‘You should have arranged these things a year ago.’
Margaret: ‘But I haven’t dabbled in politics for about fifteen years, how was I to know?’
Colonel: ‘Do you mean to tell me you have never dabbled in politics?’
Margaret: ‘No, but I have had nothing to do with any political parties or activities for such a long time, that I had no inkling that I would ever be involved in such a situation.’
The Colonel then abruptly implied that it was our own fault that we were here, and therefore we could expect nothing.
Margaret was not the only person who had long left politics but had now been detained. Several of the other detainees, both men and women, had only ever been marginally associated with anti-government politics or were no longer politically active and were shocked to find themselves suddenly in prison – and with a number of communists, to boot. And initially, they thought the mistake would be rectified and they would be released.
Freda had arrived at Marshall Square immaculately dressed, with earrings and high-heeled shoes, but proved to have failed to pack any change of clothing. ‘Why didn’t you bring anything?’ we asked her. ‘I thought it was all a ghastly mistake,’ she replied.
Before long, the women obtained certain concessions from the Colonel. They were allowed recreation time in the yard outside their cells and some games would be brought in – but no books, of course.
Money could be deposited for them, and the Colonel said he would look into the matter of writing materials and paper, and their jewellery.
They asked again about the food and were told they were receiving the proper diet as laid down in prison regulations for whites.
Margaret: ‘Do you mean to say there are different diets for different racial groups?’
The Colonel: ‘You are making a political question out of this.’
Apartheid affected every part of life, even in the diets of prisoners in South Africa. Prisoners were classified by racial groups – whites, coloureds, Indians and ‘natives’. The black prisoners were given mainly maize porridge (mealie meal) and beans, with meat only once or twice a week. The Indians and coloureds got more rice and more meat than the black prisoners, while the white prisoners were given soups and stews. Bread was not considered part of a black diet.
One day, while the women were out in the yard, an African prisoner walked by and dropped a little ball of paper close by. It contained a note from Bertha Mashaba and Violet, two of the black women detainees at the Fort, complaining about their food and included a sample – some horrible-looking black mealies.
Acutely aware that the conditions of their black women colleagues were far worse than their own, the women managed to get a wardress to send the black detainees some of their bread and meat and were allowed to transfer some of their money into their accounts.
They also managed to obtain the release of one of the black women, Georgina Mofutsanyana, who was mistaken for her husband’s first wife.
What a day! To end it all, the girls in the second cell saw a metal plate above Freda’s bed, and she was convinced it was a microphone. Sheila climbed on Freda’s shoulders – Freda standing on the bed – and with a great effort they managed to pull at the plate. Down came a cloud of black soot, all over them. There was a great deal of hilarious laughter.
There was camaraderie among the women, who found comfort in being together. As a group of highly vocal, middle class political activists, being together gave them the strength to complain and make a nuisance of themselves to the authorities.
All our watches have been taken away. The time of day is to be ascertained only by the routine sounds of routine days.
Woman prisoner cleaning floor.
‘When they were taken out into the yard to exercise or out of their cells for any other reason, the wardresses would shout: ‘Maak oop die hek, hier kom die Noord Regulasies’ (‘Open the gate, here come the Emergency Regulations’). Soon they were known all over the prison as the ‘Emergency Regulations’.
Meanwhile, the men were also grappling with the dreadful food
and poor conditions.
During the day we have access to a tiny enclosed yard on a lower floor where the light filters in dimly through a dusty steel mesh roof. In one corner is a cesspit where chamber pots are emptied each morning and food bowls scrubbed.
Poor-quality food arrives from a distant kitchen in battered steel bowls, which are laid out in the stair hall and left to congeal before they reach us. Ronnie Press, the scientist amongst us, makes a trawl through the lunchtime stew and mounts his catch of weevils, grubs and other creepy-crawlies on white card, like a museum exhibit. He presents it to the Prison Commandant on his next inspection. It’s received without comment and taken away.
Before long, we have an outbreak of diarrhoea. The prison doctor looks at our tongues from a safe distance and hands out sulpha tablets. As the outbreak becomes an epidemic, dispensing pills becomes too onerous for him and he hands a wholesale supply of sulpha tablets to our two pharmacists – Archie Lewitton and Jock Isaacowitz – to dispense as they see fit.
Around 4 pm the steel grille gates between our cells and the corridor are locked for the night. Lights go off around ten.
On their second day in prison, the routine of the male detainees was interrupted by unusual panic.
It’s about 2 pm. It should be quiet with warders off having lunch. Suddenly there is the noise of men shouting and hurrying about, doors and gates slamming. It cannot be an escape – there are no alarms, though we can hear vehicle sirens in the streets beyond the walls, and the wail of emergency vehicles. The warders seem unusually hostile. Routine is the source not only of our sense of time but of all sense of normality. Rumour spreads like wildfire. It is said that Verwoerd has been shot. It would be dismissed as false were it not the turmoil around us. And, even more scary, could the killer be one of OUR people? If so, it has terrifying implications for all of us.
Hours later, the rumours and gossip solidify into facts. Verwoerd has been shot while on a visit to the Easter Show6. He has been rushed off to hospital – no one knows whether he is alive or dead – and not many of us care.
We find out only later that the shot was fired at point-blank range by a white dairy farmer with a grievance. The shot has passed through Verwoerd’s cheek but has not deprived him of the ability to speak.
Prime Minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, known to have been a sympathiser with the Nazis during the war, was known as the chief architect of apartheid and enforced it with a rigid brutality that caused enormous suffering. Although he survived this attempt on his life, on 6 September 1966 he was assassinated by the parliamentary messenger Dimitri Tsafendas, a Portuguese national of Greek descent, who stabbed him in parliament.
I regard him as not just bad but mad; and his apartheid to be the most inhuman attempt at human engineering since Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’7.
Looking back at that time, with the knowledge of what came only a year or two later, it seems a benign and lenient way to detain political prisoners. These conditions lasted only during this first State of Emergency. It wasn’t long before far harsher treatment
