Part of the solution
‘FIRST YOU HAVE TO BUILD A NEW COUNTRY, THEN YOU CAN BE AN ENGINEER’
The first thing struggle veteran Denis Golberg asks is for my business card, because he wants to know who will “misquote” him. Goldberg is 82 years old and settled in his hometown of Cape Town – and has chosen to live in Hout Bay. He is relaxed. But never forget: he spent 22 years in jail as one of the Rivonia trialists sentenced to life – expecting to die.
“I was born in Cape Town. My parents came out of London. So I am a first generation South African,” he says at his home, filled with stunning artworks by lesser-known artists.
“By the age of six I was reading newspaper headlines about World War II about to break out in 1939. I knew about Nazi concentration camps. I also grew up in a communist home where people, regardless of their social class or skin colour, would come to us for meetings – dinner and so on – and I learnt to respect people because they are people.
“For me the idea that I learnt at school that people of colour are bad or not to be trusted just seemed wrong. But you must also know that this was the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi racism – and white South Africa was very divided over it, but in the end went to war against Nazi Germany.
“We sent 30 000 soldiers to fight the Nazi racism when we had racism at home.” In 1943 he was 10 years old and realised this didn’t make sense. “We learn from our oppressors,” he says.
Goldberg says the late president Nelson Mandela once told him that “people who are heroes are those in all the countries who fought the Nazis behind the lines”. “And I tell this because later I discover Mandela says the heroes for him were the leaders of the African people who fought for 100 years against the British.
“So it’s the same thing … freedom is absolutely important. I grew up knowing this.”
He wanted to be a civil engineer at age 13, but when he went to university, he discovered he could only build for white people. “First you have to build a new country, then you can be a real engineer.”
Goldberg knew apartheid was wrong and if he didn’t do something about it, he was part of the problem. “This I couldn’t do because of my own conscience; of what I know is right or wrong – so I got involved in youth politics.
“We very quickly became active in it. We were busy, busy, busy. The demand, however, for a democratic South Africa was high treason,” he says. These were key moments in his life. “We thought there would be change.” And then he joined the Umkhonto we Sizwe movement.
“Fighting for your freedom means that people are going to die – and mostly the people who die are those in the liberation movement.
“As happened in the end. It was necessary because kids were dying because of apartheid – there was hunger. It was crazy.” Half the kids never went to school.
“Of course, government never liked it when we blew up their offices and things.”
His comrades advised him to leave the country and equip himself with new documentation. And he could, he says – he was a trained civil engineer with privilege because he was white.
He eventually ventured to Johannesburg where he was responsible for a supply of arms. But after being caught in Rivonia, along with the rest of the trialists, Goldberg thought that was it.
“They wanted death, but it was all life sentences. So in the end I didn’t die at all. I got a 100% discount. I expected 75%,” he laughs.
The moment where Goldberg knew what he was supposed to do in life, comes down to this: “There was a man, in 1946, sitting on the pavement eating his lunch … an African in the shade of the tailgate of a truck. And he had a baguette and he poured sardines into it – today you call it a sub. And he was eating this, hmm hmmh, num num …
“I remember thinking, why can’t I eat like that?
“And along came a white guy with little piggy glasses and said :‘ You filthy black, you make the street dirty with your food.
“And this man stood up and said: ‘Do not call me a filthy black! I am respectable’.” –
Freedom is absolutely important. I grew up knowing this