The piece by Paul Trewala carried in politicsweb on 4 December attracted a fair amount of commentary, not all of which bears any relationship to the facts. I do not know whether our dear departed Chief Justice was a communist or not, and I don't care if he was either. Rather than attach pejorative labels, the commentariat ought to concentrate on the facts and judge the man on his track record instead by applying some or other label to his undoubted contribution to the achievement of constitutional democracy under the rule of law in SA.
I first met Arthur Chaskalson in the early seventies. He was a newly promoted silk at the Johannesburg Bar and I was a lowly articled clerk in a big firm of attorneys in that city. We worked together on commercial matters. I found him rather austere and even a little shy, given his status as a well respected advocate at the time. He was a member of the legal team during the Rivonia trial, in which Braam Fischer QC was a leading light. Fischer was a leader of the SACP and went to jail for his "communistic activities".
Whether Fischer was an influence in the thinking and leanings of Chaskalson is hard to say with any certitude; the former was incarcerated by the time I met the latter and the cut and thrust of commercial law did not lend itself to philosophical or even political discussion. Chaskalson was good at what he did, he enjoyed the confidence of his peers sufficiently to be elected to leadership positions at the Bar, and it came as a surprise and even disappointment to many when he turned his back on the topics of greed, anger and stupidity which take up the professional time of senior counsel in favour of setting up the Legal Resources Centre at the end of 1978.
By doing so, he proved that he was not venal; his stipend at the LRC was a fraction of the fees he could command at the Bar. Some may interpret this as evidence of communist leanings, but others have idealistically made the same mid career moves without any such inference being drawn against them.
It is certainly not correct to characterise Chaskalson as a communist for representing the SACP at Codesa. Advocates do not have to believe in the ideas of their clients, nor do they have any choice in the matter of whom they may represent. This is called the cab rank rule and it is a salutary one. An advocate who represents the interests of rail commuters is no more a rail commuter than one who represents the communists is a communist.
The contribution of Chaskalson to the new constitutional order in SA is a matter of record. Not only is he a founder of the new dispensation, he led one of its major new institutions, the Constitutional Court, with distinction until his retirement in 2005. He has been internationally recognised for his contribution to the promotion of the rule of law, a concept unknown and unheralded in communist regimes.