Denis Goldberg was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment for sabotage in the apartheid-era Rivonia Trial of 1963/64. He was the youngest of the eight men sentenced, aged 31 years at the time. He was also the only white person, and was therefore sent to Pretoria Prison instead of Robben Island.

Denis was released after 22 years, and went into exile in London, where his wife, Esme, and their two young children, Hilary and David, had gone soon after the Rivonia trialists were arrested. He spent the next period of his life working for the African National Congress (ANC) to win international support for the struggle for the freedom of his comrades as well as South Africans more generally.
Denis and his second wife, Edelgard, returned to live in South Africa after the death of his wife and daughter. After a few years spent working as an advisor to the then Ministers of Water Affairs and Forestry – namely Ronnie Kasrils and Buyelwa Sonjica – Denis and his second wife settled in Hout Bay, Cape Town.

While officially retired, Denis continued to work towards meaningful freedom. He focused, in particular, on the local community in Hout Bay and, more particularly, on children. The focus on young people reflected his main regret regarding his long imprisonment, namely having lost out on the childhoods of his own two children. (Another regret, he said, was having been caught by the apartheid police!)

In 2015, Denis and a few others established the Denis Goldberg Legacy Foundation Trust. In 2018 he and his fellow trustees agreed to focus their efforts on establishing the Denis Goldberg House of Hope, an arts and culture education centre that would bring local young people together to be exposed to experiences that most would not otherwise have access to and to grow, learn and enjoy themselves in a safe environment alongside children from other parts of the divided community.