Jac Rabie

Rabie was born in Middelburg in the former Transvaal in August 1938.[1] His father was Indian and his mother was a Coloured domestic worker. The government evicted the family from their farm when Rabie was a child and they moved to Pretoria, where Rabie matriculated in 1958 at Pretoria Indian Boys' School. He trained as a teacher in Coronationville and took up his first teaching post in Potchefstroom in 1966.[1] He left teaching after two years due to disputes with the teaching authorities, and by then he was active in the Federal Coloured People's Party (FCPP), having become an organiser for the party in the Transvaal in 1967.[1]

In 1969, the party nominated him to sit on the Coloured Representative Council as the representative of the Reiger Park constituency in Boksburg, Transvaal.[1] After launching an unsuccessful bid to become leader of the FCPP in 1975, Rabie fell out with the new party leadership, among other things over his support for political proposals which would see independent Coloured homelands established in each of South Africa's provinces.[1] He was expelled from the party and sat in the CRC as an independent for three-and-a-half years, becoming the unofficial leader of the independents' caucus in the council. He joined the Labour Party in 1978 and continued to serve on the CRC until it was disbanded in 1980.[1]

In 1962, Rabie married Angeline Rabie (née Roos), with whom he had four sons and one daughter.[1] He later remarried to Sandra Rabie.[8] On 14 December 2006, Sandra, then aged 47,[9] was killed during a robbery at their home in Windmill Park on the East Rand; both Rabie and the couple's adopted son were present.[8] She died of a broken neck on the scene.[10] Three men, including one teenager whom the Rabies knew personally, were charged with the robbery and murder.[9][10]

Rabie himself died on 29 April 2008 at Sunward Park Hospital in Boksburg.[11] He had been hospitalised with cerebral atrophy, which his family said was aggravated by the trauma of his wife's murder.[6]