Swimming with Cobras (14 page)

On Christmas Eve one year we tried our luck by asking permission to sing carols in the prison. Not surprised to be denied access, we adjourned to a nearby hillock where we sang under the pine trees. It was a still, warm night, the sky velvety dark and covered in a patchwork of stars and the large orange orb of a recently full moon peeking over the horizon. One of the children with us shouted out, and at the prison windows we could see arms waving through the bars of the cells. Our singing had been heard.

Helping the families of prisoners of conscience – opponents of the regime rather than criminals - was the specific brief of an organisation called the Dependants' Conference (DC). A small local committee had existed in Grahamstown since 1963, but with the escalation of detentions it was becoming inundated with requests for support. Often people just needed information about their detained relatives, but increasingly their need was for assistance to cope with the effects of detention. The Reverend Bob Clarke now opened Grahamstown's first formal DC office and in collaboration with them we established a process for the debriefing of ex-detainees. This project, masterminded by two remarkable Sash members, Priscilla Hall and Marianne Roux, made it possible for detention data to be systematised, trends to be identified and, as always, our campaigns to be informed by hard fact.

Over a ten-month period from 1987-88, some 200 ex-detainees were debriefed. Apart from the circumstances of their arrests and the conditions in which they were held, we also documented the physiological and psychological effects – and after-effects – of their experiences. Released detainees experienced depression, mood changes, lack of confidence and reduced trust in people, and very often backaches, chest pains, headaches and insomnia. Where possible we made referrals to the psychology clinic at Rhodes University and the outpatient unit at Fort England psychiatric hospital. If nothing else, just telling us their stories at least had therapeutic benefit.

Detention not only isolated people from their usual support groups but also deprived them of any control over their situation. Detentions often appeared to be completely random; many detainees were never questioned and very few were ever given reasons for their arrest. According to a 1987 survey conducted by the Human Rights Trust in Port Elizabeth, more than half of the people then in detention were being held for alleged membership of certain organisations, while more than a third were being held on charges that the state was unable to substantiate. One 63-year-old man from Kenton-on-Sea told me that he had been going from house to house collecting money for a lawyer to defend detainees from his community, including his own son. He collected small amounts, but then he was arrested. He was held in a small, very cold cell with some adults and eleven children who shared their blankets with him. “We asked for blankets but were not given them. The day we arrived there we got nothing to eat. The following day we got coffee and porridge three times a day. My book with the names of the people who had given money was taken from me. But we were never charged with anything and we never appeared in court.”

Predictably, the conditions under which people were held were appalling: overcrowded, dank and filthy cells, inadequate sanitation, poor food. Medical attention was cursory at best. District surgeons would stand at cell doors and shout, “Is everybody all right?” or something similar and then move on before hearing the replies. Based on our findings we persuaded a judge to inspect the conditions in local prisons. It seemed to achieve little but we hoped that it would at least send the message to the prison authorities that they were under scrutiny. I never personally debriefed anyone who had been tortured, but the occasional story did emerge, and we couldn't help wondering whether some of our security personnel had perhaps learnt their trade from the infamous colonels of the Greek military Junta, notorious for their ghastly torture methods.

The Black Sash extended the debriefing project to examine in particular the impact detention had on the women who were left behind. Detention seemed to be designed to make life as difficult as possible for all concerned, and most often it was women who were left with the burden of responsibility and stress, along with the inevitable financial and emotional struggles. Frequently it was the major breadwinner who was detained, and usually his employer would stop paying his wages, leaving rents and school fees unpaid. On top of this, wives of detainees might face antagonism from unsympathetic communities. A cloud of suspicion was spread by the SABC and other media, with words like “agitators” and “enemies of the state” indiscriminately used. The old adage that there is no smoke without fire was often proffered as the only comment on detentions without trial, and where communities were already divided this could lead to vilification of those connected with detainees.

Usually they were held far from home, making it difficult for families to discover where they were being held, let alone visit them. Permits had to be obtained and transport was an added burden. Some relatives told us that they could not visit as they had nothing to give the detainee and they did not want to compound the mutual feelings of guilt and distress by arriving empty-handed. “I felt very sorry and worried that we couldn't go,” one woman told us. “We tried to send money whenever my mother got her pension.” Taking children to visit was particularly distressing. One mother told us, “The visit made my son cry. He couldn't understand why we left his father inside at the end. So I never took him again.” Already these children may have witnessed the horror of their father's arrest, perhaps late at night and with some force.

Needing to be strong in front of their children and their curious neighbours, women developed a range of coping mechanisms. To hold back the tears, one woman scrubbed and rescrubbed her floor. Another went to the toilet outside so that her children would not see or hear her cry. Some women remarked that the experience had made them stronger. “Sometimes I'm surprised that you can cope under so much stress," said one. "You find out how to do things, things you would never normally do. And you learn to speak up for people.” On the whole the women we interviewed were not involved in political organisations themselves. If anything, the detention experience discouraged them from ever becoming involved. For such women the church was the most common source of solace and support.

In 1986 the chairperson of the Pretoria branch of the Black Sash was arrested. Annika van Gylswyk was kept in solitary confinement for several weeks and thereafter interrogated. Towards the end of her six-week detention she was given a choice: stay in detention under the new 180-day regulations and face a court case thereafter, or take a plane to Sweden. She was not told the reason for her detention nor what she would be charged with. Annika was Swedish but was married to a South African and had lived in South Africa for 30 years. She opted for release and was deported immediately.

Annika was not the first or the only white woman to be detained, but this event was particularly unsettling for me. I was a regional chairperson of the Sash by then, and of course, a foreign citizen too. As in Annika's case, my 20 years of domicile would be no defence against deportation. I became extremely nervous, turning over and over in my mind the choice she had made. What would I do?

