Anti-apartheid activist Ben Turok dies
Former anti-apartheid activist Ben Turok has died at the age of 92.
The Turok family confirmed that he died at his home in Cape Town on Monday morning after a long illness.
Turok's wife of 65 years, Mary Turok, says he will be remembered by the family as a consistent man.
"At the age of 92 he was tired and so it's actually, for him, a relief that he has been able to pass over from home without having to be admitted to an institution.
"He has been courageous and consistent."
Describing the man he was at home, Mary says he was a loving husband and father to their three sons.
"It was sometimes quite a difficult relationship but we stayed together for 65 years and he was a very loyal husband. He took his three sons, loved them dearly, and helped them to become very effective and influential people in their own rights.
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Turok, also a long-serving former African National Congress MP, recently served as director of the Institute for African Alternatives and editor of the journal New Agenda.
He was one of the party delegates tasked with drawing up and presenting the Freedom Charter in 1955, and also served three years in prison for his activism during apartheid in the 1960s.
In the last few months, Turok was critical of the maladministration of state resources under former president Jacob Zuma.
"His legacy is that he helped draft the Freedom Charter in the 1950s, he spent three years in prison for being arrested for trying to blow up the general post office in Johannesburg and he spent many years in exile supporting the anti-apartheid struggle,” Mary says.
"In the end he became quite critical of the way the government was actually handling the post-Zuma issues, which is why he decided he did not want to have a big memorial gathering ,but preferred to go quietly in a small family and friend memorial. I think that's a comment on what he felt about the crisis that we are now going through in South Africa.”
Turok will be cremated in a private ceremony and details of his send-off will not be made public.
"There won't be a public indication, we will invite a few friends and the family will attend the cremation,” says Mary.
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