Kumi Naidoo is so unassuming about his achievements and so enthusiastic about saving the planet and the wretched of the earth that those who encounter him could come away feeling like lazy and incompetent underachievers.
This is particularly so if you happen to be a journalist he taught politics to in college, when he occasionally laughed at your essays.
Now, more than 20 years later, Naidoo remains the steadfast campaigner he was back when he was surging with energy about the transition to democracy and attempting to infuse political knowledge into aspirant but somewhat rebellious student journalists.
Naidoo, 53, has just assumed the role of secretary-general of Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights movement.
The appointment was announced in Johannesburg last week, giving SA the opportunity to embrace its most indefatigable social justice campaigner in the post-democratic era before he headed off to the organisation's headquarters in London.
On the day of the announcement, Naidoo is nursing a nasty cold, but, true to character, he honours back-to-back media engagements with an unwavering smile and unflagging energy.
Our late-afternoon interview is in the garden of Amnesty International's Johannesburg office. Possibly because of our own history, Naidoo does not spend much time doing the big sell on his mission for Amnesty, which has 2,600 staff members worldwide.
Instead he talks about how bittersweet the past few months have been, with the loss of his eldest sister Kay to brain cancer a few weeks after he interviewed for the position of secretary-general.
The Naidoos, a tight-knit family from Chatsworth, Durban, were left reeling after their mother committed suicide when Kumi was 15. Kay, who was 19, tended her three younger siblings through the trauma.
"She was always the rock in our lives, holding us together," says Naidoo.
By then, he and his younger brother Kovin had joined the hurly-burly of the anti-apartheid struggle and both were expelled from school in 1980 for leading a student uprising.
Kay would provide cover for her brothers when they had to slip away in the night to spray-paint "Free Mandela" slogans around Durban, even stealing her husband's car keys so they could get around.
"At that time graffiti was an important tool. It was the voice of the voiceless," says Naidoo.
He has a pained expression as his mind flits from the rigours of the apartheid defiance campaign to his sister's deathbed. He was on an Ayurvedic retreat in Kerala, India, when he received word that she was doing poorly. He rushed back home and she died a few days later.
ROCKING THE BOAT
Last month, six months after his sister's passing, Naidoo and her son were part of the Nelson Mandela Foundation's expedition to Mt Kilimanjaro. They summited on Madiba's birthday.
Thanks to preparation for the climb, Naidoo says, he is the healthiest he has ever been and therefore feels physically fit for the new job, which requires constant travel to wherever in the world human rights and freedoms are under attack.
In his previous roles, particularly as an eco-warrior and executive director of Greenpeace, Naidoo also had to be physically and mentally strong.
In 2011, he spent a week in prison after scaling a Greenlandic oil rig to hand-deliver a petition protesting against drilling in the Arctic. The following year, he led a group that occupied a Russian oil rig in the Barents Sea.
Although Naidoo's background in the anti-apartheid struggle cultivated his bold activism and penchant for civil disobedience, leading Greenpeace protests required new skills.
At his first staff meeting he was asked whether he knew anything about ships, as Greenpeace had three.
"I said: 'No, but I can cook if you allow me in the kitchen.' This is what I ended up doing when I went on the ships to Russia and Greenland. It was very hard cooking chicken curry on a ship without cumin and coriander - and with the pot rocking about."
Considering that these expeditions often result in the activists being shot at and arrested, missing spices and the stability of the pot are strange things to complain about.
Naidoo goes on to relate how he had to learn to scale a ship on a one-day training course at a rock-climbing centre in Cape Town, then practice in the hold of the ship during the two-week trip to the Russian Arctic.
"When we got there, I screwed up and slipped and fell in the ocean. They pulled me out and I had to put on new gear. So I was the last one to scale the Russian rig."
He climbs mountains, scales oil rigs and can cook curry for 30 people on a ship while fighting for universal human rights. What happened to teachers saying "carpe diem" and leaving it at that, instead of setting out to make the rest of us feel inept?
UNDERGROUND
Secretary-general of Amnesty International is a really massive job, I say.
"Er. I think so," says Naidoo, before gibing that having to lecture me in politics was probably his most difficult job.
Amnesty International is a bigger organisation than Greenpeace, but they are similar types of organisations, he says. Neither sources funding from governments or businesses.
"Greenpeace has a strong civil disobedience component, which I liked," he says. This rebellious spirit has defined all his roles. At 21, Naidoo was charged with violating SA's state of emergency regulations and forced underground. In 1987, he fled into exile in the UK, returning to SA after the ANC's unbanning.
He could have been scaling the ANC's leadership ranks instead of Russian oil rigs had he not made the choice to decline a position at party headquarters and instead grounded himself in the civil society struggle.
