Remembering Rivonia

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

South African journalist Gavin Fischer gets exclusive access to newly available recordings from one of the most significant trials in modern political history – The Rivonia Trial. He has a personal connection. His great-uncle Bram Fischer led the defence of Nelson Mandela and his co-accused during the trial in the early 1960s. Gavin looks back on the trial and Bram’s decision to use his white privilege to fight apartheid – rather than be part of it – with Denis Goldberg, one of the last survivors of the trial.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the BBC World Service, welcome to the latest edition of the documentary podcast.
0:06.0	Every week we bring you a range of stories from our presenters and reporters across the world.
0:11.0	Please do rate the documentary on your podcast app and leave a comment.
0:15.7	Let us know what you think.
0:17.0	With these words, the to the state against Nelson Mandela and Nine Out.
0:23.5	With these words, the Rovonia trial began in earnest.
0:27.0	It was December 1963, and in South Africa's Supreme Court
0:31.0	in Pretoria, Nelson Mandela and is co-accused
0:34.0	faced a possible death sentence for opposing the country's white minority rule.
0:38.1	I'm Gavin Fisher, a South African journalist, and I have a strong personal link to the trial.
0:44.0	Lord I appear for the accused.
0:47.0	The voice you hear now is my great uncle, Brahm Fisher,
0:50.0	who led the defense and played a big part in saving Mandela's life, but Brahms
0:54.7	role in the trial could have been so very different. As well as a lawyer he was
0:59.2	heavily involved in the anti-apartheid movement and could easily himself have been put in the dock at the Rovonia
1:04.7	trial.
1:05.7	He was later jailed for this work and died in prison in 1975 before I was born.
1:11.3	So gaining exclusive access to these trial recordings for the BBC World Service,
1:15.3	I've had my first chance to hear him speak.
1:18.1	I've just been made aware of what appears to be a most extraordinary and unheard of procedure.
1:24.0	Here he's objecting to a planned radio broadcast of the prosecution's opening address.
1:29.0	That it might be without your Lords consent, contempt of court and gravely prejudicial.
	...

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