We, the People. Albie Sachs
security officer who organised the placing of the bomb in my car]! I haven’t seen him for almost a year. He’s beaming as he comes up to me, absolutely elated. And we get into a corner to be away from the music. Excitedly he tells me: ‘I went to the Truth Commission, and I spoke to Bobby (it was Bobby Singh), and Sue (Sue Rabkin), and Farouk (Farouk Mahomed) and I told them everything I knew. And that you said maybe, one day’. And I said, ‘Henri, I’ve only got your face to tell me that what you’re saying is the truth’. And I put out my hand, and I shook his hand. He went away absolutely beaming. And I almost fainted. And that should be the end of my story. But the truth doesn’t end at any particular point.
I heard afterwards that he had been invited to the party given by film people interviewing him as one of the few soldiers who had gone to the Truth Commission. He was enjoying himself enormously, I was told, when suddenly he left, went home and cried for two weeks. And that moved me.
Henri is not my friend. I won’t phone him up and say, let’s have a drink or go to a movie together. But if I’m sitting in a bus and Henri sits down next to me, I’ll say, ‘Oh Henri, how are you getting on?’ Somehow, this whole process enabled us to live together in the same country. We can acknowledge each other and feel some kind of connection. And to that extent I feel that the Truth Commission liberated me from the lurking mystery of that abstract thing, ‘the enemy’, that had tried to kill me. And now, it’s this guy, Henri, who’s struggling to get on with his life in the new South Africa. And somehow I feel just a little bit stronger in myself, thanks to the Truth Commission; just a little bit better and more human than I’d been before.
Soft Vengeance
JOURNAL OF THE AFRICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION [USA] | VOLUME 8, NUMBER 2 WINTER/SPRING | 2014
The three Ls: Literature, Liberation, Law. I’m going to add a fourth L. OK – and a fifth L: Love and Life. I’m going to tell you a story about a story about a story. And just to give you a little advance notice, there will be two diversions involving two great Americans who influenced my life. I’m going to give you their initials to see if you can anticipate. The one is PR, and the other is HW.
The story about the story about the story:
After the bomb, it took me some time to get better. I was flown to England. I travelled first class for the first time in my life, but I was unconscious. I ended up in a London hospital, which was quite amusing because I was under an assumed name, no one was to know where I was, so I would say I was in a London hospital but would refuse to give its name. Its name? The London Hospital!
And I got better. I learned to sit up. On a marvellous day after about six weeks – my heel had been shattered, and I was as nervous as anything – the physiotherapist says, ‘Now you’re going to stand’. I’m on the edge of the bed, I move forward – that moment of courage when you thrust through your fear. I’m on my feet, and I see my head in a mirror in front of me – shaven, scarred, bandaged, looking very, very serious – going up, and I see my head coming down again. Slowly, he’s back! Look, Mummy, I can stand! That same sense of doing it on your own for the first time as a little child. And then to walk. And I’m getting better.
But there were times early in the morning when I’d wake up feeling very alone. The painkillers are wearing off and I’m totally alone: no hospital people around, no cheerful nurses, and I feel isolated and a little bit sore. And I would be singing to myself [deepens voice, sings], ‘It’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer’. And this is where the first great American comes in – PR.
Paul Robeson. So, secular, secular, secular Albie is singing what used to be called a ‘negro spiritual’ from Paul Robeson. Robeson was our hero in South Africa. He had for us that same legendary status that Mandela has in the United States. And it wasn’t just that he was tall and imposing and impressed people. There was something about his moral stature and his capacity for embracing everybody. So similar. We adored Paul Robeson in South Africa. And it’s a bit off, you know, that you don’t all even know who Paul Robeson was. It kind of amazes me, you know? And he had a very direct influence on our struggle. I discovered afterwards that when Professor ZK Matthews was studying at the Theological College in New York, he met with Paul Robeson and Paul Robeson said to him, ‘You people in the ANC, the anti-apartheid struggle, are spending so much time denouncing apartheid – quite right. But what about projecting your vision of a future free South Africa?’ And, I was told that the idea of the Freedom Charter, which ultimately became the guiding light of the struggle in South Africa, was born in New York during this discussion between Paul Robeson and Professor ZK Matthews, who went on to become the first African head of Fort Hare University.
‘It’s not my brother or my sister, but it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer’. I thought I would get a few more voices to join in.
Now, in the youth movement I belonged to I had quite a deep bass voice, so I could sing the Paul Robeson songs. One of the songs I had learned was the Chinese national anthem. ‘Arise! You who refuse to be bond slaves’. And what’s amusing is we had the vice-president of the Chinese Supreme Court visiting the Constitutional Court in South Africa a few years ago, and his delegation was sitting on one side of the table – very, very serious. We were sitting on the other side of the table – very, very serious – and I suddenly sang, ‘Arise!’ and they looked at me in astonishment. They realised I was singing the anthem, big smiles came out and we got on quite marvellously afterwards.
The nurses would come down – 6, 6:30. Cheerful, my spirits were going up again – get through the day. And then one day, I got a note from my comrade, Bobby Naidoo, who could also have been a victim of the bomb in Maputo – ten years on Robben Island he had been.
‘Dear Comrade Albie, we will avenge you!’ And I think, ‘Bobby, what do you mean? Are we going to cut off their arms? Blind them in one eye? What kind of country would we be living in?’ And I say to myself, ‘If we get democracy in South Africa, if we get freedom and equality and justice for everyone, that will be my soft vengeance. Roses and lilies will grow out of my arm’.
And a couple of weeks later, somebody came to me very excited, ‘Have you heard? They’ve captured one of the persons who put the bomb in your car, Albie’. And I think to myself, ‘If he’s put on trial, and if the evidence is insufficient to prove that he actually did it and he is acquitted, that will be my soft vengeance’. Because that meant living under the rule of law, and that is much more important than one rascal getting sent to jail.
I don’t know if it’s all of us South Africans, but this South African has spent a lot of time turning the negativity of disaster into the positivity of hope. So I’m starting to begin to think – I wrote a book about my jail experience, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, and I wrote a second book about my experience again in solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, torture, Stephanie on Trial. I had to write another book. And the ideas were slowly beginning to shape themselves into a narrative, and I knew what the title of the book would be: The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter.
And in fact the opportunity, my first chance to write it, came after I got out of the hospital. Several months later, I was at Columbia University in New York – the same university where Robeson had been – and I wondered, ‘Can I do it?’
I’ve just got my left hand now, but computers, personal computers are coming in. I’m nervous as anything. I type out a couple of pages, and I know. I can do it. I can do it!
And so the manuscript of Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter was typed out high up in a flat on – I forget – the thirteenth, fourteenth floor or something – in a building near Columbia University. Title page: Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. We’re still in exile, but now it’s a time for envisaging and imagining a new South Africa.
First came imagining the soft vengeance, then living the soft vengeance. And we return from exile.