Aluko &amp; Oyebode, Nigeria’s formidable commercial law firm, at No.1 Murtala Mohammed Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria, is unusually empty for a Saturday.
It gives one enough time to admire its plush interiors. Describing it would be taking a page out of a John Grisham novel.
The imposing building houses three floors of prime real estate in the heart of the city and on one of the most expensive strips in Lagos.
As you walk in, the blood-red walls are juxtaposed with grey metallic fixtures and fittings. The décor of the building is reminiscent of past cultures of various African countries.
Each floor is delightfully curated with Afro-centric artefacts and in the middle floor of the building is the firm’s seat of power, the office of its leader, Gbenga Oyebode.
For a sweltering Nigerian afternoon, Oyebode is dressed like no other in a 100-mile radius of the elite Victoria Island hub of Lagos: in a two-piece power suit, his signature outfit. Today, it is in black, accented by a deep blue tie.
Oyebode is cordial and pleasant with the team as he takes his position on the ground floor for the first set of pictures for the FORBES AFRICA cover.
He is the Chairman of Aluko &amp; Oyebode, one of the largest integrated law firms in Nigeria with over 70 lawyers and three offices in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. 
The firm provides a comprehensive range of specialist legal services to a highly diversified clientele including top-tier Nigerian, international and multinational clients. In his capacity as chairman, Oyebode coordinates the various practice areas of the firm.
Described as a consummate dealmaker who has received plaudits from clients and peers alike for his corporate acumen, Oyebode’s areas of expertise cover energy and natural resources, power projects, foreign investment and privatization, telecommunications and project finance. 
It is not just his formal dressing that is unusual.
Law firms in the country, family-owned by tradition, almost never run their firms like well-oiled machines providing solutions for several sectors at the same time. Oyebode was one of the pioneers of this concept. And it has not been an easy journey.
<blockquote>&#8220;It exposed me to these great minds I read about in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and I said very quickly to myself that I wanted to be like them,”</blockquote>
The 59-year-old spent the early years of his life musing over the promises of life in the civil service, a path taken by his father. It was a stable and comfortable job and one had guaranteed employment as well as a good salary. But he was compelled to ponder the possibilities of a riskier career.
“In those days, being a civil servant was the dream of every young person due to the stability of the job. However, as I started reading law, it became clear to me that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and for a lawyer that means opening a law firm,” says Oyebode as he takes a break from the photoshoot to begin our interview.
And that is exactly what he did. But not just any law firm, he wanted to leave behind a dynasty of great lawyers whose work would carry on long after he was gone.
If he had worked for any Nigerian law firm, his future would not have been guaranteed.
<div id="attachment_36614" style="width: 855px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36614" class="wp-image-36614 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-845x1024.jpg" alt="" width="845" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-845x1024.jpg 845w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-300x364.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-600x727.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-247x300.jpg 247w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-768x931.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348.jpg 1300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />Gbenga Oyebode is Nigeria&#8217;s formidable legal mastermind. Photos by Kelechi Amadi-Obi.</div>
“The history of Nigerian law firms in the early 80s and some of them today was that they were set up by great minds essentially to be kept in the family. Their children went to law school and even if you were a great lawyer who worked with them, they make it very clear that you shouldn’t be thinking about your future at the law firm, because they were going to hand over the business to their children. So I understood that it was not going to work for me,” says Oyebode.
At well over six feet, Oyebode has a towering presence in any room, yet his calm and cordial disposition immediately sets you at ease and makes you feel as though you are having a conversation with an old friend.
Sitting in the conference room of his eponymous firm, Oyebode recalls a series of events that shaped the course of his career.
Like the time he was going to university and struggled to get guidance from mentors who would have advised him on the best path to take to become a successful legal entrepreneur.
The prominent Nigerian lawyers at the time were not strictly lawyers who worked at the firm but were mostly also involved in other professions.
According to Oyebode, the earliest nationalists of Nigerian politics were all lawyers, who used the law that they had learned abroad to change the system in Nigeria to gain independence and push the envelope against colonialism.
That would later become the real motivation for Oyebode to become a lawyer. For him, the ability to use law to change the political system with democracy or creating value was a calling he wanted to be a part of.
