Читать книгу If This Be Treason - Helen Joseph - Страница 8

Tuesday, 29 March 1960. As we sat in court, listening to the cross-examination of Chief Luthuli, our thoughts turned to what was going on outside during those troubled days. Duma Nokwe, advocate and Accused Number 16, turned round and muttered to me “This trial is out of date.” I thought that he was right, for it was already more than four years since we had been arrested, and so much had happened since then – more especially in the last weeks, when the horrible massacre of Sharpeville had shaken the whole world: 66 people dead, shot by the police, while we had to sit immobilised and inactive in court, day after day, year after year.

The month of March had seen mass activity on an almost unprecedented scale. The African National Congress fixed 31 March as anti-Pass Day; then Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress made a dramatic announcement calling on Africans throughout the country to walk to the police stations on 21 March and offer themselves for arrest until pass laws have been abolished. Sharpeville followed these demonstrations, and the African National Congress had now called for a mighty demonstration, a stoppage of work in protest against the ghastly Sharpeville massacre. The government seemed to be on the run and pass laws were suspended. Chief Luthuli had burnt his pass. All over the townships, all over the Union, passes were being burnt. In Parliament there was a Bill to outlaw the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress – who knew what other organisations might follow? Was this a time to sit in court, passively listening to this trial which we were so sick of? This trial was out of date indeed.

“Silence in court” – we heard that shout for the first time in 1956 when the prison van took 156 of us from gaol to the bare barn of the Drill Hall, where we were to sit for the fourteen months of our Preparatory Examination.

But by January 1958 the Examination was over. Ninety-­two of the accused were committed for trial on a charge of high treason; we were taken back again to the great cell beneath the magistrate’s court where we had all met together in December 1956. It took four hours for our bail to be arranged and then we were free again, to await the trial itself. We scattered all over the Union, to our homes, to our jobs – the few who still had them. The future looked uncertain; we didn’t know when the trial would be – nor where. There had been a rumour that it might be moved to Pretoria, but we just didn’t believe that could happen.

It was not a happy prospect for most of the accused. Months of unemployment lay ahead. Many were financially crippled already; during the long months in the Drill Hall, debts had piled up, instalments had fallen into arrears. It did not seem as though the trial itself would even begin for some months, and we could not think of its end. Would we have believed it if we had been told that three years later we should still be on trial?

Doctors, lawyers, factory workers, clerks, trade union officials, labourers; our walks of life were many and varied. The accused who lived in Johannesburg were the most fortunate; we had to face no separation from our families; a few of us could carry on working, for we had kept our jobs during the long months in the Drill Hall. But 41of those committed for trial came from afar, from 600, a thousand miles away.

There were cheerful farewells at the station. “See you at the trial!” we shouted as the trains pulled out, and the dreary platforms echoed to the shouts of “Afrika!” For the accused were going home again, home to their wives, their children – for how long? We did not know. But we all knew that we must use these months to plan for the future – which wasn’t really a future. It was six months before we met again; six months of struggle and anxiety. Each month more of the accused were compelled to come to the Defence Fund for assistance. God alone knows how some of them held out as long as they did.

On 1 August 1958, 91 of us heard it again, “Silence in court!” – when the trial opened in Pretoria, 57 kilometres from Johannes­burg. Not one of us lived in Pretoria; for those of us who came from other parts of the Union there were no relatives there to offer kindly homes; only fifteen of the 91 of us had managed to find any sort of accommodation. We were bitter about this cruel caprice of the Minister of Justice. There could be no reason to set the trial in Pretoria, except the deliberate intention of separating us from the mass of our supporters and from our friends.

It spelt disaster for almost all of those who had managed to keep their jobs – five hours a day to be spent in travel, five hours sitting in a bus – hours that might have been spent earning money to pay the rent, to buy food and clothes for the children, to give a man some feeling of independence, to ease the agony of being a burden on the family. It cost the government £500 a month to run that bus, but it cost the accused twice as much, in the money they couldn’t earn. “The public safety is more important than the convenience of the accused,” said Pirow.

So to Pretoria we went – first 92 and then 30. The bus became a very important part of the lives of the accused, for we spent nearly as much time in it as we did in Court. We travelled nearly 37 000 kilometres in it – a girdle around the earth – imagine going round the world in a lumbering jolting bus, for this was no luxury safari motor coach. It was an ordinary bus of the kind that serves the non-European townships, the seats hard slats of wood (until drastic protest brought some scanty cushions).

Once, in January 1959, the bus failed to arrive in Pretoria for the opening of the trial of the 30 accused. The judges waited, Counsel waited, the public and the international observers waited at the Special Court – and the 21 accused who lived in Johannesburg waited too. Someone had blundered. After two hours came a gaol van; we looked at it scornfully: “Why should we ride in such a thing? We are not prisoners!” Only after consulting our Counsel on the telephone as to whether it would be proper for us to ride in such a conveyance did we graciously agree – on condition that we were not locked in! Harassed policemen drove us out of Johannesburg, but some­thing was wrong. The engine spluttered and petered out. To the amazement of the local residents, we climbed out. They had never seen gaol-van passengers calmly standing around outside it while the police escort buried their heads under the bonnet. We started again, but after another few miles it broke down completely. More delay, until another police van was brought. We telephoned dutifully to our waiting Counsel to report on lack of progress. Eventually we arrived three hours late. The attorney-general had complained, we heard. He told the court that it was “an act of grace on the part of the De­partment of Justice to provide this transport”. Whose act of grace was it to hold this trial 57 kilometres away from our homes?

