Clive Keegan, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 72, was one of eight Nusas students banned in 1973 for five years by the notorious Schlebusch Commission for “supporting the revolutionary overthrow of the SA government”.
Keegan, vice-president of the National Union of South African Students at the time, was in good company.
Among others banned were then president of Nusas Paul Pretorius, chief evidence leader at the Zondo commission of inquiry; former Nusas president Neville Curtis; academic Rick Turner, who was assassinated by a police death squad; and Paula Ensor, who became dean of humanities at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Keegan subsequently became the mayor of Cape Town and chairperson of the city’s planning and executive committees. He championed the planning and development of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and was responsible for the pedestrianisation of St George’s Mall, which revitalised the city centre.
He and the other students refused to testify before the commission unless they were subpoenaed, which they promptly were.
The scene was set in 1972 when students protesting against apartheid were chased into St George’s Cathedral by police, who then beat them mercilessly with sjamboks and truncheons.
The scene was set in 1972 when students protesting against apartheid were chased in to St George's Cathedral by the police, who then beat them mercilessly with sjamboks and truncheons.
At the commission, chaired by future deputy president Alwyn Schlebusch, Keegan, accompanied by a lawyer who was not allowed to say anything, was confronted by a line of MPs from the ruling National Party and opposition United Party, who glared at him with ill-concealed hatred.
All of the Nat commissioners subsequently became cabinet ministers and all were virulent right-wingers, none more so than Louis le Grange, who became minister of justice and speaker of parliament. The UP MPs were even more aggressive.
The atmosphere was threatening and hostile. The questions, based on boxes of so-called evidence compiled by the security police, were loaded and vicious and designed to prove the students were guilty of communism and terrorism, for which the definitions were impossibly broad.
About half of those who testified were banned, without being any more or less guilty than those who were not.
The only explanation the lawyer who “represented” them as they testified could think of was that the ones the commission acted against were those who had gone on record.
Keegan was a brilliant and prolific orator. His speeches, which, like him, were gloriously flamboyant, were on record and used against him with a vengeance.
Extracts, taken out of context, were hurled at him like grenades with vicious, gleeful, vindictive nastiness, designed to provoke rash and incriminating responses.
Keegan was a brilliant and prolific orator. His speeches, which, like him, were gloriously flamboyant, were on record and used against him with a vengeance.
In complete command of his emotions and totally uncowed, Keegan, 22 at the time, answered every question calmly, rationally, politely and patiently.
He kept his cool throughout, which, for someone with a razor-sharp tongue and wicked wit, who delighted in irony and double entendre, took a superhuman effort.
There seemed no possibility that anything could happen to him. But when the Schlebusch commission’s report was released, it was more vicious than they could ever have imagined. He and his lawyer were shattered by the banning.
Keegan was born in Cape Town on January 26 1950. After matriculating at Bishops he began reading political science and English at Rhodes University in what was then Grahamstown, before, sporting a Che Guevara beret and sex appeal to match, he moved to UCT, where his political activism prevented him from completing his degree.
In spite of the Che look he came across as a toff, with an impossibly posh accent. His mother taught elocution and he took it way over the top.
He often came across as pompous and overbearing, but wasn’t like this at all in private.
The pomposity was triggered when he witnessed an obvious injustice, which would invariably arouse in him a passionate fury.
After being banned he opened a book store, Keegan's Africana Books, in Rondebosch. The security branch raided the formal opening and he was found guilty of breaking his banning order. When the police arrived to issue a summons, his mother told them to use the tradesman’s entrance.
After his banning order expired, he became a Cape Town city councillor in 1978, at 28, one of the youngest councillors ever elected.
In 1981 he stood for the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) against powerful Nat cabinet minister Lapa Munnik in his very safe seat of Durbanville. Munnik helped Keegan greatly by making a comment about pensioners being able to live on R20 a month, which then reporter Helen Zille jumped on.
Keegan halved Munnik’s majority. His supporters hoisted him on their shoulders, from where he said of his vertically challenged opponent: “I may not have slain a giant, but I think I have wounded a midget.”
In 1981 he stood for the Progressive Federal Party against powerful Nat cabinet minister Lapa Munnik in his very safe seat of Durbanville. Munnik helped Keegan greatly by making a comment about pensioners being able to live on R20 a month.
He was a master of the sharp, witty, extremely funny, on-the-moment comment, and a brilliant raconteur.
Soon after joining the city council he was doing an investigation of Cape Town’s steakhouses after complaints about health standards.
“I do not think this piece of steak has seen a cow in more than two weeks,” the Cape Times quoted him as saying during a visit to one kitchen.
Journalists phoned him for comments all the time and he never let them down.
He said of a Nusas resolution that it "has about the same chance of happening as a humming-bird flying to the planet Mars with the Voortrekker Monument tied to its tail".
He was extremely well read, going through at least six newspapers a day and books voraciously. He knew everything. If you wanted to know about puberty rites in the Outer Hebrides or Amazonian frogs, he was your man. He was a veritable fortress of general knowledge.
While mayor in 1993 his wife and mayoress Marilyn Keegan announced she was joining the ANC, causing a rumpus in the Democratic Party (DP).
Keegan supported her. If she’d switched from the ANC to the DP there wouldn’t have been any criticism, so why now, he asked?
He lost his council seat in 1995 after a lot of infighting and manoeuvring, and began producing a monthly municipal news sheet uncovering corruption in municipalities across the country. After 20 years or so the corruption depressed him so much he stopped the publication.
Keegan knew Steve Biko well and supported him when he led black students out of Nusas. He had a firm and empathetic grasp of what the black consciousness movement was about.
In the 1980s he had a lot of PAC activists on the run from the police sleeping on his couch.
He reviewed Benjamin Pogrund’s book about PAC founder Robert Sobukwe, which the author described as the best of all the reviews it received because of its obvious depth of understanding of Sobukwe and the PAC.
Keegan was sometimes called Churchillian because of his wit, defiance, political resilience, eccentricities and superb oratorical skills. Like the British wartime leader, Keegan also prepared and rehearsed his speeches meticulously — he never spoke off the cuff — and usually in the bath.
A highly entertaining, but also very complicated and difficult man, he was married three times and was living alone when he was found dead at home after an apparent heart attack.
He had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, though he’d only ever been a light, 10-a-day smoker.
He is survived by a daughter and two sons.
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