TRANSCRIPT: It's called a walkabout. For me, it's going to be a sit about. And I start with that piece of art behind me called Requiem in Wood by Mozambican artist Govane. It's unique. I don't think there's a work like it in any other museum in the world, because we filmed its creation from the very beginning to the piece that's now here; cutting down the tree in the forest, chiseling away. And there was a very strong reason for doing that.

I'd been living 11 years in Mozambique. It was huge for me. I'd been in exile in London for 11 years. They were great years. I got a PhD, married, had two children, wrote books, was on TV, but I was unhappy, even when I was happy in England. I come to Mozambique, tremendous problems, ending civil war, but in Mozambique I was happy even when I was unhappy. And what really got my goat was the way Africa was being represented in the world: as a continent of refugees, starving children, begging bowls.

For me, Mozambique was a country of intense creativity, beautiful creativity, of people reflecting profoundly on the lives they were living and producing art of extraordinary quality. And I wanted to show that. So, I'd already seen work by the artist Govane. I liked it, and together with a friend from Vienna, Margit Niederhuber – who I'd met in Mozambique – we decided to film the creation of that work.

And the film is there. The work is here. You see him chiseling away. I'm watching it. I'm amazed at how that tree trunk is not used normally. Sculpture in wood [usually] shows standing figures. He went for the knotted parts, the roots, to show the turmoil in his country. He said, ‘The story is in the wood.’ And the theme that came out [was that] he said he would look at the wood, sleep, dream, wake up, and then start working away in terms of the dream that he'd had. He said the theme was [that] a man is approaching his death, but the little strength that he's got left is to cradle two other men who are dying. It's just exquisite in feeling and emotion. And that story really is in the wood. And I'm so glad that we're going to have something to show the world, and I'm blown up…

TRANSCRIPT: Marjorie Wallace, a Scottish painter had met her husband, Jan Rabie, a rebel South African writer, writing in Afrikaans language in Paris, and she settled in Cape Town. She asked, would I sit for a portrait with her? And she told me her dad had been a barrister in Scotland, and the picture that was emerging was Albie the Advocate, rather stern. She said, ‘It's got none of your whimsy, none of your humour, none of your brightness. But it's got your thoughtfulness and sternness as an advocate.’

I took my work as an advocate very, very seriously. The very first case I got, aged 21 – I just started legal practice – was a death penalty case. Young advocates could train on death sentence cases, because nobody should be hanged if they didn't have defence. I was trembling. In fact, my client was acquitted – a woman who had stabbed her husband. Phew! The first year was terrifying. A judge would ask me a question, I wouldn't know the answer. And from the second year, third year, I had poise.

I started my legal practice with a lie. I swore to uphold the Constitution and the law of South Africa. It was a total lie. We hated the Constitution. We hated the law. But practicing in the courts, applying the law, was complicated, difficult. We could win cases, we could expose torture, we could save people from the death penalty. But overwhelmingly the courts were white judges, white police officers giving most of the evidence, everything was white, white, white, enforcing laws made by a whites-only Parliament. Difficult. And then I'm entering my chambers one day, and the next thing I know, I'm locked up. I'm in prison myself.

The door slams. I'm alone in this big concrete cube. Nothing to sit on. A mat on the floor. High window. ‘Da-da-da-dum’. I love Beethoven, giving me courage ‘Da-da-da-dum.’ And I look around, no one to speak to, nothing to read, can't write. This is inhuman. Human beings are made to be with other human beings.

I sit down on the floor, I stretch my toes, the wall, the walls, my toes. I know I'm there under the 90-Day Law. I could be detained without trial, without access to lawyers, without going to court, for 90 days in this total solitude.

The only thing from outside was noise, and occasionally I would hear chimes of a clock, little bit of traffic sometimes, but mainly the din of prison – doors slamming, metal commands, drunk people crying out, crying out, crying out, and then quietening down, and then crying out, crying.

