If This Be Treason. Helen Joseph
my head,” said Robert Resha, “is now over. But that does not mean that we have achieved our freedom. We still have to struggle as we did before to bring about peace and harmony between all people in South Africa.”
Undaunted by the failure of the treason charge, the Nationalist government seeks new ways, new powers to crush its opponents. Each year brings new repressive legislation, each year the patience and discipline of the non-white people is stretched almost to breaking point. The African National Congress was cleared of the charge of high treason; it was proved that it had a non-violent policy; yet a year before the end of the trial it was declared an unlawful organisation by a Special Act of Parliament. Threats are still being uttered, from time to time, that other Congress organisations will be outlawed.
1961 saw a new form of intimidation, a further cynical flouting of the rule of law. Powers have been given to the police to hold a person without bail for twelve days, while arrest and imprisonment on charges later withdrawn have become the order of the day, a common feature of Nationalist action against their opponents. It is indeed a convenient way of disposing of unwelcome opposition.
1961 saw, too, the call up of military units to intimidate the struggling people and to create an atmosphere of panic and emergency at the time of the Congress stay-at-home in protest against the Verwoerd Republic. The stay-at-home was announced as peaceful and non-violent, but it was met with this nationwide threat of military force.
1962 will doubtless see further inroads upon civil liberties, upon fundamental human rights. There is already a foreshadowing of “house arrests” from 8 pm to 5 am, and no doubt the present flood of banning orders will continue, denying the right of freedom of movement and association.
The Treason Trial was only one part of the whole pattern of repression, and it was a part that came adrift. Instead of destroying 156 men and women, and turning them from their chosen path of struggle for the freedom of their people and their country, it resulted only in the strengthening of their resolve and drew the limelight of world opinion onto this bitter farce played out upon the South African stage.
This Trial is Out of Date
Tuesday, 29 March 1960. As we sat in court, listening to the cross-examination of Chief Luthuli, our thoughts turned to what was going on outside during those troubled days. Duma Nokwe, advocate and Accused Number 16, turned round and muttered to me “This trial is out of date.” I thought that he was right, for it was already more than four years since we had been arrested, and so much had happened since then – more especially in the last weeks, when the horrible massacre of Sharpeville had shaken the whole world: 66 people dead, shot by the police, while we had to sit immobilised and inactive in court, day after day, year after year.
The month of March had seen mass activity on an almost unprecedented scale. The African National Congress fixed 31 March as anti-Pass Day; then Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress made a dramatic announcement calling on Africans throughout the country to walk to the police stations on 21 March and offer themselves for arrest until pass laws have been abolished. Sharpeville followed these demonstrations, and the African National Congress had now called for a mighty demonstration, a stoppage of work in protest against the ghastly Sharpeville massacre. The government seemed to be on the run and pass laws were suspended. Chief Luthuli had burnt his pass. All over the townships, all over the Union, passes were being burnt. In Parliament there was a Bill to outlaw the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress – who knew what other organisations might follow? Was this a time to sit in court, passively listening to this trial which we were so sick of? This trial was out of date indeed.
“Silence in court” – we heard that shout for the first time in 1956 when the prison van took 156 of us from gaol to the bare barn of the Drill Hall, where we were to sit for the fourteen months of our Preparatory Examination.
But by January 1958 the Examination was over. Ninety-two of the accused were committed for trial on a charge of high treason; we were taken back again to the great cell beneath the magistrate’s court where we had all met together in December 1956. It took four hours for our bail to be arranged and then we were free again, to await the trial itself. We scattered all over the Union, to our homes, to our jobs – the few who still had them. The future looked uncertain; we didn’t know when the trial would be – nor where. There had been a rumour that it might be moved to Pretoria, but we just didn’t believe that could happen.
It was not a happy prospect for most of the accused. Months of unemployment lay ahead. Many were financially crippled already; during the long months in the Drill Hall, debts had piled up, instalments had fallen into arrears. It did not seem as though the trial itself would even begin for some months, and we could not think of its end. Would we have believed it if we had been told that three years later we should still be on trial?
Doctors, lawyers, factory workers, clerks, trade union officials, labourers; our walks of life were many and varied. The accused who lived in Johannesburg were the most fortunate; we had to face no separation from our families; a few of us could carry on working, for we had kept our jobs during the long months in the Drill Hall. But 41of those committed for trial came from afar, from 600, a thousand miles away.
There were cheerful farewells at the station. “See you at the trial!” we shouted as the trains pulled out, and the dreary platforms echoed to the shouts of “Afrika!” For the accused were going home again, home to their wives, their children – for how long? We did not know. But we all knew that we must use these months to plan for the future – which wasn’t really a future. It was six months before we met again; six months of struggle and anxiety. Each month more of the accused were compelled to come to the Defence Fund for assistance. God alone knows how some of them held out as long as they did.
On 1 August 1958, 91 of us heard it again, “Silence in court!” – when the trial opened in Pretoria, 57 kilometres from Johannesburg. Not one of us lived in Pretoria; for those of us who came from other parts of the Union there were no relatives there to offer kindly homes; only fifteen of the 91 of us had managed to find any sort of accommodation. We were bitter about this cruel caprice of the Minister of Justice. There could be no reason to set the trial in Pretoria, except the deliberate intention of separating us from the mass of our supporters and from our friends.
It spelt disaster for almost all of those who had managed to keep their jobs – five hours a day to be spent in travel, five hours sitting in a bus – hours that might have been spent earning money to pay the rent, to buy food and clothes for the children, to give a man some feeling of independence, to ease the agony of being a burden on the family. It cost the government £500 a month to run that bus, but it cost the accused twice as much, in the money they couldn’t earn. “The public safety is more important than the convenience of the accused,” said Pirow.
So to Pretoria we went – first 92 and then 30. The bus became a very important part of the lives of the accused, for we spent nearly as much time in it as we did in Court. We travelled nearly 37 000 kilometres in it – a girdle around the earth – imagine going round the world in a lumbering jolting bus, for this was no luxury safari motor coach. It was an ordinary bus of the kind that serves the non-European townships, the seats hard slats of wood (until drastic protest brought some scanty cushions).
Once, in January 1959, the bus failed to arrive in Pretoria for the opening of the trial of the 30 accused. The judges waited, Counsel waited, the public and the international observers waited at the Special Court – and the 21 accused who lived in Johannesburg waited too. Someone had blundered. After two hours came a gaol van; we looked at it scornfully: “Why should we ride in such a thing? We are not prisoners!” Only after consulting our Counsel on the telephone as to whether it would be proper for us to ride in such a conveyance did we graciously agree – on condition that we were not locked in! Harassed policemen drove us out of Johannesburg, but something was wrong. The engine spluttered and petered out. To the amazement of the local residents, we climbed out. They had never seen gaol-van passengers calmly standing around outside it while the police escort buried their heads under the bonnet. We started again, but after another few miles it broke down completely. More delay, until another police van was brought. We telephoned dutifully to our waiting Counsel to report on lack of progress.