News24.com | 'He made perilous sacrifices': Ramaphosa mourns death of Dutch anti-apartheid activist Klaas de Jonge

Chris Hani, head of Umkhonto we Sizwe, shares a laugh with Klaas de Jonge.

• Dutch anti-apartheid activist Klaas de Jonge has died.
• His death was due to an extended illness.
• President Cyril Ramaphosa has conveyed his condolences to De Jonge's family, friends and comrades.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has conveyed his condolences to the family, friends and comrades of Dutch anti-apartheid activist and Umkhonto we Sizwe fighter, Klaas de Jonge.

De Jonge passed away on Friday, at the age of 85 following a long illness.

De Jonge and his life partner, Belgian citizen Helene Pastoors, who was imprisoned for her armed action against the apartheid regime, were remembered as distinguished liberation fighters on whom South Africa conferred the National Order of the Companions of OR Tambo, the Presidency said.

"At the very close of his life, Klaas de Jonge exercised the characteristic clarity and bravery with which he had conducted his multifaceted life, a great deal of which he dedicated to fighting for our liberation," Ramaphosa said.  

"He made critical and perilous sacrifices for the cause of freedom in South Africa – a struggle that took him to different parts of our continent where he established bonds of solidarity and built networks of armed resistance to apartheid and colonialism as part of a new generation of progressive Dutch internationalists."

De Jonge was a Dutch civil rights activist, who became internationally known as an activist against apartheid in South Africa when he was forced to spend two years as an asylum seeker at the Dutch Embassy in Pretoria in 1985.

From 1981 until 1985, he was a member of a "special operations unit" of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, doing reconnaissance work and bringing in arms and explosives into South Africa.

This led to his arrest in 1985. However, he managed to escape and acquired asylum in the Dutch embassy in Pretoria until – after two years, in 1987 – he was exchanged for SADF special forces commander Captain Wynand du Toit who had been captured in Angola.

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De Jonge continued to do work for MK and the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement until the end of 1989.

"We remain appreciative of his heroic and unselfish contribution to our struggle and he will live on in the memory and values of our nation and our continent," Ramaphosa said.