I remember well that first meeting with the redoubtable
Solly Sachs, when I flew to Johannesburg for the interview. He didn't seem
at all interested
in what I had done already and only talked about the coloured people, impressing
on me that the Medical Aid Society's function was to give the workers whatever
benefits they were entitled to — "not a penny less, not a penny
more!" I sensed his great concern for the clothing workers as people,
and although I had not intended to come to any immediate decision at this
first interview, when he asked me abruptly, “well, do you want the
job?”, I said "yes".
Solly used to say of himself, "I am a Jew. I have a rough voice
and a Lithuanian accent. I am ugly and I had everything against me. .
." Yet he had captured and held the loyalty of thousands of Afrikaner
women in the clothing industry.
As the first months of my new job passed, I found myself
in a very close relationship with Solly. He was unlike anyone I had
ever met before.
He didn't belong to my middle-class life, which he contemptuously called "spit
and polish". Nor did I fit into his life. He had come with his family
from Lithuania and they had settled inevitably into the Eastern Jewish
community in South Africa, which had clung to many of the traditional
ways of life. These Solly himself had thrown off, but many of his friends,
and to a great extent his family, still belonged to that tight Jewish
community. Solly's mind and his total commitment to the cause of the
garment workers went far beyond all this. Perhaps this is what drew me
to him and led me to try and identify with him. It was never the other
way round, for Solly never tried to identify with anyone. He could be
tremendously arrogant, even abrasive, yet he was capable of great affection,
even tenderness.
Solly had said of himself that he was ugly. In fact when I first met
him I found him almost repellent. It was not his features, as they were
good, strong and Slav, but his skin was acne-scarred and had been discoloured
since his youth. When I became accustomed to it, I never thought him
ugly again. Indeed his curling silver hair gave him almost an air of
distinction and he carried himself well, despite a slight stoop when
he was tired or deep in thought.
We were an oddly assorted pair but he taught me human
values, which I had not appreciated before — and much else too. His intense love
for the workers, his determination to fight for them, to carry on the
struggle in which he had won so many victories for them during the past
twenty years, inspired me, and I am sure played apart in setting my feet
on the road which I was to walk for the rest of my life. He scoffed at
my lack of political erudition but I learnt more from listening to him
than I ever learnt from the "masters" whom he was always urging
me to read.
I had begun my work at the Medical Aid Society in March
1951. It took me a little while to learn about this new work, but personalities
in
the management committee soon emerged. There was Solly himself, and in
the union I found Afrikaner women of outstanding personality and leadership.
One and all they had come into Johannesburg during the depression years,
driven off the land by poverty into clothing factories to work for 12/6
a week. One was Johanna Cornelius, later to become General Secretary
of this militant union. It is said that she addressed public meetings
in her old school blazer; quite unconscious of the strange impression
she must have created. Her words as a young girl speaking at a large
public meeting in Germiston still ring out strongly. "We are tired
of slaving for a few pence." she declared, "our fathers rebelled
for freedom and we are their daughters." The young Johanna knew
gaol, police persecution, and physical assault for the sake of her fellow
workers in the factories. She became a dynamic trade union leader, greatly
loved for her warmth and compassion.
There were others too. Anna Scheepers, President of the union for many
years, was noted for her skill as negotiator in disputes with employers.
Johanna's sister, Hester Cornelius, was the national organiser and there
were many more like her. They were indeed the rebels' daughters who had
built up the militant Garment Workers' Union, led and guided by Solly
Sachs.
In May 1951, the Separate Representation of Voters Act
was passed, removing the coloured voters from the common voters’ roll.
This proposal had aroused a storm of protest after the Act was passed
and the Torch
Commando took the lead, starting off as a war veterans' organisation.
It soon widened its ranks and together with a few of my friends I marched
in procession across Johannesburg by night carrying flaming torches.
This was really my first political activity, and very impersonal it
was, for we marched in the dark, 4.000 of us, eight abreast. At its zenith,
the Torch Commando numbered a quarter of a million followers, but the
Nationalist government achieved its aim ultimately by increasing the
Senate in order to get the required two-thirds majority needed to change
the coloured vote. It had been a short but bitter battle, in which the
Black Sash also played its part.
