When I get a good book I try and make it last. When I get a great book it takes over and I don’t regret reading into the early hours of the next day. Like Bizos’ amazing autobiography, this is a great book.
George Bizos is South Africa’s most respected and most influential lawyer. Along with other legal experts like Arthur Chaskalson, and Bram Fischer, Bizos used his fine legal skills from the ‘50s onward not only to repeatedly attempt to restrain and frustrate the wickedness of the Apartheid Government but to actually keep Nelson Mandela and the other Rivonia trialists alive. South African history would have been very different if he had failed. It’s an amazing thing that the thirteen year old boy who came as a refugee fleeing Nazi-occupied Greece, and who for years couldn’t leave the country for fear the authorities would rescind his residence status, ended up defending the fathers of the nation, and became a key author of the South African Constitution.
This is a wonderful book, with the pace of a spy novel and the intricacy of a courtroom blockbuster. It’s a testimony to years of painstaking work that led finally to political freedom for the majority of South Africans. It’s also a testimony to life-long friendship through thick and thin.
If you’re South African you obviously want to learn your history, but if you have any aspirations to be a leader in South Africa whether in business, in church, in government, or in your local community you absolutely must, in my view, read about these heroes who have given so much for the future of the country.
There’s an informative three minute video that highlights Bizos here
There’s a review of Bizos’ autobiography, An Odyssey to Freedom here
Some quotes:
Speaking of his early meeting with Mandela: ‘He was proud and made no apologies for his blackness. He once described apartheid as a moral genocide – an attempt to exterminate an entire people’s self-respect; he was not prepared to bend his knee.’ 28
Quoting Greek thinker Pericles as an example of how to advance the cause of Africans in South Africa: ‘We decide or debate, carefully and in person, all matters of policy, and we hold, not that words and deeds go ill together, but that acts are foredoomed to failure when undertaken undiscussed. For we are noted for being at once most adventurous in action and most reflective beforehand.’ And after quoting Pericles he adds, ‘When I had finished, Nelson grinned. “That sounds just like what is needed here.”… The debates of the philosophers of Ancient Greece would permeate not only our discussions, but also our decision on legal strategy in the future.’ 74-75
On funding for the Treason Trial: ‘Christian Action in London took responsibility for fundraising and the Treason Trial Defence Fund was set up in South Africa to ensure that a proper trial could be conducted.’ 85
On Walter Sisulu: ‘Walter…grew up in a poor district of the Transkei and left school at sixteen to become a cowherd – but he had a brilliant mind. He was a short, pale man – his father, Victor Dickinson, was a white magistrate who had abandoned his two children and their Xhosa mother to move to Johannesburg. Walter would sometimes attend court to watch him preside, but his father never acknowledged him.’ 133
On Oliver Tambo: ‘ Oliver Tambo played a key role as the leader of the ANC in exile. On a visit to the United States, he was told that the student leader of a multi-billionaire banker was leading the anti-apartheid campaign at her university. Oliver asked to see her. Within days of meeting her, her father’s bank announced that it would not extend the repayment period of a large loan to South Africa. Other banks followed suit. The rand lost more than half its value against foreign currencies.’ 184
On discussions during negotiations just prior to Mandela’s release, when NM was given a small cottage to live in: ‘His time here was such that when he built his home in Qunu after his release it was designed on the same floor plan. Nelson welcomed his many guests wearing suits and ties, his collared shirts perfectly starched. He would take his daily constitutional along the garden paths and sometimes I would join him for the more confidential of our conversations. We learnt only later that the flowers were bugged.’ 195
NM to Govt representatives during the negotiations: ‘the majority need the minority. We do not want to drive you into the sea.’ 197
On FW de Klerk: ‘In his speech after his release on 11 February 1989, Nelson had told the world that President FW de Klerk was “a man of integrity”. Not long afterwards, he confided in me that he was mistaken…there was no personal warmth between them… “He has sometimes very little idea of what democracy means”. When Nelson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with De Klerk in 1993, he was not sure whether he should accept it. He felt that…he should not have to share it with a man who had spent most of his political life upholding apartheid. His hesitation was compounded by his personal difficulty with De Klerk’s lack of humility or self-reflection…’ [At the prize giving event] ‘Nelson expected De Klerk to acknowledge the immorality of apartheid and the suffering it has caused the majority of South Africans in his acceptance speech…Instead, De Klerk said only that ‘both sides had made mistakes’… ‘At a private dinner hosted by the Norwegian prime minister to honour the two laureates, Nelson’s patience finally snapped. Before the one hundred and fifty invited guests, he spoke off the cuff. In horrible detail he described the treatment of political prisoners on Robben Island, recounting an incident in which prison warders buried a man in the sand up to his head and urinated on him. He attacked the apartheid regime for the oppression of black people and for the murders committed by its squads. ‘What mistakes did we make when you were brutalising us and locking us up and banning us and not allowing us to vote?’ he asked angrily of De Klerk.’ 213-214
On the violence before the first election: ‘My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: Take your guns, knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea.’ 215
Nelson Mandela on Greece: ‘Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa, its youngest daughter.’ 240
George Bizos – 65 Years of Friendship (Umuzi, Penguin Random House South Africa)
Church History Review 