In January 1957 we were back again in the Drill Hall. The cage had
been removed and our seats were now numbered. I found to my dismay
that I was number thirteen, but there was nothing that I could do about
it. The 156 persons occupied the greater part of the Drill Hall but
there was some space at the back, which, to our anger, was separated
into black and white. Yet the accused were not. Our division was only
into regions. Johannesburg came first with by far the largest number,
77, almost half of all the accused.
We had been numbered in alphabetical order and I sat between Jack Hodgson
of the Congress of Democrats and Paul Joseph of the Indian Congress.
A white woman and a black man having the same surname caused some confusion
from time to time, but not as great as that created by the identical
twins, Norman and Leon Levy. They created havoc during identification
by police witnesses.
The
prosecutor completed his opening address and Vernon Berrange of our
defence team replied in an historic address. Pirow had included
the Freedom Charter in his accusation of treason, but Vernon asserted:
The defence will contend that the ideas and beliefs which are expressed
in this Charter, although repugnant to the policy of the present government,
are such as are shared by the overwhelming majority of mankind of all
races and all colours and also by the overwhelming majority of the
citizens of this country . . .
We
will endeavour to show, in other words, that what are on trial here
are not just 155 [sic] individuals, but the ideas which they and
thousands of others incur country have openly espoused and expressed
. . .
They will assert and in due course ask the Court to hold that they
are the victims of political kite flying on the part of those responsible
for these prosecutions. We are going to endeavour to show that the
prosecutions and the manner of their presentation are for the purpose
only of testing the political breezes, in order to ascertain how far
the originators thereof can go in their endeavours to stifle free speech,
criticism of the policies of the government and everything, in fact,
that the accused believe is implicit in the definition of the oft misused
word "Democracy".
They come of all races, but they hold one thing in common . . . they
believe in the brotherhood of man and the desire to work for his betterment
and towards his ultimate freedom . . .
We believe that, in the result, this trial will be answered in the
right way by history.
Vernon Berrange had spoken for us all and set the tone for the conduct
of our case. We were determined to affirm, not merely to defend, our
convictions and our activities.
Our bail conditions prohibited us from addressing meetings and also
required us to report to a police station once a week. That was when
my regular reporting to the police really began, but it was onerous,
and we were all doing it and constantly reminding each other.
Just as our trial
began in January, the great Alexandra Township bus boycott also began.
Alexandra Township (popularly known as "Alex")
was then a crowded black freehold township, some ten miles from the
city. This boycott was not the first of its kind: that had been in
1943, when 15,000 Alex people walked ten miles to work and back again
because they could not and would not accept an extra penny on the fares.
I was then stationed as a WAAF officer at the Union Grounds in Johannesburg,
right on the road from Alex into the city. I saw the boy cotters, washerwomen
with their huge bundles of washing on their heads, the factory workers
who worked a fifty-hour week, and old men and children too. Alex walked
for nine days, through the sun and the wind and the rain — and
the Alexandra people won. The bus fares remained at four pence a journey,
already more than ill-paid workers could afford.
A year later, Alex walked again. I saw it again, the determination
that could conquer exhaustion, a people who could walk twenty miles
a day for seven weeks. I marvelled at it, the passive resistance of
a people who were denied any say about the conditions of life in which
they worked and travelled. They lived in poverty, they worked for exploitative
wages, they lived ten miles away from their jobs, because the whites
would tolerate them no nearer. They travelled in grossly overcrowded
buses, for which they stood for hours in queues and which already cost
them eight pence a day. It was the extra two pence that brought them
out in defiance. They would not pay it because their wages were too
low to stand the extra shilling a week.
The boycotters
won again and the busfares remained at four pence a journey until
1957. Then
Alex walked once more, refusing to pay an
extra penny on the fares. "Asikwelwa!" they cried, "we
will not ride!" Again I was on their road, this time sitting day
after day in the Drill Hall past, which the people walked, in the wind
and the rain and the mud. It was in the summer months, and the storms
broke in the afternoons. While we sat in the Drill Hall, with transport
to hand, the boycotters walked, sometimes soaking wet, and the next
day they wore the same clothes to work, still wet.
