EXTRACT

“It is a delightful memoir – entertaining, richly populated and wittily written. I have read it with amusement and enjoyment. It will be of interest not only to lawyers but also to laypeople.”

Edwin Cameron, retired Constitutional Court Justice

ABOUT THE BOOK

Jeremy Pickering has lived an extraordinary life. He was born underweight in a cold September in 1949. The hospital in Stutterheim had no incubators. To keep him warm, he spent hours each day in the yeast-proving drawer at Holland Bakery.

When Pickering enrolled for a BA Law degree at Stellenbosch, his mother quipped, “At least there’ll be one honest lawyer.” Her words stayed with him, guiding his decisions whenever he faced an ethical dilemma.

Raising the Bar is a memorable, funny, at times poignant—even tragic—but always engaging account of a life’s journey. Pickering recounts his childhood, student days, and his experiences as a practicing advocate. In early 1986, at the height of the State of Emergency, he joined the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Port Elizabeth. A year later, he opened the LRC’s Grahamstown office, serving as its director until 1992, when he was appointed a Judge of the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court. He retired in 2019 after spending 27 years on the bench.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in law, South African history, or simply a well-told story full of heart and humour.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

As far as I am aware I am the only judge ever appointed in South Africa who had previously worked as a clown. Conversely, I am the only erstwhile clown ever appointed as a judge. In the opinion of many advocates, however, clowns were apparently regularly appointed to the bench.

One judge apparently so regarded was a certain Hofmeyr. A vacancy arose in the Supreme Court of Appeal in the days long before the establishment of the Judicial Service Commission. The fearsome Rumpff was the Chief Justice. The Minister of Justice allegedly phoned him and said he wanted to appoint Judge X to the position. “He’s useless,” remonstrated Rumpff. “You had might as well send me that other fool, Hofmeyr.” In due course Hofmeyr arrived to take up his post. Rumpff angrily phoned the minister asking why he had appointed Hofmeyr. “Because you asked for him”, was the reply.

After his retirement from the Supreme Court of Appeal, Hofmeyr served on the Transkei Appeal Court Bench. He, together with Munnik CJ (Chief Justice) and James JA (Judge of Appeal), heard an appeal consequent upon the conviction of my clients of attempted murder in the High Court. My clients had ambushed and shot at a posse of policemen who had arrived to raid their illegal dagga plantation in the Lusikisiki area. In those days a convicted accused in Transkei had an automatic right of appeal regardless of the merits of their case. There was basically nothing I could say on their behalf at the appeal hearing and I expected a barrage of hostile questions from the bench. To my surprise, before the other two judges could say anything, Hofmeyr said, “Isn’t it clear that the appellants were acting in defence of their property? Surely a farmer is entitled to protect his crops from marauding policemen?”

“Absolutely, M’Lord!” I said, delighted at this wholly unexpected turn of events. Munnik and James were staring in horror at Hofmeyr. Before he could say another word Munnik said, “We’ll take a short adjournment.” They left the court for 10 minutes. On their return Hofmeyr sat in glum silence.

“Is there anything you can say in favour of the appellants?” Munnik asked me. “You mean apart from the issue raised by Mr Justice Hofmeyr?” I innocently replied. He glared at me. “You can leave that issue in our hands,” he said. “Then I can’t take the matter any further,” I said. “Right,” said Munnik, “then the appeal is dismissed.”

Tholie Madala, then an attorney with the leading firm Madikizela, Madala and Mdlulwa and many years later a Constitutional Court judge, briefed me in a civil claim by our client for damages arising out of his allegedly wrongful arrest and detention by the police at Engcobo. There was no evidence against our client. The police officer who arrested him justified the arrest as follows when I cross-examined him:

Q. Why do you say the plaintiff was guilty of any offence?

A. Because he ran away when he saw our helicopter.

Q. Don’t many people in the rural areas run away on seeing a helicopter?

A. But not as fast as this one.

Needless to say we won at a trot.

Conradie J, who had been the Speaker of the South African Parliament, was put out to pasture and appointed as the only judge in the then-South West Africa. He wasn’t coping. An apparently extremely undistinguished but well-connected advocate, one Badenhorst, was appointed as the second judge to assist him. When he was congratulated by some of his colleagues at the bar he said, “It will probably be tough work because I’ll only have Conradie to ask for help.” “Think how Conradie must feel,” said the renowned senior advocate, Rex Welsh, one of his far more illustrious colleagues. “He’ll only have you to ask.”

One needs a thick skin at the bar.

Once the woman I had won in the fight grew tired of her peripatetic life in the circus and gravitated back to Grantham, the trapeze artist and I grew close. “I’m a gypsy and a trapeze artist,” she told me. “I’m always on the move. You can’t fall in love with a trapeze artist unless there’s a safety net below you.” There wasn’t but I did anyway, and the lack of a safety net made things exciting. I even wrote her a poem in a romantic moment:

You are so beautiful

Star-spangled in the hot night

Under still canvas.

For one dizzy moment as you swing,

A tiny Catherine Wheel in flight

The upturned faces hold you with their breath

Against the night

As intimately as I have held

Your supple body close against my chest

But only I have felt upon my face

Your own warm breath.

I read it to her slowly. She was very touched by it. She regularly asked me to read it to her, tracing the words with her finger as I read, which was how I discovered that she, too, was illiterate.

Cicero in the first century BC wrote, “I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself super-excellent.” And so it was with me. When I was back home I showed my poem to my aunt Ella, who was well versed in poetry, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury always at her side, in the hope of some praise for my literary talents.

“How can you be so sure?” she sniffed. “About what?”

“About being the only one to feel her warm breath.”

“But that’s just poetic licence,” I protested.

“Licentiousness, more likely, knowing these circus types as I do.”

“But you don’t know any,” I said.

“And I’m all the better for it,” she replied, putting paid to my literary pretensions.

In more rational moments I had to admit that my trapeze artist, while attractive, was not necessarily beautiful. I was also not so naive as to discount the probability that quite a few faces before mine had felt her warm breath upon them. But we had fun.

With the coming of winter the circus was to enter into hibernation and the time had also come for me to go home, despite the promise of an appointment as ringmaster in the place of Deadwood in the following spring. It is not possible to keep up a correspondence with people who cannot write. I often wondered who had usurped my position as ringmaster. I also often wondered, jealously, on whose face the trapeze artist was breathing in my absence. For a long time I missed them all.

I wonder if they wondered about the lawman who had come into their lives for a while. I think they would have been horrified to find out that years later I had become a judge. But now, as The Seekers sang, the carnival is over and that circus is dead and gone, killed off by television and Covid.

Raising the Bar: The Making of a Judge by Jeremy Pickering is published by Staging Post. Extract provided by Janine Daniels on behalf of J Doubled Publicity.