South African anti-apartheid activist Mosiuoa Lekota, who broke away from the African \u200bNational Congress to found a new \u200cpolitical party, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his party said in a statement. \u200bHe was 77 years old.<\/p>\n
Lekota died after \u200ba period of illness and had \u2060stepped back from active politics.<\/p>\n
He was a \u200bclose ally of former President Thabo Mbeki and \u200bserved as South Africa’s defence minister from 1999 to 2008.<\/p>\n
Lekota, nicknamed “Terror” for his fearsome skills on the \u200bsoccer pitch as young man, quit \u200bin protest at Mbeki’s ousting and was voted off \u200cthe \u2060ANC’s National Executive Committee after repeated criticism of Mbeki’s successor, Jacob Zuma.<\/p>\n
He co-founded the Congress of the People (COPE) party in 2008.<\/p>\n
COPE won \u200broughly 7% \u200bof the \u2060vote in the first national election it contested, in 2009, but \u200bits vote share has been below \u200b1% \u2060at every national election since then.<\/p>\n
Lekota worked as a student activist during the 1970s. \u2060He \u200bserved jail time on Robben \u200bIsland with the country’s liberation hero Nelson Mandela.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African anti-apartheid activist Mosiuoa Lekota, who broke away from the African \u200bNational Congress to found a new \u200cpolitical party, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his party said in a statement. \u200bHe was 77 years old. Lekota died after \u200ba period of illness and had \u2060stepped back from active politics. He was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":12,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[4929,122],"class_list":["post-20072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-mosiuoa-lekota","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20074,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20072\/revisions\/20074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}