Corporation
of New York
Vol. 4/No. 2
Spring 2007
The Lost (and Found) Voters of Hurricane Katrina
At the Heart of South Africa, a Constitution and a Court
A Timeless University Trains Teachers for a New Era
Philanthropy Now: Diversity and Creativity for Changing Times
Also in this issue:
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by Kenneth Walker
The foundation of democratic
rule in South Africa is its Constitution. The strength and relevance of
the Constitution are rooted in the work of the nation’s Constitutional
Court.
There comes a time during one of Justice Albie Sachs’ storied tours of South Africa’s new Constitutional Court building when it becomes clear that this is not just another tour, and that Justice Sachs is not just another tour guide.
The ninety-minute tour through the remarkable building is as much a journey through South Africa’s history as it is an exploration of architecture. On this day, the tour is being held for visitors from eight different countries, as well as a few South Africans.
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Near the end of the tour, Justice Sachs pauses and raises his eyes above the heads of his visitors and fixes his gaze upon a distant place the tourists cannot see. “I have a special feeling of delight whenever I come to work,” he says. “Here in the Court, there is an experience of intense satisfaction; a sensation of infinite joy.” As he speaks, Sachs holds his arms outstretched. More accurately, he holds out his left arm and the stub that remains of the right arm that was blown off—along with his right eye—by a car-bomb assassination attempt by apartheid-era police in 1988.
The tour is a journey through the past—both Sachs’
and South Africa’s—filled with unspeakable brutality, into
a future-oriented present notable for the brilliance of its happy possibilities.
Sachs has found this happiness only in the winter of his life. The disabling
bomb, a half year in solitary confinement, along with decades in exile
fighting the apartheid government, rendered Sachs decidedly stoic and,
just recently, he confessed to being uncertain about whether he could
express happiness after so many years of dealing with the brutality and
violence that had marked his life because of his opposition
to apartheid.
But a coincidence of timing has brought him delights he never thought himself capable of experiencing. In many ways, he regards the Constitutional Court as his baby, having guided the process from conception through construction and to which he applies continuing oversight. And now, at the age of 71, Sachs and his partner, Vanessa, have become the parents of a new son, Oliver.
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A Design for Transformation
Sachs’ tour of the Court, which has received support from Carnegie
Corporation of New York, begins at the heart of the site on what is now
called Constitution Hill, but was the location of a prison built in the
19th century that itself “is at the heart of South African history,”
Sachs explains. “It was a place where everybody locked up everybody.
The Brits built the prison to lock up the Boers. The Boers then locked
up the Brits, and later the Boers used it to lock up the Africans.”
The complex housed three infamous prisons. White inmates were kept in a fortress section. Another prison, “Number 4” as it was called, was known as “the natives’” jail. A women’s prison was added in 1909.
Hundreds of thousands of people were jailed in the complex, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Chief Albert Luthuli, a former head of the African National Congress (ANC). Mahatma Ghandi also spent time in this prison.
Mandela first visited the prison as a young lawyer defending blacks charged with violating apartheid laws, such as being in the cities without a pass book, or after dark. He was later imprisoned here himself after being arrested for treason. Finally, as president, Mandela visited the site in 1997 to announce the winners of the international competition to design the new Court building.
“Today,” Mandela joked during the festivities, “I feel distinctly uncomfortable. Here I am in prison once more, surrounded by judges who were also in prison…As soon as I finish speaking, I want to get out as quickly as possible, in case somebody loses the keys.”
Janina Masojoda was a member of the winning design team. Unlike many young South Africans who traveled abroad for education in the waning years of apartheid, Masojoda decided to return to South Africa after receiving a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991.
Masojoda says that she and her partner, Andrew Makin, were confident from the start of winning the commission for the first post-apartheid public building to be opened to design competition. There were 150 submissions, including 100 from highly renowned international architects. “For us,” she says, “it was the right project at the right time. The building had to tell the story of the meaning of the Constitution, and we had a vision for the broader site, which would include facilities for all the human rights institutions listed in the Constitution, such as the Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality.”