Later in the year came my first continuous period of political activity,
when Solly, Johanna Cornelius and Anna Scheepers all stood in the municipal
elections as Labour Party candidates. Solly had impressed on me that
the Labour Party stood for all workers, but it seemed to me that it was
really a white workers' party. However, there wasn't any other political
option for me at that stage, so I joined the Labour Party and became
engrossed in Solly's election campaign. He stood in Doornfontein, mainly
a working-class area and mostly English speaking, but with a fair sprinkling
of Jewish immigrants from Europe.
I was suddenly busy every night for a couple of months, either helping
at the election office or, less happily, canvassing. Solly decided that
my English accent would either outrage the Doornfontein Afrikaners or
be unintelligible to the Middle European immigrants. I was limited to
canvassing the obviously English names on the voters' roll. I was not
much good at this, partly because I was not sufficiently informed about
the South African scene and partly because I was shy and not capable
of thrusting myself through front doors as Solly and others could. I
was grateful for the few cups of tea that I was offered, but I am very
sure that I did not win any votes for Solly.
It was an exciting two months for me and out of it came
a lasting friendship with Violet Weinberg, Solly's election agent.
She was working with the
Garment Workers' Union, in charge of the workers' Provident Fund. Neither
Solly nor Anna nor Johanna won any seats in the election. Violet, from
previous experience, said sadly, "wouldn't it be nice if we could
win — even just once?"
I accepted that the Medical Aid Society work was to some extent constructive
and not merely palliative, but it still did not help my growing feeling
that it was the system itself, the colour bar, that had to be attacked.
At the Medical Aid Society office I came into contact with the Garment
Workers' Union officials, black and white, and, for almost the first
time. Met black people as equals in status and responsibility. Yet even
this was confined to a work association and I cannot say that I really
knew any of them socially, black or white, except Solly and Violet.
Since the passing of the Suppression of Communism Act
in 1950, several left-wing political leaders, both black and white,
and some trade union
leaders too, had been ordered to resign from their organisations, forbidden
to attend meetings or leave the areas where they lived and worked. In
May 1952, Solly Sachs, despite having been expelled from the Communist
Party in 1932, was ordered to resign as General Secretary of the Garment
Workers" Union, not to attend gatherings or leave the magisterial
area of Johannesburg. I was soon caught up into the fury of thousands
of garment workers that their leader, the man who had led them to their
victories during the past twenty years, should be thus summarily removed
from them.
Within a few days, a public protest meeting was held on the City Hall
steps, the Hyde Park Corner of Johannesburg's political organisations.
This was on the morning of 24 May 1952, a Saturday morning. Thousands
of workers attended, black and white, and I marched in my first daylight
procession from the Trades Hall to the City Hall. I felt very conspicuous,
despite the size of the procession with Solly himself at the head of
it. When we reached the City Hall, we saw the coloured workers arriving,
marching eight abreast, in their thousands. Solly had publicly announced
his intention of addressing the meeting. It was his defiant act of public
protest. As he took the microphone and began to speak to the cheering
crowds, the police burst out from the doors of the City Hall behind him
and pulled him violently backwards with them until the doors closed again.
The workers were incensed and there was a spontaneous surge forward.
The City Hall doors flew open again. I was standing nearby and saw it
all. The police burst out and charged the crowds with batons and even
bits of broken chairs. The helpless people were literally beaten back,
beaten to their knees as the police chased them, nearly all women, down
the steps into the roadway.
It was a horrifying sight, women and a few old men, with bleeding heads,
scrambling to their feet to get away. I had not known that police could
act lib this. I watched their faces as they rushed past me. They were
young, but not too young to relish this brutality, legalised and official.
It was later described as a riot but that was no riot, for there was
no violence among the workers. It came only from the police. About sixty
people were treated at the hospital and many privately.
I went with some of the union leaders to the police station where Solly
was held, to take food and books to him. He was brought out from the
cells to us without his collar and tie. Somehow that really seemed to
mark him, for me, as a prisoner. He insisted that he was perfectly all
right and being well treated. He was released on bail that evening.
