenced to life imprisonment. After United Nations sponsored negotiations a cease-fire was established and East Timor became independent. Gusmao became president in 2002.
Political activist and newspaper editor. Co-founded the ANC, 8 January 1912 (as the South African Native National Congress). In 1906 he travelled to England to discuss land claims of the Sotho people. President of the ANC, 1927–30. His son, Archie Gumede, was an ANC activist and served time in prison. Nelson Mandela corresponded with him from prison.
Anti-apartheid activist, journalist, politician, member of the ANC. Left South Africa in 1960 after helping to establish safe escape routes for anti-apartheid activists. She helped Oliver Tambo and Yusuf Dadoo to set up the first office in exile for the ANC. A journalist, she became the managing editor of two Tanzanian English-language newspapers, The Standard and Sunday News. She returned to South Africa in 1991. The first woman to serve as the speaker of Parliament in South Africa, she held this position from 1994 to 2004.
Politician and anti-apartheid activist. Went into exile in 1980 and joined the ANC and then Umkhonto weSizwe and became a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). On return from exile in 1990 she served as an official in the relaunched SACP. She was deputy minister of welfare and population development from 1995 till 1996 when she became the minister. She was minister of public service and administration from 1999 to 2008.
Civil servant. Appointed by President Nelson Mandela as the first national commissioner of the new South African Police Service. His primary responsibility was to unite eleven policing agencies into a single united South African Police Service and secondly to align the new police service to new legislation and the process of transformation in South Africa. When his term of office expired in January 2000, he was succeeded by National Commissioner Jackie Selebi.
Politician, trade unionist and academic. Participated, on the side of the ANC, in the negotiations to bring an end to white minority rule and was a member of the Development and Reconstruction Committee. Elected to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC in 1990. Deputy minister of finance in Mandela’s first cabinet, then minister of trade and industry. Minister of public enterprises under President Mbeki from 29 April 2004 to 25 September 2008.
President of Angola from 1979 to 2017 and leader of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) which fought against the Portuguese army in the struggle for liberation.
Medical doctor, anti-apartheid activist, politician. Completed a medical degree at the University of Bristol, 1978, then worked for the ANC’s Regional Health Committee and later Health and Refugee Trust, a British non-government organisation. Returned to South Africa after the ANC was legalised and took part in the negotiations at CODESA. Appointed health minister, 1994. Minister of foreign affairs (1999–2009) under President Mbeki and under President Motlanthe. Served as minister of home affairs under, President Jacob Zuma, from 10 May 2009 to 2 October 2012. President of the African Union from late 2012 until early 2017.
A small opposition party in the white apartheid parliament. It originated in 1989 under the leadership of Zac de Beer who was succeeded by Tony Leon in 1994. In 2000 made a short-lived alliance with the New National Party, after which it kept the name Democratic Alliance.
Political activist. Member of the Liberal Party of South Africa. Member of the African Resistance Movement which sabotaged non-human targets as a statement against the government. Served a fifteen-year sentence in Robben Island Prison where he was held in B section with Mandela. He was banned immediately after his release in 1979. Received the Order of Luthuli in Silver from the South African government in 2005. Mandela calls him ‘Danie’
Chief justice, 1989 to 96. First met Mandela while visiting Robben Island. He later administered the oath of office when Parliament elected Mandela as president of South Africa on 9 May 1994, and the next day at his inauguration.
Established in the 1950s by ANC, South African Indian Congress (SAIC), Congress of Democrats (COD) and the South African Coloured People’s Organisation. When the South Africa Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) was established in 1955, it became the fifth member. It was instrumental in organising the Congress of the People and mobilising clauses for inclusion in the Freedom Charter. After the ANC and SACP were unbanned it was succeeded by the Tripartite Alliance of ANC, SACP and COSATU, joined later by the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO).
National Party politician, lawyer, administrator and negotiator. Deputy minister for defence and national intelligence, 1978. Minister of justice, 1980. Held meetings with Mandela from 1985 about creating conditions for talks between the National Party and the ANC. Elected President of the Senate following South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.
