When news reports trickled out in late summer of 1992 that atrocities were being committed in the bitter struggle for control of the former Yugoslavia -- including mass rape, the eviction and killing of civilian populations as part of the Serbs' "ethnic cleansing" policy, and the creation of Nazi-like death camps where prisoners were tortured and often killed -- South African judge Richard Goldstone, now the tribunal's chief prosecutor, didn't have much time to dwell on the implications. Since 1991 Goldstone had been chairing an inquiry into the causes of violence in South Africa. "I had my hands full," he notes with a thin smile.

In fact, the Standing Commission of Inquiry regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, widely known as the Goldstone Commission, played a critical role in defusing the partisan political violence that had been unleashed as apartheid, itself the result of ethnic cleansing, began eroding in the late 1980s. By 1991 the violence -- with daily killings in South Africa's black townships, and a white minority increasingly fearful of the implications of majority rule -- threatened the transition to democracy that President F.W. DeKlerk was then struggling through.

Desperate to keep the country from deteriorating into chaos, DeKlerk and some two dozen political parties, including the two largest, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and the rival Inkatha Freedom Party, signed a shaky peace accord in September 1991. Part of that accord included the creation of the commission to investigate violence, to be chaired by someone acceptable to all 19 parties. That someone turned out to be Goldstone, then a judge on the appellate division of the South African Supreme Court, the country's highest court at that time.

Goldstone had been quietly undermining apartheid policies since joining the bench in 1980. In a landmark 1982 ruling, for instance, he essentially gutted the notorious Group Areas Act, which had restricted blacks to living in violent black townships. It was a clever piece of work: He did not just overturn the act, which might well then have been reinstated by the white parliament. Instead, he ruled in a carefully constructed decision that police must weigh certain factors before they could evict an elderly Indian woman from her home in a white suburb, the most important being whether they could provide her with alternative shelter of similar quality. Since housing standards in the mixed race and black townships fell far below that in white areas, the woman stayed, and the act became a toothless relic of the fading apartheid era.

"His decision put an end to use of the criminal courts to evict pursuant to the Group Areas Act," says President Nelson Mandela's personal lawyer, George Bizos of Johannesburg. Goldstone hadn't always been so strongly antiapartheid. His father owned two musical instrument stores, and Goldstone says that he grew up comfortably in an upper-middle-class Jewish household in a white suburb of Johannesburg, blithely unaware of what he now refers to as the "immorality and inhumanity" of apartheid. "For my first eighteen years I'd never met any blacks other than as subordinates, servants in our home and other people's homes," he confesses.

Goldstone's eyes were abruptly unblinkered when he attended a mixed-race school, the University of Witwatersrand, in 1957. "It became apparent to me immediately that when [my black classmates and I] were at school we were equals, but as soon as we left the grounds, blacks were treated as second- or third-class citizens," he says. In 1960, the year Goldstone was elected president of the student council, the government attempted to segregate universities. Goldstone and others protested vociferously, making public speeches and leading marches against the proposed measure, which failed. Goldstone says that was the last time he was involved in political activities.

Goldstone became a barrister in the then-bifurcated bar in 1963. From 1963 to 1980 Goldstone -- who, according to colleagues, was very ambitious and a hard worker -- built what fellow lawyer Bizos describes as "a large and successful" commercial and intellectual property practice in Johannesburg. In 1977, at the age of 38, he became one of the youngest members of the bar to "take silk," the expression for achieving the highest level of barrister. He was not involved at all during that period, he concedes, in the struggle for democracy and against apartheid.

That all changed when he was appointed to the Transvaal Supreme Court in 1980 at the age of 42 -- one of the youngest barristers to be sent up to the bench. Because of the labor, intellectual property, and corporations work he did as a lawyer, many of the cases assigned to Goldstone were rather dry, complex commercial matters. Nonetheless, when cases came to Goldstone that dealt with laws designed to preserve apartheid, he managed to strike them down.

And judges in South Africa were then the only officials who had the authority to visit prisons at any time to ensure that conditions were humane and that no mistreatment occurred. Few exercised that right; Goldstone, aware of the conditions imposed on blacks -- many of them political prisoners -- made these visits part of his job.

