Dennis Goldberg, a veteran activist of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa who has spent more than two decades in prison because of the resistance to apartheid, died at the age of 87.
As a Jewish member of the Communist Party, Goldberg was the only white person to be sentenced to life imprisonment in the famous Rivonia Trials of 1964, as Nelson Mandela was also sentenced to life in prison - who later became South Africa's first black-skinned president.
Like Mandela, Goldberg was convicted of being involved in the armed struggle of the African National Congress against the apartheid regime.
Debbie Bodlender, director of the Dennis Goldberg Foundation, the Legacy Foundation Trust, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa yesterday that Goldberg died late yesterday, after suffering from lung cancer for two and a half years.
After his release from prison in 1985, the engineer went into exile, joined his wife who was also a political activist involved in the struggle, in London, and returned to South Africa in 2002, according to the foundation.
Like Mandela, Goldberg was convicted of being involved in the armed struggle of the African National Congress against the apartheid regime.