Andrew Mlangeni, who has died aged 95, was the last surviving defendant of the Rivonia trial at the end of which he, Nelson Mandela and seven others were sentenced in 1964 to life in prison for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa by force. On trial for their lives, the 10 defendants, six black, three white and one Indian, decided to turn the trial into a political one, putting apartheid in the dock of world opinion.
Their decisions not to deny their role in the campaign of sabotage organised by the ANC’s armed wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (“MK”), Spear of the Nation, and not to expose Mandela to cross-examination in the witness box – so that his speech from the dock would be a platform for an uninterrupted condemnation of apartheid – made death sentences, which their lawyers advised were likely, even more probable.
To them their lives were of secondary importance. Their courage was all the more remarkable given that, throughout the trial, in the prison where they were held, there was a ritual before the weekly 6am hangings. From 6pm the night before the whole prison sang in solidarity with the condemned men throughout the night.
Fifty years later, I filmed Andrew and his co-defendant Denis Goldberg for my documentary on the Rivonia trial as they made a return visit to the dock in the Pretoria supreme court. There, in April 1964, they had sat next to Mandela as they heard him challenge the judge to hang them all: “The ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities is, if needs be, an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Andrew said that they had all approved the speech and the feeling was indescribable. “I felt such pride.”
The trial was the most important in South African history. It brought the evils of apartheid to the attention of the world and 30 years later led to its dismantling. But the price Andrew paid was enormous. He was subjected to electric shock torture (during which he did not react, leading his tormentors to give up) and spent 26 years and four months in Robben Island and other prisons, for the first 10 suffering the indignity of being made to wear short trousers.
Whenever his wife got a job to support their children, the special branch had her sacked by telling her employers that her husband was a rapist and murderer. I asked him if it was worth it. “Oh yes. Definitely worth it. Those years were wasted and it should have ended sooner. But most definitely worth it.”
One of 10 siblings, he was born into extreme poverty on a white-owned farm near Bethlehem, in Orange Free State (now Free State province), where his father, Matia, worked as a labour tenant in exchange for a place to live for his family. When Andrew was six his father died and the family had to move to Bethlehem. Andrew did not go to school, a place he did not know existed until, at the age of 11, wondering where his friends disappeared to in the mornings, he followed one of them. The destination turned out to be a church, where the children learned to count using piles of stones. At secondary school Andrew was taught by Oliver Tambo, a future president of the ANC.
He got a job as a caddie to help his mother, Aletta, put food on the table. It was the start of a lifelong passion for golf. But when he was 17 it took second place to a new passion: politics. He was recruited to the Young Communist League by Elsa Watt and described being served tea by a young white woman as liberation. Later he joined the ANC and rose to be a senior organiser in Soweto. He was the first activist recruited by Mandela to MK.
In 1962 he was one of six MK recruits sent to China for training. While there they had a meeting with Mao Zedong and asked for tips on how to defeat apartheid. Speaking in English, Mao said: “If you try to cut someone’s arm off it’s very difficult. But if you cut off their little finger it’s just as painful,” leaving them to interpret his enigmatic advice for themselves.
On his return to South Africa in 1963 Andrew was put in charge of recruiting MK members and arranging to smuggle them abroad for training. One was Jacob Zuma, who was detained before he could leave the country and ended up on Robben Island with the Rivonia trialists. Mlangeni was arrested at about the same time.
In the years after his release in 1989, Andrew retained the integrity that had led to his imprisonment. He remained a loyal member of the Communist party and of the ANC, serving two spells as an MP. But that did not stop him from repeatedly urging Zuma to resign as president in the latter years of alleged state capture.
He lived in modest circumstances in the same house in Soweto in which, apart from the prison years, he had lived since 1952. No swimming pools at taxpayers’ expense for him.
He said of the Rivonia trialists: “We were a multiracial band of comrades whose aim was a non-racial South Africa.” He also said: “We did not spend 26 years in prison so that public officials could steal from the people or take bribes. Corruption must be stamped out ruthlessly.” At the end of my documentary, Life Is Wonderful: Mandela’s Unsung Heroes, filmed in 2014 and released in 2018, he said: “When you see what is happening in the country today it makes your heart to bleed.”
In 2015 he became chairman of the ANC integrity and ethics committee. At Andrew’s 93rd birthday party, Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, said: “He should be known as Comrade Integrity.”
He is survived by three children, Maureen, Sylvia and Sello. His wife, June (nee Ledwaba), whom he married in 1950, died in 2001 and his son Aubrey also predeceased him.
• Andrew Mlangeni, anti-apartheid activist and politician, born 6 June 1925; died 21 July 2020
