George Bizos

Early life

Bizos was the son of Antonios (known to his family and friends as "Antoni") Bizos, the mayor of the small village of Vasilitsi, south of Koroni and Kalamata on the Messenia peninsula of the Peloponnese, Greece. In May 1941 at the age of thirteen, George Bizos and his father helped seven New Zealand soldiers (Don Gladding, Mick Karup, Peter Martin, John Lewis and three others) who were hiding in the hills to escape Nazi-occupied Greece to Crete. He says the escape did not go well and he was adrift for three days until he managed to attract the attention of crew on the British destroyer, HMS Kimberley, which was on its way to the Battle of Crete. After the battle HMS Kimberley dropped him off at Alexandria, Egypt.

As a refugee he was sent to South Africa and landed in Durban. From there he went by train to Johannesburg. He disembarked at the Braamfontein railway station because it was feared that the Ossewabrandwag would have a demonstration at the central station. The Ossewabrandwag blamed Jan Smuts for bringing the vuilgoed (rubbish) of Europe to South Africa. The local Greek community helped integrate him into society. Bizos did not immediately go to school because he could not speak English or Afrikaans but by 1948—the year that the National Party was voted into power—Bizos had managed to gain entry into the law faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand. It was here that he says he first became politically active.

Legal career

Bizos joined the Bar in Johannesburg in 1954.

During the 1950s and 60s he was counsel to a wide range of well-known people including Trevor Huddleston of Sophiatown.

At the Rivonia Trial in 1963 – 64 he was part of the team that defended Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu. The accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, but spared the death penalty. Although it is sometimes said that he claims to have drafted Mandela's famous speech spoken at the trial, he says that his main contribution was to advise the use of the words "if needs be" before Mandela said that he was prepared to die. Bizos believes that this may have contributed to the avoidance of the death penalty by having Mandela not appear to seek martyrdom. This trial heralded the arrival of a group of tough human rights lawyers – Joel Joffe, Harry Schwarz, Arthur Chaskalson and Harold Hanson.

Bizos was counsel at various inquests into the deaths of people in detention.

He has been a senior member of the Johannesburg Bar since 1978. He is a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights, which he helped found in 1979. He is Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the Constitutional Litigation Unit. He was a judge on Botswana's Court of Appeal from 1985 to 1993.

In 1990 he became a member of the African National Congress' (ANC) Legal and Constitutional Committee, and at Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) he served as advisor to the negotiating teams and participated in drawing up the Interim Constitution. He was involved in the drafting of legislation, and particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Bill and amendments to the Criminal Procedures Act, to bring it into line with Chapter 3 of the constitution, guaranteeing fundamental human rights to all citizens of South Africa.

In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, he was the leader of the team that opposed applications for amnesty on behalf of the Biko, Hani, Goniwe, Calata, Mkonto, Mhlauli, Slovo and Schoon families. He was appointed by then President Mandela to the Judicial Services Commission which, in terms of the constitution, recommends candidates for appointment as judges and proposes reforms to the judicial system to erase its apartheid past. Bizos was the leader of the team for the South African Government to argue that the death penalty was unconstitutional, and counsel for the National Assembly in the Certification of the Constitution by the Constitutional Court.

In 2005, Bizos was legal advisor to Nelson Mandela in a bitter legal dispute with Mandela's former lawyer, Ismail Ayob.

Bizos represented the Chinese Association of South Africa in a case that ended in 2008 in which Chinese South Africans were granted 'previously disadvantaged' status, thus qualifying them for Black Economic Empowerment benefits.

List of well-known people he represented

Bizos represented the following people, among others:

Other activities

In the 1970s Bizos helped start a Greek school, called SAHETI. It embraced Hellenism, yet was non-exclusionist, even during the heart of apartheid. It was here that people like Chris Hani's children were educated.

Honors and awards

Family

Bizos is married to Arethe, known as "Rita", and has three sons, one doctor, a surgeon, and the other an engineer. He has seven grandchildren.