Wilfrid Grenville-Grey, who has died in England at the age of 85, was an upper-class Englishman who became Thabo Mbeki's brother-in-law and helped run the International Defence and Aid Fund in London and New York. The fund, which smuggled money to South Africa to pay the legal costs of anti-apartheid activists and support their families when they were in jail, was started by Canon John Collins of St Paul's Cathedral in London.It was banned in South Africa in 1966 and it was illegal for any organisation in the country to receive money from it or from any related source.This meant that the job of getting money to the right people in South Africa was a highly clandestine and at times dangerous and complicated operation that required considerable ingenuity.Adjusted to today's money value, the funds that were distributed amounted to some R10-billion. The money saved many activists from the gallows and resulted in much reduced terms of imprisonment for thousands of others.An intricate web of dummy trusts ensured that the money raised secretly from over 50 governments and the UN was distributed without either the "front" donors or those distributing the funds aware of the true source of the money.After helping to run the IDAF in London for about three years in the late '70s and early '80s, Grenville-Grey was sent to New York to represent it at the UN.He was born in Britain on May 27 1930. He attended Eton, Oxford and Yale and had a brief stint as an officer in the British army.While running the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Zambia, where he wrote the book All in an African Lifetime, he met Edith Sibongile Dlamini, a former cover girl for Drum magazine and the sister of Mbeki's future wife, Zanele. They were married in 1963.Back in England he ran a centre for international development workers which operated from Farnham Castle, where he and Edith lived (as a result ANC exiles jokingly called him "lord"), and where Mbeki and Zanele were married.Grenville-Grey's marriage to Edith was fairly turbulent.One morning, according to legend, he arrived at the IDAF office with his briefcase full of clothes that she had stuffed in before ejecting him from their house. They were divorced in 1989.After leaving the IDAF he became a speech writer for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.He is survived by his three children with Edith.1930-2016..