Albie Sachs Interview (page: 7 / 9) Constitutional Court of South Africa	Print Interview

Your parents developed a sense a community, with their friends, their neighborhood. What were the passions of those people, of that community?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albie Sachs: Well, my dad lived in Johannesburg. He was a very well-known figure. We'd call him a big shot. We'd walk down the street with him and people would, "Hi, Solly," wave to him, greet him. I still remember once when that happened, he gave a huge greeting back. I said, "Who was that?" He said, "I don't know." He just found it easier, you know, just to be acknowledged. And he was a very strong personality. He was a fighter, and after he died -- when he died -- in Johannesburg, somebody at the cremation -- the funeral said, "I'm sure if God exists, Solly is arguing with him right now." He was a very marvelous, passionate person with a deep romanticism. A brilliant trade union organizer who helped to establish modern labor unions in South Africa, with more than just fighting for wages. Cultural programs, medical aid, educational programs. One of the union members became a great opera singer afterwards, and that was quite important for my sort of background. It was embarrassing reading about him in the newspapers. You felt proud but also a little bit embarrassed. And he had lots of argy-bargy with the authorities. Eventually he was forced out by government diktat from doing any trade union activity. And when I was now away at university, he went into exile, to England.

My mom and I lived in Cape Town.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We grew up by the sea in very modest circumstances. Usually a basement, or what we call a bungalow, a little cottage which she had to move from every six months, 'cause you could only let it for six months. And I remember in my second, third year at school, my report card was full already with addresses that I had been in. I felt very uncomfortable. So we were different. We were different. We didn't celebrate birthdays. We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays, we didn't celebrate Christian holidays. These weren't important things. And we had lots of knitted jerseys from our aunties and hand-me-down clothing. Clothing wasn't important. What was important was ideas.

Were you an avid reader as a student?

Albie Sachs: Yes. Yes.

What books did you have access to, and what did you enjoy reading when you were young?

Albie Sachs: There weren't near as many children's books then as there are now, but I would have read a few. A little bit older are the books that I remember. And yet, extremely important to me, there was one book that was fables.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There's one particular story of a young man from a poor family, and living in a peasant, rural environment and he sets out to see the world. And he passes through a forest, and it's a thick, dense forest and he requires enormous perseverance to get through. And then it's the desert. And it's crossing the desert and the sun is beating down, and his mouth is tight with thirst, and then a high mountain and then the ice and snow. And eventually he gets to the other side, a kind of a kingdom, and of course, as these stories end, he's triumphant and he's made the king and he gets the bride. And it ended happily. Now I'd forgotten that story completely until I was in solitary confinement in prison.

And all the other books that I'd read glorified the brave, young person. We got things called comics from England, weeklies with the serial, and the boy -- usually from a poor background -- at the school who dealt with the school bully and got on. And there was an English boxer called "Rockfist Rogan," and Rockfist Rogan would knock out the German heavyweight champion in the ring, pretending to be a German himself -- this was during the war -- and suddenly escape and capture a Messerschmitt in the airport and fly back and his plane is being shot down. And the one wing would fall off, and one propeller would go and then the other propeller, but somehow he would land safely. So these were like our heroes. We loved those stories. But there were also stories like Emil and the Detectives from Germany. And I was recently in Berlin and saw the Hotel Adlon where it had taken place.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It wasn't an accident I read that, because there were many refugees from Germany whom my mother was very friendly with. And we even got her into trouble, because my brother and I went around very primly, aged about four and three, or five and four, telling the other kids, "You mustn't say all the Germans are bad. You mustn't say the Germans are bad. It's the Nazis who are bad." Again, you know, quite tough for a little four-year-old and yet, that was also combating stereotypes.

There was a writer called Geoffrey Trease who wrote stories about young boys who were involved in very historical episodes -- Bows Against the Barons -- fighting with Robin Hood. So you could identify with the poor, with the rebels, with the people fighting for a better life, and getting their sense of achievement and worth not through making money or scoring in football games, but through being associated with people fighting injustice. So all of these. But reading and reading. Jules Verne, and going to the moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, that sort of fantasy, the precursors of modern science fiction. By the way, I don't enjoy contemporary science fiction, but as a kid I liked reading those books.

Who did you admire as a young man? Did you have a role model or a mentor that you looked up to?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albie Sachs: I don't like the idea of role models. There's only one role model I think that matters, and that's yourself. And the question is not to try and be like someone else. I think of two great personalities who were locked up in the prison where we've now built the Constitutional Court: Gandhi and Mandela. But you can't be like Gandhi. You can't live with a dhoti today and have that strict diet and you give up sex and eating food with salt. He didn't consult his wife, by the way, when he gave up sex. It was his response to a moment, a period in history, Gandhi. You know, if you're not six foot tall and an African man, you're not gonna be even physically like Mandela, let alone you're not gonna spend 27 years in jail. You can't emulate that, and then you say, "Well, I can never be like that. That is so heroic in terms of the imagination. That leaves me out," instead of saying, "What can I find in myself? How can I interrogate myself? How can I be my own role model? Drawing from the experiences of others, what other people have done, what they've achieved, the dilemmas they've had, how they have overcome. All that will help me, but I must be my own role model and not try and copy someone else."