And then one day I hear whistling. There's another human being; that's not prison sound. There must be another political prisoner. I whistle ANC songs ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.’ I'm whistling. No response. ‘Mayibuye’ – Come Back Africa - no response. ‘Senzeni Na, Senzeni Na.’ No response. Then I try ‘The people's flag is deepest red. It shrouded oft our martyred dead.’ No response. And then I hear [sings] and I respond [sings] – Dvořák, ‘New World Symphony’. He's in New York, he's nostalgic for his homeland, Czechoslovakia, and he picks up on what was called a Negro spiritual ‘Going Home.’ And the theme of going home means so much to me in that prison [sings], and there's somebody else, a whistler, with whom I'm communicating.

TRANSCRIPT: For me, this is a very, very, very London scene. Dumile Feni, South African artist, sitting on the only piece of furniture that he had in a basement, little apartment, Tufnell Park, working-class area of London. The trunk, we travelled… none of us travelled by plane in those days. You went by boat, you put all your belongings in the trunk, and that's the only furniture he has in this apartment, pieces of screen with trousers un-ironed hanging over them, a mattress on the floor, a tap of toilet, and he's explaining his ideas about art and the people and telling me stories in his soft voice and I'm listening to him and he would often come round to my house nearby to the flat I'm then married to Stephanie Kemp, we have two little children. He loved being in a space with children, and it was warm and soft things to sit on, and he'd have some nice food. We loved having him around, and I've known many great artists, William Kentridge, South African, world-renowned handspring puppet people, South Africans world-renowned Marlene Dumas, South African-born world renowned, but for sheer genius none of them can touch Dumile Feni. He just managed with black and white imagery and a little bit of sculpture to capture something so intense, so strong, so memorable.

Everything, everything was political. Even love was political. I'm Advocate Albie Sachs, interviewing my client Stephanie Kemp in a prison in Cape Town. She had blown up pylons. She'd been braver than myself. She wanted me to be her advocate. We’re across the table and I'm falling in love. There was just something so bright, so idealistic, so proud, so vulnerable, so beautiful about her. We don't say anything. The only time I even touch her is after she's sentenced to some years in jail, not the long period that we'd feared, and I shake her hand – I had my right on then – and say, ‘Good luck, be brave.’ She comes out of prison, she comes to see me, and she says, ‘Be careful, they're coming to get you.’

They did come to get me and I'm thrown into solitary confinement again. This time it's much worse. It's sleep deprivation – noise for 10 minutes, total silence for 20 minutes, noise for 10 minutes, 20 minutes silence. Another team comes in working afternoon, night, after midnight, into the morning, and I feel I'm breaking. I'd held out completely my first 168 days. I'd run to the sea and thrown myself into the water. It was joyous. Now I was collapsing. They pour water on me, pry my eyes open, and I start breaking. The worst moment of my life, the worst moment of my life. I leave. Stephanie and I decide we will marry. We'll go to London. Okay, with a sense of defeat, but [also] elation; I'm not going to be raided, I'm not going to be thrown into prison. My telephone is not going to be listened to; I'm not going to be followed. My car is not going to be interfered with.

I lie on Hampstead Heath, and I see the kites flying, and I just feel so safe, so safe. And yet, for all my wonderful friends in England, and powerful anti-apartheid movement, and access to art and culture and music and learning this subject and that subject and the other, teaching law, getting to know things I can bring back to South Africa, in England, even when I'm happy I'm unhappy.

Mozambique. Independence, revolution, ‘zona libertada da humanidade’ – ‘liberated zone of humanity.’ A whole new lifestyle for me. A country where even when I'm unhappy, I'm happy, because I'm so close to the issues. I'm back in Africa. We're trying to build a new society. Wonderful artistic expression, cultural expression, completely new. I'm overwhelmed, I'm joyous.

TRANSCRIPT: Samora Michel used to joke sometimes that there were people in Africa who were proud that they'd been colonised by the British, a superior class of coloniser, and not by the Portuguese. But strangely, the nature of the colonialism influenced the nature of resistance to a large degree.

