Thembinkosi Qondela, a longstanding socialist activist, died this week due to COVID-19 related complications. He was a lifelong activist for social justice. Not many people who knew him realise that he worked on the mines for a year in the early 1990s where he came to understand the need to defend workers’ rights and the importance of health and safety at work. That experience, along with others might have been the spark to turn on his calling to make justice, equity and worker’s rights a reality. After moving to Cape Town, he became involved in various progressive socialist organisations, including serving as Assistant Regional Secretary for the Western Cape Unemployed Workers Movement, part-time assistant librarian at both Khanya College and the Trade Union Library and Education Centre, and as Resource Coordinator and then Assistant Researcher at the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG).

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