This piece was
first published by Style Magazine in 1996.
One morning in 1983 I woke up with a Security
Policeman in my room. I was sharing a house in Mons Rd in Bellevue East with my
friend the painter, Carl Becker, and a beautiful young woman, since emigrated
to Australia, Carol Constancin.
The Security Policeman was bearded and casually
dressed. He demeanour was relaxed, even warm. He seemed pleasantly surprised at
the tastefulness of my quarters. The empty whisky bottle was placed just so on
the rat-arsed Persian rug. The packet of Camels somehow highlighted the Becker
etching on the mantelpiece. He spoke without looking at me.
"Where's Keith?"
"Huh?"
Keith was Carol's lover. But
I was trying to figure out who the hell my visitor was. Had I met him during
the course of some revelry and then forgotten all? But the previous night had
been abstemious. The whisky was demolished two days previously.
"Where's Carol?"
"Isn't she in her room?"
"No."
I could only presume that he was a friend of hers.
"Where's Keith?"
"I don't know."
"What's your name?
"James."
"James who?"
"James Whyle."
"Thanks." He smiled pleasantly, left the
room. I went back to sleep.
Keith worked
for the South African Students Press Union. (SASPU.) The union put out a
newspaper advocating obscure, evil notions like democracy. Keith knew the
Branch were after him. He laid low for a few days and then decided to give
himself up. He went round to John Voster Square on a Friday afternoon and
handed himself in.
Look, its really busy, they said, can you come back on
Monday.
He did and they locked him up for many months.
It was around that time someone slipped me a battered,
banned, coverless copy of Hugh Lewin's Bandiet. I devoured it. The
book told tales that we weren't allowed to hear. Stories that were the opposite of what was coming
out of Cliff Saunders' mouth on the television during the eight o'clock
news.
Hugh Lewin was
in Pretoria Central, right next to gallows, when he first read Herman Charles
Bosman's Cold Stone Jug. Bosman had been in Central for killing his
step-brother, Lewin was in for blowing up electricity pylons. Sentences and 40
years separated the prisoners. Other than that nothing had changed. The men in married
quarters still grasped each other in the darkness. Dagga and tobacco were still
the currency. The place still had a spooky evil feel whenever there was a
hanging.
Lewin was there
when they hanged the man he knew as Deysel, a rare white among the many blacks
who occupied the cells of the condemned. Lewin sat in his cell and listened to
the special programme that the secretary of the entertainment committee played
over the loud speakers the night before Deysel stepped into the void. The
secretary played Home on the Range, and Don't Fence Me
In, and finally, at the end of the programme, I'll see You
in my Dreams.
Lewin heard horrible stories about hangings in
Central. Stories about the noose sticking and taking someone's
face off, dropping him maimed and alive onto the sawdust covered concrete.
Stories of women strapped between their legs because of the way the blood would
gush from them. One dark, shivery morning he heard a woman sobbing as she was
taken, straight-jacketed, to the gallows. She didn't go well,
they told him afterwards.
Lewin was picked up after the Rivonia trial. His
organization, the African Resistance Movement (A.R.M.) had ceased sabotage for
the duration. The plan was that when government had locked up the Rivonia men,
A.R.M. would ride again, showing the state that the forces of resistance were
still alive. Blowing up electricity pylons. Not harming any people. Just a
signal really: You haven't stamped us out. They never got a chance to do it.
Adrian Leftwitch, who had been Lewin's
best man, and who had recruited Lewin into A.R.M., was picked up. He talked.
Leftwitch, who always insisted that members keep no records, had not followed
his own orders. The Branch knew a lot about A.R.M. After twelve hours of
interrogation, Lewin also talked. But he talked selectively, only confirming
information the police already had. They threw him in a cell and forgot about
him.
Then a bomb
went off on Johannesburg Station.
Tonight, the interrogators told Lewin, we'll
kill you.
They pulled off his glasses and started beating him.
Close, personal stuff, using bare fists. When he fell over they kicked him
upright again. To stop the beating, Lewin gave them what he though was the name
of a further A.R.M. member: John Harris. But John Harris was the station
bomber. He was already in the building.
It was a busy
night. Next door, Lewin's flat mate, John Loyd was been interrogated. Later he would turn
state witness. A man with bloody hands came into the room.
That Harris, he said, another one who wouldn't
talk without a lawyer.
And then, says Lewin, he wiped the blood off his fists
and laughed. A couple of hours later John Harris jaw was broken. Four months
later, John Loyd's evidence put a noose round his neck. The word in Central was that
he went well.
It was the beginning of a seven year education for
Lewin. Its lessons were simple. Hanging doesn't work and
prison makes criminals. Survival in prison demands that you lie and cheat and
steal. The Government was taking one out of four black South Africans, jailing
them for pass offences, and training them in criminality.
But the people Lewin was in with did not end up
criminals. For most of the seven years he was part of an elite company. Bram
Fischer was Afrikaans aristocracy. Dennis Godlberg was a civil engineer. Jock
Strachan was the prisoners' hero. On his release he published an expose of
prison conditions, which improved dramatically as a result. Irritated, the
security police framed him and put him back inside.
No, the people
Lewin was in with were not criminals. They were middle class whites,
intellectuals. They studied through UNISA and staged classic plays. They had
acted because they had faith that a better future was possible, and they
suffered for their faith. In the early stages their isolation was almost
complete. Outside the world continued, their children died, their wives made
lives in England. They were adrift in the wash of history.
At the end of the seventies John Lloyd, flat mate
turned state witness, re-emerged as chairman of the Anti-Apartheid group in
Exeter, England. At the time of writing (1996) the Labour Party executive is
deciding whether he should be allowed to stand under their banner. He claims
that the ANC have effectively given him amnesty. Lewin feels he should face the
Truth Commission before he makes such claims.
If A.R.M. had been as efficient as the ANC, says
Lewin, he would have been dead a long
time ago. Despite his protestations, an old Bandiet anger burns against the men
who shopped him.
The past is relentless. It seeps into the present like
water finding its way to the sea. Marius Schoon, a fellow prisoner, is suing
Craig Williamson, the fat spy who admitted responsibility for the murder of
Schoon's wife and child.
Lewin is back in South Africa now, teaching
journalism. He has never again been a member of a political organization. He
came back as soon as he could. He was always coming back. He only blew up the
pylons because he loved the place. He seems a quiet, methodical man. But every
now and then he uses a word like ouens, a bit of Bandiet-speak, a hint that a
middle-class boy was changed by years in prison, a sign that history lives.