It was perhaps no surprise, then, that President DeKlerk asked Goldstone to conduct an investigation in 1990 into the shooting of several black demonstrators by police in the black township of Sebokeng. Goldstone's report castigated the police for firing without provocation and recommended they be prosecuted for murder. Ultimately, none were so prosecuted, but numerous damage suits were successfully brought against the policemen involved.

Two years later, Goldstone -- described by Bill Keller in a 1993 New York Times article as "perhaps the most trusted man, certainly the most trusted member of the white establishment, in a land of corrosive suspicion" -- was a natural choice to be chairman of what became the Goldstone Commission. It had an unlimited budget and broad powers to search and seize evidence, subpoena witnesses, and compel testimony about the sources of political violence in South Africa. Thrust into the limelight, Goldstone excelled. For three years he appeared almost daily on the TV news and the front pages of the papers, a reassuring presence in such turbulent times. "He is a household name in South Africa," says Capetown lawyer Carl Pohl.

The pressures from all sides were tremendous: The government hoped he would determine that the black political parties were responsible for the numerous killings wracking the townships; the ANC wanted him to blame the Inkatha Freedom Party and a "third force" of military and police officials who conspired to preserve white dominion by inciting black-on-black violence. Conservative Afrikaaner fringe groups just wanted him to fail in his inquiry. In fact, he received death threats early on, and a detail of security officers became his constant companion for the next two years.

But finding the culprits ended up a secondary concern for Goldstone; the commission's priority became venting away the explosive anger resulting from violence that continued even as the commission convened. If a killing occurred in a township, Goldstone and his police and investigators became the authority in charge. "It was an important safety valve," he says, "because investigators were on the scene immediately and evidence was heard within a week at times."

For the first year Goldstone's commission turned out unsurprising reports, essentially laying the blame on the two largest parties, Inkatha and ANC. The turning point came in late 1992, says Goldstone, when he requested and received his own independent police force to conduct investigations he directed. Goldstone and his commission immediately made some shocking discoveries. In November 1992, for example, a bold raid he authorized turned up a secret section of the government's military intelligence division that used dirty tricks to undermine the political power of the African National Congress. Presented with incontrovertible evidence, De Klerk dismissed or suspended some 23 members of the clandestine group.

Finally, shortly before the elections last April, Goldstone discovered that some senior police and military officials, including a high-ranking general, had been selling arms to political factions, hoping to disrupt the armistice that the political parties had worked out prior to the elections. He rushed his report to the public, essentially forcing DeKlerk to address another embarrassing situation his appointee had created. The general refused to resign, but Goldstone would not back down, demanding that DeKlerk take action. In the end, DeKlerk suspended the general.

"I don't think DeKlerk or anyone else thought Goldstone would uncover what he uncovered," asserts Capetown lawyer Mervyn Smith.

While the government and Inkatha seemed to receive most of the blame for the violence, everyone was faulted by the commission at one point or another. "The best indication of success was that we incurred the wrath of every party involved," deadpans Goldstone.

His colleague, Constitutional Court justice Johann Kriegler, assesses Goldstone's commission work more charitably: "He played the political game as an outsider and had to walk a tightrope. But he is a surefooted tactician, and he maintained his credibility with people on all sides. That was damned difficult to do."

By mid-1994 the elections were complete and Goldstone had turned over the bulk of the commission's files to prosecutors to pursue further. It's worth noting that Goldstone maintained a full caseload as an appellate judge while he chaired the commission. His rationale reveals his practical, honorable approach to his fiduciary roles: He says he wanted to maintain his absolute independence and therefore took no pay for his role with the commission, but also felt that since he was collecting a full judge's salary, he should fulfill his duties in that arena as well.

Goldstone took a five-week vacation in Europe. When he returned, he was offered both the chief prosecutor's job at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and a position on South Africa's new Constitutional Court. Within a week, urged on by Nelson Mandela, he accepted the prosecutor's job. The high court position would be temporarily filled until he returned.

Not all his cohorts at the bench and bar agreed with his decision to go to work for some far-off tribunal. "I think it's a pity he took it," says Capetown lawyer Pohl. "There's a hell of a lot of work to be done here."

But he is inarguably a good choice for the position: "He'll be breaking new ground over there," says Justice Kriegler. "He's an innovative, creative lawyer, and I think he'll be good at that."

(The American Lawyer is an affiliate publication of Court TV.)
Copyright © American Lawyer Media, L.P.