TRANSCRIPT: FROM ADVOCATE TO ACCUSED
The state is closing in, closing in all the time and one by one the comrades are leaving. Some are imprisoned, some are escaping, some are told – we are told – they’ve been ordered out of the country to carry on working externally. There are fewer and fewer of us left. And you know your office is being bugged. Your telephone is being tapped. My car was being interfered with; the gear lever came out one day. My tyres would be punctured. And there’s that sense of isolation, they’re listening to you, they’re spying on you, they’re following you, they’ve got informers everywhere. But you carry on. It’s a movement with traditions of courage, of bravery and resistance and it’s for a cause. But you feel it. And then in daytime, I’m performing as an advocate as though nothing is happening and that chit chat in the bar common room about trivialities and I’m going along with all that. And then at night the underground, the resistance work, the secret contacts, the weekends, the meeting under the tree. There’re fewer and fewer of us all the time. And now people are being whipped off under what’s called the 90 Day Law, one by one. And then it’s me.
And you don’t get immunity because you’re an advocate. It was so odd when it happened. You see it in the movies. You walk into a scene; it looks every day. And suddenly people who are down tying their shoelaces and reading newspapers and leaning on a car, spring to life. And they all seem to be enormous, big powerful guys. And the next thing I know, four or five very burly cops, ‘We’re placing you in detention under the 90 Day Law.’ And the next thing I’m in Maitland Police Station. I’m signed in. And ‘bang!’ the door slamming. And now I’m alone.
You’re waiting for that day for years. And will I be brave? And I look around, I can’t see out of any windows. There’s a mat on the floor. There’s a little toilet in the corner. There’s nothing to sit on, no bed, no chairs. Everything in these prisons is Bang! Crash! People screaming, shouting! There’re no normal sounds and noises. It’s all heightened, exclamatory and ugly noises, concrete and metal and slamming and ‘da da da da daaaa!’ [sings]. That Beethoven theme comes to me, and I walk around and I want to hear my voice and I’m trying to be brave. So, this is what it’s like. So, this is what it’s like.
It turned out it was far worse than I’d imagined. I’d thought, you know, you’re locked up, you’re going to jail, you’re brave, you say ‘Come and get me!’ And you defy everything they can do. There’s nobody even touching you, hitting you, beating you up, shooting at you, doing anything to you. You’re just alone, alone, alone, alone in the cell. No-one to speak to, no activity. And it goes on hour after hour after hour of total inactivity. And you realise, human beings are made to associate with other human beings. We often long to be alone. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to be alone! Just have enforced loneliness going on day after day and you just see how terrible it is to be left alone. Very quickly words like freedom, democracy, liberation, they just float out. They don’t belong to that universe. It’s another universe. I’m not even sure what keeps you going in that little cell and yourself as a lonely individual.
I even remember saying to one of the guards at one stage, ‘I can understand now why so many killers confess. You’d think, why the hell did they confess?’ And I can see there’s something about that extraordinary situation where you are powerless and totally under somebody else’s control. And a kind of involuntary side of you takes over. And the interrogation became quite intense after that. They thought I wanted to confess. In fact, I was commenting. I had to tell somebody. The only person I could tell that rather strange experience from being the advocate to now being the accused, as it were, was one of the guards there.
I’d refused to answer any questions, and they bring my mother to see me, thinking that she’s going to say, ‘Albie, tell them what you know. You’re locked up in jail all this time. You can do so much more if you’re outside.’ And my mother said afterwards, she had her hair done, she put on a special dress, and she came in. And I start speaking and she says, ‘Keep quiet, don’t talk.’ They wanted her to break my spirit, and she was reinforcing my spirit.
And then the other thing that had helped me – somebody was smuggling in messages. I’m chewing a very beautifully cooked chicken leg one day. And I discover a bit of gristle. And I’m chewing it, it doesn’t go, and I take it out. And it’s a tiny thing wrapped in cellophane paper, and I open it. And it’s a little message. I kept that secret for years and years and years… Dot Cleminshaw from the Black Sash risking quite a lot to communicate with me and that also helped keep me going.
I whistled in prison. I’m doing my exercises. Press-up, press-up, press… and I hear whistling. It seems like somebody’s whistling for me to hear. It’s not a prison sound. And I whistle back ANC songs. There’s no response. I whistle The Red Flag. There’s no response. I think it’s likely to be another political prisoner. And finally, I hear some whistling. ‘Da-da-dah. Da-da-dum. Da-da-dah-da-dum. Da-da-dah. Da-da-dum. Da-di-da-dah-dum.’ [Whistles.] It’s the Dvořák 9th Symphony, the ‘Goin’ Home’ theme. Dvořák, in the United States, hearing what was called a negro spiritual. So, it even had a kind of political significance. And I whistle back. And this music was just so exquisite and so special. And just the fact that I’m doing something structured, organised, hearing my voice, the vocal cords, my body, with at least the rhythm of music, was something of a consolation for me. I never knew who it was. And only after I came out, I met Dorothy Williams. She’d been locked up. She’d heard me whistling. She’d seen me once walk past her. She said, ‘Gee, this guy looks brave!’ And I remember seeing her sitting down and I thought, ‘Gee, she looks brave!’ I didn’t feel brave. She didn’t feel brave.
