Protest erupted in Eastern Pondoland, where government henchmen were assaulted and killed. Thembuland and Zululand fiercely resisted, and were among the last areas to yield. People were beaten, arrested, deported, and imprisoned. In Thembuland, resistance had been going on since 1955, with Sabata part of the forces of protest.
It was especially painful to me that in the Transkei, the wrath of the people was directed against my nephew and onetime mentor K. D. Matanzima. There was no doubt that Daliwonga was collaborating with the government. All the appeals I had made to him over the years had come to naught. There were reports that impis (traditional warriors) from Matanzima’s headquarters had burned down villages that opposed him. There were several assassination attempts against him. Equally painful was the fact that Winnie’s father was serving on Matanzima’s council and was an unwavering supporter. This was terribly difficult for Winnie: her father and her husband were on opposite sides of the same issue. She loved her father, but she rejected his politics.
On a number of occasions, tribesmen and kinsmen from the Transkei visited me in Orlando to complain about chiefs collaborating with the government. Sabata was opposed to the Bantu Authorities and would not capitulate, but my visitors were afraid that Matanzima would depose him, which is eventually what happened. At one time, Daliwonga himself came to visit during the Treason Trial and I brought him with me to Pretoria. In the courtroom, Issy Maisels introduced him to the judges and they accorded him a seat of honor. But outside — among the accused — he was not treated so deferentially. He began aggressively to ask the various defendants, who regarded him as a sellout, why they objected to separate development. Lilian Ngoyi remarked: “Tyhini, uyadelela lo mntu” (Gracious, this man is provocative).
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IT IS SAID that the mills of God grind exceedingly slowly, but even the Lord’s machinations can’t compete with those of the South African judicial system. On August 3, 1959, two years and eight months after our arrests, and after a full year of legal maneuvering, the actual trial commenced at the Old Synagogue in Pretoria. We were finally formally arraigned and all thirty of us pleaded not guilty.
Our defense team was once again led by Issy Maisels, and he was assisted by Sydney Kentridge, Bram Fischer, and Vernon Berrangé. This time, at long last, the trial was in earnest. During the first two months of the case, the Crown entered some two thousand documents into the record and called two hundred ten witnesses, two hundred of whom were members of the Special Branch. These detectives admitted to hiding in closets and under beds, posing as ANC members, perpetrating virtually any deception that would enable them to get information about our organization. Yet many of the documents the state submitted and the speeches they transcribed were public documents, public speeches, information available to all. As before, much of the Crown’s evidence consisted of books, papers, and documents seized from the accused during numerous raids that took place between 1952 and 1956, as well as notes taken by the police at Congress meetings during this same period. As before, the reports by the Special Branch officers of our speeches were generally muddled. We used to joke that between the poor acoustics of the hall and the confused and inaccurate reports of the Special Branch detectives, we could be fined for what we did not say, imprisoned for what we could not hear, and hanged for what we did not do.
Each day at lunchtime we were permitted to sit outside in the spacious garden of a neighboring vicarage where we were supplied with a meal cooked by the redoubtable Mrs. Thayanagee Pillay and her friends. They prepared a spicy Indian lunch for us almost every day, and also tea, coffee, and sandwiches during the morning and afternoon breaks. These respites were like tiny vacations from court, and were a chance for us to discuss politics with each other. Those moments under the shade of the jacaranda trees on the vicarage lawn were the most pleasant of the trial, for in many ways the case was more a test of our endurance than a trial of justice.
