Albie Sachs
Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs (born January 30, 1935) is a South African lawyer, activist, writer, and former judge appointed to the first Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela. Sachs and his younger brother, Johnny, were raised in a modest beach side home in Cape Town by their mother, Rachel "Ray" (née Ginsberg) Sachs Edwards, who was separated from their father, Emil Solomon "Solly" Sachs, General Secretary to the Garment Workers' Union of South Africa in Johannesburg. Both of Sachs's parents had fled to South Africa at a very young age with their families to escape  pogroms against Jews in Lithuania. On April 6, 1952, almost all white South Africans commemorated the tercentenary of the arrival of Dutch naval commander Jan van Riebeek to start what they regarded as the beginnings of "white civilization" at the bottom of the tip of the African continent. A large section of whites moreover celebrated the recent electoral victory of the National Party (South Africa) and the introduction of the word "Apartheid" into the English language. Sachs, then a second-year law student, was one of a handful of whites at a meeting in a working class area in Cape  Town where about two hundred black supporters of the African National Congress, which had chosen that same day to launch the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. The group called for volunteers and Sachs inquired about joining the Defiance Campaign. When Sachs said that he wanted to join the campaign, he was told that it was a black campaign led by black people. As it turned out, however, six months later, Sachs led a group of young whites to sit on seats marked non-whites in the General Post Office, marking his initiation into political activity and anti-Apartheid struggle. Sachs  went on to attend the Congress of the People (1955) at Kliptown on the outskirts of Johannesburg in the black township of Soweto, where more than 2,000 delegates supporting the ANC adopted the Freedom Charter, which envisaged equal rights for all in a future South Africa that "belongs to all that live in it, black and white." A year later, at the age of twenty-one, he started his law practice as an Advocate at the Cape Town Bar. Much of his work involved defending people charged with breaking racist laws as well as draconian laws used to suppress opposition  to Apartheid. Sachs himself became a victim of these laws: he was subjected to predawn raids by the security police, to banning orders that restricted his activities (for example, he was not allowed to meet with more than one person at any given time and was banned from publishing), and was ultimately arrested and detained in solitary confinement under the 90-Day Detention law (formally the General Law Amendment Act, 1962). He was released after ninety days, took in a brief moment of freedom, and was then promptly rearrested and held for another seventy-eight days. When he was finally  released, he ran the eight kilometers from the center of Cape Town to the beach where he had grown up and jumped into the ocean. Sachs's first book, "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs", which he wrote clandestinely in Cape Town, details his detention and was later dramatized by playwright David Edgar for the Royal Shakespeare Company and was televised by the BBC. In 1966 he was arrested again. He has described this detention as the worst moment of his life. He was subjected to a spell of sleep deprivation by a security team whose head had been trained  in torture methods by the French Directorate-General for External Security in Algeria. He recalls collapsing to the floor, having water poured on him, and thick, heavy fingers lifting his eyes open. Soon after he was released from jail in 1966, he filed his exit paperwork. Permission was granted on the condition that he never return to South Africa. He moved first to England, where he earned a doctorate from Sussex University. His thesis, entitled "Justice in South Africa," was published in the United Kingdom and the United States, but was banned in South Africa, making it a criminal offense  to possess a copy. In 1977 he moved to Mozambique and taught as a law professor, later becoming Director of Research in the Ministry of Justice (Mozambique). He frequently traveled to Lusaka to provide legal support for Oliver Tambo, president-in-exile of the ANC. One of Sachs's tasks was to draft a Code of Conduct, which forbade the use of torture by the ANC of captured enemy agents. Sachs also served as the scribe of the ANC's Constitution Committee, set up by Oliver Tambo to lay the foundations of a future constitution for South Africa. On April  7, 1988, Sachs's car in Maputo exploded when he opened his car door. The car bombing killed one passer-by. Sachs survived the assassination attempt, which was planned and planted by South African security agents. He lost his right arm and sight in his left eye. After Mozambican doctors had saved his life, he was flown to London to recover at The London Hospital. While there, he received a letter saying, "Don't worry, Comrade Albie, we will avenge you." This led Sachs to the conviction that what he wanted was not "an eye for an eye," but the  achievement of freedom and democracy under the rule of law - this would be his "soft vengeance." After his recovery, traveled to Dublin to begin the task of preparing a Bill of Rights for South Africa alongside Kader Asmal. In 1990, after Mandela's release, Sachs returned to South Africa, where he played a significant role in the country's transition to a constitutional democracy. