My friend Henry Brown, who has died aged 85, was a South African and later British solicitor whose human rights work across nearly four decades reads like a South African anti-apartheid struggle “Who’s Who”. In the UK he also became a leader in the field of mediation.
As a young attorney with Cape Town’s leading civil rights firm, Frank, Bernadt and Joffe, he was involved in the trial of leaders of a dramatic march of 30,000 protesters from Langa township into the centre of the city in 1960. Henry, barely into his 20s, was on his way. In 1967 he consulted with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, on one occasion when the then ANC leader and future president was charged with slacking in the notorious salt mine. The charge was withdrawn after it was reported in the local newspaper.