Whites tried to
help, as they had before, with car lifts, but this was hampered by
traffic
policemen pulling surplus passengers out of
cars, threatening and sometimes carrying out prosecutions. The passengers
were harassed for passes, taken off to police stations and even cyclists
giving lifts had the valves of their tyres removed by the police. My "Congress
Connie" was a little small for this job, but she could just squeeze
in three portly ladies and I insisted that she was for women only — for
the "aunties". I realised more fully now that the bus boycott
had significance deeper than the refusal to pay the extra penny a ride.
It was the only weapon available to the people of Alex, the weapon
of sacrifice and determination, of undiminished fortitude, against
which neither the bus company nor their allies, the police, could prevail.
The treason trial continued in 1957, taking up most of the working
time of all the accused but, as best we could, we continued defiantly
with our political activities and made the most of the Congress leadership
being together. Fourteen of our leading Federation women were amongst
the accused. Five of us were from Johannesburg. We could and did continue
with our Federation programme for the Transvaal, organising women's
conferences against passes for women, in Pretoria and on the East and
the West Rand and collecting pledges of opposition against the Group
Areas Act. We were also busy promoting and popularising the Freedom
Charter, despite the attacks on it in the trial.
We had a full programme and it meant a lot of weekend organising for
Bertha and me. Sometimes Lilian or other ANC Women's League organisers
used to come with us. I could now go only rarely at night, because
1 was working at my offices during the evenings to make up for time
spent at the trial. None of us, not Bertha, Lilian or I, could attend
the conferences we organised because our bail conditions prevented
us from attending political gatherings, nor could we address gatherings
of any sort. Although we missed the actual conferences, we received
very encouraging reports from these gatherings of African. Indian and
coloured women, even a few whites. The spirit of the Federation was
as strong as ever, despite the threat of the treason trial hovering
over the leaders.
On 23 April, I
was met on arrival at court by two special security branch detectives
who handed
me two banning orders, one prohibiting
me from attending any gatherings, except purely social ones, and the
other preventing me from leaving the magisterial areas of Johannesburg — and
all this for five years.
I don't think I paid much attention that day to what was going on
in our trial. Shocked and angry, I looked at those banning orders and
tried to figure out lust what they were going to mean to me, to my
life. 1 wasn't banned from any organisations, but the prohibition on
gatherings was more stringent than the hail terms. It seemed that holding
me for months on end on a charge of high treason was not enough for
the Minister of Justice, Charles Robbertse Swart, who eventually became
the State President of South Africa. He did not know, of course, and
nor did I, that in the end the trial would take up four years of the
period of the ban.
Confinement to Johannesburg was frustrating, for I could no longer
go to Pretoria, to the East and West Rand. or even to the further Transvaal
areas. It meant the end of the precious organising expeditions with
Bertha and Robert and the contact with the women.
I looked at the orders several times before I realised that the confinement
to Johannesburg would take effect only after seven days. In the trial
interval that morning, Robert and Bertha and I planned a hectic week
of farewell visits, though we knew of course that I would meet the
women again after five years. We went to the various areas every night
that week. I decided that my office working hours could be made up
afterwards. This last week was too precious to lose. So, night after
night, while I still could, we went off to small gatherings of women
in little houses in many different places. We drank tea and ate cakes
to make these meetings into social gatherings. On the last night, after
we had dropped Bertha in Germiston. Robert and I drove back rather
silently and I thought dismally of the five years ahead.
I did not think then of how fortunate I was in that I had already
had a few years of intense political activity, nor of the fortunate
fact that I was in the treason trial where I could daily meet so many
friends and colleagues in court. But I knew that others had been banned
before me and others would be banned after me. I was only one amongst
many.
We all drew close
to each other in the first year of the treason trial, the preparatory
examination
in which we played no personal part. The
prosecution would lead their evidence and then it would be for the
magistrate to decide whether, on that evidence, he should commit us
for trial in a higher court — or let us go.
The passing weeks
brought sunshine and shadow. We began to realise that this part of
the trial
would go on for a long time. The prosecution
was putting in masses of documents, found in police raids, literally
hundreds of longhand reports of our speeches, taken down by semi-literate
security branch detectives. These were astounding, incomprehensible,
yet claiming to be verbatim reports. Vernon Berrange exposed them for
what they were — gibberish. Bertha raged one day, almost audibly, "that
is NOT the way Helen speaks'" But it went on and on and the court
record grew longer and longer.
