South African History Online

The first Bram Fischer Memorial lecture,
delivered by President Nelson R. Mandela

Market Theatre, Johannesburg, 9 June 1995

We here present and many thousands elsewhere are grateful to the Legal
Resources Centre for taking the initiative in establishing a Bram Fischer
Memorial Lecture. I thank you for asking me to deliver the first. I am confident
that there will be Bram Fischer Memorial Lectures for as long as South Africans
yearn for freedom in a non-racial democratic South Africa.

Bram Fischer was a great advocate and a great patriot. The lectures that will
follow this inaugural lecture will provide opportunities for lawyers and others
to address fundamental issues relating to law and society with which Bram
Fischer was deeply concerned, and which are also concerns of the Legal Resources
Centre. But as this is the first Bram Fischer Lecture I have chosen to talk
about the man rather than the law.

The last time that I saw Bram Fischer was on Robben Island about two weeks
after we had been sentenced to life imprisonment. It was in June 1964. He came
with our attorney Joel Joffe, to see how we had settled in and whether or not we
stood by our decision not to appeal. I was restrained by the Major from hugging
him. Though he was strongly of the view that we should appeal he resigned
himself to our decision. He and Joel wanted to know how we were being treated
and we told them. I then asked Bram about Molly, his wife. No sooner had I
pronounced Molly's name than Bram stood up, excused himself and abruptly walked
out of the room. A few minutes later he returned, once again composed, and
resumed the conversation but without answering my question. On our way back to
the cells the Major asked me whether I considered Bram Fischer's behaviour
strange. I said yes it had been. He told me that Molly had died in a car
accident the previous week.

We were devastated by the news. Molly was a wonderful woman, generous and
unselfish, utterly without prejudice. She had supported Bram in more ways than
it was possible to know. She had been a wife, colleague and a comrade.

The refusal to talk about Molly and what had happened was typical of Bram's
character. He was a stoic, a man who never burdened his friends with his own
pain and troubles. He had come to advise us and to express concern for our
predicament; he did not want to become the focus of our concern.

Bram was a courageous man who followed the most difficult course any person
could choose to follow. He challenged his own people because he felt that what
they were doing was morally wrong. As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him
to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, he showed a
level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. I fought only
against injustice not against my own people.

Shortly after his arrest that led to him being sentenced to life
imprisonment, Bram Fischer was asked whether his sacrifice of family and legal
practice, being hunted as an outlaw and the inevitable harsh punishment that was
to follow, was worth the gains of leading the underground struggle for less than
a year. He was offended by the question. He replied sharply "Did you ask Nelson
Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki or Kathy Kathrada or any others that have
already suffered this punishment? If not, why do you ask me?"

I waited for over 70 years to cast my first vote. I chose to do it near the
grave of John Dube, the first President of the ANC, the African patriot that had
helped found the organisation in 1912. I voted not only for myself alone but for
many who took part in our struggle. I felt that with me when I voted were Oliver
Tambo, Chris Hani, Chief Albert Luthuli and Bram Fischer. I felt that Josiah
Gumede, G M Naicker, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Yusuf
Dadoo, Moses Kotane, Steve Biko and many others were there. I felt that each one
of them held my hand that made the cross, helped me to fold the ballot paper and
push it into the ballot box.

Even his political opponents would agree with us his comrades that Bram
Fischer could have become prime minister or the chief justice of South Africa if
he had chosen to follow the narrow path of Afrikaner nationalism. He chose
instead the long and hard road to freedom not only for himself but for all of
us. He chose the road that had to pass through the jail. He travelled it with
courage and dignity. He served as an example to many who followed him.

Many have asked what in his early life led Bram to choose between the
privileges offered to him by the system and the imprisonment and the harsh
condemnation that he knew he would suffer.

His grandfather, Abraham Fischer, was a close confidante of President Steyn
of the Orange Free State at the turn of the century and particularly during the
Anglo Boer War. He became Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony when the
bitter pill of defeat had to be swallowed. Leadership was needed to help rebuild
the country and heal the ravages of war. His grandfather offered that
leadership. His father, Percy Uhlrig Fischer, in his youth, was more militant
than his grandfather. He identified himself with Hertzog's brand of Afrikaner
nationalism and even organised an ambulance service to help those who in 1914
rebelled against Louis Botha's South African Government.