Meanwhile the union called for a one-day protest strike for the Monday
when another mass meeting would be held on the City Hall steps. That
Monday morning Solly first appeared in the magistrate's court and was
charged with breaking his banning orders. His case was then remanded
to a later date. A few hours later he came to the meeting, defying his
banning orders for the second time.
Thousands of workers were gathered on the City Hall steps, just as they
had been on the Saturday. I think there were even more of them this time.
As Solly came towards the platform, the police arrested him. He told
them there was no need for them to break any more heads; he would go
quietly with them. He was once more led off to the police station. The
union leaders continued the meeting and the police did not interfere
again, but feelings were running very high among the workers. On this
occasion, Solly was refused bail until the following morning. I suppose
it was feared that he would go straight back to the meeting. And I think
he would have done. He came to trial later on two counts of violating
his bans and was sentenced to six month's gaol on each count but he remained
on bail pending his appeal to the higher courts against the conviction.
Weeks of protests, meetings and demonstrations followed, all against
Solly's bans and I became part of them. I stood with a placard in Eloff
Street, Johannesburg's main thoroughfare. I rode to Pretoria in a bus
filled with garment workers, mostly Afrikaners, joining them in their
folk songs. I found all this exciting; yet still felt that I was really
on the outside looking in. I was not a union official. I was not a garment
worker. I had never worked in a factory of any sort.
Solly's case came before the Appeal Court at the end
of the year it Bloemfontein. He argued his case himself before the
five judges. "The
five old men of Bloemfontein," he used to call them. He had considerable
ability and experience in the law and he had decided that neither he
nor his union could afford legal representation at this high and costly
level. The appeal judges complimented Solly on his able presentation
of his case but refused to set aside his convictions. The magistrate's
judgement was upheld and consequently the validity of his banning orders.
His six-month gaol sentence was, however, suspended for three years,
provided he did not commit a similar offence.
It was a bitter disappointment to Solly. He felt he had achieved nothing.
He wanted only one thing, to have his bans set aside and to be free to
return to his union, the organisation he had built and led for twenty-four
years. All political work and trade union activity was now closed to
him and he decided to leave South Africa. I thought he should stay, despite
the restrictions. His influence in the trade union movement was still
very strong and his presence in South Africa would continue to be valuable.
I could not see that he would serve South Africa more by leaving, whatever
he might achieve overseas. Of course, personally, I also wished that
he would stay, but I don't believe that this had anything to do with
my conviction that he could do more by remaining in South Africa.
It was now pretty clear that there was no permanent future
for me with Solly. I had begun to doubt whether I could really fit
into his intensely
individualistic personal life. Perhaps my middle-class conventions were
too strong, but I was not content to accept the second-class role, which
seemed to be all that Solly was prepared to allow me. In fact, I learnt
long afterwards that he decided not to marry me because he was looking
for some woman with "epic" qualities to share his life. I doubt
that, for Solly, I ever graduated from the "wishy-washy" liberal
he used to call me.
Nevertheless I followed him to London, spending time in France with
him before I went on to London and then to Geneva. After that I joined
him briefly in Manchester, where he had obtained a research fellowship
at the university. That visit finally convinced me that I could not adjust
myself to his life. In any event, by now I felt committed to the struggle
in South Africa in whatever way would be possible and Solly had decided
that his future lay in England.
The main political event of the year 1952 was the Defiance Campaign,
organised by the Congress movement. It had brought together the African
National Congress, the South African Indian Congress and the Cape Coloured
Franchise Action Council. They united in this great protest against injustice,
and thus the struggle for the liberation of the black people. It was
also the beginning of the Congress Alliance.
The particular unjust laws chosen for protest were those relating to
the pass system, the culling of cattle (a long-standing grievance in
African rural areas) and the Suppression of Communism Act, especially
for its banning of black leaders. The Separate Representation of Voters
Act was of course also included, for its arbitrary removal of coloured
voters from the common voters' roll.