The bus itself became a little world apart. Some would read, others passed the time playing word games; sometimes discussions would flare up and draw in others, who would rise to their feet to join in above the noisy rattling of this lumbering Leviathan. Political discussions? Not at all. It would probably be the men of the Eastern Cape, with Simon Tyeki holding forth on the Bible, disputing, arguing, gesticulating; for some of these men were lay preachers and their religion was very real to them, part of their daily life. And this was what the Crown failed to understand: that when these men brought God and the Bible into their speeches, that was their true way of thinking. Yet such men as these were accused of high treason.

The daily journeys became almost intolerable at times. Because we were human beings, not angels, disputes arose about seats, trifles took on the importance of earth-shaking events – tempers flared. Was it any wonder? Eventually Philemon Mathole was appointed ‘Commissioner General’ of the bus, and peace was established under his stern rule until we finally discharged him with honour on the last journey in the bus on 29 March 1961, the 211th journey to Pretoria! There had been laughter and sadness during those years, in our little world. Who could forget the showers of telegrams when the trial reopened? Fifty, 100, from all parts of the world, from all parts of South Africa. “Mayibuye Afrika!” they read, “Solidarity and sympathy!” We felt like stars on a first night, excitedly tearing open the orange envelopes, passing them from one to the other, backwards and forwards along the rows.

On the first morning of the trial, we gathered in the Congress office in Johannesburg very early and marched defiantly in an unauthorised procession across Johannesburg, through the crowds of workers disgorging from trains and buses to the day’s toil in factory and office. We sang as we marched over the bridge to where the two treason buses stood, on whose hard seats so many weary hours of travel were to be spent for nothing. We began our first journey to the trial.

As we rode down the streets of Pretoria we found our friends waiting for us at the Special Court, the newly converted synagogue. Hilda Watts, wife of one of the accused, wrote in New Age about our arrival:

Perhaps we only imagined it, but there seemed to be an air of expectancy as we drove into Pretoria, as though this calm civil service town was alerted for the big trial. We did not need to ask the way to the Old Synagogue. We simply followed the clusterings of khaki uniforms. Where they were thickest, that was the place.

Two queues had formed outside the iron gate – white and black. At the head of one queue was Ida Mtwana, formerly one of the accused, who had waited since before six in the morning so that she would be sure of a place inside. People stood in groups around the building, but the greatest activity centred around the press representatives and cameramen. There were masses of them. One man had three different cameras slung round his neck. The newsreel people were busy. They did not want to miss the important people. The legal representatives were the centre of attention for a while, then they went inside and the newsmen scuttled around elsewhere.

Inside and out, the Old Synagogue bears not a vestige of religious atmosphere. In the courtyards, on different sides (everything is strictly divided into “European” and “non-European”) are waiting rooms for witnesses, inter­view rooms, lavatories; inside there, is a formal atmos­phere about the old building, with its high, narrow galleries, ornate columns and fancy mouldings. The whole place contrasts sharply with our memories of the Drill Hall, which was just one big hall where all were massed together, and where casualness and informality prevailed, and muddle and inefficiency characterised the place. Perhaps that was why some treated the whole case as a big joke.

It is no joke, and that must be plain to all.

But soon there is a sound of singing, we look up – the buses have arrived! The songs, the raised thumbs, the spirit of courage and unity, all this arrives with the accused in their buses, just as it came with the kwela that morning more than a year and a half ago when they were first brought from the prisons to the court.

The spectators pack the public galleries, white along one side, non-white on the other. The press galleries are all packed. The spectators are high above the well of the court, and they stand and crane to see what is going on.

The red-robed judges file in and take their seats. The public and pressmen strain to identify leading counsel in their black robes and white bibs. The clerk of the court opens the proceedings in both official languages and the prosecutor explains the absence of some of the accused; the man who is “in custody” at Port Elizabeth – but someone blundered and failed to deliver him for the trial; the man who “missed the bus”!

The rest of the 91 accused are sitting in rows of benches closer together than ever before, Indian, European, African, men and women. All around is apartheid and the sharp division by notice and by order – black this way, white that.

But here, in this court, once again these 91 accused demon­strate so vividly the truth for which they stand. They worked together for justice and equal rights for all, regardless of colour. They answer the charges side by side, undivided, and so they will be to the bitter end.

The formalities are over, and defending Counsel rises to his feet. The court is hushed. South Africa’s treason trial has begun.

The leader of the Defence Counsel, Advocate ‘Isie’ Maisels, tall, bespectacled, with dark hair receding from a massive forehead, rose to his feet to make a dramatic application for the recusal of two of the judges, the Presiding Judge and Mr Justice Ludorf. Only a few of us knew this was coming; it had been a closely guarded secret, but we knew our fellow accused would understand and approve. The decision to make the application had been taken by our Liaison Committee on behalf of all the accused, in consultation with Counsel only a few days before. It had not been taken lightly; Defence Counsel had warned of the possible serious implications of either success or defeat in such an application. But we had been unanimous.

The judges sat, immobile in their scarlet robes, as Mr Maisels proceeded clearly and logically to outline the reasons why we thought we might not get a fair trial at the hands of these two judges. Judge Ludorf had been an advocate representing the government in 1954 in a case in which the issues were largely the same as some of the issues in the present case. The Presiding Judge, according to the press, had been said by the Minister of Justice to have been party to the appointment of Judge Ludorf to this Special Court, and the report had not been corrected.

And so, almost within minutes of their appearing, the judges gathered up their robes again and filed out. The court was adjourned until after the weekend for their Lordships to consider the application for recusal.

Elated, we gathered up our possessions, and left the court.