After graduating from the University of Ife in 1979, he immediately went to the Nigerian Law School and thereafter, completed his postgraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the United States (US).
“What UPenn did for me was show me that there was a different way to do things and that the world was bigger than the opportunities I had in Nigeria. One of the most significant things about going to an Ivy League institution is how they draw from great minds around. So we went to conferences where great minds in the capital markets were and it was a game-changer. It exposed me to these great minds I read about in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and I said very quickly to myself that I wanted to be like them,” recalls Oyebode.
His journey is a textbook case study on how to systematically build a business step by step. He eschews convention. From the minute he finished primary school, his father signed up to a subscription of Reader’s Digest that was to become his monthly diet.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/08/02/success-bag-entrepreneur/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Success Is In The Bag For This Entrepreneur</a>
“He thought that it was important for us to read. He said it was important for us to understand what happened around the world. So one of the things that I do continually even today is I read the Reader’s Digest every month. It shaped my view of the world and created for me a situation where I learned more about the things that were happening around me and I was not limited to Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
His tenure as an associate at White &amp; Case, one of the world’s leading law firms, helped him visualize the type of law firm he wanted to build of his own.
“American law firms were the type of law firms I thought we could replicate in Nigeria. Their vision for building big partnerships and for those partnerships to survive named partners was impressive. So it was very clear where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I worked with White &amp; Case for a year and I said to myself it was time to come back home,” says Oyebode.
Home had changed a whole lot while he was away. Nigeria had returned to democracy after years of military rule. The business environment was growing and there was a need for competent people to push the envelope and help with the development of law and business.
Furthermore, there were less than 10,000 lawyers admitted to practice law and Oyebode decided he would rather be one of 10,000 in Nigeria than one of a million in the US.
Soon after making that decision, disaster struck. No sooner had he returned to Nigeria did the crude oil market collapse and the Nigerian economy took a dip for the worse. The democratic government that had motivated Oyebode to come back was very quickly removed in a coup d&#8217;état in 1983.
“Before we knew it, the [Muhammadu] Buhari government was in power. To make matters worse, the naira had collapsed and the country was looking at a structural adjustment program with the World Bank. So contrary to my plans, things changed very quickly. I couldn’t go back to the US and I had to make do with things in Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
But where there are clouds, there is also a silver lining. Oyebode chose to keep faith and stick it out. He applied to work for the Gulf Oil Company, which later merged with Chevron, and spent two years learning about the oil and gas industry.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/12/01/bank-on-this-man/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Bank On This Man</a>
“That was very instructive because it gave me an opportunity to work in an industry, which was Nigeria’s biggest foreign exchange earner. I essentially cut my teeth working in Nigeria’s oil industry. I saw through the merger of Gulf and Chevron and then decided it was time to go out and do my own thing.”
In 1985, Oyebode went into partnership with friends and started his first law firm 
Ajumogobia, Okeke, Oyebode &amp; Aluko. After eight years of success, the firm was dissolved due to internal challenges. The string of such incidents, be it the country’s economic downturn or disagreements with partners, have all contributed to the success story Oyebode is today.
“What is impressive about Oyebode is his calmness and composure in times of crisis. He has the ability to look beyond that problem and says ‘how do we move on from this and get to the solution’,” says Tunde Folawiyo, Managing Director of Yinka Folawiyo Group in Nigeria.
That steadfastness has been an invaluable trait for Oyebode over the years.
He went on to establish Aluko &amp; Oyebode with his other partner. Perpetual wins translated into mammoth personal gains for the legal mastermind.
Oyebode’s is also the story of a smart entrepreneur who, spurred by the increase in the proliferation of Western companies in Nigeria, spotted an opportunity in corporate law and has methodically worked to cash in on it.
He is currently advising on the Brass LNG Project, a joint venture between NNPC, TOTAL, Conoco Philips and Agip for the construction of a $3.5 billion Liquefied Natural Gas plant. He has also advised on key transactions like the $1.275 billion financing of the Exxon Mobil Natural Gas Liquid II Project, the $1.06 billion financing of trains four and five of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Plant Expansion Project and the $3.5 billion financing of the NNPC and Mobil Producing Unlimited Satellite Oil Field Project. He sits on the boards of MTN Nigeria, Nestle Nigeria and CFAO, among many others.
