I choke as I see the desperation in her eyes. Not wanting to raise expectations, I say, ‘I will, but you must know that this is a very difficult case. It will be a long battle but we will not stop fighting.’
They look at me expectantly and I think, Who am I to tell them about difficult battles? Who am I to tell them anything? I know the law is almost useless in such cases and soon I will get into my nice car and go home to my nice house.
My thoughts are interrupted by Mrs Masina who says, ‘About the money for the case, we will give you what we have but we do not think that it will be enough. We will speak to our families to see what can be done.’
Relieved that at least I can address this, I reply, ‘You mustn’t worry about the money for the case. The ANC has made arrangements for the money for their defence. This money will come from overseas and you will not have to pay anything. They will also pay you a small subsistence allowance to help you cope with the expenses that you will incur in attending the trial and coming to the consultations. So the money is the one thing that you don’t have to worry about.’
The provision of finance for political trials and detainees was an important component of the ANC’s resistance struggle. It was critical for ANC members and guerrillas to know that they would always get access to a good legal defence and that their families would be supported. Such financial support was the one certainty that those who were captured could rely on.
The money came via the law firm of Carruthers & Company in London who, in order to disguise the source of the money, took their instructions from another London law firm by the name of Birckbeck Montagu’s, an upper-crust, well-established firm that represented the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF). The partner at Birckbecks responsible for disbursing the money and paying our accounts was a man called Bill Frankel, a well-spoken and clever solicitor of great integrity. Bill would be the last person anyone would associate with the provision of funding for the legal defence of the guerrillas of a liberation movement. In fact, the money was raised from a variety of sympathetic sources and countries. The Scandinavians, particularly the Swedes, were generous donors, with Bengt Save Soderberg, the Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office, playing a leading role.
The key person responsible for raising the funds was the chief executive of IDAF, Horst Kleinschmidt, a South African exile and ANC member. Horst, a backroom person by nature, played a critical role in coordinating donor funding to IDAF. Quiet and enormously professional, he moved through Europe establishing contacts and setting up the conduits to get money into the country to fund most of the political trials and support political prisoners and their families after sentencing. If you had seen Bill Frankel and Horst Kleinschmidt having coffee in Covent Garden, you might have assumed that they were investment analysts discussing commodity prices.
The other key funder of political trials was Gay McDougall’s Washington-based organisation, the American Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. Gay was a hugely impressive and well-connected lawyer who ran her organisation with efficiency and integrity and who could always be relied on to help out when things were dire.
Despite the sometimes splintered nature of the international anti-apartheid movement, there were a large number of groupings and individuals who did fine work. Bill Frankel and Horst Kleinschmidt were two such people. They delivered the goods yet never claimed public credit.
Without this legal funding from outside, it would have been impossible to run the trials. Nationally, there were simply not enough anti-apartheid organisations with access to resources to pay for these cases. The few attorneys prepared to do political work generally charged fees that were about a third of the going rate. Likewise, sympathetic counsel charged a fraction of what they could charge commercially. However, these costs combined with the expenses of running a trial that could last as long as three or four years, amounted to large figures. The big commercial law firms that could sustain the costs simply refused to do it. And so, it fell to Carruthers and the American Lawyers’ Committee to provide the funds.
However, the financing of the trial was not uppermost in the minds of the parents. They wanted to know if the group had committed these deeds.
‘I don’t know,’ I respond to Mrs Masina, who has taken the lead. ‘I have only just got this information and will have to discuss it with them at our next consultation.’ The families are confused, and I feel powerless to comfort them. I cannot say that justice will take its course or that their sons are innocent and will be set free. These are not detainees in a state of emergency where you know that eventually they will be released. This is different. These men have accomplished their objectives. And now the State is going to make them pay.
The difference between the families and me is that they still think something just or fair will happen, that the actions of their sons will be understood in the broader context and that they will not go to prison or worse. I know differently. I know the kind of people who will be prosecuting this case, the type of investigating officers, the judge, and I know that their job is to ensure that these men receive the maximum sentence.
11
HOJE YA HENDA CAMP, MALANJE PROVINCE, ANGOLA
It had been a Cuban camp and was well fortified with three anti-aircraft batteries. During the 1980s it became one of MK’s major training camps. It was here that Joseph Makhura received his training.
Joseph Makhura: ‘There was a big fight between MK and Unita in eastern Malanje Province near a town called Cacuso. I was sent there along with a friend called Jeff, who had been with me in the Swapo camp. He was a nice guy from Rockville in Soweto. When we got to Cacuso, Jeff stayed there and I moved to a village called Musafa, about fifty kilometres away. There was nothing but jungle between the two villages which were connected by a gravel road. Musafa was deserted. The war had driven out the locals a long time ago.
‘We were about fifty or sixty MK at Musafa, an outpost really. Our mission was to stop Unita from taking the area. We lived in some destroyed houses and I was the medic there. It was a strange place. The villages around us had been destroyed by Unita and were deserted, but the people had to live and to eat and so they returned during the day and tended their land. At night they disappeared. They would tell us if Unita was in the area and we would hunt them down. There were frequent firefights.
‘To get supplies, we had to go to Cacuso. The MK commander there was a man by the name of Bra T – T for Timothy, I think. He had a reputation for bravery. I admired him because whenever there was trouble he would be there, which you couldn’t say for some other commanders. Chris Hani and Bra T were always there for us.
‘Unfortunately, Cacuso was a mess. The people robbed the stores, stole supplies to buy liquor, there was no discipline. The worst thing was the journey to and from Cacuso. Often on our way back to Musafa, we would find that the road had been mined by Unita. Once a tractor driven by a farmer was blown up and locals were also sometimes shot by Unita. We tried to help them, but usually it was no use, their injuries were too severe.
‘There was a lot of complaining on that eastern front. We wanted to fight at home, not in Angola. In late 1983, Chris Hani and Bra T came to listen to our complaints. There was a lot of talk about the guys in London and in the diplomatic missions in Europe while we were in the camps fighting a war against Unita in Angola. Personally, I was not happy, but I knew I had volunteered. It was my decision to join and so I had to take what was given.
‘But it was very bad. Once, when we were travelling back to our camp, we came across bodies on the road, poor villagers who had surprised Unita laying a landmine. Unita shot them, just like that. When we got there people were crying and removing the bodies from the road. It was terrible. And then I knew that I must get out of this place. This wasn’t why I’d left South Africa. This wasn’t my war.
‘Driving on from there to Musafa was one of the worst drives of my life, not knowing whether Unita had chosen another place to plant their mines. Every bump we went over, every jolt of the truck, which was filled with supplies, could have set off