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The only account of this seminal trial, written by Mandela's defence attorney The only account of this seminal trial, written by Mandela’s defence lawyer and with a new foreword by Denis Goldberg, accused alongside Mandela and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 11 July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia near Johannesburg, arresting alleged members of the high command of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Together with the already imprisoned Nelson Mandela, they were put on trial and charged with conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government by violent revolution. Their expected punishment was death. In this compelling book, their defence attorney, Joel Joffe, gives a blow-by-blow account of the most important trial in South Africa’s history, vividly portraying the characters of those involved, and exposing the astonishing bigotry and rampant discrimination faced by the accused, as well as showing their incredible courage under fire.
Fifty years before his death in 2013, Nelson Mandela stood before Justice de Wet in Pretoria's Palace of Justice and delivered one of the most spectacular and liberating statements ever made from a dock. In what came to be regarded as "the trial that changed South Africa", Mandela summed up the spirit of the liberation struggle and the moral basis for the post-Apartheid society. In this blistering critique of Apartheid and its perversion of justice, Mandela transforms the law into a sword and shield. He invokes it while undermining it, uses it while subverting it, and claims it while defeating it. Wise and strategic, Mandela skilfully reimagines the courtroom as a site of visibility and hear...
The question was: would he hang? In 1963, when South Africa's apartheid government charged Nelson Mandela with planning its overthrow, most observers feared that he would be sentenced to death. But the support he and his fellow activists in the African National Congress received during his trial not only saved his life, but also enabled him to save his country. In Saving Nelson Mandela, South African law expert Kenneth S. Broun recreates the trial, called the "Rivonia" Trial after the Johannesburg suburb where police seized Mandela. Based upon interviews with many of the case's primary figures and portions of the trial transcript, Broun situates readers inside the courtroom at the imposing P...
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Not a day goes by in present South Africa when the role of law, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the future of constitutional democracy is not debated. This book will take the reader into the heart of the legal system, the understanding of which is necessary when wrestling with these pressing questions. The book examines a series of key cases over the past 60 years, the judgements in which changed the political or social landscape of the country. The choice of cases for inclusion in the book was made both to tell compelling and significant historical stories, as well as to illustrate the possibilities inherent in law, and the potential for its abuse and use. All of the chosen cases were ones where the country held its collective breath before judgement was delivered. Through the stories told, the reader will not only engage with critical aspects of South African history, but will be exposed to the manner in which the possibility of our new constitutional democracy is linked to the legal precedents, traditions and culture which were built up over the past century.
Nelson Mandela is one of the most revered figures of our time. The essays in this Companion, written by experts in history, anthropology, jurisprudence, cinema, literature, and visual studies, examine how Mandela became the icon he is today and ponder the meanings and uses of his internationally recognizable image.
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but this is the first book to view the truth commission as public ritual and national theater. Catherine M. Cole brings an ethnographer's ear, a stage director's eye, and a historian's judgment to understand the vocabulary and practices of theater that mattered to the South Africans who participated in the reconciliation process. Cole looks closely at the record of the commissions, and sees their tortured expressiveness as a medium for performing evidence and truth to legitimize a new South Africa.
This is well-told story and an important historical record of the struggle for a democratic South Africa.
"Behind the clerical dog collar he wore as Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, John Collins ran a single-minded, constantly creative, campaign over several decades to provide material support to those waging the struggle against apartheid - assisting leaders like Nelson Mandela and thousands of township and rural activists, as well as families who suffered because their loved ones were in prison, in exile or dead. The success of the organisations he founded, the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) and Christian Action, depended on a network of volunteers across the world and a small group of South African exiles and British workers in London. South African intelligence agents tried to penetrate these networks but to no avail."--BOOK JACKET.
Takes you to sites related to the remarkable story of the opposition to South Africa's apartheid system, a saga that culminated in the country's transition to non-racial democracy in the early 1990s.