Obits in Brief

Frans 'Ting-Ting' Masango

Frans "Ting-Ting" Masango, who died on 21 September aged 51, was a former guerrilla activist once sentenced to death for treason against the apartheid government in South Africa.

Masango, who was born in 1958 in Mamelodi, a township outside Pretoria, was part of an ANC underground military unit in the mid-1980s that carried out attacks against the apartheid regime, including assaults on policemen and planting bombs. He was captured in 1986 along with Jabu Masina, Neo Potsane and Joseph Makhura and faced charges including murder, treason and terrorism. The four were held in solitary confinement for months before their trial in Delmas, east of Johannesburg.

The "Delmas Four" did not participate in their own defence, refusing to recognise the authority of the court and wearing full combat uniform for their sentencing. All except Makhura were sentenced to death, but released in 1991 after the ban on the ANC was lifted. After the end of apartheid in 1994 Masangi worked as a radio journalist and was elected to parliament in this year's elections.

Jose Antonio Muñoz Rojas

Jose Antonio Muñoz Rojas, who died on 29 September 10 days short of his 100th birthday, was a poet and writer who was one of the most important voices in contemporary Spanish poetry. He was a member of the "Generation of '36" and co-founded the cultural and political journal Nueva Revista as well as working on many other literary and poetry magazines.

Muñoz Rojas taught at Cambridge University and translated into Spanish the works of several poets, including William Wordsworth, John Donne and T.S. Eliot. He also wrote several prose works, such as Historias de familia, Las cosas del campo and Las musarañas. He won the 1998 National Poetry Prize and the 2002 Queen Sofia Ibero-American Poetry Prize.