Few judicial memoirs manage to be both uproariously funny and quietly profound, but Raising the Bar: The Making of a Judge by Jeremy Pickering does exactly that.
It offers a life story that moves effortlessly from the absurd to the deeply humane, while tracing the unlikely, often eccentric journey of a man who became one of the Eastern Cape’s most respected judges.
This book is a rollicking good read which I devoured in one sitting.
Retired constitutional court judge Edwin Cameron describes it as “a delightful memoir — entertaining, richly populated and wittily written”.
And it is. But it is also so much more.
It’s a charming, quirky, sometimes side-splitting, roll-on-the ground funny book filled with eccentric characters that ebbed and flowed through the life of the now retired Eastern Cape division high court judge.
On his retirement in 2019 after having served on the Eastern Cape bench for 27 years, advocate Izak Smuts, SC, told the Daily Dispatch that Pickering’s career in the law had been an “exemplary demonstration of commitment to justice and fairness for ordinary people”.
“Throughout his career as an advocate, both at the bar in Mthatha and in the service of the Legal Resources Centre, he often stood as a lone guardian of individual rights in a time of unjust laws and practices.”
Pickering’s account of his own life is far more self-effacing with much of his humour directed against himself.
Born in 1949, Pickering was raised on the family’s dairy farm near Stutterheim.
Having been born prematurely and at a time when Stutterheim Hospital had no incubators, he spent the first weeks of life in the “warm environs of the yeast proving drawer of Holland Bakery” where the baker accommodated him “rent free”.
“My weight rose with the yeast and eventually I was allowed home to the farm.”
What follows is a delightful account of his early years on the farm, as a pupil at Stutterheim Primary School and later St Andrew’s College in Makhanda.
He later writes of how he “fell” into the legal profession at Stellenbosch University because of his inability to adequately read Afrikaans at enrolment.
And so, he copied the registration form of the student in front of him, who happened to be registering to study law.
Pickering later became as proficient in Afrikaans as he was eloquent in English.
His short stint paying off his government bursary as a prosecutor came to a sticky end when he was unable to stomach an unpleasant attorney-general who would “celebrate” every death sentence his office achieved with tea and cake.
He departs on a “gap year” in the UK where he joins a small travelling circus.
There, as one does, he fell in love with a supple trapeze artist for whom he wrote some rather lovely poetry.
He later took over from a syphilitic clown who had to vacate his post to recover from his disease.
In the book, Pickering notes: “As far as I am aware I am the only judge ever appointed in SA who had previously worked as a clown.
“Conversely, I am the only erstwhile clown ever appointed a judge.”
I have yet to find any evidence to dispute Pickering’s assertion.
The only criticism of the book is that his self-deprecating and often humorous account of his life and career sometimes hides the fact that he was an outstanding, courageous lawyer and judge.
Most of his legal work was about achieving real justice at a time when injustice was built into the law.
As a jurist, his judgments were always carefully crafted, crystal clear and powerfully insightful.
The book also has important references to our awful apartheid past and those lawyers, like Pickering, who fought those injustices through the courts.
While working in the former Transkei, he earned the wrath of the then Bantustan leader, Kaizer Matanzima, for his human rights work.
Later, as head of the
Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, he was just as unpopular with
the apartheid regime and its security police who suffered numerous humiliating defeats in court as a result of his
work and that of his LRC colleagues.
His white neighbours in Mill Park also treated him with utter contempt for the good work he did.
No doubt, those same people will now deny ever having supported apartheid.
The book serves as a powerful record of the behind-the-scenes work done by lawyers in establishing important law including the 1975 Supreme Court of Appeal judgment on police liability.
It held that police could be held legally liable, not just for unlawful actions, but also for omitting to act.
Pickering was part of that small coterie of brilliant lawyers working hard against horrific forced removals, detention without trial, police assaults and other shocking injustices perpetrated by the apartheid regime.
There can be no doubt that under a democratic dispensation, he would eventually have been appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal but for his enormous Newfoundland dog, Henry.
He declined the honour of acting in the SCA because “there was no possibility of Henry being accommodated in a rented flat in Bloemfontein … I have never regretted my decision. Some things are more important than work.”
Like with so many of his judgments, his account of his life and growth as a lawyer and a judge reads beautifully and is woven through with wry humour.
This book falls into my category of being a must-read.