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Sachs resigned from his position as a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, withdrew from all political activity, and allowed his name to go  forward for a position on South Africa's newly established Constitutional Court. Later that year, he was chosen by President Nelson Mandela from a list selected by the Judicial Service Commission to become a founding member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In addition to his duties as a judge, Sachs and his colleague Justice Yvonne Mokgoro were instrumental in establishing an extensive art collection for the Court that reflects humanity and social interdependence in a newly democratic South Africa. Sachs's influence was felt in the design and construction of the award-winning Court building in the heart  of what had been the Old Fort Prison where both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela had been locked up. Sachs's fifteen-year term for the Court came to an end in 2009. A number of his judgments dealing with fundamental freedoms and the rights of marginalized and disadvantaged people have become internationally known, both for their content and his distinctive style of writing. He has stayed active and in the public eye through writing and speaking to audiences throughout the world, sharing his experiences of transitional justice in South Africa as a contribution to healing divisions of post-conflict  societies. Early Life and Education. Albie Sachs was born in Johannesburg at the Florence Nightingale Hospital in 1935 to Emil Solomon "Solly" Sachs and Rachel "Ray" (née Ginsberg) Sachs (later Edwards). Both his mother and father fled to South Africa as children with parents who were escaping from pogroms against Jews in Lithuania. Sachs has described himself as "a very secular person" who is very respectful of the beliefs of others. Sachs has said that as long as there's antisemitism in the world, he is proud to describe himself as a Jew. He has added that the Jews he  identifies with the most are Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud, all of whom were profoundly secular. His parents separated while he was still a child, and he moved with his mother and younger brother, Johnny, to Cape Town as a toddler. Both of his parents were politically active. His father, Solly, was a general secretary to the Garment Workers' Union of South Africa. His mother was a member of the South African Communist Party and worked as a typist for its general secretary Moses Kotane. Sachs has said that a white woman working for a black man seemed  perfectly natural to him as a child. He has expressed that Kotane's presence in his family's life, especially the way that Kotane was respected and admired by his mother, made it clear that racism was absurd, inhuman, unjust and plain wrong. Sachs's father also worked to instill the importance of political activism into Albie from a young age. His father sent him a card on his sixth birthday, during World War II, expressing the wish: "May you grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation." Sachs excelled in school from a young age. Owing  to a shortage of schoolteachers in South Africa during World War II, Sachs was moved forward two grades. He attended the South African College Schools for junior and high school, where he edited the school magazine. After matriculating at the age of fifteen, he studied for a law degree at the University of Cape Town, winning the prize for English during his first year of university study. He was admitted to the Bar and began practicing law at the age of twenty-one. He has described that, at the time he became an advocate, laws were being used to oppress  rather than protect people. During his nine and half years of practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar, he defended people being prosecuted under racist and oppressive laws. Time in Exile. Exile (London). Sachs moved as a stateless person to London once his exit paperwork was granted to him. He was joined by Stephanie Kemp, a former client, who had been locked up in a cell in which Sachs had himself had been detained. They married and had two children and continued with anti-apartheid work. They were now able to work openly as members of the London branch  of the ANC when the ranks became open to whites. When he arrived in England, "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs" was published. After spending six months catching up on his reading, he wrote "Stephanie on Trial," which dealt with Kemp's imprisonment and Sachs's