The Courtroom As A Space Of Resistance Reflections On 50 Years Of The Rivonia Trial

This volume returns to the Rivonia courtroom to engage with Mandela's masterful performance, when he stood before Justice de Wet in Pretoria's Palace of Justice and delivered one of the most spectacular and liberating statements ever made from a dock. Cutting across a wide-range of critical theories and discourses, contributors reflect on the personal, spatial, temporal, performative and literary dimensions of that constitutive event. By redefining the spaces, institutions and discourses of law, contributors present a fresh perspective that re-sets the margins of what can be thought and said in the courtroom.

Fifty years before his death in 2013, Nelson Mandela stood before Justice de Wet in Pretoria's Palace of Justice and delivered one of the most spectacular and liberating statements ever made from a dock. In what came to be regarded as "the trial that changed South Africa", Mandela summed up the spirit of the liberation struggle and the moral basis for the post-Apartheid society. In this blistering critique of Apartheid and its perversion of justice, Mandela transforms the law into a sword and shield. He invokes it while undermining it, uses it while subverting it, and claims it while defeating it. Wise and strategic, Mandela skilfully reimagines the courtroom as a site of visibility and hearing, opening up a political space within the legal. This volume returns to the Rivonia courtroom to engage with Mandela's masterful performance of resistance and the dramatic core of that transformative event. Cutting across a wide-range of critical theories and discourses, contributors reflect on the personal, spatial, temporal, performative, and literary dimensions of that constitutive event. By redefining the spaces, institutions and discourses of law, contributors present a fresh perspective that re-sets the margins of what can be thought and said in the courtroom.

Great speeches have the power to bring about political change, and South Africa lays claim to some of the world’s most skilled orators, from Nelson Mandela, whose courageous statement from the dock inspired the liberation struggle, to Desmond Tutu, whose ‘Rainbow People of God’ speech prepared the country for a new era. On the other side of the political spectrum, who can forget P.W. Botha’s infamous Rubicon speech, an oratorical flop which took the country backwards during the 1980s, or F.W. de Klerk’s unbanning of the ANC in 1990, which took it forwards again? Speeches that Shaped South Africa is the first collection of these historic utterances, featuring key speeches from the beginning of apartheid to the present. It includes Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’, Thabo Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’ and Mmusi Maimane’s ‘Broken Man’ speech. Also featured are Bram Fischer, Helen Suzman, Steve Biko, Winnie Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Julius Malema and many others. The book covers past and present shenanigans in Parliament, clandestine broadcasts on Radio Freedom, moving funeral eulogies that celebrate our political giants, and the informal rhetoric of populist crowd-pleasers. Accompanying each speech is a commentary that places it in a historical context and explores its effects. Accessible and engaging, this analysis is based on original research and offers fresh insights into events. This is a fascinating journey through South African history over the past seventy years.

This edited collection examines the culture of surveillance as it is expressed in the built environment. Expanding on discussions from previous collections; Spaces of Surveillance: States and Selves (2017) and Surveillance, Race, Culture (2018), this book seeks to explore instances of surveillance within and around specific architectural entities, both historical and fictitious, buildings with specific social purposes and those existing in fiction, film, photography, performance and art. Providing new readings of, and expanding on Foucault’s work on the panopticon, these essays examine the role of surveillance via disparate fields of enquiry, such as the humanities, social sciences, technological studies, design and environmental disciplines. Surveillance, Architecture and Control seeks to engender new debates about the nature of the surveilled environment through detailed analyses of architectural structures and spaces; examining how cultural, geographical and built space buttress and produce power relations. The various essays address the ongoing fascination with contemporary notions of surveillance and control.

Studies what lawyers do in challenging contexts of conflict, authoritarianism, and the transition from violence.

Fifty years before his death in 2013, Nelson Mandela stood before Justice de Wet in Pretoria's Palace of Justice and delivered one of the most spectacular and liberating statements ever made from a dock. In what came to be regarded as "the trial that changed South Africa", Mandela summed up the spirit of the liberation struggle and the moral basis for the post-Apartheid society. In this blistering critique of Apartheid and its perversion of justice, Mandela transforms the law into a sword and shield. He invokes it while undermining it, uses it while subverting it, and claims it while defeating it. Wise and strategic, Mandela skilfully reimagines the courtroom as a site of visibility and hearing, opening up a political space within the legal. This volume returns to the Rivonia courtroom to engage with Mandela's masterful performance of resistance and the dramatic core of that transformative event. Cutting across a wide-range of critical theories and discourses, contributors reflect on the personal, spatial, temporal, performative, and literary dimensions of that constitutive event. By redefining the spaces, institutions and discourses of law, contributors present a fresh perspective that re-sets the margins of what can be thought and said in the courtroom.

With a unique transitional justice perspective on the Arab Spring, this book assesses the relocation of transitional justice from the international paradigm to Islamic legal systems. The Arab uprisings and new and old conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and other contexts where Islam is a prominent religion have sparked an interest in localising transitional justice in the legal systems of Muslim-majority communities to uncover the truth about past abuse and ensure accountability for widespread human rights violations. This raises pressing questions around how the international paradigm of transitional justice, and in particular its truth-seeking aims, might be implemented and adapted to local settings characterised by Muslim majority populations, and at the same time drawing from relevant norms and principles of Islamic law. This book offers a critical analysis of the relocation of transitional justice from the international paradigm to the legal systems of Muslim-majority societies in light of the inherently pluralistic realities of these contexts. It also investigates synergies between international law and Islamic law in furthering truth-seeking, the formation of collective memories and the victims' right to know the truth, as key aims of the international paradigm of transitional justice and broadly supported by the shari'ah. This book will be a useful reference for scholars, practitioners and policymakers seeking to better understand the normative underpinnings of (potential) transitional truth-seeking initiatives in the legal systems of Muslim-majority societies. At the same time, it also proposes a more critical and creative way of thinking about the challenges and opportunities of localising transitional justice in contexts where the principles and ideas of Islamic law carry different meanings.

The only account of this seminal trial, written by Mandela's defence attorney The only account of this seminal trial, written by Mandela’s defence lawyer and with a new foreword by Denis Goldberg, accused alongside Mandela and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 11 July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia near Johannesburg, arresting alleged members of the high command of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Together with the already imprisoned Nelson Mandela, they were put on trial and charged with conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government by violent revolution. Their expected punishment was death. In this compelling book, their defence attorney, Joel Joffe, gives a blow-by-blow account of the most important trial in South Africa’s history, vividly portraying the characters of those involved, and exposing the astonishing bigotry and rampant discrimination faced by the accused, as well as showing their incredible courage under fire.