Fish Keitsing
1919 -

African National Congress activist and Treason Trial defendant in the 1950s. Keitsing was born in Bechuanaland in 1919, the son of a peasant. At the age of 23 he came to South Africa as a mineworker and became one of the original members of the African Mineworkers' Union led by J.B. Marks.

In 1949 he left the mines, moved to Newclare in Johannesburg, and became a factory worker. Joining the ANC in 1949, he became a leader of the Newclare Congress branch and its volunteer-in-chief during the 1952 Defiance Campaign. In 1956 he was involved in an incident with police who had arrested a group of pass offenders. Taking the lead in a crowd of angry onlookers, Keitsing ordered the police to release their victims, and they complied. Keitsing was later sentenced to 12 months in jail and lost an appeal to the Supreme Court in mid-1957. Charged with others in the treason trial, Keitsing was brought daily from his cell to attend the trial. Released in 1958, later moved to Botswana where he now lives.

Source:

From Protest To Challenge, Political Profiles Volume 4 p49