It was to be a vigil of tribute and it drew an enthusiastic response
from political organisations and people of all races, particularly
young black people. There were to be addresses, poetry and play readings,
choirs and instrumental music throughout the twenty-four hours. The
vigil was to begin and end with requiem masses for the dead, celebrated
by the Bishop of Johannesburg. A tall candle would bum at the high
altar for the whole twenty-four hours while the Black Sash would
maintain a continuous stand of two women in front of it, wearing
their black sashes. Below the candle would be the names of those
who had died in 1976, those in detention or in gaol and those known
to be banned or banished. There would be just one vase of flowers
sent by Winnie Mandela, to be given the next day to the mother of
Hector Peterson, the first schoolboy to die from the police bullets.
At the Witwatersrand University there was to be a mass meeting of
commemoration at noon at which Helen Suzman, Bishop Desmond Tutu
and I were to address the students. I was to address the people at
the cathedral vigil at midnight.
On the eve of the vigil, the Minister of Justice warned the Bishop
of Johannesburg that if there were to be any speeches at the vigil,
the magistrate would stop the proceedings. The police had instructions
to take action immediately if the minister's warning was not heeded.
Both the Dean of the Cathedral and the Bishop immediately refused
to preach if others could not speak and the Bishop decided that the
vigil must be silent throughout.
It seemed that the vigil had been dealt a cruel blow. The element
of spoken and sung tribute, such a vital part of the whole concept,
had been destroyed. Yet the flame of the candle burned steadily on,
the women of the Black Sash stood in motionless silence. Throughout
that day and night, there were always forty or fifty people, black
and white, kneeling in silent tribute and prayer. The dignity and
the meaning of the vigil had not, after all, been touched.
I was at the opening mass of the vigil and remained there for a
few hours until I came home to complete my address to the students.
My midnight speech for the vigil had of course been discarded.
At half past eleven that morning one of the students
phoned to tell me that all campus meetings had been banned for
three days. At twenty
minutes to twelve he phoned again to say that the ban did not actually
take effect until midday, the students were already assembled in
the Great Hall — could I get there in time to speak for five
minutes before twelve o'clock? Fortunately Use Wilson, Bram Fischer's
daughter, was at my house with her car and we drove at top speed
to the university. I reached the platform with almost five minutes
in hand to a great welcome, except for some boos from one comer of
the hall. That was a new experience for me, but I was not altogether
surprised, for I had already heard of an ugly act of vandalism on
the campus. Some of the students had planted hundreds of black crosses
on the campus lawns that morning in commemoration of the young Soweto
dead. These had later been set alight with petrol and the crosses
were burned — the work of right-wing students.
I spoke for five minutes; there was no time for more.
Then the students sang, "We shall overcome" and, as the meeting closed, exactly
at noon, remembering the boos, I gave the clenched fist salute of
the liberation struggle with a defiant shout of “Amandla!" (Strength).
I returned to the Cathedral for the rest of the twenty-four
hours, moved yet saddened, by the complete silence. The night hours
passed
very slowly for all of us. Most of the clergy and the whites went
home for the night, except the gallant team of Black Sash women
and the few who provided a continuous coffee service up in the Tower
Room. Some forty black people had remained for the night, mostly
women; they had brought blankets against the cold of that June
night.
They had come from work and would go back to work the next morning.
At intervals during the night some would go up to the Tower Room
for coffee and perhaps a sort of nap in a chair or for companionable
talk amongst themselves, sometimes to sing part of those weary
hours away — up there where they would not be heard.
The Cathedral itself was so quiet, so still, only a few lights burning
high up in the roof, and the great candle, growing shorter as the
hours passed, two women always standing beside it. I wondered whether
the minister realised what he had done. He had killed a part of the
vigil but he had totally failed to destroy its spirit. The very silence
filled that great cathedral, poured out of the open doors into the
dark night.
At five o'clock the next morning the black people began to sing,
very softly, in quiet defiance. They sang hymns in lovely harmony;
they sang for the last hour of the vigil, but the silence and the
singing were each part of the other and it was a fitting end to an
unforgettable night. I stood with Barbara at the door when it was
all over and we had blown out the candle. It had not been as she
had planned it, and we were still disappointed at the Bishop's insistence
on total silence, but we both knew that the vigil itself, silent
or sung had proved indestructible.
The press coverage of my brief speech at the university
and the Amandla salute aroused right-wing anger. There were a couple
of death
threats the following morning. "We're coming tonight to kill
you, you communist bitch!" . . . "We'll bomb your house
tonight!" with sundry obscene abuse. I telephoned the Norwood
police and met with the usual lack of comprehension and just a vague
assurance that the night patrol would be told to "watch out".
