Lawyers in Turmoil
The Johannesburg Conspiracy of 1895
Judge Owen Rogers
... a dense, engrossing and vivid historical account...
Owen Rogers draws on a wealth of published and archival material to present a lively, occasionally provocative, account of the lawyers caught up in the Jameson Raid – in the dock, at the bar, on the bench, behind the scenes.
Was Kotzé CJ as faithful to Kruger as he would have us believe? Did the Pretoria bar’s future leader, Ewald Esselen, belong to an anti-Kruger Boer fifth column? Was Johannesburg’s Jim Leonard QC part of the conspiracy’s inner core or an innocent latecomer? And how should we judge his brother Charles, a leading attorney, who managed to evade trial?
These and other questions are explored in a work full of drama, incident and anecdote.
978-0-639989-25-9 | Trade Paperback | SA History | 528 pages | R 365
Owen Rogers, born in 1958, obtained his law degree from the University of Cape Town, a course of study interrupted by an honours degree in classics. He joined the Cape bar in 1988, was awarded the status of senior counsel in 1999, and became a judge of the Western Cape High Court in 2013. Since 2017 he also sits as a judge of appeal in the Competition Appeal Court. He lives in Cape Town.