On the morning of October 11, as we were preparing to go to court, we heard an announcement on the radio that the prosecutor, Oswald Pirow, had died suddenly from a stroke. His death was a severe setback to the government, and the effectiveness and aggressiveness of the Crown team diminished from that point on. In court that day, Judge Rumpff gave an emotional eulogy to Pirow, and praised his legal acumen and thoroughness. Although we would benefit from his absence, we did not rejoice at his death. We had developed a certain affection for our opponent, for despite Pirow’s noxious political views, he was a humane man without the virulent personal racism of the government he was acting for. His habitual polite reference to us as “Africans” (even one of our own attorneys occasionally slipped and referred to us as “natives”) contrasted with his supremacist political leanings. In a curious way, our small world inside the Old Synagogue seemed balanced when, each morning, we observed Pirow reading the right-wing Nuwe Order at his table and Bram Fischer reading the left-wing New Age at ours. His donation to us of the more than one hundred volumes of the preparatory examination free of charge was a generous gesture that saved the defense a great deal of money. Advocate De Vos became the new leader of the Crown’s team and could not match the eloquence or acuity of his predecessor.
Shortly after Pirow’s death, the prosecution concluded its submission of evidence. It was then that the prosecution began its examination of expert witnesses commencing with the long-suffering Professor Murray, its supposed expert in communism who had proved so inept in his subject during the preparatory examination. In a relentless cross-examination by Maisels, Murray admitted that the charter was in fact a humanitarian document that might well represent the natural reaction and aspirations of nonwhites to the harsh conditions in South Africa.
Murray was not the only Crown witness who did little to advance the state’s case. Despite the voluminous amount of Crown evidence and the pages and pages of testimony from their expert witnesses, the prosecution had not managed to produce any valid evidence that the ANC plotted violence, and they knew it. Then, in March, the prosecution displayed a new burst of confidence. They were about to release their most damning evidence. With great fanfare and a long drumroll in the press, the state played for the court a secretly recorded speech of Robert Resha’s. The speech was given in his capacity as Transvaal Volunteer-in-Chief to a roomful of Freedom Volunteers in 1956, a few weeks before we were all to be arrested. The courtroom was very quiet, and despite the static of the recording and the background din, one could make out Robert’s words very clearly.
When you are disciplined and you are told by the organization not to be violent, you must not be violent . . . but if you are a true volunteer and you are called upon to be violent, you must be absolutely violent, you must murder! Murder! That is all.
The prosecution believed it had sealed its case. Newspapers prominently featured Resha’s words and echoed the sensibilities of the state. To the Crown, the speech revealed the ANC’s true and secret intent, unmasking the ANC’s public pretense of nonviolence. But in fact, Resha’s words were an anomaly. Robert was an excellent if rather excitable platform speaker, and his choice of analogy was unfortunate. But as the defense would show, he was merely emphasizing the importance of discipline and that the volunteer must do whatever he is ordered, however unsavory. Over and over, our witnesses would show that Resha’s speech was not only taken out of context but did not represent ANC policy.
The prosecution concluded its case on March 10, 1960, and we were to call our first witness for the defense four days later. We had been in the doldrums for months, but as we started to prepare ourselves for our testimony, we were eager to go on the offensive. We had been parrying the enemy’s attacks for too long.
There had been much speculation in the press that our first witness would be Chief Luthuli. The Crown apparently believed that as well, for there was great consternation among the prosecution when, on March 14, our first witness was not Luthuli but Dr. Wilson Conco.
Conco was the son of a Zulu cattle farmer from the beautiful Ixopo dist
rict of Natal. In addition to being a practicing physician, he had been one of the founders of the Youth League, an active participant in the Defiance Campaign, and the treasurer of the ANC. As a preparation for his testimony, he was asked about his brilliant academic record at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he graduated first in his medical school class, ahead of all the sons and daughters of white privilege. As Conco’s credentials were cited, I got the distinct impression that Justice Kennedy, who was also from Natal, seemed proud. Natalians are noted for their loyalty to their region, and these peculiar bonds of attachment can sometimes even transcend color. Indeed, many Natalians thought of themselves as white Zulus. Justice Kennedy had always seemed to be a fair-minded man, and I sensed that through Wilson Conco’s example, he began to see us not as heedless rabble-rousers but men of worthy ambitions who could help their country if their country would only help them. At the end of Conco’s testimony, when Conco was cited for some medical achievement, Kennedy said in Zulu, a language in which he was fluent, “Sinjalo thina maZulu,” which means, “We Zulus are like that.” Dr. Conco proved a calm and articulate witness who reaffirmed the ANC’s commitment to nonviolence.
