South African liberation hero Dennis Goldberg dead at 87

30 Avril 2020

Cape Town, South Africa, April 30 (Infosplusgabon) – Liberation hero Dennis Goldberg died at his Cape Town home after a long illness on Wednesday night. He was 87.

He was born in 1933 in Cape Town. His grandparents had from fled Lithuania to England in the late 1800s to avoid the anti-Semitic threat in eastern Europe at the time.

Goldberg was arrested along with Nelson Mandela and other leading anti-apartheid activists in Johannesburg in 1963.

Goldberg was the only white person in the group at the Rivonia Trial held in Pretoria between October 1963 and June 1964. He was convicted of "campaigning to overthrow the Government by violent revolution and for assisting an armed invasion of the country by foreign troops" and sentenced to four life terms.

He spent the next 20 years on Robben Island with many of the country’s future leaders.

After his release in 1985, Goldberg continued to campaign against apartheid from London but he returned to South Africa in 2002.

In 2016, he received the Freedom of the City of London award along with Ahmed Kathrada, Lord Joel Joffe, George Bizos and Andrew Mlangeni in recognition of their fight for freedom and racial equality.

Mlangeni who served as an MP for many years, is the only Rivonia Treason trialist still alive. Mandela died in 2013.

FIN/ INFOSPLUSGABON/RTF/GABON2020

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