Some of the burgers of the Orange Free State did not want to go to war
against Germany at the invitation of the British Empire but chose to take part
in the war on the other side, from which they hoped the Afrikaner people might
gain their freedom. As a member of the Bar, Bram's father defended many of the
boer rebels and often expressed his disgust at the South African judges who, he
said, had sold their souls to the rooinekke and sentenced burgers to prison.

When South African judges sent our comrades to prison for 5, 10 or at times
15 years for comparatively less serious offences, Bram would relate how his
father had threatened to burn his counsel's robes when a burger was sentenced to
3 years imprisonment.

Bram also spoke about how members of his family visited General de Wet and
other rebels in prison. Although he was less than 8 years of age he was taken
along to such visits by his father or mother. His father's actions cost him and
his family dearly. His support for the rebel cause offended against prevailing
values of the time and his practice as an advocate suffered. The family was
compelled for financial reasons to live away from Bloemfontein on a farm. His
mother sold flowers at the station to supplement their income. Like many of our
people do now, she had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to manage the home
and her other responsibilities.

With that background he could not but have become an Afrikaner nationalist,
as we became African nationalists thirty years later as a result of our
oppression by whites. Both of us changed. Both of us rejected the notion that
our political rights were to be determined by the colour of our skins. We
embraced each other as comrades, as brothers, to fight for freedom for all in
South Africa, to put an end to racism and exploitation.

In November 1965 Bram was arrested. In March 1966 he explained from the dock
how that change came about. He spoke about growing up as a young boy on a farm
where he felt no different from the two young Africans who were his constant
companions and playmates. Later, in the city at school and at university, there
were only masters and servants, not friends across the colour line. Under that
influence he came to believe in segregation. He was attracted to the
Bloemfontein Joint Council of Europeans and Africans, a body devoted largely to
trying to induce the authorities to provide proper but separate amenities for
Africans. He still believed in segregation. He found it difficult to touch the
hand of a black man in friendship.

At Grey College his history teacher Leo Maquard had an important influence on
his life, and broadened his vision. After matriculating he went to the
University of Cape Town for a year but returned to Bloemfontein in order to give
himself a better chance of gaining a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He could
reconcile his anti-imperialism with the acceptance of a scholarship named after
this arch imperialist. After all, his father's Afrikaner nationalism had not
blunted by his having studied at Cambridge.

In 1929 the National Union of South Africans Students - NUSAS - was formed. A
mock parliament was established. Political parties reflecting those who
participated in the all white parliament of South Africa were established. Bram
Fischer championed the cause of Afrikaner nationalism. He was elected the first
prime minister of the student body. The ordained path to climb high in political
office had been well and truly made. But a new vision for South Africa was
beginning to take shape in his mind.

At about this time he drove an old ANC leader home to the west of
Johannesburg. He tried to persuade him that friction between the races would
only be avoided if they were kept apart. According to Bram the old ANC leader
didn't see it that way. He mentioned this incident at his own trial. What the
old ANC leader said to him was this:

"If you place the races of one country in two camps and cut off contact
between them, those in each camp will begin to forget that those in the other
are ordinary human beings, that each lives and laughs the same way, that each
experiences joy or sorrow, pride or humiliation for the same reasons. Thereby
each becomes suspicious of the other and each eventually fears the other which
is the basis of all racism."

Bram came to believe in this himself, and having done so committed himself
without reservation to the struggle for a society which acknowledged this. There
are still a small number of our people within South Africa who may cling to
notions of living in independent homelands but the vast majority have accepted
the validity of the words of that old ANC leader. I would urge the rest to
follow that majority. Their own culture and heritage will not be compromised
when they accept unreservedly that we are one country and that we should all
constantly strive to become one nation.

Bram's studies at Oxford, his travels in Europe and especially in Germany and
the Soviet Union, brought home to him the ideological divide between Nazism and
socialism. The super race ideology of the former struck him as no different from
white racism in South Africa. Yet it was not an experience that led him to join
the Communist Party in South Africa. He returned from his travels to take up
practice as an advocate, and it was only years later that he joined the
Communist party. He was apparently influenced by people such as J B Marks, Moses
Kotane and Yusuf Dadoo, and by the fact that with the exception of a small
number of religious leaders, communists were the only ones amongst the whites
who seemed unreservedly to accept blacks as equals.

