Mary Benson, writer and indefatigable campaigner against apartheid in South Africa, who died on June 19th, in London at the age of 80 was a remarkable woman.
Her history of the African National Congress and her life of Nelson Mandela, first published in 1964, are an indispensable record of black South Africa's struggle for freedom.
Her Irish background - her father who emigrated to South Africa as a young man was a son of the famous headmaster of Rathmines School, Dr Benson - meant much to her, particularly in later years. After a conventional childhood in South Africa, and a brief and hilarious visit to Hollywood at the age of 18, she served in Egypt with the South African Women's Auxiliary Army and later with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Athens and Vienna.
The turning point of her life came with Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. The writer and the work brought her a new understanding of herself and of South Africa.
Her purpose became the struggle for justice in her own land. For some seven years she worked selflessly with the Anglican priest, Michael Scott, writing, typing, speaking and lobbying to help his work at the UN and the Africa Bureau, which they helped to set up with their friend David Astor, editor of the Observer, and others to promote information on African affairs.
Her break with Scott, an ascetic with whom she had learned but also suffered so much, was very painful. On her return to South Africa she took on the Treason Trial Defence Fund travelling widely and later, in the course of her research for the first history of the ANC, meeting many of those involved in the struggle against apartheid.
Her friendship with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other leaders later on the run, and her reporting of the subsequent Rivonia treason trial formed the groundwork for her biography of Mandela.
She had earlier visited Chief Hosea Kutaku, who had worked until his death with Michael Scott to bring the plight of his people in what is now Namibia to international attention.
She became the first South African to testify before the newly formed UN Committee on Apartheid calling for the imposition of sanctions.
She had met Bram Fischer, the chief defence laywer for Mandela, at the Rivonia trial the previous year. On her return to South Africa in 1964 their relationship became a deep friendship maintained throughout Fischer's period on the run, when she met him in a series of almost comical disguises.
His eventual capture and condemnation to life imprisonment in 1966, and his death in prison in 1975, caused her deep distress.
In 1966 Mary Benson was herself placed under house arrest. She chose exile, returning only very briefly in 1968 to be with her dying father in highly restricted conditions. Throughout the following years, from her small flat in London's Saint John's Wood, a stream of letters and reports, radio plays and documentaries kept alive the struggle even as gradually other actors, governments and international organisations became increasingly involved.
More than almost any other individual she helped to keep alive before the public the insistent voice of Mandela. Her writing blossomed. A novel At the Still Point appeared in 1969 and her moving autobiography A Far Cry, the Making of a South African, in 1989.
Her friendship with the South African playwright, Athol Fugard who sought through a non-racial theatre to break down the cultural barriers of apartheid, began in 1961 and developed symbiotically. She was his "sounding-board" and he her brother. She co-operated in the production of his work in Britain and in America. She was also very close to another South African playwright, Barney Simon, until his death some years ago.
In 1990 Mandela walked free from his prison on Robben Island. In that and following years she returned to South Africa. The dream had been realised and it was for others to carry on the story. Only a few months ago Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel paid her a visit at her flat, leaving a huge bunch of white lilies.
Her myriad interests and enthusiasms left time for her Irish past. She sent articles to Irish publications and corresponded with Irish writers.
Her life was built tenaciously around important things. Her affliction with rheumatoid arthritis that progressively deformed her hands and feet caused her excruciating pain which she rarely revealed.
Adept at deflating pomposity, she set a profound moral example by the grace and authority of her actions.
Funny, compassionate and purposeful she was a marvellous companion.
Mary Benson is survived by her sister Kathleen (Poppy) Grieve.
Mary Benson: born 1919; died, June 2000