Background
September was born in Cape Town in 1923 to a working-class family.
September was born in Cape Town in 1923 to a working-class family.
He graduated from Trafalgar High School before gaining employment as apprentice in the shoe industry, and becoming a trade unionist.
In 1960, the South African government detained him for five months without charge, and he was repeatedly harassed and detained after that as the apartheid government cracked down on internal resistance. He retired in 2004, and died November 22, 2013 at the age of 90.
He fled the country in 1963 and served as the African National Congress" Chief Representative for the United Kingdom and Western Europe until 1978, and as member of the African National Congress"s Revolutionary Council in Lusaka.
He returned to South Africa in 1991 after the unbanning of the African National Congress, and was elected as a member of parliament in 1994 in South Africa"s first democratic elections.