In 1935 Bram became a member of the Johannesburg Bar. In 1937 he married
Molly Krige, a niece of Ouma Smuts. He became familiar with the life of the
oppressed through his involvement in the South African Institute of Race
Relations, the Joint Council of Europeans and Africans and, more particularly,
the Alexandra Health Committee. Bram and Molly served on the district committee
of the Communist Party. Molly was almost elected to the Johannesburg City
Council as a Communist, a feat later to be achieved by Hilda Watts, the wife of
Rusty Bernstein, our co-accused in the Rivonia trial. He recalled the successes
of the forces of the Soviet Union against Nazism, and how at that time attitudes
to the Communist Party were different, and how it was able to find favour among
the white voters of South Africa. It was only later, with the combination of the
cold war propaganda and the beating of the tribal drum by the Nationalists, that
most whites viewed the Communist Party with hatred. They also believed that by
branding anyone who took part in the freedom struggle as a Communist they would
discredit our movement.

In 1946 the district committee of the Communist Party identified itself with
the plight of the black miners who had gone on a so-called "illegal" strike
against the Chamber of Mines. Although Bram was absent when the decision was
taken, in a characteristic act of solidarity he accepted legal responsibility
and was convicted.

Bram's commitment to the struggle helped to change many of us in the ANC from
being Africanists to believers in a non-racial democracy. The declaration in the
Freedom Charter of 1955 that South Africa belongs to all, both black and white,
was inspired by many people of all races who had identified themselves with our
struggle. Amongst them none were held in higher esteem than Bram and Molly
Fischer.

Bram often acted as our legal adviser and defended us in Court. In cases in
which he could not appear or thought it advisable for other reasons not to do
so, he asked other leaders of the Bar to act for us. Harold Hanson, Isie
Maisels, Walter Pollak, Rex Welsh, H C Nicholas, Vernon Berrangé, John Coaker,
Sydney Kentridge, Tony O'Dowd, Chris Plewman and many others did so. All had the
greatest respect for Bram. Because of this they often acted on our behalf
without a fee.

They acted for us when we were charged in the defiance campaign trial, when
attempts were made to remove us from the roll of professional organisations, and
when we were tried on charges of high treason from the end of 1956 to the
beginning of 1961. Bram's painstaking work on the law and above all his
understanding of the vital political issues of those days played a crucial part
in the defence, which led to our acquittal.

His integrity and reputation as a great South African of Afrikaner stock was
of vital importance to our magistrates and judges. The Magistrate who tried
Ismail Meer, J N Singh and me on charges arising out of my having sat on the
wrong seat on the tram, when the conductor referred to me as their "kaffir
friend", was overawed by Bram's presence and hastily acquitted us.

But the dark clouds were beginning to gather. Our acquittal in the treason
trial was a pyrrhic victory. Our organisation had been declared unlawful a year
earlier. The whole leadership including those of us on trial were detained in
terms of the emergency regulations. Our attempts to continue the struggle by
peaceful means were increasingly frustrated.

Bram like many of us reluctantly came to the conclusion that the State's
institutionalised violence against the majority of the people of South Africa,
and more particularly the liberation movement, left us with no option other than
to turn to armed struggle. Prompted by his humanity he supported the decision
that violence was to be confined to attacks on the symbols of apartheid and that
great care should be taken that there should be no loss of lives.

During this period he remained in close contact with the underground
leadership of the African National Congress and its military wing Umkhonto we
Sizwe which accepted political violence for the liberation.

When our leaders were arrested at Rivonia, our families and friends feared
that the hysteria created by the Government propaganda machine was likely to
lead to death sentences being imposed on us. Naturally, they turned to Bram for
guidance in relation to our defence. He did not want to be part of the defence
team at the trial, although he was willing to appear in Court on the day that we
would be charged and argue for the time that we would require to prepare our
case. He had personal knowledge of the decisions which had been taken to turn to
the armed struggle and had been party to such decisions. He felt that with such
knowledge he could not act as our counsel. But he could not tell our families
and lawyers what his reasons were. Joel Joffe, our attorney, and Arthur
Chaskalson and George Bizos, our counsel, assumed that he would lead the
defence. They put tremendous pressure on him by using the argument that there
was no other advocate in the country who could say that we had done nothing more
than what his people the Afrikaners had done in 1914, and that despite the loss
of life in that rebellion, there were no death sentences; that if people were to
die there would never be reconciliation between black and white in South
Africa.

