Odyssey to Freedom

"In October 1941 a young boy and his father disembarked at Durban

harbour from a large liner commissioned into emergency service by

the Allies. They were Greek refugees from their German-occupied

motherland. They spoke no English. They had little money and no

prospects. They were heroes, but no one knew that.

Some months earlier, father and son, together with two other

Greek men and seven New Zealand soldiers, had set off in an open

boat in an attempt to escape the German invaders. For two days and

nights, sailing by instinct and the stars, battered by fierce winds,

their food stocks running low, their water bottles almost empty, they

ploughed across the Mediterranean towards Crete, little knowing

that the island was soon to capitulate to the Germans.

Fortunately the escapees sailed into an Allied fleet while it was still

light and were rescued. Had they encountered the fleet in darkness

their fate might have been dire, as, sometimes, in the horrors of war

no prisoners were taken – a reality the young boy discovered not

many nights later.

The boy who stood on the Durban docks, appalled at the sight

of Zulu men doing the work of animals by pulling rickshaws, would

become one of the leading human-rights lawyers in the country that

his father had chosen because the pavements were allegedly paved

with gold. The boy was George Bizos.

Today George Bizos is a legendary name, renowned throughout the

legal profession and beyond. More than that, he is a figure recognised

in townships across South Africa. For as an advocate, Bizos is

associated with the Treason Trial of the late 1950s; the subsequent

Rivonia Trial where his colleague, client and friend Nelson Mandela

was sentenced to life imprisonment; the trial of Bram Fischer; that of

the Namibian Toivo ja Toivo; a host of major human-rights trials through

the 1970s and 1980s right up to the amnesty hearings of the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission; and, in 2004, with the treason trial of the

Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, in that country. A consummate lawyer, a self-styled street fighter with a quiet tone of

voice and a beguiling smile who, in cross examination, would slice

through the evidence of security police and apartheid apologists

alike, Bizos haunted the courtrooms of the apartheid regime. For

four decades he exposed State lies and hypocrisy, State brutality

and murder. In response the State badgered and threatened him,

bugged his phone, obstructed his hearings. But the advocate was

not to be intimidated.

In this compelling and long-awaited autobiography, George Bizos

reveals the drama, the heartache and the moments of triumph, the

fears and the frustrations of his long career as an advocate. He writes,

moreover, about himself and his family, and the domestic moments

that made bearable the brutal years. He revels in his return to his

beloved Greece, his joy at the Athens Olympic Games and his love of

modern Greek poetry.

Above all, his is a warm and compassionate account, related by

a raconteur of note. It is history told from the inside."