Ivan Toms Tribute

Ivan Toms, a South African doctor who played a key role in the campaign to end conscription of young white men to bolster the racist apartheid security forces was found dead Tuesday in his home, police said. He was 55.

Police spokesman Superintendent Billy Jones said foul play was not suspected, and an autopsy was to be performed to determine the cause of death.

Toms, who opposed the actions of the apartheid defense force, was conscripted in 1978 and served six months as a noncombatant army doctor in Namibia, then a South African protectorate.

On his return to Cape Town, he set up a clinic in the growing squatter settlement of Crossroads, where he was the only doctor caring for 60,000 people.

The brutality of the security forces toward residents of the settlement made Toms decide he would never again serve in the army.

He became a founding member of the End Conscription Campaign, a movement that opposed drafting white South African men.Toms was one of several white men jailed for refusing to serve in the defense force and subjected to intimidation and harassment, including a "dirty tricks" campaign, which targeted Toms' homosexuality.

With the end of apartheid in 1994, Toms helped create a national AIDS program and pioneered the use of antiretrovirals drugs in the fight against the HIV virus.

He was also an outspoken advocate of gay rights.

In 2006, President Thabo Mbeki awarded Toms the Order of the Baobab in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to the struggle against apartheid and sexual discrimination."