What helped me more than all the political books I’d read and the prison literature I’d read, was a story I’d read as a child about this kid from a very poor family. And he wanders through the forest. And it’s full of creepy, crawly creatures and he battles, and he gets through. And then it’s the desert and it’s dry and his feet are bleeding. And then he has to climb up over the mountains through the ice and snow. Kind of mythical things like that. Until eventually, he gets to the other side and of course there’s the beautiful woman becomes his bride, that’s the kind of reward. That story had more meaning to me than any theory of revolution or struggle or freedom or anti-apartheid. Some inner part of me just had a bit of guts and I wasn’t going to allow them to tell me what to do. There were times when I was very close to breaking. But they never timed the interrogations to fit in exactly, exactly with that.
I’m moved from Maitland Prison to Wynberg. And now I’m in another kind of a cell. At least it had a bed that I could be on and a tiny little courtyard in front. And the downside of it was it was attached to the Wynberg Court. And late afternoons I would hear the kids – the juveniles – being whipped, screaming, screaming, screaming. One, two… the screams got louder and louder… six, the ultimate. And then I’d come out to do my little bit of exercise and I’d see broken pieces of cane. And there were the guards reading Die Burger, drinking their coffee. Was it you beating a child like that to scream, out of control? Drinking the coffee?
Nothing to read, nothing to do. One day I see a bit of newspaper lying in that tiny courtyard, crumpled up. It had been used for beetroot; it still had the red colour in it. Whew. I’m running, running, running. I learnt to be a thief in prison… pick it up… I don’t put it in my pocket straight away. I’m running, running, running, slowly it’s in my pocket. I get back after my 20 minutes of exile, they slam the door, I’m on my own. And I take out… It mainly had advertisements in it. But it was something to read. It was the most precious piece of material I could possibly imagine. And now what to do with it? If I’m caught with it, I’m in trouble. And I tear it up a little bit and I flush it into the toilet. And then I notice afterwards it hasn’t gone through. And I notice it’s smelling a little bit. And the level of water’s gone up. I’m in big, big, big trouble! And you exaggerate anxiety enormously. I decide I’ve just got to, and I put my hand in through the lumps of shit floating there and pulled out the paper and tore it up into smaller bits and flushed it again. It all disappeared.
Now the only book I had was the bible. And then one day the station commander comes in waving a piece of paper, ‘If they’d listen to me this would never have happened.’ And he gives me the piece of paper. And I read, ‘In the Supreme Court of South Africa…’ I see my name is there. ‘And it’s hereby ordered that the applicant receive reading matter and writing material.’ I want to jump up for joy, but they must never see your emotions. So, I contain. ‘Okay,what do you want to read?” So, I say, ‘Oh, my friends can send in stuff.’ No, they’re not allowed to send anything in. So, he gives me The Police Gazette. And then Die Huisgenoot, it’s the Afrikaans weekly magazine. I actually got quite hooked on Die Huisgenoot. And there’d be a story about this very intense and serious and good-hearted Afrikaans-speaking woman and she’s the librarian, but she’s feeling very lonely. And this stranger, who’s a professional comes to town and he’s so disdainful and disrespectful of her. And you know how it’s going to end. But you have to wait for the next week and the next week. And I’m following these serials. But I’m loving it because it’s about human beings, human emotions, it’s words. And finally, they arrange that I can have books. And maybe if it hadn’t been for that court order, I wouldn’t be sitting here Albie Sachs today. I might have been completely destroyed, completely broken.
Eventually I’m released. I was absolutely overjoyed. I put on some takkies, some running shoes. I’m right in the centre of Cape Town. I’d grown a moustache. It was the only thing that was under my control was to have a big moustache. And I ran through town. Somebody said she was in a bus, she saw me running, she thought I’d escaped. And I didn’t know, could I run? It must have been – what’s it – 6, 7 miles from the centre of town to the sea? All the time running round and round my tiny exercise yard, I’m imagining I’m running to the sea, I’m running to the sea. And now I’m released and I’m running, I’m running, I’m running, I’m running. I go through town, I go past Green Point, I go down to Beach Road in Sea Point. I run up… I didn’t know how steep that road was. It seemed like a fairly flat road. Ha… ha… ha [mimics the sound of being out of breath]! And now I know I’m going to make it, I’m going to make it. And meanwhile, word’s got round to my colleagues. And I reach Clifton, and I see my colleagues in their dark suits with their shiny shoes. And they go down to the beach, and they think Albie’s gone mad. And in a way I was mad. And I’m down on the beach and the waves are coming up and I see their shoes. And I fling myself into the sea. And I’m feeling jubilant, triumphant, I’ve got through, I haven’t answered any questions! But something inside was broken irremediably.
