This Heritage Day, Independent Media is celebrating the 20 greatest women and men of KwaZulu-Natal.
The focus is on iconic figures in the province, who through their activism changed the path of the Struggle against colonialism and apartheid.
These are women and men whose legacy is an integral part of KZN's heritage.
Each video interview is with someone who worked closely with the subject of the profile or an historian who has researched the individual.
Alan Paton joined the Liberal Party of South Africa when a 19-year-old student at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. His iconic novel Cry, the Beloved Country was published in 1948 - ironically the very year in which apartheid was formally institutionalized.
He was banned in 1965 for 10 years because of his exposures of forced removals of rural African people from their land.