South Africa’s first post-apartheid foreign minister, Alfred Nzo, died aged 74 in Johannesburg clinic on Thursday after suffering a stoke last month, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) announced.
Nzo served as secretary-general of the ANC in exile from 1969 to 1991. Born in Benoni near Johannesburg, Nzo attended a missionary school before going on to the University of Fort Hare in 1945 when he joined the ANC. During the 1950s he played a key role the defiance campaign against apartheid. In 1962 he was placed under house arrest and later detained for seven months before joining the ANC in exile. After the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, he was appointed foreign minister.
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