Solomon Makgale
He's a white doctor of Greek parentage - and he's the national health secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress, a party once notorious for its "one settler, one bullet" slogan.
Nothing about Costa Gazi's life has been conventional; he began his struggle against authority at the age of nine, when he was helping out behind the counter of his parents' shop in Krugersdorp.
The small cafe was not licensed to sell medicines. One day a sneaky inspector tricked little Costa into selling him a box of aspirin. The lad had to appear before a magistrate for his heinous crime.
On that day, a rebel was born.
Gazi, now 64, is loved by journalists because everything he says is on the record - politicians often like to spread innuendo through the safety of "off the record" statements.
"If it is true, why hide it?" is the philosophy of Gazi, one of the few public servants in the Eastern Cape who believes in talking frankly about the tottering provincial health department for which he works.
There are many reasons for his openness, but the one that stands out in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation is that he has lived a life of struggle in which he has rarely compromised himself.
In addition to his post with the PAC, Gazi heads the public health department, a network of 20 community clinics run from Cecilia Makiwane hospital in Mdantsane.
This week he told of the "injustices" he had suffered under the NP and ANC governments. He has been threatened with disciplinary hearings by the ANC government, and was fired twice and denied a job by the apartheid regime because of his stance against injustice.
Gazi matriculated at Krugersdorp high school with three distinctions and went to Wits when he was just 16 to study civil engineering. "I thought building bridges was great. I wanted to do good for society."
At Wits he learnt about protest politics. He changed his course to study medicine a year later, again to serve society. He says his "road to Damascus" conversion came in 1954 when a friend lent him a copy of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, a banned document in those days. "It was mind-blowing. No poverty. No more exploitation. The good for all was the basis of the good for each. It left an indelible mark on my brain."
After qualifying as a doctor in 1962, he was sacked twice - from Queen Victoria maternity hospital in Johannesburg only 10 days after starting his internship - and from King Edward VII hospital in Durban 20 days later. In both cases he was fired because of reports from the police special branch unit.
In Durban he was recruited by the underground Communist party. He returned to Johannesburg and got a job as a medical officer at West Rand Consolidated Mines.
Later that year he was expecting to start as a surgical intern at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, only to be told they had "made a mistake".
Gazi made national headlines this year when he called for former health minister Nkosazana Zuma to be charged with manslaughter for refusing to provide the drug AZT to HIV-positive pregnant women.
Mvuyo Tom, the Eastern Cape director-general of health, responded by ordering that Gazi face disciplinary charges.
That was not the first time Gazi had faced the threat of discipline under the ANC government. Three years ago he landed in trouble when he refused to administer a government-introduced vaccine for hepatitis B. Further research found he was right: the vaccine was useless in 95 percent of children. "I decided to stop using the vaccine until we had clarified why it was so ineffective."
He heaped scorn on the government's approach of "if something goes wrong you must just correct it without admitting anything to the public".
Gazi is adamant that he is unafraid of threats of disciplinary action, saying they are reminiscent of the apartheid era.
How did this white medical man land up in the PAC, which only recently publicly abandoned its anti-white slogans? Especially since he was stabbed in the upper arm and chest in 1995 by a young PAC zealot at the unveiling of the tombstone for five children murdered by the former defence force in Umtata in 1993.
Ironically, the casualty nurse who treated him was his assailant's mother. "It was a purely racist attack. He did this because I was white. I did not want him charged though, because I thought it would give the PAC bad publicity."
But the youth was later identified by his branch secretary, reported to the police and jailed for five years.
Gazi said the Sharpeville massacre was also a turning point in his life. "This was a watershed in my life and in our history. I joined the Congress of Democrats, part of the Congress Alliance, and subscribed to the Freedom Charter and was an avid reader of the New Age newspaper.
"Eventually, I was arrested in 1964 and spent the two years in jail. My eldest son was born and my father died while I was in jail."
In 1966 he rejoined his family but was promptly banned. "I became very isolated and was not allowed to further my studies. In October 1968 I left ... to study in Edinburgh."
The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks and the crushing of the freedom movement in Prague led him to denounce Soviet communism, the South African Communist Party's support for the Kremlin - and finally the Congress movement back home in South Africa.
"The PAC made an impression on me because it had able representatives and a revolutionary orientation. In 1983 the PAC chose me as their 'Prisoner of the Year' and I travelled to the United States for a week, addressing the United Nations committee against apartheid.
"People were astonished that the PAC had a white member. I explained the PAC's position that there is only one race, the human race, unlike the ANC's multiracialism."
In Britain, he helped establish the Azania Solidarity Movement, which offered support to all the liberation movements.
After 22 years in exile, Gazi returned home in 1990. He stood as a candidate for the PAC in the 1994 election but failed to get elected.
His bugbear remains racism among white people. "Whites who were beneficiaries of apartheid still harbour strong racist attitudes."
Last year he changed his name from Gazidis to Gazi because it was "difficult for people to remember".
He loves the name Gazi because it means "blood" in Xhosa. "A good name for a doctor and also a clan name in Xhosa". - ECN Weekend