The Kairos Foundation (Stichting Kairos) was founded in 1970 as a support group for the Christian Institute in South Africa, whose general secretary was anti-apartheid activist Dr CF Beyers Naude. Kairos, a Greek word, means 'time is running out'. Until 1990 most of Kairos' attention focussed on violations of human rights in South Africa and mobilisation of support in the Netherlands for sanctions and disinvestment.

In the 1970s and 1980s the organisation focused on the causes of apartheid with campaigns aimed at Dutch firms active in the apartheid economy. Other campaigns were aimed at forced removals, detentions, torture in detention, the death sentence, children, conscription and the activities of the security forces

Kairos' work was supported by many of the Dutch churches and there was co-operation from church circles in Southern Africa. Extensive contacts were made with black South African clerics studying in the Netherlands. Kairos mobilised attention on the disempowered and influenced public opinion through campaigns and publications

Through Kairos, many South African organisations channelled information to international organisations and the media. From 1996-1997, Kairos researched the assault and torture of political prisoners in the 1960s and 1970s for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

After 1990 attention shifted to the consequences of apartheid and support for the reconstruction of the country. Youth development was given considerable attention with training, conferences, support and specialist input from experts in various fields to organisations involved in the development of the youth.

In 2002, the Kairos Foundation closed its doors. Its resource and research material was then donated to the University of the Witwatersrand.

Karl von Holdt has been a researcher and publisher in the South African labour and trade union movement. He is the former editor of the South African Labour Bulletin.

Born on 15 November 1938 in Yeoville, Johannesburg, Ronald Kasrils was the son of Rene (born Cohen) and Isidore Kasrils. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania, who fled from the Czarist pogroms at the end of the 19th century. A matriculant at the King Edward VII High School, he excelled in athletics and history. His initial career was as a script writer for a Johannesburg film studio and then for Lever Brothers, as Television and Film Director for their advertising division in Durban, until 1962.

Political history 1960-1994

The Sharpville massacre prompted Ronald Kasrils to join the African National Congress (ANC) in 1960, serving as the secretary of the ANC-aligned Congress of Democrats in Natal until it was banned in 1962. His involvement led to bannings from gatherings and various forms of employment, and having his movement restricted to Durban. In 1963 he registered to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree and joined the Cross Country Team at the University of Natal. His plans were cut short when the security police sought to arrest him under the Terrorism Act. He evaded arrest and began operating underground. A member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC's military wing, since its inception in 1961, he was involved in its first operations. In 1963 he became the Commander of the Natal Regional Command of MK. He fled South Africa in October 1963 together with his future wife Eleanor Logan, who had escaped from police custody, where she was held for her own political activities. They got married in Tanzania in 1964 and later had two sons, Andrew and Christopher.

Exiled years and Transition

Ronald Kasrils was sent by the ANC to the Odessa Military College in the Soviet Union where he graduated at the end of 1964, having completed a general military course as well as a specialist course in military engineering. He later served in various capacities and deployments in London, Luanda, Maputo, Swaziland, Botswana, Lusaka and Harare. He became Chief of MK Intelligence in 1983, served on the ANC's Politico-Military Council (PMC) in Lusaka from 1985, on the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) from 1987 and on the South African Communist Party's Central Committee (SACP) from 1985. Just before the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, he played an active role in Operation 'Vula' which aimed to infiltrate leadership back into South Africa. He subsequently lost the indemnity given to returning NEC members by FW de Klerk's government and again was on the run from police, this time until June 1991. He continued to work within the ANC and SACP structures and was an active participants in the negotiations and a member of the Transitional Executive Council's Sub-Council on Defence.

New Democratic South Africa

In 1994 Ronald Kasrils was appointed Deputy Minister of Defence in Nelson Mandela's first cabinet, and served in this position until June 1999. His second appointment was Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, from 1999-2004, during which he also served as a member in the UN Secretary General's Advisory Committee on Water & Sanitation from 2002-2004. In 2004 he was appointed to the intelligence portfolio where he served as Minister for Intelligence Services from April 2004 to September 2008.

Ronald Kasrils retired from Government in September 2008. He has however remained actively involved in the political landscape of South Africa. From 2008 he has been active in the Palestine Solidarity Committee, and participated in the Jurist Russell Tribunal on Palestine since 2011. From 2012 he served as a Commissioner in the International Verification Commission, Basque Country, Spain.

His wife Eleanor Kasrils died in 2009. Ronald Kasrils married journalist Amina Frense on the 2 February 2012 in Cape Town.

South African historian and a world authority on the history of the South African mining industry, early trade unionism, medical history and the history of Johannesburg.

She will be remembered for her two masterful works of South African historical scholarship, which were based respectively on her M.A., earned in 1974 at the University of the Witwatersrand and on her Doctoral dissertation for which she was awarded her PhD by Wits in 1990. Her first impressive study was 'A Trade Union Aristocracy: the Transvaal White Working Class and the General Strike of 1913' (1976), published by the African Studies Institute at Wits. In 1994, Wits University Press published her authoritative study, 'White Death: Silicosis on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines 1886-1918'. These two works established Elaine's reputation as a leading historian of the South African gold mining industry. She gathered international accolades and her reputation was enhanced by her journal publications and presentations to a range of international conferences on mining history.

In 1995, Elaine achieved the by no means minor distinction in academic circles of publishing a pioneering article in one of the top rated economic history journals of the time, the Economic History Review (UK) with a path-breaking critical article on a key debate of the decade, 'Outcrop and deep level mining in South Africa before the Anglo-Boer War: re-examining the Blainey thesis'. This frequently cited article brought her scholarship to the attention of an overseas audience and fostered much interest in the complexities of the South African version of mining capitalism and the links between technology, geology and labour issues.

Elaine is additionally remembered for her work, together with Eric Axelson and Edward Tabler, on the publication Baines on the Zambezi, 1858-1859, a prestige collector's limited edition published by the Brenthurst Press in 1982. This book was the eighth book in the first Brenthurst Africana series and remains one of the most sought after.

In 2008, Elaine contributed a major piece on Johannesburg to the New Encyclopaedia of Africa, published in the USA and edited by John Middleton. In her final years, her research took her into the subject of the role of American mining engineers and mining technology in the Witwatersrand gold mining industry; a recent talk on this subject at the Rand Club was received with accolades. Elaine also became interested in Jewish genealogy and in her own extensive family history, and applied her skills of careful scholarly research and data gathering to this new area of interest.

Elaine Katz taught at Wits for many years and she was an excellent, demanding yet· encouraging lecturer and teacher. She was versatile, serving successively as a lecturer and later senior lecturer in the Departments of History, Economic History and Communications Studies at Wits and, following her formal retirement, she held an honorary research fellowship in the Wits History Department from 1995 until her passing.

Extracts with permission from an Obituary, written by Kathy Munroe and published in 'Jewish Affairs', Vol. 72, No. 2.