Chief Luthuli was next. With his dignity and sincerity, he made a deep impression on the court. He was suffering from high blood pressure, and the court agreed to sit only in the mornings while he gave evidence. His evidence-in-chief lasted several days and he was cross-examined for nearly three weeks. He carefully outlined the evolution of the ANC’s policy, putting things simply and clearly, and his former positions as teacher and chief imparted an added gravity and authority to his words. As a devout Christian, he was the perfect person to discuss how the ANC had sincerely strived for racial harmony.
The chief testified to his belief in the innate goodness of man and how moral persuasion plus economic pressure could well lead to a change of heart on the part of white South Africans. In discussing the ANC’s policy of nonviolence, he emphasized that there was a difference between nonviolence and pacifism. Pacifists refused to defend themselves even when violently attacked, but that was not necessarily the case with those who espoused nonviolence. Sometimes men and nations, even when nonviolent, had to defend themselves when they were attacked.
As I listened to Conco and Luthuli, I thought that here, probably for the first time in their lives, the judges were listening not to their domestic servants who said only what they knew their masters would like to hear, but to independent and articulate Africans spelling out their political beliefs and how they hoped to realize them.
The chief was cross-examined by Advocate Trengove, who doggedly attempted to get him to say the ANC was dominated by Communists and had a dual policy of nonviolence intended for the public and a secret plan of waging violent revolution. The chief steadfastly refuted the implications of what Trengove was suggesting. He himself was the soul of moderation, particularly as Trengove seemed to lose control. At one point, Trengove accused the chief of hypocrisy. The chief ignored Trengove’s aspersion and calmly remarked to the bench, “My Lord, I think the Crown is running wild.”
But on March 21, the chief’s testimony was interrupted by a shattering event outside the courtroom. On that day, the country was rocked by an occurrence of such magnitude that when Chief Luthuli returned to testify a month later, the courtroom — and all of South Africa — was a different place.
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THE DECEMBER 1959 ANC annual conference was held in Durban during that city’s dynamic antipass demonstrations. The conference unanimously voted to initiate a massive countrywide antipass campaign beginning March 31 and climaxing on June 26 with a great bonfire of passes.
The planning began immediately. On March 31, deputations were sent to local authorities. ANC officials toured the country, talking to the branches about the campaign. ANC field-workers spread the word in townships and factories. Leaflets, stickers, and posters were printed and circulated and posted in trains and buses.
The mood of the country was grim. The state was threatening to ban the organization, with cabinet ministers warning the ANC that it would soon be battered with “an ungloved fist.” Elsewhere in Africa, the freedom struggle was marching on: the emergence of the independent republic of Ghana in 1957 and its pan-Africanist, anti-apartheid leader, Kwame Nkrumah, had alarmed the Nationalists and made them even more intent on clamping down on dissent at home. In 1960, seventeen former colonies in Africa were scheduled to become independent states. In February, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visited South Africa and gave a speech before Parliament in which he talked of “winds of change” sweeping Africa.
The PAC at the time appeared lost; they were a leadership in search of followers, and they had yet to initiate any action that put them on the political map. They knew of the ANC’s antipass campaign and had been invited to join, but instead of linking arms with the Congress movement, they sought to sabotage us. The PAC announced that it was launching its own antipass campaign on March 21, ten days before ours was to begin. No conference had been held by them to discuss the date, no organizational work of any significance had been undertaken. It was a blatant case of opportunism. Their actions were motivated more by a desire to eclipse the ANC than to defeat the enemy.
