Nicholas Haysom, a white South African anti-apartheid activist who was tapped by prisoner-turned-president Nelson Mandela to help draft the country’s new constitution that enshrined equal rights for Black people, minorities and white people, has died at 73.
Haysom went on from high-level positions promoting human rights in his home country to a distinguished career as a U.N. diplomat, serving in hot spots from Afghanistan and Iraq to Somalia and South Sudan.
His daughter, Rebecca Haysom, told The Associated Press that he died Tuesday in New York “after a long, valiant battle with heart and lung complications.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Haysom “devoted his life to justice, dialogue, and reconciliation — from his central role in South Africa’s democratic transition serving as chief legal and constitutional adviser to president Nelson Mandela to years of leadership in U.N. posts in some of the world’s most complex and fragile settings.”
His legacy “will endure
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