67 Minutes in Honour of Madiba

At a session at the Fourth International Legal Ethics Conference at Stanford Law School yesterday afternoon Freddy Mnyongani Senior Lecturer of the Jurisprudence Department at the University of South Africa told us that today has been marked by the United Nations as Mandela Day, in honour of the great man’s 92nd birthday.

On Mandela Day people are called to devote just 67 minutes of their time to changing the world for the better, in a small gesture of solidarity with humanity, and in a small step towards a continuous, global movement for good. The Elders provided a video here.

The Hindu yesterday marked the day with a special slide show – and Secretary of State Clinton sent a tweet and a link to the State Department page.

Lawyers may be interested to read of the stories of lawyers involved in the struggle and transformation of South Africa in Black Lawyers, White Courts by Kenneth S. Broun which builds on interviews with twenty-seven black South African lawyers. And the Rivonia Trial statement of 1964

At the trial, Mandela dressed like this with a kaross, instead of the usual lawyer uniform:

During his infamous treason trial, the one that sent him to his long imprisonment on Robben Island, Mandela made the connection between his cultural heritage and the struggle against apartheid explicit:

I entered the court that Monday morning [the first day of his trial] wearing a traditional Xhosa leopard-skin kaross instead of a suit and tie. . . . The kaross electrified the spectators. . . . Winnie [his then-wife] also wore a traditional beaded headdress and an ankle-length Xhosa skirt.
I had chosen traditional dress to emphasize the symbolism that I was a black African walking into a white man’s court. I was literally carrying on my back the history, culture and heritage of my people. That day, I felt myself to be the embodiment of African nationalism, the inheritor of Africa’s difficult but noble past and her uncertain future. The kaross was also a sign of contempt for the niceties of white justice. I well knew the authorities would feel threatened by my kaross as so many whites feel threatened by the true culture of Africa.

Long Walk to Freedom at page 384

The Constitutional Court says in S v Makwanyane and Another (CCT3/94) [1995] ZACC 3; 1995 (6) BCLR 665; 1995 (3) SA 391; [1996] 2 CHRLD 164; 1995 (2) SACR 1 (6 June 1995)

The concluding provision on National Unity and Reconciliation contains the following commitment:

The adoption of this Constitution lays the secure foundation for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge.

These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.

More about the concept of Ubuntu later this week