JUDGE Fikile Bam - a.k.a. "Bra Fiks" - first captured my imagination at Steve Biko's funeral on September 25 1977. I was only 11 but had joined the throngs of people who had descended on our township to pay homage to Biko. The notables on the dais that day included Desmond Tutu, Fatima Meer, Nthatho Motlana and Fikile Bam.

Bam made a veiled threat to the apartheid government that black people would not sit by while their leaders were being killed. This put him in jeopardy of going back to jail. He had served 11 years on Robben Island as a Unity Movement activist and a member of the Yu Chin Chan - which is Chinese for guerrilla warfare. I hope in this land of selective memory he will be remembered as one of the first to consider the armed struggle as a legitimate form of struggle and he paid the price for it.

The next time Bam captured my imagination was in the more intimate environment of his office in Randburg, Joburg, where he served as a judge of the Land Claims Court. He cut an austere figure as a judge but he became animated when I brought up the subject of Steve Biko's fateful trip to Cape Town. He recalled that on his release from Robben Island in 1975 he had asked Francis Wilson - who was a friend of both Biko and Bam - to take him to meet Biko in Ginsberg, where the latter was banished.

At that meeting Biko had expressed a desire to meet with Bam's close comrade in the Unity Movement, Neville Alexander. And so when Biko and Peter Jones travelled to Cape Town in August 1977 as part of the unity talks among the liberation movements, they relied on Bam to facilitate the meeting with Alexander.

However, what enraged Bam - back in 1977 and in our interview - was Alexander's refusal to see Biko on security grounds. While Alexander regards that evening as "one of the most tragic moments in my life", the security concerns were real: "Fiks tried every trick in the book but I would not budge. We had been sent to jail because of such little mistakes," he said.

I have always refused to make a value judgment about who was right or wrong in this incident involving very close comrades. Suffice to say that these were leaders confronted with some of the most difficult existential decisions of our struggle. I cannot say "Bra Fiks" and I became friends but whenever we met he would call me aside to light-heartedly "gossip" about this politician or the other, or what he would call "ezi-chaps [these chaps]."

In our last encounter, I asked if he still remembered the veiled threat to the apartheid government he made at Biko's funeral. He could not. And so I repeated it to him: "But we are not helpless."

Bam may have issued that as a threat of physical violence against the regime but it was the essential message of the black consciousness movement - that we were never helpless.

Born in Tsolo, Transkei, on July 18 1937, "Bra Fiks" shared his birthday with his childhood hero, Nelson Mandela.

In an interview with John Carlin, he recalled how Madiba would keep the biscuits his visitors brought him in December for his July birthday celebration, and would share them with him. "And when I'd exhausted all mine, he would come out on the morning of the 18th to present me with biscuits and chocolates, and so I had a rather charmed life."

Judge Bam started his legal career by helping out at the law firm of Mandela and Oliver Tambo, who had also been his teacher at St Peters. He obtained a BA (law) degree at the University of Cape Town in 1960, and later finished his B Proc and LLB degrees through the University of South Africa in 1975 and 1976. His illustrious career included working as the director of the Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth in 1975; advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa and a partner at the law firm Deneys Reitz. In 1993 he was appointed to the Goldstone Commission and the SABC board. Among other things, he served as chairman of council at Wits; and as Judge President of the Land Claims Court for the past 15 years. In addition to serving on the boards of several companies, he received an honorary doctorate of laws from Rhodes University - one of those rare truly deserved honours. Judge Bam is survived by his wife Xoliswa, his sister Brigalia Hlophe Bam, the outgoing Independent Electoral Commission chairman, children and grandchildren and four siblings."

In my mind's eye, he remains the inspiration who entered my imagination in 1977 with those prophetic words: "But we are not helpless."

May his words remain an inspiration in building a democratic society with a judiciary as independent as he was in his life.

Published in The Times 23 December 2011 

Mangcu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town