Pretoria - The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory on Monday joined millions of South Africans in expressing their deepest condolences to the family of the late Judge Fikile Bam.
Bam passed away on Sunday after a long battle with cancer.
"We will remember him as a patriot and a leading legal mind in South Africa," Sello Hatang, spokesperson of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, said on Monday.
As a law student in the 1950s, he only saw former President Nelson Mandela from a distance but met him on Robben Island when he served a 10-year sentence from 1964 to 1974 for his efforts against apartheid.
He was held in B Section with Mandela and his comrades and although he was from another political organisation, the Yu Chi Chan Club, he was voted by fellow inmates as the first chairperson of the Prisoners' Committee in B Section.
Justice Bam and Mandela became close friends in prison. They shared a birthday, 18 July, and every year, Madiba would save the sweets he was allowed to buy at Christmas and gave them to "Fiks", as Bam was affectionately known, on his birthday.
Bam, who completed a BA at the University of Cape Town in 1960, studied law on Robben Island and graduated in 1975.
The last position in his illustrious career was as judge president of the Land Claims Court of South Africa.
