Historical story

Nelson Mandela's fellow prisoner Andrew Mlangeni has died

Andrew Mlageni, a figure in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a companion on the march and fellow prisoner of Nelson Mandela, has died at the age of 95, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced today.

In a tweet, Ramaphosa said he was "deeply saddened to learn of the death overnight" on Tuesday to Wednesday of Andrew Mlangeni.

Mlangeni was admitted to a Pretoria hospital with abdominal pain on July 14, according to the presidency.

His death "marks the end of an era and puts our future in our hands," the president added in a statement.

Andrew Mlangeni was the last survivor of the infamous Rivonia Trial (1963-64), during which several prominent members of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), including Nelson Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

This trial went down in history because Nelson Mandela, who became the first black president of South Africa thirty years later, in 1994, made a political statement by drawing the world's attention to his case.

Andrew Mlangeni ended up in prison for 26 years.

It was "the last 'monument' of a courageous generation of South Africans who gave up their freedom, their careers, their family life and their health so that we could all be free," said Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and comrade in arms of Nelson Mandela.

"It is now up to the younger generation to pick up the baton and finish the route," he added in a statement.

The racist apartheid regime, which the ANC fought against, officially fell in 1994, but inequalities between the black majority and whites remain very stark even today.

The ANC today paid tribute to "one of the most remarkable fighters" who "considered the freedom of the people more important than his own life".

In 2018, Andrew Mlangeni walked the red carpet at Cannes with the crew of a documentary about the Rivonia trial "The State against Mandela and the others".

Another convicted in the Rivonia trial, Dennis Goldberg, died at the age of 87 last April.