Jac Rabie served in the apartheid-era House of Representatives throughout its lifespan from 1984 to 1994, representing the Reiger Park constituency, and subsequently served one term in the post-apartheid National Assembly from 1994 to 1999.
17 Facts About Jac Rabie
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Jac Rabie joined the council as a member of the Federal Coloured People's Party but, after being expelled from the party, he sat as an independent before joining the Labour Party in 1978.
3.
Jac Rabie became the Labour Party's chairman in the Transvaal in 1982 and was elected to the House of Representatives under its banner when the Tricameral Parliament was established in 1984.
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Jac Rabie joined the governing National Party in 1991 and represented it in the National Assembly after the end of apartheid in 1994.
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Jac Rabie was born in Middelburg in the former Transvaal in August 1938.
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Jac Rabie's father was Indian and his mother was a Coloured domestic worker.
7.
The government evicted the family from their farm when Jac Rabie was a child and they moved to Pretoria, where Jac Rabie matriculated in 1958 at Pretoria Indian Boys' School.
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Jac Rabie trained as a teacher in Coronationville and took up his first teaching post in Potchefstroom in 1966.
9.
Jac Rabie left teaching after two years due to disputes with the teaching authorities, and by then he was active in the Federal Coloured People's Party, having become an organiser for the party in the Transvaal in 1967.
10.
Jac Rabie was expelled from the party and sat in the CRC as an independent for three-and-a-half years, becoming the unofficial leader of the independents' caucus in the council.
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Jac Rabie joined the Labour Party in 1978 and continued to serve on the CRC until it was disbanded in 1980.
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In 1982, Jac Rabie elected as the chairman of the Labour Party's Transvaal regional branch, and he continued in that position after losing a campaign to be elected the party's national chairman in January 1984.
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Jac Rabie subsequently formed the breakaway United Democratic Party, which in the 1989 general election won three seats in the House of Representatives, among them Rabie's seat in Reiger Park.
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In May 1991, Jac Rabie disbanded the UDP, and he and his colleagues joined the governing National Party.
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In 1962, Jac Rabie married Angeline Jac Rabie, with whom he had four sons and one daughter.
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Jac Rabie himself died on 29 April 2008 at Sunward Park Hospital in Boksburg.
17.
Jac Rabie had been hospitalised with cerebral atrophy, which his family said was aggravated by the trauma of his wife's murder.