I found out later that one of my friends had sat outside my house
in his car until one o'clock the next morning, but he saw and heard
nothing. This is a problem for all of us who are subjected to telephone
threats. Should we ignore them on the assumption that nothing would
happen on the night of the threat? ... Yet some day it might . .
. who knew?
The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 had been
renamed the Internal Security Act and its scope had been extended
to cover, not merely
suspected communist activities, but also those which "endanger
the security of the state or the maintenance of public order".
Its new name did not make the Act any less sinister or far-reaching
and it made it even easier for the minister to ban organisations
or persons.
In October 1977 these extended powers were invoked in the banning
of seventeen organisations together with some of their officials.
They included the multiracial Christian Institute, which, together
with the South African Council of Churches, was keeping the banner
of the struggle for justice and freedom flying in the Christian church.
The bans also covered every black consciousness organisation.
The minister declared that the banned organisations,
persons and publications had been a threat to the maintenance of
peace and security.
He had acted on the report of a committee consisting of a magistrate
and two other jurists, but the banned organisations and banned people
never saw those "factual" reports which in reality amounted
to secret trials at which the accused could not appear. For good
measure, the widely read black newspapers, the World and the Weekend
World, were also declared illegal, despite their enormous circulation — or
perhaps because of it.
I saw a haunting press photograph of Theo Kotze, Director of the
now banned Christian Institute, my Cape Town friend, in whose house
I had so often stayed. He was standing in the doorway of the Institute.
The photograph showed him flanked by two young policemen in full
camouflage uniform. What for? To outlaw a Christian institution,
did they need to appear in this garb? Was Theo, this gentle but determined
minister of the Methodist church, so dangerous?
One policeman had the grace to bow his head, even to look ashamed,
but the other was sharing a joke with a triumphant grinning constable
in the background. Theo himself had just been served with a banning
order, his life and work destroyed by a stroke of the minister's
pen. I should not stay again with this warm, hospitable friend, for
now Theo could not communicate with me.
In February 1978 a date was at last set for the hearing of our appeal
against our conviction for refusing to answer questions about Winnie.
Judgement was reserved but I was suddenly aware that I really had
a possible four months' gaol sentence hanging over my head and the
other three, Barbara, Jackie and Ilona, had far worse to face. There
was no way of assessing the chance of any of our appeals succeeding
and there would still probably be some weeks before we should know
our fate. Nevertheless, I began to expect a telephone call, hour
after hour, day after day, with a feeling of relief when each afternoon
was over and I knew I could hear nothing until the following day.
Then at last I heard that judgement would be given the following
day, 13 April. Only a couple more days and I might well be in gaol
for four months.
I decided that I must say goodbye to all my friends,
so I telephoned, bidding them come to my "judgement party" the following
night, although I did not yet know whether it would be a celebration
or a "going in" party. I knew the next morning. My sentence
had been reduced to two weeks and Barbara's from a year to two months.
Jackie and Ilona had been acquitted because our defence counsel had
discovered a flaw in the prosecution's case. I was delighted for
them, but anxious lest they should be charged again and have to go
through a repeat performance. I remembered what the prosecutor had
said in my case, "I can bring her back again and again . . ."It
seemed to me that there was no point in appealing further. The judge
had upheld the conviction though reducing the sentence. Seeing that
our stand was one of protest against any compulsion to make statements
and become state witnesses, I felt that to appeal further would weaken
our stand on principle.
Seventy of my friends crowded into my house for that "going
in" drink with me, bishops and lawyers, priests and politicians,
people who had already known gaol and bans, and those who hadn't,
the young and the old, they were all there. Most of them had to stand
for there wasn't room for sitting and it was gay, the way I wanted
it to be, the way I wanted to go into gaol. Barbara was away on holiday
at the time and would surrender herself to serve her sentence a little
later.
Exactly what I was supposed to do next was not clear.
I did not want to sit at home and wait to be taken into custody.
I knew that
I should have to report to the magistrate's court in Bloemfontein,
so I arranged to drive down there on the Monday morning with some
friends (provided I wasn't picked up by the police in the meantime).
We should meet Zeni and Zindzi Mandela in Brandfort on the way, having
a "going in" lunch at an "international" hotel
in Bloemfontein where we could all eat together and then I would
report to the court and surrender myself. Fourteen days still seemed
an unbelievably short sentence. I took a few books, the Oxford Book
of English Verse, which a friend lent me for the occasion, a modem
translation of the Bible and a couple of devotional books.
