A speech in celebration of Nelson Mandela given to the youth at The Roy Mcmurtry Youth Correctional Centre on February 28th, 2014.

The South African Sunday Times of February 9th, 2014 carried an article entitled, “Five facts about Nelson Mandela that you did not know.” Two of those facts caught my personal as well as lawyer’s attention. The first was that it took Mandela 50 years to qualify as a formal lawyer in the context of South African legal education. In his book, The Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela states that after finishing his law articles in 1951, but before he became a “fully fledged lawyer,” he and Oliver Tambo opened the first Black law firm in South Africa in 1952. Mandela had failed his Bachelor of Laws examinations in 1948 due to a confluence of circumstances beyond the purview of this speech. He needed to qualify by alternative means. But he never did until 50 years later in 1989.  According to the article in the afore-mentioned newspaper, Mandela and Tambo had nevertheless established some kind of law practice in South Africa in 1939, before Mandela was formerly qualified to practice law. He eventually was qualified to practice law in Magistrate’s courts but could not accept briefs for higher courts. He handed over those briefs to senior lawyers who were always invariably white lawyers. Only 50 years later and while serving time in a South African jail was Mandela qualified as a senior lawyer. He did his law studies through correspondence.

By Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, PhD

Barrister and Solicitor,
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Phone: (416) 644-1106; (416)644-1123; Fax: (416) 644-1126
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