Madiba’s Rivonia lawyer dies at 85

Tributes pour in for Mandela lawyer Joel Joffe.

Tributes poured in yesterday for Joel Joffe, the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela in the trial that saw the anti-apartheid icon jailed, following his death at the age of 85.

Lord Joffe died on Sunday, said Oxfam, the aid agency which he chaired. The Nelson Mandela Foundation said the human rights lawyer died in London.

Joffe was a key part of Mandela’s defence team in the 1963-64 Rivonia Trial, which saw Mandela get a life sentence for sabotage against the apartheid state.

After leaving for Britain, he founded a big insurance firm and later became a parliamentarian spearheading the campaign for assisted dying for the terminally ill.

Leading British anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain said Joffe was an “iconic figure” who never sought the limelight – “he just supported everybody else”.

Joffe was “a totally generous person, warm, passionate, and he continued to fly the flag for the anti-apartheid struggle and subsequently the new South Africa”.

Joffe was born to a Jewish family in Johannesburg on May 12, 1932 and studied business, then law at Witwatersrand University, graduating in 1955.

Mandela’s wife, Winnie, approached him to defend her husband in the Rivonia Trial, where several leading members of the ANC were facing charges.

In his autobiography, Mandela described Joffe as “the general behind the scenes in our defence”.

“For me, it was about saving the lives of these wonderful people,” Joffe told BBC radio in 2007. “The nine members of the ANC were the finest people I had ever met – such courage, such integrity, so committed... It was a great privilege to defend them.”

After the trial, the South African government offered him the opportunity to leave as long as he never returned.

In 2007, Joffe wrote a book about his experiences entitled The State vs. Nelson Mandela: The trial that changed South Africa.

In its foreword, Mandela wrote that the book would be “one of the most reliable sources for understanding what happened at that trial and how we came to live and see democracy triumph in South Africa”. – AFP

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Picture: AFP ANTI-APARTHEID ICONS. From left Ahmed Kathrada, Denis Goldberg, Joel Joffe and George Bizos.