Vuyisile Mini was a South African trade unionist, singer and anti-apartheid freedom fighter who fought against racial oppression and white minority rule. His involvement in the struggle led to his arrest and eventual execution by hanging at Pretoria Central Prison on 6 November 1964, alongside two fellow activists. He was 44 years old.
Mini was born on 8 April 1920 in Tsomo in the Eastern Cape. His father was a dockworker active in labour struggles. At 17, Mini joined protests against increases in bus fares and rents. He also opposed the forced removal of Black residents from Korsten, where he lived, to the township of Kwazakhele.
After elementary school, Mini worked as a labourer and became a trade union organiser. He organised metalworkers and became secretary of the Metal Workers’ Union. He also helped establish the African Painting and Building Union and the Port Elizabeth Stevedoring and Dockworkers’ Union.
The dockworkers’ union campaigned for higher wages and opposed the use of prison labour during disputes. Mini became known for organising workers who had not previously been represented by unions. In 1960, he became secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) in the Eastern Cape.
Resistance to apartheid
Mini joined the ANC in 1951 and quickly became involved in the organisation’s campaigns against discriminatory laws. In 1952, he participated in the Defiance Campaign, a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience against apartheid legislation. He deliberately entered a railway area reserved for white people and was sentenced to three months in prison alongside fellow activists Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. His imprisonment also cost him his job as a packer at a battery factory.
After his release, he continued combining trade union organising with political activism and eventually became secretary of the ANC’s Cape region. In 1956, he was among 156 anti-apartheid activists arrested and charged with high treason in the famous Treason Trial. The state’s case eventually collapsed, and Mini was discharged on 20 April 1959.
In 1960, he became a target of the government’s repression of anti-apartheid organisations and was detained during the State of Emergency. The following year, he joined the first group recruited into uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and became a member of its Eastern Cape High Command. The organisation had been established to carry out armed resistance against the apartheid government.
Arrest and execution
On 10 May 1963, police arrested Mini in Port Elizabeth alongside fellow ANC activists Wilson Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba. They were charged with 17 counts of sabotage and other political offences, including complicity in the January 1963 death of Sipho Mange, an alleged police informer.
In March 1964, all three men were sentenced to death. Their convictions provoked international protests. Appeals for clemency came from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, acting on behalf of the Non-Aligned States, as well as United Nations Secretary-General U Thant. The UN Special Committee on Apartheid and the Security Council also made efforts to prevent the executions. These appeals were unsuccessful.
While Mini was on death row, security police approached him in an attempt to get him to provide information against fellow members of the liberation movement. He refused to betray his comrades. On 6 November 1964, Mini, Khayinga and Mkaba were hanged at Pretoria Central Prison.
Mini went to the gallows singing freedom songs, including some he had composed himself. His fellow prisoner Ben Turok, who had previously stood trial alongside him and was serving a prison sentence for MK activities, later recalled the final hours of the three men in the ANC journal Sechaba.
Turok described how the condemned prisoners sang through the night, their voices carrying across the prison. In the early morning, Mini’s powerful bass voice rang through the corridors as he delivered a final message in Xhosa. He spoke of the struggle being waged by the ANC and his conviction that victory would eventually come. Khayinga and Mkaba also delivered their final messages before the three men sang together for the last time. Their voices gradually faded as they were led away to be executed.
Following their executions, Mini, Khayinga and Mkaba were secretly buried in paupers’ graves at Rebecca Street Cemetery in Pretoria. In 1998, their remains were exhumed. Mini was reburied at Emlotheni Memorial Park in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, where he received a hero’s funeral. The memorial park was officially opened on 27 June 1998 by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Port Elizabeth Mayor Nceba Faku.
His contribution to the liberation struggle was also recognised in 2010 when Port Elizabeth’s Market Square was renamed Vuyisile Mini Square. His name was also given to a furniture factory established by the ANC Mission Office in Tanzania.
Mini left behind a wife and six children. His daughter, Nomkhosi Mini, later joined MK and was killed by South African security police in Maseru, Lesotho, on 19 December 1985.
Sources:
https://sahistory.org.za/people/vuyisile-mini
