Following the period of blackout after the explosion, South African freedom fighter Albie Sachs asked a nurse what had just happened to him. She explained that a bomb had been planted in his car. Sachs then sank into a state of what he described as "euphoria." The day had finally arrived when the Apartheid authority had come for him. He hadn't been kidnapped and he was still alive; all that had gone missing was an arm and his sight in one eye. He'd gotten off easy.

Justice Sachs recounted this story in a stopover to UCLA, all part of a book tour for two recently released volumes on the South African Constitutional Court, which Sachs now serves on. Art and Justice and Light on a Hill (edited by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen) chronicle the building of the Court, which is located at the same site as the South African prison that once held Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

The majority of Sachs' lecture, however, did not feature promotional banter for the book. The former attorney, who defended victims of Apartheid's racist statutes, began the lecture with a story about meeting Henry, one of the soldiers who had organized the planting of the car bomb. While Henry had agreed to testify to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Sachs couldn't bring himself to shake the hand of the man who had tried to kill him.

Reconciliation had not yet come for Sachs, a man who once spent180 days in solitary confinement, placed there after being accused and arrested as an alleged terrorist. Sachs maintained his sanity in a world where he was his only companion by alphabetically reciting the American states, singing Irving Berlin's "Always," and imagining his experience as a theater production. (His book, The Jail Diaries of Albie Sachs, was eventually put onstage by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London.)

After his release, Sachs was eventually exiled from his home country for participation in the anti-Apartheid movement. It was while residing in Mozambique that he became the target of actual terrorism, after the state arranged for his car to be rigged with an explosive device. He recalled that the first thing he did following the attack was reach down for his balls, after remembering a joke about a man falling off a bus and checking for "testicles, spectacles, wallet, and watch."

During his recovery, he pondered what would happen if his attackers were put on trial, and acquitted. If the evidence did not prove their guilt, he would get his "soft vengeance," simply by living in "a country where the rule of law applied." (This is where the title of his second book, The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, originated.)

Before taking questions, Sachs' ended the lecture with the story of his last meeting with Henry, when the soldier approached him at a party. This time he shook his hand.

Story by Natalie Hamingson.

Art and Justice: The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa is available through David Krut Publishing.

For more information see Artists for a New South Africa.

Photo by Caitlin Swan, courtesy of ANSA.