Death of human rights lawyer Lucrecia Seafield

Lucrecia Seafield, one of the longest-serving members of the Foundation for Human Rights, has died after a long illness. Programme manager for the promotion of constitutional rights awareness programme, Seafield was not only a human rights defender but also an activist, notes a report on the FHR site. She worked for Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) before joining the foundation in 1996 when it was launched. She was part of the struggle to abolish the death penalty in an effort to save the lives of political activists who had been sentenced to death for opposing apartheid. In a statement, the FHR says: ‘Much of the earlier litigation funded by the foundation owed its origins to her tireless struggle for justice. Lucrecia lived her life with a passion for advancing the possibilities of giving substance to the human rights embedded in our Constitution as a basis for societal transformation. In her capacity as a human rights lawyer, she played a strategic role in the struggle to extend human rights to all, without qualification.’ The FHR has also recorded the death of Advocate Rudolph Jansen, a close friend of Lucrecia and a former director of LHR, who died on 25 November.