TRANSCRIPT: ALL THEY’LL HEAR IS BEETHOVEN
We’d had big campaigns in the ‘50s. The Defiance Campaign, hugely successful, repressed by the threat of extreme sanctions from the regime and a riot. I don’t know if it was provoked, but it was taken advantage of in Port Elizabeth and East London, to really suppress that whole movement. The Freedom Charter now lifting up our spirits enormously. And then calls for stay-at-homes.
We would sell The New Age newspaper, Saturday afternoons, door to door. At the time of the Defiance Campaign, the circulation went up to about 50,000 throughout the country. And it would be a newspaper read and passed on and read and passed on, full of in that sense, of defiance, of telling the story mainly from an ANC’s point of view with pictures of ANC leaders and we became familiar. The New Age in Johannesburg – Ruth First and Joe Gqabi were the reporters there. M.P Naicker from Durban, Govan Mbeki from Port Elizabeth. And then Cape Town, it would be Brian Bunting, Lionel Forman, Alex Le Guma. I would do some work there as well. And we’re getting news in from all over the country and telling that news and showing the pictures. I learned a lot about layout. I loved being given the responsibility for going down to the printers. I think it would be on a Monday night, Monday evening for the paper to come out on the Tuesday morning.
The Anti-Pass Campaign for women was very powerful and very strong in the Cape, because now African women for the first time were being forced to carry passes. And extensive mobilisation, people marching in the streets, often there would be 200, 300, 500 women and three or four men. And the women singing, now it’s all soprano type voices and then just a couple of us with our male voices. I remember one very poignant moment when the Black Sash were becoming involved now. They’d started off as simply protesting against the removal of coloured men from the voter’s roll – ‘Defend the constitution,’ they said. And that was far too limited. And they became very involved in learning about the way African women were being oppressed in particular by the laws and the extension of the passes. They set up advice offices. And I remember one anti-pass protest that was being organised. A whole group of African women came from the townships. They arrived in the top of Adderley Street. And one of the ladies from the Black Sash said, ‘Come along, girls!’ And one of the African women said, ‘We are not girls!’ And one could see the Black Sash developing a consciousness and a militancy as time went by. And they gave a lot of support to the Anti-Pass Campaign.
The state in the 1950s, Oswald Pirow, I’m not sure if he was Minister of Justice at that stage. He was a clever lawyer who’d been to Germany, very influenced by the Nazis. And he said, ‘These people are asking for equality. They can’t get equality in South Africa given the apartheid separation of races, except through violence. We can charge them with treason.’
And finally, in ‘56, December, we would be raided quite often. And 4 o’clock in the morning, loud ring at the door. The Afrikaans word was more powerful: ‘n klopjag! It would be a _klopja_g. And I still remember, now this would have been maybe my 3<sup>rd</sup> or 4<sup>th</sup> raid. And they say, ‘You’re lucky.’ And I can’t quite understand why I’m lucky. And I just remember one of the cops saying, ‘All these books, do you read them all?’. It was kind of naïve. And I said, ‘Yes, I think I’ve read all the books that are here.’ I couldn’t understand why I was lucky. I discovered afterwards when the phone rang, ‘Oh, you’re still here.’ That was when the Treason Trial arrests took place. Apparently, I was on a reserve list. So, I wasn’t picked up then.
And so began the famous South African Treason Trial. And they took the offensive using the law to try and suppress a popular protest movement. It backfired very badly. In a sense even from their own point of view. It was a ludicrous kind of project.
But it also had an enormous educational effect. It brought the accused together from all over the country. Most of them were banned, now they were meeting in the cells and at the trial. It made Nelson Mandela emerge from being Nelson Mandela to being NELSON MANDELA_,_ defending himself as one of the four or five lawyers who were just bored with proceedings. He began to stand out. It influenced the white lawyers who were defending them. We set up a treason trial defence fund internationally and locally. Got a lot of support. So in that sense, we were able to convert the Treason Trial into a disaster for the regime.