Four days before the scheduled demonstration, Sobukwe invited us to join with the PAC. Sobukwe’s offer was not a gesture of unity but a tactical move to prevent the PAC from being criticized for not including us. He made the offer at the eleventh hour, and we declined to participate. On the morning of March 21, Sobukwe and his executive walked to the Orlando police station to turn themselves in for arrest. The tens of thousands of people going to work ignored the PAC men. In the magistrate’s court, Sobukwe announced the PAC would not attempt to defend itself, in accordance with their slogan “No bail, no defense, no fine.” They believed the defiers would receive sentences of a few weeks. But Sobukwe was sentenced not to three weeks’ but to three years’ imprisonment without the option of a fine.
The response to the PAC’s call in Johannesburg was minimal. No demonstrations at all took place in Durban, Port Elizabeth, or East London. But in Evaton, Z. B. Molete, ably assisted by Joe Molefi and Vusumuzi Make, mustered the support of the entire township as several hundred men presented themselves for arrest without passes. Cape Town saw one of the biggest antipass demonstrations in the history of the city. In Langa township, outside Cape Town, some thirty thousand people, led by the young student Philip Kgosana, gathered and were spurred to rioting by a police baton-charge. Two people were killed. But the last of the areas where demonstrations took place was the most calamitous and the one whose name still echoes with tragedy: Sharpeville.
Sharpeville was a small township about thirty-five miles south of Johannesburg in the grim industrial complex around Vereeniging. PAC activists had done an excellent job of organizing the area. In the early afternoon, a crowd of several thousand surrounded the police station. The demonstrators were controlled and unarmed. The police force of seventy-five was greatly outnumbered and panicky. No one heard warning shots or an order to shoot, but suddenly, the police opened fire on the crowd and continued to shoot as the demonstrators turned and ran in fear. When the area had cleared, sixty-nine Africans lay dead, most of them shot in the back as they were fleeing. All told, more than seven hundred shots had been fired into the crowd, wounding more than four hundred people, including dozens of women and children. It was a massacre, and the next day press photos displayed the savagery on front pages around the world.
The shootings at Sharpeville provoked national turmoil and a government crisis. Outraged protests came in from across the globe, including one from the American State Department. For the first time, the U.N. Security Council intervened in South African affairs, blaming the government for the shootings and urging it to initiate measures to bring about racial equality. The Johannesburg stock exchange plunged and capital started to flow out of the country. South African whites began making plans to emigrate. Liberals urged Ver
woerd to offer concessions to Africans. The government insisted Sharpeville was the result of a Communist conspiracy.
The massacre at Sharpeville created a new situation in the country. In spite of the amateurishness and opportunism of their leaders, the PAC rank and file displayed great courage and fortitude in their demonstrations at Sharpeville and Langa. In just one day, they had moved to the front lines of the struggle, and Robert Sobukwe was being hailed inside and outside the country as the savior of the liberation movement. We in the ANC had to make rapid adjustments to this new situation, and we did so.
A small group of us — Walter, Duma Nokwe, Joe Slovo, and myself — held an all-night meeting in Johannesburg to plan a response. We knew we had to acknowledge the events in some way and give the people an outlet for their anger and grief. We conveyed our plans to Chief Luthuli, and he readily accepted them. On March 26, in Pretoria, the chief publicly burned his pass, calling on others to do the same. He announced a nationwide stay-at-home on March 28, a national Day of Mourning and protest for the atrocities at Sharpeville. In Orlando, Duma Nokwe and I then burned our passes before hundreds of people and dozens of press photographers.
Two days later, on the twenty-eighth, the country responded magnificently as several hundred thousand Africans observed the chief’s call. Only a truly mass organization could coordinate such activities, and the ANC did so. In Cape Town a crowd of fifty thousand met in Langa township to protest the shootings. Rioting broke out in many areas. The government declared a State of Emergency, suspending habeas corpus and assuming sweeping powers to act against all forms of subversion. South Africa was now under martial law.
The Long Walk to Freedom Page 28