The ‘family’ forged in injustice
A new book tells how a group of worried relatives of young anti-apartheid activists grew into a national lifeline for thousands of detainees and their families
In 1981, the South African police imprisoned a number of young antiapartheid activists without the right to trial or legal representation. The Detainees’ Parents Support Committee was born in the wake of that swoop, when the parents and families of those detained came together to fight for their loved ones. Fear and impotence to rescue their children brought parents of all races and backgrounds together within the DPSC.
Keith Coleman was a young white activist who co-edited an anti-apartheid newspaper, SASPU National. He was arrested in October 1981 and detained for five months. From the time of Keith’s arrest until his release five months later, his father Max went to John Vorster Square almost every day. Max and Keith’s mother, Audrey Coleman, were founder members of the DPSC.
The first meetings of the group that would become the DPSC were held at Wits University. The venue was booked by a social anthropology lecturer, David Webster [who was later assassinated by apartheid death-squad goon Ferdi Barnard].
David’s involvement began with his concern about the detention of one of his students, Barbara Hogan. Audrey Coleman remembers: “David was an amazing man. He had integrity and a fine brain. He was there at the beginning for Barbara. At the same time, I’m sure he had a larger vision than just Barbara because there were a lot of students detained. And he immediately said, ‘Use the university as a base’.”
Recruited to the ANC
Barbara Hogan’s arrest was a central part of the story of how the DPSC came into being. Barbara had been recruited to the ANC in 1977 to provide information about the political dynamics inside the country and to mobilise the white left. By 1981, Barbara was doing a Master’s thesis on unemployment and was working with a wide range of trade unions. For several months, the security police followed her.
Concerned that she was becoming a danger to the people in her network, she approached her comrade in Umkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC’s armed wing), Rob Adam, for help to leave South Africa. He responded by saying that his principal had asked that she write a list of names of the people she knew were sympathetic to the ANC — potential “close comrades”. He had been advised that she should not waste time writing in the secret code the ANC used to conceal its activities from outsiders as the task was a matter of urgency.
Neither of them knew at the time that Rob’s ANC principal was a police spy and very soon the security police had what became known as the “Close Comrades” list in their hands. This gave them the ammunition they had been waiting for. They began their raids on activists in September 1981, mistakenly believing that they were cracking an ANC cell.
The crackdown began with the detention of Barbara herself. During her interrogation, Barbara Hogan was shocked to learn that the security police had intercepted the “Close Comrades” list. For three days, they interrogated her about the names on the list and tried to force her to provide them with further names. She says: “It was a very horrible, aggressive interrogation,” but she refused to implicate anyone. Barbara was detained for 11 months and subjected to torture before being sentenced to a 10-year imprisonment for treason in October 1982. She was the first white woman to be convicted of treason in South Africa.
Activists targeted
Hogan’s detention was symptomatic of the crackdown on the emerging nonracial movement against apartheid. Activists from across South Africa’s racial groups were targeted. Prema Naidoo was detained in November 1981. He was a prominent leader of the Transvaal Anti-South African Indian Council, which was mobilising the country’s Indian community against apartheid. His wife, Kamala, was one of the family members who came to those first Wits meetings. Barbara Hogan’s parents were there, along with Max and Audrey Coleman. Cedric de Beer was another young activist on the “Close Comrades” list who was detained in the 1981 swoop, and his parents attended those meetings.
So too did Tom Mashinini, the husband of trade unionist Emma Mashinini, with whom Barbara had been in contact before her detention. The parents of two brothers who had been repeatedly detained, Firoz and Azhar Cachalia, also attended.
Hogan had been part of a close community of young, white, left-wing people, many of whom lived in the enclaves of Crown Mines and Yeoville in Johannesburg. Barbara Creecy was one of the Crown Mines activists. She remembers: “When Barbara Hogan and the first group were detained we thought we should find a way to support the detainees . . . We were all friends and comrades so were also supporting one another through the process.”
The Crown Mines activists realised that parents and family members lacked the support they got from their own close group. The activists were also concerned that the families might not be sympathetic to the detainees’ cause, and so would be liable to manipulation by the security police. For all these reasons, they were keen to get the families together. Glen Moss, one in the group of young white activists, remembers that the first meetings were convened by him, David Webster and Fink Haysom — a lawyer and also a Crown Mines resident.
Audrey Coleman said the name was seen to be an expression of affinity for the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which was formed in Argentina in 1977. This was a group of mothers who came together to fight for the truth about their children who had been abducted, tortured or killed by the military junta in power in Argentina.
The newly formed DPSC set about doing what it could for those in prison. “The welfare of the detainees was our first concern. Such things as a regular change of clothing once a week, food parcels, and whatever other concessions we could get for them. And over a period of time, we managed to get visits to detainees, which was unheard of up to that point,” says Max Coleman.
