JUST lately I’ve been riled unto fury on behalf of my late father. First came my delight when out of the blue I received an email from a researcher at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.

Paul Wessels revelled in the discovery of Peter Godfrey’s short stories published in anthologies and magazines all over the US in the 1950s and wanted to be directed to everything he ever wrote both as an author and journalist The object: To deposit them in an archive for South African literary heroes and use them as a research facility for the Republic’s budding English graduates.

Paul also uncovered more than 90 examples of a hard-hitting regular newspaper column called “Peter Godfrey Says…” which were published in the Cape Standard.

I knew nothing of these and when Paul emailed me the cuttings I was gobsmacked. It seems that dad began writing them late in 1946 when I was just two months old and he was in his fighting prime.

His was one of few strident voices in those days, sounding the alarm in sinister times. The United Party, headed by Second World War hero General Jan Smuts, was in power by virtue of a whites-only vote and as an election approached it was pandering to voices of deepening prejudice by introducing racialist legislation.

It was also trying to win votes from the rising National Party opposition, which emerged from siding with Hitler, to preach out-and-out apartheid.

Dad’s portents were in vain. By 1948, the Nats were in power and, as he predicted in those columns, the horrors of apartheid began. But he fought on, particularly as editor of a publication with a black readership.

When the Government Special Branch regularly sent agents to his offices to read and censor stories, dad became the first journalist to insist that all red-pencilled material would go out as white space.

He fought them until he could fight no longer. Targeted under the Suppression of Communism Act, he ultimately fled, eventually seeking asylum in the UK.

Sadly, he died in 1992 – and was never to see the collapse of apartheid and the emergence of his dream: a new multi-racial democracy with free press stewarded by the African National Congress.

But, oh Dad, I feel your sense of betrayal beyond the grave now that the ANC itself, after 17 years in power, has pushed through a new Secrecy Bill.

The new law, which has no public-interest defence clause, means that South African journalists justifiably keeping a watchful eye on elected representatives for signs of corruption could be liable to up to 25 years’ imprisonment.

Unsurprisingly, it has been condemned by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. But the only hope now is that it will be successfully challenged in South Africa’s constitutional court.

And that more Peter Godfreys will sound the alarm both in the Republic and here, in the UK where as evidence of the abuse of press freedoms unfolds comes the prospect of over-reactive restrictions which could tear apart the delicate fabric of democracy.

• FINDING himself between jobs, my good friend John consulted Hull University, where many years ago he had obtained his English degree, to help him make choices about his uncertain future.

The university was offering its post-graduates a gratis opportunity to take a special careers test to determine their future.

To the astonishment and mirth of my highly literary, artistic and philosophic pal who had utter contempt at school for boys who joined the cadet corps, he was informed he would be better off in the Army.

John was convinced that defence officials were conducting a crude recruitment campaign in which the university was complicit. Altern-atively there was someone out there at Hull University who was a square peg.

A week later he was sent another letter saying, in effect – “Sorry. Big mix-up. We sent you someone else’s assessment.”

Mischievously, John wrote back: “Sorry. Too late. Already on my way to Afghanistan...”