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| FILE- In this file photo dated Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008, George Bizos, left, arrives for his 80th birthday party with former South African president Nelson Mandela, in Johannesburg. The 85-year old legal warhorse has tousled white hair, a soft, sometimes quavering voice, describes himself as “computer-illiterate” and sprinkles remarks with references to the ancient Greeks, is an executor of Mandela’s will, and it is revealed Saturday March 8, 2014, that he refuses to retire from his human rights work. |
JOHANNESBURG
(AP) -- One of Nelson Mandela's closest confidants is still challenging
the powers that be, with plenty of guidance from his ancestors, the
ancient Greeks.
"Power, even in advanced
democracies, is abused. It's part of life," said George Bizos, a
Greek-born lawyer who defended Mandela at the 1960s trial in which the
anti-apartheid leader was sentenced to life in prison.
After
the end of white minority rule, many activists in South Africa branched
into other fields or eventually retired. But 85-year-old Bizos, now an
executor of Mandela's will, resists retiring from human rights work.
The
advocate, who doesn't carry a mobile telephone and wears a big suit
jacket that hangs loose on his shoulders, works for the Legal Resources
Centre, a South African human rights group. He has hammered at police
witnesses during an inquiry into the shooting deaths of several dozen
protesters by police during a mine strike at Lonmin's Marikana platinum
mine in 2012.
The legal warhorse has tousled
white hair, a soft, sometimes quavering voice, describes himself as
"computer-illiterate" and sprinkles remarks with references to ancient
Greeks credited with building the foundations of democracy.
"I'm sorry to bring the Greeks into it," Bizos said last week. "But they claim democracy was a Greek invention."
Then
he talked about Solon, the ancient leader whose constitutional reforms
laid a framework for Athenian governance; Cleisthenes, who introduced
more reforms; and Kimon, a statesman who fought the Persians.
Bizos, who
named a son after the latter luminary, connected the ancients with the
present, warning that leaders use conflict as justification for curbing
rights.
"The worst enemy of freedom is war and
security," he said. Bizos spoke after receiving an award from the Free
Market Foundation, a non-profit group that tries to craft solutions to
poverty, unemployment and other problems in South Africa.
Bizos,
who arrived as a 13-year-old fleeing the Nazi occupation of his country
during World War II, considers himself Greek and South African to the
core. In the thick of the South African struggle against apartheid, he
drew on his roots a continent away. Children in Greece, he said, learn
early about freedom.
"We were the slaves of
the Ottoman Empire for 380 years," he said. "When you start on grade one
about freedom, you get to like it."
He
contributed to the transformation of South Africa, which turned from
white racist rule to democracy on Mandela's watch. Bizos represented
people who defied apartheid's harsh laws, the families of slain
anti-apartheid activists, including Steve Biko, and helped write the
laws of a new society after the end of apartheid in 1994.
The
respected lawyer is credited with getting Mandela to add the words "if
needs be" to the 1964 speech from the dock in which he said he was
prepared to die for his ideals. The tweak was seen as an escape clause,
avoiding any impression that Mandela was goading the court to impose the
death penalty.
Last year, some of Mandela's
relatives tried to oust Bizos and other directors of two companies whose
funds are meant to benefit the family.
Bizos
sometimes gets teary when talk turns to Mandela, his old friend, who
died in December at age 95. Bizos said some South African leaders have
fallen short of their commitments to uphold the ideals of reconciliation
and sacrifice associated with the country's first black president.
"The
idea that a legacy can be fulfilled to the Nth degree is too
optimistic," he said. "But I do believe that we should remind them
constantly of what the leader that they praise stood for."
Bizos
cited Plato, who warned of tyranny's threat to democracy, and the
divine gift of reason mentioned in Sophocles' play, Antigone. Mandela
played the role of Creon, an authoritarian ruler, in a prison production
of Antigone during apartheid.
In a 2011 speech, Bizos described how he visited Mandela's hotel room on a trip to Greece ahead of the Athens Olympics in 2004.
"The
curtains had been drawn. I opened them and said, `Nelson, come look.'
Before us was a breathtaking view of the Parthenon," Bizos said. "He
looked and looked and looked and said, `George, why do I feel like I've
been here before?' He couldn't explain it and neither could I. But I
like to think that Mandela was simply impressed by all things Greek."
