Copyright 2009
Childhood
Talk of Liliesleaf, Goldreich and the Rivonia trial in this thread has had me re-reading Nelson Mandela?s speech at the trial. It also prompted me to write down my thoughts and memories of how the South African crisis affected me over several decades. I apologise for its length. I have broken it into parts.
Part 1
South Africa?s crisis had his beginnings decades before 1948, the year that racism was merely institutionalized and given the veneer of ?legality?. We simply belonged to the generation in whose prime the crisis would come to a head as it was always going to do.
During our childhoods we were probably all aware of some undefined notion of something not being right, accompanied by a faint and undefined sense of disquiet. From a young age, we knew or knew of someone who was banned, had to leave or was in prison. In Standard 1, the father of Roy Isaacowitz (who became a leading journalist in Israel), was imprisoned and I remember Mrs Friedman, our teacher, asking Roy how he was. Even at that age I knew that he was not a criminal. This means I knew something more but could not articulate it. I remember getting tit-bits of information from our nanny about impending strikes in the early sixties. And of course while the details of the Sharpville massacre were kept from me, I remember the sense of unease that followed it.
I had grown up in what was probably a typical household. My parents were liberally oriented but this did not prevent them from employing servants. These were wonderful people, one of whom had worked for my grandmother and effectively raised my down-syndrome aunt, and remained in the service of our family for over forty years. The other retired when my parents left South Africa also after about forty years of service. My and my brother?s relationship with them was a warm and loving one but I as I grew older, I began to see its bizarre nature.
My political awakening began in the middle years of high-school when I became friends with Errol Price and Stephen (Eli) Friedman and was taught history by people like Mrs Zampatakis and Mr Lowry. This led to tensions at home as I began to raise some of these issues with my parents.
My childhood, sheltered as it was in the secure surrounds of Meyer street, with its almost one-hundred percent Jewish population, prevented me from getting a broader perspective of life in South Africa. This isolation actually concerned my mother to the extent that, after discussion with Joy Levenberg, decided to march me off alongside Terry to Scouts somewhere around Edenvale perhaps. I hated every minute of it and attended twice. The tying of silly knots and the use of strange salutes made no sense to me.
The real rude awakening came in the army when I was exposed to the harshness of attitudes toward people of colour. On my mid-year leave from Walvis Bay, I joined Errol and Eli for a day at the University. There was a mass meeting in the great hall to decide whether Wits should play Tukkies at Rugby, given the latter university?s reluctance to play against black players. The intensity of feeling at this meeting shocked me, as conservative and liberal forces within the university locked horns over the issue.
It was only when I enrolled the following year that the full force of the conflict became clear to me. There were a number of protests, campus invasions by the police and arrests in that year and those that followed. Although my sympathies were clearly with their argument, and I admired their courage and commitment, I disagreed with the tactics of the more radical students. I was continually puzzled by the deliberately provocative and alienating stance they took, seeming to delight in shocking the general public. It seemed that they enjoyed their role in this game of baiting the opposition, of flouting social norms, of engendering mistrust. Rule number one in persuasion: Gain trust. Show yourselves to be reasonable and patriotic people seeking a better and more sustainable future for the country. Then move to show that the alleviation of poverty and guarantee of human rights was not only the moral thing to do, but the pragmatically sensible thing to do for its long term health. It seemed obvious that amongst a conservative white population, you were not going to get your message across to people who could not see past your behaviour and that the ultimate goal of liberation, human rights and the right to a life of dignity was more important that the indulgence of free expression.
With one exception, I did not participate in demonstrations. I didn?t want my head kicked in as happened to a friend of mine at the time, Brian Sherman. The exception was later on and in response to the capture and arrest of Breiten Breitenbach in disguise at the airport I think. I stood on the island or pavement on Jan Smuts Avenue and yelled slogans at passing motorists. The traffic had stopped for the lights and I said to a guy in the car opposite me ?It could happen to you?. He got out of the car and made his way threateningly over toward me. He would have taken a swing at me had not the traffic begun to move and he had to return to his car. I had not said anything particularly provocative but he was absolutely enraged. It all felt so futile. Looking back though, I think I mistook demonstrations to be acts of attempted persuasion instead of the expressions of solidarity they were.
However, I was not able to assuage the sense of guilt I felt for not doing enough. I dealt with it by taking it out on my parents. Such was my conflict that by day I would make these reasonable arguments to my more radical acquaintances, and by night I would rail against my parents for making the same arguments to me.
End of Part 1