“Corporate law was something I was good at. It’s something that is dependent on your network and it is something that comes naturally to me. At White &amp; Case and at Gulf Oil, that was my forte. I had invested a significant amount of my time around that so I was able to very quickly develop as a good oil and gas lawyer,” says Oyebode.
His wife, Aisha, attests to this. “What I admire most about Gbenga is he is very kind and warm and he is a people’s person. I do not know anybody that doesn’t like Gbenga.”
It was what Oyebode did next that distinguished him from his peers.
“One of the people that I studied a lot was Chief Chris Ogunbanjo. He ran the biggest law firms in town and was a lawyer who represented all the multinationals and was a lawyer who got involved in the businesses he represented. So when I came back [to Nigeria], I saw his model as one that I could emulate. I saw that he was able to achieve his objective, which was essentially run a significant law firm and become the advisor of the biggest corporates in the market as well as the repository of knowledge of what it means to work in Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
And that was to become Oyebode’s operating style over the next two decades. His modus operandi was simple.
Find opportunities, which he could maximize, and provide professional services and legal advice to top-tier corporate clients and where there was an opportunity, take a chunk of the business.
“One of the things as an entrepreneur that you tend to look at is opportunities around you, so long as those opportunities don’t divert your from your chosen path. If you ask me what I want to be known as, I would say a lawyer first, then an investor,” he says.
Oyebode sits on boards of companies that he has invested in as well as boards that he has been invited to join due to his significant expertise in corporate Nigeria.
<div id="attachment_36622" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36622" class="wp-image-36622 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-1024x684.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="684" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Photo by Kelechi Amadi-Obi</div>
The last two decades have seen a veritable boom in the business. For Oyebode, the key is passion for what you do.
“I am driven to build a big firm. We have 85 associates in three offices. There are 16 partners in the firm across the different practice areas that you expect a full service law firm to have, from legislation to corporate law to intellectual property, to risk and governance. So these are all key sectors that are sectors for growth of the Nigerian economy. The rationale is building a legacy that is driven by return,” says Oyebode.
Ever the opportunist, Oyebode is also looking to capitalize on the growth in demand of global companies looking for local partners in the real estate sector. He has a two-hotel deal with the Fairmont Group to establish hotels in Lagos and Abuja. Given the size in the number of tourists and business people in the country, Oyebode believes there is tremendous growth opportunities in this sector.
“The view is that there is still a gap around the hospitality business in Lagos. I go to Accra and I see the Kempinski and Movenpick hotels and I know that if Accra can do it then Lagos certainly has significant scope to develop hotels. Abuja only has the Hilton.”
But it has not all been smooth sailing. No sooner had he started his second stint at a law firm that tragedy struck.
“Life is about tripping and falling and learning from mistakes, pulling your strengths and moving on. My partner, Bankole Aluko, had a mild illness and called in sick for a couple of days. I decided to pay him a visit after work and on my way there, I was told he had passed away suddenly. It was a big shock because we had built everything together and most of the lawyers that joined us did so because of our strength as a firm. I had the corporate law expertise and he was a litigation expert. I thought it was all over at the point,” says Oyebode.
It was dark times for Oyebode.
“In those days it was very difficult to get clients. They came to you because they knew you and your reputation so it was very personality-driven. Today, clients look at your brand and your track record. So losing Bankole both as a dear friend and a professional was devastating.”
He vowed to continue the legacy they had started together and leave his name on the business as a named partner, which still stands today. These days, Oyebode is more interested in giving back. He mentors the next generation and is finding ways to give back. He has also turned his attention from corporate boards to philanthropy boards and actively seeks out opportunities to contribute to the community.
On the issue of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC) fight to retrieve Nigeria’s stolen loot, which is estimated to be billions of dollars from state coffers, Oyebode offers some practical advice.
“My concern about Nigeria is not the lack of law or policy but always about execution. I think we have a robust legal system, we have laws and policies in place and we have a strong civil service. Do people obey the law around the world? Yes, and that is because they are afraid of sanctions. So if you do not obey the law or sanctions, then you pay the price. So our problem is a lack of execution of good policy, inconsistent application of the laws and sometimes, we have allowed federal character and the process of rotating positions to trump skill and expertise so therefore mediocrity is able to rise to the very top.”
