Thursday | September 10, 2020
George Bizos, renowned human right lawyer, died yesterday in his Johannesburg home.
In his tribute to the anti-apartheit lawyer, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Bizo contributed immensely to the fight for freedom and democracy. He played a critical role in the crafting of the constitution.
According to Daily Maverick:
Born in 1928 in Greece, he came to South Africa with his father in 1941 as a refugee together with his father. Bizos studied and completed his law degree at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The celebrated lawyer as the champion of human rights was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar in 1954.
He was 92 years old when he passed on. Bizos came to South Africa as a “store away kid” on the aeroplane from Greece, former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke told eNCA’s Vuyo Mvoko.
Bizos represented the former SA President (the late) Nelson “Madiba” Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Khathrada in the “treason” Revonia trial in 1963/64.
The Legal Resources Centre and the Constitutional Litigation Unit stole most of his boisterous life in legalies. Go was also one of the Executors of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Among his high profile cases he represented:
- The Steven Bantu Biko family,
- Chris Hani family
- The Cradock Four — Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli,
- The Truth and Reconciliation
- The Ahmed Timol family,
- The families of the Marikana massacre families,
- Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) late leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a 2004 treason trial in Zimbabwe, etc.
In his biography, My Own Liberator, Moseneke wrote that Bizos was an obvious choice in a “legal team” picked by Madiba to represent his wife Winifred Nomzamo Mandela.
In his interview with the late Xolani Gwala of Talk Radio 702, he intimated that: “The treatment of blacks was atrocious”. The flashback broadcast was flighted on Thursday, Sep 10, 2020, as part of remembering the life of the deceased legal eagle. Bizos said he “paid dearly” for associating with black people. He remarked that he was labeled the “enemy of the state”.
It has been widely reported that he suffered ill-health before he passed on. Bizos was reluctant to retire from his benevolent yet catalyst in the democracy revolution that was born in 1994.