Perhaps it is a reflection of the kind of society in which we live that the murder of a somewhat shady character eclipses the death of a South African woman of substance. Sheena Duncan, founding chair of the Black Sash Trust passed away recently. Unfortunately however it was the sordid murder of Lolly Jackson which hogged the headlines endlessly.

Sheena Duncan was in all respects an activist and a tireless fighter for human rights during the apartheid era. Over the years of her involvement with the Black Sash, Duncan would become well-known and highly respected as she sought to assist hundreds of people whose lives were cruelly affected by the apartheid pass laws. Duncan's role in leading the Black Sash in its pacifist vigils along road-sides in rain or shine in protest against repressive laws will also be remembered. Her commitment to a just society still underpins the work of the Black Sash today as it continues her work to ‘make human rights real'. Her passing allows a moment to reflect on the role of an ordinary South African woman who, when she might have turned a blind eye to injustice, chose not to. It is Duncan's ordinariness which makes her life's work extraordinary. It may be clichéd to say it but she was, after all, a middle class white woman who lived in a community largely indifferent to the plight of the oppressed. Taking a risk was a choice few were prepared to make.

The Sowetan editorial's words were apt, ‘"Our sorrows and fears lifted a little whenever her ample figure hove into view. She took up the cudgels and fought tirelessly... against members of her own race who enslaved us."

South Africa today is a very different place to the one in which pass laws existed and black people were treated as imposters on the land. Yet, in so many ways, the deep structural inequalities, the poverty and exclusion of many have created rifts within this society which either did not exist before or deepened existing ones. Duncan's life - that of choosing to fight for injustice everywhere even for no profit or reward- challenges all of us as citizens to redouble our efforts against corruption, venality, injustice and inequality.

This last week also saw the passing of van Zyl Slabbert, former Progressive Federal Party Member of Parliament, Afrikaner, African and intellectual. Slabbert, who with Alex Boraine was the founder of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa (today known as ‘idasa'). Slabbert was a fellow member of the Independent Panel on the assessment of Parliament, set up by then Speaker Baleka Mbete in 2008 and chaired by former ANC MP, Pregs Govender. He will be remembered by those of us who served on the Panel for his razor sharp understanding of power, the workings of Parliament and his intricate knowledge of various systems of accountability. His was a great mind with a sharp eye for detail. The work of our panel was enriched because of his insights. For whatever the criticisms of his political life, in 1986 when he made the decision to abandon the last white Parliament, it was a decision based on principle and patriotism, as the Presidency's statement rightly put it. It was a decision which created a momentum in the white body politic from which it never recovered. His attempts to bring Afrikaners and the ANC into dialogue in Dakar, Senegal in 1987 was in many ways a turning point in the stalemate that had become the turbulent 80s. It was one part of the jig-saw which brought down an apartheid regime. In the lives of Sheena Duncan and Van Zyl Slabbert we reflect on the countless other men and women who contributed to dismantling apartheid and pinning their colours to the mast when it mattered. Such individual and corporate acts brought down the repressive apartheid regime.

Written by: Judith February, head of Idasa's Political Information and Monitoring Service, and Richard Calland, associate professor of public law at UCT

This article first appeared in the Cape Times, Wednesday, 19th May 2010.