The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs

by Albie Sachs

Genres: South Africa, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Diary, Law

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1969

About the author

Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was appointed by Nelson Mandela in 1994 and retired in October 2009. Justice Sachs gained international attention in 2005 as the author of the Court's holding in the case of Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie, in which the Court overthrew South Africa's statute defining marriage as between one man and one woman, finding this to be a violation of the Constitution's general mandate for equal protection for all and its specific mandate against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read about a quarter of the book I don't add books to my currently-reading shelf until I've read quite a bit as there are so many I just pick up and give up. A luxury afforded by having a bookshop. It is the story of Albie Sachs 164 days in solitary confinement in the days of apartheid in South Africa.

Two things have really resonated with me so far.

The first was when a very senior official and interrogator, possibly British, that where he was from, Eastern Europe, they would just shoot people like him rather than keep him in such 'luxury' for interrogation. Albie Sachs is South African, what the officer meant was that he was Jewish. If you aren't Jewish you would be surprised at the amount of anti-semitism around, stuff you read of more than personally directed, but still...

The second was his questioning how some monks could choose the life of an anchorite. To live in total silence and not to have anything unneccessary from the outside world. How they didn't go mad. Or perhaps they were.

I hope this book goes on being as brilliant as it is. Right now I'm reading the chapter detailing one day in the life of a man with 6 blankets, one mat, a toilet, a bible and some scraps of paper, and nothing else at all.

[Anjali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to give this 5 stars and move on, but since there are no reviews here, I will arbitrarily tell my personal story about the wonderful Albie Sachs and his life-changing book.

So at first, Albie Sachs was just some guy whose jail diary I picked off my late grandfather's shelf in Italy because it was (1) in English and (2) about some guy in jail (which for some reason still hooks me).

Then, he became my friend. You know, the way that people (fictional or real) become your friend when you read their most intimate story on your grandfather's armchair while on vacation. This guy was exactly who I wanted to be--in terms of his character, because I had no idea that I wanted to be a lawyer or anything. As a white lawyer in South Africa, Sachs took a stand against apartheid and found himself imprisoned and in solitary confinement. Everything he does in this book is exactly what I would want to do if I were imprisoned for political reasons. Not in a self-righteous or pretentious way. Just as a good person.

I wrote my college essays about the jail diary and how it spoke to me. Not that it was recognizably life-changing, but I had to write about something, I guess. There was a personal angle, involving my grandfather who died before I was born and had spent 5 years in a prison camp himself. I wouldn't look back at those essays now if you held a gun to my head.

Then, I basically forgot about Albie Sachs.

Fast forward about 8 years, and for some unknown reason, I'm going to be a lawyer. And you know what happened to Albie Sachs? Well first of all, he went into exile from South Africa and lost his arm to a car bomb planted by agents of the South African government in Mozambique. Second, after generations of fighting for justice in his country, he helped to draft its first democratic constitution, and third, he became a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa! He happens to be the author of a moving opinion allowing same-sex marriage in South Africa, and also a bunch of other books that I now intend to read. Of course, it is entirely unforgivable that I didn't know any of this history at the time I was writing my lame college essays about him, but I'm going to blame the absence of wikipedia and leave it at that.

Justice Sachs gave a wonderful speech at my school and he showed a video he narrated about the meaningful art and architecture of his Court. I was ridiculously nervous, but with a little prompting I went and talked to him about the jail diary, about my awe for him, and a little bit about my grandfather. And you know what he did?? He put his one remaining arm on my shoulders and asked me for a hug!!! It was kind of the best moment ever.

Epilogue: That night, I went to a discussion about the different ways to be a public interest lawyer, where we were all super angsty about what perfect job would let us to make a difference without imposing our own agenda on the people or being a patch that covers up real problems, etc. etc. And well, I thought about Albie Sachs, who had inspired me as a teenager just by being a good and strong person in the face of injustice, and who now is--seriously!--a justice on the Constitutional Court. And I mean, you can hardly plan out a career track like that, right? You just kind of fight for what you believe in, when the fight is required of you, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And sometimes you make a difference just by reaching out your one arm and hugging a poor angsty law student.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst enduring 168 days of solitary confinement under South Africa's apartheid regime, Albie Sachs wrote in order to keep himself sane. The result is neither self pitying nor self indulgent but honest, intelligent, occasionally humourous and insightful, such as that described in the excerpt below;

...being alone all the time, day in and day out, has had a disintegrative effect on my thinking, and I find it difficult to organise ideas and to sustain interest in them. My present world is stale and largely depopulated. I suck from it what materials I can to feed my mind, but I am always starved of stimulation. The mind is not a free floating entity that can activate itself and function in dependently of it's physical habitat. My mind lives in my body, and my body is caged in here in a tiny world which is like a zoo. My thoughts prey on themselves....What I need is stimulation, so that my senses have immediate contact with the world of movement and emotion. In order to write I must live. It is not enough to merely stay alive. Every now and then a new thought germinates in my conciousness, but it swells up quickly and then drifts away for ever, like a balloon lost in the sky.

[Sergio GRANDE · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is surprisingly well-written for a jail diary. But then again, the author went on to become South Africa's Chief Justice.
Not such a great literary piece, but an outstanding historical document.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 1967 when I first read this book, it was an insight into the South African Apartheid system and it's notion of Justice as well as a testament to resilience of this young lawyer. I thoroughly enjoyed it.