Felicia Kentridge, who has died aged 85, was the co-founder of South Africa’s Legal Resources Centre, which, through a series of test cases, overturned some of the most oppressive features of the apartheid system. She appeared as junior to Arthur Chaskalson, a co-founder of the centre, in the Komani case, which contributed to the collapse of the pass laws that for decades had straitjacketed the lives of the African majority.
Daughter of Irene and Max Geffen, Felicia was born in Johannesburg and studied law at Witwatersrand University, where her mother had qualified as South Africa’s first female barrister. In the absence of an adequate state legal aid system, Felicia set up the Wits Law Clinic in 1973 at the university, for impoverished people of all races. The clinic remains a substantial operation to this day.
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