TRANSCRIPT: YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE A GUERRILLA
The sequence is 1960: anti-pass campaign, PAC take the initiative, massacre at Sharpeville, people shot down, huge international reaction, march on Cape Town. Very dramatic, we see change coming. It’s very much in the air. What will the government do? Harold MacMillan’s famous speech in Parliament about ‘The winds of change are blowing in Africa.’ And the answer is, we stand as firm as granite. Verwoerd is absolutely adamant. We don’t concede, we’re not going the way of Africa, apartheid is our route.
When we drafted the Freedom Charter, the principle of non-violence reigned and the hope was a combination of international boycott, industrial action in the country, would force the regime to negotiate. And in 1961, acting on what had been a decade of moving in that direction, Nelson Mandela came out from his semi-underground when South Africa was going to be declared a republic. He said, ‘we African people are not against a republic, but we’re against a republic being declared without our consent and involvement. And we call for a national convention of all parties, people in South Africa to draft a new democratic constitution.’ And that was the vision projected at that stage, and it was the exposure of the might of the state, and the Verwoerd policy of not conceding anything, and the attempts to crush the organisations that made armed struggle inevitable after that.
We had many discussions about violence. The theme then was non-violence. At every ANC meeting: non-violence, non-violence, non-violence. And we in the youth couldn’t see change coming about. We couldn’t see a ruling class so deeply entrenched, so powerful, giving up out of the goodness of their hearts. We’re told, ‘no, no, non-violence. If there’s violence, they’ve got the guns; they will use it as an excuse to destroy us.’ Okay, we kind of accepted that.
1960 was the turning point for many reasons. It wasn’t just the ANC that was banned. The PAC was also banned; the Communist Party had been banned for a long time and you couldn't even protest about the lack of rights, you couldn't campaign, newspapers were banned, individuals were banned, everything was closed down. And sporadic acts of violence were now breaking out. The Poqo – it was painful to see the kinds of targets, the lack of political clarity, but yet the passion and the commitment that was there, fighting for freedom. And people feeling okay, we’ll go and attack white families in a nearby house. And now the decision is taken to embark upon very focused intensive armed struggle as a component of a broad popular and international struggle to bring down apartheid. And I would say most people of my generation welcomed the decision to set up an armed wing of the ANC. And it was very focused at that stage, in the sense of it was physical targets, not aimed at personnel at all. At a later stage it was aimed at military personnel but never at civilians.
In my own particular case, I used to break up fights at school. I think I did boxing once or twice. I didn’t really enjoy it. But a strange thing had happened. I’d often imagine becoming a guerrilla, going up into the mountains carrying a gun. I used to climb Table Mountain every Sunday. Denis Goldberg actually got me to take about 20 young black people for a very stiff walk along the mountainside. I didn’t ask questions. Afterwards I learnt they were probably MK recruits, and they hated it that this white man was walking faster and tougher than them. They were panting and panting. But I was fit. I used to run down the mountain, run, run, run at breakneck speed, like crazy and I messed up my knees. And when I went on long walks in it was then called Basutoland, long walks up into the Maluti Mountains, first day I’m striding out, the second day I can’t walk. I have to get on a pony. And I’d said, ‘Okay, you’re not going to be a guerrilla.’ That was a decision taken I think even before the armed struggle. Denis Goldberg in the Modern Youth Society was very handy. He would fix the lights, the sound system for our all-night parties. He could do things. Albie Sachs: talk, talk, talk, talk. I was never invited into MK. I’m a pacifist by temperament and inclination. But I supported the right of the oppressed people to use violence against the violence of the state.
Everything is changing now. The regime is not relying upon legal mechanisms to suppress opposition. It’s introducing states of emergency, detention without trial. Once we have detention without trial, you get torture, people disappear for a long time, witnesses are processed before they come to court. In the 1950s we lawyers, we used to win all our cases. If necessary, we would go to the top court in the land. From the early 1960s, we are losing all our cases. And the only issue is – will people be sentenced to death? If they get 20 years, it’s a victory, they’re not being sentenced to death. People who were brave, wonderful fighters are reduced to terrified, cringing people, a mixture of shame and defiance giving evidence for the state. People are disappearing out of the country; people are being banished. It’s becoming extremely harsh.
And I would find in my practice, a woman comes to me one day, and she speaks about her husband, Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle, who’s been picked up under the 90-day law. And I want to tell her, ‘Yes, but there’s nothing we can do… please!’ And she’s telling the story slowly, slowly, ‘And he’s locked up in Cape Town.’ ‘Yes, but there’s…!’. ‘And then he’s taken to Pretoria…’. ‘Yes but…’ And then she says ‘…and his body is found covered in bruises.’ I’d been so impatient with her trying to tell her there’s nothing we can do. And I say, ‘Well, at least, at least let there be a post-mortem’. And Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle turned out to be the first of the political detainees to be tortured to death.
And the police are closing in and people I know are being picked up and the movement is being undermined and destroyed in all sorts of way[s]. People are leaving the country. It was very hard to escape from Cape Town. You had to get from Cape Town to Johannesburg to then escape over the border to Botswana, which I think was then still Bechuanaland…to Basutoland, Lesotho or to Swaziland.
And the one time I violated the oath I swore as an advocate, apart from being engaged in the underground resistance to apartheid very specifically, was when Chris Hani, then known as Martin Hani, and Archie Sibeko were found in a car with ANC pamphlets in the boot. There was nothing to actually connect them directly. But we had a terrible magistrate, and I was challenging on the charge sheet that said, ‘carrying on ANC activities.’ I said, ‘What activities?’ They just said, ‘ANC activities.’ I thought we would win on appeal. We had terrible judges and I’m not one who always blames the judges. But the most reactionary, conservative pro-Nationalist Party judges. They just dismissed my arguments. And Chris said he’s not going to jail; he’d been sentenced to two years in jail. He said he’ll never come out.
There was what was called the Sobukwe Clause. People locked up as Robert Sobukwe, leader of the PAC, had been for a certain period, could be detained in a kind of detention indefinitely after serving their sentence. And he said he wants to escape. I helped him escape. I found a young student at the University of Cape Town, had a little cottage near the university. And I said, ‘Would you be able to put up…’ I didn’t give their names. ‘…two people? I’m telling you they’re wanted by the police.’ He said yes. I said it would just be for a night or two. I think it took us six weeks, two months before we could get information from the underground in Johannesburg about how they could be taken to Johannesburg to get out of the country. And I still remember so vividly going to take him somewhere. It was on the edge of the – what we called the locations. And I had two guys on either side of me with big clubs beating down the dogs – it was like marching into hell. I don’t know if they were trained to see white people as the enemy. But they were snarling and yapping and I’m nervous and I’m in an area I don’t know, and they jump… jumping, jumping and being beaten down, beaten down. And finally, we find Chris and Archie and eventually they leave.
I can tell that story now even with a certain measure of pride because it was hard as an advocate. You were a part of that system in a way, and you do everything for your clients within that system – even while politically, outside of the courts and the legal framework and structure, you’re trying to destroy and undermine the whole system. And now I’m actually knowingly violating my oath as an advocate because it was just intolerable that somebody as thoughtful, intelligent with so much to offer South Africa should end his days in prison like that, abstracted from our society and the contribution he had to make.
