Albie Sachs is a South African lawyer, activist, and writer. He was appointed a judge in the first Constitutional Court of South Africa, and became an internationally recognized common law judge. After several detentions in the late 1960s on account of his activist work against Apartheid, Sachs was forced to leave South Africa. He continued his ANC work abroad, including first England and then Mozambique, where he survived an assassination attempt in 1988. Sachs was able to return to South Africa in 1990, where he was subsequently closely involved in the creation of the post-apartheid 1996 constitution. Sachs has written several books on justice in South Africa and his experiences as an activist judge—e.g., Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter (2009); Strange Alchemy of Life and Law (1990)—and has won many awards both for the books and for his contributions to peace and justice, including the Reconciliation Award (Institute for Justice and Reconciliation); the Legion of Honour (France); the Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil).