My friend Don Noels, who has died aged 84, was a teacher in South Africa who moved to the UK after being imprisoned for his anti-apartheid activities. In his new homeland he continued teaching, rising to be deputy head at a London comprehensive, as well as with his activism.
Unable for years to return to South Africa, Don co-founded the UK-based Azania Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), a group of exiles that published two magazines: the monthly Azania Frontline and the quarterly Azania Worker. Articles for both were smuggled into the UK via a network of contacts in South Africa before being edited and laid out by volunteers and sent back for clandestine distribution.
Don had been given the name Ronnie when born in Salt River, Cape Town, an area designated for “coloureds”. His father, Frank, was a boilermaker who fought in the second world war, while his mother, Rosina (nee Ruitis), worked as a housemaid. Politicised by apartheid from an early age, he honed his ideas at Trafalgar high school before winning a bursary to study at Cape Town University, after which he became a history teacher at Oaklands high school.
Around that time Don joined a Marxist cell that met secretly on a weekly basis, trying to work out ways of sparking a revolution against the apartheid regime. In 1968 all its members were arrested, and Don spent three months under interrogation in jail. Although no charges were brought, he was told that if picked up again he would face a much longer period of incarceration.
He and his wife, Margaret, a fellow teacher whom he had married in 1966, fled to the UK. They settled in London in 1969, and he taught first at Shirley school in Croydon and then at Chelsea boys’ school. Later, he became an adviser at the Inner London Education Authority and deputy head at Stoke Newington school, taking early retirement in 1994.
Don’s ALSC work involved setting up connections between anti-apartheid activists in South Africa and politicians and trade unionists in London. Over the years he provided introductions – as well as food and accommodation – to visiting figures such as Cyril Ramaphosa, who went on to be president of South Africa, and Moses Mayekiso, later general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers. Once apartheid fell, the support committee was disbanded.
Don was unable to regain full South African citizenship, but from 1975 onwards he returned regularly to his birthplace to see family and friends. On his initial visits he was given a 24-hour tail by police, but in later years was able to move around more freely.
Outside work and activism, he was a fine sportsman who played football for Cape Town Hotspurs and cricket in the Middlesex League for Shepherd’s Bush, where I met him. Retiring to Birmingham, he served as a magistrate and became a member of Handsworth golf club, where he was a popular personality.
He is survived by his second wife, Margaret Shakespeare, a former university administrator whom he married in 2021, two daughters from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, and two grandchildren.
