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The Mandela Brief: Sydney Kentridge and the Trials of Apartheid

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The Legal Assistance Trust Newsletter" (PDF). LATforSA.org. 2004 . Retrieved 20 December 2012. [ permanent dead link]

However, what will always dominate his legacy are his cases challenging the apartheid laws, policy and conduct by the apartheid government. Kentridge retired at the age of 90, precisely 64 years to the day after he had first been called to the Johannesburg Bar. He initially took several cases representing the trade unions and trade unionists, on occasion chalking up big wins against the National Party government, such as the case where he successfully asserted to the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein that the government could not unilaterally suspend trade unionist Solly Sachs’s passport. Thomas Grant QC knows how ephemeral and incommunicable the art of advocacy is – how, if you were not there, it is impossible to understand the magic of a particular technique or the impact of a particular remark. Even the printed transcript of the proceedings is a dead thing by comparison with the event itself. Despite these challenges, this is Grant’s third book about what might be called notable cases. The first was The Trials of ­Jeremy Hutchison, who appeared in the evergreen Lady Chatterley’s Lover case; in another obscenity trial, the barrister achieved notoriety by simulating a penis with his thumb. Better still was Court Number 1, The Old Bailey, which built a richly variegated and ­perceptive portrait of 20th-century Britain around the framework of 11 trials held in that court. De Vos, who had produced this political cornucopia, was powerless to halt the use now being made of it. By the time Kentridge had got Murray to accept that one was unlikely to find a Marxist-Leninist invoking Christian principles, his credibility as a witness, Grant considers, had been destroyed. I don’t think that is quite right. True, Murray had fallen into a series of elephant traps by identifying passages which turned out to be the work of Milton, Pitt, Voltaire and Lincoln, and in one instance of Murray himself, as communistic. But by treating him as an intellectual equal and exploiting his learning, Kentridge and his fellow counsel had made Murray an asset for the defence. While Kentridge would no doubt point out that it was de Vos who had unwittingly dealt him this hand, it required an advocate of Kentridge’s skill to avoid both underplaying and overplaying it.

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In many ways, lawyers like Kentridge, who robustly represented Nelson Mandela and his banned ANC colleagues, were both hated and welcomed by the apartheid government. They were hated because they were competent and showed up the stupidity and evil of the apartheid laws. On the other hand, so the Nationalists believed, Kentridge’s work showed the world that there was a decent legal system in place and those who obeyed the law would be protected by the courts.

There can be no doubt that Kentridge’s brilliance and hard work made a dramatic difference to many of his clients and indeed to the Five years later he was called to the English Bar, and in 1984 he was appointed Queen's Counsel. He was an elected Bencher of Lincoln's Inn in 1986. In England Kentridge represented the English Bar in Court and acted for the British Government (in the litigation on the Maastricht Treaty) and against it (in litigation citing the Home Secretary for contempt of Court). He also appeared for William Shakespeare (in an action disputing his authorship, Middle Temple Hall 1968) and for the government of His Majesty George III (in trial for treason of George Washington, Lincoln's Inn, 1990). But the vexed question is always raised: Should men and women of solid morality take part as lawyers in an immoral legal system. Should lawyers take part in the legal systems in, for example, Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa?

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Ultimately, Sir Sydney Kentridge KC SC can certainly be said to have done far more good by being part of and challenging the system. His work, in my view, gave legitimacy to Nelson Mandela and those whose dignity was trampled on daily. Without the courage and diligence of Kentridge and other lawyers like him, apartheid may have lasted a lot longer than it did.

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