Читать книгу If This Be Treason - Helen Joseph - Страница 6

The dramatic story of the mass arrests of 156 people on a charge of high treason has already been told in South African Treason Trial by Lionel Forman, one of the accused, with ES Sachs as co-author. This brilliant young journalist and barrister described the drama and comedy of the long drawn-out Preparatory Examination, and his book came to us on the very day that we were committed for trial. We sat in the cells under the magistrate’s court waiting for our new bail to be arranged and autographing each other’s copies.

Then after many months we came to Pretoria, to the Special Criminal Court, to face the Treason Trial itself. Lionel was still with us when we first came and I watched him making his notes. I used to wonder how and when his second book, on the trial itself, would be written.

In October 1959, we heard that he was dead. He was not with us in court at that time, because he was among the 61 whose indictment had been withdrawn. They were not discharged, however, but were awaiting the outcome of our trial. Lionel was in Cape Town and we knew of the serious condition of his heart; knew too, that instead of living a lesser life on account of his illness, his days were crammed with activity and work. His adult years had been filled with an unfaltering dedication to the ideal that all men and women should be able to live complete, healthy and happy lives unmarred by poverty, degradation and ignorance.

His death was sudden. He had taken the chance offered by a heart operation to add “at least seven years to his life”, as the doctors had said. The risk was very great and so was his indomitable courage. But he did not survive the operation.

Months later, I was asked by Mr Sachs to complete the task which Lionel had barely begun. I know that this book is not – could not be – as he would have written it. But Lionel wanted the story of our trial to be told. This is not the full story of the Treason Trial. It is neither a legal nor a political analysis. It is primarily our story of the last dramatic year of the trial, from 29 March 1960, the day when we were arrested under the Emergency regulations which were declared after Sharpeville, to 29 March 1961, the day when we were at last acquitted of the charge of high treason.

I want to express my sincere thanks to Advocate Sydney Kent­ridge for reading the manuscript and for his most valuable advice, to Miss Diana Athill who has helped me so tremendously in the final stages of preparation, to “Solly” Sachs, but for whom the book would never have been written, and last but not least, to Farid Adams, Accused Number One, who has so willingly given up countless hours during the past years to the typing of this MS and of my weekly summaries of the actual trial proceedings.

I should like this book to be a tribute to my fellow treason trialists, who were called upon to endure so much more hardship than ever I had to face; to the Treason Trial Defence and all its thousands of supporters, who provided funds for our very survival; to our incomparable legal defence; and to all those who carry on the struggle “side by side, throughout our lives, until we have won our liberty”.