Adelaide Tambo, 77; South African activist fought apartheid
Adelaide Tambo, 77, widow of South African anti-apartheid hero Oliver Tambo and a stalwart in the struggle against racial segregation, died Wednesday after collapsing at her home in Johannesburg, the African National Congress said in a statement. No other details were given.
Fondly known as Ma-Tambo or Mama Adelaide, she was a lifelong political activist and widely regarded as a mother figure to anti-apartheid figures in exile.
In her later years she became an advocate of rights for the elderly and the disabled.
Born July 18, 1929, Tambo began working for the ANC as a courier in her teens.
In 1956, Oliver Tambo was arrested and charged with high treason along with 155 other ANC members, including Nelson Mandela. The trial lasted more than three years, ending in the acquittal of all the accused.
The Tambos fled South Africa in 1960, and Oliver Tambo was ANC leader in exile when Mandela was imprisoned for leading the ANC’s armed struggle against the government. Oliver Tambo died of a stroke in 1993, one year before the country’s first multiracial democratic elections.
Adelaide Tambo received South Africa’s top decoration -- the Order of the Baobab in Gold -- in 2002 for exceptional commitment to the struggles against apartheid and dedication to community service and nation building.
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