The Long Walk to Freedom (47 page)

We named our new daughter Zindziswa, after the daughter of the poet laureate of the Xhosa people, Samuel Mqhayi, who had inspired me so many years before at Healdtown. The poet returned home after a very long trip to find that his wife had given birth to a daughter. He had not known that she was pregnant and assumed that the child had been fathered by another man. In our culture, when a woman gives birth, the husband does not enter the house where she is confined for ten days. In this case, the poet was too enraged to observe this custom, and he stormed into the house with an assegai, ready to stab both mother and daughter. But when he looked at the baby girl and saw that she was the image of himself, he stepped back, and said,
“u zindzile,”
which means, “You are well established.” He named her Zindziswa, the feminine version of what he had said.

THE CROWN took over a month to do its summing up, which was often interrupted by interjections from the bench pointing out lapses in the argument. In March, it was our turn. Issy Maisels categorically refuted the charges of violence. “We admit that there is a question of noncooperation and passive resistance,” he said. “We shall say quite frankly that if noncooperation and passive resistance constitute high treason, then we are guilty. But these are plainly not encompassed in the law of treason.”

Maisels’s argument was continued by Bram Fischer, but on March 23, the bench cut short Bram’s concluding argument. We still had weeks of argument ahead, but the judges asked for a week’s adjournment. This was irregular, but we regarded it as a hopeful sign, for it suggested the judges had already formed their opinion. We were to return to court six days later for what we presumed would be the verdict. In the meantime, I had work to do.

My bans were due to expire two days after the adjournment. I was almost certain that the police would not be aware of this, as they rarely kept track of when bans ended. It would be the first time in nearly five years that I would be free to leave Johannesburg, free to attend a meeting. That weekend was the long-planned All-in Conference in Pietermaritzburg. Its aim was to agitate for a national constitutional convention for all South Africans. I was secretly scheduled to be the main speaker at the conference. I would make the three-hundred-mile drive down to Pietermaritzburg the night before I was scheduled to speak.

The day before I was to leave, the National Working Committee met secretly to discuss strategy. After many meetings in prison and outside, we had decided that we would work from underground, adopting a strategy along the lines of the M-Plan. The organization would survive clandestinely. It was decided that if we were not convicted I would go underground to travel about the country organizing the proposed national convention. Only someone operating full-time from underground would be free from the paralyzing restrictions imposed by the enemy. It was decided that I would surface at certain events, hoping for a maximum of publicity, to show that the ANC was still fighting. It was not a proposal that came as a surprise to me, not was it one I particularly relished, but it was something I knew I had to do. This would be a hazardous life, and I would be apart from my family, but when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.

When I returned home from the meeting it was as if Winnie could read my thoughts. Seeing my face, she knew that I was about to embark on a life that neither of us wanted. I explained what had transpired and that I would be leaving the next day. She took this stoically, as if she had expected it all along. She understood what I had to do, but that did not make it any easier for her. I asked her to pack a small suitcase for me. I told her that friends and relatives would look after her while I was gone. I did not tell her how long I would be gone and she did not ask. It was just as well, because I did not know the answer. I would return to Pretoria for what would probably be the verdict on Monday. No matter the result, I would not be returning home: if we were convicted, I would go directly to prison; if we were discharged, I would immediately go underground.

My elder son, Thembi, was in school in the Transkei, so I could not say good-bye to him, but that afternoon I fetched Makgatho and my daughter Makaziwe from their mother in Orlando East. We spent some hours together, walking on the veld outside town, talking and playing. I said good-bye to them, not knowing when I would see them again. The children of a freedom fighter also learn not to ask their father too many questions, and I could see in their eyes that they understood that something serious was occurring.

At home, I kissed the two girls good-bye and they waved as I got in the car with Wilson Conco and began the long drive to Natal.

Fourteen hundred delegates from all over the country representing one hundred fifty different religious, social, cultural, and political bodies converged on Pietermaritzburg for the All-in Conference. When I walked out onstage on Saturday evening, March 25, in front of this loyal and enthusiastic audience, it had been nearly five years since I had been free to give a speech on a public platform. I was met with a joyous reaction. I had almost forgotten the intensity of the experience of addressing a crowd.

In my speech I called for a national convention in which all South Africans, black and white, Indian and Coloured, would sit down in brotherhood and create a constitution that mirrored the aspirations of the country as a whole. I called for unity, and said we would be invincible if we spoke with one voice.

The All-in Conference called for a national convention of elected representatives of all adult men and women on an equal basis to determine a new nonracial democratic constitution for South Africa. A National Action Council was elected, with myself as honorary secretary, to communicate this demand to the government. If the government failed to call such a convention, we would call a countrywide three-day stay-away beginning on May 29 to coincide with the declaration of South Africa as a republic. I had no illusions that the state would agree to our proposal.

