ROB ROSE: Tangled up with Tom
Bewildering attempts at logic as Sars boss tries to explain why he is happy to have his deputy back in the office
Lavery Modise, chairman of law firm Hogan Lovells, has had a nightmare month. Modise (62) is one of SA’s pre-eminent labour lawyers. A son of a nurse, and a nursing sister, his story is a compelling tale of someone who rose from rags to become a judge in the labour court. When he was seven or eight, he and his parents were forcibly removed from Weston (near what used to be Sophiatown) and shunted to Soweto — an incident which gave him his first sense that "something was wrong". "From that time, I think I told myself that I wanted to become a lawyer," he said in an insightful interview he gave to the Legal Resources Centre years ago.It was a hard grind. Through Morris Isaacson school, matric at Orlando High (1974), then numerous interrupted stints at Turfloop and Fort Hare (where he was deemed a "troublemaker"), till Modise finally got a permit (which black people needed during the dark days of PW Botha) to finish his law degree at Wits, where his classmates included Patrice Motsepe....
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