Even in the modern Diplomatic Service, Maeve Fort was unusual both because she was a woman and because she did not have an Oxbridge education. Also unusual was her success: she became the highest-ranking female British diplomat and, as High Commissioner in South Africa, enjoyed close contact with Nelson Mandela. She also represented British interests in Beirut and Mozambique.

Maeve Geraldine Fort was born in Liverpool in 1940. She attended Nantwich grammar school, Trinity College Dublin and the Sorbonne. She joined the Foreign Office in 1963 — in spite of being warned that her gender and her academic background would count against her. She went on to enjoy a 37-year diplomatic career, serving in missions from Bangkok to Bonn, and Santiago to the UN in New York.

She developed an expertise in African affairs that would define the larger part of her diplomatic career, first with a posting in Lagos, Nigeria, from 1971 and then at the UK mission to the UN from 1978. While at the UN she was involved in negotiations over the southwest African state of Namibia, which was then enduring an ugly war of independence with South Africa.

After stints with the Royal College of Defence Studies and the Santiago posting, Fort returned to London in 1986 to be head of the West African department. Concurrently she won her first ambassadorial post, although as the UK representative to Chad she lived in London. Chad, which was being subjected to bombing raids launched from Libya, its neighbour, was thought too unstable to have permanent ambassadorial presence.

In 1989 Fort became Ambassador to Mozambique. During her three-year appointment she fostered contacts between the left-wing Government of President Joaquim Chissano and the nationalist Renamo rebels led by Afonso Dhlakama. The conflict killed tens of thousands and threatened one third of the country’s 15 million people with famine.

Later Fort described her tasks. “The real job of a diplomat is to stop war . . . Your job is to keep all the options going when people want to say ‘no’ and keep fighting.” She had no illusions about how difficult this was. “It’s not enough to say there is an obvious solution in a conflict; you’ve got to work at it,” she said.

After Mozambique, from 1992 to 1996, Fort volunteered to take the posting in Lebanon. Beirut was thought safe enough, or important enough, to have an ambassador in residence but with Hezbollah ascendant, tight security was essential. Fort habitually travelled in an armoured Range Rover and was surrounded

by six militarily trained bodyguards. Here the ambassadorial tasks were as much about attempting to develop an understanding of conditions on the ground as trying to ensure that British advice was heeded.

Fort was appointed High Commissioner to South Africa in 1996. She drew on her previous experience of southwest African politics when civil tensions in Angola were reawakened in 1997. Later that year she was also on hand when the Prince of Wales completed a nine-day visit to the region. It was a sensitive time, just weeks after the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Fort won lasting respect from Mandela. She attended the 80th birthday party of the first President of the post-apartheid republic in 1998, alongside Clare Short, the Secretary for International Development. Fort was the senior Briton on hand when Mandela handed the reins of power to Thabo Mbeki in June 1999. Shortly afterwards a fire destroyed her official residence in Cape Town. The blaze, started by accident while repairs were being made to thatched buildings, destroyed most of her personal possessions.

In 2000, just as she retired from the Diplomatic Service, Fort directed stern criticism at African leaders who failed to stand up to Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. She said she found it disturbing that neighbours failed to take a more robust stand against violence in the run-up to that year’s election. She believed that Mugabe had introduced land ownership reforms as an act of revenge when Zimbabweans appeared to reject him in a referendum vote. Britain, she asserted, would have been willing to provide financial help to Zimbabwe, whose fortunes declined rapidly in the past decade. But in a pointed reference to Mugabe she said: “Funds for development can only be spent on development and not to reward cronies and so-called war veterans for outbreaks of lawlessness.”

In 1998 Fort was one of only six females of ambassador rank or higher, out of a total of 145 positions in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Only 30 of 443 officials in the senior roles were women. But speaking at that time she said that her gender worked to her advantage. “The curiosity value of being a woman can be exploited. One can often get access to people more easily because male-to-male relationships often have an element of competition. Men don’t usually find women socially confrontational. In fact, men can get a little confessional with a woman. They find it easier to relax in female company. Which can be very useful indeed.”

According to one female colleague: “She succeeded because she was a woman and in spite of that fact. She was jolly shrewd, but also fun and different in approach. She was clever and likeable with a knack for getting on with awkward people.”

In retirement she was a trustee of the British Red Cross and the Beit Trust, a charity that helps to fund health, education, welfare and environmental projects in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Fort was appointed CMG in 1990, advanced to DCMG in 1998 and appointed DCVO the following year, making her one of the few women with the status of a so-called double dame. She did not marry.

Dame Maeve Fort, DCMG, DCVO, diplomat, was born on November 19, 1940. She died after a short illness, on September 18, 2008, aged 67