Double trouble
Twin brothers Leon ‘TsabaTsaba’ and Norman ‘Mahlalela’ Levy stood in the dock with Nelson Mandela, were there when the Freedom Charter was signed, and were locked up for fighting apartheid. They share struggle memories with Jonathan Ancer
We were frustrated with all the terrible injustices, such as the pass laws, Group Areas Act and forced removals, where the police knocked down people’s homes and did enormously terrible things
Leon to the left of me, Norman to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with Zoom.
I sing this ditty to remind me which Levy twin is which, but Norman has never been “to the Right” and, with the exception of Marx and perhaps Trotsky, very few people have ever been to the Left of the Levy brothers. Norman and Leon, identical twins, are collectively 180 years old (90 years per Levy), and have lived a life of defiance, jail, exile and eventually — and triumphantly — democracy.
“But we’re not quite there yet,” says Norman.
Leon is the last surviving signatory of the Freedom Charter, the 65th anniversary of which was celebrated on June 26, and the brothers stood in the dock with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi and 150 other leaders of the liberation movement in SA’s “trial of the century” — the 1956 Treason Trial.
In typical online video chat fashion, the first 20 minutes consist of a series of “can-you-hear-me’s”.
“Can you see me, Leon?” asks Norman.
“I can hear you, Norman, but I can’t see you. Can you see me?”
“Where’s Jonathan?” they chorus.
The brothers, who live near each other in Sea Point, Cape Town, were born in Johannesburg at the tail end of the roaring ’20s, when men in plus-four breeches and women in short skirts and bobbed hair listened to jazz and flouted social norms. It was also the era of the stock market collapse, leading to the Great Depression.
Their parents, Mary and Marc Levy, were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. The boys had just turned six when their father died, leaving their mother to raise four children.
Leon says they have been interested in politics ever since he can remember.
Norman contracted scarlet fever in 1939 and was in hospital when he received a letter from Leon. “Leon wrote that Churchill had declared war on Hitler and that when I get back we will be at war with the enemy.”
“Norman,” Leon interrupts his brother, “it was Chamberlain.”
There’s a moment’s silence before Norman responds. “Yes, you’re quite right, Leon. And subsequently Churchill made that ‘We will fight them on the beaches’ speech, which came crackling through on that awful radio we had. Do you remember?”
“Absolutely,” says Leon.
Their elder sister Goldie belonged to the multiracial Left Club and the brothers tagged along to meetings, where they listened to politics and music by The Merry Blackbirds.
“Being aware of discrimination and poverty made us thoughtful and our mother always told us about the oppression under the tsars in Lithuania, which had an impact on our political development,” says Norman.
The brothers had similar ideologies but took different paths to becoming radicals. For Norman, it began with a bicycle ride round the streets of Hillbrow when he was 14. He turned a corner and found himself in a Communist
Party gathering. He was enthralled and the next week joined the Young Communist League of SA.
Leon joined Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist, secular Jewish youth movement that had groomed anti-apartheid radicals like Baruch Hirson.
In 1946, when they were 17, the twins joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the South African Congress of Democrats.
“It was exciting times,” says Leon. “The world was changing. Colonial freedom was rolling across Africa and there was a lot of inspiration that the developments in these countries would spark freedom in South Africa.”
Leon’s interest lay in the trade union movement; Norman, who became a teacher, was focused on education.
After coming to power in 1948 the National Party began closing loopholes in laws that had made multiracial activity possible.
“We were frustrated with all the terrible injustices, such as the pass laws, Group Areas Act and forced removals, where the police knocked down people’s homes and did enormously terrible things. We were motivated to do whatever we could to end all of that,” says Leon.
Norman adds: “These dreadful acts also saw the mobilisation of a vicious security police service. It was a rough period for activists.”
On June 26 1950 the Suppression of Communism Act was passed.
“As soon as the ink was dry the government removed the trade union leaders,” says Leon. “My generation stepped in and we developed trade unions throughout the country.”
