Albie Sachs Interview (page: 3 / 9) Constitutional Court of South Africa	Print Interview

So how did you feel when you finally left South Africa for England?

Albie Sachs: In those days you traveled by boat. This is 1966. You didn't travel by plane unless you were super rich or a prime minister or something. People were throwing streamers and everybody was happy. Lots of South Africans longed to go to Europe. And the boat would go, "Wooooo, woooo!" and my heart is going, "Woooo, woooo!" and I'm laughing and appearing very jolly and happy. At least I'm going to be free of the arrest without trial, sleep deprivation, living in a country that's so racist and ugly, and where it's hard even to fight back. But inside me there was a terrible, terrible heaviness.

We get to London, and all I wanted to do was lie on Hampstead Heath and watch the kites flying. It's soft grass and kites flying, and you're not going to be arrested. Part of it was quite marvelous, but part of it was also very humbling and very, very sad. I'd asked them for a permit to leave. I was stateless. They gave permission to leave on the basis you never came back. You committed a criminal offense if you tried to come back. And it took me years and years and years to recover my courage.

I read. I could catch up on my reading. Oh wonderful, wonderful! The History of Science by J.D. Bernard. Always wanted to read that. The Origins of Chinese Civilization by Joseph Needham, I'd always wanted to read that. Nothing to do, no pressure, no money to earn. Just to read, read, read. And then I managed to get a scholarship to go to Sussex University, do a Ph.D.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I wanted to write about this strange thing, the South African legal system. It was so extraordinary. On the one hand it allowed me to be thrown into prison, tortured by sleep deprivation. It made the majority of people carry these documents. Millions -- literally millions -- of Africans were prosecuted all the time for not having their documents in order. We had the highest rate of judicial capital punishment in the whole world. Kids were beaten, thousands of them, as a form of punishment for juveniles. At the same time you could sometimes use words like "freedom" and "justice." You could get something through the court. You could expose your torture. You could be heard with some degree of dignity, there was some little open space called the courts. How could these things be reconciled? And my whole thesis was based on that, and the book Justice in South Africa emerged from that. And it was a very fascinating story for me to learn the origins of the implantation of a modern legal system. To learn about African justice in traditional African society, where capital punishment wasn't used. Where the families would be brought together, where there was strong systems of rationality, where everybody in the community could engage in questioning the witnesses to get at the truth. I felt a little bit reconciled to what had happened to me. I had a Ph.D., I got a job teaching international law at Southampton University. They took me on because I was a foreigner and they thought that meant I was qualified to teach international law. And teaching everything -- criminal law, criminal procedure, criminology, family law, contract law, law of tort -- because I wanted to get material I could take back to a free South Africa one day.

But I was always down. Stephanie and I married, we had two children, absolute joys to us. I had books published.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had a book, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, my first book, which was converted into a play and put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast by the BBC. I even went to the play one day. There was an American tourist sitting next to me, and I was dying to nudge him and say, "You know what?" And some stupid sense of dignity made me feel, you know, that's a bit cheap, and I'm sorry now, it would have been a nice story for him. And it was marvelous the way they spoke. I mean the actors, British actors, were tremendous. And when I was sitting in jail I used to imagine a play by me being put on at a theater in England. Somehow applause from an English audience in theater, that was the highest applause in the world you can get for anything. And here I'm actually sitting in the theater and people are applauding, not me but the play.

David Edgar did a most marvelous adaptation, and I did quite a lot of broadcasting and I wrote. My Ph.D. was converted into a book called Justice in South Africa, and it won some prizes and was well received. And then years later, I wrote a book called Sexism and the Law. It was the first book on the way the legal system, as a system, had kept women out, denied them the right to practice as lawyers. The way the judges had used the word "person" to say, "a person means a male person," so that they'd even distorted the English language to keep women from voting, from practicing as barristers, from doing a whole range of things that men could just do. That was my contribution to British intellectual life. And it was published in America, California University Press, but they wanted an American counterpart and I met, through that, Joan Hoff Wilson, and she did the second part of the book. We hadn't even met and I said, "Dear Joan, you don't know me. Your name was given to me by somebody you don't know either, but this is my manuscript. Can you do the American part?" She wasn't a lawyer, she was a legal historian and she did the most marvelous section. So this was the first book in the world I think on sexism and the law. And I'm happy to say that many other books have followed and I'm sure improved on it.

