1. George Bizos was a Greek-South African human rights lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in South Africa.
22 Facts About George Bizos
1. 2.
George Bizos was noted for representing Nelson Mandela during the Rivonia Trial.
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George Bizos instructed Mandela to add the qualification "if needs be" to his trial address, which is credited with sparing him from a sentence of death.
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George Bizos was born on 14 November 1927, although this was erroneously recorded on his South African identity documents as 1928, owing to his father's declaration to the authorities upon arrival in Egypt.
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George Bizos did not go to school for his first two years in the country as he spoke neither English nor Afrikaans.
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At the Rivonia Trial from 1963 to 1964, George Bizos was part of the team that defended Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu.
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George Bizos was council for the accused in at least 26 other prominent anti-apartheid trials and inquests.
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George Bizos subsequently became a senior member of the Johannesburg Bar in 1978.
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George Bizos was a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights, which he helped found in 1979.
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George Bizos was senior counsel at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the Constitutional Litigation Unit.
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George Bizos served as a judge on Botswana's Court of Appeal from 1985 to 1993.
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George Bizos became a member of the African National Congress' Legal and Constitutional Committee in 1990, and at Convention for a Democratic South Africa he served as advisor to the negotiating teams and participated in drawing up the Interim Constitution.
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George Bizos was involved in the drafting of legislation, and particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Bill and amendments to the Criminal Procedures Act, to bring it into line with Chapter 3 of the constitution, guaranteeing fundamental human rights to all citizens of South Africa.
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George Bizos was retained as counsel at various inquests into the deaths of people in detention.
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George Bizos was appointed by President Mandela to the Judicial Services Commission in 1994.
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George Bizos was the leader of the team for the South African Government to argue that the death penalty was unconstitutional, and counsel for the National Assembly in the Certification of the Constitution by the Constitutional Court.
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George Bizos later served as a legal advisor to Mandela in 2005, during a bitter legal dispute with the latter's former lawyer, Ismail Ayob.
18.
George Bizos represented the Chinese Association of South Africa in a case that ended in 2008 in which Chinese South Africans were granted 'previously disadvantaged' status, thus qualifying them for Black Economic Empowerment benefits.
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In 2017 George Bizos appeared along with surviving defendants at the Rivonia Trial, Denis Goldberg, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada, along with fellow defence lawyers Joel Joffe and Denis Kuny, in a documentary film entitled Life is Wonderful, directed by Sir Nicholas Stadlen, which tells the story of the trial.
20.
George Bizos said that the daughters were trying to "get their hands on things that should not be sold".
21.
George Bizos was married to Arethe Daflos, known as "Rita", who he met in 1948 when she was an art student.
22.
George Bizos died of natural causes at home on 9 September 2020 at the age of 92.