The accused read, slept and even knitted if they were not in the front
row. I was, but I still brought some of my Medical Aid Society work
to court and signed hundreds of sick pay cheques, which our messenger
brought each morning. The court orderly then brought them to me. I
suppose it was actually contempt of court, but the magistrate sensibly
turned a blind eye, for how could we retain an alert interest for hours,
days and weeks on end, especially when we could hardly hear what most
of the witnesses were saying?
I think, too, that the magistrate was, understandably, somewhat apprehensive
about how he would handle so many of us if we became difficult. It
almost happened once, when one of us, Joe Slovo, an advocate himself,
clashed with the magistrate who then committed him for contempt of
court. The magistrate had to face 155 furious persons, who had risen
in a body and were advancing towards his rostrum. He certainly blanched
and seemed uncertain of what to do, but it was Chief Luthuli who rushed
to the front and called upon us to resume our seats. All except a few
did so and the few were committed for contempt of court as well, but
there were no serious consequences.
We laughed a lot
too, at the comic placards, "soup with meat", "soup
without meat", seized by police at the Congress of the People
as they overturned the pots of food in their search. Now these placards
appeared in court as evidence — of what? Treason? Or treason
soup? We laughed at the motorcycle and sidecar solemnly rolled into
court with a detective seated on it to write down what Vernon Berrange
read to him slowly and clearly, with an interpreter, in order to show
that his six-line report of a thirty- minute speech, taken down while
on his motorbike was rubbish. We laughed at the figure he cut when
Vernon read to the magistrate the garbled nonsense, which was all that
this detective-turned-reporter had been able to write down of what
Vernon read out.
We did not laugh at the financial ruin of so many of the accused,
especially those who came from other areas, leaving jobs, professions,
to face weeks and months of unemployment. Even for those who lived
in and around Johannesburg, there was no possibility of work: the court
proceedings filled our days and not more than a dozen of us had managed
to hold onto our jobs by working at night.
On 26 June 1957, the second anniversary of the Congress of the People,
we stood in silent prayer during the morning break. More than half
the industrial workers in Johannesburg stayed at home that day, answering
the Congress call. In the Eastern Cape and elsewhere there were mass
meetings and torchlight processions. It was one of the Congress's finest
demonstrations. On the day that twenty-two African men were hanged
for the killing of five policemen in a dagga (cannabis) raid in Bergville,
we came to the court in mourning. I sat through the trial that day
thinking of twenty-two living men executed on one morning.
We led a life within a life and became ever more firmly bound to our
organisations and to our common struggle. The effort to turn us from
our path had resulted only in a stronger determination to follow it,
as almost the whole of the Congress leadership, from all over South
Africa, sat together, discussed together, planned together for the
future.
On 31 December 1956 I had moved into my little cottage with the tall
trees, delighted to have a home of my own, pushing aside any intrusive
doubts of how long I might be able to live in it. Many friends urged
me not to go on with the purchase arrangements when I was arrested,
but I would not listen. It was in some way a demonstration of my own
faith in the future.
The year moved slowly on, with endless relays of detectives giving
evidence, handing in our documents, until we came to Professor Andrew
Murray, from Cape Town University, an expert on communism. He fared
badly at Vernon's skilful hands, exposing himself in so many ways to
our barely suppressed laughter and ridicule. We could not see his evidence
as formidable.
At the end of September, the court adjourned until the beginning of
1958. The prosecution had at last come to the end of its case, and
the magistrate needed time to arrive at his finding on the mass of
evidence before him. I often wondered how much of it he actually managed
to read. The accused from the other areas went back to their homes:
the few of us still in our jobs welcomed the break, and many others,
dependent on help from the Treason Trial Defence Fund, sought, but
mostly did not find, temporary jobs. Yet it was a relief to all of
us to be out of that Drill Hall, not to have to sit on those hard chairs
for so many hours every day, not to have to listen to those relays
of witnesses and all those documents being read into the record.
The Federation
of South African Women had been active throughout most of the year,
despite
the immobilisation of fourteen of its leaders
at this preparatory examination and my banning orders. Our special
anniversary, 9 August, had been celebrated with anti-pass demonstrations
and we had printed and sold thousands of "Women's Day" badges — a
black mother with her child upon her back.
Passes for African
women were, however, being issued in many areas in spite of the efforts
of the ANC Women's League and the Federation
in campaigns and protests. Then African nurses were called upon to
supply identity numbers for registration with the Nursing Council.
