Security was tight. Members of the special branch were always in attendance and police officers, armed to the teeth, stood outside with machine guns. Women were not allowed to carry handbags into the building. While it was far off from Johannesburg, families and comrades arrived in numbers, setting up tea and food stalls, singing songs of protest and support, congregating in the streets outside.
Although most of the 22 men and women who stood in the dock in the Old Synagogue that summer’s day in 1969 were unfamiliar to one another, they knew who they were. They were the scaffolding of the anti-apartheid movement – a motley collection, joined together by a common cause.
How they had got there was the result of a large-scale, staggered but finely co-ordinated national raid on the part of the South African security police during the cold early winter months of April and May. Almost all of them had been pulled out of their homes at ungodly hours by the special branch and taken away from their families. To all intents and purposes, they simply disappeared.
An International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) document which captured the details from the detainees afterwards, noted: ‘In each home, police searched for many hours, and took away with them books, private letters, newspaper cuttings, typewriters, and many things which had nothing to do with politics, or which were political, but legal. Some of those arrested were journalists and writers, one was a poet, some were students.’16
‘The police took drafts of short stories, poetry, articles; copies of the London Observer; student magazines; love letters. Security officers testified to finding a number of books, none of which were banned, and press cuttings in the house of one of the accused, a 19-year-old student, Joseph Sikalala. They also recovered two school notebooks in which, in addition to algebraic equations, there were some notes. In all the forty, perhaps fifty, homes raided during May and June, the total of ‘subversive’ documents seemed to be a copy of a pamphlet issued by the ANC in London, and one or two documents said to relate to the ANC.’17
The accused would have made a pathetic picture in the courtroom, some in the same set of clothes they’d been wearing when they were taken. Some were skeletal, most were sallow skinned from the lack of decent food and exercise, sunlight and fresh air. More than a few bore scars and bruises from the physical torture they’d endured.
They were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act (Act 44 of 1950)18 for, in layman’s terms, terrorism and treason. Of the seven women on trial, two were to be called as state witnesses.
Among the lawyers for the defence were George Bizos, Sydney Kentridge and Joel Carlson.
The names (some misspelt) of the 22 were recorded as19
Mr. Samson Ratshivande Ndou
Mr. David Motau
Mrs. Nonzoma Winnie Mandela
Mr. Hiengani Jackson Mahlaule
Mr. Elliot Goldberg Tshabangu
Miss Joyce Nomala Sikhakhane
Mr. Nanko Paulus Matshaba
Mr. Lawrence Ndzanga
Mrs. Rita Anita Ndzanga
Mr. Joseph Sikalala
Mr. David Dalton Tsotetsi
Mr. Victor Emmanuel Mazitulela
Mr. George Mokwebo
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain Nobanda
Mr. Simon Mosikare
Mr. Douglas Mtshetshe Mvembe
Miss Venus Thokozile Mngoma
Miss Martha Dhlamini
Mr. Owen Msimilele Vanqa
Mr. Livingstone Mancoko
Mr. Peter Zexforth Magubane
Mr. Samuel Solomon Pholotho
The detainees were taken to Pretoria from all around the country, some journeys longer than others, where they were held in solitary confinement and worked on by operatives to create evidence for this trial. In terms of apartheid law, they could be held for 90 days without being charged, without access to lawyers.
Weeks and then months passed. Winter turned to spring. On the other side of the world, in the United States, the music festival that came to be known as Woodstock was taking place, a gathering of peace and unity and harmony in protest against the controversial Vietnam War. While this outdoor demonstration by half a million peace-loving people made news around the world, it could not have been further from the oppression that was happening in South Africa at the same time. Locked away, their personal freedom brutally taken from them, with no news from the outside world, and no visitors allowed, the detained persons in their cells could scarcely tell day from night. They were taken from their cells, at any time, only to be interrogated and tortured by men and women trained to make their incarceration unbearable.
Among the detainees, three young men died soon after their arrest – Michael Shivute, on the night of his detention; Caleb Mayekiso, nineteen days later, and the Imam Abdullah Haron, four months after being detained.
Only when the summer heat was dry and stifling would the 22 see daylight again, on trial in the Old Synagogue. They sat in the dock, hearing themselves being described as guerrillas, spies and terrorists. What they were, in reality, were ordinary people – activists, trade unionists, ‘organisers’, individual cogs in the network of messengers, pamphlet distributors and social workers trying to support the oppressed population. They did have a singular motive, however: freedom for South Africa.
In the courtroom constables armed with automatic pistols at the ready sat behind the rows of the accused. Dishevelled and dispirited, in worn-out clothing and obviously in strained health, by now the prisoners were shadows of their former selves. Their families had last seen them nearly a year before, and the toll of poor food rations and lack of medical care, eyesight affected by being kept away in dark, freezing dungeons would have been visible.
They might have wondered who their fellow captives were and where they were from. Perhaps they would have recognised voices from hushed, stolen midnight discussions. Many were from the Eastern Cape, some from the Transvaal, and all had been gathered up by the security police who had tenuously linked them, accused and witnesses.
Prosecutor JH Liebenberg addressed the court. He claimed that the accused had revived the ANC in 1967 and established contact among old comrades. Meetings had been held ‘in houses, in cars and in the veld’, where groups were instructed in ANC policy.
There was evidence that the ANC was an integral part of the communist movement in South Africa, he continued. This evidence came in the form of pamphlets which could be traced back to the ANC London office for distribution in South Africa and spoke of ‘guerrilla warfare’ to be instigated by members of the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the South African Indian Congress. Examples were presented to the court. Which of the triallists were responsible for the distribution of these pamphlets, however, was not made clear. Other charges impossible to prove in law were presented, from showing support for freedom fighters and providing social welfare for the families of political prisoners, to considering armed uprising and military training.
Records read: ‘(A witness) Eselina Klaas from Port Elizabeth said she had distributed forms to families of six people who had been released