The following Monday, we were back in Pretoria. In a crowded court and an atmosphere of hushed expectancy, Mr Justice Ludorf admitted that our fear might not be unreasonable. He had forgotten about the previous case, he explained. Looking back now one feels that the recusing judge was the fortunate one, since the trial lasted so long!

The Presiding Judge, Mr Justice Rumpff, leaned forward. Speaking in a low clear voice, he denied the Minister’s allegation that he had nominated or recommended either Mr Justice Kennedy or Mr Justice Ludorf.

“Whatever was said by the Minister, it is my duty to state the facts to the accused. I repeat, I did not recommend the appointment of Justice Ludorf or Justice Kennedy. The fear of the accused was based on wrong information. I have no choice but to follow the dictates of my conscience and refuse the application for recusal.”

On 12 August, we were back for the third time with Judge Bekker in place of Judge Ludorf, and the battle of the indictment began. By August 1959, a year later, this part of the trial was over; the indictment for 30 of us still stood in an amended form; but 61 were temporarily free, their indictment quashed. Their future might depend on us.

We pleaded not guilty, the trial began – and its rhythms came to govern our lives: the bus from Johannesburg to Pretoria, the courtroom, the bus back, day after day.

On the opening day, 4 August 1959, our Defence Counsel were all there, a formidable array. We looked at them a little curiously then; only Bram Fischer, Vernon Berrangé and Tony O’Dowd were well known to us; these three had always been our friends. Bram had stood beside us in the political struggle, Vernon had fought many of our legal battles. There was John Coaker too, who had been with us throughout the long Preparatory Examination, and Chris Plewman who was to do such stalwart work in the long months to come. But Maisels, Nicholas, Kentridge: to almost all of us they were then just names, legal giants, prominent in their own sphere, but to us still unknown people.

Isie Maisels, the leader, dominated the proceedings from the outset; a giant of a man in intellect and physique. He commanded the respect of the whole Court and we had admired him from our distance during the argument on the indictment. When he came to deal with Professor Murray, the Crown’s expert on Communist doctrine, in October and November, we came to know him; we listened delighted as he chased the learned professor backwards and forwards, exposed his weaknesses and his bias, challenging him on every pronouncement, on every document on which he had relied. But for us the greatest joy of all was when Maisels delivered his mighty attack on racial discrimination; he took Professor Murray meticulously through every one of the Acts of Parliament that discriminated against non-whites, forcing him to concede the harsh realities of the life of the non-whites. He pointed to forced farm labour, farm prisons, imprisonments for failure to pay rent, deportation without trial, pass raids; the accused listened, as only those can listen whose daily life is made up of discrimination. The faces of the judges were impassive as they heard this powerful indictment of Nationalist policy, but at one stage Mr Justice Rumpff queried the object of putting these statistics to the witness. “Where will it stop?” he asked.

“Where did the Crown stop?” Advocate Maisels retorted. He intended to show that our real inspiration was the miserable conditions of the non-whites, not “varying degrees of Communist fanaticism” as alleged by the Crown. We nodded our heads in enthusiastic agreement, and our admiration for this uncompromising challenger of injustice soared high. As time went by, we drew closer to this great son of Africa who was so soon to be lost to our country, to become a judge of the Rhodesian High Court.

Sydney Kentridge used to delight us with his lively exchanges with the Judges and with the Crown. Within the first three weeks of the trial, he dealt effectively with the alternative charges under the Suppression of Communism Act.

“My learned friend [Mr G Hoexter for the Crown] suggested that it might be necessary to apply surgery to the alternative charges. I submit, My Lord, that they should be buried.”

Mr Justice Bekker: “There’s still life in them yet!”

Mr Kentridge: “Then I would suggest, My Lord, that your Lordships should quietly put them out of their misery.”

When Kentridge was on his feet we would listen expectantly, for he would fearlessly challenge any suspected infringe­ment of the rights of the accused and Counsel. His argument was lucid, positive, deliberate, delivered in a clear cool voice, the very absence of emotion making it even more effective. With the accused he was a little reserved, but anxious over our well-being, especially during our detention.

It was Kentridge who so pointedly brought the Arlow judge­ment right in to the case on the very morning that it was delivered, on 28 March 1960. Arlow and Hattingh, two police­men, had been charged with illegally shooting and killing an African – the case was headlines and we waited eagerly for the verdict. A note had reached us as ‘Culpable homicide. Fined £75 and £25.’

At that time Advocate Kentridge was examining the witness Dr Conco, Accused Number 30.

Advocate Kentridge: “Dr Conco, I think in connection with the Defiance Campaign you were asked whether that sort of defiance would increase respect for law, and you gave an answer. In your view do you think that the Pass laws, for instance, and the arrests under the Pass laws, increase respect for law?”

Dr Conco: “No, they don’t.”

Advocate Kentridge: “Supposing for instance you had the case of a policeman shooting a man unlawfully and being found guilty of culpable homicide and being fined £25, do you think that increases respect for law?”

Dr Conco: “Among Africans that does not increase respect for law. In fact, it creates a very big resentment against the law.”

And when Mr Trengove broke in to ask what was meant by the question, Kentridge replied blandly, “I’ll inform my learned friend at the argument stage, My Lord.”

