Bizos
Anti-apartheid icon and renowned human rights lawyer, George Bizos, who defended Nelson Mandela on treason charges for which he escaped the death penalty has died at the age of aged 92.
The announcement was made by South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa during an online media briefing saying that the right’s lawyer died yesterday. He added, “This is very sad for our country.”
According to a family statement, Bizos died of natural causes in Johannesburg.
Bizos, a celebrated lawyer represented Mandela during the Rivonia Trial which saw Mandela and seven others sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 on charges of seeking to overthrow the racist apartheid government. Many had expected the death penalty.
President Ramaphosa described Bizos as one of the lawyers who “contributed immensely to the attainment of our democracy,” adding that “He had an incisive legal mind and was one of the architects of our constitution.”
Bizos arrived in South Africa as a 13-year-old war refugee from Greece and became one of its most respected lawyers.
In a long career dedicated to defending democratic values and human rights, the soft-spoken Bizos represented a series of activists against the white minority regime and later helped to finalise the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa.
He worked into his late 80s and was quite loved by the people of South Africa. One of his last major trials secured government payouts in 2014 for families of 34 miners shot dead by police at Marikana northwest of Johannesburg two years earlier.