Govan Mbeki, who died on August 30th aged 91, was one of the stalwarts of South Africa's struggle for freedom, and father of its president, Thabo Mbeki.
A trade unionist and journalist, "Oom Gov" (Uncle Gov) was probably the longest-living senior member of the African National Congress, which he joined in 1935. He was jailed for life for "conspiracy to overthrow the South African government by violence" at the 1963-64 Rivonia trial and served 24 years on Robben Island.
Govan Mbeki was born in the Ngqamakwe district of the Transkei, the son of a chief who was later deposed by the government. In his teens, during a mission school education, his interest in politics was sparked by a visiting African minister who was a member of the infant ANC. In 1936, he gained a degree in politics and psychology at Fort Hare, the university which has educated many black African presidents and community leaders. After qualifying as a teacher, he moved to Johannesburg, but throughout his life he was dismissed from teaching posts because of his political activity. In 1938, he returned to the Eastern Cape. Unlike other nationalists from the region - Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe - his power base was to be at home.
He obtained a further degree in social studies through a University of South Africa correspondence course. He was elected to the Bunga, a toothless Xhosa quasi-parliament - he later described it as talking on a toy telephone; nobody listened.
From 1954, Govan Mbeki ran the Port Elizabeth office of the leftwing weekly, New Age, which reported the news that did not appear in the white establishment newspapers.
The co-operative store that he and his wife ran in Idutywa, Transkei, brought him into contact with the harrowing life of the African peasant. There was material in the letters he would read to wives from their husbands working in the gold mines. In 1939, he had published a book of essays, The Transkei In The Making. In 1964, a study of politics and life in the forgotten homelands, South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt, reached a wider readership when published in London by the Penguin African Library. It had been begun on rolls of toilet paper and was smuggled out of prison in 1961 when Govan Mbeki was held in solitary confinement, awaiting trial under the Explosives Act - he was acquitted on a technicality.
After his store was wrecked by a tornado, he found a job in Ladysmith, Natal, but was once again sacked for trying to organise coal miners who worked nearby. In defiance of a house arrest order, he went underground.
Govan Mbeki had become leader of the ANC in the Eastern Cape and, in 1956, its national chairman. After his detention during the state of emergency that followed the shootings at Sharpeville on March 21st, 1960, he joined the Communist Party. With all avenues to peaceful protest closed down, the ANC leadership started planning the armed struggle. Govan Mbeki became a member of the high command of the liberation army, Umkhonto-we-Sizwe (spear of the nation). But in July 1962, the police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, outside Johannesburg, and nabbed the cream of the guerrilla leadership.
The Rivonia trial, with Nelson Mandela's defiant speech, was a dramatic courtroom moment. But behind the scenes a more personal drama was being enacted. After their conviction, the trialists agreed there would be no appeal, despite the doubts of their lawyers, who feared that Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Dennis Goldberg would hang. Joel Joffe, their attorney, recalls his clients, "calm, living in the shadow of death ... the strain almost unbearable, yet the only matter they wanted to discuss was how they should behave in court if the death sentence was passed". Against the odds, it wasn't.
In prison, Govan Mbeki studied for an economics degree and taught less well-educated fellow prisoners in the "university of Robben Island". He never went to film shows, only watched television to see the news, and spent much time debating the merits of communism. (Mandela said that for Mbeki, the ANC and the party were "one and the same".) At weekends, he strummed his guitar and sang Afrikaans folk songs.
When he was freed in 1987, it was believed that the government was testing the water in preparation for Mandela's release. But at his first press conference he proclaimed his allegiance to the Communist Party. President de Klerk's government placed restrictions on his freedom of movement and speech, though his release had been nominally unconditional.
Govan Mbeki was reunited with his exiled son Thabo in 1990, in Zambia, on the runway of Lusaka Airport - their first meeting in 30 years. They hugged and then shook hands "in businesslike manner". In 1994, with his fellow prison-mate, now president, Govan Mbeki was elected deputy president of the senate. He retired from politics in 1999.
He leaves his wife, Piny, three sons and a daughter.
Govan Archibald Mvunwelya Mbeki: born 1910; died, August 2001