TRANSCRIPT: THE MOUNTAIN, THE FYNBOS AND THE SEA
Lots of people ask me about what they call my retirement. I call it the R-word. I refuse to use it. It’s actually a crushing word. It indicates somehow, you’re not part of the busy world. You’ve retired. It was shocking for me to feel I’m displaced from the arc of my whole life engaged with the public world, with rights, emancipation, freedom, struggle. And suddenly now, I can’t go back into politics – I’m a Judge. Can’t carry on as a Judge – my term has come to an end. And there’s a horrible word that’s used, ‘functus’, defunct. When your term at the Court has come to an end, you’re defunct. I didn’t want to be defunct.
I was depressed for a year. It was an amazing year. I got three honorary degrees. I had a book published, The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law, with fabulous reviews. I got a Lincoln Medal, Washington DC, at the behest of then-President Barack Obama, whom I met with Michelle in the White House. One year of wonderful honours and garlands and fame and celebrity and all the rest, but actually feeling depressed, almost clinically depressed. I should’ve been the happiest person on earth, but I was really down, down, down. And it took a year, it was almost like mourning for a life of struggle, resistance, opposition, on the Court. And the year passed and boom, boom, boom, I'm dancing again and finding new ways of carrying on. The arc is much more dispersed. It’s things I choose to do. It’s been, for me, a period of great vitality and energy and creativity and a continuation of the things that moved me throughout my life.
‘Would I like to make a film,’ I'm asked, ‘on my life?’ Abby Ginzberg, who’d been in the anti-apartheid struggle, a lawyer in Berkley, California. Now she makes films about judges. I said, show me your work. She showed me her work. I said okay. And so, the next year or two, making that film, Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa. And it actually won a Peabody Award in the United States.
And I'm lecturing and getting honorary degrees. And probably the most important work is going to countries that are torn apart and trying to share South African experience in reuniting the people. Northern Ireland. I must’ve gone six, seven times there. Sri Lanka, with the Tamil Tigers fighting. Colombia, the FARC rebels. I spoke in Angola to the Parliament, to all the different parties there. Guyana in South America. So that was very validating for me. And more books came out, collecting articles I'd written, writing specially to commemorate the centenaries of Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.
And I'm traveling round the world, giving lectures. And I'm in San Diego at a convention there. I open my computer, it says ‘Congratulations, you've been awarded a prize of a million dollars.’ Ah, come on, you know! There’re all these scams all the time. I read, I read, I read five times. And there's some information that indicates it's true. It’s true! The Tang Prize for the Rule of Law. I was the first recipient. With the prize came $350,000 for research. I decided instead of doing one research project, I would set up an institution to communicate what the Constitution means. How it was made in South Africa, what it means for ordinary people. And we set up ASCAROL – Albie Sachs Constitutionalism and Rule of Law Trust. And that turned out to be a wonderful vehicle for continuing with the work that had meant so much, getting books published, communicating things.
And we discovered the Constitution Hill Trust, working on Constitution Hill itself, was dealing with very similar topics. And together we created an archive of all the documents used in the making of our Constitution. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pages, and tapes of the making of our Constitution in boxes, unsorted at the National Archives. And now it's all been digitised. The story is there. We can actually hear the voices of the people in the Constitutional Assembly arguing with each other, debating this clause, that clause and the other. And we would like that to be made available free of charge to the general public, to the world. Initially the idea was to have a physical museum. COVID came, the visitors centre that was going to have that museum was delayed for a long time. It's now under construction. But the virtual museum has taken over as the main part. We discovered you could do so much in the virtual realm. You could reach so many more people in different creative ways.
And then something crazy and wacky happens. And it all starts with my friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When I was leaving the Court in South Africa, she said I must meet their new member of their Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and a great friendship developed between us. She said, come to New York, NYU, New York University, we'll have a good conversation there. So Vanessa and I and our son Oliver go. And she says, ‘Can you come round for coffee tomorrow evening? A former law clerk of mine and her husband will be coming.’ So, we come, Sonia walks in with greetings. Her former law clerk, Amal Clooney, walks in and her husband, George Clooney. So, another great friendship starts.
And then Amal follows up sometime afterwards. And eventually she tells me they’re planning to have an award for justice – the Clooney Foundation – would I be the first recipient and would I mind if it's called the Justice Albie Sachs Award for Justice? I said yes. Of course, I said yes. But there was more than a niggle. In a way, this was violating my whole life. We didn't do it for awards, we didn't do it for celebrity. We didn't do it to be singled out. We were part of a community; we were siding with the oppressed. And, and this was like the complete opposite of all that. And yet, the world has changed, I've changed, awards have changed. I was tempted for half of a quarter of a tenth of a nano-second to say no, but I said yes – because of Amal and George. They are formidable and fun. They’re using their public positions to promote causes of justice. And they do it with energy and spirit. The world works now so much through publicity. And if it serves the cause of justice, so be it.