All the leaders in Angola, and Mozambique, wrote poetry. Can you imagine Nelson Mandela writing poetry, or Oliver Tambo? We would have been embarrassed. But one result of the fact that the resistance from Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, so and so on, combined with the resistance to fascism in Portugal was a feeling for poetry, for culture, for art, as part and parcel of the liberation movement. Augustina Neto was a poet, first president of Angola.

And now it wasn't poetry, now it was art coming with independence. The streets of Maputo were just covered – then Lourenço Marques – with paintings by people, until they ran out of paint. And then artists came; artists from Mozambique, some from Chile, from Latin America, got together and did wonderful murals, properly prepared.

But the biggest thing was the mural that was done at the Place of Heroes. Not monumental triumphalist art to honour the heroes, but a simple star with the body of Eduardo Mondlane, founder of Frelimo Frente de Libertação Mozambique, and the bodies of other leaders. A very simple star, and a curving wall depicting the struggle from conquest, to liberation, to independence. And it's a magnificent portrayal in bright colours, showing a vigorous nation suffering extreme pain, but also enjoying that emotion of liberation, of independence, in that mural, a little bit of which you can see behind me now.

TRANSCRIPT: Alberto Cissano. Alberto Sachs. I love this work. Self-taught, so expressive, using local timber, trees, beautiful carvings. And I go to his home, his studio, and I see this work that's behind me, and I just fall in love with it. And I say, ‘Alberto, I don't have much money, I'm teaching law at the university, I've saved a little bit, can I acquire that work from you?’ And he says, ‘Fine.’

I discover about two months later, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, is visiting Maputo, and where's she taken? She's taken to the studio of Malangatana and of Alberto Chissano. She sees this work, and she says, ‘Oh, magnificent, beautiful,’ expecting it'll be wrapped up and sent to India straight away. And he says, ‘Sorry, Madam Prime Minister, I've already sold it to Dr Albie Sachs.’

The artists were delighted, because government would always assume, for the sake of the nation, you do what's good for Mozambique, trade with India, and so on. Any event, it becomes mine, and he delivers it one day to my apartment. It's a heavy, heavy day, because the day before, our friend, our comrade, our sister Ruth First had been killed by a letter bomb sent to her at the Eduardo Mondlane University. And we're feeling such gloom. He brings the sculpture, and he says beautiful words to me about our sister Ruth; condolences in that kind of African style with generosity and finesse and feeling. And then he explains the work to me.

And he says to me, ‘You see the figures on the one side, big strong heads, confident, and they're looking at the other heads, and they're saying, “Is something the matter?” And that's like the world throughout the world today.’ Some people are comfortable and well off and secure, and other people are struggling and struggling, and there's a big divide between them. But right at the bottom, there's some contact, there's a little bit of hope.

So that work was sent with my other works to the University of the Western Cape. I'm glad it's close by, and it's a reminder of that period in Mozambique. Some people happy, comfortable; majority of people unsure, uncertain, insecure in the world.

And then I'm blown up! Boom!

Mozambican doctors saved my life. They were amazing. The British doctors, afterwards, when I was sent to London, were amazed at how skillful they were. Sadly, they had a lot of experience dealing with trauma.

I recuperate in the London hospital. Eventually I leave. My first task after leaving, something I'm burning to do, is to complete the film of the Govane sculpture; to do the narration. And I arrange for Ivan Strasburg, South African filmmaker living in London, to film me. And I can't write a narration and then speak it. I have to have the ideas. I see the film; my voice is very soft. I'm still weak after months in hospital. But it was better than any of the physiotherapy, occupational therapy, any of the medications I took, in terms of healing, working with art, and completing the film, The Deeper Image.

TRANSCRIPT: Planning the idea of the exhibition with Koyo was joyous, exciting, but there was a moment of clash, and she said, ‘Albie we’re not putting in images of you after the bomb.’ I said, ‘but Koyo, that's me, that's how I am now. If you exclude that, you're excluding me.’ And they came up with this extraordinary quiet space.

I think a fear was, if it's the bomb and loss of an arm that's the only thing viewers would think about, and she wanted people to think about my relationship with art. And what she's done now is a little picture of me looking into the mirror just after I'd come out of hospital and a narration of the experience of being blown up so that people can hear what I said in an interview with a Swedish journalist.

