Lord Joffe
Lawyer who defended Mandela, founded a major insurance firm and campaigned for euthanasia
LORD JOFFE, who has died aged 85, set up a hugely successful insurance company, became chairman of Oxfam and mounted a long campaign for terminally ill people to be given the right to die; the greatest turning point in his life, however, came when, as a young civil rights lawyer, he was invited to take over the defence of Nelson Mandela and nine other ANC fighters on charges of sabotage, during the infamous Rivonia trial of 1963-64.
The trial, which dominated the world’s headlines, was all the more extraordinary in that Joffe’s legal expertise was hardly needed. It was Mandela himself who made all the decisions about how it should be conducted.
From the outset Mandela insisted that the defence team should not examine witnesses or apologise and, although he would plead not guilty, he would admit plotting to destroy the South African apartheid state. “It is of fundamental importance that I, and my fellow accused, accept responsibility for everything,” Mandela explained, “because what we did was the only thing we were allowed to do and that was to fight for the freedom of our people. What we must do is turn this trial into a trial of the government.’’
Joffe recalled the scene when Mandela arrived in the courtroom: “There was a ripple of excitement among the public. His deep voice boomed out with the ANC battle cry: ‘Amandla!’ The African audience replied immediately in chorus: ‘Ngawethu!’”
When the trial got under way after a series of delays, Mandela was asked how he would plead. “I plead not guilty,” came the reply. “It is the government that should be on trial, not me.’”
When it came to the defence, Mandela decided that the best way to get his message to the world would be to make an unsworn statement that would allow him to speak without interruption. “It was amazing to sit through Mandela’s speech,” Joffe recalled. “There was tremendous silence in the courtroom when he stood up and he spoke for a long time, around five hours: ‘What I did was right. I had no alternative. Freedom will come to South Africa one day and even if you hang me it will only give inspiration to others. I plead not guilty.’
“When Mandela got to the end, he took off his reading glasses, looked straight at the judge and said: ‘It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’
“There was this intense pause. As he sat down, the court was very quiet and then a sort of sigh went up from all the black people listening.”
When Mandela and his co-accused were found guilty, Joffe, fearing that they would be given the death penalty, begged to be allowed to call witnesses to give evidence in mitigation – historians, for instance, who could explain that if people are denied the right to vote, armed rebellion is the natural consequence.
But Mandela refused. “He prepared a note for what he would say if the death sentence was passed: ‘I meant everything I said. The blood of many patriots in this country has been shed for demanding treatment in conformity with civilised standards. If I must die I will meet my fate like a man.’”
In the event Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he served 27 years before being released by South African president FW de Klerk in 1990, setting the country on the path to multi-racial democracy.
Joffe recalled that at their first interview, in the prison interview room in Pretoria, knowing the cell would be bugged, they devised a code whereby Mandela would write answers on scraps of paper that they would then burn in an ashtray. One day a Lieutenant Swanepoel, “bulky, no neck, red-faced”, rushed in and grabbed the ashtray. But Mandela had anticipated his jailer, so on the most recent scrap had written simply, tongue firmly in cheek: “Isn’t Lieutenant Swanepoel a remarkably handsome man?”
Out of prison Mandela showed that he had lost none of his mischievous sense of humour, introducing Joffe at formal gatherings as “the man who sent me to prison for 20 years”.
When Joffe took the case, he had been on the point of emigrating from South Africa, where he had been sacked from his law firm for representing black clients free of charge. After the trial, he was banned from the country for 30 years and, after also being rejected by Australia, he came to Britain.
Joel Goodman Joffe was born into a secular Jewish family in Johannesburg on May 12 1932 and educated at a Roman Catholic school run by the Marist Brothers, whom he recalled as being “into physical punishment in a big way”. Manifesting an unusually independent spirit and considerable physical bravery, young Joffe instigated a competition to see who could receive most beatings with the cane. “I was miles in the lead with over a hundred when the headmaster gave up and said caning was wasted on me.”
After studying Law at the University of Witwatersrand, from 1958 to 1965 he worked in South Africa as a human rights lawyer. He was called to the Bar in 1962.
After moving to Britain in 1965 Joffe found work in the financial services industry, becoming administrative director of the Swindon-based Abbey Life Assurance. In 1970, with fellow South African Sir Mark Weinberg, he co-founded the assurance company Allied Dunbar (now Zurich), of which he became managing director, then deputy chairman.
Joffe had a lifelong commitment to philanthropy and when he first came to Britain he worked with Swindon Voluntary Services Council. He persuaded Weinberg to make Allied Dunbar the first company to routinely give a percentage of its profits to charity, and he pioneered the Per Cent Club, borrowing an American idea of getting the most generous companies to join a group and so persuade more companies to give a percentage of their profits to charity.
Between 1982 and 2001 Joffe worked closely with Oxfam in various roles, serving as chairman from 1995 to 2001. From 2000 to 2004 he led the government’s Giving Campaign to encourage people to give more of their incomes to charity. He himself was reported to have given two-thirds of his wealth to good causes.
Joffe was appointed CBE in 1999 and made a life peer in 2000. Owing to his charitable commitments he joined the cross-benches, though he later moved to the Labour benches.
An ardent supporter of euthanasia, on the basis of “personal autonomy and people making decisions for themselves”, between 2002 and 2006 he made no fewer than four unsuccessful attempts to enshrine the “right to die” in British law. He was a devoted member and patron of Humanists UK.
In 1962 Joffe married Vanetta Pretorius, who survives him with their three daughters.
Lord Joffe, born May 12 1932, died June 18 2017