Mom’s diary
The Beginning
This was not the first time my parents were arrested – and it would not be the last. By 1960, both my mother and father had been banned and their lives severely restricted. Three years earlier, in December 1956, just days after my brother Keith was born, my father was arrested along with 156 other leaders and charged with High Treason. That trial was still dragging on.
My parents were deeply involved in anti-government politics in apartheid South Africa. They were members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the white section of the ANC (African National Congress) – which had to be segregated at that time – and held important positions in both movements. They believed strongly in equality and in the perniciousness of the South African government.
As with all children of political parents, we developed an extra awareness, antennae which picked up on whisperings, meetings and extra tension in our parents. We all knew that below the surface of our lives as ordinary children of white South Africans, we were different. Our parents’ views were not those of most white South Africans. We had been taught not to ask too many questions and to be careful when talking on the phone as the Special Branch listened in on all our phone calls. Some of us older children would sometimes discuss things among ourselves. ‘Did your dad go out last night?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Must have been to the same place as mine.’ At sixteen, I knew far more about what was happening, and why, than my younger siblings.
My parents had explained to us about the apartheid government and why they were working against it. They explained why apartheid was wrong and that all people were equal. We learned that in other countries people weren’t defined by the colour of their skin, and that people didn’t think the way they did in South Africa. They talked to us about socialist countries and why socialism would make society fairer for everyone. When I was older, my father gave me books to read that explained their philosophy.
Black colleagues of my parents came to our house for secret meetings or had lunch or tea with us. In the South Africa of 1960, this was not only illegal but was considered outrageous by most white people. When I was younger, if I arrived home with school friends, I was sometimes embarrassed to find my parents’ black friends sitting in our living room. My friends’ association of black people was with the domestic workers in their homes. Their families would have been shocked, even horrified, to find black people socialising on equal terms in our home, and I found it difficult to explain the scenario to them. I would tell them that the visitor was a very important person or chief, and this seemed to make their presence more acceptable.
The weeks leading up to my parents’ arrests that April were tense. Both the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) were planning protests against the hated pass laws which forced African men to carry passes, thereby severely limiting their movements. This law allowed the police to stop black men at any time and if they weren’t carrying their passes, they would be arrested.
The Sharpeville shootings were a turning point in South African history and signalled the end of peaceful protest in the country as it became clear that non-violent action wasn’t going to bring about change. A year later, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s military wing, was formed underground.
A few days after Sharpeville, my mother called me to her bedroom to explain what was happening. ‘The ANC is calling for the whole country to go on strike to protest the killings at Sharpeville,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what will happen, but we think some people will be arrested – and some of us will have to go into hiding for a while. You must be prepared so that you can help with the younger children.’ Neither my mother nor my father anticipated they would both be arrested.
Telling me this made me feel included – and grown up. I watched both my parents carefully in the days that followed, trying to pick up clues as to what was going on. For a few days, life continued as before but we knew we were living in a time of crisis.
My parents, who were involved at a high level in planning protests, knew that the ‘stay-at-homes’ and strikes that were being called would provoke a reaction from the authorities. They didn’t know what the government would do, but they knew it was likely that a State of Emergency would be declared, and dissidents arrested.
A night after Sharpeville, my father received a phone call from Ahmed ‘Kathy’ Kathrada, one of his colleagues in the ANC. Kathy had a coded message for him about rumours of impending police raids. They had a plan, warning various activists not to sleep at home. Arrests were beginning to take place.
In his book, Memory Against Forgetting3, my dad writes:
The Sharpeville storm, far from blowing itself out, is whipping up like a cyclone … Protest strikers are staying away from work and bonfires of burning passes are blazing in the townships.
By the time I had worked through my list, it’s too late to find a place away from home for myself. I decide to take a chance and go home. These alerts often proved false in the past. There is no reason why this one should be different.
It is and it isn’t. There is no night-time knock at our door, but in the morning, we discover there have been raids on homes all over the country and many arrests. Hilda and I spend the day trying to find out which of our friends and political colleagues have been arrested. There’s no way of finding out where those arrested have been taken but police spokesmen have told the press that more ‘detentions’ can be expected.
We don’t doubt that we figure somewhere on the State list of ‘undesirables’ and while arrests are continuing, we are living on the brink. With four children to look after, we can hardly bolt from home, even temporarily. We agree that one of us should sleep somewhere else, away from home, each night.
We have grown so used to living on the edge of crises that we don’t now act with urgency. Inertia has set in. For a few days, we keep up the semblance of normal life for the benefit of the children, even though we know our time is running out.
The day after the arrests, I tell my employer that I won’t be coming to work until further notice. He understands that this is to do with my politics, but not that I am telling him my world is about to implode. It’s five months before he sees me again. In downtown Johannesburg, there is nothing to suggest the country is teetering on the brink. Business life is going on as normal.
In the days that followed, several leading figures disappeared from their homes ahead of the police.
Each evening Hilda and I have the same discussion; we must take cover ourselves; that it will upset the children and disrupt their lives. We never get beyond discussion.
My father was, in fact, making arrangements – for drivers to take other people who were in hiding to Swaziland – but he put off the day when he and my mother would have to leave themselves.
They did agree that mom would leave home early each evening, sleep somewhere else, and only return in the morning.
I intend to do the same but am always too tired to actually do so.
The night of their arrests, my father writes:
I reach home dog-tired. I am half intending to find somewhere else to spend the night but find that Hilda is still at home. She, too, has decided to sleep out after the children have been put to bed.
But their plan was thwarted by the arrival of a colleague who had been tipped off to leave home ahead of the police. My mom gave up her safe place to him and had nowhere else to go. They were both exhausted by then and so both stayed at home. That same night they were arrested.
None of us went to school the following morning but hung about the house, not sure what would happen next. Later that morning, my uncle Harold arrived to discuss what arrangements would be made for us with Yvonne ‘Fuzzy’ Lewitton. The Lewittons were family friends who lived close by. Fuzzy was anxious to get home to make her own arrangements for her disrupted life and that of her children. Her husband, Archie,