second spell in detention. With the aid of a stipend from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, he completed a PhD at Sussex University (1967-1970), being supervised by Colonel GIAD Draper and Professor Norman Cohn. His dissertation was published under the title "Justice in South Africa" by Heinemann in the UK and University of  California Press in the US, but was banned in South Africa, where anyone found with it in possession could go to jail. From 1970 until 1977 Sachs lectured in the law faculty at the University of Southampton. During this time, together with Joan Hoff Wilson, he wrote "Sexism and the Law," the first book published on this theme. Sachs's portion of the book dealt with cases in Britain and former British colonies where from the 1860s to the 1920s the courts had consistently ruled that women could not vote, hold pubic office, practice as lawyers, or enter medical school  because otherwise qualified they were not "persons." In the course of his anti-apartheid work, he traveled to many countries in Europe. However, the United States Department of State regarded people in the ANC, such as Sachs, to be "terrorists" and denied them visas to travel to the United States. In 1974 the US changed its policies and Sachs was able to travel to the United States. He attended a portion of The Trial of the Chicago Seven at the invitation of the lawyers defending the Black Panthers to show support for the group and, more specifically, Bobby Seale. Sometime  later, he met Huey P. Newton, a Black Panther leader, in Oakland, where they compared notes on being in solitary confinement. Exile (Mozambique). Sachs moved to a newly independent Mozambique in 1977 and studied and became fluent in Portuguese. He worked as a law professor at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and later as the Director of Research at the Ministry of Justice (Mozambique). While in Mozambique, Oliver Tambo invited Sachs to the ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. During this visit Tambo asked Sachs to draft of Code of Conduct for the ANC that would highlight the democratic principles of  the ANC and forbid the use of torture. This Code of Conduct was dispensed as widely as possible to ANC members in exile and the underground. The Code of Conduct was presented by Sachs and adopted as binding policy by the ANC at its Kabwe conference in 1985. Assassination Attempt On April 7, 1988, Sachs's car in Maputo exploded when he opened his car door. The car bombing killed one passer-by. Sachs survived the assassination attempt, which was executed by South African security agents. He lost his right arm and sight in his left eye. After Mozambican doctors  had saved his life, he was flown to London to recover at the London Hospital. Exile (London and New York). While recovering at the London Hospital, he received a letter saying, "Don't worry, Comrade Albie, we will avenge you." Sachs's response to the assassination attempt would be to seek not revenge, but "soft vengeance." This "soft vengeance" would take the form getting freedom in a new non-racial and democratic South Africa based on human rights and the rule of law. With funding from the Swedish International Development Agency and the Ford Foundation, Sachs established and acted as  the founding director for the South African Constitutional Studies Centre at the University of London. This was a first step in his "soft vengeance." Sachs's second step was to fly to Dublin on the instructions of the Constitutional Committee of the ANC to begin to prepare a first draft of a Bill of Rights for South Africa alongside Kader Asmal. In early 1989, Sachs went to the United States to work at as a joint professor at the Columbia School of Law, to teach courses together with Professor Jack Greenberg, and at the School of International and Public Affairs  at Columbia University with Professor Louis Hankin. While there, Sachs learned to use a computer and wrote "The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter" with his left hand. The book offers a sensitive reflection on how Sachs felt physically and psychologically while he healed. Sachs details the moments of failure and success as he learned how to re-balance his body; read with impaired vision; and write, cook, clean, and eat with his left (and less dominant) hand. While at Columbia, Sachs attended the Law and Justice seminar in Aspen, Colorado, which was directed and moderated by Supreme Court Justice  Harry Blackmun who, at the last session, explained to the invitees how he had come to write his opinion in Roe v Wade - that Blackmun's beliefs as a Catholic should not determine what become the law for everyone - a line of reasoning that Sachs would go on to use in his own judgments. Return to South Africa. Sachs returned to South Africa in 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC and other political organizations and the release of Nelson Mandela. Soon after his return to South Africa, Sachs was appointed Professor Extraordinary at the University of the Western Cape  (UWC), where he worked at the Community