Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a lawyer. He was born in South Africa into a white Jewish

family who were strong supporters of black rights. His belief in justice led

naturally to a love of freedom for everyone. In the 1960s he was imprisoned

and spent nearly six months in solitary confinement. Then came 24 years of exile but

still actively supporting the ANC, the African National Congress.

For that in 1988, he was blown up by a car bomb and lost an arm and the sight of an eye.

Today he's back in the country of his birth, one of the architects of the new

system of government and a constitutional judge. His books reveal him to be free of bitterness.

He's an optimist working hard for the future of his beloved country.

Looking back, I have a sense of elation that we never gave up, he says. He is Albee Sachs. You can say that of course,

because you won, you triumphed.

Albie, the freedom fighter, became albie Sachs, the high court judge.

But can you really have believed that through all of those years? Can you really

have been always with optimism in your heart?

We never lost the belief. It was a conviction. It wasn't based on rational evidence and I remember we used to knock on doors and say

Apartheid is terrible. Everybody agreed and one day we will have a non-racial

Constitution which all be equal and people smiled and said well it's not really possible and

when Mandela and co come out of prison they'll be filled with bitterness and rage and hatred and we just knew it wouldn't be like

that.

You said something interesting which is that it was the bomb which maimed you that blew the

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