The son of a headmaster, Stephanus Francois du Toit was born on January 28 1919 at Groot Marico, Western Transvaal, and educated at Helpmekaar School, Johannesburg. Whilst studying Engineering at Witwatersrand University in 1937, he enrolled as a pupil pilot with the Transvaal air training scheme, then transferred to the South African Military College at Roberts Heights, where he trained as a pilot. Go To full article
His father, Captain Thomas Kinna, had been decorated for his part in the relief of Ladysmith, during the Boer War. Patrick Kinna, who died on March 14 (2009) aged 95, was Winston Churchill's confidential assistant during the Second World War and saw the great man in some of his most private moments. Go To full article
Guy Jonson - pianist. His concert appearances were widespread, with engagements in South Africa, South and Central America and Canada as well as in Europe. Go To full article
Henry Neil George Wheeler was born in Pretoria on July 8 1917. He was educated at Waterkloof House School, Pretoria Go To full article
Nadia Nerina was born Nadine Judd on October 21 1927 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Her mother died when she was young, and the girl took ballet lessons from two teachers with connections to Anna Pavlova and Marie Rambert. Determined to join the Ballet Rambert in London, at the age of 17 she took the boat from Cape Town, like several other teenage South African dancers, among them John Cranko, who would become an important choreographer. Go To full article
Joseph Sherman, a scholar and translator of Yiddish literature died March 20. He was 65. Born in Johannesburg Sherman was a longtime professor of English literature at the University of the Witwatersrand and more recently a professor in the department of Oriental studies at Oxford. Go To full article
Kirby Laing lived for a short time in both South Africa and Canada, overseeing major expansion of the company abroad. In South Africa the Laing family's religious convictions were to instil fierce distaste for the apartheid system; indeed the company was never really successful in South Africa and left in 1961. Go To full article
He, Sir Clement Freud, gave strong support to Peter Hain during his trial on bank robbery charges which turned out to have been concocted by South African intelligence. Go To full article
The Most Reverend Michael Wright was appointed the Church's metropolitan in South Africa, and he returned regularly to train clergy and lay readers for ordination while producing a series of teaching icons in the Ethiopian style. His ministry culminated in the promulgation of the booming diocese of Umzi wase Tiyopiya, outside Port Elizabeth, and the consecration of its first bishop. Go To full article
Richard Pickup had been in a new, more relaxed, post – as a defence adviser in Pretoria Go To full article
Richard Hambro supported many other charitable concerns, including St Paul's Cathedral and the South African National Business Initiative, of which he was chairman from 1995.
This latter project, which had been started in the 1960s, helped the education and housing of South Africa's poor, and was endorsed by Presidents Mandela and Mbeki. Go To full article
Published: July 22, 2010 Gen. Peter Walls, the last commander of white Rhodesian forces in what is now Zimbabwe, who played a central and sometimes ambiguous role in the first days of his country’s transition to majority rule only to fall out bitterly with its first black leader, died on Tuesday in South Africa, where he lived in exile. He was 83. Go To full article another link
Hansie Cronje, who was killed in a plane crash on Saturday aged 32, was South Africa's most successful cricket captain and regarded as a national hero until he became implicated in a bribery, corruption and match-fixing scandal that not only wrecked his career but brought shame to the game internationally. Published: 12:01AM BST 03 Jun 2002 Go To full article
Sir Charles Mackerras Published: 15 Jul 2010 While he made visits to South Africa – an introduction to orchestral conducting with the pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli as soloist – and other countries, Go To full article
Sir Edmund Grove, who died on June 28 aged 90, was almost certainly the last survivor of the Household of George VI; with the Queen, he was also the last survivor from the royal visit to South Africa in 1947. Published: 05 Jul 2010 Go To full article
"He also spoke Italian, German, Afrikaans and Fanagalo, a pidgin based on the Zulu, English, and Afrikaans languages" "got a job with St Helena Gold Mines in Welkom, Orange Free State" Published: July 1, 2010 Go To full article
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who died on May 14 aged 70, was one of the architects of South Africa's transition from apartheid and a noted writer on its politics and sociology. Published: 16 May 2010 Go To full article
Dieter Bock, who died on May 12 aged 70, was the little-known German businessman who ousted the tycoon Tiny Rowland from Lonrho, in one of the most celebrated boardroom battles of the 1990s He was last in the news in March this year when he put his controlling stake in the Johannesburg football team Moroka Swallows up for sale. Published: 30 May 2010 Go To full article
Nico Smith, Minister and Fighter of Apartheid, Dies at 81 From 1985 to 1989, some of the most climactic years of the struggle, Dr. Smith and his wife, Ellen, lived in Mamelodi, the main black township outside Pretoria. Published: June 24, 2010 Go To full article
RW "Tiny" Rowland, who has died aged 80, transformed Lonrho from a small mining company in Africa into a huge international conglomerate, but never achieved his ambition to own Harrods Published: 27 Jul 1998 Go To full article