Leon was one of the founders of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), which paved the way for Cosatu. He served as Sactu president for nine years. Norman was a fierce opponent of the appalling Bantu education system and set up cultural clubs for black children to have access to proper education.
As Sactu president Leon helped organise the Congress of the People, where delegates of the ANC and its Congress allies gathered in Kliptown, Soweto, to assert their political aspirations and adopt the Freedom Charter.
“I will never forget it,” says Leon. “It took place on 26 June 1955, exactly five years
after the Suppression of Communism Act was assented to.”
I glance at my calendar; it’s June 26, which I point out to the twins.
“How very interesting,” says Leon, who was on the platform 65 years ago when the 2,884 delegates were surrounded by hundreds of police on horseback.
“Major Spengler [of the security police] mounted the platform and said he believed an act of treason had taken place. He ordered that no-one was to leave until the police interviewed them. People sat on benches and sang freedom songs well into the night.”
According to Norman, the Freedom Charter was different from previous campaigns that targeted single issues like the pass laws.
“This was an extension from a one-issue protest to a challenge; a challenge for power,” he says.
Leon agrees. “We can crow about the fact that the Freedom Charter has become part of the values of our transformation; it’s a real triumph of our struggle. The Freedom Charter found its way into the content of the Constitution of South Africa in a democracy … the Suppression of Communism Act found its way into the dustbin.”
A year after the Freedom Charter was adopted, the twins were among 156 anti-apartheid leaders who were arrested and charged with high treason, a capital offence.
“It was a blunder to put all the people together,” chuckles Leon. “The movement’s leadership was able to discuss our campaigns, which helped to inject a leadership that was thoughtful, careful and militant into the struggle. The result was that the liberation movement grew phenomenally.”
There were 156 accused in the dock, but it was actually the Freedom Charter that was on trial. The government said it was a communist document that advocated the violent overthrow of the state.
“The prosecution was determined to convict us, but we never believed we would hang — although it was a possibility,” says Leon.
Speaking at a Treason Trial reunion in 2008,
Bertha Gxowa recalled the brothers’ proposed defence strategy. “Leon and Norman planned to deliberately confuse witnesses. After giving evidence, the lawyers would say: ‘Which one of the Levy twins do you mean?’ That evidence would be dismissed because the witnesses [wouldn’t be able to] say which one of the two they meant.”
Towards the end of 1957, the prosecution launched a separate trial against 30 accused. Leon was one of them.
He remembers getting on the “Treason Bus” in the Joburg CBD to travel to the Old Synagogue in Pretoria, which had been expropriated by the government and transformed into a supreme court to hear antigovernment cases.
“Being on the bus was wonderful,” says Leon. “We talked about music, discussed politics and analysed the trial, and Duma [Nokwe], Mandela and Kathy [Ahmed Kathrada] and I played word games.”
On March 29 1961, the four-year-long trial ended with a not-guilty verdict. “We were ecstatic,” recalls Leon. “People from all over came to hear the verdict, and there was jubilation in the court.”
Is it possible you are the last living Treason Trial defendants? I ask.
“Could be,” says Norman.
They start to rattle off names.
“No, I think she’s dead, but he could still be alive,” says Norman.
“I’m not sure about the last but it’s safe to say we are one of the few left,” says Leon.
“I think you mean we are ‘two of the few’ left,” corrects Norman.
Norman and Leon continued their anti-apartheid work after the trial but much of the activity had quietened down because of the state’s determination to crush the opposition.
Shortly after marrying Lorna in May 1962, Leon became the first person to be arrested under the 90day detention law. When he was released five months later he decided there was no scope for further activity in SA as far as he was concerned and he decided to continue his activism in exile. He moved to Britain and became a specialist in labour relations.
Six months later, Norman, who was involved in the area committee of the SACP, was arrested in an anticommunist purge. He was put in solitary confinement. “Gradually you feel the oppression of the environment … the heaviness grows as you feel isolated and disoriented as they break you down for interrogation.”
