Page 8 - SA Chamber UK-NOV News letter 2023

Sir Nick along with a number of the Rivonia Trialists and their legal team at the Bram Fischer colloquium panel
at Wits University March 2015. Photo credit, Wits University.

In 2015, with the help of his friend the late Lord Joel Joffe, Mandela’s solicitor in the

Rivonia trial, Nick organised a colloquium at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)
in Johannesburg to coincide with the award of an honorary doctorate posthumously
to Bram Fischer, who headed the legal team which spared Mandela and his colleagues

from the gallows.

Denis Goldberg, the only white among

the eight convicted Rivonia defendants,
attended the colloquium.

Lynda Murray, who convenes Wits

alumni in the UK, recalls how Nick
worked tirelessly with Joffe in preparing
the ground for a dynamic panel which
discussed the controversial role and

life of Bram Fischer. In 1961 Fischer,
a white Afrikaner from a top family,
was simultaneously a leading member
of the Johannesburg Bar Council and

secret leader of the of the outlawed Andrew Mlangeni and Nick Stadlen Wits University
South African Communist Party (SACP). March 2015 Photo credit, Wits University

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SA CHAMBER UK NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2023