|
 Toms Fought To End Apartheid, Advocated For
Gay Rights, PWAs
by The Associated Press
Posted: March 26, 2008 - 7:30 am ET
(Johannesburg, South Africa) 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 was found dead
Tuesday in his home, police said. He was 55.
Police spokesman Superintendent Billy Jones said foul play
was not suspected, and an autopsy was to be performed to determine the cause of
death.
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.
Toms was one of several white men 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."
©365Gay.com 2008
|
Entertainment
