Bram Fischer's 'Statement from the dock'

Fischer's daughter Ilse received the honory doctorate
from the US on behalf of her father on 9 December 2004.

(Adv Bram Fischer did not testify in his own defence because he feared being forced to implicate others. Instead he chose to read a statement from the dock. This document, perhaps one of the most important documents in South African history, is a rational yet moving explanation of his choices, his willingness to accept the consequences and a plea for a society that is based on justice and dignity. - Yvonne Malan)

Statement by Abram Fischer in the State versus Abram Fischer and Thirteen Others, 1 April 1966

Retyped by Yvonne Malan^*

1. I am on trial for my political beliefs and for the conduct to which those beliefs drove me. Whatever labels may be attached to the fifteen charges brought against me, they all arise from my having been a member of Communist Party and from my activities as a member. I engaged upon those activities because I believe that, in the dangerous circumstances, which have been created in South Africa, it was my duty to my fellow citizens to do so. (Political belief and conduct cannot be separated. I believe that to hold a belief and to fail to set upon it constitutes cowardice)

2. When a man is on trial for his political beliefs and actions, two courses are open to him. He can both confess to his transgressions and plead for mercy or he can justify his beliefs and explain why he acted as he did. Were I to ask forgiveness today I would betray my comrades. That course is not open to me. I believe that what I did was right. I must therefore explain to this Court what my motives were: why I hold the beliefs that I do (certain beliefs) and why I was compelled to act in accordance with them.

3. My belief, moreover, is one reason why I have pleaded not guilty to all the charges brought against me. Though I shall deny a number of important allegations made, this Court is aware of the fact that there is much in the State case that has not been contested. Yet if I am to explain my motives and my actions as clearly as I am able, then this Court was entitled to have had before it the witnesses who testified in chief and under cross-examination against me. Some of these I believe were fine and loyal persons who have now turned traitors to their cause and their country because of the methods used against them by the State, vicious and inhuman methods. Their evidence may therefore in important respects be unreliable.

4. There is another and more compelling reason for my plea and why I persist in it. I accept the general rule that for the protection of a society laws should be obeyed. But when laws themselves become immoral and require the citizen to take part in an organised system of oppression - if only by his silence or apathy - then I believe that a higher duty arises. This compels one to refuse to recognize such laws. The laws under which I am being prosecuted are enacted by a wholly unrepresentative body, a body in which three-quarters of the people of this country have no voice whatever.
These laws were enacted, not to prevent the spread of communism, but for the purpose of silencing the opposition of the large majority of our citizens to a Government intent upon depriving them, solely on account of their colour, of the most elementary human rights, of the right to freedom and happiness, the right to live together with their families wherever they might choose, to earn their livelihoods to the best of their abilities, to rear and educate their children in a civilized fashion, to take part in the administration of their country and obtain a fair share of the wealth they produce; in short, to live as human beings. My conscience does not permit me to afford these laws such recognition, as even a plea of guilty would involve. Hence, though I shall be convicted by this Court, I cannot plead guilty. I believe the future may say that I acted correctly.

5. My first duty then is to explain to the court that I hold and have for many years held the view that politics can only be properly understood and that our immediate political problems can only be satisfactorily solved without violence and civil and by the application of the scientific system of political knowledge known as Marxism. I shall also have to explain why this view compelled me to act as I have.

6. And I wish to emphasize that I do this from the dock and not from the witness box, not because I fear cross-examination on these matters, I would in fact welcome nothing more than to discuss this subject. But I know that cross-examination must go further and involve others who may or may not have been associated with me in my work. In the long series of political trials that this country has experienced in recent years, brave men and women have refused to testify against their friends and accepted long prison sentences rather than do so. In this very case, Mrs. Lesley Schermbrucker, whose husband is already serving a five-year sentence for his political ideals, provides an outstanding example of that courage. She was prepared to sacrifice herself and the happiness of two young children rather than give evidence. I ask the Court to consider my position in the light of such conduct. I will not go into the witness box and prevaricate or lie. I will not go into the witness box and answer questions that might implicate others. There is only one alternative therefore which is open to me. That is to make my statement from the dock. I know that it is possible for this Court to draw adverse inferences from my failure to go into the witness box. In the circumstances I cannot avoid that possible consequence. In no circumstances, whatever the consequences to me personally may be, would (will) I myself be State witness. I cannot even allow myself to be put in the position of informing on others whether directly or indirectly, whether by answering or my refusing to answer questions.

7. When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that time were.

8. Marxism is a system of philosophy which covers and seeks to explain the whole range of human activity, but looking back, I cannot say that it was Marxism as a social science that drew me originally to the Communist Party, just as little, presumably as a doctor would say that he was originally drawn to his own field of science by its scientifically demonstrable truths. These only become apparent later.

9. In my mind there remain two clear reasons for my approach to the Communist Party. One was (The one is) the glaring injustice which exists and has existed for a long time in South African society; the other, a gradual realisation as I became more and more deeply involved with the Congress Movement of those years, that is, the movement for freedom and equal human rights for all, that it was always members of the Communist Party who seemed prepared, regardless of the cost, to sacrifice the most, to give their best, to face the greatest dangers, in the struggle against poverty and discrimination.

10. The glaring injuries is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see. This is not even a question of the degree of humiliation or poverty or misery imposed by discrimination on one section of the community. Hence it cannot be (It is not) justified by comparing non-White standards of living or education in South Africa with those on other parts of the continent. It is simply and plainly that discrimination should be imposed as a matter of deliberate policy because of the color which a man's skin happens to be, irrespective of his merits as a man, a worker, a thinker, a father or a friend.

11. Yet the injustice of the system does not in itself (suffice to) explain my conduct. All White South Africans can see it. The vast majority of them remain unmoved and unaffected. They are either oblivious to it or, despite all its cruelty, condone it on the assumption, whether admitted or not, that the non-White of this country is an inferior being with ideals, hopes, loves and passions which are different from ours. Hence the further tacit or open assumption that he need not be treated as a complete human being, i.e. that it is not "unfair" to make him carry a pass, to prevent him from owning lands, deprivations which if applied to Whites, would horrify all and cause a revolution overnight.

12. Though nearly forty years have passed, I can remember vividly the experience which brought home to me exactly what this "White" attitude is and also how artificial and unreal it is. Like many young Afrikaners I grew up on a farm. Between the ages of eight and twelve my daily companions were two young Africans of my own age. I can still remember their names. For four years we were, when I was not at school, always in each other's company. We roamed the farm together, we hunted and played together, we modelled clay oxen and swam. And never can I remember that the color of our skins affected our fun, or our quarrels or our close friendship in any way.