One day he found a note wrapped in silver paper in his bucket for water. It was from Costa Gazidis, a political prisoner in the next cell, with instructions on how to communicate by tapping letters on the wall.
“It took a lot of time but it was quite comforting.” During one of their clandestine conversations a captain stormed into Norman’s cell and demanded to know what he was doing.
“I’m reading the Bible,” Norman told him.
“You bleddie liar,” the captain screamed.
After 55 days in solitary confinement Norman was taken to Special Branch HQ for interrogation. He was ordered to stand inside a circle. He stood for hours on end, but gave nothing away. Norman knew the game was up when he was greeted by his interrogator with a cheerful, “Good morning, Bentley.”
Bentley was his nomme de guerre. Norman and his co-accused had been betrayed by Pieter Beyleveld, a member of the SACP who had turned state witness.
Norman was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. He was found guilty and received a three-year jail term.
“I had been involved in the struggle for some time and knew prison could happen, so I resigned myself to serve the sentence.”
He was released on April 11 1968. His daughter Deborah was nine and his son Simon, who was just one when his father was arrested, was now five. “I arrived home and saw Simon in the garden; it was very tense. He had found a dead bird which he held in his hand. I looked at the bird and realised that we were all rather frozen and it would take us time to thaw.”
Two months later, Norman joined his brother in exile. He continued to work for the ANC and SACP, completed a PhD, and became a lecturer at Middlesex University.
The twins’ contribution to the struggle hasn’t been formally acknowledged by the ANC but the SACP bestowed on them the Moses Kotane Award in recognition of their lifelong service. I ask them about their relationship with the ANC.
“We have always been close to the ANC. The old leadership knew us intimately,” says Norman, who adds that he met Cyril Ramaphosa in 1989 at a union meeting, and the then future president had been intrigued by the twins and the nicknames they had been given by their friends in the movement.
Leon was known as Tsaba-Tsaba, a very energetic dance, which is a reference to how active he was in the different spheres of the liberation movement. Norman’s nickname was Mahlalela, “a loafer”, which he says he was called in contrast to Leon being “here, there and everywhere”.
Are you recognised as struggle icons?
“Are we struggle icons?” asks Norman.
“I don’t like to sing my praises,” says Leon, “but I think we are recognised as people who made a good contribution to the struggle in South Africa.”
You are identical twins, but do you have identical views?
“It’s impossible to think both of us carried the same point of view when we were doing different things, but after democracy our thoughts were very similar,” says Leon.
Norman continues: “In the ’60s our differences become apparent in regard to our thinking on the economy, on Marx, and on Leftism. Do you agree, Leon?”
“Not entirely, Norman. I think I took a broader view … I’m not saying you were a fundamentalist, but I wasn’t a fundamentalist …”
Norman hits back: “As far as fundamentalism is concerned, I think you took a very stereotypical view of us as Stalinist, static and unthinking. I think your view was much narrower, really, market-driven. So I think there were fundamental differences but I was never a fundamentalist … and I’m not one now.”
It’s at this point that Leon, like a Soviet dissident in the Stalin era, vanishes without a trace. After several “can you see me, Leons” from Norman and I, he returns.
“You kicked me off, Norman,” Leon says, “because you didn’t agree with me.”
The brothers chuckle. Leon’s “adviser”, his eightyear-old computer whiz granddaughter Daisy, confirms her grandfather’s suspicions.
“It says, ‘Norman Levy has kicked you off the call’,” says Daisy.
“Oh really,” laughs Norman, “that’s Freudian in the extreme.”
I say goodbye to the principled, humble, goodhumoured and selfless twins of the South African struggle and just before logging off, Leon asks when the profile will be published.
I tell him I’m not sure.
“Well,” says Norman. “Don’t leave it too long. Remember, we are 90 …”
Being on the bus was wonderful. We talked about music, discussed politics and analysed the trial, and Duma, Mandela and Kathy and I played word games