Zindzi and Zeni were waiting for us on the Brandfort Bridge as we
arrived (and so, we discovered later, were the security police, watching
I suppose to see whether Winnie would join us!). Zindzi brought a
huge knitted stole in ANC colours, black, gold and green, for me
to wear for the occasion. Ilona joined us for lunch, as she was visiting
her parents in Bloemfontein.
I reported to the court office and found a policeman
at my elbow. "Come
with me," he said, but I protested that I must first bid my
friends goodbye and went back to them. They were standing together
a little forlornly, not knowing what had happened to me, but there
they all were, Zeni and Zindzi and her boyfriend, Ilona and the two
Little Sisters of Jesus, Iris Mary and Valentine, my friends who
had driven me down from Johannesburg.
There was laughter, and hugs and kisses, with the policeman still
at my elbow until I was suddenly without my friends and on my way
down to the dark cell below the court. My personal possessions were
first taken from me and then returned when I was transported in the
prison van to Bloemfontein gaol, where my reception was neutral but
not unfriendly.
I was of course a strange phenomenon to the young
wardresses, an old woman who had chosen to go to gaol rather than
make a statement
against a friend. I was taken to a cell, better than I had expected,
far different from those dreary dingy cells high up in the rafters
in the Pretoria gaol in 1960. Here there was a window, which could
open, even if barred, but I could see black women prisoners moving
around in a courtyard. There was even a private loo in one corner — that
was something I had not known before in gaol. I went to bed quite
soon after lock-up time and slept peacefully on a rather hard bed,
with sheets, which were as usual too short for the bed, and enough
blankets.
I was almost disappointed to discover the next morning that I was
to serve my sentence in Klerksdorp gaol, about halfway between Johannesburg
and Bloemfontein.
As I was driven into Klerksdorp gaol, high and forbidding, one of
the newest prisons, I looked anxiously at the gigantic, monolithic
concrete fortress. My spirits dropped as I clambered up three flights
of noisy, steep iron stairs, holding rather desperately onto my issue
of prison clothing, bundled together with my bag under one arm, grasping
the iron railings with the other. I arrived at the reception office,
panting, breathless and thankful to be allowed to sit, for prisoners
usually stand. I was glad that with my papers there was a certificate
stating that I had had a serious heart attack two years before and
was under medication. I didn't fancy traipsing up and down those
stairs very often.
The officer in charge of the women's section was young, cool, kind
and serious. I discovered that I was the only white woman prisoner
in the gaol. There were fifty or sixty black women serving sentences
whom I never saw at all. Klerksdorp was in fact mainly a men's gaol
and the women's section was tightly sealed off, a little world on
its own. I, too, was tightly sealed off from the black women prisoners.
My cell was obviously part of a section specially
designed for white women and it was like nothing that I had ever
imagined a cell could
be. It was light and bright and the afternoon sun was streaming in.
I stood in the doorway and asked unbelievingly, “Is this for
me?” There was a loo and a washbasin behind a three-foot dividing
wall, windows, long and very narrow, from floor to ceiling, but the
slit window of the top half could be swivelled open to let in the
sun and the air. They looked outwards, beyond the gaol, right across
the prison grounds to open country. The cells were high up, on the
third floor and I had the feeling of being in a tower, like the Lady
of Shalott, looking down on the passing world below, except that
the only human life for me to see was a black convict labour gang
working, m the prison grounds.
Lights went out at eight o'clock so I had to learn to sleep early
and long. I woke before five in the morning to watch the eastern
sky slowly lighten and redden until the flaming sun came up on the
horizon. For me that would mean that another day and night had passed.
Yet I was not unhappy there. I could read and after a few days I
had some wool and could crochet. All the same, it was a strange,
sterile existence. My home and my life in Johannesburg faded away,
although I thought very much about my friends.
As I came to each new experience, I thought of Barbara. How would
the plain heavy starchy food affect her? I could not imagine her
slim elegant figure, her tailored clothes exchanged for the loose
heavy overdress, nor that classic head atop the tan jersey. For me
it was all so much better than anything I had hitherto experienced
in gaol. For her it was all going to be so much worse than anything
she had ever known or imagined.
I thought very often of how my pink skin had made me better off
as a prisoner. I could not doubt that black conditions had improved
in the gaols in some ways over the years, just as white conditions
had done but the gap was still there and whites were still far better
off.
When I was discharged, the officer came outside the
gaol to see me off, saying, "I shall miss you," very sincerely. Thinking
of a possible re-subpoena and a longer gaol sentence, I laughed and
replied, "Don't worry — I'll be back!"
I returned to a gay, friendly welcome from my friends, but I wondered
when the telephone calls would begin again. The day before the judgement
there had been a particularly nasty one. Gaol had given me relief
from this and I had felt secure in that cell, high above the world,
the danger locked out.
