If This Be Treason. Helen Joseph
quotations from President Wilson, from President Lincoln, from Dr Malan, and even from his own writings had been put to him, and he had said that they were the sort of thing a Communist would say or could be expected to say. We remembered that too, and laughed to ourselves at the memory, as Advocate Kentridge continued wringing further concessions from the Crown’s expert on Communist doctrine.
At last, after 32 days in the witness box, the ordeal was over. Professor Andrew Murray stepped down and made his way out of the court.
Two hundred and ten other Crown witnesses were called, of whom some 200 were members of the Special Branch. For the accused, this had a special significance. It is the Special Branch detectives who dog our steps, who arrested us at dawn for high treason, and later in the dead of the night, with thousands of others, for detention under Emergency regulations. It is they who ransack and raid our houses, invading the innermost privacy of our homes. It is they who force their way into our conferences, marching arrogantly at the head of a troop of armed police, or who secretly, stealthily, wire our conference halls. It is the Special Branch who attend all our public meetings, scribbling in their little notebooks, who photograph us, who take our car numbers and intimidate our friends, who prowl up and down outside our homes. It is they who bring banning orders.
We execrate the Special Branch; they are the objects of our bitterest contempt and loathing. In direct relationship with us as individuals, it can be conceded that generally they behave with some degree of courtesy, avoiding the brutal methods of the uniformed police, but this does not modify our attitude towards these men, who spy on us and our organisations, and who hide in cupboards and take notes. Today their official title is the Security Branch of the Police, but to us they will always be known as the ‘Special Branch’.
The first time that I was ever subjected to a raid by the Special Branch was in 1954; they came at 7.30 in the morning (now they come before dawn) and I was still in my dressing gown; I had been ill. I was shown the warrant and I could do nothing but allow them in. I remember how they searched the house, prying into all my papers, reading my very private letters despite my protest. Now I destroy all my personal letters as soon as I get them so that the words of those dear to me shall not be read by such men. When they took their leave, after two hours, I was still shocked. My whole life seemed violated. I felt soiled. Today I shrug my shoulders and watch in silence.
In the witness box, they made a sorry showing. We had listened in the Drill Hall for months to their stumbling efforts to read their notes, their ludicrous reports of the speeches of hundreds of Congressmen and women. It became immediately clear that only the shorthand writers were able to take down adequate notes, and of these, there were not more than four or five in the whole Special Branch. At the Preparatory Examination there were only three or four, and at the trial we observed with great interest that one of these was no longer in the police force at all. This was Schoeman, who had admitted in the Drill Hall that as a detective constable of the Special Branch he had hidden behind a cupboard on more than one occasion to record speeches at delegates’ conferences, to which he knew he would not be admitted. Today, of course, the police have new powers and can invade any conference.
We speculated with much interest about Schoeman. Had he been dismissed by the Special Branch because he had admitted to the cupboard incident? Or had he himself decided that there were other ways of making a living?
As far as the trial was concerned, we had no objection to the evidence of the shorthand writers, for their recording was accurate; we had no need to fear accuracy. Indeed, Counsel stressed in argument that the true reports of our speeches confirmed our non-violent policy. But without exception, the longhand writers, white and non-white, rendered themselves objects of scorn. They were not qualified reporters and their garbled, inadequate reports drew scathing comment from the Judge President even during the trial. He said he felt that the State had employed reporters to take down speeches at meetings for a long time, and presumably the State had in mind that some action would be taken.
“Sometimes the State employs shorthand writers, sometimes recording machines, sometimes Africans are sent who may or may not be qualified. Sometimes they are not qualified; I am not going to make people employed by the State qualified if they are not qualified.”
Yet it was to their evidence that the Court had to listen for so many weeks. The Crown wanted us to be judged by what they said we said.
We listened with satisfaction to Vernon and Bram mowing down the police reporters. It was not only that they were the hated Special Branch detectives; it was what they had done to our speeches, to the aims and the principles we had expressed. Some admitted that they had gone to the meetings to write down what they were told to look out for; others that they only wrote down what they thought important; most admitted they could not get down everything they heard; a few were stubborn and destroyed themselves.
During those years it was rare for our speakers to use prepared notes, and some of the speeches that were being so mangled and maimed in court had been made all of seven years ago – and none less than four. But we knew what our speakers used to say; and it wasn’t this garbled gibberish, this double-Dutch, this blood-and-thunder nonsense. Sometimes we became angry as we listened, but Vernon and Bram gave us our revenge. One after another the detectives left the witness box, humbled and humiliated.
So much for the police evidence of what we had said at our meetings. But many hours, days, weeks, of the trial were taken up with the laborious evidence of these longhand writers. Yet the Preparatory Examination had already fully exposed the quality of this evidence, and still the Crown had the effrontery to bring such witnesses to this trial, where 30 people faced a capital charge.
The judges, the Prosecution, the Defence, these were the people who made up our world at court; a world almost unbearably tedious. Lack of occupation was the worst aspect. It wasn’t so much that we were bored, but sheer immobility was a strain. It was an effort to go on listening; often it was an effort to hear what was being said. We used to say that we could be hanged “for what we didn’t say, for what we didn’t do – and now for what we can’t hear!”
True, we used to read, sometimes, some of us, but mostly, when we couldn’t hear, or were too tired to listen, we slept. Only those who had had to do it can ever know what it meant to travel almost a hundred kilometres a day for so long, five or six hours a day in a bone-breaking, rickety, noisy bus. Leaving home before six every morning, the accused were physically exhausted throughout the trial. Mondays were not so bad, but by Friday we were all utterly worn out. Those who were clinging on to some sort of job tried to do a full day’s work, or part of a day, in addition to going to court, and worked frantically at weekends. Was it any wonder that we slept? Most days the time dragged unbearably; I would look at the clock and then tell myself “I won’t look again!” But five minutes later I would be turning my head.
I knew every pillar, every window of that court; I knew just when the sun came in the mornings in the great glassed dome overhead. I used to gaze at the Union Coat of Arms, far above the judges’ heads: Ex Unitate Vires – Strength from Unity. I used to think how true it was, and wonder at the hypocrisy of a land which, by apartheid, denied this very thing.
Each year brought its sorrow. In October 1959, Lionel Forman died at the age of 32, as courageously as he had lived. In the last few hours before the operation he wrote to his wife “I’m going in without the slightest fear of death, and if I die it will mean nothing at all, it will not hurt me, except in the thought that it will hurt you . . . Tell the Treason Court we’ll achieve freedom in the lifetime of our children and yours, whether they like it or not . . . Tell the children they must have love for their fellow men, they must exorcise all race prejudice and understand why it is abominable . . .” And so passed a great fighter for freedom and justice for all mankind.
Ida Mtwana was the next to go. A gallant veteran leader, she died in March 1960 before we were arrested under the Emergency regulations, and the African women said that she had gone to Heaven to be there to welcome those who had died so tragically in the Sharpeville massacre.
Attending the Treason Trial became a way of life; we spoke our own language. There was the pony post! I don’t know now who called it that – it dated from the Drill Hall days, when we first, very surreptitiously, began passing