In the end, a lovely email comes saying, ‘George thinks that Justice Albie Sachs Award for Justice, very clunky. Can we call it The Albie?’ And there's a drawing of a figure with one long arm, one short arm. And I love the idea that normally awards show perfection and this award shows imperfection. And it honours all the people in the world who don't look like so-called normal. And then the name, what does that mean? My name won't signify all that much. It's the wonderful people, who’re getting the justice award who’ll give it special significance.
So last year Albie – that's me – got The Albie. And who gave it to me? Michelle Obama. It was a raucous, spirited, witty, powerful evening. I’m handed the little statuette by Michelle Obama. And I said to this little statuette in my hand, ‘Hello, Albie. Don’t get too carried away. I’ve been an iconoclast all my life, and now I’m becoming an icon. You’re called an Albie, but you could have been called a Nelson after Nelson Mandela, or an Oliver after Oliver Tambo. Or Griffiths after Griffiths Mxenge, a wonderful young black lawyer murdered by the security police. Or his wife, Victoria, also a lawyer murdered by the police. But you’re called an Albie. Why? Because I’m still alive. And my trauma can be seen through the short arm represented in the statuette.’
And finally, with the creation of The Albie Awards came the opportunity of creating an Albie Collection. So, The Albie Collection is a very good, substantial grant from Ford Foundation over four years, to tell the story of the life and law of Albie Sachs. We've expanded it a bit to make it the life, the law, the love, the literature and the laughter – all different dimensions. So, we’re very, very involved with that.
And in a way, the older I got, the more valuable I became for intergenerational discourse. I have lots of it now and I absolutely love it. And I see these students and there's so much cynicism around. And they see this young idealist who’s become an old idealist. And they’re very curious about my arm. And they like the personal stories. And very responsive to the idealism, to the vision, to the passion, to learning about the history.
Our son, Oliver, now – he's in his second last grade at school. The teachers invite me to speak, and I love, love, love speaking… I imagine for them it's like, you know, prehistory. And here’s somebody speaking about what happened. And then Oliver Tambo did this and Nelson Mandela said something else.
So, I have an energy, that's connected with the work I'm doing. It's connected with having a wonderful companion, spouse, wife, Vanessa – so vivacious and strong. It's very connected with being a dad again, watching Oliver growing up. It’s been fantastic to be a father again. My two elder children were born in London, grew up in London in exile. And I loved being a dad. And then when Stephanie and I separated, I was the holiday dad, far away, seeing them once a year. I missed out on a lot there. So, with Oliver now, I’m getting some of that experience. There was a time when he felt very remote from me. He just saw my back working at the computer. But the past year or two, we’re actually connecting a lot. We’re having wonderful conversations.
For the first half of my life, we struggled for the future for the sake of our children and our children’s children. That was the reward. We weren't thinking of ourselves going to heaven and getting a celestial award. So, the reward had to be an envisaged future for our children not living under oppression, injustice. Then a moment came when I said, no, we’re not fighting for our children. We’re not fighting for a postponed thing. We’re fighting for ourselves. When you're fighting for your children, you can become a little bit inhuman and detached, and you're part of history and it's all projected onto history. We’re fighting for our own rights, our own dignity, to be free people in a free society. And it means we've got to take responsibility now for what’s happening, the good and the bad. So that was kind of liberating for me.
Then my soft vengeance: going home, helping to devise a new Constitution, voting for the first time, getting onto the Court, deliberating with my colleagues, the judgments that come out, this beautiful, wonderful building on Constitution Hill filled with art. All a sense of continuation of life, of the ideals, materialising in different ways, and yet rooted in the imagination and the dreams we had as young people of a better world. It's miles better than it was, hugely better than it was, enormously transformed. It's still full of ugliness and war and injustice. So, we say a luta continua, the struggle continues. The struggle to find out what the struggle [is] about continues. It will continue with me, I think, for as long as I can sit and talk and wave my hand.
Somehow, I didn't like the word ‘legacy’. It was making me posthumous while I'm still alive. So, I don't think in terms of legacy. I like to feel that the impact I leave is more the impact of my life, my spirit, my writings over the years. It's intangible. In that sense, my constituency is still the mountain, the fynbos and the sea.