Family members were also unsure what, if any, legal rights they and their loved ones in jail were entitled to. Lawyers ran Saturday morning workshops for the small group to advise about the law, trials and security police operations. As the climate of fear intensified, these workshops evolved to include information about what to do in the event of detention.
Catherine Hunter was a student detained in the early 1980s. She describes how valuable a DPSC pamphlet on detention proved when she was in prison. “I knew, for example, how important it was to keep fit and how to do this even in the confines of a small cell. I knew that it was essential to keep track of time and to keep your spirits up, by singing, exercise, any way you could. I also knew — from this invaluable DPSC publication, about the good-cop/bad-cop tactic — how one cop is deliberately ‘softer’ on you in contrast to the brute, so that you’d open up to the softer one. I also knew to look out for ways that messages would be relayed to me through obscure means,” says Catherine.
Generate publicity
In its initial days, the main function of the DPSC was to generate publicity about the detainees and to offer support to the families of those taken away. Cedric de Beer’s mother wrote at the time about her despair at Cedric’s detention, and the consolation offered by the DPSC: “It was and is a most extraordinary conglomerate of assorted people, from students to the elderly, from professors to housewives, from every political viewpoint to the totally apolitical.”
Audrey Coleman talks of the DPSC as “a family”. This support was increasingly important, she says, as many of their friends distanced themselves after their son Keith was arrested.
“I don’t think people were being nasty. I think they were just afraid.”
Mohammed Valli Moosa was an antiapartheid activist who spent much of the 1980s in detention and later became a cabinet minister in the new South African government. He reflects: “There’s very little written and said about the experiences of the parents whose children were detained. There’s a lot written about the heroic detainees. And, you know, it’s unimaginable what the parents would have felt. Their 19year-old, their 17-year-old, even their 25year-old being taken away in the middle of the night. The house is raided; their child is taken away — gone — the police don’t say anything and they can’t have contact with the person. Can you imagine the suffering they went through? That’s where the DPSC fitted in.”
That first group of stricken parents turned to one another for support. Their meetings at Wits University were held in the shadow of John Vorster Square, the police station that was two kilometres from the university in central Johannesburg. As the site of interrogation and police brutality, it was a building that came to symbolise terror.
Neither Max Coleman’s watchful vigils there, nor the lawyers’ best efforts, could protect the families from the reality of what their loved ones were facing inside that building.
The complex included cells for solitary confinement, and an isolated tenth floor containing a darkened strongroom with steel doors known as the “Truth Room” or “Warekamer”. The tenth floor was accessed only via an internal staircase, secured by steel grilles. This already heavily guarded staircase led off from security police offices on the ninth floor. This meant that police could interrogate detainees undisturbed by the daily comings and goings at a police station, and away from any scrutiny.
Held without charge
The government steadily increased the length of time for which it could hold people without charging them. In 1961, detainees could be held for 12 days in non-emergency situations. In 1963, this was extended to 90 days that were renewable on completion. The “90-day Act”, as it became known, was a watershed. The notion of habeas corpus — a prisoner’s right to be charged with a specific crime or released — no longer applied. This drastic law was to have a devastating impact on political activists in the years to come. In 1965, the 90-day detention permitted under law was extended to 180 days, also renewable on completion. Prisoners could be held for an indefinite period without access to a lawyer, or the public knowing their names.
Winnie Mandela was one of the people to be detained under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. In 1969 she was detained, along with 21 other activists, and was held in solitary confinement for 491 days before being tried, acquitted, re-detained, re-tried and then finally released.
As one of the first detainees in South Africa to face a long period of solitary confinement, Winnie faced the trauma of isolation unprepared and with little support. Much later, in the 1980s, the DPSC and other detainee support groups would research the devastating effects of solitary confinement on prisoners’ mental health, and educate activists about this. But Winnie and her comrades had no formal detainees’ group to support them. In her book, 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69, she describes how, deprived of contact with the outside world and in particular her children, she was subject to the worst imaginings in her solitary cell and often felt suicidal. She writes: “Being held incommunicado was the most cruel thing . . . I’d communicate with the ants, anything that has life. If I had lice, I would have even nursed them.”
Even before the enactment of the Terrorism Act in 1967, the security police’s torture tactics were so brutal that many people died in detention. The first of these fatalities was MK Commander Looksmart Khulile Ngudle, who was held under the 90day detention laws in 1963 at Pretoria Central Prison. The security police claimed that he had committed suicide by hanging himself with his pyjamas.
An inquest into this death was called for when a cellmate insisted on reporting details of Ngudle’s treatment in jail. In order to prevent this, the state banned Ngudle four days after his death because, as a banned person, he could not be quoted. Ngudle was the first person to be banned postmortem.
Police brutality continued unchecked. The small group of people meeting at Wits were well aware of the brutalisation and deaths of activists in detention. They were desperate but powerless to rescue their loved ones. Together, they resolved to do all they could to fight for the rights of detainees.
Their child is taken away — gone — the police don’t say anything and they can’t have contact with the person. Can you imagine the suffering they went through?