Mandela still hoped that the two factions of the ANC could be reunited. He had been Sobukwe’s attorney as well as Leballo’s: he respected Sobukwe’s sense of honour, and regarded him as ‘a dazzling orator and incisive thinker’.25 But Mandela was impatient with the immaturity of Sobukwe’s crude black nationalism – which he himself had abandoned a decade ago – and the Africanist bandwagon of politicians settling old scores. He was especially worried by Sobukwe’s intolerance of the rights of minorities, which was summed up in the Africanist manifesto: ‘The African people will not tolerate the existence of other national groups within the confines of one nation.’ Mandela would always argue that tribal and ethnic minorities – whites included – must have their rights guaranteed. Sobukwe, he thought, was evading the issue.26
But Mandela underestimated the threat that Sobukwe represented to the ANC, and the appeal of the PAC’s nationalism to young black intellectuals. He was now facing his first serious political challenge; and looking back forty years later, he would recognise Sobukwe as his most formidable rival.27
When the Treason Trial resumed it was moved to the Afrikaner stronghold of Pretoria, an hour’s drive from Johannesburg, where the ANC’s support was much weaker, and the white population more hostile. Three judges presided in the ornate courtroom – a converted Jewish synagogue – led by the same Justice Rumpff who had already tried many of the accused during the Defiance Campaign. Mandela respected Rumpff, but thought he wanted a conviction: ‘He wanted to send us to jail, but he was too brilliant a judge to commit a disgrace.’28
The defence team still included Vernon Berrangé, ‘the human lie-detector’, but it was now augmented by two very senior lawyers, Israel Maisels and Bram Fischer. Fischer, who became one of Mandela’s closest friends, was already a hero to the ANC. He was a true Afrikaner, the son of a Judge-President of the Orange Free State, with the chubby red face and open style of a farmer. He had begun as an Afrikaner nationalist, but after studying at Oxford and visiting the Soviet Union he joined the Communist Party, and was influenced by J.B. Marks, Moses Kotane and Yusuf Dadoo. Mandela was deeply impressed by Fischer’s stoic self-sacrifice and commitment: ‘We embraced each other as brothers.’29 Fischer devoted all his energies to organising both a political and a legal defence, and his skills attracted many of the accused to the law.
The trial stopped and started, with intricate wrangles. In August 1958 Berrangé embarked on a long legal argument questioning the vaguely-worded indictment. In October the prosecution suddenly withdrew their charges altogether; but a month later they returned with a more precise indictment, which left out sixty-one of the accused to be tried later, and was directed against only thirty people who were thought to be guilty of particularly revolutionary or violent incitement. Mandela was among them.
The trial was due to start again in Pretoria in February 1959. The night before, Mandela went to the first night of the black musical King Kong, composed by his friend Todd Matshikiza, which told the story of the black heavyweight boxer from Sophiatown whom Mandela had known, and who murdered his girlfriend. The premiere was held in the main hall of Wits University, the only auditorium in Johannesburg which would admit blacks and whites together (though segregated by rows). The show, which was later taken to London, expressed all the creative energy of the black townships, with an exuberant cast including Mandela’s friend Nathan Mdledle of the Manhattan Brothers, who played King Kong. Mandela was thrilled by the performance, and afterwards he embraced Todd Matshikiza and his wife Esme. He was particularly moved, he said, by the song ‘Sad Times, Bad Times’, with its refrain ‘What have these men done that they should be destroyed?’, which reminded him of the trial beginning the next day.30
The trial resumed, was adjourned, and then started again, making Mandela’s life still more unpredictable, and his work in his law practice more difficult. The activities of most of the ANC leaders were circumscribed, either by the trial or by bans. The President, Luthuli, was no longer on trial, but in June 1959 he was confined again for a further five years to his home district in Natal. Luthuli now had a high international profile. The British diplomat Eleanor Emery told London that the ban had removed ‘the most stable and moderate of the ANC leaders’, and predicted that it would lead to more extremism, and perhaps to a general banning of the whole ANC.31 The New York Times published a profile of Luthuli, saying that the South African government had chosen ‘a worthy foe’, and the new American Ambassador Philip Crowe – much more sophisticated than his predecessors – went to visit Luthuli in Groutville three months after he was banned.32 But Western diplomats continued to steer clear of the more militant ANC leaders like Mandela.
Mandela was under still greater pressure in the trial, but he remained very active behind the scenes. He could see Tambo nearly every day in their law offices, and was closely in touch with Sisulu both in the courtroom and in Orlando. Sisulu remained very influential. ‘I was still looked upon by everybody as Secretary-General,’ he explained later, ‘because I was doing the work, although it was Oliver Tambo or Duma Nokwe who was formally Secretary-General. I was having a discussion with Nelson, I think, daily.’33
But the ANC had remained disorganised through the 1950s. As a ‘banned leader’ described it in Liberation with devastating candour in 1955:
There exists great inefficiency at varying levels of Congress leadership: the inability to understand simple local situations, inefficiency in attending to the simple things, such as small complaints, replying to letters, visiting of branches. There is complete lack of confidence of one another, lack of teamwork in committees, individualism and the lust for power. The result is sabotage of Congress decisions and directives, gossip and unprincipled criticisms.34
Mandela was aware of the incompetence, but was touchy about criticism of the ANC, particularly from whites. The reporter Martin Leighton wrote an article in the Rand Daily Mail which described how the ANC did not have a real organisation, with no files or membership lists, while its officials were cringing compared to Africans in bordering countries. Mandela was furious, and when Leighton called on him he said he felt like choking him; but not, he reflected later, because the article was false: ‘The criticism which hurts me is the criticism which is correct.’35
The ANC’s Transvaal branch was both the most important and one of the most incompetent. ‘There is no awareness of the need to be alert and vigilant in branch activities,’ the Transvaal executive had complained in November 1956. ‘There is a great deal of sluggishness and inefficiency in our style of work.’ The more leaders were banned, the more urgent the problem became: in December 1958 the National Executive reported that ‘our aim should be to make the Congress a body that can survive any attack or onslaught made upon it, however severe.’ They advocated an immediate efficiency campaign. But a year later the new Secretary-General, Duma Nokwe, who had succeeded Tambo, was lamenting that the problems of organisation ‘have now become hardy annuals’. He warned that ‘the