But that is an ongoing fight, which Oyebode believes will not be solved overnight. Presently, his focus is on leveraging his expertise as one of the most formidable and accomplished legal minds to add value and give back to Nigeria.
His legal firm is a victim of its own success. And this is a happy problem to have.
&nbsp;
Herbert Wigwe, the CEO Access Bank, one of Nigeria’s top banking institutions, calls Oyebode one of the strongest legal minds, not just in Nigeria but also across the world.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-36617 size-thumbnail alignleft" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
“And I say this because I have a strong personal relationship with him, apart from the fact that in Nigeria, he runs the strongest corporate law office. The existence of what is a modern Access Bank would never have happened but for people like Gbenga&#8230;.All of these attributes have led him to sit on most of the large corporate boards in the country…Saying Gbenga is the new face of business in Africa is not something that is far-fetched; it is something that he has proven over and over again in his career.”

DSC8546-Edit

The Tall Lawyer, Investor And Philanthropist In A Power Suit

<ol>
<li>You grew up facing superstition about albinism and having people treat you differently, how did that form your world view? </li>
</ol>
I never had a linear world view, because I had to experience the contrast of being home and fully accepted for who I am to leaving the sanctum of the household and family nucleus and walking out into a world that misunderstood my difference.
I would do everything possible to hide my difference. I would not apply sunscreen and wear a hat, because I didn’t want to feel that I was different, so that would mean I would allow my skin to burn, in order to play in the sun like other children. I would hide the fact that I had a bad eyesight, that would result in me performing poorly at school, as I could not see what was on the board. It took a message from my parents that &#8216;if you don’t embrace your difference&#8217;, it could be harmful to me; that embracing diversity and being human isn’t a bad thing.
<ol start="2">
<li>You have taken a sabbatical from law to focus on modeling – would law not be a more powerful platform to address things wrong in the world? </li>
</ol>
The interesting thing about law and modeling is they both deal with representation. It is the business of representation so that means carry more than yourself; you carry more people. When I put myself out there I carry far more images than just one. I am a woman, I am a woman with albinism, I am a South African, I am a black person, so that means everything I do it carries thousands of people. The more I mature in this industry, the more I understand the fullness of the images that I carry. I really try to do what I can do to build on all those images and shape narratives that create a positive and empowering perception of all of my images.
<ol start="3">
<li>You feature in next year’s Pirelli Calendar; as part of an all-black cast retelling the story of Alice in Wonderland&#8230;</li>
</ol>
The Pirelli Calendar spoke mostly about the importance of representation in storytelling and Alice in Wonderland was basically a template for that message. To really be brought into significance. When representation comes into play, such as this, you basically say that possibilities belong to everyone.
<ol start="4">
<li>Do you think projects like this are an indication the world is moving towards celebrating African beauty?</li>
</ol>
Beauty should not be confined and labeled as African beauty as if it were a niche. I just believe beauty is the celebration of an image and what it means for the world now is becoming more diverse. Initially there was one conventional beauty type bombarded by the media and now there is a lot that is challenging that conventional beauty. 
<ol start="5">
<li>You are the first black South African ever to feature in the Pirelli Calendar&#8230; </li>
</ol>
There was nothing about my character that was particular to albinism but it so happened that the person who played the character had albinism. I think that is an important message that there can be a message of inclusion, diversity and integration. You can accept difference without side-lining it. The calendar just did that for me. It said difference can be embraced and not side-lined.
<ol start="6">
<li>Tell us about working with photographer Tim Walker for the project?</li>
</ol>
He is the type of photographer that lends you his eyes to see his work. He really understands that impact art has on cultural development and in his mind the world was already created&#8230; I loved working with him.
<ol start="7">
<li>What was it like working with global icons like Whoopi Goldberg for the calendar? </li>
</ol>
Working with her warmed my heart, because here was this woman who I used to watch in movies like Sarafina, Sister Act. I admired her resilience and authenticity and just before we did our shot, I held those hands and I had to tell her that. So working with her was moving personally because she was a person I really respected.

7 Questions With… Thando Hopa

Yvonne Malan still gets threats more than 13 years after a campaign for a posthumous degree for Bram Fischer. She fled her African home for England after the furore that brought down wrath that has left her looking over her shoulder for more than a decade.
