South Africa’s anti-apartheid campaigner dies at 95

Andrew Mlangeni, South African anti-apartheid campaigner, who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela in 1964 after a treason trial, has died at the age of 95.

The man who was born in 1925, spent 26 years in jail and was the last of the eight defendants in the trial to die.

Mlangeni was said to have been on admission in the hospital after a mild abdominal complaint.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa described him as a “beacon of ethical leadership and care for humanity” whose death marked the end of a generation of history and left the future in the hands of those who remained.

“With his passing Mlangeni has indeed passed the baton to his compatriots to build the South Africa he fought to liberate and to reconstruct,” President Ramaphosa said.

Mlangeni was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent with Mandela to Robben Island prison, the main jail used at the time for Black male anti-apartheid prisoners.

After his release, he served as a member of parliament and lived in the township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg, until his death.