Bram Fischer and Vernon Berrangé were the two Counsel who, though so vastly different in personality and technique, were yet the closest to us. These two not only knew that we were innocent of high treason, of any conspiracy to overthrow the State by violence, they also knew that we were right. Vernon had been our god during the long months of the Preparatory Examination in the Drill Hall. He fought our battles for us, ever ready to take up the cudgels on our behalf. He had clashed with the magistrate, Mr Wessels, on many an occasion, championing his 156 clients. Medium in height and build, always impeccably dressed, he was a joy to behold as he would systematically demolish the Crown witnesses. Long before the trial itself began, the name of Vernon Berrangé struck fear into the hearts of police witnesses, because of his incomparable and merciless skill in exposing unreliable or dishonest evidence. Only the utmost truth and sincerity could ever stand against this supreme master of cross-examination. He would begin gently enough, lulling the witness into usually false confidence, and then the attack would begin, and he would take the report of a meeting and tear it piece by piece into shreds, ridiculing the witness into a state of gibbering confusion. At the peak of the cross-examination he would pause, ask his question, and then deliberately look away, as though indifferent to the answer. But well we knew that by this time there would be only one answer the witness could give. Vernon had seen to that.

“Are you serious?” he would say icily, and then he would move in for the kill. One after another we saw them destroyed by Vernon – Special Branch detectives Sharp, Segoni, Masileke and some others whom even the Crown did not dare to produce again at the trial itself. It was Vernon who first challenged Professor Murray in the days of the Preparatory Examination; it was Vernon who then exposed the disgraceful efforts of the Crown to smear the Congress with riots, hut burning, school burning – efforts that were not repeated during the trial itself. Tireless, fearless, confident, he systematically destroyed the Crown witnesses, turning them inside out with his fast-following question, so deliberately and brilliantly planned.

In the Special Court we expected Vernon to renew his attack on the police witnesses, and we anticipated gleefully the clashes that we thought there would be. But we were wrong. To the trial came a dignified and disarming Vernon, the controlled Counsel of the Supreme Court, not the fighting tiger of the magistrate’s court. But as we listened and rejoiced again in his deadly cross-examination of the police witnesses, we knew it was the same Vernon. He had laid the foundation during the Preparatory Examination, and for those who survived to face him in the trial itself, Vernon was waiting.

Bram Fischer was Vernon’s opposite: sturdily built, fresh-­complexioned, with a gentle, almost boyish face, despite his now greying hair. But that gentle face was deceptive, for under­neath Bram was indomitable, one of the most brilliant of advocates. He could pursue his way with a Crown witness just as relentlessly as Vernon; silver-tongued, he won the confidence of his witness with gentle skill. He didn’t chase his witness into a corner and pin him down, indeed he never raised his voice, but in the end somehow, the witness turned out to have said just what Bram wanted him to say. We marvelled at his unerring technique. I think the Crown did, too, when they realised the fatal concessions their witnesses were making so unsuspectingly.

The Crown began to lead their witnesses. Pirow was there in his special chair, slumping into it, almost disappearing from sight, his voice rasping as ever, but he took no part in the leading of evidence. And he was only to sit there for another two months, until his death on 13 October.

There was Van Niekerk, who had been leader of the Crown team in the Drill Hall during the Preparatory Examination: tall, rumpled as before, we remembered him fumbling with his files; he led the first Crown witness and we could not fit him in very well with the formality and discipline of this Special Court. He belonged to the junketing atmosphere of the Drill Hall, where dapper Magistrate Wessels tried so hard, so vainly and for so long to introduce the atmosphere of a magistrate’s court. Pretoria was different. And it was not long before Van Niekerk was in trouble with this Court; the judges soon saw an indefinite future of documents stretching out ahead, and the battle of the summaries began. For a solid eight months, the Court appealed to the Crown to summarise documents but this the Crown could not achieve.

“Van Niekerk’s got document trouble again!” we used to say.

After months of struggle, Judge Rumpff gave in. When he had taken a document himself and summarised it pithily, Van Niekerk would gaze at him in wide-eyed admiration.

“This is a very good summary, My Lord! I was unable to formulate such a good summary!”

Yet it was to another Crown advocate that the most cutting rebuff was given, when he summarised a speech as being on Bantu Education, and it was indicated by Defence Counsel that the transcript suggested that it was about birth control.

Mr Justice Rumpff: “The Crown has great difficulty in summarising but if they start summarising birth control as Bantu Education, they should not summarise at all!”

Early in the trial, the crown called Andrew Murray, professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, as their expert on Communist doctrine. He was no stranger to us; we had sat through his performance once before in the days of the Drill Hall, when Vernon Berrangé had so mercilessly exposed his weaknesses. Now he was back again, claiming to be an expert on Communist doctrine – the only authority to be called. A Polish priest, Father Bochensky, had made an abortive visit a year earlier, only to listen to weeks of argument on the indictment, and returned to Switzer­land without ever expounding his knowledge of Communism in the witness box. We wondered whether his mantle had fallen on Professor Murray’s shoulders.

For days on end, the court echoed to definitions and theories and to quotations, as the expert developed the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. “The negation of the negation” was one of the phrases that caught our fancy, but it was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that was to prove so important to us in the end, for not even Professor Murray could discover that concept in the Freedom Charter. Reluctantly he had to concede that the type of State envisaged in the Freedom Charter was not a Communist State.

Our Defence Counsel opened attack within minutes of Professor Murray’s appearance, protesting that the witness should not be permitted to give his evidence from notes. The notes were discarded. The professor abandoned himself to extem­pore replies to the Crown questions. But it wasn’t long before Advocate Maisels was on his feet again. The witness had quoted a statement by Stalin at the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. No foundation had been laid for this piece of evidence and it couldn’t be quoted unless the witness himself had been present at that congress.

“No superstructure without substructure!” cheerfully quoted Defence Counsel from one of Professor Murray’s own snippets of Communist doctrine.

The Crown and the Professor struggled on for some days, ploughing their way through expositions of Communist doctrines and lengthy extracts from Communist classics. The Court’s patience was sorely tried, as over and over again documents were rejected in face of the barrage of Defence objections. Mr Justice Rumpff insisted that all evidence must be put on a proper basis, and somewhat desperately asked the Crown, “How must the Court approach this? I ask questions but I can’t lead the evidence for you!”

