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Albie Sachs

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Appointed by
  
Nelson Mandela

Awards
  
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

Role
  
Judge

Name
  
Albie Sachs

Nationality
  
South African


Albie Sachs Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies UMass Lowell

Nominated by
  
Judicial Service Commission

Born
  
30 January 1935 (age 89) (
1935-01-30
)

Alma mater
  
University of Cape Town Sussex University

Education
  
University of Sussex, University of Cape Town

Books
  
The Strange Alchemy, The soft vengeance of a freed, Justice in South Africa, Liberating the law, Jail Diary

Similar People
  
Joan Hoff, Oliver Tambo, John Langalibalele Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Nelson Mandela

Ictj interview with albie sachs


Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs (born 30 January 1935) is an activist and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. After having his arm blown-off by a car-bomb in Mozambique due to his opposition of the apartheid, he fled to the United States, and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.

Contents

Albie Sachs Jackie Kemp interviews South African judge Albie Sachs

Life in a concrete cube albie sachs recalls apartheid


Early life

Albie Sachs Albie Sachs 39The fact that South Africa is a country at

Sachs was born into a South African family of Lithuanian Jewish background. He attended the South African College School (SACS) in Cape Town. As a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, where he earned his LLB, he took part in the Defiance Campaign. Three years later, in 1955, he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted.

Albie Sachs Architect of postapartheid constitution in South Africa

Sachs started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21, defending people charged under racial statutes and security laws under South African apartheid. After being arrested and placed in solitary confinement for over five months for his work in the freedom movement, Albie Sachs went into exile in England, where he completed a PhD from Sussex University, and later Mozambique. In 1988, in Maputo, Mozambique, he lost an arm and his sight in one eye when a bomb was placed in his car. After the bombing, he devoted himself to the preparations for a new democratic constitution for South Africa. He returned to South Africa and served as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the African National Congress, before seeking asylum in the United States.

Judicial career

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Sachs was appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela in 1994. His appointment was controversial, primarily because of his conduct at his JSC interview, where he 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.

Sachs retired in October 2009, along with Pius Langa, Yvonne Mokgoro and Kate O'Regan.

Writings

Albie Sachs Activist judge Albie Sachs launches new book Constitution Hill

In 1991, Sachs won the Alan Paton Award for his book Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, which chronicles his response to the 1988 car bombing. He is also the author of Justice in South Africa (1974), The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966), Sexism and the Law (1979), and The Free Diary of Albie Sachs (2004). His most recent book, The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law (2009), also won the Alan Paton Award, making him the second person to have won it twice. The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs was dramatized for the Royal Shakespeare Company by David Edgar, as well as for television and broadcast by the BBC in the late 1970s.

Other positions and awards

Albie Sachs Justice Albie Sachs retired bencher scholar carbomb survivor

Sachs has 14 honorary degrees across four continents. In 2009 he received the Reconciliation Award as well as the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award. On 21 June 2014 he was awarded Taiwan's inaugural Tang Prize in the Rule of Law for his contributions to human rights and justice globally. In 2015 Sachs was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow. Sachs had helped select the art collection at Constitution Hill, the seat of the Constitutional Court.

Albie Sachs Albie Sachs Academy of Achievement

Sachs has also served as a member of the Kenya Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board. He is currently an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Personal life

Albie Sachs Albie Sachs Justice Memory Art University College Dublin

In 1966 he married Stephanie Kemp, a member of the African Resistance Movement, ANC and SACP, in London. They had two children: Alan (an artist) and Michael (a developmental economist). In 1980 they divorced and Stephanie remained in London until 1990 working as a paediatric physiotherapist. He remarried in 2006 to urban architect Vanessa September in the Constitutional Court and they have a son, Oliver Lukutandu September Sachs.

References

Albie Sachs Wikipedia


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