In 1963, Terence Ranger, who has died aged 85, was deported from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He had earned the enmity of the country’s minority government for his engagement with a burgeoning African nationalist movement and for doing so from within the respectable halls of what was then called the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the only university in Salisbury (now Harare).
With his wife, Shelagh, and a key group of colleagues, he campaigned against the colour bar, edited the groundbreaking journal Dissent and formed the Southern Rhodesia Legal Aid and Welfare Fund to defend the many hundreds of nationalists kept in preventive detention. He was among a handful of white people who held office in the African nationalist movement, earning the vilification of white settlers. He formed fast friendships among an extraordinary multiracial group of fellow liberals, radical Christians and nationalists that would endure for a lifetime.
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