But when Professer Murray attempted to quote from a speech by Krushchev, Advocate Maisels could contain himself no longer, objecting, “The Court has not been told who this gentleman is and has no judicial knowledge of him!”

Mr Justice Rumpff demurred only slightly. “The Court has judicial knowledge that there is a Mr Krushchev who is a Soviet leader, but the Court does not know if this is the same Krushchev.”

The professor’s evidence covered a wide field. We found ourselves travelling from Africa to China, from the USA to North Korea, although the Defence objected strenuously to the professor’s claim to speak with authority on the foreign policy of the Soviet Union in North Korea.

Legal argument took up much time on the periphery of the professor’s evidence. We wondered whether the witness had ever foreseen these devastating challenges, although he should have been forewarned by his experience at the hands of Vernon Berrangé during the Preparatory Examination. He appeared impervious enough, and repeatedly exposed himself to sharp Defence attacks.

It was a strange sight to see this man of letters passing his comments on a steady stream of books and journals, some 400 altogether, pulled from the bookshelves of 150 people during four years of police raids. It became monotonous, mechanical, almost hypnotic, as the police orderly marched from the prosecutor to the witness box, handed the witness a book, which he would open, it seemed almost at random, and pass judgement on it with a terse “Straight from the shoulder of Communism” or “Contains Communist matter” or “Communist Propaganda”. The volume would be handed back and the orderly would march yet again to and from the prosecutor with ever more books. I became fascinated by the rhythm. The orderly must have walked many kilometres backwards and forwards.

Professor Murray endured cross-examination by Defence Counsel for 23 days. Grimly, relentlessly, his evidence was dissected and remoulded by Advocate Maisels. The witness put up a stubborn, dogged resistance but he was no match for this, the greatest of South African advocates, and one by one his utterances were whittled down. On the meaning claimed by the professor for the word “fascism” as used in our documents, Maisels commented cuttingly, “We hope to establish at the end of the cross-examination that you are about the only person who uses the word in this special fashion!” And on the professor’s stigmatisation of a speech by Chief Luthuli, he was compelled to concede that a reference to trade unions and politics could also be common non-Communist doctrine.

“Why did you not make that distinction in your evidence-in-chief?” demanded Advocate Maisels.

“I was not asked.”

“You are here to tell the Court what it ought to know, but you expected the Court to know that this was also in line with non-Communist doctrine?”

“I expected the Court to know that it might be in line with Communist doctrine and it might not be.”

At one stage Maisels wanted to know, “Was your task to smell out Communism?”

Mr Justice Bekker asked, “What was your mandate?”

“To report on the documents, to read them in full and to indicate where I thought there was Communist association or attitudes of mind.”

“You mean no more than that?” burst out Maisels. And he pointed out again that the witness in his evidence-in-chief had not made it clear that views that he stigmatised as Communist were not exclusively Communist, but could be and were held by others.

Advocate Maisels made it clear to the Court that the purpose of the cross-examination of this witness was first to show that the witness was not qualified to give evidence by virtue of his ignorance of significant factors, and secondly, that his opinions given in his evidence-in-chief might deceive the Court. “If you’d only said in your evidence-in-chief that it was Communist theory, but not only Communist theory – but you studiously refrained from this.”

Returning to a speech by Chief Luthuli, Advocate Maisels commented, “Your answers, Professor Murray, have been less than candid (and that’s putting it euphemistically), and show that you are completely biased in your approach to this case.”

Concession after concession was wrung from this star witness for the Crown. He agreed that “extra-parliamentary” had two meanings, legal and illegal; neither was essentially violent, but either might lead to violence. After devastating and detailed cross-examination on the Freedom Charter, the professor finally agreed that the Charter was a liberatory, humanitarian document and could be the natural reaction of the non-European to conditions in South Africa. There was no clause in it that could be said to be only Communist or that could not be said to be bourgeois Socialist. Defence Advocate Kentridge unkindly reminded this expert witness of his showing during the Preparatory Examination, already two years ago, when unidentified quotations from President Wilson, from President Lincoln, from Dr Malan, and even from his own writings had been put to him, and he had said that they were the sort of thing a Communist would say or could be expected to say. We remembered that too, and laughed to ourselves at the memory, as Advocate Kentridge continued wringing further concessions from the Crown’s expert on Communist doctrine.

At last, after 32 days in the witness box, the ordeal was over. Professor Andrew Murray stepped down and made his way out of the court.

Two hundred and ten other Crown witnesses were called, of whom some 200 were members of the Special Branch. For the accused, this had a special significance. It is the Special Branch detectives who dog our steps, who arrested us at dawn for high treason, and later in the dead of the night, with thousands of others, for detention under Emergency regulations. It is they who ransack and raid our houses, invading the innermost privacy of our homes. It is they who force their way into our conferences, marching arrogantly at the head of a troop of armed police, or who secretly, stealthily, wire our conference halls. It is the Special Branch who attend all our public meetings, scribbling in their little notebooks, who photograph us, who take our car numbers and intimidate our friends, who prowl up and down outside our homes. It is they who bring banning orders.

We execrate the Special Branch; they are the objects of our bitterest contempt and loathing. In direct relationship with us as individuals, it can be conceded that generally they behave with some degree of courtesy, avoiding the brutal methods of the uniformed police, but this does not modify our attitude towards these men, who spy on us and our organisations, and who hide in cupboards and take notes. Today their official title is the Security Branch of the Police, but to us they will always be known as the ‘Special Branch’.

