Albie Sachs Interview (page: 8 / 9) Constitutional Court of South Africa	Print Interview

You were involved in one of the first major protests against apartheid, the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. How did your participation come about? When did you start?

Albie Sachs: I started when the campaign started. It was April the 6th, 1952. April the 6th, 1652 was the day when the Dutch fleet and Jan van Riebeeck landed in Cape Town, put up a flag, and said, "From now on this is part of the Dutch East India Company territory." And so the day was celebrated as the beginning of what was called "civilization" in southern Africa, as though African people didn't have a culture or civilization, history or past. And the Defiance of Unjust Rules Campaign started on that very day -- to challenge this idea of white hegemony, that the whites are the centerpiece of existence, of history, of meaning in the world -- when black people voluntarily sat on park benches marked "whites only," traveled on buses marked "whites only," crossed on bridges marked "whites only," were out on the streets without carrying their documents, their passes that black people had to present to the police all the time.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I was at the very first meeting in Cape Town, when one of the leaders of the African National Congress, named Johnson Ngwavela, voluntarily defied an order -- we called it "the banning order" -- put upon him, placed on him by the Minister of Justice, prohibiting him from attending any political gatherings. And he came into this little hall, and we all stood up and sang, and we sang freedom songs. It was a very emotional moment, and they called for volunteers to join the Defiance Campaign. And I was dying to volunteer. And my friend Wolfie Kodesh with me, he said, "Shhh, shhh. No, no, Albie, whites can't join." I said, "Why can't whites join? It's a non-racial struggle against racism." He says, "No, no, no, you can't." I remember holding onto the seat, clinging onto it to prevent myself from being hurled up with all the others rushing to sign that they wanted to be volunteers. And he said, "Look, I'll speak to some of the leaders and we'll see." And it was only in December, so that several months afterwards a small group of whites, four whites in Cape Town, were allowed by the organization to join. Looking back now, I can see, of course, it had to be a struggle by the oppressed black people, manifested under their own leadership, organized by themselves. And then whites could come in at a later stage to demonstrate that very point. But at the time it really hurt me as a young, anti-racist idealist.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

So then we went -- four whites -- to the General Post Office, and we came in through the "non-white" entrance and sat down. There were four of us and only three seats, so one had to sit up on the edge. And it became a little bit farcical, because they wouldn't arrest us. The minute any black person defied any law, they were just whipped off to jail. And there was a white person sweeping the floors, and he was saying, "Hey, I'm sorry but you're not allowed to sit there, it's for non-white people only."

Get the Flash Player to see this video. This guy had a long broom and he was sweeping the marble floors of the General Post Office, and we were writing very pompous telegrams to the Prime Minister then, Dr. Malan, saying that we are voluntarily defying unjust laws to show our objection to racism in South Africa, something like that. And he was saying, "Hey, you can't sit there. You've gotta move. That's for non-whites only." And we would say, "Yes, we understand that. We're writing a telegram to the Prime Minister." And then he would call his supervisor, and then the supervisor called somebody from the ninth floor and eventually the General Manager himself came to say we couldn't sit there. And finally the police arrived. By then there was a huge crowd, and again, I remember with some amazement these tall Colonels from the police force came and said, "We have to place you under arrest." And I stood up, and I was the youngest in the group but I was officially the leader, and I said, "Mayibuye iAfrika!" Africa, come back. And the crowd shouted back, "Afrika Mayibuye!" And when I think of it now, you know, where did I get the guts? Age 17 in front of these police. And the next thing, we were locked up.

You join the freedom struggle and you always imagined being in jail. And here we're in jail, and we're a little bit cocky, the three men and one woman. She was on her own.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. And an hour or two later we're in the magistrate's court, and it's packed, and the journalists are there, and it's the first time whites are joining the Defiance Campaign, giving it extra newsworthiness. And then the magistrate looks at the docket and he says, "I see there's a 17-year-old youth," and it's me. So I'm not a brave revolutionary freedom fighter; I'm a juvenile. "Are any of his parents in court?" And my mother stands up, and she was very proud of me and I'm very proud of her. And he says, "I'm sending you home to your mother." That was very humiliating for this young guy.

