18 December, 2011 – On behalf of our Founder, Trustees and staff, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory sends its deepest condolences to the family, comrades and friends of the late Judge Fikile Bam.
Justice Bam passed away on Sunday 18 December 2011 after a long battle with cancer.
We will remember him as a patriot and a leading legal mind in South Africa.
As a law student in the 1950s he only saw Mr Mandela from a distance, but met him on Robben Island when he served a 10 year sentence – from 1964 to 1974 – for his efforts against apartheid.
He was held in B Section with Mr Mandela and his comrades and, although he was from another political organisation, the Yu Chi Chan Club, he was voted by fellow inmates as the first chairperson of the Prisoners’ Committee in B Section.
Justice Bam and Mr Mandela became close friends in prison. They shared a birthday, 18 July, and every year Mr Mandela would save the sweets he was allowed to buy at Christmas and gave them to “Fiks” on his birthday.
Justice Bam, who completed a BA at the University of Cape Town in 1960, studied law on Robben Island and graduated in 1975. The last position in his illustrious career was as judge president of the Land Claims Court of South Africa.