The first time that I was ever subjected to a raid by the Special Branch was in 1954; they came at 7.30 in the morning (now they come before dawn) and I was still in my dressing gown; I had been ill. I was shown the warrant and I could do nothing but allow them in. I remember how they searched the house, prying into all my papers, reading my very private letters despite my protest. Now I destroy all my personal letters as soon as I get them so that the words of those dear to me shall not be read by such men. When they took their leave, after two hours, I was still shocked. My whole life seemed violated. I felt soiled. Today I shrug my shoulders and watch in silence.

In the witness box, they made a sorry showing. We had listened in the Drill Hall for months to their stumbling efforts to read their notes, their ludicrous reports of the speeches of hundreds of Congressmen and women. It became immediately clear that only the shorthand writers were able to take down adequate notes, and of these, there were not more than four or five in the whole Special Branch. At the Preparatory Examination there were only three or four, and at the trial we observed with great interest that one of these was no longer in the police force at all. This was Schoeman, who had admitted in the Drill Hall that as a detective constable of the Special Branch he had hidden behind a cupboard on more than one occasion to record speeches at delegates’ conferences, to which he knew he would not be admitted. Today, of course, the police have new powers and can invade any conference.

We speculated with much interest about Schoeman. Had he been dismissed by the Special Branch because he had admitted to the cupboard incident? Or had he himself decided that there were other ways of making a living?

As far as the trial was concerned, we had no objection to the evidence of the shorthand writers, for their recording was accurate; we had no need to fear accuracy. Indeed, Counsel stressed in argument that the true reports of our speeches confirmed our non-violent policy. But without exception, the longhand writers, white and non-white, rendered themselves objects of scorn. They were not qualified reporters and their garbled, inadequate reports drew scathing comment from the Judge President even during the trial. He said he felt that the State had employed reporters to take down speeches at meetings for a long time, and presumably the State had in mind that some action would be taken.

“Sometimes the State employs shorthand writers, sometimes recording machines, sometimes Africans are sent who may or may not be qualified. Sometimes they are not qualified; I am not going to make people employed by the State qualified if they are not qualified.”

Yet it was to their evidence that the Court had to listen for so many weeks. The Crown wanted us to be judged by what they said we said.

We listened with satisfaction to Vernon and Bram mowing down the police reporters. It was not only that they were the hated Special Branch detectives; it was what they had done to our speeches, to the aims and the principles we had expressed. Some admitted that they had gone to the meetings to write down what they were told to look out for; others that they only wrote down what they thought important; most admitted they could not get down everything they heard; a few were stubborn and destroyed themselves.

During those years it was rare for our speakers to use prepared notes, and some of the speeches that were being so mangled and maimed in court had been made all of seven years ago – and none less than four. But we knew what our speakers used to say; and it wasn’t this garbled gibberish, this double-Dutch, this blood-and-thunder nonsense. Sometimes we became angry as we listened, but Vernon and Bram gave us our revenge. One after another the detectives left the witness box, humbled and humiliated.

So much for the police evidence of what we had said at our meetings. But many hours, days, weeks, of the trial were taken up with the laborious evidence of these longhand writers. Yet the Preparatory Examination had already fully exposed the quality of this evidence, and still the Crown had the effrontery to bring such witnesses to this trial, where 30 people faced a capital charge.

The judges, the Prosecution, the Defence, these were the people who made up our world at court; a world almost unbearably tedious. Lack of occupation was the worst aspect. It wasn’t so much that we were bored, but sheer immobility was a strain. It was an effort to go on listening; often it was an effort to hear what was being said. We used to say that we could be hanged “for what we didn’t say, for what we didn’t do – and now for what we can’t hear!”

True, we used to read, sometimes, some of us, but mostly, when we couldn’t hear, or were too tired to listen, we slept. Only those who had had to do it can ever know what it meant to travel almost a hundred kilometres a day for so long, five or six hours a day in a bone-breaking, rickety, noisy bus. Leaving home before six every morning, the accused were physically exhausted throughout the trial. Mondays were not so bad, but by Friday we were all utterly worn out. Those who were clinging on to some sort of job tried to do a full day’s work, or part of a day, in addition to going to court, and worked frantically at weekends. Was it any wonder that we slept? Most days the time dragged unbearably; I would look at the clock and then tell myself “I won’t look again!” But five minutes later I would be turning my head.

I knew every pillar, every window of that court; I knew just when the sun came in the mornings in the great glassed dome overhead. I used to gaze at the Union Coat of Arms, far above the judges’ heads: Ex Unitate Vires – Strength from Unity. I used to think how true it was, and wonder at the hypocrisy of a land which, by apartheid, denied this very thing.

Each year brought its sorrow. In October 1959, Lionel Forman died at the age of 32, as courageously as he had lived. In the last few hours before the operation he wrote to his wife “I’m going in without the slightest fear of death, and if I die it will mean nothing at all, it will not hurt me, except in the thought that it will hurt you . . . Tell the Treason Court we’ll achieve freedom in the lifetime of our children and yours, whether they like it or not . . . Tell the children they must have love for their fellow men, they must exorcise all race prejudice and understand why it is abominable . . .” And so passed a great fighter for freedom and justice for all mankind.

Ida Mtwana was the next to go. A gallant veteran leader, she died in March 1960 before we were arrested under the Emergency regulations, and the African women said that she had gone to Heaven to be there to welcome those who had died so tragically in the Sharpeville massacre.