As I had anticipated, the security branch were soon
on my doorstep with a subpoena for a repeat performance. I must
appear before
the Bloemfontein magistrate again on 1 June, to answer questions
relating
to two alleged offences by Mrs Winnie Mandela on 27 September 1977 — the
mixture exactly as before.
I accepted the subpoena in silence and they went away. I began immediately
to make plans to go to Bloemfontein and to face gaol again. I thought
I should handle it alone this time to save legal expenses. There
would be no point in noting an appeal against the inevitable conviction.
It had all been argued before and we had lost our case.
I was astounded a few days later to learn that the Attorney General
of the Free State had dropped the case against me on account of my
age. It seemed incomprehensible, for I was only a few weeks older
than when I had gone to gaol. Although I was of course very relieved
for myself, I was nevertheless very unhappy at being protected by
age and thus levered into a more favourable position than Ilona and
Jackie and Barbara.
I knew that Barbara had not been able to adjust to gaol conditions
that it was a continuous traumatic experience for her. It had not
been so for me and I knew how fortunate I had been. I knew, too,
that for me there never could have been any other way and never would
be. It raised a question; however, to which I do not think I have
yet found the answer. How far can you be held responsible for the
sufferings of another? To some extent my example of not retreating
from a principle had been followed. Barbara had taken her own decision,
very courageously, but I could not escape from the thought that I
had helped to bring this suffering on her.
Ilona and Jackie had also been re-subpoenaed, had again come before
the Bloemfontein magistrate, refused to speak and this time had been
sentenced to three and four months' gaol respectively. They had appealed
against the severity of their sentences and were once again in that
strange limbo of waiting for their judgement.
They were still waiting as Christmas approached and it seemed that
they might still spend it with all their friends, but on 29 November,
the judgement was given and they had lost. Their sentences were upheld
and they had to go into gaol, not to Klerksdorp, but the Pretoria
Central goal, where they were subjected to very harsh conditions
and discipline. They were even kept in solitary confinement, separated
from each other completely, for the first six weeks.
I knew that Joe Morolong's banning orders were due to expire in 1978 — the
third five-year restriction. It had been inhuman, this confinement
to within a mile and a half of his father's little house in Ditshipeng
Reserve, a desolate semi-desert area in the Northern Cape Province.
That was by day; by night, Joe's radius of movement was reduced to
a little over fifty yards. During these fifteen years of his bans,
Joe and I had not been able to communicate with each other.
We had been companions on that long exciting tour to find the banished
people. We had both been put under stringent restrictions, but mine
had ceased seven years ago. Would the Minister of Justice sentence
Joe to yet another five years of that hell of desolation? I was in
a state of both hope and dread as the third five-year banning order
expired.
For the first few days, my hopes rose, for there was no report of
any renewal of his ban, but on 4 April, the tragic news was published
that Joe had been murdered five months previously. He had been found
dead in the veld with a stab wound in his back. That is all that
was ever known of the death of Joe Morolong. Today he lies buried
in the place where he existed for fourteen and a half years of that
living death, the man who had chosen to stay in South Africa.
Joe had been a laughing companion on our tour, but his laughter
must surely have died during those lonely years. Photographs had
been published from time to time of the stark isolation of Ditshipeng
Reserve. Did the minister ever see them? Or did he ever care to know
what he had done when he imposed those three five-year banning orders,
one after the other, on Joseph Morolong?
I went to Pretoria a few times to attend the trial of eleven African
men and one African woman on charges of ANC activities, training
for guerrilla warfare and sabotage. Six were found guilty and on
the day of sentence the court was crowded with whites, unlike all
the other days when only the families and a few friends came there.
Security was always very strict at such trials and I often had the
contents of my handbag examined. Once a policeman used his dog against
us as we stood on the pavement to wave to the prison van as it drove
the accused back to gaol. The dog was an Alsatian, as police dogs
usually are, and I felt outraged that such a beautiful animal should
be used for such a purpose. I had my own dog Kwacha in mind, but
I knew that the blacks who stood with me to face that policeman and
his straining dog did not share my view. To black people an Alsatian
is a police dog, to be hated and feared on sight.
Some of the whites who crowded the court on this occasion were recognisable
as security policemen, but there were other whites there too, and
a few white women. All were grim-faced, expectant; they had come
to hear a death sentence and to exult over the condemned men.
There were not many friends, wives and mothers, yet they had to
fight their way into that crowded courtroom to hear the fate of their
men. Two young women had married their men in prison during the trial.
