Читать книгу The ANC Spy Bible - Moe Shaik - Страница 12

The week after Yunis, Shamim and my father and cousin were released, I was in the best of spirits. I believed that I had outsmarted Lieutenant Botha. And while I felt anxious about this unfolding game of tit-for-tat, controlling some aspects was reward in itself. Clearly Shirish was sticking to the legend so it was probably only a matter of time before he too was released. That would have meant total victory.

Another reason for my high spirits concerned a ‘line’ I had opened to the outside world.

As with the Bathroom Officer, good luck and happenstance played a part. One night a young white policeman doing the inspection rounds mentioned to me that we had a mutual friend named Shaun.

Initially I was suspicious that this might be a ploy to win my trust but I was also intrigued. Shaun was a community activist and for this cop to have known him meant that he had to have contacts in interesting circles.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘how do you know him?’

It turned out that the young policeman had joined the police to avoid military conscription. His name was Phillip and he became a godsend. He had met Shaun through their respective activist groups, and I decided I could trust him.

Cautiously, over some weeks, I got to know Phillip and eventually asked him to carry vague messages to Shaun. I knew that the activist in Shaun would seize this opportunity to allow others in the underground to contact me. He did.

One day Phillip returned with a message from the ‘man on the hill’. It was a phrase known only to me and Yacoob Abba Omar, a student leader and a member of the underground. I now began to communicate with Abba through cryptic messages passed between Shaun and Phillip, messages understood only by Abba and me. In this way I learnt that our underground units were intact, and that the contagion had not spread. As nothing communicated via Phillip ever arose in the interrogation sessions, my trust in him was affirmed. The Security Branch had no knowledge of the contact.

That back channel of messages dealt a massive blow to Lieutenant Botha’s investigation, although Phillip was oblivious of this.

Phillip helped me in another way too. After months of heroic resistance to torture and solitary confinement, Shirish’s interrogators delivered a cruel and inhumane blow. They told him that his wife, Ruweida, had suffered a miscarriage as a result of his detention. This was a deliberate lie. Because of the echo chamber created by the corridors, I heard his screams of torment. They went beyond endurance. I panicked. In a remarkable display of courage, Phillip risked all by taking me to see Shirish.

He was emaciated, clearly in need of urgent medical attention. Yet again Phillip came to the rescue. He quickly contacted Dr Sagie Naidoo, the appointed district surgeon, and arranged for him to see me. I begged the doctor to attend to Shirish, which he did, by immediately hospitalising him. Under medical care, Shirish could no longer be interrogated. He was safe from the hands of Lieutenant Botha and this gave me more time.

Botha was livid, incensed. He knew he had been outmanoeuvred and soon enough discovered my part in the matter. Accompanied by a Lieutenant Colin Peckham Robertshaw, he barged into my cell yelling and swearing in anger. His rage was such that I feared he would attack and kill me. Robertshaw cautioned him in Afrikaans to control himself. The rebuke stopped Botha but I could see in his eyes his frustrated hatred for me, ‘the easy Indian’. I was then informed by Lieutenant Robertshaw that he was now in charge of the investigation and we would talk soon.

I was so shaken by this confrontation that I demanded to see the district surgeon. This time I convinced him to hospitalise me for psychiatric observation. I had to get out of CR Swart because I feared death at the hands of Lieutenant Botha. I must have cut a pretty crazed individual because Dr Naidoo insisted I spend at least two weeks under psychiatric care at a hospital.

In true apartheid fashion, I was taken to a private Indian hospital in an Indian area and kept under guard by Indian police officers. None of them was remotely interested in maintaining the strict no-contact rule. On the contrary, they spent hours with me lamenting the ills of apartheid police life. I took comfort in our common disdain of the racist policies.

During this time the Bathroom Officer paid me a few visits. It was from him that I learnt that the Security Branch had discovered that Ebrahim was back in Swaziland.

After two weeks I was returned to CR Swart somewhat refreshed.

The interrogation sessions with Lieutenant Robertshaw now began. Robertshaw was taller and stockier than Botha, square-faced with intense blue eyes behind his spectacles. He was the epitome of the outdoor man in the Camel cigarette advert. His furrowed brow gave the impression of harshness. In truth, he was far from that. In a sense he was an oddity, an English-speaking South African in a conservative Afrikaner institution. Afrikaners had a deep-seated mistrust of their English-speaking counterparts. Partly this was inherited from British colonial rule compounded by the atrocities committed during the Anglo-Boer War. Memories of how Afrikaner families had suffered in the concentration camps were still very much alive.