In the early years of this century, Malan was a young researcher at Stellenbosch University, in the Western Cape. She nominated lawyer Fischer for an honorary law degree, saying it was long overdue.
Fischer was the leader of the legal team in the Rivonia Trial that saved Nelson Mandela from the gallows in 1964; he was vilified by his own people and suffered, for years, from cancer, in prison. When he died, not even his ashes were handed to his family. The apartheid authorities also tried to erase him from history; his image was banned until South Africa’s transition to democracy.
<blockquote>“As a kid, I saw an old history book with one of the pre-1994 photos with Fischer’s face whitened out. It was terrible, it really shocked me that you could just erase someone from history like that,” says Malan from London.</blockquote>
Malan is the grandchild of refugees who fled Nazi Germany in fear of their lives. Her family was all too aware of people being erased from history, she says.
Years into democracy, Malan nominated Fischer to the university’s council and honorary degrees committee. The nomination was accepted with mixed feelings. The university granted an honorary doctorate in law in 2004. It was received by his daughter Ilse Fischer.
But later, newspapers came out strongly against the degree, kicking off a campaign to have it revoked, says Malan.
“This was led by senior Naspers members, a regular columnist for the Naspers papers, a few apartheid-era National Party ministers and MPs, and the [alumni body]. Since they all knew there was no mechanism for the university to revoke the degree, they used the Naspers papers and what one Stellenbosch University academic described as ‘Stalinist tactics’ to attack Fischer as a person and myself as the nominator.”
Naspers refused to talk to FORBES AFRICA regarding the allegations.
This led to months of death threats and assaults. Attackers cracked her ribs and pushed her around. It forced her, after 300 days of chaos, to leave for Oxford, in 2005, to study. Thirteen years on, Malan still looks over her shoulder.
“As to why Afrikaners became so angry, many saw, and still see, Fischer as a volksveraaier (traitor to his people). Secondly, Naspers journos and certain Afrikaner historians proclaimed that Fischer wanted a race war/genocide in South Africa. They never cited any proof, and had they bothered to read Fischer’s remarkable statement from the dock, they would have known that he wanted to avoid violence. Still, many Naspers readers bought this lie and it played a big role in the so-called Fischer ‘debate’ spinning out of control. Thirdly, they claimed that, as a Communist, he was responsible for all the evils committed in the name of the ideology. And that Communism was far worse than apartheid,” says Malan.
In 2017, on a windy Wednesday morning, we follow the Fischer story to the Castle Of Good Hope, in Cape Town. FORBES AFRICA visits 84-year-old veteran, and one of South Africa’s struggle heroes, Denis Goldberg, who escaped the death sentence with Mandela through a defence led by Fischer. Goldberg was the prisoner who eased the last painful days of Fischer in jail.
Goldberg made a walking stick for him, which was confiscated because prison authorities thought it could be used as a weapon. Fischer spent his dying days in his prison bed with Goldberg at his side.
“Bram Fischer gets arrested, Bram Fischer defended us, he was often at Lilliesleaf (a farm used as an underground hideout in Johannesburg), and the farm workers at Lilliesleaf knew him. And then it was strange seeing a man arrive in his beautiful car, his beautiful hat, suit, tie, and briefcase – the perfect life – come to the headquarters of uMkhonto we Sizwe with geese at the farm. But Bram, being a country boy, just walked through them,” he recalls.
<div id="attachment_32738" style="width: 234px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32738" class="size-medium wp-image-32738" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Bram-Fischer-01-224x300.jpg" alt="Bram Fischer" width="224" height="300" />Bram Fischer (Photo by Jacana Media archives)</div>
The Rivonia Trial could have seen Fischer also facing the death penalty. During the trial, the prosecutor presented documents which had Fischer’s fingerprints, along with prints of other members of the Communist Party, and a letter in Fischer’s handwriting.
“The prosecutor said, ‘There is a document here, that if we knew who the author was, he would be on trial with the accused too.’ while looking at Fischer, because they knew it was his writing,” says Goldberg.
“But they didn’t want to arrest him, so Bram played this political game with them to defend us. I believe by his very careful work and careful understanding of his politics, of what we were doing, was able to convince the judge that while we were talking about an armed uprising, we’d not made that decision, and that was a key moment in that trial.”
