One man’s lifelong fight against racism and injustice
All struggles against oppression have participants whose valor does not receive the recognition it deserves. Dennis Goldberg, who died in Cape Town last month at the age of 87, was one of the unsung heroes of the long struggle against South Africa’s malevolent apartheid regime. He paid a heavy price for his resistance to racist tyranny, spending 22 years in jail and then many years in exile until the antiapartheid movement finally triumphed, led by his close friend and co-defendant in their trial, Nelson Mandela.
A white man from a Jewish family who emigrated to South Africa in the 1930s, Goldberg was an unlikely recruit to the African National Congress and the frontline of the struggle against apartheid, and even less likely to be part of the armed struggle. However, he was brought up on values of fairness, justice and equality. His parents were working class communists from London’s East End who left for Cape Town at a time when fascism was on the rise in Europe and causing trouble in their own neighborhood.
In joining the ANC’s armed wing in 1961, Goldberg was aware of the grave risk he was taking, considering that the apartheid regime was increasingly turning violently oppressive against any sign of opposition. His arrest in 1963 was the prelude to a long trial and many years of incarceration, most of it in solitary confinement. In the notoriously fixed 1964 Rivonia trial, Goldberg was convicted of sabotaging utility installations, charges that he and his co-defendants never denied, and sentenced to life imprisonment after the judge declined to impose the death sentence. Being white, Goldberg was not sent to the notorious Robben Island prison along with black political prisoners such as Mandela, in keeping with the apartheid regime’s distorted philosophy that the country’s different “races” should not mix. Despite separating him for more than 20 years from his anti-apartheid comrades, the regime could not crush his spirit or his convictions, even by forcing him to spend most of the time in solitary confinement.
When he was finally released from jail in 1985, his commitment to the cause of defeating apartheid had not diminished one iota. After a short time with his daughter’s family on a kibbutz in Israel, he left for London, for family reasons, but also knowing that there he would be better placed to continue the struggle by other means, those of diplomacy and mobilizing public opinion against the evils of the apartheid regime. When events within South Africa, combined with international pressure, led to the release of Mandela from jail and soon afterwards to the end of white rule, the establishment of democracy and the emergence of the “rainbow nation,” Goldberg continued his charity work promoting education and culture, which spoke volumes about his character. It also left him with the freedom to criticize the corruption that was spreading under and within the ANC, especially during the presidency of Jacob Zuma.
Goldberg’s heroism can be summarized in his own words: “I did what I believed was necessary. And it was necessary.”
His cause required proactive intervention and not just intellectual debate while waiting for others to do the right thing. He answered the call to arms because it was necessary. This is Dennis Goldberg’s legacy to all those who witness injustice, from the smallest to the most harrowing. Above all, he lived his life in the spirit of one of Mandela’s favorite mottos: “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”