Dutch anti-apartheid activist De Jonge dies aged 85
Klaas de Jonge, the freedom activist who gained fame by living for more than two years in the Netherlands' embassy in Pretoria after escaping the clutches of apartheid South Africa, has died, Dutch media reports said Friday.
De Jonge, 85, suffered from advanced prostate cancer and passed away early Friday by assisted suicide surrounded by family and friends, the authoritative NRC and De Volkskrant daily newspapers said.
An anthropologist by profession, De Jonge hit the headlines when police in apartheid South Africa arrested him in mid-1985, while he was smuggling arms for the banned African National Congress, which became the ruling party after democratic elections in 1994.
Pretending to cooperate with the police, De Jonge fooled investigators by convincing them to take him to an office complex in Pretoria, which he said was a target for the liberation movement.
Instead, De Jonge led them to the Dutch embassy, situated on the building's first floor. He broke free from the police, ran into the entrance and shouted "I am a political prisoner, a Dutch citizen, I am Klaas de Jonge."
He was however dragged back by plain-clothed police officers and thrown in jail.
The incident caused a major diplomatic fallout between the Netherlands and South Africa, which was then forced to return him to the embassy, regarded as Dutch sovereign territory.
De Jonge subsequently spent 26 months living in the embassy, where reports said he often played the song "Free Nelson Mandela" at full blast while waving at passers-by from a window.
The anti-apartheid icon had already spent more than 20 years behind bars after being sent to prison in 1964.
"Waving from the window, he emerged as a rock star of the anti-apartheid movement," De Volkskrant said in its obituary.
De Jonge was eventually allowed to return to the Netherlands in September 1987.
A year later, in 1988, De Jonge was blinded in one eye after he was most likely poisoned by apartheid state operatives in the central Dutch city of Nijmegen in a revenge operation.
In the years that followed, he remained active within the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, the NOS public broadcaster said.
Following democratic elections in 1994, De Jonge did research for South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission among other things.
He also worked for several NGOs including Penal Reform International after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the NOS added.
