Centenarian

GLIMPSES FROM 100 YEARS

On 5 November 2022 Sir Sydney Woolf Kentridge KC (BA 1942, LLD honoris causa 2000) celebrated his 100th birthday. His abilities as a lawyer have earned him a world-wide reputation and saw Lord Alexander of Weedon QC, former leader of the English Bar, describe him as “simply the most highly regarded advocate in the Commonwealth”.

Born and raised in Johannesburg, he was the first of three brothers to study at Wits. He told the Wits Legal Resources Centre’s Oral History Project in a 2006 interview: “I became a lawyer simply because my father was a lawyer, it was something which one could do, and I couldn’t think of anything else that I could do.”

In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Steven Sedly writes: “Two things distinguish Kentridge from his contemporaries: One was a principled liberalism, shorn of party allegiance, from which he never strayed. The other was a talent for advocacy – something that is not as mundane as it sounds and has little to do with oratory.”

At Wits, as a student and active member of the 1941 SRC, he edited a special edition of the Wits student newspaper, WU’s Views, in response to calls for the University to impose segregation between its black and white students at all levels, or face expulsion from the intervarsity. The banner headline read: “Intimidation?” and the editorial sought to rally the student body and reject the “interference” of Pretoria.

Back row: A Goldes, R Hons, LB van der Spuy, A Cowan, J Cassel, A Lanser, B Sacks 2nd row: A Medalie, S Mirlin, R Pretorius, H le Riche, A Feetham, Z Zur, A Oettle, B Cohen, B Drysdale Seated: D Bright (senior woman student), D Etheridge (hon secretary), V Thurnbull (vice-president), R Welsh (president), S Kentridge (hon secretary), J Richardson (hon treasurer), E Dixon

From 1942 to 1946 he served with the South African armed forces in East Africa and Italy. After the war he read law at Exeter College in Oxford in 1946, graduating with first class honours in jurisprudence in 1948. The following year he returned to Johannesburg and was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court. In 1965 he became senior counsel and for several years chaired the Johannesburg Bar Council.

“I suppose the reason why I got engaged in political cases was, I think, very much due to a great South African trade unionist called Solly Sachs. He ran the Garment Workers Union, and he was a great litigator, both personally and for the Garment Workers Union. And my father…almost immediately I came to the Bar, he got an attorney to brief me to do some cases for the Garment Workers Union, at a very junior level then,” he said in the 2006 interview.

During a career spanning more than six decades, he was involved in big political trials such as the Treason Trial, the Sharpeville inquest, the Rand Daily Mail trial and the Steve Biko inquest. He represented three Nobel Prize winners: Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Luthuli.

Unlike other lawyers his career was diverse in range, as he took on cases of murder, libel, corporate takeovers, patent protection and constitutional law. His style was described by Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom as “always understated, controlled and relentlessly rational. His cross-examination was devastating. Of the private person, there were few glimpses.”

In 1977 Sir Sydney was called to the English Bar and in 1984 he was made Queen’s Counsel. Three years later he relocated his practice to London. He returned to South Africa briefly in 1995 as acting justice of the Constitutional Court. He acted for the British government in numerous cases, including the litigation on the Maastricht Treaty.

He has been the recipient of numerous honours around the globe. In 1999 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to human rights law. He was also a recipient of the Order of the Baobab in Gold in 2008. Wits conferred a doctorate of laws on him in 2000 for “his outstanding personal qualities and exceptional contribution to law”. Sir Sydney is the long-standing Patron of the Wits Foundation UK.

In 1952 Sir Sydney married Felicia, Lady Kentridge (LLB 1953), who died in 2015. They had four children, Catherine, William (BA 1976, honoris causa 2004) Eliza (BA 1982, BA Hons 1984) and Matthew (BA 1984, BA Hons 1985), nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He is an avid South African cricket fan, who according to The Times sees a personal trainer three times a week!

Sources: Wits historical papers, Arena magazine 2004, Wits archive, LRC Oral History Project, LRB Vol 44 No18: “The Treason Trial”