13. Then my family moved to town and I moved back to the normal White South African mode of life where the only relationship with Africans was that of master and servant. I finished my schooling and went to University. There one of my first interests became the study of the theory of segregation, then beginning to blossom. This seemed to me to provide the solution to South Africa's problems and I became an earnest believer in it. Because I do not believe that theory and practice can or should be separated a year later to help in a small way to put this theory into practice, I joined the Bloemfontein Joint Council of Europeans and Africans, a body devoted largely to trying to induce various authorities to provide proper (and separate)¹ amenities for Africans. I arrived for my first meeting with other newcomers. I found myself being introduced to leading members of the African community. I found that I had to shake hands with them. This, I found, required an enormous effort of will on my part. Could I really, as a White adult touch the hand of a black in friendship?

14. That night I spent many hours in thought trying to account for my strange revulsion when I remembered I had never had any such feelings towards my boyhood friends. What became abundantly clear was that it was I and not the Black man who had changed ; that despite my growing interest in him, I had developed an antagonism for which I could find no rational basis whatsoever.

15. I cannot burden the Court with personal reminiscences. The result of all this was that and in succeeding years, when some of us ran literacy classes in the old Waaihoek location in Bloemfontein, I came to understand that colour prejudice was a wholly irrational phenomenon and that true human friendship could extend across the colour bar once the initial prejudice was overcome. And that I think was lesson No. 1 on my way to the Communist Party which has always refused to accept any colour bar and has always stood firm on the belief, itself two thousand years old, of the eventual brotherhood of all men.

16. The other reason for my (the) attraction to (of) the Communist Party, the willingness to sacrifice, was a matter of personal observation. But there could be no doubt of its existence. By that time the Communist Party had already for two decades stood avowedly and unconditionally for political rights for non-Whites and its White members were, save for a handful of courageous individuals, the only Whites who showed complete disregard for the hatred which this attitude attracted from their fellow White South Africans. These members, I found, were Whites who could have taken full advantage of all the privileges open to them and their families because of their colour, who could have obtained lucrative employment and social position, but who, instead, were prepared for the sake of their conscience, to perform the most menial and unpopular work at little or sometimes no remuneration. These were a body of Whites who were not prepared to flourish on the deprivation suffered by others. But apart from the example of White members, it was always the communists of all races who were at all times prepared to give of their time and their energy and such means as they had, to help those in need and those most deeply affected by discrimination. It was members of the Communist Party who helped with night schools and feeding schemes, who assisted trade unions fighting desperately to preserve standards of living and who threw themselves into the work of the national movements. It was African communists who constantly risked arrest or the loss of their jobs or even their homes in locations, in order to gain or retain some rights. And all this was carried on regardless of whether it would be popular with Authorities or not. Without question this (such a) fearless adherence to principle must always exercise a strong appeal to those who wished to take part in politics, not personal advantage, but in the hope of making some positive contribution. The Court will bear in mind that at that stage, and for many years afterwards, the Communist Party was the only political party which stood for an extension of franchise. (The) To this day, the elimination of discrimination and the granting to all of normal, human rights remain to this day its chief objective as a number of exhibits show. In particular, as far as I am concerned, this appears from my own draft notes for the Programme (Exhibit 182)² , from the Programme itself (Exhibit ) and from Exhibits 5 )³ and 189)⁴ . It (remains) is the objective for which I have lived and worked for nearly thirty years.

17. But I have to tell this Court not only why I joined the Communist Party when it was a legal party - when at times it had representatives in Parliament, the Cape Provincial Council and the City Council of Johannesburg. I must also explain why I continued to be a member after it was declared illegal. This involves what I believe on the one hand to be the gravely dangerous situation which has been created in South Africa from 1950 onwards and, on the other, the vital contribution which Socialist thought can make towards its solution. I shall start with the latter.

18. This is neither the time nor the place in which to embark upon an exposition of a system of philosophy I want to refer, however, to a few well recognized principles which demonstrate the nature of the extremely dangerous situation into which South Africa is being led, by those who choose to ignore these principles, and which also demonstrate the desperate urgency for reversing this direction. I should add that most of the Marxist principles to which I shall refer are to-day accepted by many historians and economists who are by no means themselves Marxists. 19. It was clear for instance that during the course of its development, human society assumes various forms. There is a primitive kind of communism found in early stages, best illustrated to-day by the Bushmen Society still in existence in parts of South Africa. There have been slave-owning societies and socialism, and each of these types of society develops its own characteristic form of government, of political control. 20. Now a number of factors may contribute towards shaping precise form of political control which each form of society develops for itself and historians may differ as to the weight to be given to each factor. There can be no doubt, however, that the economic form which a society assumes is basically determined by the manner in which it produces the goods upon which it lives, i.e. the manner in which it satisfies its material wants. There can be equally no doubt that it is this economic form which basically determines the form of political control which each system ultimately evolves for itself. Thus in a primitive clan or tribal system such as exists amongst Bushmen, the whole community is occupied with the task of scraping a bare subsistence form nature itself, assisted by only the most primitive types of tools and weapons, such as the bow and arrow and crude implements. Hence there is obviously no room for slavery because the slave would produce no more in general than he himself consumes. Hence slavery is not to be found amongst these people. Here too the society has its own particular method of political control by the clan itself.

21. As more elaborate tools and methods come (came) to be developed, for instance in a settled agricultural community, man gradually evolves ways of producing more than he himself consume and hence provides the basis for the slave owning society, the typical form of classical times. Then for the first time do we find a division in society itself between those who own the means of production and those who do not, and who have therefore to work in order to remain alive. Then too a new political form of government has to be evolved.

22. I do not propose to go through the whole process. Two things are abundantly clear. The one is that the economic form which one society assumes is incompatible with that of the society which preceded it or with that which will succeed it. The second is that a new form of economic society cannot be finally establish itself unless it also develops the new political forms which can allow it to develop to its full extent.

23. It is hardly necessary to elaborate these propositions. In the main they are self-evident. Two illustrations will suffice. The idea of universal adult franchise can simply not exist in a slave-owning society for, if put into operation, it would be destruction of that society itself. The majority of the people, the slaves, would simply vote themselves free. Similarly to go to much later stage in human development, feudal economic and political forms are wholly incompatible with the system of capitalist production. Capitalistic production requires certain essential conditions. Land must be alienable and serfs must be freed from their feudal obligations in order that they can move to the cities which spring up and take part as "free" workers in the new system of production. Thus, once man has invented machinery and has learned how to drive it by mechanical power, new economic forms must of necessity come into existence and, in their train, inevitable political changes must take place. It is inconceivable, for instance, that modern Britain or modern France could be ruled by the feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages, just as it is inconceivable that a modern capitalist system could run with slave labour.

