Lord Joffe

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2007

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Joel Joffe. For many years he was the chairman of Oxfam, before that he set up a hugely successful insurance company and most recently he's been campaigning for terminally ill people to have the right to die. But the career in which he has had the greatest impact is the one he was forced to give up more than 40 years ago - law.

In 1963, Joel Joffe was a young defence solicitor, so dismayed by the apartheid system of his native South Africa that he was on the brink of emigrating. Then he was asked to take over the defence of a group of ANC activists including Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Nelson Mandela.

The trial gripped the world and was all the more extraordinary because, far from aiming to secure his clients' freedom, Joel Joffe was simply fighting for them not to receive the death penalty. He tells Kirsty how, even in his prison clothes, Nelson Mandela was a figure of calm authority, who guided them through the trial.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Under Milk Wood by Richard Burton Book: A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela Luxury: Wind-up radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My castaway this week is Joel Joffy. For many years he was the chairman of Oxfam. Before that he set up a hugely
0:34.8	successful insurance company. Most recently he's been campaigning for terminally
0:38.9	ill people to have the right to die. But the career in which he had the greatest impact is the one he was forced to give up
0:45.5	more than 40 years ago, the law. In 1963, Joel Joffi was a young defense solicitor, so
0:51.9	dismayed by the apartheid system of his native South Africa
0:55.0	that he was on the brink of emigrating. Then he was persuaded to stay, to organize the defense
1:00.8	of a group of ANC activists including Walter
1:03.8	Susulu, Governor Beke and Nelson Mandela. He was the main defense attorney
1:08.5	throughout the trial and was described later by Mandela as the general behind the scenes of our defence.
1:15.0	What an extraordinary moment in history to be involved in Lord Joffi.
1:18.5	Can you start by explaining what your best hope was for the defendants?
1:23.0	Well, the trial was, from the point of view of the defense lawyers, was about saving the lives of these wonderful people.
1:33.2	And that was our main objective, but that was not the main objective of Nelson Mandela
1:38.4	and his colleagues.
1:39.7	They considered it of secondary importance. The important thing to them was that the grievances
1:46.5	and the reasons which drove them to the sort of violence which they initiated
1:51.9	needed to be brought to the attention of the world and they
1:55.6	wanted to put the government in the dock in the court of world opinion.
2:00.7	Nine members of the African National Congress were standing trial.
2:05.0	What did you make of them as individuals? You'd had no dealings with them before.
	...

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