Rob+Amato,+respected+writer+on+legal+issues,+The+Star

The Star, Johannesburg, July 24, 2006 //Edition 2//
=Respected writer on legal issues=


 * Jeremy Gordin**

Robert Louis "Rob" Amato (63), the well-known legal columnist of The Sunday Independent, was killed on Saturday night in a vehicle collision in Kensington, Johannesburg.

Amato was on his way home from a Cosatu conference in Springs, which he had been covering in the course of his duties for his weekly column, Separation of Powers.

Amato, who wrote the column since 2000, won the WWB legal print journalist of the year award in 2005 for it. He was well known for his book, Understanding the New Constitution and for his work in protest theatre in the Eastern Cape and Cape Town in the late 70s and 80s.

Johannesburg-born Amato schooled at Marist Inanda school and then studied politics and English literature at the then University of Natal. He became a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University. It was there, his son Carlos said last night, that Amato first became interested in his life-long passion: the theatre and protest theatre in particular.

Until the 1970s, Amato worked in his family's Johannesburg textile business but then founded the Imitha Players, a protest theatre group in East London, where he worked with many people who would later become well-known actors and writers.

He later was one of the founders of the Space Theatre, which became famous as The People's Space Theatre in Cape Town.

Amato then turned to the world of academia, teaching English literature and theatre studies at the University of Natal, University of Cape Town, and Rhodes University in Grahamstown.

In the 1970s, Amato also founded the influential literary magazine, Speak. In the 1990s he became very involved in Cape Town in what he called "community politics", especially community policing.

Amato is survived by his wife, Hildur and children Ben, Bianca, and Carlos.

"He was much loved by his family and everyone else," Carlos said, "because he was enormously kind and funny and warm. He was a wonderful father and a wonderful husband.

"He was one of those people who struggled his whole life to discover what he wanted to do but found that struggle enriching and fun. He loved writing his column because it gave him time to read and write and think."

"This is really shocking news. Rob will be deeply missed by us all," said Jovial Rantao, the editor of The Sunday Independent.

Police have opened a docket of culpable homicide but no arrests have been made.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3352859**

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