100 not out ... a tribute to Sydney Kentridge

The Daily Maverick runs a lengthy tribute to Sydney Woolf Kentridge, whom it says is widely held to be the greatest advocate and barrister of his age, in celebration of his 100th birthday on Saturday. It notes Kentridge never flinched from taking on the state at its venal worst. He represented Nelson Mandela and others at the Treason Trial (1956-61), Bram Fischer (1965), the Biko family at the inquest into Stephen Bantu Biko’s death (1977) and the families of those killed at Sharpeville in the 1960 inquest into that massacre. Kentridge, who now lives in London, was born in Johannesburg on 5 November 1922. He matriculated at the age of 16 from King Edward VII High School in Johannesburg and went to study at the University of the Witwatersrand, where, as a member of the student representative council, he voted against the segregation of students in 1941. In 1942, he volunteered to fight against fascism in World War 11. He served in East Africa and North Africa before taking part in the liberation of Italy.

After the war, Kentridge studied law at Oxford and returned with a degree in jurisprudence, to be admitted to the Johannesburg Bar in 1949. There, he built a varied and successful practice in, among other aspects, commercial law but, notes the DM, perhaps because he came from an intensely political left-wing home, he also took up human rights cases, which at the time was tough, unpopular, grim and a far cry from the glamour attached to many such cases today. Kentridge really shot to prominence during the Treason Trial, where he was part of a team of lawyers under the leadership of Isie Maisels QC, appearing for the 156 accused. Each member of the team was assigned certain of the accused to lead in the witness box. The young Mandela was assigned to Kentridge, who gave the former a daily lift to the trial in Pretoria in his car. During these drives they would discuss the trial, Mandela’s evidence in it and wider matters of the world. Mandela and all other trialists were eventually acquitted. In 1965, Bram Fischer was disbarred by the Johannesburg Bar for skipping bail and absconding while being an accused in a case involving the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, which made it an offence to be a communist in South Africa. At the disbarment hearings, Kentridge appeared for Fischer with Arthur Chaskalson (later to become Chief Justice) as his junior. Fischer was disbarred, although the decision was reversed posthumously in 2003.

In 1977, it was Kentridge who appeared on behalf of the Biko family at the inquest into Steve Biko’s death. Through incisive cross-examination, he got to the bottom of what happened, cutting through the lies and deceit of the security police and the medical professionals who aided them. Although the magistrate did not find anyone guilty, the case caught the attention of the world and added impetus in the international isolation of apartheid SA. It also made Kentridge, then in his early fifties, a household name worldwide, notes the DM commentary. Kentridge, who had represented luminaries such as Inkosi Albert Luthuli, Winnie Mandela and Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, Anglican dean of Johannesburg, in court, was beginning to consider practising law in England rather than in SA, where he did not wish to become a judge administering apartheid law, and where he felt frustrated to have to appear as an advocate before judges whom he experienced to be below par. In 1977 he was admitted to the Bar in London. For the next decade he shuttled between London and SA, keeping up two practices and homes in Johannesburg and London. Over time, he gravitated more to his British work and spent more and more time in London. He became the foremost barrister in that city and the most highly respected in the Commonwealth. After the establishment of the South African Constitutional Court in 1995, Kentridge agreed to serve it as an acting judge, contributing to many of its early landmark findings, including the non-constitutionality of the death penalty. He continued to practise law at the highest level in London, where he became a QC (currently KC) in 1984. On his 90th birthday he argued – and won – a substantial tax case before the Supreme Court. He retired at the apex of his profession.

See also a report in the Sunday Times

Full Daily Maverick commentary