Denis Goldberg

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Denis Goldberg (2013)

Denis Goldberg (born April 11, 1933 in Cape Town ; died April 29, 2020 in Hout Bay ) was a South African civil rights activist who campaigned against apartheid and gained prominence as a defendant in the Rivonia trial .

Life

Goldberg's father had to flee the pogroms of the Russian Empire as a Jew from Lithuania and became a transport company in South Africa, where Goldberg grew up in Cape Town, where he graduated as a civil engineer. As a member of the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP), suppressed by the apartheid regime, he co-founded the Congress of Democrats, an organization of about 200 white communists that supported the African National Congress (ANC). For his work, Goldberg was imprisoned for four months in 1960 without trial.

When Umkhonto we Sizwe , the armed wing of the ANC, was founded after the Sharpeville massacre in 1961, Goldberg joined him as a technical officer and was responsible for building explosives . In 1963 he became the temporary headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe, a farm in Rivonia near Johannesburg, was arrested and in the same process for high treason accused and sabotage and four times life imprisonment convicted.

Unlike his black co-defendants such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu , Goldberg was not arrested on the notorious prison island of Robben Island . He was sent to a white prison in Pretoria . There he completed three distance learning courses and learned self-taught German, his dismissal in 1985 after 22 years broke a law degree.

After his release Goldberg first went to Israel , then to London into exile , where his family lived for many years. There he worked until 1994 in the London branch of the ANC, which he also represented at the United Nations .

Goldberg returned to South Africa in 2002 and worked for several years as a special advisor to the then Minister for Water and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils . In 2009 he received the Order of Luthuli in silver and in 2011 the Federal Cross of Merit for his work for international understanding .

Goldberg last lived in Hout Bay . He died of lung cancer on April 29, 2020 .

Awards

Works

Publications

literature

Documentaries

  • Comrade Goldberg - Terrorist? Freedom fighter! by Peter Heller , 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ ORF : Anti-apartheid fighter Goldberg dies
  2. ↑ a b c d Tages-Anzeiger - The Last Big Hurray, accessed on December 11, 2017
  3. ^ Federal Cross of Merit for Denis Goldberg . Rosa Luxemburg Foundation , accessed on January 27, 2012.
  4. ↑ FAZ No. 40, February 16, 2018, p. 4.
  5. ^ Freedom of London for men jailed with Nelson Mandela. bbc.co.uk of January 27, 2016 (English), accessed July 30, 2018
  6. ↑ Description at filmkraft.de, accessed on June 7, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Goldberg, Denis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 2020
Place of death Hout Bay