Bram Fischer - Tributes

Tributes

Fischer is widely acknowledged as a key figure in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Nelson Mandela wrote, Fischer was one of the "bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known." From a prominent Afrikaner family, he gave up a life of privilege, rejected his heritage, and was ostracized by his own people, showing "a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself.

In Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog writes, "He was so much braver than the rest of us, he paid so much more, his life seems to have touched the lives of so many people – even after his death.”

In her account of her detention and solitary confinement by the South African Security Branch in 1963, Ruth First writes about being questioned about Fischer during an interrogation. She told her interrogators: "Bram is a friend, a very dear friend of mine, a wonderful man, and – thank God for the reputation of your people that you have at least one saving grace – he's an Afrikaner."

Fischer was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967.

In 2003 Fischer became the first South African ever to be posthumously reinstated to the Bar.

In 2004, despite opposition from alumni and management, Fischer was awarded a posthumous honorary degree by Stellenbosch University.

New College (University of Oxford), where Fischer was a student, holds an annual Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture to honour his legacy.