don’t do the practice, knowing she won’t know the difference. Later I will appreciate that her anger at me is the anger she can’t level at my father. She had her feisty, determined side, head pushed out, lips tight, whether it was digging a hole to plant a tree when she was seven months pregnant or flaring up in outrage at injustice. The poverty in South Africa was a constant source of anger for her.
As a child, I would look hard at photos of my parents in their youth. My father was a handsome, six-foot-tall man in shorts with thick wavy black hair and skinny legs. Some photos show him with a serious expression, others light-hearted. All show his stereotypical Jewish nose, which he was quick to joke about, laughing as he sang along to his LP recordings of Jimmy Durante, the Schnozz, the American comedian renowned for his large proboscis.
Standing next to him, my mother seemed even shorter than her five feet. She was an attractive woman with a bushy head of black hair and a rounded body. She started going gray, as did I, in her thirties, turning completely white by her midfifties. Although she dressed carefully and enjoyed shopping for what she needed, her wardrobe was not large. Consumer goods were not that important to her, but books were. I would often come home from school to find my mother taking an afternoon rest, a book clasped in her hands. She went for the classics, abhorred best sellers, which she considered trashy, but churned through the mysteries such as those of of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Nothing too violent. Once I graduated to chapter books, I too became an avid reader. Twice a year my mother would take me to Stuttafords department store to choose a hardcover from the children’s book section. “No Enid Blyton!” was her one rule, referring to the popular British author whom I loved but she considered trite. I would spend time savoring the new books, mulling over this or that title until I selected one. Back home I would crack it open, eager to start, intoxicated by the new-paper smell.
While books were my lifeline, classical music was even more so. As I listened to my parents’ records, and to my own growing collection, I escaped from my insecurities and the family tension that seeped out of the walls. I would be transported by the waves rolling through Jascha Heifetz’s Mendelssohn Violin Concerto or Pablo Casals’ Bach Cello Suites.
I COULD SLOUGH OFF MY MOTHER’S demands. Not my father’s. Full of charm and laughter one moment, he could be withdrawn or explosive the next. I feared his foul moods and outbursts of temper. Swayed by his authoritarian assertions that I was too young to have thoughts of my own but should learn from his experience, I adopted his thinking as mine. I tempered what I wanted to say or censored my own opinions until I could suss out what his were and adapt accordingly. When he berated me sharply I would often dissolve into tears. The next morning I would wake to a small peace offering on my bedside table, a chocolate bar or candy—his way of telling me he was sorry. Until the next time.
My mother, too, was intimidated by my father’s anger, and I would absorb her unhappiness when one of his moods descended on our household like a dark cloud. Leonie was more resilient and could stand up to him better than I, but she found it exhausting and annoying. At age twenty-one she emigrated to London, to get away from apartheid but also to break free of our father’s hold.
A turning point came when I was sixteen. It was right after the Sharpeville massacre. I was visiting my Aunt Sophie in Camps Bay, standing in her narrow living room to the right of the piano talking to my cousin, Arnold, who was five years older that I. The salty smell of seaweed and ocean entered the room through the open windows, and from beyond the playing fields I could hear its steady ebb and flow and catch the sparkle from the rippled surf.
“What do you think about all that has been happening?” Arnold asked. I felt a tightening in my chest, something I was used to when asked for my opinion. I froze. I assumed my cousins and my sister could only agree that my father’s strong opinions as the family intellect were to be learned from, not challenged.
“I don’t really know,” I spluttered. “I haven’t discussed it with Joe yet.” I had recently started calling my father Joe, a first unconscious effort to distance myself. Arnold contemplated me for a long minute. I shifted on my feet, rolling them onto the outer edge and back again while scrunching my toes in discomfort as I waited for him to respond to my statement with approval.
“You know, Stephanie,” he said, with some condescension in his voice. “Joe is a very smart and knowledgeable man. But he doesn’t know everything. You have to learn to think for yourself. You are certainly bright enough.”
The ground suddenly shifted. How could Arnold be so dismissive of Joe’s opinions? I was truly shocked. At the same time, his words became the catalyst that enabled me to eventually break away from my father’s hold, even though it would take many more years to do so. What I did not give up were the values he passed on to me. He was a man passionately intolerant of racism and anti-Semitism, of injustice and inequality. Most of all, he taught me to hate apartheid, a hatred that would define my life.
4 — By the Stroke of a Pen
It was 1964, the end of the academic year at the University of Cape Town. I stood among a crush of students, vying for a spot to find my name on one of the sheets of paper pinned to the walls of the long hall. It wasn’t there. I slunk away, mortified, to avoid the inevitable questions from friends about my results. I had already stretched the three-year undergraduate degree into four years. Now I had failed too many courses to be readmitted.
I had spent most of my time at university convinced I was unequal to the academic task. I was painfully mute in lectures and seminars, blocked by an inner voice that told me I wasn’t smart enough. I was envious of fellow students who seemed to take academics in their stride. But after the initial disappointment, I realized I felt a sense of relief. No more exams! No more procrastinations as I struggled with the rigors of academia. I had to get on with life. I had to find a job.
I had one salable skill: I was a fast and accurate typist, crisply tapping out letters and words at a steady pace. A year earlier, Joe had insisted that I enroll in a summer typing course. “You never know,” he said. “One day your husband might have difficulty in supporting you and you can help out by working in an office.” My mother had worked in his. I was appalled at the notion, but I now had to admit that being a proficient typist would help me find a job.
My friend Sally Spilhaus came to my rescue. I met Sally at university. She hadn’t finished her degree either, but that was by choice. She felt stifled there and had taken a job with the Defence and Aid Fund. Now she was moving on, and she recommended me for the job. I began work in February 1965.
DEFENCE AND AID, OR D AND A as it was referred to, received funds from overseas to provide legal aid for political prisoners charged under the anti-terrorism acts. It also provided funds for the families of political prisoners who lost their breadwinners as a result of arrests, long trials, and longer prison sentences. The lawyers D and A retained honed their skills with every trial, and as a result many activists—too many for the government’s comfort—were found not guilty, received light sentences, or escaped the death penalty altogether. These lawyers were courageous. Some were imprisoned themselves, usually under the 90-day or 180-day detention regulations, which denied trial or representation. Many were slapped with banning orders under the Suppression of Communism Act, which meant they could no longer practice law.
I began working for D and A eight months after the Rivonia trial, which resulted in the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and seven others. D and A contributed funds for the defense. In his famous three-hour speech from the dock, “I Am Prepared to Die,” Mandela made it clear that, given the violence perpetrated against Africans every day, the ANC had no choice but to abandon nonviolence, which had been its tactic since it was founded in 1912. He concluded with words I would only read after I left South Africa:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought
