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Walter Felgate
WALTER FELGATE, INFLUENTIAL AND WELL-KNOWN POLITICAL ANALYST AND ACTIVIST, DIES AT 77
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information regarding Walter Felgate's career, click here: Walter Felgate Interview with The Helen Suzman Foundation
Johannesburg, South Africa, January 11, 2007 - Walter Felgate, Rhodes Lecturer, previous Chief Advisor to Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and subsequent ANC Member, died peacefully at the age of 77 in Johannesburg on January 3, 2007 surrounded by his family and loved ones. He had recently been battling with ill health.
Walter Felgate studied Social Anthropology under Eileen Krige at Durban University, where his post graduate studies focussed on the Tembe-Tonga of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. During both his student years and his postgraduate research he became increasingly involved in anti-apartheid politics. He was a founder member of the Liberal Party, was instrumental in the establishment of the Inkatha Freedom Party as the internal arm of the struggle against apartheid, and was a key negotiator in the Codesa process which resulted in the peaceful transition to the new democratic South Africa. After liberation, he represented the Inkatha Freedom Party as a parliamentarian at national level, and later at provincial level in KwaZulu-Natal, before he returned to what he always considered his proper political home, the ANC.
He left formal politics due to ill health, but retained a very active interest in the various local communities he became part of. He was particularly active in assisting local communities to formulate and find funding for a large-scale community game reserve and SMME development.
Rita Felgate, daughter of Walter Felgate: "His energy and drive throughout his life and at every level of his life has ensured that wherever he has been, and whatever he has done, he has become well known and depended on to achieve a better life for all he came in contact with."
A private ceremony will be held today, the 11th January 2007, in Johannesburg to commemorate his death.
Walter Felgate Interview
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