Law Centre under Professor Dullah Omar. At this time, the South African Constitutional Studies Centre was moved from the University of London to the University of the Western Cape.Sachs was also appointed as an Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town, where his inaugural lecture was entitled "Perfectibility and Corruptibility." He continued his work as a member of the Constitutional Committee of the ANC. While attached to the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town, Sachs wrote "Protecting Human Rights in South Africa" (1990) and "Advancing Human  Rights in a Democratic South Africa" (1992). "Protecting Human Rights in South Africa" includes a paper that Sachs wrote for a conference organized by Barbara Masakela, Head of the ANC Department of Culture, entitled "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom." The paper produced a storm inside and outside of the ANC by stating that the ANC should stop declaring that "culture is a weapon of struggle," arguing that culture's political impact is much richer than simply that. In 1991, when the ANC had its first conference on South African soil in more than thirty years, Sachs was one of four members  of the Constitutional Committee to be elected to a National Executive Committee of the organization. Together with the Centre for Development Studies at UWC, Sachs helped to organize broadly based workshops with international participants on an electoral system for South Africa, whether to have a Constitutional Court, rights to land, regional government, affirmative action, and for inclusion of social and economic rights in a Bill of Rights. When negotiations for a new constitutional order started at Kempton Park, near Johannesburg, at Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) in December 1992, Sachs was an influential member of the ANC’s  team. Sachs later served on Working Group Two, which dealt with the nature of the South African State and the process for constitution-making. He continued to serve on the team when CODESA negotiations broke down, and later resumed under the title “Multi-Party Negotiation Process (MPNP).” The latter process led to the drafting of an interim Constitution, which provided for South Africa’s first democratic elections to create a Parliament to draft the country’s final Constitution according to 34 Principles agreed to in advance. The interim Constitution provided for the creation of an independent Constitutional Court both to  ensure that fundamental rights would be upheld during that period and to certify that the final text complied with the principles agreed to in advance. In anticipation of becoming a candidate for a position on the Constitutional Court, on the eve of the first democratic elections on April 27, 1994, Sachs resigned from the National Executive of the ANC. A day after the elections he resigned from his ANC branch and since then has not belonged to or identified with any political formation. Sachs has been widely credited as the "chief architect" of the post-apartheid 1996 Constitution, a label  that he has not embraced and rather focuses on the dedicated group effort of the Constitutional Assembly. He has said that, if one were to do a paternity test on South Africa's Constitution, that Oliver Tambo's DNA would show up. Constitutional Court and Judicial Career. Sachs was appointed to serve on the first Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela in 1994. He has described his time on the Court as, "joyous and exhilarating, but also exhausting, complicated and problematic." His book, "The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law", deals with a question that preoccupied him as  a judge, namely the way in which his subjective life experiences had influenced his objective decision-making as a judge. Sachs wrote prolifically during his tenure and played a key role in numerous landmark decisions. Sachs's appointment to the Constitutional Court involved some initial controversy, primarily because of his remarks at his Judicial Service Commission (South Africa) interview. Here, Sachs was asked about his role in a report downplaying the ANC's indefinite detention and solitary confinement of Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Thami Zulu. One commissioner told Sachs his answers were "appalling" and criticised him for "sell[ing] his soul  by signing onto the report. One prominent lawyer later said that if Sachs's interview had been more widely publicised he could not possibly have been on the Court". Sachs felt the criticism was unfair given his central role in ending torture in ANC camps. Many of Sachs's best-known judgments are on discrimination law. He was the main author of the majority judgment in "Prinsloo v Van der Linde", which established the connection between the right to equality and dignity. He was the author of the Court's majority judgment in "Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie", in  which the Court declared unconstitutional South Africa's statute defining marriage to be between one man and one woman. O'Regan J strongly criticised