24. The political change therefore are as inevitable as the economic changes and ultimately both depend upon that slow but ever accelerating process of the change in the methods of production. It is these political changes which in Marxist language are known as "revolutions" whether they take place by violent or by peaceful means, and this again depends on the circumstances at any given stage of history. It is not difficult to illustrate this proposition either if one merely compares the French Revolution with the evolution of capitalist democracy in England during the 19th century.

25. What I am saying therefore, and this is relevant to my motive, is that this approach explains in rational terms why at different times in man's history, different economic and political forms of society have existed. It also explains why one type of society must of necessity give way to a new and higher form. History therefore becomes something which can be rationally understood and explained. It ceases to be a meaningless agglomeration of events or a mere account of great men wandering in haphazard fashion across its stage. Similarly, modern society itself assumes a meaning as well. It has not appeared on the scene by mere chance; it is not final or immutable and in its South African form it contains its own contradictions which must irresistibly lead to change.

26. This is part of Marxist theory and the first point therefore which I seek to make is that Marxism is not something evil or violent or subversive. It is true that propaganda against it has in recent times been unbridled and unscrupulous. It is also true that for sixteen years now its principles have been outlawed, and that prejudiced propaganda has made it almost impossible for our people to give unbiased thought to those principles which most closely affect their future. They do not even study what the people they choose to look upon as enemies, are thinking. In fact they have no idea what Socialism means and the tragic stage has been reached were the word "communism" evokes nothing but unthinking and irrational hatred. But this does not alter the character nor the accuracy of the Marxist view of South African society nor does it alter the fact that Socialism has already been adopted by fourteen states with a population of over 1, 000 million people and is accepted as the future form of society by many other millions in all parts of the world. What it does do is to throw into high relief the absurdity of legislation which seeks to abolish a scientific approach to history, which as I shall show, has so much to contribute to the solution of our problems. One should not forget either that this legislation cannot abolish those four years when the Soviet State, then the only socialist State, stood as one of the main bastions between civilisation and the Nazi armies. Nor can it finally prevent our returning to the more relational attitude we have previously displayed, when, for instance, in 1919 even the late Dr D.F. Malan could study the praise the virtues of socialism.

27. I have not said anything about capitalism as yet. Its characteristic features are displayed in South Africa hence I ask the Court to look at it (can consider it) in its South African context. Before I do so, I merely want to emphasize two relevant matters.

(a) The political changes I have referred to occur when the outmoded political form ceases to serve the needs of the people who live under the new circumstances brought about by the development of new economic methods. Where old forms are at their weakest, the change is the most likely to occur first and when it comes it is irresistible. The clock of history can never be set back. Once the economic changes have occurred, the political changes are bound to follow.
(b) In fact therefore, the sole question is whether, when they occur, the political changes will be effected by peaceful means or by violence and this depends in essence upon the balances of forces at the time when the changes come and on the degree to which people understand the need for political change.

28. South Africa today is a clear example of a society in which the political forms do not serve the needs of the most of the people. The chief features of capitalism as we know it (in) here (South Africa) are clear :

(a) The means of production are owned by a relatively small handful of people. This ownership is becoming more and more concentrated. I am referring, of course, to the ownership of factories, mines and land used for productive purposes.
(b) The overwhelming (vast) majority of men and women in the country own no means of production and can exist only by selling their labour power.
(c) Production of commodities is undertaken solely for the purpose of making a profit and for no other. This is not due to any particular trait of avarion in mankind. It is inherent in the system, for profit is its life blood. If profit disappears, as it does periodically, the system falters or even comes to a standstill as it did in the 1930's.
(d) Moreover, the existence of the system depends on competition for markets and raw materials and cheap labour. Since large scale production and up to date methods of production which are constantly being improved, reduced costs, the inner motive force of the system is constantly driving it to form larger and larger production units and to an ever more intense search for market.

29. It is precisely this characteristic of capitalism which leads to Imperialism and which led to the scramble for Africa during the last century and to the division of the world into colonies of the Imperial States.

30. All recognize these facts. What everyone tries to forget or simply overlooks is that for the vast majority of men the system is based upon fear, fear of unemployment and poverty. This is so in the older industrial countries. It is more particularly so in the colonies and ex-colonies and in South Africa it is a fear which is accentuated by the colour bar. At heart the problem is an economic one which becomes only too apparent in South Africa when one takes note of the reactions which, even in a period of apparent prosperity, follow any attempt to permit non-Whites to perform unskilled work. In the back of every White man's mind lurks the fear of losing his job. This feat is always with the White man in this country, be he miner or bricklayer, steelworker or bus driver.

31. For the non-Whites the position is intolerable. He knows he will always be the first to suffer loss of employment. He realises that so little concern is shown to him that in South Africa the number of unemployed Africans is never counted or known.

32. Now it is the fear, bred by this system, which is fertile soil for producing racialism and intolerance. It was a similiar fear which in Europe enabled Hitler to propagate his monstrous theory of race superiority which led to the extermination of five (six) million Jews in Germany. It is this fear which provides scope for the ready acceptance by Whites in South Africa of many distorted ideas : that Africans are not civilized ; that they cannot become so for many generations; that they are not our fellow citizens but really our (real) enemies, and hence must be ruled by extreme police state methods and must be prevented from having any organizations of their own; that their voices should be heard only through mouthpieces selected by our White Government; that they leaders should be kept permanently on Robben Island.

33. As far as I South Africa is concerned it is the economic fear which this is the greatest evil which our system has produced for it has severed all contact between the two main races of the country and it is daily making it more difficult for those two races to get together to work out by discussion and not by violence, a method whereby they can live together in peace and prosperity in this great country of ours.

