Ben Kies was a leading member of the Cape Town community who was originally a teacher at Trafalgar High School and later a leading advocate. During the 1940s he played a leading role in the Anti-CAD (Coloured Affairs Dept) Movement and the Unity Movement.
On his death a leading article in the Cape Times described Mr Kies as "an outstanding representative of the generation of intellectual and political leaders of the so-called Coloured community who were silenced by banning orders and harrassed by official victimization in the early years of Nationalist rule after 1948. Being dismissed from the Cape department of education on account of his outspoken political views, and losing his livelihood as a teacher, Mr Kies, as a banned man, then set about building up a second career from scratch, qualifying as an advocate in middle life and becoming a first class practitioner. A man of determination and great intellectual brilliance, Mr Kies was the first member of his community to overcome the customary restraints and barriers of racial discrimination to qualify as a barrister. In the courts he was an indefatigable defender of the poor and the weak and opponents of the apartheid system".
Ben Kies was one of the few Cape Town lawyers to take on defence of political cases. The magistrate and prosecutor in the Hermanus trial both paid tribute to him as a fine lawyer and friend of his court.
