Albie Sachs: Transforming Injustice

Stephen Goulding and Siobhan O’Callaghan speak to the former South African Constitutional Court judge who survived assassination and imprisonment in order to fight the injustice of apartheid.Clad in a vibrant, traditionally patterned shirt with a soft weathered face, Albie Sachs might at first be overlooked as an elderly eccentric more at home in a bingo hall than at the top of a lecture hall. Warmly greeting the many academics that accost him, Sachs is utterly unassuming: nothing about his demeanour, save for his elocution, hints that you are in the presence of a human rights and legal titan.Our first question – ‘Do memories of apartheid still haunt you from your time in exile?’ – brings at first no reply. He pauses, pensive, before a retort with shaking head:“No. No. I think basically what our generation – when I speak of our generation, that’s the generation known through Mandela, even though  there are thousands and thousands of others – what we succeeded in doing was transforming the negativity into positivity.“We don’t say ‘forget the past’, we don’t say ‘it didn’t happen’; there was a lot of pain, a huge injustice. In a strange way the only good thing apartheid produced was anti-apartheid. Why should I, Albie Sachs, growing up in Cape Town, going to a whites only boy’s school become connected with Nelson Mandela, who was born in a rural peasant family? We had nothing in common in language, culture or background, but we came together through the struggle. We connected through struggle, through resistance to apartheid.

'What we succeeded in doing was transforming the negativity into positivity.'

“We developed not just superior power to overcome, but a superior moral sense, a superior set of values through which we were able to transform the negative into positive. So the past doesn't haunt. We use the past as a springboard to the present. It’s a source of joy to see people doing things now that they couldn't in the past.“My child Oliver, his mother has dark skin, I have fair skin; under apartheid we couldn’t have loved together, have lived together. It would have been a criminal offence to kiss let alone conceive a child. So it’s a sense of accomplishment to see the progress that’s being made. Yet we still have such a long way to go, still so many problems.”An unfilled shirt sleeve and a blackened scar under the mouth are the only external indications of the life that this seventy-nine year old has really lived: a personal price he has paid in his fight for the equality and liberty of an entire nation. In 1988 the South African anti-apartheid campaigner fell victim to an assassination attempt when a bomb was placed under his car by those who sought to silence him. Despite having lost his right arm and sight in his left eye, Sachs, later appointed by Mandela to the Constitutional Court of South Africa in 1994, demonstrates an astonishing positivity in relation to the incident.“I felt marvellous. I got over the bomb right from the beginning, I had the moment every freedom fighter dreams of, they came for me, and I lived. There are certain things that you cannot get over...I haven't fully gotten over solitary confinement; it leaves a certain residue of sadness, but I’m not preoccupied with it.” Sachs’ presence in UCC is not without reason, he is the keynote speaker at a law conference focusing on the ‘invisible victims’ of the prison system: those who are indirectly affected by imprisonment. Sachs, who has a history of making ground breaking judgements during his time in the green robe, now spends his time on the college circuit, discussing his life and pressing legal issues. When quizzed about the momentous S vs M case – in which Sachs ruled that a mother who was a serial credit card fraudster should remain out of incarceration as her imprisonment violated the fundamental human rights of her children – he harks back to her words, mimicking them:“‘I can’t go to jail,’ she says. ‘If I go to jail their lives will be shattered. They’ll end up in gangs.’ At first I thought it was a hopeless case. We, the court, deal with constitutional matters; this is not a such a matter, she brought it on herself.  And my female colleague, one of the judges, said; ‘have you thought about the rights of the children?’... and I hadn’t... why should their destiny be so determined by the crimes of their parents?

"I had the moment every freedom fighter dreams of, they came for me, and I lived."

“The law cannot simply be a passive bystander and send the caregiver to jail without seeing that the children are now going to carry a very heavy burden. What’s the point of saying children have rights, if you ignore them in an important matter like that?“We picked up on something that is now echoed throughout the world: the impact of incarceration on the people outside who are innocent. They haven't committed the crime, yet they’re affected. They're not simply losing a bread winner, there’s a sense of stigma, to being that close to the crime. When the person comes out of jail afterwards, they’re less capable of reintegrating and having a steady life. Instead of being a better citizen, you come out a debilitated citizen. So there are all sorts of reasons why the impact of imprisonment on the innocent parties should be given attention.”Perhaps Sach’s most preeminent ruling came in 2005, when the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Sachs, who is an ardent supporter of LGBT* rights, is often cited as being one of the masterminds in the integration of non-heterosexual people into a new South African society. Yet when asked if he had any advice for the voters in Ireland’s upcoming Marriage Equality Referendum, he refrained from preaching.“Irish people will decide for themselves. I’m not offering any advice other than to say you might find it interesting to see how we decided. I think it’s wonderful that the referendum is being held at all. Anybody reading my decision would know how I would vote.“Back then, for me and for the court unanimously, it was an important aspect of human dignity. And to say that somehow the marriage of straights would somehow be undermined by allowing same sex couples to marry was very, very insulting. To say that their love and their intimacy and how the public accounts for that somehow amounts to less than the same for heterosexual couples is a gross violation of equality principles.”

"...to say that somehow the marriage of straights would somehow be undermined by allowing same sex couples to marry was very, very insulting."

Sachs offers a coda to the interview in the form of an upbeat and inspiring piece of advice, fitting of his tenacity and wisdom:“Don't always have a long face. It’s pretty strong in the west for human rights activists to be gloomy. But if the sole thing is anger or denunciation then you’ll get too tight. I remember vividly when Mandela was released from prison. I was carefree and dancing; yet my British counterparts were mournful and said things like ‘How dare they?’”“Personally, I just felt there was a difference of culture. Me, I learned to sing in public, to move and shake my body a little bit. The humour, the actions: it’s all very affirmative. It’s not about getting together with like minded people to expose the evils of the world; it’s about getting together with people who are buoyant and eager about life and searching for interesting, creative, lively ways of doing things. This is what it’s about. And for me it’s been a very marvellous life.”