Passive, non-violent resistance in the tradition of the South African
Indian Congress in 1908 and 1946 had been decided on. Volunteers must
defy the laws, but only selected volunteers, who must be trained to defy,
to undergo harsh gaol conditions and not break, must be trained not to
retaliate whatever violence might be inflicted on them.
6 April 1952 was to be celebrated throughout South Africa as the 300th
anniversary of Van Riebeek's landing at the Cape. It was a joyous occasion,
no doubt, for whites, but for the blacks it merely marked 300 years of
wrong. The congresses decided to launch the Defiance Campaign on 6 April,
with nationwide meetings calling for volunteers. Many thousands responded
and actual defiance began on 26 June.
Nearly 200 were arrested on that day for defying curfew
regulations or entering post offices or railway stations through "whites-only" entrances.
Defiers intended in all cases to go to gaol without paying fines, but
in some later cases they were turned out of gaol against their will.
Money found on their persons was taken by the police to pay the fines.
The campaign continued and grew. At first the sentences passed on defiers
were fairly light, a month or two in gaol but they became increasingly
severe as the campaign proceeded. In August, the peak month, over 2,000
were arrested. Everything was highly organised, even the names of the
intended defiers and the time, date and place of the intended offence,
and were published by the congresses. There were some reports of ill-treatment
in the gaols, but generally the groups of defiers established themselves
effectively through their own discipline, their songs and their determination
and unfailing cheerfulness. It became an honour to be a defier.
I was of course, aware of the Defiance Campaign, which had attracted
considerable press publicity. The idea of non-violent resistance to injustice
appealed to me strongly. I believed, on the example of India, that if
it grew to fully national proportions, the government would have to negotiate,
even on its own repressive laws. Yet it did not really touch me personally.
I was still moving in the trade union field, though not even as a significant
part of that, and I was kept very busy at the Medical Aid Society office.
As the months went by, however, this amazing campaign of self-discipline
and self-sacrifice made me feel ever more ashamed that I was part of
the unjust system and not pan of the campaign against it. I think that
this was true of many other white people. It was only at the end of the
year that a handful of whites actually went to gaol. They were all very
much more politically involved than I was, so I lived on with my sense
of guilt, which I did not yet see clearly as white guilt. That came later.
Overseas publicity and sympathy for the Defiance Campaign was growing
steadily. Some 8,000 men and women defied the unjust laws and went singing
to gaol. No violence of any sort arose out of actual defiance episodes,
but in the last two months of the year, ugly rioting was sparked off
by police violence, when police fired into crowds. It soon became clear
that the Congress could and did discipline effectively its own members,
especially the volunteers, but they could not exercise control over masses
inflamed by police violence.
Even before the end of 1952, government regulations had
raised maximum penalties for defiers to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of £300.
When Parliament met at the beginning of 1953, drastic repressive laws
were passed, specially designed to crush passive resistance and to make
it impossible for it ever to be revived in this form. Whipping, up to
twelve strokes, had been introduced as an additional penalty for defiers.
Inciting others to commit an offence by way of protest became a new offence
for which fines or imprisonment were up to £500 or five years in
gaol. A second new crime also came into being: assisting materially in
any way whatsoever any person campaigning against any law by way of an
unlawful act — even members of the family.
These laws dealt the fatal blow to the Defiance Campaign
and it had to be called off. Hitherto the gaol sentences for defiers
had been one
or two months but the possibility of three years" imprisonment was
a different matter. The defiers refused to pay fines because this would
violate the principle of courting imprisonment as an act of defiance.
Yet the Defiance Campaign had not failed, as it had strengthened the
determination of the oppressed people to continue their struggle for
freedom and justice. Their sacrifice had not been in vain, for it had
highlighted the evil regime of the Nationalist government, heaping injustice
upon injustice. As for me, I was still hoping for ways to become directly
and personally involved. I had joined the Labour Party when Solly had
told me to stop criticising it, get into it and do something about it.
I still saw it as a party involved in the interests of white workers.
I found I was regarded, and rightly so, as a newcomer amongst the experienced
stalwarts of the labour movement, but much as I admired their dedication
and leadership, I realised that I would not find here the political non-racial
home, which I sought.
