Mandela at 100

Mandela at 100

By Bruce Murray

NELSON MANDELA AT WITS

OVER THE BAR

Nelson Mandela, whose birth centenary was celebrated this year, was a law student at Wits University from 1943 to 1949. But he did not graduate with a Wits LLB, failing the final examination on three occasions between 1947 and 1949. On the third occasion he applied to the Dean of Law, Professor HR Hahlo, for permission to write supplementary examinations in the three papers he failed, but this was denied him as the regulations allowed for a maximum of two supplementaries.

Evidently, the advice Hahlo subsequently gave Mandela was to abandon the LLB, which was required to become an advocate, a career Hahlo deemed unsuited to Africans as they would get no business, and instead to qualify directly as an attorney. Mandela took the advice, passing the Attorney’s Admission examination at the end of 1951.

There is a strong tradition that places the blame firmly on Hahlo for Mandela’s failure to qualify for a Wits LLB. Hahlo was a racist who gave Mandela, the first African law student at Wits, the gratuitous advice that Africans, and women, were unsuited to the study of law. “His view,” Mandela recounted in his autobiography, “was that law was a social science and that women and Africans were not disciplined enough to master its intricacies.”

Hahlo was unhelpful but Mandela ultimately passed all the courses he took from Hahlo—six out of 14—except Jurisprudence in 1947.

Mandela had always struggled with examinations at Wits, but his performance in his final-year LLB exams is something of a puzzle. By 1947 he had completed his articles at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, the firm of Lazar Sidelsky (BA 1933, LLB 1936), and with the aid of a substantial loan from the Bantu Welfare Trust—a loan he never repaid—he was freed to study full-time. Yet, in 1947, he failed all six papers badly, followed by four failures the next year and three in 1949. A likely explanation is that his activities in the newly formed ANC Youth League had taken over much of his life, his having been made secretary in 1947, responsible for political organisation.

After qualifying as an attorney, Mandela decided on another attempt at the LLB, enrolling again at Wits for the 1952 academic year, but he never really made a go of it, becoming deeply involved as volunteerin-chief in helping organise the Defiance Campaign. On 18 July his registration was cancelled for nonpayment of fees. A month later Mandela opened his own law practice, soon to be joined by Oliver Tambo.

“His [Hahlo’s] view was that law was a social science and that women and Africans were not disciplined enough to master its intricacies.”

Nelson Mandela receives his honorary LLD from Wits University

Mandela still hankered after an LLB and at the end of the decade enrolled as an external student with London University. In 1964, he wrote and passed his first London LLB examinations while awaiting sentence in the Rivonia Trial, which many expected would be the death penalty.

Sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, he was permitted to continue with his LLB studies, the only prisoner allowed to study law. In 1967 he successfully completed Part 1 of the London University LLB examination, but at that point he again stalled, and his task became impossible when in 1970 the government put an end to his overseas supply of books through the British ambassador. Out of a sense that he was getting nowhere with his London University LLB Mandela wrote in October 1974 to the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Wits inquiring whether it would be possible for him to write the University’s final LLB examination in November of the next year. The response he received from the Registrar’s office was cautious and legalistic, but an application form was sent to him. He never received it. At this juncture the Department of Prisons blocked his correspondence with Wits and refused him permission to continue his LLB studies, whether through London, Wits, or UNISA. Ultimately, in 1981, it was the Dean of Law at UNISA, Professor Willem Joubert, who persuaded the government it was ridiculous to continue blocking Mandela’s LLB, and he was enabled to enrol for the UNISA LLB, which he finally qualified for in 1989, 46 years after his first registration for the degree at Wits. He had finally proved Hahlo wrong, demonstrating his ability to attain an LLB. It was a remarkable feat of persistence, particularly as since his imprisonment there was no prospect Mandela would ever practise law again.

Mandela never bore an enduring grudge against Wits, which he came to perceive as an important instrument of transformation. In 1982, while in Pollsmoor Prison, he ran for the post of Chancellor of Wits, and in 1991, after his release, he accepted the University’s honorary LLD. In the spirit of reconciliation, he requested a reunion of the law class of 1946, including those who had snubbed him as a student, which was held in November 1996. “Wits made me what I am today,” Mandela told the reunion. “I am what I am both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and those who did not respect me and treated me badly.”

The original version of this article was published in Curios.ty, Issue 5, 2018

Class of 1949

Abdul Kader Vahed (LLB 1951)

Abdul Kader Vahed grew up in KwaZulu- Natal and matriculated from Sastri College in 1939. Indians were not allowed to move to the Transvaal but he went to Johannesburg, worked as a tailor and studied part-time at Wits. He was a member of the Progressive Forum, a group of Trotskyite intellectuals affiliated to the Non-European Unity Movement. He served his articles with the Natal Indian Congress activist Debbie Singh and opened a law practice in KZN. Two well-known political figures, Pat Poovalingam and DK Singh, joined him. Vahed died in 1976, at the age of 56. His son Rashid Vahed is a judge.

Henry Nathanson (BA 1947, LLB 1949)

Henry Nathanson was born in 1927 and lives in Johannesburg. Having an older brother who was already a lawyer, he enrolled at Wits to study chemical engineering, but switched to law after a year. He was articled to Max Pinchuck at Wertheim & Becker, then started his own firm, Nathanson Bowman & Nathan. He practised as an attorney, notary and conveyancer for 50 years. Nathanson attended and enjoyed the Wits law class reunion in 1996 and greeted Mandela one year at the Killarney voting station.