Many Afrikaners believed that their English-speaking compatriots enjoyed the benefits of apartheid but were ever ready to abandon the country in the event of a serious challenge to white minority rule. Afrikaners had a word for them: ‘sout-piel’, meaning ‘salty penis’. A term of mocking disgust implying that English speakers had one foot in Africa and the other in England with their penises dangling in the salty Atlantic Ocean.

Afrikaners were similarly disparaged by English South Africans; viewed as unsophisticated ‘Dutchmen’ – uncouth, rural, backward.

Despite these underlying prejudices, Lieutenant Robertshaw was well regarded by his Afrikaner superiors. He spoke fluent Afrikaans, was a good investigating officer, thorough in his work, his curious intelligence serving him well.

Once he had control of the investigation, he decided to re-arrest Yunis. He did so in an unusual way by contacting Yunis’s legal team and indicating that he needed Yunis for further questioning and would detain him under Section 29.

In response Yunis did various things: he wrote a statement giving the details of his torture during his previous detention; he cleaned all fingerprints off Ebrahim’s car which had been abandoned in a parking lot; then he anonymously called the owner of the car lot and informed her that the car was sought by the police in a major investigation. He suggested that she notify them so that the car could be impounded. Finally he met with his lawyer, Yunus Mahomed, an ANC activist who worked closely with MJK.

That month, August 1985, South Africa went into economic freefall. President PW Botha gave the most damaging speech of his political life, defying the West’s calls for reform and vowing to defend apartheid with the full might of the state. The consequences for his government were devastating. The South African currency crashed against all others, especially the dollar. International organisations, outraged at the arrogance of the National Party government, renewed their efforts to impose sanctions. Disinvestment from South Africa mounted. Resistance to apartheid increased at all levels. People had lost their fear of the state’s repressive machinery and were taking on the might of the state with sticks, stones and petrol bombs.

Against this background, Yunis handed himself over for detention. He met with Mohamed for a final review of his statement. In part this read: ‘I am the leader of the unit. I find it difficult to leave my comrades behind and for me to go into exile. If we are to face the music, then it is better we do so together. The struggle is here at home not in exile. I do not want to go into exile. I choose to stay.’

Mohamed scanned the document of defiance and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’

To which Yunis shot back, ‘Yes, I am. Besides if there is to be a trial, we can use it for propaganda purposes. It will show that minorities are also members of the ANC and that the ANC is a truly non-racial organisation. I think we will gain more this way. Apartheid cannot sustain itself against this opposition.’

They both knew that Ebrahim had escaped to Swaziland – in fact Mohamed had helped with that operation – which left the Security Branch with hardly any information should they want to mount a trial.

They shook hands. ‘I am ready,’ said Yunis. ‘I think it is best if you take me to CR Swart.’

Immediately after Yunis’s re-arrest and based on the testimony of his torture at the hands of Lieutenant Botha, lawyers acting on behalf of my father filed an application in the courts to interdict the Security Branch from any further assaults on us. The application succeeded to the extent that the physical assaults stopped but solitary confinement did not. Also, the head of the Security Branch, Colonel Ignatius Coetzee, gave an undertaking that we would not be assaulted or subjected to prolonged interrogation.

Despite this, Lieutenant Botha was not done with me. Even though he had no further role in my interrogation, he elected to escort me from the cells to the interrogation rooms each day. In the small public holding room en route, he would make me strip naked. Under the pretext of upholding Colonel Coetzee’s undertaking, he then inspected my body for marks and scars, often in the presence of others, including female police officers. He made me bend over to see if I had objects hidden in my rectum. Throughout he commented derisively about my marks and scars. Most especially, with jeers and laughter, he delighted in mocking the size of my penis. This inspection was then repeated when I was returned to my cell. Day in, day out it continued until he grew bored and ceased.

Initially, I bore this shaming with grit and grimace. But the insistent nature of the ordeal lodged a destructive inadequacy in my psyche that would haunt me for years afterwards. His shaming came to occupy the spaces in between my bedsheets.

Lieutenant Robertshaw, on the other hand, treated me with respect. He informed me of Yunis’s re-arrest but he took the precaution of detaining Yunis at a different police station so that we had no contact.