But it was a kind of a breakthrough where you put yourself on the line. In the end, the Defiance Campaign was crushed by very severe state action.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. What had been so interesting was going around asking other students who would join us. And some of the big, proud speakers, oh, they would make a fantastic speech about justice and so on. "Albie, I'd love to join the Defiance Campaign, but I'm going to a wedding," or "I'm going to be with my parents in Johannesburg." They all found little excuses. And some people whom I regarded as very modest and quiet said, "Yeah. Sure. Fine. Just tell me the date." It was interesting to see a discrepancy between some of the passionate declaimers, on the one hand, and the quiet people who were more dependable, on the other.

After the Defiance Campaign, what was the next major step in your activism?

Albie Sachs: There's one thing can't be left out. It's the Congress of the People and the adoption of the Freedom Charter.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It was 1955, in a big plot of open ground outside Johannesburg called Kliptown, that's now become a monument of South Africa. And there were about 2,500 of us, defying all police attempts to stop us getting there, and over two days we proclaimed our support for what is called the "Freedom Charter." That was a totally different vision of South Africa. It started off, "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white..." and together we will fight until there is justice for all. The police came. They were armed with what were called "stun guns." They came on horses. They surrounded us. Everybody had their names taken. There could have been a massacre then. We stood up, we sang. We sang. We sang. We sang freedom songs. We kept our calm, and on the basis of the Freedom Charter saying "Votes for everybody. Open the doors of education for everybody, the doors of learning and culture for everybody. Homes and security for everybody." The leaders of the campaign were put on trial for treason.

I was raided. I was constantly raided by the police. I was about 23. They sent 156 people, put them on trial. I was part of a reserve team, like you get in a sports team, who were there in case of casualties, as backup. But I was never put on trial for treason. I was placed on what were called "banning orders," which prohibited me for five years from attending any gatherings, from speaking to other people who were banned, from writing anything for publication, a whole range of prohibitions put on me. In one way it was nice. It cut out a whole lot of meetings. We spent our lives in meetings talking, talking, talking non-stop. And any meetings would be underground. We'd be very careful and report the meetings with great security. And the '50s, that was a decade where the majority didn't have the vote.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. They didn't have dignity. The laws were atrocious, but at least they could complain. They could protest. We could organize. And we created the germ, the vision of the new South Africa. The volunteering chief for the Defiance Campaign was a certain Nelson Mandela. He was the first one to go to jail, emerging now as a prominent leader. Chief Albert Luthuli, who was the President of the ANC, was the sponsor of the Freedom Charter. He was the first South African to get the Nobel Prize for Peace afterwards, and he embodied that spirit of non-racialism. He was a very earnest Christian, he was a traditional leader, he was a democrat. He liked people, he enjoyed being with people, he liked everybody. He had that vision of a country where we got away from these racist structures. And it wasn't just an idea that he had; he did it in his daily life. And I remember when he came to Cape Town in the late 1950s. The crowds just thronged around him. I couldn't shake his hand because I was banned. He had just ended his banning order. But I saw the street sellers, the businessmen driving their cars, stopping their cars, people coming out of the shops, off the barber chair, shopping in the big department stores, just to see him. I felt South Africa is ready. It's aching for a non-racial democracy. This was a spontaneous thing. This wasn't a drummed-up support. And it took us another 30 years. So many deaths, so many people tortured, so much exile, so much misery, but we got it in the end.

Had you already met Mandela, personally or professionally?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albie Sachs: When I was a law student and I would go to Johannesburg, I would go up to the office of Mandela and Tambo just to pay my respects -- the first black African firm of attorneys -- and it'd be jam-packed with people. And the assistant there, the sort of manager, Ruth Mompati, would meet me and take me through the crowd, very kind. I mean, I was just a young law student from Cape Town -- and introduced me either to Oliver Tambo or to Nelson Mandela. I'd be offered a cup of tea and then they would say, "Comrade Albie, how is the struggle going in Cape Town?" And you never said the struggle was going badly. You always said, "Oh, the struggle's doing very well," and, "You know, we did this, that and the other at the university." And they'd say, "Well, thank you so much for the report, and you can see we're very, very busy. I wish I had more time to spend with you." It was really a courtesy call on my part, but it shows you should always make these courtesy calls. You never know.