With the help of Fischer’s argument in court, the judge gave the accused a life sentence for sabotage instead of death.
“My mother calls up to me and asked what it is. I told her its life, life is wonderful,” laughs Goldberg.
In the end, years later, the authorities got Fischer. They charged him for forging a driver’s license and using a false name and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
“In prison he was absolutely strong. As he develops cancer, he becomes very ill. He was very unhappy that the accused could see that he wasn’t well because Fischer didn’t want to burden anyone with his problems,” says Goldberg.
Fischer was worried about everyone but himself, recalls his cell mate.
<blockquote>“He just wouldn’t show, he wouldn’t show pain, he wouldn’t show pain,” he says.</blockquote>
Fischer eventually got treatment, but it was too late.
Today he is remembered with the Bram Fischer International Airport in Bloemfontein and a play by Harry Kalmer called Bram Fischer Waltz. Plus a disputed honorary degree at Stellenbosch.

The Painful Price Of Courage

The wise, white-haired lawyer who has seen a thousand trials, nodded sagely as he spoke about the shooting that shocked the world. He believes the South African Police Services and government will pay for the deaths of 34 miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in Rustenburg, north-west of Johannesburg.
London-based criminal defense lawyer James Nichol traveled 5,600 miles to Johannesburg for a couple of weeks, to give his services for free. Those weeks turned into months of shocking evidence.
<div id="attachment_1590" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1590" class="size-medium wp-image-1590" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_1167-300x235.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="235" />James Nichol</div>
“There is no question of self-defense here, these are police officers who had gone completely berserk and had fired into these people. And in some cases there’s evidence of a number of strikers who had been shot in the back,” says Nichol.
The hearings are revealing evidence on how the miners died and 78 others were injured. The week before, 10 people—six miners, two police officers and two Lonmin security guards—were killed as thousands went on a wildcat strike, over pay.
When Nichol saw the images of the Marikana massacre in his living room in England, it reminded the 67-year-old of the shock he felt about the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. On that fateful day in the township south of Johannesburg, the police shot into a crowd of around 5,000 unarmed anti-pass protestors, killing 69 people—many shot in the back—and wounding more than 200.
At 15 years of age, he took to the streets, in his hometown of Newcastle, calling to boycott the apartheid regime.
Nichol knows how hard mining is. He started work as a miner at 15, while his father worked at a coal mine from age 14 near Newcastle. Nichol senior died from dust related heart disease when he was just 40. It left Nichol bringing up his siblings—their mother had died earlier from tuberculosis.
Nichol worked his way up to specialize in miscarriages of justice and is a lawyer for the Socialist Workers Party, of which he is a member. He defended miners during the famous miners’ strike in Britain between 1984-1985.
With the help of a legal team from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), Nichol represents the families at the commission, which is chaired by retired judge Ian Farlam. It is examining whether the police were justified in using lethal force, whether union rivalry triggered the violent strike and whether Lonmin played a role.
Nichol says the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) had abandoned its members. He says the union did not write to the bereaved families or represent them at the commission.
“I can think of no graver betrayal than to do nothing for the family of a dead member of your union.”
The families were wholly ignored by the state until Nichol and Joseph Mathunjwa, the president of rival union the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU),  found them.
“It seemed to me that it was wrong. I knew then that I was here to stay,” says the lawyer.
However, NUM’s general secretary, Frans Baleni, says that it is the responsibility of the company or the owner of the infrastructure where the incident happened, to call or write to the bereaved families. He added that the families would have had to give consent to be represented by the union and its lawyers.
Nichol believes that the killings could have been avoided because stopping the strike was not about public order but more about strike breaking.
The evidence suggests the police set up an operation of 800 officers the night before the massacre, including several machine guns, rifles with stun grenades, gas grenades and water cannons, plus helicopters and razor wire. The operation also organized ambulances and fire brigades.
“The decisive point for me that this was not about public order and more about strike breaking came on the morning of August 16, when two statements were made: one by the police commissioners when she said: ‘This strike stops today’ and one by the head of press for SAPS when he said: ‘Today is D-day.’ Why? Why did it have to be today?”