Attending the Treason Trial became a way of life; we spoke our own language. There was the pony post! I don’t know now who called it that – it dated from the Drill Hall days, when we first, very surreptitiously, began passing notes to each other, like children in school. After four and a half years the pony post was still going strong but it wasn’t exactly surreptitious then! Our Christmas cards went by pony post. We signed Christ­mas cards for special people; we all had to sign each card and so we passed them solemnly along to each other, a dozen at a time, on our human assembly line. It was an important task and demanded our serious attention. Treason? Well, we had treason all the year round, but Christmas only comes but once.

In February 1960, ‘Jurist’ wrote in New Age:

What some of the accused have listened to during this period has occupied quite a sizeable part of their vocab­ulary. You just have to travel with them to and from Pretoria, be among them at tea intervals or during lunch and adjournments, to get to know how much legal language is freely and effortlessly spoken.

The other day one accused was quarrelling with another for having failed to fulfil an appointment. After telling the other how disgusted he was, he went on to question his friend.

Questioner: You kept me waiting there for hours before I could decide to go, only to find these people gone. What the hell, why did you fail to keep our appointment?

Answer: I’m sorry, man, I just could not make it. I’m really sorry.

Questioner: Really sorry. It’s just an excuse. It’s not the first time you have failed.

Answer: That may be so. But does that carry your case any further?

Questioner: Well, I am still laying a foundation.

Answer: OK, carry on.

Questioner: As your Lordship pleases!

In March 1960, we celebrated the 100th day of the treason trial. Our friend, Mrs Pillay, who provided us with morning coffee throughout the trial, brought us a special birthday cake, and I wrote in the Indian Congress Bulletin of the 100 days that had passed:

A 100 days on trial! As the months and years go past, we lose track of the days and it comes almost as a shock to discover that the Crown had made its century – its case has taken already a 100 days and it is not yet over. But it is drawing to a close, unbelievably. The documents have been handed in. Professor Murray has given his evidence and has been cross-examined brilliantly by Advocate Maisels and now the police witnesses have finished their evidence, and during the past weeks we have lived again the days of the Drill Hall when Vernon Berrangé dealt with the police witnesses in a way that warmed our hearts. We have seen the same faces, we have recognised the same attitudes, we have heard the same replies, only it is now “My Lords” and no longer “Your Worship”.

Highlight of this period was the street collection and the application made by the Defence for the Court adjournment so that the accused could collect. The break was given – not for the collection but on account of “the exhaustion of the accused” – and we rode joyfully, if uncomfortably, back to Johannesburg to throw our weight into the collection, which smashed all our records with the astounding total of £1 670.

And a story has come back that has touched our hearts, the story of the old African woman, who asked the shop to take back her 3d worth of tea so that she could put her tickey in the collection box.

And so the days pass. We sit, we listen to the police reporters; for a few days we heard the tape recordings of which we had been totally ignorant when we spoke. We heard once again “Afrika” which several of us have not heard for so long. Our thoughts went back to those days, to the crowded halls and squares. Once the tape recorder played “Nkosi Sikelele” and we heard the voices of our people, but it was only for a short while and then it was cut off again, and we were once more sitting in the Old Synagogue, facing the three red-robed judges in whose hands our destiny lies.

The end of the trial is in sight – after more than three years. We do not know what the end will be nor when it will be, nor if others will come after us, to sit on those same wooden benches, to ride in that same green bus, to listen, as we have listened to thousands of documents and speeches, to many hours of legal argu­ments. We have lived in a sealed circle, the 30 of us, we have our own language, our own jokes, our own games. Who will ever forget the yard of the Court at lunch time, with the accused in little groups playing cards, the “Scrabble” school, others sitting in serious discussions until the Sergeant calls us and we file once more into the Court? Can we really imagine the day when that circle will be broken? And yet that day is coming ever nearer, the day that will see the end of the timeless trial, the day that will be so vitally important for all those who strive for freedom, for it is not ourselves, but our ideals, our very organisations, our struggle itself, that is on trial.

I did not know then that it would be another year before the trial would end.

“I call Albert John Luthuli!” Chief Luthuli walked with simple dignity to the witness box. His ordeal was to be immense. A witness from 20 March to 2 June 1960, appearing on 26 different days, the time must have seemed interminable to him. Brought from Durban by special relaxation of the banning order, which had confined him to the Tugela district in Natal for two years, he had only been in the witness box for a week and a day when the post-Sharpeville Emergency was proclaimed. He had burnt his pass the Saturday before, giving the lead to his people in the tense days that followed. Arrested in the first Emergency swoop, he was assaulted by a prison warder; his hat fell to the floor and as he bent to pick it up he was hit twice on the head and across the face. He already suffered from serious high blood pressure, and had almost miraculously recovered from a dangerous thrombosis only a few years previously, but he too was subjected to the harsh brutal treatment customarily meted out to African prisoners.

Our Chief was not to resume his evidence until a month later, after the judgement of the Court that the trial must go on, and after our decision to cancel the mandate of our Counsel during the Emergency. Then he returned, a very sick man, allowed to be in the witness box for only a few hours every day. Judge Rumpff treated him with great consideration, anxious to avoid any undue strain, but he had to undergo the most gruelling cross-examination by Advocate Trengove. We marvelled at his endurance and patience, his dignified self-­control in the face of these sinister implications and insinuations.

A devout and practising Christian, Chief Luthuli had been a delegate from the Christian Council in South Africa to the International Missionary Conference in Madras in 1938, and in 1948 had accepted an invitation to tour the USA, lecturing on Christian Missions in Africa. Originally a teacher by profession, he had taken an interest in South African affairs, particularly from the time that he had been elected Chief of his tribe, the Abasemakholweni in the Umvoti Reserve, in the heart of the Natal sugar country. But when, in 1952, he became a recognised leader of the African National Congress, which he had joined in 1945, he was offered a choice by the Secretary for Native Affairs to remain the Chief of his tribe or to be the leader of the African National Congress. He replied that he could see no conflict between the two, and was thereafter deposed. But he remains Chief Luthuli to his people.

