He described fund-raising efforts for the Anti-Pass Campaign and added, “what a joy it is to be alive in these days when history is being made all around us.” A few months later he wrote again, enquiring what plans were being developed by the ANC “to clamp down on Advisory Boards, Councils, and individual chiefs?” His concern went beyond the details:
Writing a letter like this I feel I must be frank. Our fears here are that we may work up the people only to find that the rest of the country does not attach much significance to its resolutions. Country people have a way of being honest. We have already lost face in the Anti-Pass Campaign which was just dropped when we were working up the people, and that was immediately seized on by the gradualists as one of these “paper fires” which do not last . . .6
It must have been a source of frustration that, for all his clear-headed urgings, there was negligible response on the part of the urban leadership of the ANC.
In 1953, Govan took up another teaching post – in Ladysmith, Natal. Once again, he was dismissed for political activities, including his opposition to the Bantu Education Act and his efforts at organisation amongst local coal-miners. While he was still in Ladysmith, he was approached by Fred Carneson and Ivan Schermbrucker in 1954 with the suggestion that he move to Port Elizabeth as local editor and office manager of the newspaper New Age.7 He did so – and thus commenced a decade of intensive, unremitting political activism.
Time and again, when interviewing Govan Mbeki about his years in Port Elizabeth, one is struck by how hard he drove himself. In the first place he was a full-time journalist, running the New Age office, attending meetings and fund-raising events and then filing news stories through to the head office in Cape Town. He also wrote more analytical and theoretical pieces for the left-wing periodicals Liberation and Fighting Talk. In particular, he wrote a major series on the Transkei (which was subsequently incorporated into his best-known book, The Peasants’ Revolt) for Liberation, then edited by Michael Harmel. As these articles had not been commissioned, Govan worked on them in what spare time he had: “On Sundays I would come and write what I could – in the afternoon. Sunday after Sunday. Sunday after Sunday.”
Secondly, he was deeply involved in organisational politics in Port Elizabeth. The M-Plan, proposed by Nelson Mandela in response to the state’s crackdown after the 1952 Defiance Campaign, sought to equip the ANC to run at least some of its activities beyond surveillance, to establish certain underground structures and practices. The only urban area in which real progress was made towards underground politics before the ANC was banned was Port Elizabeth. From 1953 to 1956, meetings of more than ten Africans were banned in New Brighton (the municipal “location”) – and so the ANC held its meetings in Korsten and elsewhere. But in 1956, the ban was extended to the entire magisterial district of Port Elizabeth: “Now it was during this time, 1956 to 1960,” recalls Govan, “that we perfected methods of working underground.” Almost all organisation work was done at night. A task dear to Govan’s own heart was political education: with ANC membership in Port Elizabeth growing rapidly, he set up scores and scores of study groups. He also wrote, cyclostyled and distributed a booklet of about fifty pages, in Xhosa, outlining the aims and politics of the movement.
Thirdly, his urban base did not deflect Govan from his long-standing involvement in rural politics. The Port Elizabeth ANC established links with smaller branches in Ciskei villages like Peddie and Middledrift, particularly through organising in migrant hostels. Govan also maintained an active interest in the Transkei, hammering away in New Age against the Bantu Authorities system – precursor to Bantustan “independence”. In 1960 (after he had been detained during the State of Emergency) Govan received an invitation to visit Pondoland. A militant popular protest movement had developed there against chiefs who supported the Bantu Authorities, and the young ANC activist Anderson Ganyile now sought Govan’s assistance. To reach Bizana meant slipping through a heavy police presence in Pondoland; and Govan achieved this disguised as a chauffeur, driving the car of a white Communist Party member from Uitenhage. Contact between the ANC and the Mpondo resisters was maintained through subsequent meetings in Durban.
Fourthly, the organisational abilities and intellectual energies displayed by Mbeki during this period won recognition, and he became increasingly involved in ANC and Communist Party leadership at national level. Much of this had to be behind the scenes, as his movements were restricted by banning orders. By the time of Sharpeville, the banning of the ANC and the State of Emergency, the balance of his activities had already swung from journalism towards organisation. From April 1960 to June 1963, this pattern of political activism in the face of state harassment intensified. He was detained for five months during the Emergency; arrested in 1961 on charges of furthering the aims of a banned organisation; arrested again in 1962 under the Explosives Act; and served on his acquittal with an order of house arrest.
During this same period he was on the National Executive Committee of the ANC (before the banning) and on the National Action Committee (its underground leadership structure after the banning); he was directly involved in the decision to turn to armed struggle and a founder member of High Command of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He recruited and ran a sabotage group in Port Elizabeth, travelled to Durban for meetings with the Mpondo rebels, and – after being served with a house arrest order – he went fully underground. Underground, but still working prodigiously. He prepared scripts, with Ruth First, for broadcasting on Radio Freedom; worked on the manuscript of The Peasants’ Revolt; served as treasurer and secretary for the underground organs; maintained contact with MK units inside and outside the Transvaal; and attended meeting after meeting. Talking about three months, Govan chuckled and said emphatically, “I was very fully occupied.” Underground, active – and living on the farm Lilliesleaf, in Rivonia.
Govan spent some months on the farm, before moving early in July 1963 with the rest of the political leadership to another property that had been acquired. A meeting was called, and it was decided “all right, let this be the very, very last meeting that takes place at Rivonia”. So, on Thursday, 11 July 1963, Govan and the others had actually returned to Lilliesleaf only shortly before a dry-cleaner’s van entered the driveway. It was full of armed Special Branch policemen. Govan, followed by Sisulu and Kathrada, jumped out of a back window but had not moved far when the command rang out: “Stop – or we shoot.” Govan was in the clothes he had used while living on the farm: old overalls and a woollen balaclava, so as to resemble a labourer. A photograph of him with the balaclava rolled up as a cap – reproduced many times since then – was taken by the police.
The arrest at gunpoint brought an abrupt end to one phase of a remarkable political career. As a Fort Hare student, he had become a member of the ANC and a student of Marxism. Thirty years later, he was one of the most influential leaders of the underground structures of the ANC and the Communist Party. Throughout that period, Govan Mbeki’s political theory and practice were inseparably fused. The dedicated organiser and activist was also a versatile intellectual – commentator, analyst, reporter and historian. More, perhaps, than any other African politician of his generation he experienced and reflected the tensions and complexities of both rural and urban life. He worked in Johannesburg, Durban and Port Elizabeth but also devoted enormous energies to the Transkei and rural Eastern Cape. As a theorist, he occupied a distinctive place on the South African left for his insistence on the potential importance of rural mobilisation and struggle. As a practising politician, he contributed mightily to the urban organisation that made Port Elizabeth a rock-solid centre of ANC support.
Hilda Bernstein provides this pen portrait of Govan during the Rivonia trial:
Govan Mbeki admits to being a member of the National High Command of Umkhonto; to membership of the African National Congress and the Communist Party. Perhaps “admits” is not the word; rather he declares proudly that he has played a substantial role in these organisations.
“As you have answered in the affirmative to questions or actions concerning all four
