Goldberg’s early days as a saboteur included hiding in Basil Kantey’s office
IN THE wake of Sharpeville and Langa, Bernard Gosschalk was arrested on March 30, 1960 along with Denis Goldberg and architect Jack Barnett, as well as a young student and later academic, David Welsh. In a telephone conversation at the time of writing, David described how he had joined the Liberal Party in the late 1950s and that he and some friends had been arrested while handing out pamphlets.
At the time of his detention, Denis Goldberg had been employed at the Athlone Power Station construction site but was then fired because the authorities considered him a security risk. My late father, Basil Kantey, was then approached by Jack Barnett to take Denis into dad’s employment at the engineering firm, Kantey & Templer.
Denis remembers Basil hiding him in his own office when the security police were looking for him and Denis would say, “I’m off on a mission. If anyone asks about me, tell them I have disappeared”.
When Basil gave evidence in mitigation of sentence at Rivonia, he was cross-examined by defending advocate Bram Fischer, who asked him whether Denis had been a good engineer and Basil had replied: “Excellent!”
Bram had then said wryly to Denis that, if he ever wanted to apply for a job, he could use the court record as a reference.
In an interview with Madi Gray, Denis describes his early years as a saboteur: “In the 1960s I joined uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation)… as Technical Officer. I was a trained engineer and you needed trained people. So I became a weapons maker in Cape Town. I worked with Fred Carneson and Barney Desai in our Regional Command. Looksmart Ngudle was the Field Commander and was the first to be murdered under interrogation in 1963…
“We chose not to use explosives in Cape Town, but to do cold sabotage. Throw a rope over a huge bunch of telephone lines and pull them down and the whole of Somerset West and the Strand and Gordons Bay had no telephones…
[The security forces] brought in police vans from all over the Cape Peninsula, Paarl, Wellington, and other areas to [patrol] this line of cables and telephone wires, so Looksmart reconnoitred. He would watch and see where they were and then go between them. We had no military instructors and had to learn for ourselves, so why make an explosion or compel them to go all out for you? You learn slowly how to reconnoitre a target, how to advance, and how to retreat and be safe. That’s the way we worked.
“…There was a swing to the left among the leaders, who thought we’d train people for a few months and they would then come back and overthrow the apartheid army of 400 000 men. That was a bit absurd, but I do understand the leftwing emphasis. But it was a dispute, nevertheless, and it led to friction. We were going by the book and they were going by emotion.
“Part of the emotion was to overcome the Gandhian influence in both the Indian Congress and the ANC. You had to bend the stick too far the other way to stress the need for an armed struggle.”
During that time, according to Masker Af (Strydom, 1964:95), a fascinating account of the Rivonia Trial, Dennis Goldberg had been active on the sabotage front.
In December, 1962, he had conducted a training camp for young guerrillas at Mamre, another witness, a young Coloured man, stated in camera.They left by bus on December 26 [from the house of Cardiff Marnie, uncle of the late Irma Liberty]. Besides provisions and the usual camping equipment, they also took a petrol engine, a duplicating machine, a cardboard box full of empty bottles, paraffin tins, a radio, tape recorder and anatomical charts.
At the camping site, Goldberg addressed the 20-odd young men present… “Comrades,” said Goldberg, “at this camp you will learn to stand at attention and to stand at ease; but you will also learn about first aid, field telephones, petrol engines, etc.” He explained that, in times of revolution and guerrilla warfare, it was necessary to know about such things.
Goldberg told the campers to address him as “Comrade Commandant” and Looksmart [Ngudle] as “Comrade Sergeant”. Each of the campers was given certain responsibilities. While they were at the camp, they listened regularly to the news broadcasts on the radio and made notes for future discussions. The revolution in Cuba, which was in progress at that time, received particular attention.
In the evenings, as they sat around the camp fire, they listened to recordings of “freedom songs” from all over the world…
The campers were taught how a petrol engine works, such knowledge being useful for the maintenance of transport vehicles. Goldberg himself taught the recruits how to use the duplicating machine, saying that this was the best method of spreading political propaganda. When the revolution broke out, news of the guerrillas’ successes would be spread in this way. He showed them how they could avoid leaving fingerprints on the cyclostyled sheets.
On the third day, Albie Sachs, a white lawyer, arrived at the camp to lecture to the recruits on economics and politics. He told them that the wealth of the country was being controlled by a small minority and that, in order to overthrow the government, the workers had to gain control of the sources of wealth. He referred in particular to the mines.
Sachs warned the recruits never to talk too freely about politics, because police informers were everywhere. Given his crucial role in the sabotage campaign, it was inevitable that Denis would become the focus of the State’s attention, as he explained to Madi Gray: “…When the 90-Day Act came into effect in 1962, my comrades of the Communist Party and other organisations assured me I would be among the first [to be] arrested, because I was known as “Mr Technico” in our movement, and the police would want me. Even if I didn’t break, somebody would under the 90-Day Law, which was designed for the police to extract information by whatever means they could…
“I was urged to leave the country, but to go via Johannesburg to get cleared by the Umkhonto High Command. As a disciplined person, that’s what I did. I went to Johannesburg by train under a pseudonym and the High Command asked me to stay and be the weapons maker for the High Command for Operation Mayibuye.
“Joe Slovo met me and was my contact there... I bought a smallholding called Travallyn Agricultural Holdings in the Krugersdorp municipality for us to live on. It was a fairly isolated smallholding and we could use it, disguising ourselves as a small farmer and his labourers. The Liliesleaf place in Rivonia was known to be dangerous as too many people had been there. We went back once too often, for one final meeting, and got caught… six weeks after I got to Joburg… on 11 July 1963, and on June 12 1964 we were sentenced at the end of the Rivonia Trial.”