WHO IZAK SMUTS REALLY IS

I do not intend to participate in the debate on the transformation of the legal profession that has arisen between Lucky Thekisho and Izak Smuts, as it is not my sphere of experience or expertise. Given, however, that Thekisho's argument is premised on an ad hominem attack on the character and track record of Smuts, I record that I have known Smuts for 39 years, and am able to correct the misrepresentation of his history, which may shed light on the value of Thekisho's contribution to the debate.

Thekisho alleges that "Smuts showed no activist or progressive role against apartheid. He played absolutely no role in bringing about the democratic dispensation in South Africa. As a matter of fact, he was the advocate of choice of Oupa Gozo, the tin pot dictator of the Ciskei..."

An examination of his record will, amongst other involvement, reveal the following:

Smuts was in fact an outspoken critic of the National Party government while a university student, perhaps best illustrated by his contribution at a protest meeting at Rhodes University after the murder of Bantu Stephen Biko, where, in his capacity as deputy president of the SRC, he shared a platform with Wendy Woods, René de Villiers MP, and Professors David Welsh and Rodney Davenport.

As a young advocate at the Grahamstown bar, he convened the first meeting and, for the next three years, served as the first chairman, of the Grahamstown branch of Lawyers for Human Rights, at a time when the country was subject to recurring declarations of a state of emergency.

During those emergency years, when such practice was less than fashionable amongst white lawyers, he repeatedly represented political detainees and other victims of political oppression, often on the instruction of then attorney and now President of the Supreme Court of Appeal, Lex Mpati.

He assisted in persuading Oupa Gqozo to issue a decree abolishing the death penalty in Ciskei, at a time when there were numerous convicted prisoners on death row, and well before the death penalty was abolished in the reunited South Africa.

He participated in the preparation of a bill of rights for Ciskei.

He participated in negotiations with, amongst others, Professor Halton Cheadle, which led to the recognition of labour and trade union rights in Ciskei, which had previously been denied in that territory.

He was indeed junior counsel on Oupa Gqozo's successful defence team, in accordance with the internationally-recognised principle, (now also recognised in the South African constitution) that a litigant is entitled to choose his representative.

He made a meaningful contribution to the debate in Working Group 2 (constitutional principles) at Codesa.

He served variously as chairman of the Border Region of the Progressive Federal Party and thereafter the Democratic Party, ending his party political involvement when Tony Leon led the Democratic Party into an alliance with the party of Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the heir to the former apartheid National Party.

He served as co-chair, again with Lex Mpati, of the Greater Grahamstown Local Government Negotiation Forum, which ushered in the era of non-racial local government in that town.

He served for nine years as chair of the Eastern Cape Advocacy Training Committee, which trained numerous young historically disadvantaged pupil advocates from Mthatha, Bhisho, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth in litigation skills.

He authored the preamble to the constitution of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa, which commits that body to the promotion of democracy, to the protection and enhancement of the rule of law, and to the ideal of an open society founded on human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms.

The point need not be laboured further. Whatever the demerits of Smuts' argument regarding judicial transformation may be, they are not founded in the racist caricature of him that Thekisho has fabricated.

R D Adendorff is Professor of Linguistics at Rhodes University

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