Bram knew then that he was at risk, and that he might soon find himself in
the dock. He ultimately agreed to lead the defence team and persuaded Vernon
Berrangé to join it. His knowledge that the leaders with whom he had been in
contact - Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and myself - were not going to put in issue
what we had done or the decisions that had been taken, probably helped him to
resolve the conflict within himself. We, unlike Joel, Arthur and George, knew
why he was reluctant to appear at the trial. We did not press him to do so, and
we admired his courage when he accepted the brief.

He helped to formulate the nature of our defence. The prosecution expected us
to try to avoid responsibility for our actions. However we became the accusers,
and right at the start, when asked to plead we said that it was the Government
that was responsible for the state of affairs in the country and that it was the
Government that should be in the dock. We maintained this position throughout
the trial in our evidence and in the cross examination of witnesses.

His carefully prepared logical argument led to the quashing of the indictment
against us. This helped to change the atmosphere which had been created by
government propaganda, and led to both internal and international campaigns
calling for our release.

When the trial proper started he spent many hours with us in Pretoria Prison,
helping us to prepare the statements that we were to make from the dock and to
prepare the statements from which comrades Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others
were to be led. He led comrade Walter carefully with compassion and great
understanding. As a result a confident Walter Sisulu was able to put down the
over zealous prosecutor who not only wanted to convict us but also to discredit
us. We have always felt that Bram's strategic planning of our defence, the
support that we received from freedom loving people in South Africa, and the
unanimous call by the United Nations to release us saved our lives.

After Bram had visited us on Robben Island I wrote to him on behalf of myself
and my co-accused to express our condolences on Molly's death. I was assured
that it would be posted. Apparently it was not, for I have since learned that he
did not receive the letter. I deeply regret that he died without knowing what
our feelings were and what we had said in the letter. Not long after his visit
to Robben Island he was arrested and charged with furthering the objects of
communism. He was admitted to bail to enable him to appear in a case before the
Privy Council in England. He had promised to come back to face trial. He did so
despite pressure put on him by our comrades who were in England, to forego his
bail and go into exile.

He returned and attended his trial in which he was the first accused. One day
he did not arrive at Court. Instead he sent a letter to his counsel, Harold
Hanson, which was read out in court. He wrote:

"By the time this reaches you I shall be a long way from Johannesburg and
shall absent myself from the remainder of the trial. But I shall still be in
the country to which I said I would return when I was granted bail. I wish you
to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any
way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment
which might be inflicted on me. Indeed I realise fully that my eventual
punishment may be increased by my present conduct...

"My decision was made only because I believe that it is the duty of every
true opponent of this Government to remain in this country and to oppose its
monstrous policy of apartheid with every means in his power. That is what I
shall do for as long as I can...

"There are already over 2,500 political prisoners in our prisons. These men
and women are not criminals but the staunchest opponents of apartheid...

"If by my fight I can encourage even some people to think about, to
understand and to abandon the policies they now so blindly follow, I shall not
regret any punishment I may incur...

"I can no longer serve justice in the way I have attempted to do during the
past thirty years. I can do it only in the way I have now
chosen."

He wrote a further letter in less than two weeks, prompted by the over-hasty
action of his colleagues at the Bar. He said:

"I have been following the Press and have seen the reports of a decision in
terms of which it is said that the Johannesburg Bar Council intends applying
to Court in order to have my name struck off the roll of advocates. I assume
that the sole reason for the decision is that I deliberately absented myself
from my trial and estreated my bail.

"The principle upon which I rely is a simple one, firmly established in
South African legal tradition. Since the days of the South African war, if not
since the Jameson Raid, it has been recognised that political offences,
committed because of a belief in the overriding moral validity of a political
principle, do not in themselves justify the disbarring of a person from
practising the profession of the law. Presumably this is because it is assumed
that the commission of such offences has no bearing on the professional
integrity of the person concerned.

"When an advocate does what I have done, his conduct is not determined by
any disrespect for the law nor because he hopes to benefit personally by any
'offence' he may commit. On the contrary, it requires an act of will to
overcome his deeply rooted respect of legality, and he takes the step only
when he feels that, whatever the consequences to himself, his political
conscience no longer permits him to do otherwise. He does it not because of a
desire to be immoral, but because to act otherwise would, for him, be
immoral."

