Mapula Sibanda
LIKE Martin Luther King, whose poster adorns his office wall, Jody Kollapen also has a dream, and his appointment this week as national director of Lawyers for Human Rights will afford him the luxury to realise it.
Kollapen’s dream is to change the confrontational relationship between the police and human rights lawyers, building one of more critical support — allowing both sides the opportunity to stand back and be objective as they work alongside.
Kollapen takes over from Brian Currin when he leaves at the end of January next year.
Born 37 years ago in the mixed area of Marabastad, Pretoria, Kollapen grew up in Laudium — also in Pretoria – – after his family was forcibly relocated under the Group Areas Act.
His fight for human rights started long before his association with the LHR. After spending two years studying law at Durban Westville, he left in pursuit of another dream, the right to study at the University of the Witwatersrand.
It was back in the days of the Extension of University Education Act, “which landed me in Westville, where I did not want to be”, he says. “In order to get into Wits, I remember I had to apply for a special ministerial permit.” From Wits, Kollapen — also a member of the Black Students Society — later obtained his B Proc and LLB degrees.
Before joining LHR four years ago, he spent almost 10 years in his own practice, defending activists at the height of the turmoil of the 1980s. He later formed a partnership with other colleagues and worked intensively on prisoners’ rights.
Representing the partnership, he was the instructing attorney in Pretoria in a number of famous political trials, including the Delmas Treason Trial in the late 1980s and the South African Medical and Dental Association’s case against the doctors who failed to save Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko in 1977.
“The opportunity to join LHR came after I met and developed a friendship with Brian Currin, who was working at the firm (Savage Jooste and Adams) where I was serving my articles at the time. I then became involved with LHR’s Political Prisoner Release Project before joining them on their permanent staff.”
Married with three daughters, Kollapen admits to the testing, trying times his work created for him as a family man, including brushes with the security police, during his practice.
“During those days the hostile environment under which human rights lawyers operated usually made some inroads into one’s personal life.”
With 14 offices countrywide, a staff of 115, and close to 10 community development programmes underway, Kollapen needs more than a dream to maintain the survival of LHR. “As an NGO, we are faced with a major challenge as foreign funders misdirect their funds to the government’s reconstruction programmes. On the other hand, we have to contend with private companies which can offer better packages for staff.”
Next year, he says, LHR will “work together with the state to improve our relationship — thereby promoting a fairer state of justice accessible to all communities”.
“As a human rights NGO, it is important though to maintain our independence in our dealings with the state, so that we can be critical of them, when the need arises.
“We now have the correct ingredients to turn LHR into more of a success. The right environment –which is our democratic state — and the perfect tools, our constitution and our bill of rights.”