But I still wasn't happy. I would sometimes say, "Even when I'm happy in England, I'm unhappy." I loved London. I'd take people around London. I went to shows, I heard music. I had really good friends there. I loved teaching at Southampton University. I discovered modern dance, contemporary dance, so many things, but there was a deep sadness inside me. And I remember when we used to have ANC meetings, they'd always be in drafty little halls with broken windows. I'd often be wearing a heavy overcoat and there would be nice soft seats. They would be old-fashioned halls that you didn't have to pay very much for. And you'd get up, and the seats would all clatter, clatter, clatter. And we'd sing "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" and people would raise their right arms with a clenched fist salute. And I couldn't raise my right arm. It wasn't a decision on my part. I just didn't have the courage, I didn't feel that strength. And I'd be the only one in a room with maybe 20 people, maybe 50, maybe 10, without giving the salute of the organization. And then I went to Mozambique in 1976. I'd been teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam during one of those long English summers. You finish marking your exams, and I was able to teach a whole term in Dar es Salaam without missing a day of work at the Southampton University, and have a week left over, during which I went to newly independent Mozambique.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We'd heard about Mozambique -- Samora Machel, FRELIMO, the Front for Liberation in Mozambique. They declared independence, June the 25th, 1975. It gave a huge fillip to the struggle in South Africa. People now started using the word viva. "Viva! Viva!" Viva this, that and the other. In South Africa, they took over the Portuguese word, "A luta..." they would say, "...continua," (the struggle continues) from the Mozambiquan struggle -- became used in South Africa, and I wanted to see this country. The minute my foot touched the tarmac of the airport, I knew, this is where I'm going to be happy. It was the light, the vegetation, the people. That separation from a context that you'd grown up in, involuntary, that gets to you. I was back again. I was back in Africa. I was close to my country. The energy. The problems were my problems.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

I had very hard days in Mozambique afterwards. I came to work there afterwards at the law faculty in the university. Things were very hard for most of the time. We used to queue up for rations of rice and bread and occasionally eggs, and some butter, cooking oil. You could get some fish from the market, you get some fruit from the market. But we stood in line like everybody else. We were very proud to be working as equals. I had to learn the Portuguese language. The legal system was very, very different from anything I'd ever known. And there was an enormous confidence. Wow! They were so proud, and rather disdainful of the ANC. "Why don't you fight like we did? It's taking you so long!" And I felt at times lonely and marginalized, which I have done many times in my life. But I sort of hung in there. But even when I was unhappy, I was happy in Mozambique. I loved these beautiful trees with purple petals -- jacarandas -- and the petals would just fall down onto the ground. By then, unhappily, my marriage was in ruins.

I got a beautiful, filigree sort of a bracelet and I picked up these, these petals and flowers and, and I sent them to Stephanie. We were both desperately unhappy. I wrote her a long lovely love letter of what we'd meant to each other, what we'd been through in South Africa -- what I wanted to say, instead of arguing about money and the children and this, that and the other -- and I posted it. I waited very anxiously for the reply. A week passed, and two weeks. Then I just got a postcard and it said nothing about it, and I snapped. For me it was over. It was over, it was gone. I put everything into that letter and then... Not even a few days later then that, I get a letter from her saying, "Dearest Albie, your letter's just arrived. We had a postal strike in England. I didn't get it. I'm so sorry about the card that I sent you. I don't think we can get together again. I don't think so, but I appreciate what you said." But I'd snapped, I couldn't put it together again. I'll leave it at that.

It's hard when your marriage finally breaks up, even if you've been unhappy for a long time. and I felt it very strongly and I couldn't understand why. I'd met somebody. We shared our beliefs, we shared danger and hopes and aspirations. We loved each other and we agreed on philosophy. We have two marvelous children. We agreed on what's good for the children. We didn't fight over money, outlook, the world, politics. Our tastes were very similar in music, art and books. And yet we just couldn't get on.