Many witnesses will appear over the next few months. A ruling by Farlam is expected in May. Nichol will be listening.

“It Seemed To Me That It Was Wrong”

With a glint in his eye, Nelson Mandela used to introduce Arthur Chaskalson thus.
“This is my lawyer… he managed to get me 27 years in prison!”
Chaskalson used to tell the story, against himself, with a laugh. Like the great man himself, the veteran human rights lawyer was a man of impeccable integrity, who never took himself too seriously. Chaskalson was born in Johannesburg in 1931 and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand from where he graduated in 1954.
In court, Chaskalson was a serious man, who quit a lucrative practice to stand up for the oppressed. For the best part of half a century, he argued for human rights and freedom.
It was a passion forged at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1964, when Chaskalson was a young member of the team that defended Mandela in the famous Rivonia Trial. It was the trial where Mandela and a number of his comrades were accused of sabotage—an offence that carried the death penalty. It was also the trial where world opinion turned in favor of the accused; overnight, criminals transformed into the freedom-seeking Benjamin Franklins of Africa.
“It was mid-winter and I remember he was wearing prison clothes with short trousers. He was in short trousers and the idea of putting people into short trousers was really to humiliate them. But it was impossible to humiliate Mr Mandela, he had this tremendous dignity, which transcended anything anyone could do to him. And from the very beginning of our very first meeting and discussions with everybody, it was clear that everybody respected him and saw him as a leader. Whereas he in turn respected them and insisted on decisions being taken by discussion and consensus not imposed upon anyone. And throughout the trial there was that collegiality and discussion,” Chaskalson told me in 2010.
Chaskalson was also in court when Mandela made his world famous speech from the dock, which took more than more six hours, in which he vowed to die for his beliefs.
“The court was packed, the people were silent and at the very end when he said that these were ideals for which he had struggled and hoped to live for, but if needs be he was prepared to die, there was a dramatic silence which we could actually hear the silence, in the court, and feel it. And it was absolutely quiet, not a sound, and then the judge said Mr Fisher, you can call your next witness.”
The next time Chaskalson saw Mandela across a court room was in 1994. Then President Mandela had made Chaskalson the first president of the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court, and attended the opening ceremony in Johannesburg.
Among the first business to be considered by the new court was an application to restore the death penalty—a weapon that had been used ruthlessly by the apartheid government and abandoned by the new government.
“He sat next to me on the bench and I remember he started by saying: ‘The last time I was in a court it was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death.’ That’s how he started his comment but the next day we were going to consider whether or not capital punishment was consistent with the Constitution. So it was quite a dramatic, quite a dramatic opening and if he had been executed what would have happened?”
A rhetorical question made possible by brave lawyers, like Arthur Chaskalson, prepared to swim against the dark swirling tide of oppression.

A Giant Of The Courtroom Who Stood Tall For All

It must be lonely at the top, sometimes. Since Kenyan geek, lawyer and political activist Ory Okolloh became Google’s policy advisor for Africa in early 2011, she is one of the few women in senior management in information technology (IT), a still largely male-dominated industry.
“The absence of women in technology is a challenge, not just in Africa but across the world,” Okolloh sighs. Through her work at Google, she wants to change that—by getting more Africans online, encouraging the creation of local internet content relevant to Africans and creating opportunities for young Africans to become developers and entrepreneurs.
Google, in a clever way of growing its own next generation of potential employees, is focusing on attracting women to the IT sector through close collaboration with universities, fellowships and internship programs. As a result, the number of women in IT should increase, Okolloh believes, and should translate into women taking up leadership positions.
<div id="attachment_960" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-960" class="wp-image-960 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/369-198_1-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Ory Okolloh, Johannesburg; 7 June 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
“You need to build a pipeline first before you can look at how to get women into the higher, more visible roles,” she says.
She also hopes her own career path—after growing up in a relatively poor family in urban Kenya, she graduated from Harvard Law School in the United States, then accepted a high-powered position at multinational tech giant Google—will be an inspiration to other African women: “I hope I come across as very normal, so women can look at me and think, ‘I can do that too’.”
It was at Harvard that Okolloh discovered the power of the internet.
