South African Transport Minister Dullah Omar, a leading human rights lawyer and anti-apartheid activist who served as justice minister in South Africa's first black-led government, died Saturday 13 March 2004, of Hodgkin's disease. He was 69.

A leading member of the ruling African National Congress, Mr. Omar was a spokesman for former President Nelson Mandela in the months leading to his release after 27 years in jail. Mandela called him a "pillar of strength.''

Mr. Omar set up his own legal practice in 1960, throughout his legal career, which took him to the Supreme Court, he defended those who suffered under apartheid. He also led the Western Cape region of the United Democratic Front, the African National Congress' voice in South Africa during the long years when it was exiled.

Dullah Omar participated in the negotiations that paved the way for South Africa's first all-race elections in 1994 and was named justice minister in the new government. He oversaw the establishment of a landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission that heard victims' accounts of human rights abuses and offered the perpetrators amnesty in exchange for a full account of their crimes.

When President Thabo Mbeki came to power in 1999, Mr. Omar was named transport minister. On a number of occasions he was acting president when both the head of state and his deputies were away.

Mandela said he had visted Omar in hospital and explained to his family if the time came to say goodbye to Omar, they could take comfort in the fact that the transport minister and former justice minister had served his country well. " We trust that they shall take some solace from the sure knowledge that he is mourned by so many from all walks of life, backgrounds and political persuasions," he said," Dullah was a lawyer for the people, a human rights lawyer in the truest meaning of the word."