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| - South African activist Denis Goldberg, one of Nelson Mandela's closest colleagues in the struggle against apartheid, has died at 87, his family and foundation announced on Thursday. Goldberg was arrested and jailed for sabotage with Mandela in the famous Rivonia treason trial. He was the only white man among those arrested in 1963 at a hideout in Rivonia, north of Johannesburg. In 1961 aged 28, Goldberg joined the African National Congress' (ANC) military wing, Umkhonto WeSizwe, where he was able to make use of his technical skills as an engineer, including making bombs and explosives. He died just before midnight on Wednesday, his family and foundation said in a statement. "His was a life well-lived in the struggle for freedom in South Africa," the statement said. Goldberg had been battling lung cancer and a heart condition. His activism meant his family was a constant target and his wife Esme Bodenstein, herself a political activist, was subjected to solitary confinement. Goldberg spent 22 years in a whites-only jail after his arrest with Mandela and other activists including Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Andrew Mlangeni. After his release, he moved to London to join his family and also resumed working for the ANC at the party's branch in the city until 1994, the year white minority rule ended. Bodenstein died in 2000 and Goldberg returned to South Africa in 2002 and went on to serve as a government adviser. "Somehow I understood that what was happening in South Africa with its racism (it) was like the racism in Nazi Germany that we were supposed to be fighting against," Goldberg said last year. "You have to be involved one way or another. That's what I grew up with." President Cyril Ramaphosa said Goldberg's "commitment to ethical leadership was unflinching and even during his advanced age, he formed part of the movement of veterans of the struggle calling for reassertion of moral centre of society." Characterising him as a "mensch", the foundation set up by the revered anti-apartheid fighter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, hailed Goldberg as a pillar of integrity. His "pragmatic human values and natural compassion shone like a candle, attracting and connecting like-minded individuals and institutions wherever he went," the foundation said in a statement. Receiving a high-profile honour in London in 2016, Goldberg said there was "a long way to go" on race relations in South Africa. "The racial segregation was burnt into the minds of every South African," he said. sn-mgu/ach
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