By Albie Sachs
In his new book, activist and former judge Albie Sachs builds on South Africans’ renewed faith in the power of the Constitution. We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge will be launched at Cavendish Square on Tuesday 22 November 2016 and Sachs will be in conversation with Zubeida Jaffer.
This stirring collection of essays and extracts offers an intimate insider’s view of South Africa’s Constitution by a writer who has been deeply entrenched in its historical journey from the depths of apartheid right up to the politically contested present. Shortly after the bomb attack in Maputo that cost him his arm and his sight in one eye, Albie Sachs was called on by Oliver Tambo and the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress to co-draft (with Kader Asmal) the first outline of a Bill of Rights for a new democratic South Africa.
In 1994, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court, where he served as a judge until 2009. We, the People takes readers back to the broad-based popular foundations of the Constitution in the Freedom Charter. It picks up on Oliver Tambo’s original vision of a non-racial future and explores the tension between perfectibility and corruptibility, hope and mistrust, at the centre of all constitutions. In this edited excerpt he reflects on the death of Imam Haron and the direction this country is going in now.
Click here to read the excerpts as published on The Journalist.