Albie Sachs
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The Honourable Albert Sachs |
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| Justice of the Constitutional Court | |
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In office November 1994 – October 2009 |
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| Nominated by | Judicial Service Commission |
| Appointed by | Nelson Mandela |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 30 January 1935 |
| Nationality | South African |
| Alma mater | |
Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs (born 30 January 1935) is an activist and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Sachs was born into a South African family of Lithuanian Jewish background. He attended the South African College School (SACS) in Cape Town. As a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, where he earned his LLB, he took part in the Defiance Campaign. Three years later, in 1955, he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted.
Sachs started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21, defending people charged under racial statutes and security laws under South African apartheid. After being arrested and placed in solitary confinement for over five months for his work in the freedom movement, Albie Sachs went into exile in England, where he completed a PhD from Sussex University, and later Mozambique. In 1988, in Maputo, Mozambique, he lost an arm and his sight in one eye when a bomb was placed in his car. After the bombing, he devoted himself to the preparations for a new democratic constitution for South Africa. He returned to South Africa and served as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the African National Congress.
Sachs was appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela in 1994. His appointment was controversial, primarily because of his conduct at his JSC interview, where he was asked about his role in a report downplaying the ANC's indefinite detention and solitary confinement of Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Thami Zulu. One commissioner told Sachs his answers were "appalling" and criticised him for "sell[ing] his soul" by signing onto the report. One prominent lawyer later said that if Sachs's interview had been more widely publicised he "could not possibly have been on the Court". Sachs felt the criticism was unfair given his central role in ending torture in ANC camps.
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