MLUNGISI GRIFFITHS MXENGE - A STRUGGLE STALWART WHO WAS BRUTALLY MURDERED IN NOVEMBER 1981 FOR FEARLESSLY FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHTS OF ALL SOUTH AFRICANS

Just over 11 years ago in 2008, the new democratic Ethekwini Municipality had taken a decision to recognise the contributions of struggle stalwart and Durban Lawyer, Mlungisi Griffths Mxenge. He was assassinated on November 19 1981 by members of the former apartheid regime’s dreaded security police in Umlazi, Durban. The Ethekwini Municipality wanted to re-name Mangosuthu Highway in Umlazi in memory of Mxenge but this was fiercely objected to by the Inkatha Freedom Party.

It was during this period that I compiled a radio documentary on the life of Griffith Mxenge which I am publishing here as a tribute to the struggle stalwart.

Mxenge, who was born in a village near King Williams Town in 1935, studied at the University of Fort Hare and later at the University of Natal in Durban where he obtained his law degree. While studying in Durban he was arrested, detained and charged with being a member of the ANC, which was banned in 1960. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment on Robben Island. After his release he continued with his studies in Durban and graduated to become a well-known anti-apartheid lawyer in the former “Grey Street” area of Durban. I befriended Mxenge in the early 1970s when I started work as a full-time journalist at the Daily News, situated at 85 Field Street in the city at that time. Mxenge emerged as a fearless lawyer who fought the cases of activists who were arrested and detained despite himself being harassed, detained and banned by the oppressive regime. He also participated in most anti-apartheid organisations, especially the Release Mandela Campaign, which was established to mobilise South Africa and the international community for the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. He also joined this correspondent and other activists such as Dr Khorshed Ginwala, Dr A E Gangat and Archie Gumede to spearhead the setting up of the alternative newspaper, Ukusa, in Durban in the early 1980s.

He was married to Victoria Nonyamezelo who was also brutally murdered by agents of the apartheid police in the drive way of her home in Umlazi in 1987. Griffith and Victoria Mxenge were posthumously awarded the Luthuli Award in Silver in 2006 for paying the ultimate price for “defending the rights of oppressed South Africans to exist in conditions of freedom, justice, peace and democracy”.