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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Albie Sachs: It was so tough being called an advocate, a lawyer, an attorney in an apartheid court, even with decent judges. The judges were white, the prosecution was white, the lawyers were white, the accused were frequently black. So it was really, as Mandela once said, "I should get equal justice, but I feel I'm a black man in a white man's court. I shouldn't feel that." Even outside of the obvious racism in many of the laws, there were racist assumptions in the court that were so taxing and enervating. The judge would say to an African woman twice my age, "And, Rosie, what did you see next?" He might say it in a very kindly voice. I couldn't call her Rosie. She was Mrs. Shabalala. But if I called her Mrs. Shabalala after the judge had called her Rosie, it's like I'm giving him a little punch, and that could be bad for my client. The judge and the prosecution would speak about "five Bantus," "five natives." These weren't natives, these were people. Five men, five men and women. But if I challenged the use of language, then it was like I was having a go at them and my client could suffer. So even in the very simple way you expressed yourself, you either compromised with derogatory or undignified terminology, or you became contestational on a peripheral issue that didn't deal with the guts of the matter and your client could suffer as a result. It cost so much psychological energy to find ways of avoiding that, neither the one or the other. You just say, "Uh huh," you know, to the witness, not using either term. The racism in that sense impregnated everything about the court from the beginning to the end.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
But not long afterwards I, myself, was in a cell on my own. I remember walking around in this little concrete space. The door slammed. The echo that's slamming in my ear and so, this is what it's like, this moment you're dreaming of. You're in the freedom struggle, and you're going to be locked up, and will you be brave and what'll it be like? And I'm walking around, and I'm singing and I'm whistling, and I'm trying to keep up my courage. There's a mat on the floor, there's a little toilet in there with a wire thing that you can pull. And five minutes, ten minutes, I don't have a watch, 20 minutes. The time goes so slowly. It's just you, your toes, the wall, your toes, the wall, looking at what to do, no one to speak to, nothing to do, nothing to occupy yourself. It was far worse than I've ever imagined, far, far, far worse. I thought you just had to be brave. You bared your chest. Let the enemy come. Let them do their damnedest. And in a way, you're fighting your own loneliness, your own eagerness to have someone to talk to.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Albie Sachs: I would try to keep myself going by inventing games, and I would sing songs, a song beginning with "A," "Always." "Because," "Charmaine," "Daisy," go through the alphabet. It's quite an interesting collection of the hit tunes of October 1963. And my favorite was "Always." "I'll be living here always. Year after year, always. In this little cell, that I know so well, I'll be living swell, always, always." And I would sort of waltz around, singing to myself and be amused with the fact that this Irving Berlin song-- picked up by Noel Coward, who wrote comedies of upper middle class manners -- was keeping alive the spirit of this freedom fighter in Cape Town. "I'll be staying in always, keeping up my chin always. Not for but an hour, not for but a week, not for 90 days, but always." And then it'd be "Because," and "Charmaine," and so on. I would try to remember the states in the United States of America. I had two arms then, so I could count on ten fingers, but -- and I would begin with all the A's -- and I couldn't mark down. And I think I got up to about 47 once.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
A day or so later -- somebody was smuggling in messages to me, in a thermos flask, in fact -- and there's a message to the effect that somebody else had been locked up, an architect, and had been through similar experiences, and his wife saw him and, and he was like a ghost. And he'd whispered to her what had happened to him, and she'd gone to court with that information and got an order restricting the security police from continuing the interrogation. And I wrote the second most important legal document I've written in my life, and I include working on the Constitution of South Africa. And a tiny piece of paper in the note that was smuggled out, saying what I've just explained to the camera now, in just a few words, that it could be used in evidence in his case. But the fact is, they didn't come back for me, so it did save me from further interrogation. And I'm sure the intention was to pile it on, pile it on, pile it on, break me down completely. So though I ended up not giving away any information of any value, I still feel something inside me was broken, some strand of dignity and self-possession, and I've never got over it, never got over it. There's some humiliations and pains you carry with you. You get on with your life, you manage, you do things, but you can't say, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't count." It counted. It was worse than being blown up, much worse then being blown up. The attack on my mind, my spirit, my dignity, much worse then the attack on my body which came many years later.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
I had met Stephanie Kemp who'd been, as it turned out, in the same prison cells I'd been in, and I was asked by an attorney to defend her. She was being charged with sabotage. And I said, "Please, I can't. I identify so much." "Just go and speak to her, give her some courage. When it comes to the trial we'll get someone else." Well they did get someone else to be the senior lawyer. Meanwhile I've fallen in love with her. We didn't mention anything. We didn't touch. We just spoke about the case and a bit about her past and sense of betrayal. But we were in love across the table, and she was sentenced to some years imprisonment, released. She came out to warn me that they're coming for me again, that was my second detention. I still remember her saying, "And I was in that prison cell, and I got so angry with you because they all told me, 'Why can't you behave like advocate Sachs?' And that pompous stuff you wrote up above the cell door, 'I, Albert Louis Sachs, am detained here without trial under the 90-Day Law for standing for justice for all.' Couldn't you say it in less legal language?" And of course, even when I was writing that, I was careful not to say anything that could be used in evidence against me. I also wrote "Jail is for the birds" on top of the cell.
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Fritz Scholder
Native American Artist
You have to realize that at times art was really pretty foreign. For most people, an artist meant going to Paris and starving in a garret. No one was making a living in this country, except for Georgia O'Keeffe and Thomas Hart Benton. And so, what one did was to get degrees and teach at a university, and if you were good, you might be able to get an artist-in-residency. So, it was pretty bleak to think that you could be an artist. Although I, right from the beginning, identified as that, and won my first prize in fourth grade.
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Fritz Scholder
Native American Artist
My second review was not that good, which shouldn't have surprised me, because if you have a great review to start, the odds are that the second one may not be so good. And I was so embarrassed, I didn't want to leave the house. I thought, oh, man, everyone read this, and they just think I'm, you know, dumb. But you soon realize that it is the self-integrity in the studio that counts. And if you have that, it doesn't matter what any reviewer says, or writes, or anyone else, and you have to, in fact, realize that the last people you want to even listen to are those closest to you. They are well-meaning, but because they're close to you they can hurt you as far as your own idea, or view of what you're doing. It's all up to you.
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