34. a) What I have had to say about Marxism is also directly relevant to the indictment. In Counts 5, 6 and 7 I am charged with performing acts to further the objects of communities, to wit, the establishment in South Africa of a despotic system of Government, based on the dictatorship of proletariat. This is a gross mis-statement of my aims and those of my party. We have never aimed at a despotic system of government. Nor were any efforts ever directed to establishing a (the) dictatorship of the proletariat in this country. It is necessary therefore me to explain what we have worked for.
(b) It is true that we say that the ultimate remedy for the evils I have described, and the many other evils which exist to-day lies in a change to a Socialist system under which the means of production are owned by the people as a whole and in accordance with a (the) planned economy. It is therefore not subject to the ups and downs and the fluctuations of a capitalist economy. It can ensure full employment at all times and will therefore abolish fear. The distribution of goods produced takes place according to the needs and the contributions of those who produce and the needs of those who cannot work, the children and the aged. Total production can be increased rapidly until eventually reaches the stage where socialism itself (where each worker is paid according to the work he performs) changes into full communism. Under communism a superabundance of wealth entitles all (each men) to receive according to their (his) needs. All this, we maintain goes hand in hand with the ever widening democracy and an ever increasing degree of individual freedom and participation in the control of the control;. But, as far as South Africa is concerned, there are matters which the future will settle.
(c) As I have already indicated we have never put forward socialism as our immediate solution. What we have said is that immediate dangers can be avoided by what we always refer to as national democratic revolution, that is by bringing our state at this stage into line with the needs of to-day, by abolishing discrimination, extending political rights and then allowing our peoples to settle their own future. This is fully demonstrated by our Programme which right at the outset says at page 4 -

"As its immediate and foremost task, the South African Communist Party worked for a united front of national liberation. It strives to unite all sections and classes of oppressed and democratic people for a national democratic revolution to destroy White domination. The main content of this revolution will be the national liberation of the African people ; carried to its fulfillment, this revolution will be at the same time put an end to every sort of race discrimination and privilege. The revolution will restore the land and wealth of the country to the people and guarantee democracy, freedom and equality of rights and opportunities to all."

And then again, at page 53 where it puts for its "immediate proposals", it makes it clear that they are put forward within the framework of the Freedom Charter for the urgent discussion by a National Convention, not in order to establish a socialist State but for the building of a national democratic state.

35. There are sound reasons for doing this. (This situation is too grave and fraught with too much danger). South Africa has already advanced too far along the path that will lead us directly to war to wait for the advent of socialism in order to save it from that horror. One has only to look at this country's military budget to realise that. From a military expenditure in 1946 of R350 000 it has risen to R 229, 400, 000 in 1965 - an increase of more than 12 fold. This exceeds the highest amount spent when the country was actually at war - the sum of R 204, 000, 000 which was the amount of our military expenditure in 1944.

36. Moreover, as I have already indicated the point at which, as history shows us, a system breaks down, is just that point at which it displays (shows) its greatest weakness and there can be no doubt that in the past few decades, the greatest weakness in the present system has been displayed in the Imperialist sector i.e. the section in which one people tries to rule and dominate another. This is the point at which it has already broken down.

37. Over the past twenty or thirty years the weakest link in the Imperialist system has been its inability to deal with the wants of the colonial peoples. There it has bred its own downfall because it on the one hand it created mass poverty and economic instability, and, on the other, developed intense feelings of nationalism. What Imperialism succeeded in doing in the colonies in the 20th Century was to produce the worst evils which the industrial revolution produced in England in the early 19th Century plus a deep sense of national consciousness. Hence in those parts of the world - India, Africa and the East - the so-called revolution has taken place but in different forms. Four Empires have had to dissolve themselves and have compelled to grant political independence to some thirty or forty states just as Britain was compelled to grant the vote to so-called "lower" classes last century. But with three or four notable exceptions these States have achieved their independence peacefully and without having to resort to any form of violence. South African State propaganda suggests that this was due to some mystical decadence in the West. Nothing could be further from the truth. Britain, France, Holland and Belgium have not in a couple of decades become soft or decadent. Far deeper forces (causes) have come into play (existence) which left them with no alternative but to do what they have done. The combination of the new nationalism and the urge to take control of their own economic future proved in the new States to be irresistible.

38. It should indeed not be difficult for South Africans to understand this process. In the one sense we Afrikaners were the vanguard of this liberation movement in Africa. Of all former colonies we displayed the greatest resistance to Imperial conquest, a resistance which a handful of freedom fighters carried on for three years against the greatest Empire of all time. We failed then. A few decades later, without having once more to resort to arms we succeeded in gaining our independence because it was impossible to stop us. And we did not say then that we had obtained freedom which ever date one chooses to regard as the date when we advised freedom, whether 1907, 1910, 1931 or 1961, because the West had become decadent 5 . We knew that we could not be resisted. Now, as we communists see it, those who rule South Africa are trying to do just those things which Imperialism could achieve in the 19th Century but which are impossible in the second half of the 20th. That attempt must lead inevitably to disaster.

39. So much for the considerations of theory which led me to contravene the law. Let me turn to what I regard as the present dangers in South Africa, which should impel people to act. I suppose it can never be easy for the normal citizen of a state to break the law. It is usually only amongst those who are mentally sick or warped that law-breakers are found, for the normal, healthy citizen is a social creature bred to respect the rules of his society. If in addition he has been trained as a lawyer as I have his instincts are re-enforced by his training. For him to make the departure is doubly difficult. Only profound and compelling reasons can lead him to choose such a course.

40. In my view such powerful and compelling reasons have been brought into existence in South Africa during the past fifteen years or more and they have as I shall show, when I deal with the indictment, led many thousands of South African citizens, including many of the country's kindliest and wisest and in normal circumstances, most law-abiding citizens, to transgress against unjust laws

41. My own case is but a single one which illustrates to what our laws have driven such widely different persons as Chief Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Dr. G.M. Naicker, Nan Sita, Hugh Lewin, Jean Middelton, Alan Brooks and thousands of others, (both) young and old (both men and women).

42. There has always, since the days of slavery, been racial discrimination in South Africa. I suppose, at the beginning, when people enjoying a more advanced civilization come into contact and intermingled with those not so fortunate, this is inevitable, though according to the tenets of Christianity it should not be so. To-day we know, from experience in other parts of the world, that is possible to make illiterate people literate and to "civilize" them in one or at the most two generations provided those who hold the state power are prepared to devote sufficient resources to that object - even if that entails sacrifices in other directions. That course South Africa never took. For 150 years it hesitated. Then the White rulers chose a road which led in an entirely opposite direction. To preserve "civilization" one would think it prudent to spread it as rapidly as possible. Instead our rulers selected as far as possible to retain it as a White monopoly. Deliberately we chose a path of "segregation" which, whatever changing appellations we may give to it, was and is a policy intended to keep the non-Whites in a state of permanent inferiority and subjection - an inferiority which is political, social and economic. This in itself constitutes a grave menace.

43. I do not propose to deal with this policy in detail. Some of its laws and enactments I shall have to refer to in relation to the charges against me. What I do want to say about it in relation to my motives can be said briefly.

