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accept a brief or not.
 Suppose you manage to get your guilty bastard off the hook in
such a way that it may later either help innocent victims or else make
it possible for existing laws to be amended to eliminate present flaws?
Don t you think that in itself may be a commendable achievement?
Whatever his real reasons may have been, he finally accepted
the brief and became responsible for one of the most brilliant
performances in our judicial history. It seemed absolutely
impossible to do something for the accused. Bernard did more than
just that  something : in a dazzling display of juridical gymnastics
he succeeded in getting the man acquitted admittedly only on a
series of esoteric technical points, but that was all that was required.
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However, when I saw him a month after the trial, just after he d
been elevated to Senior Counsel (no doubt in recompense for his
performance in that particular case), much to my surprise I found
him in a deep depression.
 What s the matter? I asked.  I expected to find you up in the
clouds.
 Now you find me under a cloud. For a moment I recognized
the old impish flickering in his eyes. Then he shook his head.  No,
Martin. I m afraid I ve dirtied my hands with this sordid business.
I feel a traitor.
 But you were brilliant!
 If it had anything to do with brilliance it just confirmed what you
said before: that the law is no more than a game of chess. And I m
sorry, that sort of academic exercise is not for me. He was too
perturbed to sit down. After walking up and down for a while he turned
back to me.  The worst of it all, he said,  is the sneaking suspicion
that even if I d fucked up the defense he would still have got off.
 But you didn t fuck it up.
 That s exactly why they d hired me. They bargained on the fact
that I d be able to find some technical loopholes which could be used
as an honorable excuse for an acquittal. And by accepting the brief
I allowed myself to be prostituted. He stopped behind a chair
opposite mine and leaned forward, clutching the back with his hands,
his eyes burning into mine.  But I swear to God it won t ever hap-
pen again.
 Since when are you a God-fearing citizen again?
For a moment he was off balance. With a brief flash of his boyish
smile he corrected himself:  All right, then I swear to whomever may
be present that every single brief I accept from now on will help me
to strike a blow to the roots of their whole infernal system.
  Their system?
 Yes,  theirs. I can no longer talk of  ours. I refuse to be
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associated any more with a nation that could devise a system like
that with the simple, sordid aim of clinging to absolute power.
 So you re washing your hands of it all?
 Certainly not. Once again he smiled.  On the contrary, I m
putting on my knuckle-dusters.
Sharpeville and its immediate consequences also had a profound influence on
my attitudes. My first reaction to the eruption of violence was emotional: a
regime which depended for its survival on the massacre of peaceful
demonstrators, including women and children, I thought, had no right to
exist. By that time I was already firmly convinced that neither the Afrikaner
nor any other group in the world could claim survival as a  right on the
basis of the simple argument that they existed. Survival had to be earned
through the content and the quality of that existence.
After more reflection, I found I could argue more objectively: perhaps
this terrible thing could still be atoned for in a way through the emergence
of a new and humble discovery of the realities of the situation on the part
of the authorities, and a sincere remorse for everything that had gone
amiss.
Instead, a general state of emergency was declared, the ANC was
declared illegal, over two thousand leaders were imprisoned and some ten
thousand others were arrested.
This was the position when African leaders met in Pietermaritzburg
in an all-in conference and decided to make one more peaceful call on the
government to hold a convention, at least to discuss the constitution for the
new Republic of South Africa, failing which there should be a three-day
stay-at-home at the end of May. Again the appeal fell on deaf ears. Again
instead of sympathy new oppressive legislation was passed, all gatherings
were prohibited between 19 and 26 June; nationwide police raids were
conducted; this time between eight and ten thousand Africans were
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detained, and the army staged demonstrations in the Black areas of our
cities. In these circumstances a new era of violent resistance was born.
I want to say this about Sharpeville. It had a profoundly disturbing
influence on me too, all the more so since I found myself on an
extended business trip to Europe at the time. I was in London when
the reports first hit the newsstands; I saw Trafalgar Square swarming
with demonstrators. The situation seemed to grow worse from one
edition of the papers to the next; it was as if South Africa was on the
point of going up in flames.
There were some of my British acquaintances who said:  You can
thank your lucky stars to have escaped the holocaust.
But my reaction was to suspend all my negotiations and take the
first plane back home. Even if we had to go down, I thought, I had
to be with my people in our shipwreck. It was one of the few wholly
irrational decisions of my life. Yet I trust that in similar circumstances
I will do so again. I hope so.
I don t mean to deny that there were serious wrongs in the sys-
tem. But a government that yields to pressure in times like those, is
asking for its own downfall. In any case I can t stand the attitude of
people who, the moment things start going wrong, assume that all
the blame must lie with us for the sole reason that we re White. This
is an impression which can only be enhanced by starting to make con-
cessions without proper reflection or restraint. Even if one gave the
demonstrators everything they ask for at a given moment, they won t
be satisfied, will they? It is imperative to first restore a context of law
and order without which no natural progress is possible. And at that
particular moment the only way of establishing law and order was by
forceful action.
It pains me to think that Bernard couldn t see it like this. I can
only assume that he d never outgrown the romantic urge in him.
But in a situation like ours there is no room for romanticism.
At the end of an exhausting court case in Johannesburg I drove an old
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ANC leader to his house in Alexandria one night. On the way I
propounded to him the well-worn theory that if you separate races you
diminish the points at which friction between them may occur and hence
ensure good relations. His answer was the essence of simplicity. If you place
the races of one country in two camps, he said, and cut off contact between
them, those in each camp begin to forget that those in the other are ordinary
human beings; that each lives and laughs in the same way, that each
experiences joy and sorrow, pride or humiliation, for the same reasons. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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