Interviews with Albie Sachs

It wasn’t as though we took a decision one day to be brave. We would have our political discussions and debates. We would imagine the new South Africa, this was in the 1950s, and step-by-step we found ourselves becoming closer to conflict with the state. And one has to understand this was a racist, apartheid South Africa. Race was in the constitution, which said that Members of Parliament had to be white. The Prime Minister all the way to the President had to be white.

Voters were overwhelmingly white.

The judges were white.

The Cabinet, Administration: white.

The Army: white.

The country was completely controlled and dominated by whites who constituted maybe 12-15 percent of the population; owned by law 87 percent of the land, including all the central business districts, the wealthy productive areas and black people had been driven off their land, ancestral lands, into rural slums, deeply impoverished, subject to taxation. The men had to go out and work on the farms of the whites, in the industry of the whites, down in the mines for the whites. And were treated as though they were simply migrant workers coming into what were called “White areas,” which is the great bulk of South Africa and then destined to go back to these impoverished rural areas.

It was a grossly unequal, unjust, unfair society and the unfairness was written in to the very laws justified on the grounds in those days that the whites were civilized, were superior, that come to bring enlightenment to Africa. And yet for the majority of our people their enlightenment involved being defeated in military terms, forced to carry documents, called “passes.” If they moved from one part of the country to the other they needed written authorization from whites.

They couldn’t set up home where they wanted. They couldn’t start a business where they wanted. They couldn’t move freely. In the cities at night after the curfew hour a siren would go 9:00, black people couldn’t be out on the streets without permission from a white employer.

Where were you born? I was born in the Florence Nightingale Maternity Home in Johannesburg, but black people would be born in their huts and their homes in under-resourced city areas and so on. Where you lived areas of the country demarcated for racial groups. And here in Cape Town not the beautiful slopes of Taylor Mountain with lovely views, but basically the impoverished, under-resourced areas crowded with hundreds of thousands and millions of poor black people.

The schools were segregated officially, formally. The beaches reserved, the beautiful beaches reserved for whites, with signs up “Whites Only.” Benches for whites only.

If you went to the post office to buy a stamp for your letter, you’d stand in the queue, a line “Whites Only,” “Blacks Only.”

So race dominated everything in our country. It was a constitutional principle. It was a symbol of injustice and oppression, an instrument for controlling people.

If a black person and white person fell in love they were in serious danger. If they were caught kissing they could go to jail.

So we resisted. It wasn’t a huge number of young white people, but we were very motivated.

Albie Sachs was born on January 30, 1935 in South Africa and grew up under the apartheid government.

His career as a freedom and human rights activist started at seventeen, when as a second-year law student at the University of Cape Town, he became active in nonviolent, anti-apartheid protests. At 21, he began practicing law and was known for defending individuals charged under racial statutes and repressive security laws. Sachs himself was arrested by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement, and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for extended periods of time.

In 1966, he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England, Sachs worked in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988, he survived a car bomb, but lost an arm and sight in one eye.

During the 1980s, working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) in exile, Sachs helped draft the organization’s Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bombing, he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic, South African constitution. In 1990, he returned home to South Africa and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC, took an active part in the negotiations leading to South Africa’s democratic transition. After the first democratic election in 1994, Sachs was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court, where he served until 2009.

Sachs has travelled to many countries sharing South Africa’s experience and discussing human rights.

South Africa is a nation of almost 53 million on the southern tip of Africa. The nation has a unique multicultural character and is approximately 80 percent African and 10 percent European, with the remaining 10 percent being of mixed race or Asian heritage. These broad racial categories include a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups.

Although it has the largest economy on the continent, much of the nation remains in poverty and there is great economic disparity. Historically, the mining industry has played a key role in South Africa’s economy and it continues to remain an important industry today, alongside manufacturing, tourism, and financial services.

South Africa was first settled by non-natives in 1652, when the Dutch established an outpost in what would later become Cape Town. Soon after, British, French, and German settlers came to the area. The descendants of the original Dutch settlers became known as Afrikaners. Conflicts over land and power arose between the settling groups as well as between the settlers and the native people of the region. In 1910, Britain formally created the Union of South Africa as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.

Throughout South Africa’s history, non-whites were subjected to widespread discrimination. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government passed a series of laws institutionalizing discrimination and segregation. In the 1948 elections, the National Party, which served as a platform for Afrikaner nationalism, gained power. The National Party program was centered on the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Supporters of apartheid argued that South Africa was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, “Coloured” or mixed-race, and Indian.

The white minority oppressed the African majority and other non-white groups. Black Africans were particularly disadvantaged in terms of education, housing, income, and health. Blacks were denied citizenship and not permitted to use the services and facilities accessible by the white minority. Many blacks were forced to relocate when their neighborhoods were declared “white.” A series of laws enacted in the 1950s further codified and expanded racial segregation. In part, the National Party justified its policies by branding its opponents as communists.

The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 to advocate for the rights of black South Africans. As apartheid expanded, the ANC and other groups used both nonviolent and violent actions to combat the government. The ANC and other groups were oppressed by the government, and many of their senior leaders were banned or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela, a prominent ANC leader, was imprisoned from 1962 to 1990.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement gained strength. Foreign governments and the international community isolated South Africa. International sanctions damaged the economy and helped erode domestic support for apartheid. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War weakened the government’s claim that yielding power would lead to a communist takeover.

In 1990, the government of South Africa took its first steps toward ending apartheid when it ended a ban on certain political organizations including the ANC. Nelson Mandela and other opposition leaders were released from prison and apartheid legislation was repealed. F.W. de Klerk, President from 1989-1994, helped to broker this transition of South Africa from the apartheid-era to a multi-racial democracy. In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.

In 1994, South Africa held its first election that allowed all adults to vote, regardless of race. The ANC gained power and Nelson Mandela was elected president. South Africa enacted a liberal, democratic constitution, backed by a strong and independent judiciary. While the ANC has remained the strongest party, elections are vigorously contested and democratic safeguards are respected. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated abuses and crimes committed during the apartheid era.

Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized South Africa as “free” with an overall freedom rating of two, with one being the most free and seven being the least. The country also received ratings of two in political rights and civil liberties. However, in the 2013 Freedom of the Press report, the nation was categorized as “party free” due to government restrictions on the press and the prevalence of civil cases brought against journalists for libel.