Sachs for referring the regulation of same-sex marriage to Parliament rather than providing immediate relief. The two had, in 2002, written a joint dissent which held that the criminalisation of sex work (and not its solicitation) unfairly discriminates on the basis of gender and is therefore unconstitutional. After serving on the Court for fifteen years, Sachs retired in October 2009, alongside colleagues Pius Langa, Yvonne Mokgoro and Kate O'Regan. Books. "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs  – 1966, Harvill Press Stephanie on Trial" – 1968, Harvill Press "Justice in South Africa" – 1973, University of California Press "Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa" - 1990, Cape Town, University of Oxford Press ""Watch Out – There's a Constitution About": Preparing Ourselves for a New Era of Constitutionalism" – 1991, Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand "Advancing Human Rights in South Africa" - 1992, Cape Town, University of Oxford Press "The Free Diary of Albie Sachs" – 2004, Random House "The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law" – 2009, Oxford University Press "The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter" - 2014, University  of California Press "We The People: Insights of an Activist Judge" – 2016, New York University Press "Oliver Tambo's Dream" – 2017, African Lives Co-Authored "Sexism and the Law: A Study of Male Beliefs and Legal Bias in Britain and the United States" – 1978, Free Press (co-authored with Joan Hoff Wilson) "Island in Chains: Prisoner 885/63: Ten Years on Robben Island" – 1982, Penguin Press (co-authored with Indres Naidoo) "Spring is Rebellious: Arguments about Cultural Freedom" 1990, Karen Press (co-authored with Ingrid de Kok) "Liberating the Law: Creating Popular Justice in Mozambique" – 1990, Zed Books (co-authored with  Gita Honwana Welch) Book Awards & Other Artistic Honors Alan Paton Award for "Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter" Alan Paton Award for "Strange Alchemy of Life and Law" Sachs's first book, "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs", was dramatized by playwright David Edgar for the Royal Shakespeare Company and was televised by the BBC. Peabody Award for "Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa" documentary film Presidential Awards. Order of the Southern Cross, Brazil Order of Luthuli in silver from South Africa 2006 - Medal of Freedom from Portugal 2010 - Lincoln Medal (presented by Ruth Bader Ginsburg at  the Ford's Theater in the presence of Barack Obama) 2021 - French Legion of Honour Honorary Degrees. Twenty seven schools have awarded Sachs honorary doctorate degrees: Amherst College (to be conferred in May '22) Columbia University Michigan State University NOVA University of Lisbon Mozambique's Polytechnic University (Universidade Politecnica) Princeton University Ulster University University of Aberdeen University of Antwerp University of Cambridge University of Cape Town University of Dundee University of Edinburgh University of the Free State University of London University of Missouri University of New South Wales University of Roehampton University of Southern California University of Southampton University of  Strathclyde University of Sussex University of Witwatersrand University of York Wayne State University William Mitchell College of Law York University Other Awards, Honors, and Accolades. Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award Honorary bencher Lincoln's Inn International Cricket Council's Disciplinary Appeals Board Kenya Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for "Island in Chains" (co-authored with Indres Naidoo) Reconciliation Award Tang Prize for Rule of Law ("Rule by Law to Rule of Law" – acceptance speech) Ulysses Medal UNESCO International Bioethics Committee In "Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common law ," McGill University law professor and author Allan Hutchinson includes Sachs as one of eight of the greatest common law judges in history. In supporting his inclusion of Sachs, Hutchinson writes, "[Sachs's] life and career redefine what it means to be a lawyer and judge in a society that is grappling with the injustices of its past and a ameliorating opportunities of its future... his important legacy comprises the deeds that he accomplished, the struggles in which he fought, the judgments that he rendered, and the fluency that he attained in both legal and political langauges" Also included are judges  Lord Mansfield, John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., James Atkin, Tom Denning, Thurgood Marshall, and Bertha Wilson. Personal life. In 1966 Sachs married Stephanie Kemp, a member of the African Resistance Movement, ANC and SACP, in London. They have two children: Alan (an artist) and Michael (a developmental economist). Sachs and Kemp divorced in 1980. Kemp remained in London until 1990 working as a physiotherapist. Sachs remarried in 2006 to urban architect Vanessa September in the Constitutional Court. They have one son, Oliver Lukho-u-Thando September Sachs.