The platform in which nineteen political groups met from December 1991 to negotiate a new dispensation for South Africa. The negotiations took place at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg. At CODESA 1, a Declaration of Intent was signed and five working groups were appointed to develop a new constitution for a democratic South Africa, make arrangements for an interim government and decide upon the future of homelands, among other issues. However, during CODESA 2, which commenced in May 1992, talks broke down over discussions around majority rule and power sharing. More than a month later, in June, Mandela suspended talks following allegations of police involvement in the massacre at Boipatong. Eventually, behind-the-scenes meetings between cabinet minister Roelf Meyer and ANC member Cyril Ramaphosa were followed by the resumption of the negotiations through the Multiparty Negotiating Forum, which met for the first time on 1 April 1993.
Anti-apartheid activist. Instrumental in the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the Western Cape serving as general secretary after its launch. Deputy Secretary General of the ANC under Nelson Mandela. Helped negotiate the new South African constitution and in drafting of post-apartheid ANC policy. She was the South Africa's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1998 to 2001.
Long-serving foreign minister in apartheid administrations, oversaw many important transitions, including the end of the Angolan Civil War and Namibian independence. In February 1986 he told a German journalist that he would gladly serve under a black president in the future. Served as minister of mineral and energy affairs in South Africa's first post-apartheid government from 1994 to 1996 under President Nelson Mandela.
Anti-apartheid activist, priest, orator. In 1982 Boesak persuaded members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to declare apartheid a heresy and to suspend membership of the white South African churches; he served as president of the alliance from 1982 to 1991. In 1983 he helped form the United Democratic Front (UDF) and was arrested a number of times for his opposition to apartheid. In the 1990s he was convicted of theft and fraud, and served one year of a three-year sentence before receiving a presidential pardon by President Thabo Mbeki.
Academic and politician. Served as secretary-general of Inkatha Freedom Party but due to differences with Mangosuthu Buthelezi left South Africa in 1978 and served as secretary for research and social action for the Lutheran World Foundation. Abroad he became friends with Oliver Tambo, then acting President of the African National Congress. Returned in 1991 to become the first black vice-chancellor of Fort Hare University. Became a minister of education in 1994 and 1999 served as South Africa's ambassador to Germany.
Civil servant and academic. Professor of political studies at the University of the Orange Free State, 1978. Head of South Africa’s Intelligence Service, 1980–92. Held clandestine meetings with Mandela in prison in preparation for his subsequent release and rise to political power. This included facilitating meetings between Mandela and Presidents P.W. Botha and, later, F.W. de Klerk. Director-general Western Cape Provincial Administration, 1996 to 2001.
Lawyer and anti-apartheid activist. Imprisoned on Robben Island between 1965 and 1975 with Mandela with whom he shared a birthday. He served as a mediator for the Independent Electoral Committee in 1994, when the first democratic election took place in South Africa. At the time of his passing he had served as the Judge President of the Land Claims Court for 15 years - the longest serving judicial officer in this capacity.
Anti-apartheid activist, academic and politician. An activist from an early age in Natal, he spent many years in exile in Ireland. He has a founder of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, He was a member of the ANC’s Constitutional Committee from its establishment in 1986. Elected to the ANC NEC in July 1991, he served as a minister of water affairs and forestry from 1994 to 1999 and minister of education from 1999 to 2004.
Academic, political and anti-apartheid activist. Founder of the National Liberation Front (NLF) against the apartheid government. Convicted of sabotage in 1962 and imprisoned on Robben Island for ten years. Awarded the Lingua Pax Prize for his contribution to the promotion of multilingualism in post-apartheid South Africa, 2008.
A skilled diplomat and mediator who worked as the United Nations (UN) commissioner for Namibia (1977 – 981) and led the UN team that supervised Namibia’s transition to independence (1989 – 90). In 1994 he became the president of Finland, and urged his nation’s entry into the European Union (EU), and for the first half of 1999, Finland assumed the EU’s rotating presidency.
Founded in 1944 by Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu, A. P. Mda and Oliver Tambo as a reaction to the ANC’s more conservative outlook. Its activities included civil disobedience and strikes in protest against the apartheid system. Many members left and formed the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in 1959. Banned between 1960 and 1990.