An anti-pass campaign was being prepared for 1960 by the ANC. The PAC had broken away – ‘58, I think ‘59. It was strong in the Joburg area. And they were led by Robert Sobukwe and their slogan was ‘Africa for the Africans’. They objected to the statement in the Freedom Charter that South Africa belonged to all who live in it, black and white. And they objected to the whole non-racist approach of the Freedom Charter. Essentially, the PAC objected to the fact that non-Africans could participate directly in the work of the ANC. And hundreds of PAC members went without their passes to the Sharpeville Police Station, March the 21<sup>st</sup> 1960. The police opened fire; it was terrible. Sixty-nine were shot dead, most of them running away, shot in the back. And it created a huge international storm.
In Cape Town some days later, there was an enormous march. Cape Town had been relatively quiescent compared to other parts of the country. Maybe 25/ 30 000 mainly young, black people from Langa township, from Nyanga township, went up over De Waal Drive, came to the centre of Cape Town and said, ‘We haven’t got our passes.’ And I remember Gerald Gordon, Queen’s Counsel, rushed down to Harry Snitcher, also Queen’s Counsel who was my neighbour and he said, ‘The natives are marching.’ And I was a bit struck because Gerald, leader in the Liberal Party, always spoke about Africans. But there was something in that phrase, ‘the natives are marching’, maybe he was saying that was the fear that whites had.
And they’re coming down De Waal Drive and I rushed out. I was banned; I couldn’t get too close to it. And I saw the people pouring down, thousands and thousands and thousands of African men – I don’t know if there were any women – past the Roeland Street Prison. I was on the corner of Buitenkant Street. And they turned down. And I didn’t get any closer because I would have been breaking my banning order. And I felt elated, ‘It’s happening! It’s happening, the people are marching!’. And they could have taken over Cape Town. They were led by Philip Kgosana. The Security Police spoke to him and said, ‘Go back home in peace and we will give you an audience with the minister.’ They went back home, and they woke up the next morning, and the army, the navy were called out, the locations were surrounded. State of Emergency was declared. I remember bringing out an edition of The New Age newspaper on that day. They waited for us to bring it out. They confiscated it all. It was so difficult to bring it out; not to violate the terms of the State of Emergency. But just to bring it out at all was important, but it kind of got nowhere.
And then our people were detained. I wasn’t detained. All our leaders were detained. A few went into hiding. The police could just lock people up without charge, without trial. Many were sent to Worcester Prison. It was one of the busiest times in my life because during the day I’m practising as a lawyer; at night I’m meeting in the underground.
One of the cases that dragged on for weeks and weeks and weeks was after the march from Langa, Nyanga, Phillip Kgosana case it was called. And the PAC line then was no bail, no defence, no fine. But three of the people in the 20 or so being charged were ANC. They asked me to be their lawyer. And I would start the cross examination, mainly African witnesses who’d taken notes at meetings, PAC meetings. And I’d say, ‘I put it to you sergeant so and so…’ and I’d sit down and then Phillip Kgosana would: ‘I put it to you Sergeant so and so…’ And Makweba would stand up, ‘I put it to you…’ I saw people copying me. I was the only lawyer they knew.
And I still remember Fred Carneson, one of our leaders, he had evaded arrest. And he was staying at the house of a pianist called Harold Rubens – brilliant pianist, born in Wales, he’d been to the United States, he’d actually played the piano at a Paul Robeson concert there. He played fantastic music. I’ve never heard music as powerful as he played then. And we would meet in his house, and I still remember he was practising for the Beethoven 4<sup>th</sup> Piano Concerto. Going through, going through, going through it and we’re sitting in a room. And we felt great, you know, if there are bugs listening in to us, all they’ll hear will be the Beethoven.
I’m banned, I’m working underground, I’m taking the risks. Most of us were banned. We’re carrying on with our work. We’d seen the ‘50s as a decade of huge advance and mobilisation. And it came together with decolonisation in Africa. I remember once standing on the Grand Parade when Albert Luthuli – so it was in between my banning orders – had been given the Nobel Prize for Peace. We were so elated. So, it was a period of growing confidence. And the international boycott was beginning to have some traction, internationally, anti-apartheid throughout the world was beginning to signify a little bit and we were very confident. Then the repression after Sharpeville, it set us back, but we recovered quickly. The march in Cape Town was tremendous. And then, what will the government do?