It is of course quite possible that, had the Communist Party still been
legal, I might have found my way into it and swallowed its doctrines
for the sake of its multiracial membership but the Communist Party, the
only multiracial political organisation in the country, was banned, and
there seemed nowhere for me to turn.
I had gone with Solly to Muizenberg in the Cape for his
last holiday in South Africa. Understandably I was not very confident
about my political
future after he had gone. I walked on the beach with Violet Weinberg
and I wondered how I should "fill my days" without all the
various tasks which Solly had demanded of me and which I had carried
out so gladly. Violet, too, spent much of her time assisting Solly in
various ways, but she had a young family and was thus not as absorbed
as I had allowed myself to become. I knew little of her political affiliation
outside her support for the Garment Workers' Union, nor of her friends,
but she did say that she thought there would be plenty for me to do and
she offered to put me in touch with others in Johannesburg.
There had been an important meeting in Johannesburg at the end of 1952,
attended by many whites, both radical and liberal, who were feeling much
as I did, that the time had come for them to do something about their
strong sense of outrage at the Nationalist government's oppressive regime
and at the conditions of poverty, injustice and racial discrimination
in which the black people lived. The United Party, the official opposition
to the government, was conservative, still seeing the racial situation
in terms of trusteeship, with the whites as guardians to wards, who were
presumably never to come of age. Liberals could not find a political
home there, nor in the relatively more radical but still narrow sphere
of the Labour Party, which was, in any event, now little more than a
shadow of its former militant self.
I do not know how I missed that meeting, other than that I simply did
not know about it. The African National Congress and the South African
Indian Congress had arranged the meeting to bring together this slowly
growing number of whites sympathetic to their aims and to the Defiance
Campaign. There were differing shades of political views at the meeting,
mainly between those who wanted a loaded franchise for blacks and those
who stood for universal adult franchise. One group took the lead afterwards
in forming a white organisation to stand firmly alongside the congresses
on universal adult franchise. This organisation was to become the South
African Congress of Democrats.
To my surprise, I was invited to serve on the provisional
committee for the formation of this new organisation. At the committee
meetings
I came into contact with Father Trevor Huddleston of the Anglican Church,
and Father du Manoir of the Roman Catholic Church. Cecil Williams. Ruth
First. Joe Slovo and "Rusty' Bernstein were there too, all former
members of the Communist Party and also of the Springbok Legion, a radical
service organisation during the war. 1 served on this founding committee
but don't think I contributed very much towards it, certainly not ideologically.
I was still pretty ignorant, despite Solly's teaching. But it did not
matter, for the really important thing was to get this new white organisation
onto its feet to provide a political home for sympathetic whites within
the orbit of the Congress alliance.
It was through this committee, however, that I became
aware of the "black
spots" issue. The government planned to separate white from black,
to unscramble enormous residential areas where blacks and white lived
adjacent to each other. Sophiatown. Newclare and Martindale, the oldest
black settlements in Johannesburg, nestled comfortably side-by-side amidst
several white suburbs of western Johannesburg. These were amongst the
very few areas where blacks owned freehold property, made doubly precious
because there a black man could own the very land on which his home stood.
Sophiatown was the largest of these three areas, well established, though
admittedly a slum in parts, but this was due to overcrowding under the
pressure of the black housing shortage. It was not, and never had been.
a prescribed area controlled by a white location superintendent, holding
the power of residence in his hand, the power to decide who should be
allowed to live there, or even enter the township. Sophiatown was free
and friendly, almost the last bastion of black freehold land in Johannesburg.
Despite poverty, squalor and violence, Sophiatown was exuberant, alive.
Its people were strong. It was a living community, an organism grown
up in its own environment. But Sophiatown was also a black spot to the
white voters who had the power to have it removed, this black spot surrounded
by white suburbs. For this reason alone it could not be allowed to remain.
