For more than 30 years of his life Albie Sachs liv as both lawyer and outlaw in an apartheid South Africa—working through the law in the public sphere, and against the law in the underground. As a result, he was detain in solitary confinement, tortur by sleep 9780199571796deprivation, and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye. Later he return to play an important part in drafting South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, and was appoint by Nelson Mandela to be a member of the country’s first Constitutional Court. As Sachs wrapp up his 15 year term this fall, Oxford publish his book The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law. Below Sachs rcs data tells us why people all over the world visit the South
African Constitutional Court every year
Following his post is an excerpt from the opening of The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law which features artist Judith Mason. She explains the inspiration behind her Blue Dress, one of the art pieces acquir by Albie Sachs for the South African Constitutional Court gallery and the image on the cover of his book. To clean email learn the full story behind Mason’s Blue Dress collection go here. And for more first hand perspective on South African culture and history, be sure to check out all of our Place of the Year contributions.
Justice Albie Sachs on the Constitutional Court Gallery
I recently had the great pleasure of visiting the new Supreme Court of the Unit Kingdom in Parliament Square. Its site is wonderful, and the rather unprepossessing building it occupies has been artfully adapt to give it a friendly, functional and stylish character. The one feature that identifying authoritative websites for backlinks I thought work badly, however, was the presence in strategic places on the walls of large oil portraits of dead white, male dignitaries who had occupi the building in the past. One day I will be a dead, white male judge myself, nothing wrong with that in itself. But if it is the only imagery you see, the story is one of unjust exclusion, at odds with the very notion of doing justice to all without favour or prejudice.