RIVONIA REVISITED
The man they tried to turn traitor
DECISIONS do not get more life-changing than the one Bob Hepple made on October 29 1963. He had a few seconds in which to make it. Rivonia trial prosecutor Percy Yutar had just presented a shoddy indictment and needed a coup. He wanted Hepple, arrested at Liliesleaf Farm and a talented 29-year-old lawyer, to turn state witness.
The reward would be liberty after 90 days of solitary confinement and psychological torture.
Hepple agreed, with no intention of testifying against his comrades. After his release, ANC operatives smuggled him and his wife Shirley to Botswana, en route to London. A brilliant career in England was to follow — as a barrister, Cambridge professor of human rights law and knight of the realm.
At Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, Johannesburg, on Tuesday, Professor Sir Bob QC, 78, will launch his gripping book on his road to jail and escape, Young Man with a Red Tie: A Memoir of Mandela and the Failed Revolution, 1960-1963. Fellow Rivonia accused Ahmed Kathrada will speak at the event.
Hepple has the cheery, avuncular style common to many of his generation of revolutionaries. He lauded the robust state of South African democracy after 20 years. “So long as you’ve got a free press, an independent judiciary and a democratic constitution, it’s possible to use
The big difference between the ANC I knew and the one I read and hear about is that everybody I knew was in it for altruistic reasons
peaceful means to achieve more social justice,” he said.
Once as red as Joe Slovo’s socks, he now calls himself a social democrat.
“The big difference between the ANC I knew and the one I read and hear about is that everybody I knew was in it for altruistic reasons and made huge sacrifices. There was no personal advancement. But I think that shift happens in any society when there’s a change in the ruling class.”
Hepple’s memoir is an engrossing ride through the maelstrom of underground activism in the wake of Sharpeville. The detail is rich, drawing heavily on an unpublished memoir he wrote in 1964 when the memories were fresh.
Yutar tried to turn Hepple because he had a relatively normal life to lose; not an MK member, he had represented Mandela in his 1962 trial. Hepple attended meetings at Liliesleaf, but he was “overground” and his chosen avenue of resistance was unionisation.
Knowing an offer from Yutar was possible, Hepple discussed the idea of hoodwinking the prosecutor with Mandela, who told him: “That would be excellent!”
He also had the support of defence advocate Bram Fischer.
But freedom came with a price beyond exile: a livid Yutar took revenge by slandering him in court as an informer.
“I was shocked to read a report in London saying ‘Sisulu says Hepple is a traitor’,” said Hepple. “So I immediately wrote to one of our lawyers, who said this was a total misrepresentation. Yutar had put a hypothesis to Sisulu: ‘If Hepple had given certain information, then what would you say? And Sisulu said: ‘If that were the case, then he might be a traitor.’ ”
Hepple was soon comforted by a warm letter from Sisulu expressing full confidence in him, and Mandela later wrote that Hepple had managed “to outwit the enemy”.
Hepple’s scorn for Yutar simmers still.
Born to a socialist family in Kensington, Johannesburg — his father, Alex Hepple, was the leader of the South African Labour Party and his grandfather, Tom, its founder — Hepple joined the fight against apartheid at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he joined the Congress of Democrats and later the Communist Party.
The book is agreeably blunt about some calamitous mistakes made by the Rivonia generation. Hepple was appalled that Arthur Goldreich had defied Mandela’s instruction (which Hepple delivered) to remove all his writings from the farm in 1962. Instead, the artist-guerrilla, worried about posterity, buried them in a coal shed. The papers were discovered by a policeman and sealed the state’s case against Mandela.
“I thought to myself, I can’t work with these people,” he said. Goldreich himself was mortified. “I think to myself, you stupid fool! How could I have done that?” he said later.
But that was not the only blunder made at Liliesleaf. The July 11 raid put paid to the quixotic “Operation Mayibuye” military plan, but even the act of describing it on paper was rash. Govan Mbeki and Joe Slovo (in exile) were among the champions of an all-out guerrilla invasion, inspired by the improbable success of the Cuban revolution.
“I thought it was crazy,” said Hepple. Sisulu, Fischer and Kathrada were also opposed, arguing instead for a limited sabotage campaign.
It took an unusually cool head to keep perspective in the feverish bubble of Liliesleaf — and more so inside a Pretoria Local Prison cell. Some chilling passages in Hepple’s book detail the police’s vicious techniques of physical and psychological torture, notably by his own interrogator, “Rooi Rus” Swanepoel.
Soon after Hepple’s escape, Suleiman “Babla” Saloojee — the operative who drove Hepple to Botswana — was killed in Swanepoel’s care, falling seven floors from a window at “The Grays” security police headquarters.
The state alleged suicide, but Swanepoel had a taste for dangling detainees from windows by their ankles.
Hepple first saw Mandela in 1953 at the Odin Cinema in Sophiatown at an anti-removals rally, and was struck by his acute judgment. The police had
Mandela exclaimed: ‘Bob, is that you?’ and embraced me with a great bear hug
just dragged Yusuf Cachalia off the platform.
“Things were looking ugly,” writes Hepple. “The next thing we knew was that Mandela had jumped onto the platform and started singing a protest song. We all joined in. His presence of mind, pulling the crowd into a disciplined peaceful response . . . prevented what could have turned into a riot and shooting by the police.”
Later, Hepple transported the Black Pimpernel between safe houses in his Wolseley, with Mandela at the wheel, disguised in a chauffeur’s cap and coat. Disguised or not, Hepple recalls that “Mandela’s attitude to his own security was almost careless and infected with romanticism”. But he does not think Mandela’s appetite for risk reflected an urge to martyrdom. “He was a man of action, impatient to awaken the sleeping giant of his people’s anger and frustration with white domination. His attitude was ‘Who dares, wins’. ”
It would be 31 years before Madiba’s daring finally triumphed. Hepple and Mandela were reunited in 1996 at a Buckingham Palace banquet, when Queen Elizabeth introduced a queue of guests to Madiba. “When my turn came, the greeting was not a decorous handshake,” writes Hepple. “Mandela exclaimed: ‘Bob, is that you?’ and embraced me with a great bear hug. And in that moment of intense feeling both Mandela and I rather overlooked the smallish woman who was standing slightly to one side with her hand outstretched.”
Young Man with a Red Tie is published by Jacana Books