Determined until the end: Anti-apartheid fighter Denis Goldberg dies

Anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg, the only white man convicted alongside Nelson Mandela and other icons of South Africa’s liberation struggle at the 1964 Rivonia trials, has died at the age of 87, his foundation said on Thursday.

Goldberg passed away late Wednesday after living with lung cancer for two and a half years, Debbie Budlender, manager of the Denis Goldberg Legacy Foundation Trust, told dpa.

The fact that he lived on for so long was “a sign of his determination and courage,” she said.

With Goldberg’s death, of the 10 defendants in the apartheid-era Rivonia case – dubbed “the trial that changed South Africa” – only one now remains, Andrew Mlangeni, aged 94.

Trained as an engineer, Cape Town-born Goldberg served 22 years of a life sentence after the apartheid state found the political activist guilty of “campaigning to overthrow the government by violent revolution.”

Goldberg, who was of a Jewish background, was raised in a liberal home and became involved in activism at a young age, acutely aware of the injustice of the apartheid regime, which saw blacks forced to live in segregated areas and denied the right to vote.

He first joined the South African Communist Party, a banned organization firmly aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) of Mandela, and later joined the ANC’s underground armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation).

He was arrested after a police raid on an ANC safe house in Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg, in July 1963. Goldberg was held under a 90-day law during which he was interrogated and tortured.

During the trial, all 10 defendants had expected to receive the death sentence, and Goldberg later spoke of how moved he was when Mandela gave his famous address to the court about how he was prepared to die for a non-racial South Africa.

Given the apartheid system of racial division, after his sentencing Goldberg was separated from his black comrades on Robben Island and instead jailed in the capital, Pretoria. He spoke of the isolation he felt during this period.

“Because I was white, their hatred for me was even greater because they saw me as a traitor,” he said.

His wife Esme Bodenstein, also a struggle veteran who had been arrested for her activism and subjected to solitary confinement, lived in London in exile during her husband’s imprisonment.

Released in 1985, Goldberg joined her in Britain, where he became ANC spokesperson and also represented the movement at the anti-Apartheid Committee of the United Nations.

Goldberg returned to South Africa almost a decade after the end of apartheid and took on a position in government as a special advisor to another Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran, Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs and forestry.

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Like his friend and fellow Rivonia trial participant, Ahmed Kathrada – who died in March 2017 – Goldberg became critical of the ANC and former president Jacob Zuma, who is facing numerous corruption charges.

Goldberg remained involved in a number of outreach projects and founded the Denis Goldberg Foundation Trust, which aims to “spread the message of tolerance, debate, justice and multiculturalism.”

He was especially interested in the role the arts had to play in bringing about social change. (dpa)