More and more whites were being detained in the Eastern Cape and anyone involved in activities that could even vaguely be described as radical became jumpy. Documents were hidden away; small suitcases stood ready at front doors, almost as if we expected to be rushed off to the maternity ward. We became suspicious of strangers in cars outside the house and unusual clickings on the phone. One night, rushing out to a meeting, I found an empty space where my “orange bomber” should have been. My immediate thought was that the police had taken my trusty mustard-coloured Ford Escort. Activists often found their tyres deflated, and removing a car was not beyond the scope of the security police. I feared that the noose was tightening.

When I was summoned to the police station a few weeks later the news was a comic relief. The car had been found, but we would have to drive to Tsolo on the borders of the Transkei to retrieve it. There in the small police yard sat my car with blackened windows and no back seat. When we opened the doors a sweet, sickly smell assailed us: my bomber had become a dagga transporter. For weeks afterwards we found tiny seeds in the upholstery and joked about feeling slightly high from the smell.

It was a terrible time of fear and uncertainty. In June 1986 it was my 50th birthday. And while it seemed strange to plan a celebration when there was so little to rejoice about, in the end we all agreed that some fun was just what was needed. It was a Sunday - a sparkling winter's morning, with leafless branches etched against a vivid blue sky and a splash of orange from an aloe in flower. The garden was full of friends drinking, talking and sitting on the grass, and for a long time afterwards, as more and more were detained, people spoke of the party as “the last time we were all together.”

More detentions

“Hullo, Rosie!” As the handsome young man sauntered past me in Grahamstown's High Street, I felt a frisson of loathing. And again, that flash of coppery yellow in the murky Kariega River returned and the cry of “Snake in the water!” rang in my ears. I maintained my composure and in my most imperious tone I retorted, “Only my best friends call me Rosie!”

Lloyd Edwards was a Special Branch operative, as friendly and fresh-faced as the boy next door, but beneath his panache lurked danger and deceit. He and his brother were an infamous pair, both undercover spies on the Rhodes campus until their cover was blown. Thereafter Lloyd continued as a ubiquitous presence in Grahamstown, propping up bars in local hotels or strolling confidently around campus. When the time came for the state to clamp down on white activists, it was Lloyd who was directly responsible for the detention of many of our friends and acquaintances.

One of these was Ann Burroughs, my co-chair in the Black Sash in the early 1980s. As most Sash members were professional women in full-time employment, we tended to elect co-leaders to spread the load. All the women with whom I shared leadership were challenging colleagues. Analytical, insightful, well informed, they gingered up my ideas, and when necessary, they were on hand to restrain the greenhorn in their midst. Like several of them, Ann was far more radical than I was and filled with passionate enthusiasm. Inevitably, people like her were regularly targeted by the security police. And she had the added distinction of having dated Lloyd Edwards as a student.

“Ex-Lover Ordered Woman's Detention,” a headline in the regional newspaper proclaimed. What the report did not describe was the period of intimidation that preceded the detention. It began with a knock on the door late one night when Ann was alone in her house. She quickly switched off the lights and listened to the ensuing silence. Then she heard people quietly calling her name. “We know you are in there,” they tormented her. For some time they walked around outside the house before eventually going away. This kind of intimidation was by no means unheard of. Two Sash activists returned from work one day to find a bloodied and necklaced doll pinned to their door. Marion Lacey was a radical academic who was not shy about her ANC sympathies, while Melissa de Villiers had made her name as a student activist. Marianne Roux, a specialist in labour relations and workers' rights, was awoken one night by the noise of a brick shattering her front window. Wrapped around the brick was a death threat in newspaper type saying, “Your name is to be removed from the death list soon.” Her line of research had clearly earned the Special Branch's ire.

As the garden of Ann's house bordered onto ours, she started hopping over the fence to sleep in our spare room. Our nights became increasingly uneasy. We would wake every time a car stopped outside our house or voices were heard in the street, fully expecting the police to come for Ann. In the event, she was detained at her place of work at the National English Literary Museum. A phone call from a colleague informed us that a group of security policemen had arrived, produced a warrant of arrest and taken her away.

Discovering where a detainee was being held was extremely difficult but we had ways of finding out what we could. One of these was to visit the waiting room of the district surgeon, who examined prisoners and detainees. He happened to be our family GP as well, so I would go there on the pretext of needing a script for some or other mild illness, and sit paging through magazines, hoping to catch a glimpse of a detainee being brought in or out of the surgery. I would even casually ask the receptionist who had been seen that day. She gradually grew wise to my nonchalance and one day she bawled me out, accusing me of interfering in police business. Another way of tracing the whereabouts of a detainee was to haunt the police cells. Our guess following Ann's detention was that she would initially be held at the New Street police station, so we stood in the road as near to the cells as we could and repeatedly shouted her name. “Ann Burroughs!” we called. “Ann Burroughs!” Sure enough, she heard our calls and shouted back. We were soon made to move on but at least we had located her and had assured her of our support.

In due course Ann was removed to the North End prison in Port Elizabeth, where she developed a kidney infection, probably as a result of the conditions under which she was held in Grahamstown. The toilet in her cell did not work and she was provided with a bucket only after some days. Her first opportunity to wash came after three days when she was taken to the police mortuary for a shower.

Ann was one of a group of seven detainees who took the rare step of going to court to apply for their release from detention. Very few lawyers were willing to take on detainee cases but the activist community had an excellent ally in a sharp-witted and bluntly spoken lawyer with a reputation for being a tough street fighter. David de la Harpe was a hunter and falconer, and a raconteur who could stand in the pub drinking with a wide range of people, including Special Branch policemen. It was he who brought the case on behalf of Ann and her fellow detainees. As part of her application Ann used the fact that Lloyd had been instrumental in her detention.