Hamba kahle Peter Williams

HUMAN rights lawyer Peter Williams, who died of cancer this week, was a quiet, humble and indefatigable champion of the downtrodden – and one of South Africa’s great moral figures when so many other Struggle heroes of his generation proved to have feet of clay.

Williams performed his most renowned work in the Western Cape, but his achievements in the courts were so important that he became known throughout the country for the cases he took on and won.

He was never happier, or more determined, than when representing those whose daily struggles few cared about – the poor.

These included people caught up in the still fraught racial dynamics in which white bosses continued to wield power over lowly-paid black workers.

Thus, when a domestic worker named Nomasomi Gloria Kente was repeatedly called a k **** r by her employer’s boyfriend, André van Deventer, it was Williams who took her fight for justice to the courts.

In the Equality Court, he sued Van Deventer for R100 000. Although Kente ended up with half that amount, a severely chastened Van Deventer begged for forgiveness afterwards.

An even more sensational case handled by Williams was when he acted for the ANC in suing a KwaZulu-Natal racist named Penny Sparrow, who sparked a nation-wide furore by comparing black people to monkeys on a social media post.

For this misdemeanour, Sparrow was ordered by a Umzinto Equality Court in KwaZulu-Natal to pay the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation R150 000.

Williams’ move into activism began at Belgravia High School in Athlone, a hotbed of anti-government activity in the 1980s.

A founding member of the Athlone Students Action Committee (Asac), which co-ordinated all the schools in the Athlone area during the 1985 student boycotts, he was also a member of the Kewtown branch of the Cape Youth Congress.

Williams studied law at the University of the Western Cape and began his legal career where a number of other top human rights lawyers cut their teeth: Essa Moosa and Associates.

There, like so many of his other legal compatriots, he built up a reputation as a formidable defender of human rights. He will be missed.

Hamba kahle, Peter Williams.