He worked closely with Nelson Mandela during the settlement talks, served as negotiator for the ANC, and participated in drafting the South African Constitution.

His family was forcibly moved to Lenasia with the implementation of the Group Areas Act in the early 1960s.

Valli played an important role in the campaign against the apartheid-era South African Indian Council.

[13] Valli contributed to the creation of a progressive non-racial network of democrats across the country, through mass-based residents and civic organisations.

He was a founding member of the United Democratic Front (South Africa)(UDF) 1983 and served on its National Committee.

The Internal Leadership Core, under the chairpersonship of Walter Sisulu was responsible for establishing and managing the legal organisational structure of the ANC.

He was arrested in July 1987 in Port Elizabeth and transferred to Johannesburg Prison, where he was incarcerated for another fourteen months.

[22] [23] In the process they successfully created international awareness through the media about the plight of detainees in South Africa.

[31] He famously introduced South Africa's first laws regulating the use of plastic shopping bags.

[33] He represented South Africa at various sessions of the UN Convention on Climate Change and was appointed as the Global facilitator for the final negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol at the seventh Conference of the Parties (COP7) held in Marrakech in 2001.

Valli describes the act as "the single biggest improvement to South African democracy since the adoption of the Constitution in 1996”.