Tributes for struggle hero Wauchope

MEMORIAL services for the late Black Consciousness and Azanian People's Organisation veteran George Wauchope will be held today

Family spokesperson Vuyo Wauchope said the service which will be held at St Hilda's Anglican Church in Senaoane, Soweto, will start simultaneously with another one to be held in Birmingham, London.

Both services in Senaone and Birmingham will start at 4pm.

Wauchope died in exile in London last week after losing a five-year battle with cancer.

Vuyo also said the family was liaising with the Anglican leadership, including immediate family in Birmingham, London, to finalise the process of bringing the ashes of Wauchope for burial in South Africa.

Vuyo added that various political, church, and community organisations throughout the world have paid tribute to Wauchope.

The tributes included a moving press statement issued by Lybon Mabasa, Nicholas Tucker, Ashraf Jooma, Chrissy Jackey and Hlapolosa. The five were activists with Wauchope in their fight for national liberation in South Africa.

The statement said: "In exile, cut off from his loved ones and comrades, he tirelessly wrote about a range of issues that impacted upon the poor of the world."

He left South Africa for exile in 1985 after the internecine violence in townships involving Azapo and the then ANC-aligned United Democratic Front. He went to Zimbabwe.

He became an Anglican Church priest in Zimbabwe and was posted to Botswana where he was diagnosed with cancer.