44. In the first place "apartheid" or "parallelle ontwikkeling" can never succeed. In terms of what I have already said, it is a form of "Imperialism" which is a complete anachronism. It is unnecessary to argue this, or to refer to the face, the figures and events which show day by day that is crumbling. It is sufficient to ask whether my Afrikaner people would after a century long struggle for freedom and equal rights, ever have been satisfied were it proposed : -

(i) That they should be given, say, the Orange Free State without its gold or coal mines, as the one and only part of the country in which they could live as of right and in which they could own land.
(ii) That Afrikaners should enjoy political rights in the Orange Free State only and those in the form of a emasculated Provincial Council always subject to the control of the legislature comprised entirely of members of a different race - with only a promise of some vague form of "independence" at some unspecified, dim and future time.
(iii) That elsewhere in South Africa, where the majority of their people live and would of necessity for ever have to live, they should be allowed to live only on a sufferance of another race only - subject also to having employment, the necessary documents and having a political record of not being openly opposed to the government of the day.
(iv) That in all the parts of the country - the Transvaal, Natal and the Cape - where lie the industries, the mines and the big cities of our country they as Afrikaners should have to live in locations or in compounds, be excluded from owning their own homes, be excluded from performing skilled work and be constantly subjected to losing their employment because of job reservation.
(v) That in those areas they should be excluded from all administrative and judicial posts and from all our best universities and schools, our theaters, restaurants, places of entertainment and other amenities.
(vi) That they should be subject to the Pass Laws and that Afrikaans should be recognized as an official language in the Orange Free State only.
(vii) Hence, that they should be condemned for the foreseeable future to degrading poverty and insult.

45. I have gone far enough, though this catalogue could be extended indefinitely. After all, my object is merely to explain my motives. The answer should be obvious. But what does (is) not seem to be obvious to the White people of this country is that the attempt to implement their present policy is one which is fraught with (mortal) peril (to ourselves). Here too argument is superfluous if for one moment if one uses one's imagination and pictures its application to one of the White races of this country. The situation created would immediately be explosive and would lead overnight to extreme unrest and violence - as indeed much milder policies have in the past led : in Graaff Reinet and Swellendam, in the Free State, in 1881 in the Transvaal and even in the 1914 Rebellion when those who thought they were wronged were in fact in possession of the vote.

46. That similiar reactions on the part of the non-White have not been produced during the past fifty years is no tribute to the policy of segregation but rather to the tolerance, understanding and infinite goodwill of the African. The only surprising thing is that it has produced nothing more violent than some highly controlled and restricted sabotage.

47. But there are circumstances which make the policy of segregation far more dangerous in the nineteen-fifties than it would have been in earlier decades.

48. South Africa has chosen the fifties and sixties of the 20th Century as the point of time at which to signal the full-steam-ahead for this policy. Historians will point to that period approximately as the end of the "colonial" system. It has been in these decades that political independence has spread through Africa and Asia. And it has spread not by here chance or because of some so-called (mystical) decay of the Imperial powers or of the West. It has spread because of historically imperialist domination has outlived its purpose and is now about to be replaced by something different. Consequently former colonial peoples are to-day able to demand and obtain independence - something they were quite unable to do even twenty-five years ago.

49. This has far-reaching consequences for South Africa which is in effect trying to establish a "colonial" system of its own brand at this state of history, complete with "indirect" rule and even the re-establishment of tribalism. This can never succeed for one cannot move backwards in history.

50. I am not trying to dramatize this situation. I am stating nothing but plain simple fact : It is there for anyone to see - for anyone whose vision is not totally obscured by the myopia of the White South Africa :

(a) There is a strong and ever growing movement for freedom and for basic human rights amongst the non-White people of the country - i.e. amongst four-fifths of the population. (b) This movement is supported, not only by the whole of Africa but by virtually the whole membership of the United Nations as well - both West and East,
(c) However complacent and indifferent White South Africa may be, this movement can never be stopped. In the end it must triumph. Above all, those of us who are Afrikaans and who have experienced our own successful struggle for full equality should know this.
(d) The sole questions for the future of all of us therefore are not whether the change will come only

(i) whether the change can be brought about peacefully and without bloodshed; and (ii) what the position of the white man is going to be in the period immediately following on the establishment of democracy - after years of cruel discrimination and oppression and humiliation which he has imposed on the non-White people of this country.

51. If this is correct - and all the world except South Africa knows it is - then my conduct in recent years must be viewed in relation to (judged in the first place by) the results which have been produced by the ruthless and persistent application of the Act, which in order to mislead, has been entitled the "Suppression of Communism" Act.

52. As the Congresses, the Communist Party and many others correctly prophesied in 1950 when this Act was before Parliament, its true purpose was not to suppress the political and economic principles of Marx. Neither at that stage nor at any stage since then has a socialist revolution been on the agenda in South Africa. Its true intention was and is to prevent the growth of the two ideas accepted throughout the whole civilized world to-day : the idea that all men should have a say in the manner in which they are to be governed and the idea that it is possible for men of different races to live and work together in harmony and peace - to co-operate for the good of all.

53. That the prophecies of 1950 were correct has been demonstrated beyond by the experience of the past sixteen years :

(i) The A.N.C., the powerful and moderate national movement of the African people, which through more than half a century has stood for a thorough-going non-racial democracy in South Africa has been outlawed. Just before its banning it had a paid-up membership of 120, 000. The extreme wing of the non-White movement, the P.A.C., which only came into existence because of the utter frustration caused by Government policy, has been outlawed.
(ii) The South African Indian Congress, an organisation founded by Gandhi himself and based on his principle of Satyagraha, though not banned, has been put out of action by the proscription, restriction, house arrest and banning of all its leaders.
(iii) The Congress of Democrats the only non-Marxist body of whites which campaigned for equality of all persons, irrespective of race or colour, has been declared an unlawful organisation.
(iv) The Communist Party, standing unequivocally for equal rights, has been outlawed and its members and even its sympathisers have been hounded from pillar to post ; have been persecuted and prosecuted, have been put to physical and mental torture.
(v) To-day, of those who stand for racial equality and for co-operation between races, at least 3000 are now in our gaols and all their leaders are either in goal, or under bans or restrictions, or banished to remote parts of the country or have been driven into exile.
(vi) If to-day there is an appearance of calm it is a false appearance induced entirely by this oppression. The police state does not create real calm or induce any genuine acceptance of a hated policy. All it can achieve is a short term period of quiet and a long term hatred. Would calm and a desire for peaceful solutions have been created amongst Afrikaners if the National Party had been declared illegal during the last war, and its leadership thrown into jail?

54. I believed when I joined the illegal Communist Party that South Africa had set out on a course which could lead only to civil war of the most vicious kind whether in ten or fifteen or twenty years. Algeria provided the perfect historical example of that. I believe moreover, and still believe, that such a civil war can never be won by the Whites in this country. They might win some initial rounds. In the long run the balance of forces is against them, both inside and outside the country. In Algeria, a close historical parallel, a French army of half a million soldiers, created by one of the worlds greatest industrial powers, could not succeed. But win or lose, the consequences of civil war (that) would be horrifying and permanent. Clearly it is imperative that an alternative "solution" be found, for in truth civil war is no "solution" at all.

