Less well known is his vegetable garden at his house in Johannesburg which he tended to lovingly every morning and from which he provided fresh vegetables to his clients while they were in detention. One of these was Popo Molefe who was a defendant in the Delmas Treason trial. He told a local television station that the defendants looked forward to the vegetables while they were held in Modder Bee prison, awaiting trial.

This aspect of his life was known to most lawyers he encountered, including Sir Sydney Kentridge who appeared in several cases as the senior advocate when Bizos was the junior. Kentridge recalls how, when he was invited to Sunday lunch, Bizos would prepare roast lamb on a spit – apparently delicious - from early in the morning.

Speaking from London, Kentridge says that what he admired about Bizos was that he ‘was thoughtful and wise’. What he had, says Kentridge, did not require a great legal knowledge, although he had that as well. His role at the inquest into the death at the hands of police while in their custody of political activist Steve Biko showed both ‘judgement and wisdom’.

This, says Kentridge, manifested when giving clients advice on when and whether to litigate. Although a case of a client may have been good, it may not always have been useful for the long-term benefit of the client to litigate. ‘The point is that it is not just a matter of law – but of wisdom,’ says Kentridge, adding that Bizos was a very good judge of people, but was not ‘judgmental’.

Kentridge’s wife, Felicity, also a lawyer, had set up the Legal Resources Centre – a public interest law firm – along with Arthur Chaskalson who was South Africa’s first chief justice at the inception of the Constitutional Court. Bizos had joined the firm and continued to work there until he was literally unable to go into the office every day. ‘In my experience, he never made snap decisions. He weighed everything up.’

Kentridge says Mandela had the greatest faith and confidence in Bizos. This became apparent when the South African Government began talks with Mandela while he was in Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Bizos was his emissary to the African National Congress (ANC), in exile in Lusaka, keeping them fully apprised of the talks. This close relationship continued throughout Mandela’s life.

Kentridge said that if one asked him for advice, it would be given with much thought and wisdom. That observation resonated in an incident described by Justice Richard Goldstone, speaking from Johannesburg. He had been asked in 1987 to inspect detainees being held mainly for political reasons during the State of Emergency which lasted for many years of the 1980s. The detention of these activists was accompanied by frequent accusations of torture and manhandling by police.

‘This gave me a huge dilemma,’ Goldstone said. ‘I did not want to be involved with the detention without trial of the detainees.’ He answered the request by saying he needed 24 hours to think about this, during which time he met Bizos for lunch. He put his dilemma to Bizos who agreed it was indeed a problem. Detainees however needed to be visited. Bizos’s advice to Goldstone was to go and visit a detainee and ask what they wanted.

Goldstone went to the notorious police station, then called John Vorster Square, and was allowed to interview Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of Mandela’s fellow Treason trialist, Walter Sisulu. He put his dilemma to Sisulu, asking for his advice. Sisulu couldn’t give any, but said he was simply extremely pleased to see Goldstone. In the end Goldstone undertook around 3000 detainee visits. ‘Without George’s advice I might not have done it,’ Goldstone says.

Bizos was best known in the court room setting, for his examination of witnesses. He was always particularly well prepared and particularly tenacious reducing at least one state witness to tears. Though neither Kentridge nor Goldstone worked with Bizos in court often, Goldstone notes that he was always ‘unbelievably well prepared’.

Bizos was not universally loved. Aside from the judges he irritated and the prosecutors who feared him, his decisions did not always please his colleagues or those involved in the politics of the day. One unpopular move was his defence of the late Morgan Tsvangirai who had been charged with planning a coup d’etat. Bizos travelled to Zimbabwe in 2004 to defend the opposition leader. This evidently displeased then South African President Thabo Mbeki and Zimbabwean Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. South Africa supported Mugabe despite considerable evidence that the regime had become brutal and violent in its suppression of opposition.

Born in Greece and during the Nazi occupation of the country, at 13 years old, George Bizos and his father took a small boat and seven New Zealand soldiers out to sea to help them escape the Nazis. They very soon got into difficulties and had to be rescued by a British ship which took them to Egypt from where they were sent as refugees to South Africa.

Bizos was never at ease with himself as an immigrant more privileged than Black South Africans. He abhorred apartheid and its injustices (in fact all injustices) and, having studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand, set about helping those who needed it in court rooms. This took him around the country appearing at seemingly small trials in small towns to help various people, often activists, who needed it.

He married the love of his life, Arethe, who died in 2017, and he leaves their three sons.