Peter Randall was an innovative publisher who promoted revolutionary authors and academics.

Peter Randall, a pioneering South African activist publisher and educator, died on 5 June in Johannesburg. He was the co-founder of Ravan Press, which published books critical of the racist apartheid state.

Randall was born in Durban in 1935. He was a gifted scholar but was at odds with the country's political environment. From 1948 onwards, the white minority government passed a series of highly repressive laws to entrench apartheid's "separate development" policies.

Randall believed in the innate equality of all and his moral objections to racially segregated classrooms led him to leave teaching to raise awareness about the wrongs of apartheid.

From 1969, he worked for the Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid South Africa, whose work is summarised in his book A Taste of Power (1973).

The study project developed into the radical anti-apartheid publisher Ravan Press, founded by Randall and theologians Beyers Naudé and Danie van Zyl in 1972. The name Ravan comes from the names of the three founders, and their logo featured a black bird sitting on a book.

Randall actively sought to make a difference - as an educator, a writer, a publisher and even a candidate in the 1974 elections. He saw books...