The lawyer who made sure no one could claim ignorance about Biko`s death, calls on colleagues to defend judges.

Former Constitutional Court judge Johann Kriegler describes Sir Sydney Kentridge, QC and advocate at the Johannesburg Bar since 1949, thus: `He was patient, courteous, generally quite quiet. But merciless.`Merciless with a scalpel, as in the case of the Biko inquest, coldly incisive; lancing the cancer, laying bare the sordid acts of evil men.`Kriegler was speaking at a dinner recently hosted by the Johannesburg Bar to honour Kentridge and celebrate his 60 years as an advocate. Other speakers were former chief justice Arthur Chaskalson and senior counsel Fanie Cilliers. Lawyers are generally not prone to exaggeration.

As Cilliers joked, `A good lawyer says: where there`s smoke, there`s smoke.` So it is noteworthy when a lawyer calls one of his peers `probably one of the best advocates in the world`. When the compliment is delivered by Chaskalson, one of the best judges in the world, at a gathering of most of the senior advocates in Johannesburg (and judges and former judges), the praise becomes even more significant. But this kind of praise is in no short supply for Kentridge. `The greatest advocate of our generation`, `peerless` and `in a class of his own` are just some of the praises heaped on him.

Kentridge showed the world that Black Consciousness Move¬ment leader Stephen Bantu Biko was brutally killed by police. The 1977 Biko inquest is regarded as one of Kentridge`s biggest triumphs, despite the predictable finding of accidental death. Chaskalson quoted the Sunday Times`s description of the effect of Kentridge`s performance at the inquest: `Nobody can plead ignorance. Nobody can say: `But I didn`t know.``Every South African must now answer to his own conscience and submit to the judgment of history on his actions.`Chaskalson said: `For many, a selective amnesia put that to rest; until the hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission some 20 years later. To which their response was: We are shocked. We did not know.``The inquest was later dramatised into a play and a film.

Human rights veteran Adv George Bizos was Kentridge`s junior at the inquest. Chaskalson said that when Bizos saw the film, hesaid: `Kentridge was better.` Kentridge was also one of the team who represented Nelson Mandela and 90 other leaders of the liberation movement in the 1958-61 treason trial. He also represented Chief Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and many others who fell fool of apartheid`s laws.

Kentridge took silk in Johannesburg in 1965. He left for London, becoming a member of the English Bar. He was appointed QC in 1984 In London, his contribution to human rights jurisprudence grew. The UK Independent once said: `The case list of Sir Sydney Kentridge chronicles some of the most defining moments of the last 40 years.`

In 1999, while representing Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, he persuaded the European Court of Human Rights that the death penalty was `an unacceptable form of punishment` which can `no longer be seen as having any legitimate place in a democratic society`.

He was knighted by the queen in 1999 and last year was awarded the Order of the Baobab (Gold) by former president Thabo Mbeki.

In 1995, when SA`s Constitutional Court was established, Kentridge returned to SA to take up an acting position on that bench, delivering its first judgment in SA versus Zuma. Chaskalson, who was in Kentridge`s advocates group, said Kentridge taught his colleagues `the importance of standing up to injustice and the abuse of power, and speaking out when there was a need to do so`. `We should not forget that lesson from our past, not allow ourselves, again, to fall victim to selective amnesia.`

Kriegler said Kentridge`s success was not only attributable to his brilliance. `If you go through Sydney`s performance at the Biko inquest, you will see the signs of meticulous homework being done, over a lengthy period,` He said Kentridge`s preparation for cases made it possible for, him to present `an imperturbable calm while actually boiling inside. If you worked with Sydney as a junior, you realised that he was a man of great passion and compassion. But he was controlled. Because he knew precisely what he was trying to achieve.`

In his speech at the event, Kentridge acknowledged that he often clashed with apartheid judges. `Even in the supreme court, one sometimes came before judges whose hostility to the defence in political trials was scarcely disguised. Judges for whom the police could do no wrong. `The piece of advocacy of which I am most proud, if I may just boast for a moment, is that once, I persuaded Mr Justice (Piet) Cillie to reject the evidence of an officer in the security police.`

Kentridge spoke fondly of his days at the Johannesburg Bar, but ended his speech on a sombre note, when he admonished the Bar to protect judicial independence. He said criticism of judgments, even robust criticism, was `always permissible. Judges are not infallible. They are not gods. `But the sort of attacks I have in mind and which I`ve seen in news-papers in the UK and, more indi¬rectly, in the US, are attacks consisting of reckless and unfounded allegations, that decisions of the courts have been motivated by a political agenda.`

Kentridge said that in the UK and US, such attacks came from! `politicians of all persuasions and from sections of the press` and that they were `deplorable`. `They cause pressures which may in themselves undermine judicial independence. They lead to a loss of respect, not merely for particular judges or courts, but for the judiciary as an institution.
`It`s difficult for judges themselves to respond to these attacks,` he said, adding that it was the duty of the organised bar to `vigorously and openly` defend thejudiciary against unwarranted attacks.

Kentridge said there was one type of attack that advocates were especially well placed to answer. `When judges, applying the law, have held that some executive action or some law is uncon-stitutional, one hears expressions of outrage, claims that here we have unelected judges overruling the decisions of an elected government or legislature, which, it is said, is the height of undemo¬cratic conduct. `The answer, which we as lawyers know, is that the judges have not usurped power. `Their judicial powers, in this country, have been conferred on them by a constitution; enacted by a fully democratic Parliament, after the broadest domestic demo¬cratic consultation. The powers exercised by the courts under the constitution have complete demo¬cratic legitimacy.`

Kentridge`s injunction left many at the event pensive. `We`re all so depressed now,` said a junior counsel afterward. As ill-consid¬ered statements, and equally ill-considered reactions, about the judiciary are bandied about by politicians and the press, lawyers seem to have retreated, bewil-dered, into their shells.

In SA, defending the judiciary is all the more complex because, historically, as Kentridge made clear, there is as much to deplore as there is to laud.

FRANNY RABKIN