Sydney Kentridge

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Sydney Kentridge KCMG , QC (born November 5, 1922 in Johannesburg ) is a retired South African- British lawyer and judge. He was against apartheid . Among other things, he defended Nelson Mandela in the Treason Trial in the late 1950s and represented the Steve Bikos family in the judicial investigation into his death in 1977 .

Life

Kentridge's father, Morris Kentridge, was a Jewish lawyer born as Morris Kantrovitch in Lithuania , who only married at the age of 40 and was a member of the South African Labor Party from 1920 to 1958 . Sydney Kentridge attended Edward VII High School in Johannesburg before graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand with a law degree. During World War II he worked as an intelligence officer in the Union Defense Force in North Africa and Italy. He then attended Exeter College , Oxford . He earned a Bachelor of Arts in law in 1948 .

Sydney Kentridge worked in a law firm before joining the South African Supreme Court in 1949 . In 1950 he won a lawsuit for the unionist Solly Sachs against the state. 1958 to 1961 he took part in the Treason Trial as a lawyer for the accused opposition, where he defended Nelson Mandela, among others. The trial ended with the acquittal of all defendants. In 1965 he was promoted to Senior Counsel . He defended the three future Nobel Peace Prize winners Albert Luthuli , Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa . Kentridge's cross-examination tactic was considered very effective. In 1977, as a lawyer for the family of Black Consciousness activist Steve Biko, he succeeded in explaining to the assembled world press that Biko had been killed by police officers - even if the court ultimately ruled differently. In the course of the autopsy of Biko's body, Kentridge represented the deceased's family on legal issues and was assisted by George Bizos and Ernie Wentzel on the instructions of Shan Chetty .

In 1981 Sydney and his wife Felicia Kentridge moved to London. Kentridge was a lawyer in the United Kingdom from 1977 to 2013. In 1984 he was named Queen's Counsel and in 1986 he became a Bencher of the Lincoln's Inn Bar Association . He defended Townsend Thoresen (now P&O Ferries ) after the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry off Zeebrugge in 1987. Sydney Kentridge represented the British government in a legal dispute over the Maastricht Treaty and opposed the government when the Interior Minister had to answer for disregard of the court. From 1981 to 1989 Kentridge was Judge of Appeal in Botswana . From 1988 to 1992 he held the same position for the islands of Jersey and Guernsey . Like his wife, he had retained his South African citizenship and took part in South Africa's first free elections in 1994 . From 1995 to 1996 he was Acting Justice at the newly established Constitutional Court of South Africa in Johannesburg. In 2005 he represented Abdullah Öcalan before the European Court of Human Rights in his lawsuit against Turkey. On his 90th birthday he was still working at the British Supreme Court ; he retired the following year.

Kentridge married the lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Felicia Geffen (1930-2015) in 1952; the marriage lasted until the death of Felicia Kentridge. She was one of the founders of the Legal Resources Center (LRC) in 1979 . Her husband was one of the founding members of the LRC board of directors. Four children are from the marriage. The eldest son William Kentridge lives as a visual artist and filmmaker in South Africa.

Awards

Kentridge holds honorary doctorates from the University of Leicester , the University of Cape Town , the University of Natal , the University of London , the University of Sussex , the University of the Witwatersrand, Seton Hall University and the University of Buckingham .

In 1986, Kentridge was elected an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College. He has been Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George since 1999 . In 2008 he received the South African Order of the Baobab in gold. He was recognized for Lifetime Achievement at the UK's initial Halsbury Legal Awards in 2013 . The General Council of the Bar of South Africa presents the Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award annually for services to the law.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Report of December 2, 1977 bbc.co.uk (English), accessed April 30, 2016
  2. ↑ Morris Ketridges biography at universitystory.gla.ac.uk (English), accessed April 30, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c d e f portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on April 29, 2016
  4. ↑ a b c Portrait of Arthur Chaskalson on the occasion of Kentridge's 85th birthday (English: PDF; 2.36 MB), accessed on April 29, 2016
  5. ↑ John Gapper: Lunch with the FT: Sydney Kentridge. Financial Times, January 18, 2013, accessed April 29, 2016
  6. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa . Johannesburg 1978, p. 160
  7. ^ Lines of resistance. The New Yorker, January 18, 2010, accessed March 30, 2018
  8. ↑ Award ceremony 2009 (English; PDF; 357 kB), accessed on April 29, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Kentridge, Sydney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African-British lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg