Key figure in South African anti-conscription campaign dies

Ivan Toms, a South African doctor who played a key role in the campaign to end conscription of young white men to bolster the racist apartheid security forces has died. He was 55.

Toms, director of health for Cape Town, was found dead in his home on Tuesday, police said.

Police spokesman Superintendent Billy Jones said foul play was not suspected, and an autopsy was to be performed to determine the cause of death.

"He was a fighter against apartheid and for human and democratic rights," Mcebisi Skwatsha, secretary of the African National Congress in the Western Cape, was quoted by the South African Press Association as saying. "The passing of Ivan Toms is a great loss to the people of the city and the country."

Toms, who opposed the actions of the apartheid defense force, was conscripted in 1978 and served six months as a noncombatant army doctor in Namibia, then a South African protectorate.

On his return to Cape Town, he set up a clinic in the growing squatter settlement of Crossroads, where he was the only doctor caring for 60,000 people.

The brutality of the security forces toward residents of the settlement made Toms decide he would never again serve in the army.

He became a founding member of the End Conscription Campaign, a movement that opposed drafting white South African men.

In 1985 he went on a three-week hunger strike in opposition to the deployment of troops in black townships. "As a Christian I am obliged to say no, to say never again will I put on that SADF uniform," he was quoted as saying.

Toms was one of several white men who were jailed for refusing to serve in the defense force and subjected to intimidation and harassment, including a "dirty tricks" campaign, which targeted Toms' homosexuality.

With the end of apartheid in 1994, Toms helped create a national AIDS program and pioneered the use of antiretrovirals drugs in the fight against the HIV virus.

He was also an outspoken advocate of gay rights.

In 2006, President Thabo Mbeki awarded Toms the Order of the Baobab in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to the struggle against apartheid and sexual discrimination."

"Toms is a remarkable individual who has always had the courage of his convictions," said a presidential statement accompanying the award.

"He could easily have lived a life of privilege and comfort but opted instead to reflect on the realities of the country and to take a bold stand against the injustices he witnessed."