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JOHANNESBURG, June 10 (Reuters) - President Thabo Mbeki led South Africa in mourning on Monday for leading politician Peter Mokaba, best known for his freedom slogan "kill the Boer, kill the farmer", who died on Sunday night.

Mokaba, 44, a member of parliament and a senior figure in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), died at home in Sandton, Johannesburg after a long illness.

The ANC said Mokaba, the party's election strategist ahead of an ANC convention in December, died of natural causes.

During the pre-1990 fight against white minority rule, Mokaba broke with the ANC's historically non-racial policies and called on blacks to rise up against Afrikaner whites under the battle cry "kill the Boer, kill the farmer".

After majority rule in 1994 he was back in controversy when he supported Mbeki in questioning the causal link between HIV and AIDS, earning the title in local media of an AIDS dissident.

In a statement on Monday, Mbeki hailed Mokaba as a hero whose spirit the white apartheid government failed to break during the struggle for freedom in South Africa.

"Peter Mokaba stood and still stands for the undying spirit of our movement (ANC) and our democracy, which he helped to build," Mbeki said from Rome where he is attending a U.N. Food Summit.

"The apartheid regime could never bend or bow him, nor could the new challenges (under a free South Africa) daunt him. A fine comrade has fallen -- but in victory not in vain," Mbeki added.

Aides said Mbeki may cut short his four-day state visit to Libya, which starts on Tuesday, to attend Mokaba's state funeral later this week.

Opposition leaders also paid tribute to Mokaba, a member of the ANC's policy-making national executive committee.

"He had mellowed from his fiery ANC Youth League beginnings, having traded struggle slogans for serious engagement and debate with the opposition," the mainly white Democratic Alliance said in a statement.

The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), whose hardline views Mokaba espoused during the struggle, heaped praise on him.

"We in the PAC want to express real shock at the death of a young leader. We believe that he still had much to offer the country and I believe it is a loss to the country," PAC leader Stanley Mogoba said in a statement.

Shortly after the end of apartheid in 1994, then President Nelson Mandela appointed Mokaba as deputy environment minister, a post he held until Mbeki was elected president in 1999.

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