Abdullah (Dullah) Omar (1939--2004)

Date of birth: 26 May 1934
Date of death: 13 March 2004

Dullah Omar, South Africa's transport minister, died in the early hours of Saturday morning in Cape Town at the age of 69. He had been fighting Hodgkin's disease for over a year.

Omar had set up his own legal practice in 1960 and represented many Robben Island prisoners as well as trade unions and other non-governmental organisations. From 1983 he was a leader of the extra-parliamentary United Democratic Front which campaigned in South Africa for true democracy and a non-racial society as defined by the Freedom Charter. During the post-Apartheid period of multi-racial rule under the Government of National Unity Omar served as Justice minister.

"We seek to create a process which will make it possible for all South Africans to come to terms with our painful past -- with dignity and in a spirit of forgiveness but with due consideration for acknowledgement and the need to provide reparation or compensation for victims."