Anti-apartheid campaigner and human rights lawyer George Bizos died on Wednesday aged 92, local media reported.
Bizos died of natural causes, according to a report by News24 which quoted the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Bizos was part of the legal team which defended former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela in the 1960s when he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the apartheid state.
In 2017, he was honoured with a gallery, the “George Bizos Gallery” by the Apartheid Museum.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters during an online press briefing that the death of Bizos was “very sad for our country.”
“He had an incisive legal mind and was one of the architects of our constitution.”
SAHETI School, which Bizos founded, described him as a “person of great integrity and courage.”
“As a community, we have walked alongside a man who has become an icon of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. As a great role model, he stood up for freedom and justice and endorsed Hellenic values displaying the virtues of respect, courage and duty, even if at own personal cost.
