Trevor Bonhomme
Trevor John Bonhomme was a South African politician and activist who represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly from 2005 until his death in 2017, except for a brief hiatus from 2010 to 2011. During apartheid, he was a prominent community organiser in Newlands East in the former Natal province.
Early life and activism
Bonhomme was born to Virgil and Patricia Bonhomme in January 1942 in the racially mixed neighbourhood of Overport, located in Durban in the former Natal province. His family was Catholic and he was the fourth-eldest of eleven siblings. After matriculating at Umbilo High School in Durban, he began work, with his brother Virgil, at Grafton-Everest upholstery company. After he and Virgil successfully agitated for higher wages at their company, they entered the trade union movement and helped found the Furniture Trade Union in the late 1960s. Also during the 1960s, his family was forcibly removed from their Overport home under the apartheid-era Group Areas Act, intensifying Bonhomme's interest in anti-apartheid activism.In the early 1970s, Bonhomme moved to Newlands East, where he became heavily involved in community organising through the local residents' association, the Durban Housing Action Committee, and other groups. He flirted with the Labour Party, but strongly diverged with its position on the 1983 constitutional reform: he campaigned strongly for a total boycott of the Tricameral Parliament when the structure was introduced by the apartheid government. He joined the United Democratic Front instead and also, with his brother, did underground work for the African National Congress. In 1989, he was detained for six months at Modderbee Prison in Johannesburg. He formally joined the ANC in 1990 after it was unbanned by the apartheid government, and he was a delegate to the party's historic 48th National Conference in Durban in 1991.