Struggle activist and United Democratic Front founding member Johnny Issel, 65, died in Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital yesterday after a short illness.
He was one of 24 people awarded the Order of Luthuli in 2007 by former president Thabo Mbeki. "We are able to live and develop in a world of freedom, without the fetters of oppression or exclusion because of them," Mbeki said.
Issel was honoured in 2007 by then Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool as an architect of freedom and democracy.
Issel was born in Worcester, Western Cape, where he was brought up by his mother and grandmother, who struggled to support him and three cousins.
In recent years, Issel criticised the values of post-apartheid South Africa. In an interview with SA History Online, he said: "In our market society [today] everyone looks out for himself - and only himself. Nobody is his brother's keeper. Very different from the tenets held and forged during the camaraderie of the '80s."
"The new values emerging within our nascent democracy are at the opposite pole of those prevalent during the times of the UDF."
Issel leaves six children.
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