Apartheid Museum salutes Mandela's lawyer

26 Octobre 2017

Cape Town, South Africa, October 26 (Infosplusgabon) -  The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg on Thursday saluted liberation hero George Bizos by launching a new gallery in his honour.

The museum is also launching his memoir – titled "65 Years of Friendship" – which details his extraordinary friendship with world statesman Nelson Mandela.

Bizos’ memoir reveals how he and Mandela formed a close friendship while pursuing a career in law at the University of the Witwatersrand in the late 1940s. The gallery focuses on some of the highlights of his career, including his role defending Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu at the famous Treason Trial in Pretoria in 1963.

The accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, but spared the death penalty. Although it has been claimed that he drafted Mandela's famous speech at the trial, Bizos says that his main contribution was to advise the use of the words "if needs be" before Mandela said that he was prepared to die.

Bizos believes that this may have contributed to the avoidance of the death penalty by having Mandela not appear to seek martyrdom.

He has been a senior member of the Johannesburg Bar since 1978. He is a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights, which he helped found in 1979. He is Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the Constitutional Litigation Unit. He was also a judge on Botswana's Court of Appeal from 1985 to 1993.

FIN/INFOSPLUSGABON/ERO/GABON 2017

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