Apartheid activist Cleopas Madoda Nsibande
Jan 13, 2009 – The Nelson Mandela Foundation remembers Cleopas Madoda Nsibande, a long-time comrade in the struggle against apartheid, who passed away on December 26, 2008 at the age of 80.
Nsibande joined the African National Congress in 1951 and was a founder of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu) in 1955.
He was buried on January 3, 2009 in Tamboville Cemetery after an official funeral attended by President Kgalema Motlanthe and former President Thabo Mbeki. It is the cemetery where his close confidante Oliver Tambo was laid to rest in 1993.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation hosted Nsibande in March last year, as part of a group of former political activists who stood trial with Mr Mandela. Nsibande was a fellow accused in the 1956 Treason Trial. His mother died of shock five days after his arrest on December 5, 1955. He attended her funeral in chains and guarded by police.
Nsibande attended a Dialogue at the Nelson Mandela Foundation last year
“We mourn the loss of Comrade Nsibande,” said Achmat Dangor, Nelson Mandela Foundation Chief Executive. “It is people of his calibre and generation to whom we owe a debt of gratitude that we now live in a free society.”
The son of a farm worker, Nsibande was born in Ermelo, Mpumalanga. He had to give up his formal education after three years of high school and became a factory worker and a trade unionist.
He was detained with thousands of others in the 1960 State of Emergency, which was soon followed by the outlawing of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress. Nsibande began recruiting for the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, after it was formed in 1961. He was twice banned for five years, in 1963 and 1969, but continued to work clandestinely for the ANC until it was unbanned on February 2, 1990.