55. Here I believed and still believe that socialism in the long term has an answer to the problem of race relations that is a Socialist State. But by negotiation, other immediate solutions can be found. They must, however, not be imposed but worked out in co-operation and that is what the Communist Party has stood for.

56. I have said that the problem is at heart an economic one. In 1930 we had hurriedly to assemble a "White Labour" policy to protect White employment during a crisis. To-day we have prepared in advance up-to-date machinery for that purpose : We have Job Reservation and Bantustans to which superfluous Black labour can be endorsed ; we have forbidden African Trade Unions so that African workers will be without protection; we have removed all their representatives from our councils so that they shall be voiceless in a new crisis.

57. But whatever may have been achieved in the 1930's, this can never be a solution for a crisis to-day. Thirty years of industrialization have been passed since then. An enormous class of African industrial and urban workers has been created. The capacity of the Reserves to accept and keep alive has grown ever smaller, while the numbers to be accommodated have grown ever greater. We cannot go back to 1930. To try to do so would lead immediately to starvation and want, to unrest and violence. This policy, in a crisis is one which would fail before it started.

58. Therefore an alternative must be found. We must start at the other end. We must find a system which creates work and banishes the fear of unemployment. That I believe can be found in a carefully conceived plan along the lines of the Freedom Charter with a fair division of political and economic power. All the (The) peoples of South Africa must be given a voice in their own affairs and in the whole of the country which they occupy and work in and they must be taught that races can live and work together in harmony. Had our White political leaders during the past thirty years preached the possibility of inter-racial co-operation instead of using every means of destroying any belief in it, we might already have reached a position of safety. South Africa would certainly by now have achieved a unique leadership amongst the States of Africa and would undoubtedly have influenced the history of the whole of this Continent and the future of the White man's position in it. Instead we stand completely isolated from over 200 million people, hated by all.

59. And so, in the circumstances, who was there to preach this co-operation but the Congresses and the Communist Party? And if one believes that these things can only be achieved by political means, what party was there to join but the illegal Communist Party? Moreover, such ideals are not achieved by theorising only. Over the past two or three decades it has been the Congresses and the Communist Party who have demonstrated in practice that men and women of different races can work together without difficulty on the basis of complete democracy and who have produced leaders prepared to sacrifice everything - even their lives - to achieve this ideal - people who have actually hammered out a policy, the Freedom Charter, in terms of which there will be room for all to exercise their rights. With (Under) these leaders no one need fear that he will be "driven into the sea". I speak from practical experience. I have worked with every Congress leader in South Africa. With these beliefs I had no alternative but to break the law.

60. I must now deal further with the allegations made in the evidence led by the State. Before doing so, I have one more thing to say as to owe to this Court my motives. I estreated bail on the 25th January of last year. Had I wanted to save myself, I could have done so by leaving the country or simply by remaining in England in 1964. I did not do so because I regarded it as my duty to remain in this country and to continue my work so long as I was physically able to do so. The same reason which induced me to join the illegal Communist Party induced me to estreat bail. By 1965 they had been magnified a hundred fold. All protest had been silenced (, National organisation had been banned,). The very administration of justice had been changed by the 90-day law and by the "Sobukwe" clause which in a vital respect had usurped the functions even of the court trying me. My punishment was no longer in the sole discretion of that (the) Court (trying me). During the previous decade too - and now I speak as an Afrikaner - something (which is) sinister for the future of my people had happened.

61. It is true that apartheid ("parallelle ontwikkeling" under different names) has existed for many decades with all that it entails in shapes ranging from segregation and the deprivation of rights to such apparently trivial things as the constant daily depiction in our Afrikaans newspaper cartoons of the African as a cross between a baboon (some sort) of animal and a 19th Century American coon (has already existed for many decades). What is not appreciated by my fellow Afrikaner, because he has cut himself off from all contact with the non-Whites (other than that between master and servant) is that the extreme intensification of that policy over the past fifteen years is laid entirely at his door. He is now blamed as an Afrikaner for all the evils and the humiliation of apartheid.

62. Hence to-day the policeman is known as a "Dutch". That is why too, when I give an African a lift during the buss boycott, he refuses to believe that I am an Afrikaner.

63. All this (I believed and still believe) bodes ill for our (the) future (of Afrikanerdom). It has bred a deeprooted hatred for Afrikaners, for our language, (, our culture) our political and racial outlook amongst all non-Whites - yes, even amongst those who seek positions of authority by pretending to support apartheid. It is rapidly destroying amongst non-Whites all belief in future co-operation with Afrikaners.

64. To remove this barrier will demand all the wisdom, leadership and influence of those Congress leaders now silenced (banned, exiled or) and imprisoned for their political beliefs. It demands also that Afrikaners themselves should protest openly and clearly against discrimination. Surely, in such circumstances, there was an additional duty cast on me, that at least one Afrikaner should make this protest actively and positively even though as a result I now face fifteen charges instead of four.

65. It was to keep faith with all those dispossessed by Apartheid that I broke my undertaking to the Court, separated myself from my family, pretended I was someone else, and adopted the life of a fugitive. I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act. I knew what they expected of me and I did it. I felt responsible, not to those who are indifferent to the sufferings of others, but to those who are concerned. I knew that by valuing above all their judgment, I would be condemned by people who are content to see themselves as respectable and loyal citizens. I can not regret any such condemnation that may follow me.

66. I propose now to deal with the evidence:

67. At the times referred to in the evidence I was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. I was its acting chairman. I was not its treasurer then or at any other stage though I dealt with certain of its financial matters as I shall indicate, I attended meetings of the Committee. I am not prepared to say who its members were though I should add that these meetings were occasionally attended my non-members - persons we wished to consult and who we trusted because of their long record of service to the liberation movement in South Africa.

68. Hlapane has given evidence about the meetings which took place between the end of 1962 or the beginning of 1963 and June 1963. Some of the evidence is correct; some of it is totally false, but I cannot deal with these meetings or with his testimony about my views and my conduct or about Umkhonto We Sizwe without giving the Court a brief outline of the history of the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe and its purposes and of the attitude of the Communist Party towards it.

69. It is well-known that throughout its history the Indian Congress has always been strongly influenced by the ideas of non-violence taught by Mahatma Gandhi, who was its founder. It is also a matter of history that during the first forty years of its existence, from 1912 onwards, the A.N.C. chose strictly legal methods only of trying to make its deep felt grievances known to the White people of this country. Exactly the same methods were used by the Coloured People's Organization and by the Communist Party.