Retired Nigerian Army General who was Military Head of State from 9 June 1998 until 29 May 1999 who succeeded Sani Abacha. Led Nigeria’s contingent in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and eventually rose to the position of Chief of Defence Staff. Abubakar was one of the few generals in the Nigerian army who rose to the top without holding political office. He has held only command and military positions, and has, in general, stayed out of the political limelight. It was during his leadership that Nigeria adopted its new constitution in May 1999. Abubakar transferred power to president-elect Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, 1999. He is retired and still lives in Nigeria.
Academic, journalist and anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist. Married Joe Slovo, 1949. Met Mandela while attending the University of the Witwatersrand. Arrested, charged and then acquitted in the Treason Trial. Fled to Swaziland with her children during the 1960 State of Emergency. Detained in solitary confinement for ninety days in 1963 and fled to the UK on her release. Lived in exile in Mozambique from 1977 and was killed by a parcel bomb there on 17 August 1982.
Lawyer, civil activist and judge. He defended liberation movement members in several political trials including the Rivonia Trial. In 1978 he helped establish the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), a non-profit organisation which used law to pursue justice and human rights. He became the first president of South Africa’s new Constitutional Court in 1994 and was Chief Justice from 2001 until retirement in 2005.
Stanley Boner was a chartered accountant and partner in the firm Leveson, Boner and Company. The firm served as auditor for Cecil T. Holmes Enterprises (Pty) Ltd. in 1963. He testified for the prosecution at the Rivonia Trial.
Anti-apartheid activist and African nationalist. Leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. Founder of the South African Students Organisation (SASO), 1968, and its president in 1969. Co-founder of the Black People’s Convention in 1972. Banned and forbidden from participating in political activities in 1973. Arrested and murdered by the police, September 1977.
Architect and anti-apartheid activist. Leading member of the Communist Party of South Africa. Founding member and leader of the Congress of Democrats, one of the participating organisations in the 1955 Congress of the People at which the Freedom Charter was adopted. Defendant in the 1956 Treason Trial. After being acquitted in the Rivonia Trial, he and his wife, Hilda, went into exile (they crossed into neighbouring Botswana on foot). He remained a leading member of the ANC, whilst practising as an architect.
Many lawyers attended to Nelson Mandela’s legal and related matters during his incarceration. The Cape Town based legal firm Bernadt, Vukic, Potash & Getz (formerly Frank, Bernadt & Joffe) coordinated the work in the period 1966 – 1990. In 2004 Himan Bernadt presented the Centre of Memory with the firm’s legal files on Mandela.
Civil servant. He was Chief Director of Corporate Services in the pre-1994 President’s Office and continued to serve in the post during Nelson Mandela’s presidency.
Anti-apartheid activist, politician, political prisoner and MP. Leading member of the ANC and of the SACP. Founding member of the Transvaal Indian Volunteer Corps and its successor, the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. Imprisoned for one month in 1946 for his participation in the SAIC’s Passive Resistance Campaign against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act. Convicted for his participation in the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Banned in 1954. Co-organiser of the Congress of the People and a member of the Congress Alliance General Purpose Committee. Detained during the 1960 State of Emergency. One of the last twenty-eight accused in the Treason Trial acquitted in 1961. Placed under house arrest in 1962. Arrested at Liliesleaf Farm in July 1963 and charged with sabotage in the Rivonia Trial. Imprisoned on Robben Island, 1964–82, then Pollsmoor Prison until his release on 15 October 1989. MP from 1994, after South Africa’s first democratic elections, and served as political adviser to President Mandela.
Anglican Bishop of Zululand and Swaziland from 1968 to 1975 and president of the World Council of Churches during the 1960s. He and Chief Albert Luthuli co-founded the Natal Bantu Cane Growers' Association in 1942 and in the same year they both joined the ANC. After retiring as bishop in 1975 he broke with the ANC, over the issue of non-violence, and became National Chairperson of the Inkatha Freedom Party.
