Cedric Mayson: Cleric who fought apartheid on the ground and in the air

1927-2015

CEDRIC Mayson, who has died in Nelspruit at the age of 87, was a Methodist minister who helped ANC cadres escape the security police by flying them to Botswana in light planes borrowed from his parishioners — who also taught him how to fly.

He flew them out from Grand Central Airport in Midrand and from Lanseria. He would drive his car past airport security with his illicit cargo well hidden from view, and park next to the plane. A large, powerfully built man, he would then lift them straight from the car into the plane as if loading a parcel.

He would deposit them in a mealie field in Botswana. If the ground was muddy and he didn’t want to get bogged down, he would instruct them to jump while the plane was still moving, and take off again.

Among those he flew out was future disgraced national police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who even then was quite portly and would have tested Mayson’s strength to the limit.

In September 1977 he was due to fly Steve Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, to Botswana to see OR Tambo and Thabo Mbeki for what would have been the first formal meeting at a leadership level between the ANC and BCM. Days before they were to leave, Biko was arrested by the security police.

Mayson himself had been detained by the security police a year earlier while he was on his honeymoon.

They were clearly keeping an eye on him, which made these flights doubly dangerous.

In 1981, by which time he had A WING AND A PRAYER: Cedric Mayson flown about 20 cadres out of South Africa, he was arrested on a main charge of high treason and several alternate charges under the Terrorism Act. Flying cadres out of the country was not one of them, although he was charged with assisting various people to leave illegally so they could undertake ANC activities.

He was also charged with holding discussions about setting up ANC structures in the country. This was quite true.

The discussions took place in an ANC cell, which included Mayson, Selebi and Beyers Naudé. The cell reported to Mbeki.

Mayson was further accused of examining targets for sabotage and distributing a tape of a speech made by Tambo, both of which charges were also true.

Tambo’s speeches were smuggled to him on cassette tapes which he would duplicate. Then he would set off at night on his motorbike, dressed as a delivery man in overalls and helmet, and ride around Soweto putting the cassettes into letter boxes.

He was detained at The Fort in Johannesburg for 15 months before the trial began.

When it started, he testified that he had been forced to stand naked during his interrogation for two days and that he had been assaulted by a police officer who pulled a tuft of hair out of his head.

Judge PJ van der Walt ruled that his confession to the police had not been made freely and voluntarily and was inadmissible. The state was granted a six-week postponement and Mayson, much to the surprise of lawyers familiar with security cases, was granted bail of R1 000.

The only other person released on bail in a major political case was Bram Fischer who in 1964 jumped bail after being charged with furthering the Communist Party’s aims.

Shortly before his trial was due to resume, Mayson too jumped bail, fleeing on foot across the border into Lesotho and thence to England.

He said he did this to save Naudé from being called as a state witness. Naudé was under a banning order and he would have faced jail if he had refused to testify.

Mayson was born in the East End of London on July 16 1927.

He grew up there and had vivid memories of the Blitz when German bombers destroyed many of the houses in his neighbourhood.

He came to South Africa as a church minister in 1953 and served in two black and three white parishes. The white parishes asked him to leave because of his political views, which he expressed unapologetically from the pulpit. In 1974 he left the church and worked for the Christian Institute with Naudé and Theo Kotze until it was banned in 1977.

At the institute he was involved in initiating the Kairos Document, a theological statement issued in 1985 calling on churches to be more actively involved in fighting apartheid.

In exile in England he joined the ANC religious committee, where he worked on establishing links with churches inside South Africa.

He arranged for hundreds of clergymen, including bishops from South Africa, to participate in pro-ANC meetings and conferences in the UK and Europe.

After returning to South Africa in 1991, he worked at Luthuli house until 2010.

He became extremely disillusioned with the degree of corruption, greed and hunger for power in the ANC.

Mayson, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, is survived by his second wife Penelope and seven children. A son, Jeremy, died some years ago. — Chris Barron

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He became extremely disillusioned with the degree of corruption in the ANC