Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo made history in 1952 when they opened South Africa’s first black law firm.
In late 1952, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo opened the doors of Mandela & Tambo in Chancellor House, Johannesburg, directly across from the Magistrate's Court. It was South Africa's first Black-owned law partnership, and its location was no accident.
Every day, the queue outside their small office told its own story about what apartheid law actually did to ordinary people's lives.
Pass laws, forced removals, restrictions on where Black South Africans could live, work or even walk without a permit- all of it fed a constant stream of criminal charges against people whose only offence was existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mandela later described the firm as the practice Africans turned to first and the one they turned to when nowhere else was left.
