Albie

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And I started having some out-of-body experiences then. Very strange. I’m lying on my little cot, and I would feel Albie is lifting out, looking down on me. And I’m not a person given to a spiritual view of the world in that sense. I’m a great believer in the human personality and spirituality in that sense, but not an out-of-body experience. But I had them. They were quite, quite strong. I’m a little bit worried, but I carry on, I do my exercises, I run around the yard, I do my press-ups.

In any event, my friend, Professor Lynn Gillis, and I — he was a great mountain climber — we went up one side of Table Mountain, and on the left was Devil’s Peak. And I said, “Lynn, I’m going up Devil’s Peak,” and I went up, I came down, we climbed Table Mountain. We walked right across the top, we came down and I said, “Lynn, I’m going up Lion’s Head.” So these three mountains in one day. I was totally exhausted. He got really worried when I came down exhausted at the end of it. And he told me about what he called “Türschloss syndrome,” the “closing door” syndrome that elderly males often suffer from. You feel you’re losing your virility so you go through extraordinary feats of physical activity to prove that you’re still a macho guy. I was only 31, but he was absolutely right. It was, for me, desperately trying to rescue something of an inner youth through physical activity. I was very, very defeated. While you were in Mozambique, you began to prepare for eventual freedom in South Africa. You began drafting human rights guarantees as a model code for a democratic South Africa, didn’t you? The best thing about working with illustrator Ed Eaves on the Albie books, is that he has an amazing ability to draw exactly what’s inside my head – only better! Ed and I seem to have a kind of telepathy when it comes to creating these stories, so I’m always delighted, but never surprised when I see his illustrations for the first time!Months passed, and I’m at a party at the end of the year, and the band is playing. I’m very tired. We work very hard as judges. I hear a voice says, “Albie!” I looked around. “Albie!” My God, it’s Henri! And we get into a corner and I say, “What happened? What happened?” And he said, “I went to the Truth Commission, and I spoke to Bobby and Sue and Farouk.” He’s calling me Albie. He’s using their first name terms, people who were put into exile with me, who also could have been victims of the bomb. “I told them everything and you said that one day….” and I said, “Henri, only your face tells me that what you’re saying is the truth.” And I put out my hand and I shook his hand. He went away absolutely beaming, and I almost fainted. I heard afterwards that he suddenly broke away from that party. It was television people. He went home and he cried for two weeks. That moved me a lot. To me that was more important than sending him to jail. I wrote a book called The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, saying that if we got democracy in South Africa, roses and lilies would grow out of my arm. Sending people to jail wouldn’t help me at all, but to get the country we’d been fighting for, that would be quite wonderful. That would be my soft vengeance. And now Henri and I — I don’t phone him up and say, “Let’s go to a movie.” But if I’m sitting in a bus and he sits down next to me, I say, “Oh Henri, how are you getting on?” We’re living in the same country because of the Truth Commission. I had met Stephanie Kemp who’d been, as it turned out, in the same prison cells I’d been in, and I was asked by an attorney to defend her. She was being charged with sabotage. And I said, “Please, I can’t. I identify so much.”“Just go and speak to her, give her some courage. When it comes to the trial we’ll get someone else.” Well they did get someone else to be the senior lawyer. Meanwhile I’ve fallen in love with her. We didn’t mention anything. We didn’t touch. We just spoke about the case and a bit about her past and sense of betrayal. But we were in love across the table, and she was sentenced to some years imprisonment, released. She came out to warn me that they’re coming for me again, that was my second detention. I still remember her saying, “And I was in that prison cell, and I got so angry with you because they all told me, ‘Why can’t you behave like advocate Sachs?’ And that pompous stuff you wrote up above the cell door, ‘I, Albert Louis Sachs, am detained here without trial under the 90-Day Law for standing for justice for all.’ Couldn’t you say it in less legal language?” And of course, even when I was writing that, I was careful not to say anything that could be used in evidence against me. I also wrote “Jail is for the birds” on top of the cell. Albie Sachs: Well, at midnight on October the 11th I lose my magic. I’m not a judge any more. It’s gone. People won’t look at me with that same respect and interest. But not just me. There are four of us, who are amongst the 11 founding members of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, who were appointed by Nelson Mandela and we all leave. It’s our 15 years. It was an extended term which will be — 12 years in 2005, in our case it was 15 years — will be over, and I don’t use the “R word.” I don’t somehow see myself as vanishing from activity. I want to give little Oliver as much daddy as I can while I’ve got strength. I want to make a movie. I’ve got a very strong movie in my head. And I’ve spoken to some movie people and I’ve said, “If you say it’s no go, I’ll drop it.” They said — two different people — “Do the script.” So I’m encouraged enough to do that. Warped, funny, with extraordinary plots, most episodes end with the innocent Albie getting the blame, and some very angry person shouting "ALBIE!"

This anniversary definitely called for a celebration so we were asked to be part of a special blog tour about ten years of Albie, with each stop starring a different book and the chance to win a copy! A lot of people who were living in exile were vulnerable. Farmers in their fields, people in hospital. Everyone became a target. What brought about that release, when you were released the second time? And then what drove you into exile?

The Jamie Drake Equation

Most of the planets we know about would not make great homes for humans. They are too hot, too cold or have no air to breathe. Because most planets are very VERY far away, it’s hard to find out whether there are any other kinds of living creatures there. What do you think will be one of the big achievements in the next quarter century? In South Africa, the rest of Africa, the world? Albie Sachs: It was the last throw of the securocrats in South Africa, saying, “You’re facing the total onslaught. We have to be ruthless in our response.” They assassinated an ANC person in Paris, her name was Dulcie September. A bomb exploded the Anti-Apartheid Office — the ANC office — in London, and clearly I wasn’t safe in Mozambique. But you didn’t want to give way. You didn’t want to flee because of the danger. So many people inside and outside the country were accepting risks. I read. I could catch up on my reading. Oh wonderful, wonderful! The History of Science by J.D. Bernard. Always wanted to read that. The Origins of Chinese Civilization by Joseph Needham, I’d always wanted to read that. Nothing to do, no pressure, no money to earn. Just to read, read, read. And then I managed to get a scholarship to go to Sussex University, do a Ph.D.