Maybe every relationship has three big elements. There's the element of destiny, there's the element of passion -- which was physical -- and there's the element of daily living. For us, destiny was just overwhelming. It was historical circumstance. In and out of prison, sharing dangers and aspirations. It was totally overwhelming. The passion was okay, and we kind of managed, and living was a disaster. The simple little things of how to eat, and getting in and out of bed, and just daily habits. Obviously that touched on something deeper in personality, and it was very, very sharp. I remember we were angry with each other for about six months, really angry. And then suddenly it kind of came right, and happily, Stephanie and I are close friends. We've been through a lot together. When I remarried, Vanessa and I both felt she should come to the wedding. It was a very small wedding and Stephanie was there.

How do you think you were affected by living in Mozambique?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albie Sachs: Mozambique did something very special for me. I remember going to a big meeting at the football stadium. It was one of their national days, and I was right up at the top there. And a little thing of people said, "Here comes Samora Machel! There's Samora!" And I couldn't work out who amongst the different people was Samora Machel until he started addressing. And he would sing, and the people would join in the singing. And then he would give a viva. "Viva povo unido do Rovuma ao Maputo!" Long live the people united from the Rovuma in the north to Maputo in the south. And 60,000 arms went up, and my arm went up. My arm went up for the first time in years, spontaneously. Mozambique gave me back my courage.

The spirit, the feeling of this great endeavor -- to transform a world, and people would emancipate themselves. I got it there. I went up with what we call "the Mozambique Revolution." I came down with it, because it couldn't be sustained. You couldn't do it just on endeavor, just on slogans, just on good ideals. You needed systems in place, you needed to develop your economy. Your economy couldn't be separate from the world economy. The Cold War was on. South Africa and then-Rhodesia were undermining and sabotaging in all sorts of ways, and it ended up with what appeared to be such a powerful idea of bringing everybody together, uniting everybody behind one party, FRELIMO, overcoming race, overcoming tribe, overcoming regional divisions. It left something out: space for opposition, for diversity. It just wasn't there.

Mozambique was extremely important for me. I was back in Africa, with the problems of Africa, the energy, the song, the music, the grace, and I got my courage back. It was such a powerful idea. Unite everybody in a poor, underdeveloped, fragmented, formerly colonized nation. You bring them together around one central organization -- the Front for Liberation of Mozambique, FRELIMO -- that's anti-racist, that's anti-tribalist, that is part of the emancipation of all oppressed people throughout the world. The unity becomes such a source of strength, and it was very, very powerful.

We would queue up. We were short of food. We would get our rations of rice and cooking oil, occasionally fish, sometimes meat, sometimes eggs, occasionally butter. But we felt very proud -- intellectuals, people from outside -- in the country, all sharing for the sake of developing this one underdeveloped country that is coming together with its own personality. Great art, beautiful dancing, a sense of pride in being who they were and not a colonized people any more. But one thing was missing -- space for opposition.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Many people ask, "Why is it that the ANC became, effectively, the key instrument in promoting possibly the most advanced progressive constitution for an open democratic society in the world?' The theme of pluralism runs all the way through the constitutional order, pluralism based on total respect for human dignity, and a basic equality for everybody. But why the importance of freedom of expression, of having opposition parties? Many people ascribe that to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Communist states and so on. Those things were important, in terms of the historical setting in which South Africa achieved its democracy. But the most important thing was our experience living in neighboring African countries, seeing at first hand the advantages and disadvantage of different political systems, and there wasn't space for opposition in Mozambique. Opposition went underground. It got picked up in the Cold War by -- I'm sorry to say -- the CIA, and the South African security, and Ian Smith in racist Rhodesia in the earlier time, and we were beleaguered. You would hear guns going off at night. You couldn't leave Maputo except by airplane for years. Before that we could travel by car anywhere and everywhere. I visited nine out of the ten -- or ten out of the eleven -- provinces. But now we were surrounded. Refugees were coming in, and you just had a sense, if there's no scope for opposition, the opposition becomes violent, and the country gets torn apart. We had to avoid that when we got to South Africa.

Albie Sachs Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9