Goldberg, who celebrated his birthday earlier this month, passed away just before midnight on Wednesday. He had battled with cancer.

"His was a life well lived in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. We will miss him," the family statement said.

Born in Cape Town in 1933 and an engineer by training, Goldberg was an executive member of the Congress of Democrats, an organisation allied to the African National Congress from the mid-1950s.

He was tried from June 1963 to October 1964 along with Mandela, who himself died in December 2013, as well as Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and others in the famous Rivonia trial on charges of campaigning to overthrow the then-apartheid government which discriminated against non-whites.

Goldberg, who was the only white man on trial, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in Pretoria. He was in jail for 22 years in total before being released in 1985.

He spent several years in exile, during which he worked for the ANC in London from 1985 to 1994.

Goldberg returned to democratic South Africa in 2002 and was appointed special adviser to then water affairs and forestry minister Ronnie Kasrils.

The ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, bestowed its highest order, the Isithwalandwe/Seaparankoe award, on Goldberg in recognition of his contribution to the struggle against the racist system.

African News Agency (ANA)