South African singer and songwriter Johnny Clegg, one of the few white artists to openly confront the apartheid government in the late 1970s and 1980s, died on Tuesday aged 66, his agent said.

He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015.

A Grammy nominee and Billboard music award winner, British-born Clegg was known by many South Africans as "umlungu omnyama," or "the black white person." He spoke fluent Zulu and mixed it into his traditional folk music, or "mbaqanga."