And 40 years later, Mandela appoints you to the highest court in the land. Amazing. In October 2009, you'll be stepping down from the Constitutional Court. What are your plans?

Albie Sachs: Well, at midnight on October the 11th I lose my magic. I'm not a judge any more. It's gone. People won't look at me with that same respect and interest. But not just me. There are four of us, who are amongst the 11 founding members of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, who were appointed by Nelson Mandela and we all leave. It's our 15 years. It was an extended term which will be -- 12 years in 2005, in our case it was 15 years -- will be over, and I don't use the "R word." I don't somehow see myself as vanishing from activity. I want to give little Oliver as much daddy as I can while I've got strength. I want to make a movie. I've got a very strong movie in my head. And I've spoken to some movie people and I've said, "If you say it's no go, I'll drop it." They said -- two different people -- "Do the script." So I'm encouraged enough to do that.

I want to keep alive as much as I can, and share experiences as much as I can about what it means to live in a constitutional democracy, to encourage and inspire -- especially young South Africans -- and people thinking about law and justice and what does it mean. And sure you can make a career, you can make money, you can travel, you can help settle things in a rational and a fair way, all that's good anywhere in the world. But in our country it really is constitutive, it's dignity. It's a way of caring and doing something about the injustices, but in a just manner. Not just grabbing and pushing aside and saying, "Now it's our turn." It's a way of bringing people together. On our court, we come from such different backgrounds, professional and life experiences. We share this ideal constitution that disciplines us, that makes us work together. We invest our empathy and spirit into that.

When I read recently President Obama's view about what he looks for in a judge, I felt, "Has he got it from my book?" The importance of what Justice Brennan called passion, to go together with reason. If you're just a cold machine applying reason, you might get it wrong, because if you forget that at the end of day it's human beings out there who are affected by your decisions -- by the impact the decisions of the court might have on their lives -- it can go wrong. Many, many brilliantly clever judges, technically, have produced consequences that are just awful as far as human dignity is concerned, because they left out of account that dimension.

In South Africa you just have to, because it's so clamorous. It's around you. You can see the unfairness that's still in our society. You can see the way in which race and racism -- despite our marvelous constitutional text and the huge progress we've made -- it still affects everything. I mentioned President Obama. He visited our court when he was a Senator. I'd met him at a house in Chicago, where I was telling people about our wonderful new Constitutional Court building, and the symbolism of putting our courts in the very prison where Mandela -- and before that, Gandhi -- had been locked up, to say the past matters, the past is important. We don't forget the past, we don't say let's turn our back on it, but we don't live trapped in the past, we move forward. We use that terrible negativity of the past to create positivity, to show our capacity as individuals and as a society to transform and change.

That energy becomes a source of enlightenment, and of something positive for our society. And it was quite wonderful, when I said in Chicago, "Please visit us." And I couldn't get his name right, you know, it was a funny kind of a name. So I just said, "Senator, please come and visit us," and a couple of years back -- in fact it was a month before he went to Springfield to announce that he was going to campaign -- he visited our court. It was a marvelous meeting, because it was a meeting of minds, philosophy and outlook, a constitutional lawyer who had worked with the poor in Chicago, understanding what our court was about, but also appreciating the beauty of the building and the idealism of the members of the court.

I was asked to speak at what you Americans call your commencement, we call it graduation, at the American School in Johannesburg, and there was a small group of brass instrument players, who played the South African anthem, and it was lovely to hear. And they played "The Star Spangled Banner," and I think for the first time since I was a kid and I saw all these war movies, I felt tears coming to my eyes. I felt I can appreciate "The Star Spangled Banner" because the American people voted for a president with whom we can identify. As a judge, I don't get involved in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, that's for the American people to work out. But knowing that he visited our court, and that a majority of Americans had supported him as a president, just rightly or wrongly, appropriately or inappropriately, it just made me feel different about the whole country.

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