Kader Asmal and Adrian Hadland with Moira Levy (2011) Kader Asmal: politics in my blood, a memoir. Auckland Park: Jacana Media

Of the many lively and engaging figures to emerge from the anti-apartheid and ANC exile movements, few were more influential than Kader Asmal. Many will perhaps remember and respect him now for his pointed critique of the ANC, to which he had a lifelong allegiance, in his last years. Indeed, he resigned from parliament in 2008 in protest over the disbanding of the Scorpions, a move which he could not in good conscious support. But this would be to short-change the immensity of his contributions to the democratic process in South Africa, both in exile and at home after 1990. At the centre of nearly every significant ANC debate of the last 30 years, perhaps his most original and important contributions were in the realm of international law, most specifically in working with the ANC and members of the UN to use law to combat the apartheid government and to frame the principles of the ANC’s struggle. Asmal was the force behind the ANC’s 1980 declaration to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, the first such declaration by any non-state organisation. Asmal founded and led the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) from the 1960s to 1990, galvanising Irish men and women of all walks of life to identify with and lend their services and time to the IAAM and its mission. He served on the ANC’s constitutional committee that drafted its constitutional proposals in the late 1980s and was a key member of the ANC’s negotiations team over a new constitution in the 1990s. In his 1993 inaugural address as Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of the Western Cape, he proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation process for post-apartheid South Africa. In the Mandela cabinet, he served