. . . With a full sense of responsibility and a clear con­viction I decided to remain in the struggle for extending democratic rights and responsibilities to all sections of the South African community. I have embraced non-violent and passive resistance techniques in fighting for freedom, because I am convinced it is the only non-revolutionary, legitimate and humane way that could be used by people denied, as we are, effective means to further aspiration. The wisdom or foolishness of this decision I place in the hands of the Almighty. What the future has in store for me I do not know; it might be ridicule, imprisonment, concentration camp, flogging, banishment and even death . . .

Insofar as gaining citizenship rights and opportuni­ties for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that 30 years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door? Has there been any reciprocal tolerance or moderation from the government, be it Nationalist or United Party? No! On the contrary, the past 30 years have seen the greatest number of laws restricting our rights and progress until today we have reached the stage where we have almost no rights at all; no adequate land for our occupation, our only assets – cattle – dwindling, no security of homes, no decent and remunerative employment, more restrictions to freedom of movement through passes, curfew regu­lation, influx control measures; in short, we have wit­nessed in these years an intensification of our subjections to ensure and protect white supremacy. It is with this background and with a full sense of responsibility that I have joined my people . . . in the spirit that revolts openly and boldly against injustice.

A month after he had been deposed as chief of his people, Albert Luthuli was elected president general of the African National Congress. Banned by the government from attending gatherings, confined to the magisterial district of Tugela, Chief Luthuli has continued to play his true role as leader of his people. But he, too, in December 1956, was arrested for high treason. He was amongst the 65 against whom the charge was withdrawn at the end of the Preparatory Examination.

In 1961 this man of strength and wisdom, already enthroned in the hearts of his people, was awarded one of the highest honours the world has to bestow, the Nobel Peace Prize. “I find it hard to believe,” said Chief, “that in this distressed and heavily laden world I could be counted amongst those whose efforts have made a notable contribution to the welfare of mankind.” But to millions of people it wasn’t hard to believe at all.

Dedicated to militant non-violence, Chief Luthuli feels that “to engage in any other method might bring bloodshed”. “To gain freedom without bloodshed,” he says, “is much the better way.”

In his evidence-in-chief, Chief Luthuli set out clearly the principles of the African National Congress: to achieve equality for all people, to work for the unity of all people and to conduct a non-violent struggle. He had testified to his own belief in the innate goodness of man, to his hope of moral persuasion and his belief in the effectiveness of economic pressure. “Pressure on self-interests should lead to ultimate pressure on the government to accord with the wishes of the people.” He thought there was still goodwill towards whites but that it was becoming limited as the years passed. He believed strongly in goodness and that the white man could be won over, not however by acts of supplication only; that had long been discarded. The African National Congress must continue to appeal to the white man but must also hit his purse so that in his own interest he would approach Parliament.

Mr Justice Rumpff: “Do you equate innate goodness with the purse?”

Chief Luthuli, with dignity: “No, the purse is enlightened self-interest.”

In clear, simple language he explained the reaction of the African people to their conditions, to the legislation that affected them so harshly, to apartheid. It was difficult for anyone to understand apartheid intellectually. “It is only when you feel it.” Bantu Education, he saw, was designed to give an inferior education to fit Africans for their “station in life”.

“I know my station in life,” said Chief Luthuli, “and I don’t like it.”

The policy of the African National Congress had always been to oppose the Pass laws. He did not agree that the pass could be any sort of protection.

“It has been said that when I am dead I can be identified by my pass. What does that mean to me?” he asked bitterly.

Chief Luthuli emphasised that non-violence was the basic policy of the African National Congress; only the National Conference, the supreme body of the African National Congress, could change the policy. “ . . . But,” he said, “I have heard no suggestion to change that policy, not a whisper.” He would have opposed such a suggestion, firstly on personal grounds, secondly because it would not be in the interests of the liberation movement. “It is not a practical thing.”

Chief Luthulli stressed the need for people to develop a spiritual defiance to anything contrary to human dignity. There should be a spirit of internal defiance, “divine discontent”, but he made it clear that he himself was no pacifist. He had a great respect for past leaders, such as Ahintsa. “I, for one, have the greatest respect for our past leaders; when their territories were attacked by the whites coming into the country, they did not merely just stand by and allow their land to be taken, or to lose their freedom.” Such men were an inspiration to the coming generations, even though different methods were used. He explained that there was a difference between pacifism and non-violence, for there were situations where there must be resistance, as in the two World Wars. If a country was attacked it defended itself. Chief Luthuli explained that the African National Congress sought to remove race prejudice, which was the evil of South Africa. “So far as we are concerned we stand for an undivided South Africa, and then therefore we look forward to the whole of South Africa being multi-racial.” The African National Congress fought for franchise rights for all, and other rights that were not being enjoyed by the non-Europeans.

Mr Maisels: “Do you struggle for universal franchise?”

“Yes.”

Mr Maisels: “Do you believe in full democracy?”

“We do, My Lords.”

Mr Maisels: “Do you believe in parliamentary democracy?”

“We do, My Lords. We attack the South Africa Act in so far as it does not give us rights.”

Dealing with the question of land, Chief Luthuli explained that it is a vital issue for the African people.

“To us,” said Chief Luthuli, “it is a painful thing and all along the African National Congress has taken a strong stand in claiming our rights to land. Being dispossessed of land is almost to be dispossessed of life itself.”