day that affected them. These helped him to understand the daily challenges urban black people were facing. He took particular interest in the behaviour of police and the way they treated the black people of Pimville, especially those who were trading in African traditional beer, umqombothi. He thought even common-law criminals were treated better than those found to be selling African traditional beer or not in possession of ‘dompasses’, the identity document meant for blacks through which the government controlled almost their entire lives. He observed that African traditional beer was one of the most popular commodities that black people sold and derived income from in Pimville. This had led the nearby Kliptown police station to have a special command under a man known to the residents of Pimville as Semomane, a white policeman who took no nonsense from African traditional beer traders. ‘Everyone from the very young to the very old knew him.’ Residents of Pimville had a way of dealing with Semomane and the ruthless squad of police he commanded. They knew that every time he conducted a raid with his men he would use the only entrance to the township. The first resident to see him and his squad as they entered the township would scream ‘Khukhukhu!’ This was the community’s signal to alert one another of the arrival of Semomane and his team. The first residents to hear the signal would echo the cry and the signal would be transmitted like that throughout the township. It was a sign to say ‘police are here!’ and it was understood by all in Pimville.
People also creatively hid their traditional beer from the police. They would dig trenches outside their yards, and cover beer containers neatly with grass. If the beer was discovered outside the yards the only thing the police could do was to destroy it – they could not make any arrest as it was difficult to link it to anyone. But Semomane knew almost everyone in the township and their tricks. He would hunt for the trenches and destroy the beer.
The misery of life in the township raised Andrew’s political consciousness. His first active participation in politics, however, came through a rather docile structure that he formed with Moorosi in Pimville, early in 1944. It was called the Pimville Students and Ex-Students League. Moorosi became the chairman and organiser, a lad by the name of Andries Mazibuko became the secretary, and Andrew was its first deputy secretary. The structure focused on lecturing about good behaviour for young people, respect for adults and how youth could be useful in the community. It organised youth camps and education workshops on local politics. Mild as it was, it was a stepping stone for Andrew towards the ladder that would take him to the heights of political activism.
Soon after this structure was established, Andrew approached his cousin, Eric Ntjane, to help him establish a branch of the organisation at St Peter’s. Ntjane was younger than Andrew but, like many others, ahead of him at school. Ntjane suggested that they approach Tambo for advice. Andrew still regarded Tambo as a teacher more than anything else, although Tambo was gaining respect as the leader of the newly formed ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and associating with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede and Walter Sisulu, some of the rising young political leaders of the time. Ntjane and other students, ahead of Andrew’s still maturing worldview, already regarded Tambo as a political activist and leader. When Andrew and Ntjane approached Tambo he discouraged them from going ahead with the formation of the branch of their organisation at school and warned that this would not go well with Darling. ‘Sdakwa won’t like it,’ he said. ‘It would later appear as if Tambo was protecting his newly formed ANCYL’s programme, as he later spearheaded the formation of its branch at the school,’ said Andrew years later. The next step for Andrew was to join the Young Communist League (YCL) in Pimville with other youths in the township, including Robert Mahlangeni, Archie Sibeko, Simon Thomas and another whom he would remember only as Morgan. Simon Thomas, whom he would proudly describe as ‘a handsome coloured boy who spoke fluent Sotho’, had come from Alexandra.
With these young minds, Andrew would embrace the communist ideology and entrench it in others after him. His association with the YCL changed him completely and laid the foundation for his future political views and activism. In one of the many YCL meetings he attended he met a young woman, Ruth First, who was a student at the University of the Witwatersrand and one of the prominent leaders of the YCL. She first caught his interest after he learned that she was the daughter of Jewish Latvian parents fleeing anti-semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, and he would later learn that her father Julius was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the mother body of the YCL. ‘I saw her as a pretty and bright girl and respected her way of putting a message across to young communists.’ The Immorality Act of 1927 prohibiting sexual relations between whites and Africans prevented young black men from regarding young white women in any way other than a leader – and the young men of the YCL, including Andrew, looked upon her as their leader and nothing else.
Ruth First was to play a major role in moulding Andrew into a committed communist, entrenching the ideology through which he would seek freedom for his people. He held several meetings with her and met many other communists of the time. One was Joe Slovo, a young man his own age. Unlike Ruth First (who was born in Johannesburg), Slovo had been born in the village of Obeliai, in Lithuania, to parents who had been forced out of their ancestral land by anti-semitism and had fled to South Africa when he was eight years old (at the same time as Andrew was seeing a town for the first time in his life). Although he was the same age as Andrew, Slovo was working at the time, having completed his studies. Slovo was close to Ruth First, whom he later married, but they were not dating at that time – it was politics rather than romance that took centre stage at their meetings. It appeared that the two were linked by the YCL and its ideology more than anything else.
It was interaction with Ruth First, more than with Slovo, that mattered most to Andrew. In his relationship with her, Andrew found the value of freedom and contrasted it with the evil of racial segregation and discrimination. In his own words, he proclaimed that from the moment he shared life with the young white communists associated with Ruth First he felt liberated. He recalled things that happened during the time which made him feel like a free man. The mere fact that he could call his white comrades by their first names was amazing – blacks wouldn’t dare call white people by their first names. ‘Baas’ or ‘missis’ were commonly used to refer to white males and females – even their young children could not be called by their names but, rather, as ‘klein baas’ or ‘klein missis’. The fact that when visiting Ruth First at her Wits University campus residence he was served tea by a white woman meant a lot to him. Black women like his mother, who were called ‘girls’, served their white ‘masters’ tea, while calling them ‘baas’ and ‘misses’. Hugging his white male and female comrades when exchanging greetings heartened him. ‘I saw that racial segregation, which I had experienced throughout my life, was a curse on the South African nation and I was more than motivated to fight it.’
As part of the activities of the YCL, Andrew frequented the offices of the organisation, which were manned by Elsa Watts as the administrative officer. She was the sister of Hilda Watts, who would later marry Rusty Bernstein, another communist who would be very close to Andrew. Not everything was rosy, though, between Andrew and Ruth First. As time went on, he observed, rightly or wrongly, that she favoured Simon Thomas over him and other comrades from Pimville, and began to think that it was because he was coloured. However, it did not dampen his liking for her, or create bad blood between him and Simon Thomas. He focused on the bigger picture, the political activism and driving the communist ideology.
Throughout his secondary school days, Andrew belonged to the YCL. Later, in 1944, Tambo established a branch of the ANCYL at St Peter’s by bringing together students such as Andrew, Joe Matthews, Nokwe, Fats Ngakane and Henry Makgothi. Joe Matthews served as its branch chairman and subsequently became chairman of the ANCYL in Rosettenville. Andrew became an ordinary member of the ANCYL St Peter’s branch while continuing his active membership of the YCL in the Pimville ‘cell’, as branches of the YCL were called. He opted not to join the Rosettenville branch as he didn’t stay there.
During 1944 Andrew carefully observed the activities of Mpanza and his Sofasonke Party and although he did not like Mpanza’s leadership style (Mpanza often pushed his own interests at the expense of the people he led),
