The Lasting Impact of "Soft" Vengeance

"I am not a victim seeking revenge or compensation or sympathy, but someone who voluntarily engaged himself in a freedom struggle, aware that risks at some stage or the other were involved, delighted that I have survived and determined to re-establish an active and happy relationship with the world." Albie Sachs, in his first press interview after surviving a car bomb attack meant to kill him.

Albie Sachs, Justice of the South African Constitutional Court, returned to Boston in April as part of a national tour promoting the re-release of his memoir, The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. South Africa Partners was particularly pleased to coordinate his Massachusetts activities, since Albie was the featured guest at our official launch of the organization in 1998.

This year, Boston was Abie's last stop on a month-long book tour across the US that included stops in Washington, DC, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago and Cleveland. Massachusetts activities included appearances at Harvard University, Northeastern University School of Law, the University of Massachusetts, Facing History and Ourselves, and a reception in his honor hosted by South Africa Partners at the home of Janet Axelrod and Tim Plenk.

The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter is a remarkable book, not just for the dramatic story it tells of loss and freedom, but also for the eloquence of its prose. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, in her introduction for the new edition writes, "Albie Sachs gives us an achingly beautiful and poetic account of his near death at the hands of the South African apartheid state, presented as a parable of the wounding and recovery of his beloved native country."

The book begins on the April 7, 1988. Albie Sachs, an avid jogger, leaves his apartment in Maputo, Mozambique, on his way to the beach on a Saturday morning for a run and a cold beer. He never makes it. His car explodes as he is unlocking the trunk and then one phase of his life is over and another begins. Recovering from the wounds inflicted by the blast, he slowly makes his way toward a new reality, incorporating this latest experience into the texture of a life devoted to the pursuit of justice.

Albie's moving account of the weeks, months, and years after the blast bring the reader into the world of his recovery, as he takes great pleasure in each mundane ritual he is able to re-master - reading, walking, bathing. Each one a sign that the apartheid government did not win, that he will return to the struggle for South Africa's liberation, that he will be able to exact his "soft vengeance" by surviving, by succeeding at everything they had hoped to deny him and his fellow freedom fighters. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his introduction writes, "He should by rights have been consumed by a burning desire to get even with those who had planned this dastardly deed." He marvels that instead, Albie chooses to fight for the inclusion of strong human rights provisions in the new constitution. Provisions that will guarantee his opponents rights that were denied to him and so many others who had fought for a free and democratic South Africa.

The new epilogue which has been added to the second edition of The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter presents us Albie Sachs in post-apartheid South Africa. Now a judge on the highest court of the country, he candidly writes about his personal dilemmas with his new place in South Africa, "Today, I thought with dismay, my life and my smile were becoming more public, while my emotions were growing ever more private. Once upon a time our success had depended on deep secrecy now it flowed from intense publicity. Instead of putting on gloves to hide fingerprints and be invisible from the police, I would choose attire to make me look handsome, trustworthy, and wise on TV". His thoughts on forgiveness become more than rhetoric as he more fully comes to terms with those who attempted to take his life. The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter is inspirational and reveals the success of his soft vengeance - living a life without rancor, full of inner peace.

The book can be ordered from the University of California Press

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