“I started blogging, which as a woman, gave me a voice and a space that I didn’t have to negotiate with anyone,” she says. Freedom of speech, liberation from patriarchal structures and participation in current political and social debates were no longer abstract concepts. Okolloh could exercise them every day and perhaps, most importantly, without intermediaries.
It was a realization that gave her life a new course. In 2006, she co-founded a parliamentary watchdog site Mzalendo (‘patriot’ in Swahili) which increased the accountability of Kenya’s government by recording bills, speeches and other official documents and making them available online. A year later, when the east African country was engulfed in violence following disputed presidential elections, Okolloh created yet another site, Ushahidi (Swahili for ‘witness’) that collected and mapped eyewitness reports of violence. The open source software created for the website has since been used to track violence in Eastern Congo, monitor elections in India and Mexico and map crime in the middle-American city, Atlanta.
Although Okolloh describes herself as a nerd, she is far from geeky. Fashionable, witty, warm and charming, she says working in the IT sector doesn’t mean hiding behind a computer screen.
“I can’t code to save my life,” she admits. “I’m much more interested in how technology can change lives.”
Her role as Google’s Africa policy advisor allows her to pursue this goal. The 34-year-old spends her days jetting from one of the continent’s 54 nations to the next to convince governments and private sector representatives of the importance of internet access for everyone.
“I try to encourage them to adopt policies that lead to getting more people online, to put in place regulations and come up with initiatives that can give people more access to the internet,” she says.
Internet connectivity and expansion should be a key aspect of any African country’s economic growth strategy, Okolloh believes: “The internet needs to be treated as an ‘infrastructure’. It’s as core, as critical, as electricity, water or roads in terms of growing the economy.” Optimistic about Africa’s future, she trusts in the continent’s ability to generate economic growth, but is wary about how it is being harnessed.
“This is a key decade for the continent in terms of opportunities. The question is how we make it a sustainable, inclusive and transformative growth, not just a boom decade.”
One way to do this is to improve internet access—currently only about 10% of Africans are online—which will have a direct impact on people’s pockets, Okolloh says, because the internet gives everyone, even those without much capital, access to the world.
“That’s why I’m drawn to technology. It’s an opportunity for people without resources, particularly young people and women, to place their stake in the ground. Those who can’t get a loan, can’t set up a manufacturing plant, can’t get an agent, but have access to this platform where they can make something happen for themselves. You can’t create jobs for everyone, you have to encourage entrepreneurship,” she says.
That has certainly been true in her own life. A mother of three young daughters, it’s largely thanks to the internet, and a supportive husband, that Okolloh manages to juggle a demanding career, frequent travel and family life as well as she does.
“The internet is a key enabler for women because it gives them mobility, flexibility and connectivity wherever they are. It helps them juggle multiple roles, work from home, be more efficient,” she says.
But until Okolloh reaches Google’s goal of Africa reaching a level of connectivity that matches that of Western nations, she will have to overcome some major challenges. Although the necessary undersea cables have been landed to connect the continent to the world’s major data hubs in the States and Europe, transmitting data inland is still too expensive.
“We still have a long way to go to tap the internet’s full potential in Africa,” Okolloh admits.
Another obstacle to innovation is lack of regional integration, which would allow entrepreneurs access to all 54 African markets.
“For innovation to really flourish, as an innovator, entrepreneur or business, you need to be able to at least sell to the continent, if not worldwide,” she explains. The basis for this would be a regionally accepted online payment system, like PayPal in the States, to facilitate e-commerce continent-wide. To date, Africa doesn’t have one.
In addition to that, Okolloh, who was on the Forbes list of Names You Need to Know in 2011 and named by Foreign Policy as one of the world’s top 100 thinkers in 2010, is rooting for more local content creation including text in local languages and country-specific geo-mapping to create “an internet that speaks to you where you are”. Currently, local content is at a dismal 2%.
“I would like to see Africans not only consume technology, but produce it. It’s about making the internet more relevant to Africa but also about sharing our content with the world,” she says.
The more Africans use the internet daily, the more likely Google is to make a profit on the continent. Since the web-search giant started operations in Africa in 2007, it has expanded into South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Uganda and opened offices in each of them, employing a total of about 90 staff.
“We are still laying the groundwork, understanding the market. We will grow as a business if people are online and local content is online,” Okolloh says, predicting that Google will profit in Africa within this decade.

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