Robertshaw was never antagonistic, on the contrary, he accepted that we were on opposite sides in this conflict. Because of this pragmatic and philosophical approach, he tried to understand my motivations. Consequently, I never felt fear in his presence, rather, I felt challenged. In a strange way, by engaging me intellectually, he reinforced my belief in the correctness of our struggle for freedom.

After one such session, he sat back in his chair and said, ‘You will be a challenge for every government of this country’. He would prove to be right and after all these years I am still astounded by his prescience.

Robertshaw tried hard to break through my resolve not to disclose everything. Occasionally I let him feel he had made headway. For instance, I wrote a long ‘letter’ to my father outlining how I had explained my activities to the police. I also bemoaned the fact that the Security Branch did not believe me. I asked Phillip to hand this ‘letter’ to his superiors on the pretext that he had found it in the corridor. Phillip’s superiors dutifully forwarded my ‘letter’ to the Security Branch. The ruse helped to ease the intensity of my interrogation sessions. I was never questioned about the ‘letter’.

By the end of September, Lieutenant Robertshaw decided he had no case with which to charge us. Ebrahim’s car was now in the police pound but there was no forensic link to Ebrahim or any weapons. Besides there was no Ebrahim to bring to court. Yet, Robertshaw saw no defeat in this. He simply accepted it for what it was and let the process of Section 29 play itself out.

Robertshaw’s interaction with Yunis and me did affect him at a personal level. In many of our discussions he often wondered how he would fare under Section 29 if the tables were reversed. He never could answer that question. In truth the answer can only be found in the lived experience.

Robertshaw knew that I had not revealed all the information at my disposal. Yet this did not drive him to torture either me or Yunis. Instead he spent the hours of interrogation trying to understand us and, in the process, came to respect our commitment to freedom as the source of our inner strength.

Perhaps he was troubled by his own demons. Detention does things to both the captor and the captured. A strange bond develops. This bond does not lessen the contradiction that separates enemies, it rises above it. In the confines of the restricted battleground, vulnerabilities are shared.

For instance, Lieutenant Robertshaw was concerned about his sensitive young son. Why he confided in me I shall never know, but I respected him for doing so. His son was an outsider in a macho culture and Robertshaw feared that the boy would not cope in a country that demanded much of its white males. I suspected from our discussions that in his attempts to understand my commitment, he was trying to understand his son’s needs and to respect these. He was a captive of the conservativeness of the time, yet behind his steely blue eyes, I sensed a sensitive and conflicted soul.

In mid-October the interrogation sessions came to an end. They were getting nothing out of us, and the questions went over the same ground time and again. The rest of the year Yunis and I spent trapped in a state of suspended reality. My mind was my only companion and like all companions, it was both friend and distractor. I longed for human contact and at times I would even have welcomed an interrogation session rather than the emptiness of the days that I was forced to endure. The torture of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation took hold of me.

It was the nothingness of the endless hours that was devastating. Each new day was a repeat of the previous one: the sun rose and set punctuated only by the uneventful meagre meals of breakfast, lunch and supper and the vast stillness of the in-between. No amount of pacing the cell, counting the steps from wall to wall or exercising could while away the long empty hours.

The effort to keep sane became harder. The vacuum fed the catatonic drift to self-withdrawal amplifying the constant voice of despair that played over and over in my head. My thoughts spoke loudly and incessantly. I awoke each morning with renewed hope that today the horror would end. As the hours passed, positive thoughts gave way to negative ones, and then to hopelessness and utter frustration. Sometimes I screamed out my frustration to the silence of the corridors. Only the damned of the place could hear me, but they too were helplessly enmeshed in their own despair. The months dragged on. I lost a sense of myself, plagued by the pervasive self-destructive belief that I was forgotten, even by the ones I loved.

I soon forgot what I looked like. My only image was reflected in the distorting waters of the urinal. I forgot the sound of my voice as the silent months went by. My cell and its emptiness and the voices in my head were the only testimony to the fact that I was alive.

I developed an acute sense of smell and hearing. I could smell the deodorant – or lack of it – of the different police officers and prisoners as they passed my cell. I could smell food long before it was brought to me. I could hear the jangle of keys and the footsteps of those who walked the corridors. I would spend hours each day rocking from side to side. It was the only movement that gave me comfort. Withdrawing into myself afforded me a sense of stillness. The world became a distant and strange place.