Tributes are pouring in for Joel Joffe, Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia trial attorney who became a British peer in exile and who has died at the age of 85. Lord Joffe died on Sunday, said Oxfam, the aid agency that he chaired. The Nelson Mandela Foundation said the human rights lawyer died in London. Joffe was a member of Mandela’s defence team in the 1963-64 Rivonia Trial, which resulted in Mandela being given a life sentence for sabotage against the apartheid state. After leaving for Britain, Joffe co-founded a large insurance group and later became a parliamentarian in Britain, spearheading the campaign for assisted dying for the terminally ill. British anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain said Joffe was an "iconic figure" who never sought the limelight. "He just supported everybody else," Hain said. He was "a totally generous person, warm, passionate and he continued to fly the flag for the anti-apartheid struggle and subsequently the new SA". Joffe was born in Johannesburg on May 12 ...
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