Vuyisile Mini

Mr. Mini was born in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth. His father was a Port Elizabeth dockworker active in labour and community struggles, which inspired Mini, at 17, to take part in bus fare and rent increase protests. He was also active in campaigns against forced removals of Black people from Korsten (where he lived) to Kwazakhele. After completing elementary school, he worked as a labourer and trade union organiser. He was known as the 'organiser of the unorganised', because of his courage and tireless efforts to organise workers across the Eastern Cape during the increasingly repressive 1950s. He became the Metal Workers' Union Secretary. Together with another activist, Stephen Tobia, they founded the African Painting and Building Union. He was also a founder 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 as cheap scab labour. He became SACTU secretary for the Eastern Cape in 1960. His militant political activities began in 1951 when he joined the African National Congress (ANC). In 1952 he was jailed with Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba for three months in Rooi Hel or North End Prison, Port Elizabeth for participation in the ‘Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws' (Defiance Campaign). He intentionally entered railway property reserved for Whites only, and because of his imprisonment, lost his job as a packer in a battery factory. On his release he married his trade union work with political activism, and rose rapidly in the ranks of the ANC. He was elected secretary of the ANC Cape region. In 1956, Mr. Mini was one of 156 defendants in the famous Treason Trial of 1956. The state's case collapsed for lack of evidence and Mr. Mini was discharged on 20 April 1959. He was a gifted actor, dancer, poet and singer too.