AnnMarie Wolpe, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 87, became a reluctant hero of the anti-apartheid struggle when she helped her husband, Harold, and three fellow prisoners escape from a security police cell in Johannesburg in 1963.
Harold was a member of the banned SACP, the party's main lawyer and a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement.
Their escape was a massive embarrassment for the apartheid government, which was still crowing about the arrest of ANC and communist leaders at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia days before.
Harold spent a lot of time at the ANC's Rivonia hideout helping to plan the armed struggle. He was arrested while racing to the Botswana border soon after hearing about the Liliesleaf raid.
The escape was front-page news and he and Arthur Goldreich, the owner of Liliesleaf, became the most wanted fugitives in the country.
The security police unleashed their fury on AnnMarie. Hours after the escape they dragged her off to the headquarters of the security police in Johannesburg, known as The Grays, where she was screamed at and threatened by their most notoriously brutal interrogator, "Rooi Rus" Swanepoel.
Every time she said she didn't know where her husband was, his rage became more terrifying.
After 24 hours she was released.
A Sunday Times journalist with good police contacts warned her she was about to be arrested again, and this time she'd be held for 90 days with a criminal charge at the end of it.
In a panic she contacted attorney Joel Joffe, who represented the Rivonia triallists. After speaking to a security police contact, he said she must go immediately. She left her children with a babysitter and took the first flight to London. She didn't see South Africa again for 27 years.
AnnMarie Kantor was born in Johannesburg on December 1 1930. She met Harold at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He wooed her for seven years before she agreed to marry him in 1955. He was a committed Marxist and close to Ruth First, Joe Slovo and other comrades.
She didn't share his zeal for the party or the struggle and resented the hold they had over him. They thought she was a spoilt Jewish princess whose bourgeois tendencies would weaken his commitment. The idea of armed struggle frightened her. She hated violence and felt that Harold and his comrades were naive and would be jailed or hanged. She wanted the couple to leave South Africa but Harold refused.
When he was locked up in Marshall Square, a friendly warder facilitated a hurried meeting. Harold asked her to bring steel filing blades so they could saw through the cell bars. She smuggled some wire cutters to him inside a roast chicken.When that didn't work they decided to bribe a warder to help them escape. She arranged the bribe money, enough for the warder to buy a new Studebaker Lark he wanted. She also arranged for an escape car to wait outside the prison.
On the night of the escape she was waiting at the jail to see Harold when a journalist, Gordon Winter, sidled up and asked her what was going on.
She said she wished someone could tell her. If she'd let slip a hint of what was about to happen it would have sealed Harold's fate and hers, because Winter, as he later confessed, was a security police spy.
Harold and Goldreich made it to Botswana disguised as priests, and eventually to the UK, where she joined him. She became a sociology lecturer at Middlesex University, published academic works on feminism and education and became a founding member of Feminist Review.
Under pressure from Harold she returned to South Africa after Nelson Mandela's release. She thought that as a white feminist she wouldn't fit into the new South Africa. Both got research posts at the University of the Western Cape. He died of a heart attack in 1996 at the age of 70.
AnnMarie, who had emphysema and died of lung cancer, felt the role of women in the struggle was never properly appreciated.
She is survived by three children.
1930-2018..