You were in an all-boys school with a cadet program. Marching and rifle practice, and so on. What was that like for you?

Albie Sachs: Well, I once scored a 50 at the rifle range and I felt very, very proud. We marched up and down, we carried guns, we learned to salute. I got into the signals which meant that I learned Morse code, which was a little bit more intellectual and a little less based on drilling. It was the thing you did. You put on your khaki shorts and that's what you did. We had a band, and you marched through the streets, and that was much more fun than sitting in school making notes and adding up figures. It was part of school life, so I didn't, at the time, worry about it. Thinking back a little bit, it's part of separating boys from the rest of the humanity who were girls. It doesn't encourage sensitivity and feeling and respect. We used to love marching past our sister girls' school. You imagined they were all coming to the windows, leaning out of 'em. I never heard from any girl who was there who said, "We actually did want to see these boys," but it puffed us up a little bit, and that's okay.

What was bad was we didn't meet with girls as friends, as equals, as people sharing tasks, and dating became very difficult. It was very problematic for me. I was very, very awkward. We would have an annual school dance at the end of our last year. The girls' school had a dance, and I was invited to be a kind of a blind date for someone. And I had a certain courage. I actually asked the headmistress to dance. I couldn't put one foot in front of the other, but I wasn't afraid. I quite enjoyed going and I enjoyed spending the evening with my partner. But I felt very raw inside. I put on something of a front. And then I wasn't safe from all that until I joined a youth group at university. That was terrific. They had boys and girls, we were equal. The girls were -- the word "feminist" wasn't being used at the time, but they were very independent. It wasn't couples: boy, girl, boy, girl, girl, boy.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It was a group of very anti-racist young women and very anti-racist young men called "The Modern Youth Society." And what was great was we'd climb Table Mountain, we would have all-night parties, we would argue about God and belief. We would ask the sort of question, "If God exists, and God is all powerful, can God build a stone that's so heavy that even God can't pick it up?" It sounded like an absurd question, but it was testing the limits of our knowledge. Would there be one language for the whole world one day? Actually thought, "Wouldn't that be good?" Because then all humanity could connect up, and many of the problems of the world were created by inability to communicate. Now of course, I think it's a horrid idea of homogenizing. And what would that language be? But there were serious questions and we were anti-racist.

One of the things that encouraged me to join that group was trying to date.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The center of romantic life was Saturday night. We'd call it -- movies -- but we'd call it bioscope, and you would have to phone up the person you wanted to go with you and hope that she would say okay. You'd pick up the phone, and you'd dial, and then you'd find an excuse to put it down again. And if you phoned on Monday, she might be waiting for someone better. If you waited 'til Friday, she might really want to go with you, but she couldn't take the chance, so she'd already said okay to someone else. So Wednesday night was the key night, but everybody was phoning on Wednesday night. I thought, "Is this what life's about?" You know. "Is this why I've been to school? I've learned everything. My mom worked for Moses Kotane. You know, is this what my heart must beat so passionately and strongly about?" And it was the Modern Youth Society that said, "No. You know, there's a world out there. There's a world of endeavor, of challenge, of association, of fun, of laughter, of tears, of difficulties so much more real." And I wasn't getting it through Frank Sinatra, and I wasn't getting it through using the telephone. I didn't have much money. I didn't have a motor car or access to a car. I wasn't even close. We would meet outside the cinema and stand in a line to get the tickets, and then she might be expecting a box of chocolates and I didn't have money for the chocolates. And the chocolates, it was before air conditioning, would be hot and sticky and make a noise. In any event, the Modern Youth Society for me was -- I must have been about 17 at the time, and that brought me into politics.

Up until that point, weren't you interested in medicine?

Albie Sachs: At school, you know, people ask the standard things, and I'm afraid I do it when I see someone in their last year of school, "And what are you going to do when you finish?" And I'd say, "I'm going to be a doctor." I don't know why I changed. I know my dad had something to do with it. And I say that phrase carefully, because last year I was at the Ford Foundation as a Scholar in Residence on sabbatical leave in New York, writing my book Strange Alchemy of Life and Law. I tried to use a dictation computer system, the Dragon System, and I spoke into it and I was asked that very question, "Why did you change from medicine to law?" And I said, "I'm not sure why but I'm sure my dad had a lot to do with it," and it came out, "My deadhead a lot to do with it." So then I said, "My dad had a lot to do with it" and it came out South African style, "My dead head..." And I did it like five times. Apparently this thing has different English programs: American English, standard English English, South Asian English, Australian English, and finally I discovered South African English and it came out "My dad head..." That was the best that I got. I don't know precisely when it was, but I went to university to study law and thinking back I think it was a good decision.

What kind of student were you at university?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albie Sachs: In my first year I was what was called a "good student." I was on a scholarship. I got distinctions for Latin and Classical Culture and English. And it was unheard of for a law student to get the prize, the medal for English, but I got it then. And I did quite well in the early legal subjects. In my second year I got reasonable passes, and the lecturers, especially in English, wanted to know "What happened to you?" And what happened to me was politics, the world, the world outside. I did enough to get through at university. I got through my five years to get a law degree without ever failing, without ever repeating, but I didn't get distinctions from then onwards.

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