Would they be widows before they were ever wives? Their husbands
were young men in their early twenties and it was for them that the
state had demanded the death sentence. The judges, however, did not
sentence them to death. Those waiting whites were disappointed.
Anger was clearly to be seen on their faces as they left the court.
There was really nothing they could do except take a statement and
scrabble around on the floor looking for bullets. The damage had
mostly been done by a shotgun, except for one bullet, which had gone
through the glass pane of the front door and then through the wooden
sitting-room door to lodge in the jamb of the bathroom door. I was
thankful I had not been in the line of fire.
The next day there was first a call at midday, "What a pity!
What a pity!" and then at three o'clock, "Next time you
won't be so lucky!" Then, "Helen, the next one will be
between the eyeballs." At four o'clock, "Are you insured?" and
late that night, "What sort of wood do you want for your coffin?" A
day or so later . . . "What about a date with death? Twelve
o'clock is the time", and then a little later, "Tonight
I'm coming to cut your throat, you old bitch."
For the rest of that year, there was little beyond
obscenity, but 1979 brought more sinister telephone calls. "We're going to
wipe you out... It won't be like last time, we'll do a proper job
this time." On 8 February, at the usual time, 12.30 a.m., when
I was not yet in bed but the curtains were drawn and the gates padlocked,
I heard three ear-splitting blasts. This time I knew what they were,
but I didn't hear any glass shattering, so I hesitantly looked into
the sitting room but saw no sign of any damage. I made some coffee,
put out the lights and went to bed. I did not fancy going out onto
the verandah to investigate any further. At half past six the next
morning I went out and was shocked to find a bullet hole in the wall
only inches away from my bedroom window.
When the police came, they found a second bullet hole, this one
in the roof just above the bedroom window and also two empty cartridge
cases outside my front gate, which established that nine millimetre
bullets had been used. Yet I knew, as before, that the gunman would
not be traceable, nor would the perpetrator of the telephone calls.
The police suggested that I should obtain an unlisted telephone number,
but I could not agree to this, for it would mean cutting myself off
from the many visitors passing through Johannesburg, often strangers
to South Africa, who wanted to see me.
Only a few calls followed this renewal of attempted
violence, mainly laughter or just silence, repeated at intervals
during the night.
Then one, "Helen, don't go out tonight, we're coming with bullets."
Part of the horror of this protracted persecution and especially
the shooting was the realisation that I was actually so hated by
other human beings as to make all this possible. A few friends were
experiencing similar incidents sporadically, though not actual shooting,
except of course the dreadful assassination of Rick Turner, who had
opened his window late one night to investigate a sound on his verandah.
He was shot and died in the arms of his young daughter.
I never met this brilliant young industrial sociologist who had
lived his house arrest with courage and undimmed commitment, but
after his tragic death, his wife Foszia became a very close friend.
Whenever I went to Durban to speak at a meeting I stayed with her.
I stood with her at Rick's grave one Sunday and loved her for her
acceptance of this tragedy and her determination that life must go
on.
In my case I found it hard to accept that these attackers were actually
would be assassins. Who were they? Yet Rick Turner was dead and I
could not totally dismiss the possibility that even in my case it
was attempted murder and not just intimidation.
Concerned friends urged me to build a high concrete wall, but I
could not bear the idea of living behind it. Nor could I tolerate
any idea of leaving the home where I had lived for more than twenty
years, the little square house with the wooded garden, which meant
so much to me. Where would I go? Once I started to run, where would
I stop? To share my home on a permanent basis, so as not to live
alone, was equally unacceptable. I wanted to live alone. I had chosen
to do so. I felt reluctant even to have casual visitors now, because
I did not want to expose others to possible danger.
I realised, however, that I needed some form of protection and finally
settled for a two-inch thick sheet of bulletproof perspex across
my bedroom window. It gives me a feeling of security, even when I
think I can hear a car stopping outside my house. I have become unconscious
of it in the daytime and of the ugly need for it. I frame it in tall
potplants and sometimes it reminds me of Prinsloo's face, framed
in the Brandfort privet hedge.
Telephone calls increased in number at the end of
the year, but hoaxes diminished, except for one outrageous and
utterly incongruous
incident. Two young men came to my door one evening to tell me
that they had come to install and operate a discotheque for my party — as
ordered by me. Anything looking less like a venue for a discotheque
party than my quiet little home and this old lady at the door can
hardly be imagined. I tried to convince them that I had made no
such order, that it was a hoax. But they were now two very angry
young
men and angry with me because they had refused another order for
that night for which they would have been paid R100. They did not
want to accept my explanation about the hoax because they could
not understand how it had happened. It did not make any sense to
them
and they had lost 100 rands.