70. If proof were needed of the fruitless results of these methods it can be found in any statue book printed in those years. Discrimination was piled upon discrimination. Steadily over the years the rights of non-Whites were eroded. After forty years no leaders could be expected to continue with such fruitless methods.

71. During the fifties, therefore, new methods were put into practice. There was the great campaign for the defiance of unjust laws. Over 8500 people, men, women and youths went to goal in 1952 for breaching discriminatory laws and this campaign was conducted without a single act of violence. Our all-white government took no cognisance of the deep human feeling underlying this movement. Instead it imposed vicious punishment on any attempt to breach laws by way of protest. The twenty leaders were tried and convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act though few were communists, some were anti-communist and none intended to achieve any object other than the withdrawal of petty apartheid laws and regulations.

72. During that decade too, as all strikes were illegal, passive resistance by means of mass stay-at-homes was developed. Again care was taken to avoid all violence. But here violence was used against the protestors, violence in the form of arrests of innocent people and actual violence in the way of shootings. On the 26th June, 1950, the police in breaking up the mass stay-at-home shot eighteen people dead - to give but one illustration.

73. But negative methods were not the only ones practised in this period. After two years of preparation, there gathered at Kliptown on the 26th June, 1955, an assembly of over 2 000 delegates from all races and from all corners of our land - The Congress of the People. Though the obstacles placed on their way by police interference and by arrests were enormous, this assembly nevertheless took place - the most representative gathering this country has ever seen. It adopted a Charter for the future of South Africa putting forward positively what people believed to be a solution for South Africa's problems - The Freedom Charter.

74. Once again the Government refused to pay any attention to peaceful demands. Instead it used this document as a basis for the arrest in 1956 of 156 of the leaders of the Congress Movement and the Communist Party on a charge of High Treason. As the Court knows, that trail dragged on for five years until eventually the accused were found not guilty.

75. Meanwhile the shootings at Sharpville and in Cape Town had taken place, a state of Emergency had been proclaimed and the A.N.C. had been declared illegal. During that state of Emergency over 2000 leaders went to goal and some 10, 000 others were arrested.

76. Meanwhile too there had been grave unrest in many parts of the country due to the application of Apartheid laws - in Zeerust and Sekhuhuniland, in Durban and Warmbaths, in Zululand and in Pondoland.
All these pointed to the almost inevitable outbreak of violence in its most dangerous form i.e. indiscriminate violence by non-Whites against Whites purely on racial grounds. The answer of the Government was not to attend to grievances but to use force in these areas and to place the Transkei under a state of Emergency where it remains to this day.

77. This then was the position when the African leaders met in March 1961 in Martizburg in an all-in Conference and decided to make one more peaceful call on the Government to hold a Convention at least to discuss the constitution for the new Republic of South Africa failing which there should be a three-day stay-at-home at the end of May.

78. Again the appeal fell on deaf ears. Again instead of sympathy new oppressive legislation was passed, all gatherings were prohibited between the 19th May and the 26th June ; nation wide police raids were conducted ; this time between 8000 and 10, 000 Africans were arrested ; leaders were held under the twelve day no bail rule and the army staged demonstrations in the non-White areas of our cities. That was the Government's reply to what was surely a reasonable request. Save for a handful, none of those leaders arrested was (were) ever charged. The few who were charged were acquitted. In fact these arrests on this vast scale amounted to an abuse of legal process.

79. In these circumstances history will (cannot) blame those Congress leaders who in some way or other came together in July of 1961 and devised the scheme by which the Spear of the Nation was to be brought into existence under the control of one of its ablest and most responsible leaders, Nelson Mandela.

80. I must emphasize the basic ideas which then prevailed -

(a) To do nothing and simply accept apartheid would have meant total and unconditional surrender to ideas which were and still are intensely hated.
(b) To proceed to personal violence against Whites or White leaders would have been to negate all the Congresses had ever stood for; the establishment of racial harmony and co-operation.
(c) Therefore there was a devised plan which it was hoped might help to achieve the required results without injury to person or to race relations : viz., the formation of a small, closely knit, multiracial organisation which would practice sabotage against carefully selected targets, targets which could be attacked without endangering life or limb but which, because of their nature, would demonstrate the hatred of apartheid. For this purpose therefore targets were to be Government installations and preferably those which, if successfully attacked, would disrupt the process of governing.

81. Two further ideas were of importance in this scheme. One was that the leaders of Umkhonto gave the assurance that it would not depart form its self-imposed limitations without prior references to the political movement. In the circumstances the A.N.C. and the Communist Party took no steps to prevent their members joining Umkhonto.

82. The second was that the organisation was not only to be in secret but was to be self-controlled by men selected by Mandela, was to finance its own affairs and was to be kept entirely separate and distinct from the Congresses and the Communist Party. This was of equal importance. The Congresses and the Communist Party still had important political functions to fulfill as several exhibits clearly indicate - the functions of political education and organisation, of making use of every political opportunity which presented itself to advance the cause of freedom and democracy. Their members had been recruited on the basis that they were joining non-violent organisations. It would have been politically dishonest as well as politically foolish to endeavour to turn them into organisations for sabotage. The Congresses and the Communist Party did not wish to have their membership held liable for every act of sabotage nor, and this was of crucial political importance, did they want their members to gain the idea that once sabotage commenced, political work should cease. This separation of organisations was always maintained. I had no hand in the founding of Umkhonto and I was never a member. I became aware of its existence, and I did not disapprove.

83. It was never believed that a fundamental change in South African policy could be brought about by sabotage alone. What was hoped by those who devised the plan was that it would highlight the everygrowing dissatisfaction and that steady political work by the Congresses and the Communist Party would have to continue to try to bring about a change in the attitude of White South Africa.

84. Nowhere are those principles more clearly stated than in the Umkhonto Manifesto (Exhibit A.F. 188) which says :

"We of Umkhonto We Sizwe have always sought to achieve liberation without bloodshed and civil clash. We hope, even at this late hour, that our first actions will awake everyone to a realisation of the disastrous situation to which Nationalist policy is leading. We hope that we will bring the Government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late, so that both the Government and its policies can be changed before matters reach the desperate stage of civil war."

85. As Umkhonto was a small and highly secret organisation, no questions were ever to be asked about it and members were informed that if any member were to join this organisation he was to keep that knowledge entirely to himself. It was because of this rule that I at first did not know who belonged to Umkhonto or even, with the exception of Mandela, who was responsible for its formation. In fact, it was not until 1963 that I knew that Slovo was a member. It was only when trials for sabotage commenced that I discovered who had actually taken part in Umkhonto activities. There was no question of Umkhonto having to report to the Central Committee or of instructions being given by the Central Committee to Umkhonto.

