Saturday, May 21 2005 11:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Durban: A former activist with the Quit India Movement and later an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa has died in Pietermaritzburg, about 100km from Durban, at the age of 84.

Mahomed "Chota" Motala died at home after being ill for the past four months. Motala, son of Gujarati emigrants to South Africa, had joined the Quit India movement while in India as a student of medicine after becoming influenced by Mahatma Gandhi.

Family friend and ANC MP Yusuf Ebrahim said Motala, who was appointed South African Ambassador to Morocco in 1994, would be remembered as a "comrade" who played a significant role in the struggle against white minority rule.

"He was the leader of the Natal Indian Congress and later the United Democratic Front in the Pietermaritzburg region for a better part of his life," he said.

Motala was buried according to Muslim rites in the local cemetery in Pietermaritzburg yesterday, he said.

Motala, a close comrade of former President Nelson Mandela the late Walter Sisulu, earned his stripes in India in the late 1930s and early 1940s when he had come to study medicine.

He was recruited into the Bombay Students Union and the All-India Students Federation and played an active role in the Quit India Movement.

He was assisted financially in his studies by relatives in Gujarat, from where his parents had gone to South Africa in the early 1900s.

After completing his studies in 1947 he remained in India to witness India's freedom from British rule and independence.

He returned at the end of 1948 and became involved in the struggle against white minority rule.