Justice Chaskalson -- who died earlier this week aged 81 in Johannesburg -- was a leading figure of the reborn country after the demise of apartheid 20 years ago. The New York Times points out that he was the first presiding judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court , having, in the mid-1960s been part of the legal team that saved Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress activists from the death penalty.
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Local South African media today said eight former and one current Constitutional Court judges rebutted claims by the country’s communist party that Justice Chaskalson had been a member.
According to a report in Business Day newspaper, the South African Communist Party had paid tribute to the judge after his death, claiming that he was a member of its underground group in the 1960s and had represented the party at the Codesa negotiations – the meetings hammering out the deal ending apartheid – in the early 1990s.
However, the paper goes on to say that the party’s deputy secretary-general, Jeremy Cronin, has now said it ‘fully accepts’ the judge was not a member.
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