apartheid.13 His friend Rusty Rostowsky recalls that their group were ‘all anti-government’.14 Perhaps, as was the case for his friend Denis Kuny (who went on to a distinguished career as an anti-apartheid advocate), there was no ‘dividing line’ in Arthur’s growing political awareness, but rather a gradual process of growing into an understanding of how unjust apartheid was.15 Perhaps, as Joel Joffe suggests, Arthur’s sense of justice was simply innate, and clear.16
One moment of Arthur’s engagement in law school politics does stand out. In 1953, George Bizos – then in the last year of his own Wits LLB degree – was a candidate for re-election to the Student Representative Council. By then Bizos was a veteran of student politics, and a sharp opponent of apartheid. In fact, two years earlier, in his first year, he had been involved in a clash with the Dean, H.R. Hahlo, over whether black students would be permitted to attend the Bar’s annual dinner, held at a hotel where liquor was served (and from which blacks were therefore barred). Bizos and his allies had prevailed on that occasion, but now, in 1953, at a candidates’ meeting in the Law Faculty, the issue came up again. Bizos recalled the event in his autobiography, when Arthur spoke out and asked, ‘What is right and what is wrong?’17
Arthur’s words convey a judgement not only about apartheid, but also about life. The question is not what is traditional – or what is politic or deferential. The question is, ‘What is right and what is wrong?’ George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson would go on to become lifelong friends, though that bond did not form until they became part of the legal team defending Nelson Mandela and the other accused in the Rivonia trial in 1963–4. And Arthur would ask more than once ‘what is right and what is wrong’ as he shaped the commitments that governed his life. Indeed, George Bizos once said ‘throughout our friendship this has been the one question that Arthur Chaskalson always asked’.18
But most of what Arthur did in his law school years does not seem to have been political. While he studied, he apprenticed as an articled clerk, the way of entry to practice as an attorney. (South Africa, like Britain, had a divided legal profession: in South Africa the courtroom lawyers, barristers in Britain, were called ‘advocates’ and members of the Bar, while the non-courtroom lawyers, solicitors in Britain, were called ‘attorneys’ and members of the Side Bar.) He did not intend to become an attorney, and in one respect this seems to have showed: he was late registering for his articles, and in fact only got the registration accomplished after his supervisor, an attorney named Charlie Johnson, became very agitated and told Arthur he had to take care of this. (After completing his articles, Arthur would take the attorney admission exam, but he was never admitted to practice as an attorney in South Africa.) But Arthur nevertheless had an outstanding placement for his articles, at the firm of Deneys Reitz. How did he get such good articles? He told Adrian Friedman in 2009 that the answer was family connections: his mother knew one of the partners in the firm, and had made phone calls to set up interview appointments for Arthur. He recalled, not for the first time in his interview with Friedman, that his mother was a dominant figure; it was nothing to her to call people up to have them do something.19
Arthur was initially articled to the attorney Claude Michael Reitz, son of Deneys Reitz (the firm’s founder). Michael Reitz, however, was a pilot and died in an aerobatic display in 1952. After that Arthur went to work with Charlie Johnson. Johnson deeply impressed Arthur, who called him ‘exceptionally brilliant’, and the feeling evidently was mutual. Arthur would later describe Johnson as one of the smartest lawyers he had ever known, and remember with admiration Johnson’s ability to encounter a legal matter and immediately dictate a concise memo, or a draft contract, to resolve it. Once, Arthur recalled, Johnson asked him for his views on one of these new matters; Arthur ventured a response based on its ‘look[ing] to me like something I had seen in mercantile law contracts for the benefit of third parties – some insurance thing – and I said I thought it might be that’. Johnson at once embodied Arthur’s point in ‘A note to Mr Jacobson [another partner] from Mr Chaskalson’. Arthur said, ‘I was actually quite shattered by that.’20 Johnson – besides teaching Arthur incisive, quick judgement – must have been impressed by what Arthur had offered. Later, Johnson invited Arthur to join the firm as a full-fledged attorney, but Arthur’s heart was set on coming to the Bar as an advocate. Along the way, however, Arthur had learned enough insurance law that he would be invited to write the annual chapter on developments in this field in the Annual Survey of South African Law when he was still a young advocate – and the Deneys Reitz firm would send cases (‘briefs’) to him, contributing to the rapid growth of his practice at the Bar.
A moment in Adrian Friedman’s discussion with Arthur about Charlie Johnson is perhaps more revealing about Arthur himself than about Johnson. Friedman thoughtfully asked Arthur why Johnson, whose capacity for fast and authoritative legal reasoning seemed to embody at least part of what advocates in South Africa pride themselves on, had not become an advocate. Arthur, who had already said that Johnson was ‘a very shy man’, first responded that ‘I don’t think he had the personality for that’. Adrian followed up by asking if Johnson was ‘too shy’, and then Arthur became unsure: ‘I don’t think – you know – I can’t tell you.’ Arthur’s first answer was clearly his intuitive judgement; why did he become so hesitant when asked to explain his view? One answer may be that Arthur was always more comfortable describing the work that was being done – he spoke at length about Johnson’s work style – than in analysing emotions. Another possibility is that he abhorred making negative judgements about others. Both of these may be part of the shyness and the politeness that Arthur showed over many years. But it’s clear Arthur was also fond of Johnson.
Two other moments from this period shed some light on Arthur’s developing political awareness. One comes directly from his articles. As he told Adrian Friedman, ‘there was an attempt to form an articled clerks’ association and there was a meeting. I went to the meeting and came back – it was obviously going to fail – articled clerks can’t really have an association because the turnover is too quick. You know, within a short time you are a boss.’ He had no wish to pursue a vain course of action. But it is interesting that he told Charlie Johnson about this meeting, and Johnson in turn indiscreetly told Jacobson, the senior partner. Jacobson ‘got very upset and sent for me. He says, I hear you are not satisfied with your position, and he went on at great length about articled clerks and about when he was young you had to pay to become a clerk and went on and on and then suddenly he said, well if you people say you don’t get enough work, come and look at this.’ Then he handed Arthur a 60-page debenture trust deed and said, ‘Go and look at that and see what you think of it!’ Arthur recalls: ‘I was, really I was, fairly taken aback by the whole incident, and Johnson was in the room at the time and was a little bit upset at what had happened and apologised to me because he had made a joke.’ Perhaps learning a lesson in discretion in the process, Arthur dealt with this problem by analysing the document ‘clause by clause’, and reflected that ‘In fact I had wonderful articles – really I wasn’t the messenger boy, I did terrific things.’21 The articled clerks’ life was not all work: Rusty Rostowsky recalls that the clerks used to get together every Thursday for lunch at Delmonico’s in downtown Johannesburg.22
The other political moment was decidedly extracurricular. Arthur’s older brother Sydney recalls that he (Sydney) had become active in the Torch Commando, an organisation built around World War II veterans, which made it its mission to protect political meetings of the United Party, the opposition party of its day, against physical disruption by National Party toughs. Though Sydney had not been in the war, he had received military training to assist in Israel’s war of independence, which ended before he could go. This military involvement, Sydney felt, ‘qualified’ him to become part of the Torch Commando, and he went on to become one of its leaders.23 Sydney invited Arthur to join him at Torch Commando events, three in all, probably in early 1952. Sydney recalled the details of the Vrededorp and Edenvale events in an email to Adrian Friedman:
I remember asking Arthur to join me and many others on a march from the City Hall to Vrededorp, to support Marais Steyn the U.P.
