Reading for pleasure

The Mandela Brief: Sydney Kentridge and the Trials of Apartheid 

Thomas Grant (John Murray: £25; e-book £14.99)

"In South Africa from the late 1960s on, we see the power and impact of a dedicated trial lawyer in a legal system conceived and constructed to enforce harsh social order."

"How can you defend someone you know is guilty?" – the classic question that many people ask of us lawyers, whether courtroom lawyers or not.  

Behind it perhaps lies a worrying preconception that litigation need not bother with ethics, truth or justice – just a matter of "eyes on the prize" of a win.

Thomas Grant’s The Mandela Brief is a superb read on many levels and gives us a truer and more inspiring view. In South Africa from the late 1960s on, we see the power and impact of a dedicated trial lawyer in a legal system conceived and constructed to enforce harsh social order. The advocate in question is Sydney Kentridge QC – no fictional Atticus Finch but a flesh and blood white South African who takes up the cause of many accused or abused by the apartheid apparatus.

The core of the book examines the trials of apartheid – from the treason trial of "activist lawyer" Nelson Mandela and fellow ANC leaders (1958 to 1961), through the Sharpeville inquiry of 1960 to the Biko inquest of 1977. Within that sweep, the complex and troubling travails of Winnie Mandela, as wife of the imprisoned leader-to-be, are considered in a chapter that takes us further on to 1986.  

As with his excellent earlier survey of Old Bailey trials, Court No. 1, Grant sets out a careful social, historical and economic context to allow us to approach the individual set piece events with empathetic understanding. He is not interested in hagiography or even conventional biography as such. His range of interviews with Kentridge himself and other key protagonists provide significant personal detail, but Kentridge is no plaster saint.  Equally, Grant’s storytelling is not a dispassionate account: he points up human and political evils at work in the various legal cases and situations.

Thomas Grant the author is also Tom Grant QC, Chancery and commercial silk and Gresham College Visiting Professor of Politics and Law. The book features many telling excerpts from the trial transcripts, showcasing the varied armoury of advocacy: quickfire confrontations with facts that refute or shame, persistence in eliciting suppressed material or admissions, the steady building of a powerful case, fact by fact. These passages repay re-reading to grasp the powerful reach of logic, rhetoric and clear structure when skilfully deployed in a good cause. 

We live now in a time of political sterility where politics achieves its cheap potency by hollow boasting, simplistic slogans and no particular attention to detail or overview. It is so heartening to be reminded by this book that lawyers can, legitimately, be professionals who uphold values and work to right or highlight wrongs. 

In the Sharpeville shootings, Kentridge challenges the falsity of the police account of events.  Far from the killings of townspeople being essential defence of a besieged police station asserted by white officers, his questioning points up the needless violence and loss of life. The skilful question and answer in the Biko inquest again shows the force of shocking medical detail brought out in a public hearing, then carried on the wind of change that is international press coverage. Throughout the book, the author interleaves passages from contemporary journalism across the globe: vivid reports of the events, backstory and reactions. 

Grant describes – with demystification for the general reader – the panoply of laws painstakingly put in place by the white South African state to maintain its social order of subjection. In the courtroom clashes, we see not only technical lawyering but deep human drama and dilemmas. Particularly striking for this reader are two personal portraits. Bram Fischer QC, another eminent white South African barrister, takes a principled stance repeatedly against apartheid yet is serious in observing his professional ethical obligations. Finally, that balancing act becomes unsustainable: he breaches his bail residence condition as the only way to continue effectively in protest and connected with the people he stands alongside. He then pays the agonising price of professional gelding – debarred from practice. 

The second is a study in human frailty. Grant tells the tale of how the Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, is ensnared by a scheming police informant Ken Jordaan. The Dean’s actions of arranging the channelling of funds to various impoverished and beleaguered individuals come from “a sense of his duty to God and to man”. Yet they are held to be a breach of the Terrorism Act and result in a minimum five year prison sentence. The book describes the trial – and the appeal – in compelling fashion.

To avoid plot spoilers, I have said nothing here of the eponymous Mandela Brief (or briefs). As well as an opportunity to learn about those, reading this book is recommended to set you thinking about other topics of perennial interest:  

• What should we do – and what do we do – when confronted with laws that appear immoral or unjust?  
• Can we change the world by the way we do our job?  

South Africa is an object lesson for us all. 

Eric Robertson, advocate