Obituary: Ronnie Press: Engineer for the struggle Ronnie Press, who has died in Together with his colleague Tim Jenkin, he founded an ANC committee to provide technical support to the armed struggle. Their most noteworthy achievement was to devise a way of using a combination of computer, radio and telephone to encipher, decipher, send and receive top-secret messages between cadres in For the first time, underground cadres were able to communicate safely and quickly with their superiors outside the country. Their messages were relayed via Press and Jenkin sitting in their aerial-festooned flats in the heart of Their method was used extensively and with great success in Operation Vula, launched in 1988 to set up ANC leadership structures inside The system was also used to enable Nelson Mandela, after he was moved to a house in the grounds of Victor Verster prison in Paarl, to keep ANC leaders in Press was born in He went to Marist Brothers school, obtained a PhD in chemistry from Wits and lectured at the university for a couple of years before working as an analytical chemist in the private sector. He was fired after leaving a note for the boss informing him he had gone to Press became general secretary of the textile workers' union, was quite militant and brought the workers out on strike a few times. Although banned in 1955 he helped the Congress of Democrats, which included the SA Communist Party, of which he was a member, and the ANC, to organise the Congress of the People, which drew up the Freedom Charter. In 1956, after the launch of the charter, he and 155 others were arrested for treason. The charges against him were dropped in 1958. After being detained during the state of emergency after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 Press left He returned briefly in the early 1990s to help the ANC prepare for the elections, but was mugged in Hillbrow on his way to ANC offices. After going into exile he settled in Press was an unlikely revolutionary. He had a high-pitched voice, was conventional, formal and reserved, and kept largely to himself. He was difficult to get to know and readily admitted that he was not "one of the boys". He was concerned about the environment and determined not to leave more of a carbon footprint than he could help. He left instructions that he was to be buried in a cardboard box in an unmarked grave. Nevertheless, he had no qualms about designing devices to blow people to pieces. War was war, he explained. Alongside his underground work and teaching, he spent much of his married life caring for his wife, Sybil, after she developed mental problems. She died in 1989. He is survived by his daughter, Estelle. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- |