Official statements about slum clearance fooled no one,
certainly no one in Sophiatown. All the slum clearance that was needed
was to provide
proper housing and freehold rights elsewhere. The people of Sophiatown
did not want to be removed against their will. They did not want to be
herded into Johannesburg's controlled black townships to live under the "permit" system.
The government named its shameful plan the "Western Areas Removal
Scheme". It stirred the consciences, at last, of some of the Johannesburg
whites, and a Western Areas Protest Committee was formed, quickly followed
by other protest committees. The congresses were represented on these
committees and I soon became involved. We went on deputations to the
City Council, sat at tables in white suburbs and in the centre of the
city, collecting signatures for our protests. Most of white Johannesburg
was too timid to give names and addresses, even the few who showed interest.
We collected money for telegrams and postcards to MPs urging them to
oppose the scheme. I felt some sympathy towards the frightened whites,
for I too was very frightened when I started collecting signatures. I
was convinced I would be arrested, although I was not sure for what offence,
as I was too ashamed to discuss my fears with anybody. I was thankful
when it rained and our tables had to be moved.
It was about the Western Areas Removal Scheme that I
had addressed the council meeting in Geneva. While I was overseas,
the first people had
been removed from Sophiatown, despite all the protests, the Congress
organisation, the weekly Sophiatown meetings and the Congress leaflets
proclaiming "We Shall Not Move." It took, however, 2,000 armed
police and army reinforcements to ensure that the people did move and
100 African families and their household goods were loaded onto government
lorries. They were taken to a controlled location called Meadowlands
and put into little matchbox houses, four times the distance from their
work. The authorities had to bring the move forward by three days so
as to forestall any resistance or response to the ANC call for a general
stay-at-home from work on the day of the removals.
Some of the people from Sophiatown had moved voluntarily. What else
could they do in the face of 2,000 armed police, there to remove 100
families? Yet such was the discipline of the ANC that despite the provocation
of the very presence of the police, there was neither rioting nor bloodshed.
Other removals followed later, though never as large, nor as heavily
policed, as the first. After several years every black family had left
Sophiatown. The long green grass grew in the streets where the houses
had stood, marking it as the grave of the life, love and laughter that
had once been Sophiatown.
Today a white suburb stands where once Sophiatown stood.
Over "Freedom
Square", where we held our meetings, a primary school has been built.
White children now play in well-ordered playgrounds where once black
children ran freely in the streets. The name of this suburb is "Triomf,
which is the Afrikaans word for "triumph". What triumph? The
triumph of the armed police who carted the families away? Or the triumph
of the bulldozer that crushed their homes into the ground? Or the triumph
of the Nationalist government, hell bent on separating black from white,
on removing the "black spot" that had soiled white suburbs
by its proximity?
Meanwhile, preparations were going ahead for the formation of the Congress
of Democrats in Johannesburg. In October 1953, a national conference
was held, attended by the Cape Town Democratic League, delegates from
Port Elizabeth and Cape Town and, of course, our newly-formed Johannesburg
Congress of Democrats.
The South African Congress of Democrats was formed and I was elected
to the national executive committee. I was already secretary of a Johannesburg
branch. At last I was a member of an organisation, which identified itself
with the struggle for freedom and justice, with the African National
Congress and the South African Indian Congress and the newly formed South
African Coloured People's Organisation. Like them we stood unequivocally
on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. I had found a political
home, even if it was not itself multiracial in composition.
There had, in fact, been considerable division of opinion on whether
the Congress of Democrats should have a multiracial membership or not,
but the ANC had been adamant on this point. The Congress of Democrats
must be white. As whites we could be equal partners in the Congress but
we would not be welcome to compete with the other congresses for membership.
Our political task was to work amongst the white people, the voters
like ourselves, to spread amongst them our rejection of all forms of
racial discrimination, our demand for full equality of opportunity, for
equal rights for all people, to persuade them that only in the acceptance
of this lay any future peace for the people of South Africa. It would
be no easy task but it was there for us to do.
Several people at the conference pressed for multiracial membership,
but the ANC viewpoint finally prevailed. The South African Congress of
Democrats, the COD, as it became known, was formed with a white membership,
to be the white wing of the Congress Alliance.
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