of law,’ and the Bar responded within a matter of days. Arthur ‘wrote to the [Bar] council asking for reasons’ for its decision. ‘They replied that they don’t give reasons for their decisions.’ Sydney Kentridge and Arthur Chaskalson represented him, Sydney (the more senior of the two) taking the leading role. (George Bizos writes that both Sydney and Arthur ‘were livid at the Bar Council’s actions at striking Bram from the roll’.)29 Bram’s daughter Ilse thinks that perhaps Bram reached out to Arthur, whom he knew much better than Sydney did, to ask them to represent him.30 Fischer had himself been a leader of the organised Bar for many years, and he was deeply distressed by the rejection by his Bar colleagues. He tried to explain his actions in a letter to another lawyer:
When an advocate does what I have done … it requires an act of will to overcome his deeply rooted respect of legality, and he takes the step only when he feels that, whatever the consequences to himself, his political conscience no longer permits him to do otherwise. He does it not because of a desire to be immoral, but because to act otherwise would, for him, be immoral.31
In court, in hearings in late October and early November 1965, Sydney Kentridge would argue that ‘It was doubtful … if there were any member of the Bar that had known Bram who would be prepared to stand up and say, “He is a less honourable man than I am.”’ But his legal challenge was unsuccessful, and he was struck from the roll, in a judgment by the same judge, De Wet, who had presided over the Rivonia trial. George Bizos felt that ‘nothing hurt Bram … more than this case and this decision, for he had acted from the highest of principles, and yet had been considered unworthy and dishonourable by his colleagues’.32
When Bram was arrested, on 12 November 1965, George Bizos recalls that he ‘spotted Arthur Chaskalson alone in a corner at the back of the [main criminal court in Johannesburg, where Bizos was already engaged in a trial], and we were able to talk briefly about Bram’s arrest’. ‘He urged me to continue with the case and to control my sadness and despondency. Along with senior members of the Bar, he believed that Bram would be detained incommunicado and tortured. The security police would want to know his underground contacts. Arthur had been briefed by [attorney] William Aronsohn to visit Bram at Ilse’s request.’33
Arthur and others feared for the worst, but they reacted by mustering the resources they had to try to protect Bram. As it turned out, Bram was not being held for interrogation but rather for trial. Although General Hendrik van den Bergh ‘was curious how Arthur knew that Bram wanted to see him, he sanctioned the visit. Bram was as well as could be expected.’34 Arthur recalled that that day, the day after Bram’s arrest, ‘his attitude … was one of self-reproach at having allowed himself to be captured’.35
One other, chilling note was struck in this period. Roman Eisenstein recalls that General Van den Bergh called Arthur after Bram’s arrest and said, ‘Mr Chaskalson, I’ve got your friend.’36 The unspoken message, it seems, was that the security police believed that Arthur and Bram were in league, and wanted Arthur to know that he was in their sights too.
The result of Bram’s period underground was that the charges against him were now multiplied. George Bizos and Sydney Kentridge represented him; Arthur was involved in another political trial, which he offered to drop, ‘but Bram felt it important that he continue’. Even so Arthur was able to assist and even attend the trial when the other case was not in session.37 The trial began in late March 1966; the case against Bram would take only a week to present. Bram himself did not testify but rather, like Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia trial, he made an unsworn statement from the dock. In it he declared:
I accept, my Lord, the general rule that for the protection of a society laws should be obeyed. But when the laws themselves become immoral, and require the citizen to take part in an organised system of oppression – if only by his silence and apathy – then I believe that a higher duty arises. This compels one to refuse to recognise such laws …
My conscience, my Lord, does not permit me to afford these laws such recognition as even a plea of guilty would involve. Hence, though I shall be convicted by this Court, I cannot plead guilty. I believe that the future may well say that I acted correctly.
Now he spoke without ambivalence of the necessity for his having gone underground:
My Lord, it was to keep faith with all those dispossessed by apartheid that I broke my undertaking to the Court, that I separated myself from my family, pretended I was someone else, and accepted the life of a fugitive. I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act. I knew what they expected of me, and I did it. I felt responsible, not to those who are indifferent to the sufferings of others, but to those who are concerned. I knew, my Lord, that by valuing above all their judgement, I would be condemned by people who are content to see themselves as respectable and loyal citizens. I cannot regret any such condemnation that may follow me.38
His words did not change the result (nor did he expect they would – he had expressly declined to ask for forgiveness or plead for mercy). He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He would never be free again.
Meanwhile, life went on, and Arthur’s connections with the Fischer family remained and even deepened. The families grew to be social friends and more than that – Bram’s daughter Ruth felt the Chaskalsons had become part of her extended family, always welcoming and always ready to do whatever they could for her.39 One of the ways that Arthur could help was with his professional skill. Bram’s daughter Ilse had been directly involved in helping him to go underground without being stopped by the security police, and she had resumed contact with him during his time in hiding. Bram had also brought her onto the Central Committee of the illegal Communist Party, and she would be officially listed by the government as a Communist within a week of Bram’s trial. She was, in other words, seriously vulnerable herself. Perhaps while Bram was underground, Ilse went to Arthur to discuss what she should do. For the first time she laid out to him all the facts about her own involvement. He was unfazed. With her he considered her circumstances, took into account her goal of remaining in the country, and came to a conclusion: he advised her to stay out of sight for a while.40 As he had with his friend Toni Shimoni in earlier and more innocent times, Arthur showed his ability to take a situation in hand and guide someone he cared about in negotiating it. He would advise Ilse’s sister Ruth as well, and she too remembered him always being incisive and clear.41
Fischer’s son Paul, who had cystic fibrosis, earned an honours degree at the University of Cape Town and returned to Johannesburg. He and his sister Ilse regularly had dinner at the Chaskalsons’ home.42 But Paul succumbed to his illness. The government refused Fischer permission to attend his son’s funeral. The family felt that Arthur, their friend, was the natural person to give the funeral eulogy.43 The strength of Arthur’s feeling for Paul, and for his father, was evident in his words. Saying that ‘Paul had the same integrity and commitment “which made Bram the great man that he is”’, Arthur continued: ‘He was Paul Fischer; a boy who grew into a young man, who lived fully, and was loved by all who knew him … He would not have wanted us to gather here today to pay tribute to him; but that is our right and he is not here to prevent it, nor to prevent our saying that we are glad that he lived and that we knew him.’44
At least once Arthur provided legal advice to Fischer while he was imprisoned. We know this from the memoir of the Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg, who writes:
Bram, through his daughter Ilse, asked Arthur Chaskalson if there was an arguable case to put to a court to win the right of access to news [for the political prisoners at Pretoria Central]. He replied that there was a very weak case. Bram did not want to embarrass his fellow advocate by asking him to argue a weak case and allowed the matter to drop.45
Fischer’s
