Unsung struggle hero’s story told
NELSON Mandela’s advocate at the famous 1964 Rivonia Treason Trial, Bram Fischer, is being given his first public veneration at the National Arts Festival.
The one-man play, Bram Fischer Waltz, received the first of the festival’s sought-after daily ovation awards yesterday.
Actor David Butler, 53, says Fischer was excoriated from public life and history by the National Party for being a traitor and SA Communist Party leader. Director and script-writer Harry Kalmer’s play is an attempt to rectify an insidious act of censorship, he says.
Fischer was jailed under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1966 and, ill with cancer, was released from jail for a few weeks in 1975 to die in his brother’s home in Bloemfontein – which the state had declared to be a “prison”.
He was defended at his trial by advocate George Bizos, a close friend and comrade of Mandela’s.
Fresh off the film set of TV series Black Sails, Butler says playing out Fischer’s life of antiapartheid pro-socialist activism at a time when Mandela is widely believed to be on his deathbed, “has added gravitas to the piece”.
He says it is an injustice that Fischer’s story has been stripped from South African history.
“We are dealing with unwritten history as he was never reported on. His story and his death were ignored until Mandela raised his profile in the ’90s and stated: “Bram Fischer has become immortal.”
Butler, who has performed at 15 festivals in a career spanning 30 years, said Fischer paid the ultimate price and died in prison.
“Fischer deserves to be up there with Mandela, Tambo and Sisulu, but National Party censorship kept him away from us.”
When Butler performed the show on the way to festival, at the Platteland Review in Smithfield, he met a woman who was in court when Mandela uttered his famous speech.
Butler recites Mandela’s words, which are in the script: “I have dedicated my life to the struggle of African people. I have fought against white domination, I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a free and democratic society in which people live together in harmony with equal opportunities for all. It is an ideal which I hope to achieve in my lifetime. Your Lordship, it is also an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Butler said the show was performed in Bloemfontein. “Afrikaners there said they genuinely did not know about him.”
Butler said Fischer was an uncompromising, principled and ethical man.
“Bram Fischer’s principles and ethics – the same as those of Mandela, Tambo and Sobukwe – should not be allowed to go out the window.”
However, one Rhodes journalism couple have named their son “Bram” in Fischer's honour. – mikel@dispatch.co.za