Bram was underground for almost a year. When he was ultimately arrested and
brought to trial he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In his speech from the
dock on 28 March 1966 he said that apartheid had been in existence before the
advent of the Nationalist Government in 1948. The Afrikaners had isolated
themselves from contact with black people. The policy had been intensified
during the previous 15 years and the Afrikaners were being blamed for all the
evils and actions of apartheid. This had led to a deep-rooted antagonism to the
Afrikaner. All the wisdom of the leadership and the influence of the Congress
leaders who had been silenced and imprisoned would now be needed in order to
bring about a reconciliation. He said that he felt that there was an additional
duty cast on him, so that at least one Afrikaner should publicly identify
himself with the plight of the people. We can do no better than remember Bram's
own words:

"... it was to keep faith with all those dispossessed by apartheid that I
broke my undertaking to the Court, that I separated myself from my family,
pretended that I was someone else, and accepted the life of a fugitive. I owed
it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those
under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act. I knew what they
expected of me, and I did it. I felt responsible not to those who are
indifferent to the sufferings of others, but to those who are concerned. I
knew that by valuing above all their judgement, I would be condemned by people
who are content to see themselves as respectable and loyal citizens. I do not
regret any such condemnation that may follow me."

Bram was condemned to life imprisonment. The conditions under which he was
held were intended to deny his human dignity by every means his gaolers could
imagine. He was not even allowed to attend the funeral service of his only son
Paul, the wedding of his daughter Ilse, nor to hold in his arms any of hers or
her sister Ruth's children, his grandchildren. His gaolers did all they could to
break Bram's spirit, to warn others who might join in the struggle of what was
to be in store for them. Their meanness continued almost to the end when a
terminally ill Bram Fischer was allowed to go to the home of his brother Paul in
Bloemfontein, but still a prisoner, isolated from all except close members of
his family. When I heard that Bram was terminally ill, I repeatedly asked Jimmy
Kruger, the then Minister of Justice, to be allowed to see him. Kruger found
reasons why I should not. They not only feared Bram and what he stood for, they
were afraid to release his body for proper burial, they were afraid to release
his ashes to his family.

They failed. The contribution of Bram Fischer will live on. Had he been alive
a year ago to celebrate with us the freedom we gained for all South Africans he
would have been well pleased. The acceptance by the vast majority of his fellow
Afrikaners of a non-racial and democratic South Africa would have been a
realisation of what he had fought for, for the better part of his life. Bram
wanted a better South Africa for all; a South Africa where there is not only
political freedom but housing and health services, education and cultural
development and a more just distribution of the wealth of the country among all
of its people.

Please forgive me for quoting myself from the last chapter of my book The
Long Walk to Freedom, where I said:

"The policy of apartheid created a deep and lasting wound in my country and
my people. All of us will spend many years if not generations recovering from
that profound hurt but the dictates of oppression and brutality had another
unintended effect, and that was it produced the Oliver Tambos, the Walter
Sisulus, the Chief Luthulis, the Yusuf Dadoos, the Bram Fischers, the Robert
Sobukwes of our time - men of such extraordinary courage, wisdom and
generosity that their like may never be known again. Perhaps it requires such
depth of oppression to create such heights of character. My country is rich in
the minerals and gems that lie beneath its soil but I have always known that
its greatest wealth is its people, finer and truer than minerals and
diamonds."

In any history written of our country two Afrikaner names will be always
remembered. Happily one is still with us, dear comrade Beyers Naude. The other
is Bram Fischer. The people of South Africa will never forget him. He was among
the first bright beacons that attracted millions of our young people to
fervently believe in a non-racial democracy in our country.

Bram Fischer was a son of the soil. His spirit lives on!

[Following from the part of the scripted speech which said: 'As
an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be
ostracised by his own people, he showed a level of courage and sacrifice that
was in a class by itself', Mandela went on to say:

'I have said on several occasions that the Afrikaners in this
country have given us a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. They have been
insensitive beyond words. It is difficult to imagine that human beings could
do what Afrikaners have done to blacks in this country. But, as an articled
clerk, as a lawyer, as a prisoner, as a politician, I discovered one solid
fact: that when an Afrikaner changes, he changes completely, he becomes a real
friend. That has been my experience, even behind bars - we developed strong
friendships with warders, Afrikaner warders. That is what is happening in this
country today. The response of all communities, black and white, and in
particular the Afrikaners, is beyond words. And that is one of the factors
which gives us strength, which gives us hope in our future. And Bram
exemplified that type of Afikaner.']