Norbert Magzamen (LLB 1950)

Norbert Magzamen came to South Africa from his birthplace, Poland, after World War 2. He had already qualified in law at the University of Lwow and was reportedly a judge in Poland. After qualifying at Wits at the age of 50, he practised as an attorney in Johannesburg. He died in 1978.

Julian Phillips (BCom 1947, LLB 1950)

Julian Phillips attended King Edward VII School, practised law in Johannesburg in the 1950s and later moved to Australia, where he lectured law at the University of Melbourne. In the 1960s he spoke out against South African sports tours to Australia. He chaired the state of Victoria’s Equal Opportunities Advisory Council in the 1970s and was described as “an outspoken advocate for social justice and active in reforming various social issues including industrial law, the status of women, equal opportunity, sentencing, and homosexuality and its decriminalisation”. Phillips died in 2006.

Wits University Law 1949

Johann Möller (BA 1957, LLB 1949)

Johann Möller was born in the Keetmanshoop district of Namibia, matriculated from Hoërskool Upington and practised law in Upington from 1951 to 2007. He was involved in agriculture as well as law. He attended the Mandela class reunion in 1996 and died in 2012.

Unity Ann Victor (BA 1947, LLB 1951)

No further information has come to light.

Max Levenberg (BA 1947, LLB 1949, LLM 1985)

Max Levenberg became an attorney and practised law successfully in Johannesburg for more than 60 years. Through a process of amalgamations, he was the effective founder of the attorneys’ firm Moss Morris and its senior partner for a number of years. In the late 1990s he joined Werksmans, where he was a partner until he reached the age of 82. He practised commercial law. His son, Peter Levenberg SC, says: “He often talked about the experience of being in Madiba’s class. During those very turbulent times, Madiba was always calm, gracious and tactful. But one of the things that best typifies Madiba’s statesmanship and penchant for reconciliation is his actions at the class reunion that took place in 1996, while he was the President of South Africa. He treated every one of his classmates as an honoured guest. He remembered all of their names and something personal about each one of them.”

Harry Schwarz (BA 1947, LLB 1949)

Born Heinz Schwarz in Germany, Harry Schwarz came to South Africa with his parents in 1933. He attended Jeppe High School for Boys and served in the Air Force in World War 2. After the war he co-founded the Torch Commando in protest against the disenfranchisement of Coloured people in South Africa, and he chaired the Law Students Council at Wits. He served in the Johannesburg city council, Transvaal provincial council and parliament, represented James Kantor in the Rivonia Trial, and broke away from the United Party to set up the Reform Party. He visited Nelson Mandela in prison in 1989 and was South Africa’s ambassador to Washington from 1991 to 1994, while US sanctions against South Africa were being lifted. He was known for his slogan “freedom is incomplete if it is exercised in poverty”. He died in 2010.

Ramlal Bhoolia (BA 1945, LLB 1951)

Ramlal Bhoolia was one of struggle stalwart Nana Sita’s seven children. He cycled daily from Hercules to the Pretoria station and then took a train to Johannesburg to attend night classes at Wits. In his third year he stayed with friends and relatives in Jeppe and Fordsburg, sleeping on the shop counters of tailor friends, until a family owning a café near the University offered him accommodation. He was imprisoned for a month for taking part in the passive resistance campaign of 1946. He became a member of the Transvaal Indian Congress and practised law for over 40 years, until the age of 80. On his deathbed in 2007 he asked to see Nelson Mandela, who was unable to visit him but wrote him a letter which read, in part: “It seems like a very long time since we last spent time together; and lifetimes that we were classmates at the University of the Witwatersrand. … I wish you comfort and strength.”

Jan Adriaan Enslin de Klerk (BCom 1947, LLB 1951)

Daphne de Klerk (BCom 1947, LLB 1950)

Jan Adriaan Enslin (Balie) de Klerk and Daphne de Klerk were married and practised in partnership as attorneys in Johannesburg under the name De Klerk & Le Roux. Their daughters, Tonnie (HD) Erasmus and Nakka (EA) de Klerk, are both practising attorneys at Couzyns Inc in Johannesburg.

If you have more information, please contact us: alumni@wits.ac.za. More at: www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/alumni-news/2018/lifetimes-in-law.html

Unsung heroes

Witsies in the UK and in Johannesburg were invited to a screening of Sir Nicholas Stadlen’s documentary Life is Wonderful: Mandela’s Unsung Heroes. The film features several alumni, including the lawyers who defended Mandela and his co-accused in the Rivonia Trial.

Banner wall in Solomon Mahlangu House, Wits University

Memorial stone

In London, a stone was laid in memory of Nelson Mandela in Westminster Abbey. South African High Commissioner Nomatemba Tambo (LLB 2003), Wits alumna and daughter of Oliver and Adelaide Tambo, addressed the ceremony. The Ubunye Choir performed.

Mandela 100 exhibition

Witsies and UCT alumni in London were treated to a private viewing of the Mandela 100 exhibition at the Southbank Centre on 24 July 2018. The exhibition highlighted aspects of Nelson Mandela’s life, career, and commitment to equality and justice. Wits UK representative Lynda Murray spoke about Mandela’s time at Wits and the parallels between his circumstances and those of some of our current students 75 years later. Though Wits is better now at supporting students who struggle with university life, there is still a great need for help.

Mandela Day at Wits

On Mandela Day (18 July), Wits staff and students donated items for the Wits Food Bank and laid them out on the Library Lawns in the shape of Madiba’s face. Dean of Students Jerome September urged Witsies to develop a habit of giving. The Wits Food Bank is managed by Wits Citizenship and Community Outreach, which gives hundreds of students a hot meal every day and runs a vegetable garden on campus.