.
half years the pony post was still going strong but it wasn’t exactly surreptitious then! Our Christmas cards went by pony post. We signed Christmas cards for special people; we all had to sign each card and so we passed them solemnly along to each other, a dozen at a time, on our human assembly line. It was an important task and demanded our serious attention. Treason? Well, we had treason all the year round, but Christmas only comes but once.
In February 1960, ‘Jurist’ wrote in New Age:
What some of the accused have listened to during this period has occupied quite a sizeable part of their vocabulary. You just have to travel with them to and from Pretoria, be among them at tea intervals or during lunch and adjournments, to get to know how much legal language is freely and effortlessly spoken.
The other day one accused was quarrelling with another for having failed to fulfil an appointment. After telling the other how disgusted he was, he went on to question his friend.
Questioner: You kept me waiting there for hours before I could decide to go, only to find these people gone. What the hell, why did you fail to keep our appointment?
Answer: I’m sorry, man, I just could not make it. I’m really sorry.
Questioner: Really sorry. It’s just an excuse. It’s not the first time you have failed.
Answer: That may be so. But does that carry your case any further?
Questioner: Well, I am still laying a foundation.
Answer: OK, carry on.
Questioner: As your Lordship pleases!
In March 1960, we celebrated the 100th day of the treason trial. Our friend, Mrs Pillay, who provided us with morning coffee throughout the trial, brought us a special birthday cake, and I wrote in the Indian Congress Bulletin of the 100 days that had passed:
A 100 days on trial! As the months and years go past, we lose track of the days and it comes almost as a shock to discover that the Crown had made its century – its case has taken already a 100 days and it is not yet over. But it is drawing to a close, unbelievably. The documents have been handed in. Professor Murray has given his evidence and has been cross-examined brilliantly by Advocate Maisels and now the police witnesses have finished their evidence, and during the past weeks we have lived again the days of the Drill Hall when Vernon Berrangé dealt with the police witnesses in a way that warmed our hearts. We have seen the same faces, we have recognised the same attitudes, we have heard the same replies, only it is now “My Lords” and no longer “Your Worship”.
Highlight of this period was the street collection and the application made by the Defence for the Court adjournment so that the accused could collect. The break was given – not for the collection but on account of “the exhaustion of the accused” – and we rode joyfully, if uncomfortably, back to Johannesburg to throw our weight into the collection, which smashed all our records with the astounding total of £1 670.
And a story has come back that has touched our hearts, the story of the old African woman, who asked the shop to take back her 3d worth of tea so that she could put her tickey in the collection box.
And so the days pass. We sit, we listen to the police reporters; for a few days we heard the tape recordings of which we had been totally ignorant when we spoke. We heard once again “Afrika” which several of us have not heard for so long. Our thoughts went back to those days, to the crowded halls and squares. Once the tape recorder played “Nkosi Sikelele” and we heard the voices of our people, but it was only for a short while and then it was cut off again, and we were once more sitting in the Old Synagogue, facing the three red-robed judges in whose hands our destiny lies.
The end of the trial is in sight – after more than three years. We do not know what the end will be nor when it will be, nor if others will come after us, to sit on those same wooden benches, to ride in that same green bus, to listen, as we have listened to thousands of documents and speeches, to many hours of legal arguments. We have lived in a sealed circle, the 30 of us, we have our own language, our own jokes, our own games. Who will ever forget the yard of the Court at lunch time, with the accused in little groups playing cards, the “Scrabble” school, others sitting in serious discussions until the Sergeant calls us and we file once more into the Court? Can we really imagine the day when that circle will be broken? And yet that day is coming ever nearer, the day that will see the end of the timeless trial, the day that will be so vitally important for all those who strive for freedom, for it is not ourselves, but our ideals, our very organisations, our struggle itself, that is on trial.
I did not know then that it would be another year before the trial would end.
“I call Albert John Luthuli!” Chief Luthuli walked with simple dignity to the witness box. His ordeal was to be immense. A witness from 20 March to 2 June 1960, appearing on 26 different days, the time must have seemed interminable to him. Brought from Durban by special relaxation of the banning order, which had confined him to the Tugela district in Natal for two years, he had only been in the witness box for a week and a day when the post-Sharpeville Emergency was proclaimed. He had burnt his pass the Saturday before, giving the lead to his people in the tense days that followed. Arrested in the first Emergency swoop, he was assaulted by a prison warder; his hat fell to the floor and as he bent to pick it up he was hit twice on the head and across the face. He already suffered from serious high blood pressure, and had almost miraculously recovered from a dangerous thrombosis only a few years previously, but he too was subjected to the harsh brutal treatment customarily meted out to African prisoners.
Our Chief was not to resume his evidence until a month later, after the judgement of the Court that the trial must go on, and after our decision to cancel the mandate of our Counsel during the Emergency. Then he returned, a very sick man, allowed to be in the witness box for only a few hours every day. Judge Rumpff treated him with great consideration, anxious to avoid any undue strain, but he had to undergo the most gruelling cross-examination by Advocate Trengove. We marvelled at his endurance and patience, his dignified self-control in the face of these sinister implications and insinuations.
A devout and practising Christian, Chief Luthuli had been a delegate from the Christian Council in South Africa to the International Missionary Conference in Madras in 1938, and in 1948 had accepted an invitation to tour the USA, lecturing on Christian Missions in Africa. Originally a teacher by profession, he had taken an interest in South African affairs, particularly from the time that he had been elected Chief of his tribe, the Abasemakholweni in the Umvoti Reserve, in the heart of the Natal sugar country. But when, in 1952, he became a recognised leader of the African National Congress, which he had joined in 1945, he was offered a choice by the Secretary for Native Affairs to remain the Chief of his tribe or to be the leader of the African National Congress. He replied that he could see no conflict between the two, and was thereafter deposed. But he remains Chief Luthuli to his people.
. . . With a full sense of responsibility and a clear conviction I decided to remain in the struggle for extending democratic rights and responsibilities to all sections of the South African community. I have embraced non-violent and passive resistance techniques in fighting for freedom, because I am convinced it is the only non-revolutionary, legitimate and humane way that could be used by people denied, as we are, effective means to further aspiration. The wisdom or foolishness of this decision I place in the hands of the Almighty. What the future has in store for me I do not know; it might be ridicule, imprisonment, concentration camp, flogging, banishment and even death . . .
Insofar as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that 30 years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door? Has there been any reciprocal tolerance or moderation from the government, be it Nationalist or United Party? No! On the contrary, the past 30 years have seen the greatest number of laws restricting our rights and progress until today we have reached the stage where we have almost no rights at all; no adequate land for our occupation, our only assets – cattle – dwindling, no security of homes, no decent and remunerative employment, more restrictions to freedom of movement through passes, curfew regulation, influx control measures; in short, we have witnessed