And I described that moment recovering in hospital in London, and I receive a letter – I always joke, you remember that thing with stamps that you licked and opened – and it says, ‘Don't worry, Comrade Albie, we will avenge you.’ Signed, Comrade Bobby. And I think, avenge me, cut off the arm, blinding one eye? Is at the country we want? If we get freedom, if we get democracy, if we get the rule of law and social justice, that will be my soft vengeance. Roses and lilies will grow out of my arm.

And that theme of soft vengeance became the theme of my life. Coming back to South Africa, helping to write a new constitution – soft vengeance. Voting as an equal for the first time – soft vengeance. Being a judge, upholding the wonderful values and principles of the Constitution – soft vengeance. Building a beautiful court building on the site of the Old Fort Prison – soft vengeance, soft vengeance, soft vengeance.

When I arrived in Mozambique, I was taken by the carvings that you could get at any curio shop. And I see this lovely, lovely, lovely carving of a woman. Turns out from a little note underneath, that she's holding her husband and saying, ‘My darling husband, you've lost a limb, but we've gained our independence.’ The very first work of art I bought when I arrived in Mozambique, little realising that when I left, I'd be leaving without an arm.

TRANSCRIPT: 1989. I'm out of hospital. I fly to Columbia University in New York. I have a four-hour lecture session on Monday mornings; two different classes. I sleep Monday afternoon. I start writing Monday evening, and I write till Sunday night, taking off one evening a week, that's all.

And I'm writing The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. I'm working for the first time with a computer. I used to type with two fingers, now I'm working with one finger. Can I do it? Can I do it? I lost the first 15 pages; I wiped them out. It turned out to be the best thing. When I revised, it was even better. And three-and-a-half months later, the story is ready. The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter.

I'm invited to speak in Stockholm at the House of Culture for the opening of an exhibition; four artists from Angola, four from Mozambique, four from Zimbabwe, four from South Africa. I fly. I didn't need an airplane; I could have just floated there on happiness and joy. I'm told 45 minutes, 35 minutes, 25 minutes. I get there; it's like seven minutes. And one by one I realised they've got art curators from all over Sweden speaking, and they all say the same thing, ‘art is a weapon of struggle.’ And I decide: shock tactics.

I start off, ‘We don't want your solidarity. Your solidarity is giving the artists a chance to be seen, but don't give us, please, solidarity criticism. Give us real criticism. If you like the work, say so. If you don't, say so. If you don't understand, ask the artists.’ And then I said, ‘Although I believe in freedom of speech, for five years, we must stop saying art is a weapon of struggle.’

Now, I'd been saying that for 20 years myself. But it became a substitute for real engagement. And it was requiring a kind of simplified art that overtly supported the struggle; heroes beautiful, handsome, brave; villains ugly, horrible and depraved. And no richness, no intensity in art.

And when Barbara Masakela, who was head of the Culture Desk of the ANC, said they were having a workshop on culture at Victoria Falls later that year, would I go? I said I can't go; I'll send a paper. And the paper was called Preparing Ourselves for Freedom. Are we ready for freedom? Or are we still locked into our minds by the apartheid ghettos? I had real fun writing that piece, and apparently it tore the conference apart. It created an enormous debate. And that was just before we were coming back to South Africa, and Barbara decided: Let Albie's paper be fed into the newsrooms in South Africa to show that we debate these things.

It created an uproar inside South Africa. People responded, and eventually two writers got together [with], I think, about 10 articles, and put it into a book called Spring Is Rebellious. And Spring is Rebellious is the title of this whole exhibition.

It was my years in Mozambique that gave me the courage, the feeling for art, the way art related to life, tragedies, complications, difficulties, the good in the bad, the bad in the good. I learned all of that in Mozambique. I was very proud then that I came out with these ideas. And I'm very delighted today that the debate is still ongoing, it's still lively, and the wonderful title to that book has become the title of this exhibition.