The day I met Nan Cross in the 1980s, I discovered that a tiny, grey-haired woman could be more powerful than any beefy sergeant.

It was a lifetime ago when a group of very different South Africans came together to embark on a single crusade.

Among this disparate bunch were militant Marxists, devout Christians, principled pacifists, determined dagga rookers, committed capitalists and men who just did not want to cut their hair.

They had one thing in common: they objected to conscription into the apartheid government’s army, the South African Defence Force.

Among them was bespectacled and grey-haired Nan, who always carried a handbag in the crook of her arm.

Nan may have looked like an “old lady”, but she had lion-hearted courage and an iron will.

She reminded me of Estelle Getty from the Golden Girls – except while Sophia cut people down to size with her sarcastic wit and sharp tongue, Nan used her voice to inspire, create and build.

Picture the scene: Johannesburg 1989, a dusty field where anxious young men had mustered.

This was the first time I met Nan.

I had volunteered to go on a mission to hand out pamphlets explaining their rights to the anxious recruits who were about to endure two years of military service.

We were positioned at the entrance of the grounds. I was fiddling in my bag, and Nan had just taken the pamphlets out of hers when a massive sergeant marched up to her, ripped the pamphlets out of her hand and threw them on the ground.

He accused this pint-sized elderly woman of treason, treachery, sedition and other dangerous crimes.

If Nan had jumped as high as she could, she would have only managed to headbutt him in his kneecaps. Not that she would have, of course.

Nan abhorred violence of any kind, even against bellowing bullies.

The sergeant did an abrupt about-turn and marched off, but not before warning her that if he saw her handing out a single pamphlet to anyone, he would shoot her.

Watching this aggressive sergeant bellow at her, I expected Nan to shrink back.

Instead, I witnessed something extraordinary: a woman who knew that her size had nothing to do with her strength. She didn’t flinch, apologise, or back down.

Nan bent to pick the pamphlets off the ground. I wasn’t that keen to get shot, so I mumbled something about needing the bathroom and wandered off.

When I eventually returned, Nan was nowhere to be seen.

All the recruits were lined up and given orders before they were to file into the buffels, the brown military vehicles that would whisk them away to begin their basic service.

There was no grey-haired woman in sight, and I worried that Nan might have been arrested or shot. And then I heard a pssst.

I looked up, and peeking out of one of the buffels was Nan. She had spent the morning dodging sergeants and climbing into the buffels to leave pamphlets for the conscripts.

Driving back from the grounds, I asked Nan if she had been scared of the bellowing sergeant.

She shook her head. “He was more afraid of my pamphlets than I was of his threats.”

That was Nan, making waves with quiet bravery — a simple, steadfast refusal to be cowed.

Nan showed me that you don’t need to be loud to be powerful.

In addition to writing and handing out pamphlets, Nan helped conscientious objectors with their statements, visited them in jail, and comforted them and their families.

She was a moral compass, but there was nothing self-righteous about her. She kept out of the spotlight, doing the unglamorous work that needed to be done in the background.

To stick her neck out like that in the repressive climate of the time took courage. I made her a target for the security police, who harassed her several times at her home.

When apartheid ended in 1994 and military conscription was abolished, Nan helped start the anti-war organisation, Ceasefire Campaign, and worked right into her 70s on issues that were important to her.

When I heard that she had clambered onto a tank at an arms exhibition and plastered it with stickers reading, “Arms are for hugging, not killing,” I smiled. One woman’s quiet grit could outshine the loudest threats.

Nan was a phenomenal woman who made me see power not as aggression but as resilience. Her unshakeable spirit taught me that true strength comes from integrity and courage.

Nan died in 2007, at the age of 79. An unsung hero, her impact was profound yet understated.

I often think of her quiet bravery — how a tiny woman got the better of a beefy, bellowing sergeant — and remember just what a phenomenal woman she was.