By Gaye Davis
Politics was always in his blood, and right now it's pumping.
As charismatic as he is controversial, the man who whipped people into a multiracial ferment of defiance during the Eighties is back - with a vengeance.
Facing a sea of multi-coloured T-shirts - and faces - at the Congress of the People's Bloemfontein launch on Tuesday, Allan Boesak soaked up the "rainbow spirit" and then let it flow out of him, galvanising delegates in a euphoric blast of the rhetoric of hope, and the possibility of change.
There were many delegates who knew him from his days as the firebrand patron of the United Democratic Front. There were many more who had yet to be born when he led the marches and fronted the rallies that catapulted him to fame.
Mouths agape, they stood in wide-eyed awe. And then there were those who remembered his fall from grace, his trial and conviction for fraud and theft over donor funds meant for apartheid's victims, and the long years on the political scrapheap.
It's the future and not the pain of the past he wants to talk about on this gentle summer's day in the southern Cape, where he's snatching a few days' down-time with his family, but there's a story to tell.
"What was so hard, politically speaking, was to be forced to stand on the sidelines, and not take part in building this democracy from the foundations up.
"I thought it was such an exciting thing for South Africans to be doing and I had tried so very hard during the struggle days to hold up to people what it would mean to have such a democracy ...
"It would have been an enormous privilege, to have been part of the struggle, and then also this new stage of our history. To have been denied that - it was painful beyond words."
Behind bars for more than a year (his six-year sentence was reduced to three on appeal), he wrestled with God and self-doubt, asking himself what it had all been for.
"To be thrown in prison - the pain of utter rejection, the loneliness - and you sit there with the feeling of total uselessness ...
"But one good thing about being in prison - I was taken away from all those thousands of voices who shouted my name and who spoke too loud, that I barely heard the voice of God at times.
"I can talk of these things (because) I learned something about my life and life in general - and because it has not extinguished the fire I have burning in me for justice, it has not turned bitter the passion I have for South Africa and its people, it has not fuelled in me the desire to isolate myself."
He's made "what many would say is a stupid decision", rejecting overtures from the ANC (and the offer of becoming minister in the presidency) "to join an organisation that can offer me nothing, that can not even make promises, except in what they are offering in terms of political change.
"So here I am where I was, all those years ago . . ."
Here he is, ready to hit the campaign trail, to set about persuading the disbelievers there's hope in COPE, encouraging the disillusioned to cast aside their apathy, to drive away the demons of despair and help herd the faithful to the ballot boxes next year.
"I hope the campaign will be more tough than dirty. I'm hoping against hope, but from our side, there's a deliberate decision not to be drawn to levels where decency can no longer be seen. I want to talk to South Africans and say that political space of tolerance and responsibility in which one handles the election campaign is absolutely essential in continuing to shape and form our democratic reality."
Talking to civil society groups around the country in recent months, when he was working on the idea of a neo-UDF coalition that "could hold politicians and government to account", people told him he should rather launch a party, that he couldn't come and tell them all these things and then remain on the sidelines, a spectator. "And I thought that was a fair question."
And then there were the feelers that had come from Luthuli House's top office: was he still angry with the ANC? And if he was, was he still so angry that he would not consider talking?
"And I said yes, I am still angry - but we can talk. I was curious about how they would explain what had happened at Polokwane - this was the organisation which, for better or worse, I have had a relationship with for most of my life ... the least I could do was to listen.
"I had no reason to approach the ANC. I was very happy, preaching in church, working at the university (of the Western Cape, on a project on globalisation). Knocking on the door of the ANC was the last thing on my mind."
What was very much on his mind was getting the ANC to publicly exonerate him, to say the missing donor funds did not go on funding his lavish lifestyle, as his trial judge had said, but were used to keep the struggle going in a state clampdown - and that he failed to take the witness stand partly because he was protecting people who post-1994 were now in high places.
Perhaps naively, Boesak agreed to spell all this out in writing and send it up to Luthuli House. This week, the memo he faithfully penned, exploring the possible positions discussed with him was leaked, timed to shore up ANC claims that he's a has-been and an opportunist who jumped to Cope only because the ANC wouldn't give him what he wanted.
Expect more mud to fly soon.