The State vs. Nelson Mandela: The Trial that Changed South Africa by Joel Joffe Nelson Mandela Denis Goldberg

Author:Joel Joffe, Nelson Mandela, Denis Goldberg
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780746159
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC

7 The Defence

We had five weeks in which to prepare our defence. It was at once simple insofar as so much was admitted by us, and yet extremely complicated. Because of the sheer volume of evidence, especially documentary, the defence virtually divided into two separate sections. On the one hand, consideration had to be given to the individual position of each accused, the extent of the evidence against him. On the other hand, there was the overall consideration— which to the accused seemed to be the most important—that of establishing the true facts of the movements in which they had been engaged and their true aims as distinct from the gross distortions presented by the prosecution.

For both aspects, a monumental job of analysis of the verbal, and more particularly the documentary, evidence was required. The documents numbered several hundred, many of them lengthy, involved, political treatises of many pages. They all had to be considered in detail, analysed, interpreted and fitted into the right place in the overall story in a way which the prosecution had scarcely ever attempted to do, and when it had, had done wrongly. The documents were tackled by one part of our legal team, the individual positions of the accused by another. It was evident from the beginning that the case against the individuals was not of equal strength. For at least three—Bernstein, Mhlaba and Kathrada—in that order, there was virtually no evidence of complicity in the alleged conspiracy. For the others, the evidence was either overwhelming, or complicity had already been conceded by counsel in the course of cross-examination of witnesses.

So far as Bernstein, Mhlaba and Kathrada were concerned, a detailed explanation of every piece of evidence would have to be given, and their pleas of ‘not guilty’ argued fully. So far as the others were concerned, what was of importance was chiefly that the record should be set straight, and distortions in the prosecution case rectified. This at least was how they saw it. We lawyers saw it somewhat differently, our bias being not politics, but law.

The lives of the accused were at stake. The State case alleged that they had already embarked on the organisation of armed insurrection and guerrilla warfare, and that in pursuit of this plan they had already arranged for the intervention of military forces of foreign powers against the Republic of South Africa. By way of aggravation of sentence, the State had led much evidence of cases of murder, and of sabotage where murder could be said to have been attempted. With this case accepted by the court, the peril to the lives of the accused was real and grave.

The accused denied absolutely that they had decided to launch guerrilla warfare, though they admitted that all their planning was based on a realisation that if all else failed, the time would come when they would turn to guerrilla warfare. They were quite prepared for it and ready to admit it. But that time had not, in their view, been reached at the time of their arrest.

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