Towering human rights lawyer recalled
GEORGE Bizos was the lawyer most closely associated with the fight in the courts in defence of leading cadres of the liberation Struggle.
It saw him turn into one of the towering human rights lawyers in South Africa’s protracted struggle for justice.
His anti-apartheid colours showed from a young age. Even the circumstances that brought him to South Africa from Greece as a 13-year-old seemed somehow to prepare him for the influential role he would come to play in helping transform South Africa to an all-race democracy.
His father, Antonios, was mayor of a village in Greece when in 1941 they helped Allied soldiers escape the Nazis. Left adrift at sea by the rescue operation, he was picked up by a British destroyer that dropped him off at Alexandria, Egypt, whence he came to Durban as a refugee. On his arrival by train in Johannesburg he got taken in and looked after by the Greek community.
Unable to speak English or Afrikaans, he could not go to school immediately, but by 1948 he was, remarkably, able to gain entry to the law faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand. It was the year the National Party came to power, and it quickly saw him involved in the anti-Nationalist politics on campus.
He became closely connected with anti-apartheid activists soon after he joined the Bar in Johannesburg in 1954, serving for a start as counsel to Anglican clergyman Trevor Huddleston in his anti-apartheid fight in Sophiatown.
His profile as a human rights lawyer grew significantly when he became a member of the team that defended Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu in the 1963-’64 Rivonia Trial that saw them spared the death penalty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Among other prominent activists he defended in court were Mac Maharaj in the so-called Little Rivonia Trial of 1964 in which several Umkhonto we Siswe members appeared, and prominent UDF leaders Mosiuoa Lekota and Popo Molefe in the 1985-’89 Delmas Treason Trial. On a number of occasions he appeared for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as well.
He also stepped into the breach for Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, when, under the autocratic rule of one-time liberation fighter Robert Mugabe, he was charged with planning a coup d’état by conspiring to assassinate the president before the 2002 general elections.
He appeared for the family of Ahmed Timol who was killed in detention in 1971, for Neil Aggett’s family following his death in detention in 1982, and Steve Biko’s family after his brutal death in the back of a police van while in detention in 1977.
He appeared for Chris Hani’s family as well, following his assassination in 1993.
He left his considerable impression, too, on the new democratic Constitution of South Africa. He did so through his appointment in 1990 as a member of the ANC’s legal and constitutional committee, and by serving as an adviser to the negotiating teams at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, in which capacity he helped draw up the Interim Constitution.
He was involved in drafting the legislation that set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and in amending the Criminal Procedure Act to bring it in line with the Constitution’s guarantee of fundamental human rights.
He served as leader of the team for the Constituent Assembly before the Constitutional Court to certify the country’s new Constitution. He was also leader of the legal team that, on behalf of the government, argued that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
Bizos was married to Arethe (“Rita”), and had three sons.