In October 1960, the government had held an all-white referendum on whether South Africa should become a republic. This was one of the long-cherished dreams of Afrikaner nationalism, to cast off ties to the country they had fought against in the Anglo-Boer War. The pro-republic sentiment won with 52 percent of the vote, and the proclamation of the republic was set for May 31, 1961. We set our stay-at-home on the date of the proclamation to indicate that such a change for us was merely cosmetic.

Directly after the conference I sent Prime Minister Verwoerd a letter in which I formally enjoined him to call a national constitutional convention. I warned him that if he failed to call the convention we would stage the country’s most massive three-day strike ever, beginning on May 29. “We have no illusions about the counter-measures your government might take,” I wrote. “During the last twelve months we have gone through a period of grim dictatorship.” I also issued press statements affirming that the strike was a peaceful and nonviolent stay-at-home. Verwoerd did not reply, except to describe my letter in Parliament as “arrogant.” The government instead began to mount one of the most intimidating displays of force ever assembled in the country’s history.

EVEN BEFORE the doors of the Old Synagogue opened on the morning of March 29, 1961, the day of the long-anticipated verdict in the Treason Trial, a crowd of supporters and press people jostled to get inside. Hundreds were turned away. When the judges brought the court to order, the visitors’ gallery and the press bench were packed. Moments after Justice Rumpff pounded his gavel, the Crown made an extraordinary application to change the indictment. This was the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, and it was two years too late. The court rebuffed the prosecution and the gallery murmured its approval.

“Silence in the court!” the orderly yelled, and Judge Rumpff announced that the three-judge panel had reached a verdict. Silence now reigned. In his deep, even voice, Judge Rumpff reviewed the court’s conclusions. Yes, the African National Congress had been working to replace the government with a “radically and fundamentally different form of state”; yes, the African National Congress had used illegal means of protest during the Defiance Campaign; yes, certain ANC leaders had made speeches advocating violence; and yes, there was a strong left-wing tendency in the ANC that was revealed in its anti-imperialist, anti-West, pro-Soviet attitudes, but —

On all the evidence presented to this court and on our finding of fact it is impossible for this court to come to the conclusion that the African National Congress had acquired or adopted a policy to overthrow the state by violence, that is, in the sense that the masses had to be prepared or conditioned to commit direct acts of violence against the state.

The court said the prosecution had failed to prove that the ANC was a Communist organization or that the Freedom Charter envisioned a Communist state. After speaking for forty minutes, Justice Rumpff said, “The accused are accordingly found not guilty and are discharged.”

The spectators’ gallery erupted in cheers. We stood and hugged each other, and waved to the happy courtroom. All of us then paraded into the courtyard, smiling, laughing, crying. The crowd yelled and chanted as we emerged. A number of us hoisted our defense counsels on our shoulders, which was no easy task in the case of Issy Maisels, for he was such a large man. Flashbulbs were popping all around us. We looked around for friends, wives, relatives. Winnie had come up and I hugged her in joy, though I knew that while I might be free for this moment, I would not be able to savor that freedom. When we were all outside together, the Treason Trialists and the crowd all began to sing
“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.”

After more than four years in court and dozens of prosecutors, thousands of documents and tens of thousands of pages of testimony, the state had failed in its mission. The verdict was an embarrassment to the government, both at home and abroad. Yet the result only embittered the state against us even further. The lesson they took away was not that we had legitimate grievances but that they needed to be far more ruthless.

I did not regard the verdict as a vindication of the legal system or evidence that a black man could get a fair trial in a white man’s court. It was the right verdict and a just one, but it was largely as a result of a superior defense team and the fair-mindedness of the panel of these particular judges.

The court system, however, was perhaps the only place in South Africa where an African could possibly receive a fair hearing and where the role of law might still apply. This was particularly true in courts presided over by enlightened judges who had been appointed by the United Party. Many of these men still stood by the rule of law.

As a student, I had been taught that South Africa was a place where the rule of law was paramount and applied to all persons, regardless of their social status or official position. I sincerely believed this and planned my life based on that assumption. But my career as a lawyer and activist removed the scales from my eyes. I saw that there was a wide difference between what I had been taught in the lecture room and what I learned in the courtroom. I went from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling class to shape society in a way favorable to itself. I never expected justice in court, however much I fought for it, and though I sometimes received it.

In the case of the Treason Trial, the three judges rose above their prejudices, their education, and their background. There is a streak of goodness in men that can be buried or hidden and then emerge unexpectedly. Justice Rumpff, with his aloof manner, gave the impression throughout the proceedings that he shared the point of view of the ruling white minority. Yet in the end, an essential fairness dominated his judgment. Kennedy was less conservative than his colleagues and seemed attracted by the idea of equality. Once, for example, he and Duma Nokwe flew on the same plane from Durban to Johannesburg, and when the airline bus to town refused to take Duma, Kennedy refused to ride in it as well. Judge Bekker always struck me as open-minded and seemed aware that the accused before him had suffered a great deal at the hands of the state. I commended these three men as individuals, not as representatives of the court or of the state or even of their race, but as exemplars of human decency under adversity.