Jules Browde: War veteran, human rights trailblazer and friend of Madiba
1919-2016
JULES Browde, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 97, survived one of the fiercest battles of World War 2 to become one of South Africa’s leading human rights lawyers under apartheid, and a close friend of Nelson Mandela.
He was a founder member and chairman of Lawyers For Human Rights, which was established in 1980. He did a lot of pro bono work for people charged with breaking the notorious pass laws and Group Areas Act.
He led the defence in a test case against the Group Areas Act spearheaded by Actstop, the action committee to stop evictions, which his wife Selma, a medical doctor, was involved in from 1979.
In the State v Adams in 1980 he argued that Mr Adams and his wife could not be prosecuted for living in a white suburb of Johannesburg because there was a shortage of housing in the coloured and Indian group areas and therefore no alternative accommodation was available to them in Johannesburg.
It was the first time this defence, the defence of necessity, had been used in a group areas case.
He lost but took the case to the appellate division, which was presided over by a bench of notorious apartheid judges headed by chief justice Frans Rumpff. They predictably upheld the court’s decision. Had they accepted Browde’s defence it would have invalidated the Group Areas Act.
All prosecutions under the act were put on hold pending the outcome of the case, which meant there were no group areas prosecutions for the three years it took the case to wend its way through the legal system. They resumed with a vengeance after the decision of the appellate division.
But Browde’s work paved the way for Judge Richard Goldstone’s ruling two years later which effectively ended the Group Areas Act. Goldstone found that one of the factors to be taken into account before someone could be evicted under the act was the availability of alternative accommodation.
The state realised it was not worth prosecuting anyone under the act if they couldn’t evict them.
Browde unsuccessfully challenged the closure of the New Nation newspaper during the states of emergency in the late 1980s. He appealed but lost, somewhat surprisingly, because the presiding judge in this case, chief justice Michael Corbett, was known for his liberal views. During the appeal, Corbett called for a copy of the New Nation. When he began looking at it, Browde muttered, “Now we’re in trouble.”
Browde was born on May 21 1919 in Johannesburg. He matriculated at King Edward VII School in Houghton. He graduated with a BA degree from Wits University in FRIEND OF THE SUBJECT: Noami Jacobson working on a head in May 1974 1939, by which time World War 2 had begun.
He joined the South African artillery and fought in every major theatre the South African army was involved in, including Madagascar where they fought the Vichy French, East Africa, North Africa and finally Italy, where they helped drive the Germans out.
One of the bloodiest battles of the campaign, and indeed the whole war, was the battle of Monte Cassino. As a forward observation officer for the artillery, Browde was on the frontline.
He spoke a lot about the war. He said it sorted out his priorities. He realised he didn’t need the most comfortable bed or the best food. All that really mattered were people.
After the war he returned to Wits to do a law degree and graduated with an LLB in 1947. One of his classmates was Nelson Mandela and they became lifelong friends.
When Oliver Tambo passed his law exams, Mandela asked Browde to move the application for his admission as an attorney.
When their law firm, Mandela & Tambo, was threatened with eviction from its premises in “white” Johannesburg and told it would have to confine its operations to the townships, the young advocate Browde argued their case and won it. Their law firm remained and they were able to continue their practice in the city.
Browde was appointed a Senior Counsel in 1969.
He led the prosecution against the police at the inquest into the Trojan Horse massacre in Athlone in 1985, in which three youths were killed by police hiding in a truck during a protest against apartheid. The police were acquitted. Browde said it was the most emotional case he had been involved in.
In 1984 the leader of the official opposition, Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, asked him to chair the National Convention Movement which he had launched with Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi to pressure the government into negotiations.
It was in this role that Browde and his wife undertook one of the earliest visits to the ANC in Lusaka, where he met his old friend Oliver Tambo.
When he became president, Mandela asked Browde to head several important commissions, including one into public sector corruption, which led to his appointment as Gauteng’s integrity commissioner, and another into racism, nepotism and corruption in South African rugby.
Rugby boss Louis Luyt went to court to challenge Mandela’s right to appoint such a commission and won. This decision was overturned by the Constitutional Court, but the Browde commission of inquiry into rugby never resumed.
In 1996 Browde was appointed to replace Advocate Bertrand Hoberman as chairman of the commission of inquiry into the collapse of the Cape-based Tollgate conglomerate, one of the largest scandals in South African corporate history.
In a hard-hitting report, Browde fingered former Tollgate chairman Julian Askin for bringing the group to its knees. He and his senior managers had shown a complete lack of appreciation of the basic legal principles governing the management of companies, he wrote.
“The details of Askin’s use of company money make sordid reading,” he added.
He recommended that Askin, who had fled to London, be extradited to face fraud charges in South Africa.
Browde served as an acting judge in South Africa on several occasions. He was also a member of the Court of Appeal of Lesotho and the Court of Appeal of Swaziland.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by Wits in 2001.
Browde, who completed his last report for the Gauteng integrity commission days before his death, is survived by his wife, Selma, to whom he was married for 68 years, and three sons. — Chris Barron
The war sorted out his priorities. He didn’t need a comfortable bed or the best food. All that mattered were people