The human rights lawyer on self belief, courage, Greek pride and ageing
The person who set me on the right road was a wonderful teacher and woman, Cecilia Feinstein, from Jeppe High School. She was a tremendous influence in my life. I'd been working with my father in a grocery shop and, as a refugee with no English, I hadn't been to school for three years. When she heard this she calmly told my father that she'd be there Monday morning to pick me up - which she did. Not just that, but she would take me back to her house and give me extra lessons.
While still a new law student at Wits, many of my friends, like me, were from different cultures. Black, coloured, Indian - we just saw each other as students and colleagues. But this was 1948 and a new regime had just come into power, the National Party. They wanted to kick out a young Mozambican student, Eduardo Mondlane , just before he wrote his last subject, the reason being the new apartheid laws.
You have to have a good propaganda machine to deny the humanity of your enemies and believe what you're doing is correct. Can you imagine that the judge in the Rivonia Trial actually asked Walter Sisulu how he knew black people wanted the vote - just because he did?
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