Jac Rabie

Jacobus Albert Rabie (August 1938 – 29 April 2008) was a South African politician who was Minister for Population Development under President F. W. de Klerk from 1993 to 1994. He served in the apartheid-era House of Representatives throughout its lifespan from 1984 to 1994, representing the Reiger Park constituency, and subsequently served one term in the post-apartheid National Assembly from 1994 to 1999.

Rabie entered politics as Reiger Park's representative on the Coloured Representative Council, where he was a member throughout the council's existence from 1969 to 1980. He joined the council as a member of the Federal Coloured People's Party but, after being expelled from the party, he sat as an independent before joining the Labour Party in 1978. He became the Labour Party's chairman in the Transvaal in 1982 and was elected to the House of Representatives under its banner when the Tricameral Parliament was established in 1984. During his first term in the house, he split from the Labour Party to establish the United Democratic Party. He joined the governing National Party (NP) in 1991 and represented it in the National Assembly after the end of apartheid in 1994.

Early life and career Rabie was born in Middelburg in the former Transvaal in August 1938. His father was Indian and his mother was a Coloured domestic worker. The government evicted the family from their farm when Rabie was a child and they moved to Pretoria, where Rabie matriculated in 1958 at Pretoria Indian Boys' School. He trained as a teacher in Coronationville and took up his first teaching post in Potchefstroom in 1966. He subsequently formed the breakaway United Democratic Party (UDP), which in the 1989 general election won three seats in the House of Representatives, among them Rabie's seat in Reiger Park. and of the racially segregated Tricameral Parliament. In February 1993, during an advanced stage of South Africa's democratic transition, he was appointed to the cabinet of President F. W. de Klerk, who named him as Minister for Population Development.

National Assembly: 1994–1999 After South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994, Rabie served a term in the post-apartheid Parliament, representing the NP in the new multi-racial National Assembly.

Personal life and death In 1962, Rabie married Angeline Rabie (née Roos), with whom he had four sons and one daughter. On 14 December 2006, Sandra, then aged 47, was killed during a robbery at their home in Windmill Park on the East Rand; both Rabie and the couple's adopted son were present. Three men, including one teenager whom the Rabies knew personally, were charged with the robbery and murder. He had been hospitalised with cerebral atrophy, which his family said was aggravated by the trauma of his wife's murder.