In 1993, Naidoo attended an ANC elections preparation workshop, where he first met Nelson Mandela.
"I have such a big mouth," he says, "but when I met Madiba for the first time, I couldn't get a word out."
Thereafter he received a request from Walter Sisulu, asking that he be seconded to the ANC media division for the 1994 elections.
"This was a dilemma for me. I remember sitting outside Sisulu's office at Shell House [the former ANC headquarters in Johannesburg]. I had a feeling like I was about to meet God."
He told Sisulu he had decided against the ANC job and wanted to work in the area of adult literacy. Sisulu teased him by pretending to be annoyed, then laughed and pledged to support him, nominating him to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as the voter-education campaign would dovetail with his adult literacy work.
Naidoo became one of the IEC's spokespersons, announcing the 1994 election results as they became available. Sisulu honoured his pledge and became patron of the adult literacy movement.
"When he was sick, we would take adult learners to him for graduation," says Naidoo.
POLICY INTELLIGENCE
Anyone who knew Naidoo during the early years was aware of the traumatic event that defined who he ultimately became.
In 1988, his closest friend, fellow activist Lenny Naidu, was shot dead by the apartheid security police at Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, as he was returning from Swaziland.
"More than any single thing that's ever happened in my life, Lenny's death helped keep me honest to the values we were committed to as young activists," says Naidoo. "To live simply, be willing to sacrifice, and not be arrogant. He was an amazing guy, way ahead of his time."
I ask Naidoo if he could see himself as a high-flyer in the South African government instead of an international social justice campaigner.
"I don't take a view that civil society is always perfect and government is always imperfect," he says. "We need good people in government, and I have a lot of respect for the sadly small number of good, decent people that are in senior government positions.
"I would rather have them there, fighting the good fight internally, than everybody walk away and leave it to an absolutely corrupt bunch of individuals who just seek to serve their own interests."
Naidoo challenges not only nuclear powers, multinationals and autocratic governments in the course of his work. In the first few years of democracy, he led the charge against the ANC government, which many of his former comrades did not appreciate.
As the founding executive director of the South African NGO Coalition, Naidoo challenged the ANC on the basic income grant and pressured Mandela's government to increase payments.
"It was the first time the ANC government was challenged by progressives and they could not ask: 'Who are you?' It was also one of the few times during my activist career when I could put a money figure to what that campaign won."
The budget was increased by R900-million to make the grant more meaningful.
The NGO coalition adopted an approach of "critical solidarity" with the ANC - it was supportive but did not want to give the government a blank cheque. Over time, the ANC came to perceive this as hostility.
Naidoo says when governments embrace the policy intelligence found in the experiences of NGOs, they tend to make better policies.
Though Naidoo is effectively a global citizen, SA is closest to his heart. He says he was greatly troubled by the events of the past few years as state capture took hold and the country plunged into decline.
"The arrogance that I saw on the part of so many ANC leaders at different levels disappointed me. I hope that after all the missteps the ANC has made over the last decades, it will come to value the power of humility, the power of listening to people."
'YOUNG PEOPLE GET IT'
Naidoo's task now is to step up the fight on global social justice issues at a time when the world is facing complex problems.
"We have had a terrible slide in adherence to human rights. We've got a president in the White House who has become one of the biggest underminers of human rights on multiple levels, such as attacking the media and separating families at the border.
"It is a terribly depressing time. But I am an optimist. I wouldn't have survived if I didn't maintain some measure of optimism.
"My optimism now is coming from the fact that a lot of people around the world, especially young people, are saying enough is enough and no more," says Naidoo.
"Young people get it. They know they will pay the price for the absence of leadership. So that gives me a little bit of hope. Sometimes bad leaders provoke good people to get off their butts and say: 'We're going to do something about this.' We are seeing Trump-like leaders in other parts of the world and they too are beginning to face resistance."
Being a campaigner of this ilk makes it difficult ever to feel the sense of accomplishment that your work is complete, because it never is.
Naidoo says that even after so many years of activism, the world's problems are escalating. On women's rights, for example, despite increased protest action such as the #MeToo movement, gender inequality and levels of violence against women are rising.
On climate change, the clock is ticking. "We are seriously running out of time to avert catastrophic climate change. We are at five minutes to midnight," he says.
This does not deter Naidoo's mission to improve the state of humanity.
"I say to young people: 'Don't let anyone tell you that activism is a drudge and a slog. Activism is fun, creative, strategic. It is all-powerful to try to analyse the world and attempt to present alternatives.'"
Half a lifetime ago, an exuberant political science lecturer said something of the sort to a group of sceptical student journalists. The message is even more profound now, coming from the world's chief human rights crusader...