Vuyisile Mini was a trade unionist, Umkhonto we Sizwe activist, singer and one of the first African National Congress members to be executed by apartheid South Africa.
17 Facts About Vuyisile Mini
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Vuyisile Mini was active in campaigns against forced removals of Black people from Korsten to Kwazakhele.
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Vuyisile Mini was tasked by the South African Congress of Trade Unions to organize the metal workers and he subsequently became the Metal Workers' Union Secretary.
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Vuyisile Mini was a founding member of the Port Elizabeth Stevedoring and Dockworkers Union, which embarked in the 1950s on one of the longest protests for a wage increase, and fought against the use of convicts for strike breaking.
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Vuyisile Mini intentionally entered railway property reserved for Whites only, and because of his imprisonment, lost his job as a packer in a battery factory.
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In 1956 Vuyisile Mini was one of 156 defendants in the famous Treason Trial.
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The state's case collapsed for lack of evidence and Vuyisile Mini was discharged on 20 April 1959.
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In 1961, Vuyisile Mini was one of the first group of people to be recruited into uMkhonto we Sizwe, and become a member of the Eastern Cape High Command.
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Vuyisile Mini was arrested on 10 May 1963 together with two other prominent ANC members, Wilson Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba.
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Vuyisile Mini went to the gallows singing freedom songs, some he had composed.
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Vuyisile Mini recalled the last moments of Mini, Khayinga and Mkaba life in Sechaba, the official ANC journal:.
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At the time of his death, Vuyisile Mini was married, and had six children.
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One of his children, Nomkhosi Vuyisile Mini became a member of MK and survived a March 1979 South African Defence Force attack on the Novo Catengue camp in Angola.
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Vuyisile Mini was shot dead by members of the notorious Vlakplaas hit squad when they raided two houses in Maseru, Lesotho on 19 December 1985.
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Vuyisile Mini is remembered for the songs he composed as well as their delivery in his powerful bass voice, sometimes militant, and at other times nostalgic.
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Vuyisile Mini's words composed during the Treason Trial, Thath' unthwalo Buti sigoduke balindile umama no bab' ekhaya, came to take on new associations as the forced relocation scheme of apartheid made Black people refugees in the land of their birth.
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Vuyisile Mini is remembered for composing one of the most popular liberation songs of the 1950s, Pasopa nantsi 'ndondemnyama we Verwoerd,.