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The apartheid regime thus denied Bizos citizenship for three decades despite his permanent residence.
But his fight for the freedom of the then oppressed majority was relentless.
Ramaphosa added that Bizos’ personal experience with injustice steered him toward being an activist lawyer at any cost. Even though the apartheid government denied him citizenship, they still treated him better than blacks, and that annoyed him.
“We read in his memoirs how it amazed him that he, a refugee from Europe, had more rights in South Africa than the majority black born and raised on this land,” Ramaphosa said. “He could not accept how he, a white immigrant, could be well fed, clothed, educated, while the natives of the country lived in misery and deprivation.
“This George wouldn’t take it.”
Ramaphosa said that Bizos’ activism began when he enrolled at Wits University. It was here that he met the late former President Nelson Mandela, whom he later defended in the Treason and Rivonia trials.
The two would be personal friends for more than six decades, united by a common belief in human rights and equality.
Ramaphosa said: “At Wits he joined the student representative council and soon became involved in the struggles of black students on campus. For this, the apartheid government punished him quite severely by denying him citizenship for more than three decades.
“And there he was, living as a stateless person in a country that he had adopted.”
Ramaphosa praised Bizos for his humility, emphasizing that despite his fighting credentials, he never boasted to everyone of his life as an activist lawyer.
“Even when apartheid ended, he never brandished his past to cover himself in glory and proclaim out loud to the world where he was and what he did during the liberation struggle,” Ramaphosa said.
“The courtroom was his front line and the law his key weapon.”
According to Ramaphosa, Bizos was guided primarily by principles, ethics, and conscience, hence his humility and refusal to join any political party during the fighting.
TimesLIVE
