Success at social activism ordinarily requires either charismatic characters, or at least, individuals who appeared quixotic in their time but come to seem prescient in ours. He fell in the latter category. Although he was for some time one of them, he was almost by nature, critical of most politicians, even though he must, at one point, have harboured a desire to be at the centre of politics. This dialectical relationship with his ilk meant that he was always doomed to wander around politics, not as one of its chief actors, but on its periphery, high as a plastic kite of his youth.
In toying, and ultimately succeeding with insisting on opposition party cooperation, he must have accepted that his own party’s sole search for political power was a quest without end. He must have also reasoned that, as they were, opposition politics were fragmented, socially ambiguous and consequently disenchanting to many voters. Nonetheless, his success in local government politics, in the trade union movement, in opposition politics and now in an executive appointment as one of the leaders of a Presidential Commission on Constitutional Review, underscores the perennial hope of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary feats; the adventurousness of party politics; and the progression of a focused citizen, despite everything. Against the wish by many of us for national relevance at all times, followed by the grudging acceptance that our pedigree or advanced age often seem to confirm that we will fail at this, what one sees in his recent appointment is the valour of this unlikely knight, able to catch the attention of powerful people, and succeeding, again against odds, to keep personal oblivion at bay. In what may arguably be his life’s final public act, he is now serving this nation in a nonpartisan capacity and assuming direct accountability to the President – arguably, the yearning of every activist!
