Hundreds of fellow activists and colleagues have paid tribute to Desmond D'Sa at a series of memorial services in Durban, honouring the environmental campaigner who spent decades fighting industrial pollution in South Durban. D'Sa, 70, was laid to rest in Durban on Friday after dying in a car crash on the R612 in Umzinto on 29 October, along with his stepson Rodney D'Sa and his sister-in-law.

D'Sa co-founded and coordinated the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), through which he represented communities living beside refineries, petrochemical plants and a paper mill, demanding clean air and accountability from polluting industries. His best-known campaign united residents against the hazardous waste landfill at Bulbul Drive in Chatsworth, which closed in November 2011.

That campaign earned him the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2014, and in 2015 the Durban University of Technology awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contribution to environmental justice. South Africa's Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Narend Singh, paid tribute after his death, describing him as a dedicated advocate who stood against industrial pollution and held industries accountable.

Colleagues remember a campaigner who worked from his neighbourhood to the boardrooms of major companies and the halls of the United Nations, and who kept pressing for clean air, dignity and the right of ordinary people to live free from harmful pollution.