Voting Station

Bram Fischer

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Attorney

The Resume

    (April 23, 1908-May 8, 1975)
    Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa
    Attorney and anti-apartheid activist
    Helped revise the constitution of the African National Congress (1943)
    Lead counsel of the defense team at the Rivonia Trial of anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela (1964)
    Found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to life in prison (1966)
    After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, was transferred to his brother’s home under house arrest (1975)
    Posthumously reinstated to the South African bar (2003)

Why he might be annoying:

    He joined the South African Communist Party, and became its chair after the Party was banned and driven underground.
    Oddly for a Communist, he excelled in corporate law.
    While out on bail, he skipped out on his trial and went underground, against the advice of Nelson Mandela, who had encouraged him to continue practicing law ‘where people could see this Afrikaner son of a judge president fighting for the rights of the powerless.’
    After he was cremated, the prison bureau lost his ashes.

Why he might not be annoying:

    His wife died by drowning after he swerved to avoid a cow in the road, resulting in their car veering off the road and overturning in a river (June 13, 1964).
    While he was in prison, his son Paul died of cystic fibrosis at age 23.
    Nelson Mandela called him ‘one of the bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle I have known.’
    At his trial he said, ‘If in my fight I can encourage even some people to understand and to abandon policies they now so blindly follow, I shall not regret any punishment I may incur.’
    After he fell in the prison shower and fractured his femur and neck, authorities waited thirteen days before admitting him to a hospital (1974).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 9 Votes: 22.22% Annoying