ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
He didn’t die. Fearing an outbreak of violence across the country, the defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, not to death.
Some D and A board members were committed to the cause and passionate about the rule of law. Alan Paton was a board member. His book Cry, The Beloved Country was an international best seller and one of the banned books I devoured after leaving South Africa. When he came to Cape Town for a meeting I was given the task of picking him up at the airport. In preparation, I cleared my small gray Ford Prefect of the papers and accumulated debris, but I had no time to give it a much-needed wash. As I drove Paton to the house where he was staying, he turned to me and said: “Stephanie, you are very courageous.” I blushed. For such a man to call me courageous! But before I could respond, he continued: “To drive with such a grimy windscreen takes courage indeed!”
A number of the board members were, like Alan Paton, Liberal Party members, a mainly white party opposed to the ANC’s position on armed struggle but whose strong anti-apartheid positions and actions had landed many in jail or on the roster of the banned. People under banning orders were forbidden to meet with more than one person at a time; to be in contact with another banned person; to attend any gathering, political or social, including “gatherings” such as funerals; to publish writings whatever the genre; to enter educational institutions, courts of law, or offices of the media. They had to report regularly to the police and could not travel outside of their magisterial district. By the time the act was repealed, soon after Mandela’s release, over sixteen hundred men and women had been caught in its net.
Ann was one such. She was arrested for breaking her banning orders when she climbed Table Mountain to meet a banned friend. She applied to D and A for legal help.
“Our funds must go to those who have no possibility of affording legal fees,” one of the more forceful members argued, with nods of approval from one or two others. That she was white was there in code.
“But Ann doesn’t have the money,” countered another, with nods of approval from the rest. “And that’s partly due to the fact that she’s banned.” A vote was taken. Her application was approved, but not without a last word by the initial naysayer, a rather large, blustery member of the committee.
“Stephanie, please note in the minutes,” she said, turning to look at me to make sure I was taking in her directive, “that Ann should be informed that we would appreciate a donation at some point.” Then she added, “Maybe she could sell some of her used clothes to her maid and make a donation to us.”
I saw my discomfort mirrored on other faces in the room. This board member simply could not imagine that Ann, a white person, was unable to afford a maid or new clothes. I “forgot” to note this when typing up the minutes the next day. Yet how many whites took the risks she did, preferring to hide behind their big houses, their whiteness, their privilege, and ignore what was happening all around them. Ann did what her conscience dictated with little protection.
On the morning of March 18, 1966, as I sat behind my desk in the small, high-ceilinged office on St. George’s Street, where many lawyers had their chambers, there was a knock on the door. Not the tentative knock of a family member or friend of someone recently arrested. Not the rap of a lawyer coming to discuss a case. This one was thunderous. Before I could call out “Come in!” the unlocked door flew open and a bunch of burly plainclothes security police in dark suits strode into the office. They stood there looking around as if surprised that it was only me. I felt my face drain of color. “Am I being arrested?” I thought. I knew I was too much of a small fry for them to bother, unless they were busy right then arresting every member of the board. Waving a document, one of them informed me with great satisfaction in his voice: “Defence and Aid has been banned.” By the stroke of a pen, D & A had joined the ANC as an unlawful organization under the Suppression of Communism Act.
They began to search through the file drawers and then proceeded to move the cabinets toward the door, to be carted off to their Cape Town headquarters. The one in charge said curtly, pointing to two police: “Tell them where you live. They will take you to search your house.” He continued to flip through papers on my desk. I was escorted out of the building at a brisk pace and onto the street between the two men, right into the path of my father, who was walking toward us. He looked at me aghast, his face draining of color as mine had earlier. He gave a slight nod in nonverbal acknowledgment as we passed. “At least he knows that I am being arrested,” I thought. If, that is, I am.
There was silence in the black sedan as I was driven the five and a half miles around the mountain to the cottage in Newlands that I shared with my boyfriend, Eric, and another male friend. I had met Eric at university when I was nineteen. He had startling blue eyes and pitch black straight hair that hung to his shoulders. He was a physics student who wrote fairy tales, liked poetry, and matched my love of classical music. His professors predicted a bright future for him. Like my father, he tended to dominate conversations. I did not protest. It was familiar territory. He was my first serious love and I knew that this was the man I would marry.
We began living together when I was twenty-two, first in a flat in Long Street, on the edge of the city, then in this cottage near the university. The expectation that young Jewish women only left home when they married was being challenged by my generation. It did not sit comfortably with my parents, but I was an adult and they couldn’t stop me. So not wanting to set up a conflict, and fearing that I would reject them altogether, they agreed. There was an unspoken charade that made it easier for them: we were not actually having sex. We were simply living communally with other friends. We each had our own room to maintain this subterfuge. It could not have been easy for my parents, who were always conscious of what others might think and feared judgment by their community. For me it was part of my rebellion against my father, and I took some pleasure out of it.
Now, standing in the living room were the two bulky men, whose large presence made the room seem even smaller than it was. They were polite—I was white after all—but they felt menacing. I sat on the edge of a chair in the living room as they searched, watching warily. Each book was perused, each drawer opened and rummaged through, each bed peered under. A few books were set aside. I doubted any were banned, but the list of banned books, plays, and even music was long and not easy to keep track of. Books that criticized apartheid were invariably on the list. Newspapers from England, such as the Sunday Observer, regularly had sentences blacked out by zealous workers in the censor’s office. Not only political books caught the attention of the state censor: those deemed too sexually explicit or morally reprehensible got the axe as well. A dog-eared copy of Peyton Place had made the rounds from one high school friend to another, its jacket covered with brown paper. One of my all-time favorite books as a child, Black Beauty, was temporarily on the list until someone realized that the title referred to a horse. More recently, it had been a recording of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which we had listened to in Ann’s apartment, curtains drawn, shortly before she herself was banned. Halfway through, the security police strode into her apartment, took down the names of the ten or so of us there, and confiscated the LPs.
Finding nothing more of interest, the leader, tucking the few books he found questionable under his arm, pointed to the door. “Laat ons gaan,” he said. Let’s go. They were gone. I was left standing in the middle of the room, both relieved and horrified. Relieved because I had not been arrested. Horrified at the implications of the banning: what would happen to the accused now awaiting trial? Or the hundreds of families suddenly deprived of funds to buy food for their families? I immediately called the chairman of the board, but he already knew. I later heard that two board members had also been raided. I then called my father to let him know that I was safe. His voice cracked in his effort to hide his relief.
The