This aroused indignation amongst nurses, because an identity number
could only be obtained by taking the reference book — the hated
pass. Groups of black nurses in the Transvaal were holding angry protest
meetings and nurses declared. "Our mothers were washerwomen and
they educated us. We will go back to the washtubs but we will not carry
passes."
These were brave words and the Federation took its stand alongside
the nurses. We organised a demonstration of women, the mothers of the
African nurses, to demand an interview with the matron of the huge
black hospital in Johannesburg, the Baragwanath hospital, to protest
against the requirement of identity numbers which would compel their
daughters to take passes.
I think it was because of our famous protests to Pretoria that we
drew such publicity, even before the demonstration. Baragwanath seemed
to have panicked over this demonstration of women, although it was
widely known that the purpose of the mothers was simply to bring their
protest to the matron of this great hospital, requesting support for
their stand.
It was to be on a Saturday morning and I drove out to watch. I could
not get close because of my banning order, but even to get near I had
to skirt a couple of police road blocks. All traffic, which passed
the hospital, was being diverted to other roads. We learned afterwards
that all walking patients had been sent home for the weekend and all
except absolutely essential medical personnel had been told to stay
at home that Saturday morning.
As I drew near,
I saw the hospital surrounded by police, armed as usual. Facing them,
on the
other side of the road, were a few hundred
African women, obviously the mothers of nurses and there to protest
on behalf of their daughters. It was a hot morning and the umbrellas
were up against the sun. Perhaps the police thought the umbrellas concealed
secret weapons. It looked a little comic from where I stood, as there
seemed to be more policemen than protesters. Then I saw four Federation
women in their green blouses, one of each race as usual, walk across
the road to the hospital gates. I held my breath for a moment — would
the police interfere with them'.' However, they were let in and they
explained that they wished to see the matron. They were ushered into
her office, where they were courteously received. They held a long
discussion with the matron who agreed to forward their request to the
Nursing Council that identity numbers should not be required for the
registration of nurses.
It was all very peaceful and polite and it made the hordes of policemen
look silly and superfluous. We heard later that there had been tear-gas
canisters hidden behind the hospital hedges. For whom? A few hundred
mothers who had walked a mile across the rough grass from Soweto? The
press and the public laughed. Yet the women had been very serious and
very dignified and they had succeeded. Soon afterwards the Nursing
Council rather hastily withdrew their demand for identity numbers.
We had always known that at the end of the preparatory examination,
a son of pre-trial run. we might or might not be committed for trial
in a higher court, but even that seemed far off. Early in 1958, we
learned that the charges against sixty-five of us were withdrawn. This
number included even the President General of the ANC. Chief Luthuli.
I was amongst those who remained on trial.
The rest of us
were committed for trial on a charge of high treason because we had "conspired with hostile intention against Her Majesty's
government by committing hostile acts or inciting others to do so".
Had it really taken more than a year to get to this point? I think
that most of the time the actual idea of treason had faded from our
minds as any sort of reality. I know it had from mine. But now it was
real and we went through the ritual of the renewal of bail bonds. now
for the Supreme Court, before we scattered again, now only ninety-one
accused.
We waited for a
new date for the proceedings to continue and for a new venue. No
longer would
we come daily to the Drill Hall, which had
become so familiar to us that we felt the apprehension of the unknown
in contemplating a trial in a more formal setting — where? For
more than a year we had been on trial while the prosecution scraped
the barrel, desperately trying to find evidence of treason. The Defiance
Campaign, the Congress of the People, even the women's protests to
Pretoria had all been dragged in. Yet these had all been peaceful,
non-violent campaigns of protest — how could they be treason?
Was it treason to ask for higher wages, for houses, for bread? Or to
protest against passes, against banning without trial? Could the Freedom
Charter be treason? A hostile act against Her Majesty's government?
I thought bitterly how right Vernon had been when he said that the
trial was simply to see how far the government could go with its stifling
of free speech, of democracy itself. I felt that we were trapped in
some unbelievable situation. Did the future hold nothing but gaol for
me? Yet in the midst of all this, I knew that I was totally and unalterably
committed to the struggle for the liberation of the people of South
Africa. I belonged now to the highest company in the land and wherever
their road would take them. I must go too. There could be no turning
back.
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