86. I should say at this stage that the Communist Party has always in this country and elsewhere been rigidly opposed to individual acts of violence. Such acts are regarded by communists as acts of terrorism which achieve nothing. Communists are not, of course, opposed to violence in principle. They are not pacifists. They do, however, believe that in general it is the working class which suffers most from violence and war, and hence that wherever possible this is to be avoided.

87. We in the Communist Party never believed that South Africa was ripe for a socialist revolution. That is precisely why in our programme we aim in the first place only at democracy and the abolition of racial discrimination and leave entirely open the manner in which and the time when socialism may eventually be achieved in this country, for, of course, it is clear from all the theoretical marxist statements to-day, that communists do not believe that violence is the only method by which socialism can be achieved.

88. The plan put forward by Umkhonto appeared to us to be of an entirely different character from that type of terrorism of which we all disapproved in principle and in practice. It was to be a demonstration. It might achieve its object of making the White voter in South Africa reconsider his whole attitude. If it succeeded in that it would succeed without loss of life or injury to persons, the very things which stimulate race antagonism. It might in addition have the effect of deterring extremists, whose numbers and influences were growing at an alarming rate, from undertaking precisely that kind of terrorism which we have always fought to prevent. It may in fact have succeeded in this respect if one remembers that but for Umkhonto the pattern for the future of this country may have been set by riots and the Bashee River murders.

89. I return (turn) now to Hlapane's evidence. As far as I can remember, I met him for the first time when he became a member of the Central Committee. I, therefore, have no knowledge of any of his activities prior to that. I do not understand how he came to take part in collecting and delivering leaflets on the 16th December, 1961, for he, as far as I know, was never a member of Umkhonto and as it appears from his evidence played no further part in its activities.

90. Hlapane is correct when he says I was not at the Conference in November, 1962. But I find it difficult to believe that any plans for Umkhonto could have been discussed. This would simply not have be permitted. In any case, on my return to the Central Committee I would have undoubtedly heard of this had it occurred and I heard nothing of any new Umkhonto plans until Operation Mayibuye was presented to us in the circumstances I shall shortly describe.

91. I am certain that the Central Committee never issued any instructions regarding Umkhonto to the District Committee (D.P.C.) or anyone else, other than those I have mentioned. The District Committee (D.P.C.) and the groups had no functions to fulfill in regard to Umkhonto nor had the Central Committee. It is out of the question therefore either that a plan for any so-called "second phase" was passed on to the Central Committee to deal with or that Slovo was our representative on the H.C. of Umkhonto. It is true that Slovo was a member, both of the Central Committee and of Umkhonto, but he was in no sense the Central Committee's representative on Umkhonto.

92. For exactly the same reasons it is not true that Slovo was told that I would supply him with money for Umkhonto. I was never asked to nor did I ever do so. In fact, I had no knowledge of Umkhonto's source of finance nor did I wish to know of it.

93. Another allegation made by Hlapane is that the affairs of Umkhonto were sometimes discussed at Central Committee meetings e.g. questions of recruiting people and that Slovo reported on acts of sabotage. I think there is one element of truth in this. When acts of sabotage did occur and were reported in the newspapers they were certainly mentioned in the informal talk at Central Committee meetings just as presumable they were discussed elsewhere. They, however, never formed any part of the agenda or of the decisions of the Central Committee and Slovo certainly never reported on them. As time passed I suspected that Slovo was part of Umkhonto but as I say, I had no knowledge of his association until much later when O.M. actually came before us. We never knew when or where such acts were to take place and it would have been quite outside our strict application of the secrecy rule for Slovo to have reported on them. If it is true, as Ludi says, that Jean Middleton invited members of her group to find targets for Unmkhonto, she was acting without the authority or knowledge of the Central Committee or myself.

94. As a matter of fact, we never knew when an act of sabotage was committed whether it had been committed by Umkhonto or by one of the other sabotage organisations. It should be remembered that the Committee of National Liberation was apparently functioning as a sabotage organisation before Umkhonto and that by the beginning of 1963 the Committee for National Liberation (C.N.L.), Poqo and an organisation known as Yu Chee Chen were in existence, a clear sign of the manner in which this country can and will yet again drift into violence it present policies are continued. Organisations such as these too do not come into existence by chance.

95. The same applies to recruiting for Umkhonto. This was never any part of the business of the Central Committee. To this day I do not know whether Slovo had anything to do with recruiting. Two of the persons most closely associated with the recruiting were accused in the Rivionia Trial. I met them for the first time and then heard for the first time when I defended those accused and then heard for the first time that they had organised recruiting.

96. I would like to emphasize two things. The first is that at Central Committee meetings we made a point of not asking questions regarding Umkhonto. The second is that apart from Umkhonto recruits, the A.N.C. and other organisations were (was) also sending abroad young people for the purposes of general education. When one read occasionally of such persons being arrested, one did not know whether they were Umkhonto recruits, recruits of other organisations or merely scholars.

97. I now turn now to Hlapane's evidence in regard to Operation Mayibuye (Exhibit 187). He is correct when he says that this document was mentioned on two occasions at Central Committee meetings, but there it was discussed once only. On the first occasion which must have been during May or June of 1963, Slovo raised this plan before the Central Committee. It obviously constituted a complete departure from the ideas on which Umkhonto had been started and it was therefore raised, with a view to ascertaining what the Communist Party attitude towards such a departure would be. I was totally opposed to the whole idea. It seemed to me that it was a plan which was politically wholly incorrect and unsuited to the situation as it then existed. It was in addition totally impracticable. If ever there was a plan which a Marxist could not approve in the then prevailing circumstances, this was such a one.

98. So far from being able to achieve anything along the lines of this plan it was my opinion that it any part of it all could be put into operation, it could achieve nothing but disaster. In fact it seemed to me as if it were an entirely unrealistic brainchild of some youthful and adventurous imagination. I raised numerous queries and objections, none of which could be met.

99. I gathered it had not even been approved by Umkhonto itself and we certainly expressed our complete disapproval. We in fact asked that our views should be conveyed to Umkhonto, that as far as we were concerned, if they were anxious to develop something which was supposed to be a so-called "second phase" of sabotage, they should reconsider the whole matter as we could not approve of anything so diametrically opposed to our views of Operation Mayibuye.

100. Many months later during the Rivonia trial I discovered that the Syllabus for a Course on the Training of Organisers (Exhibit 201) had been prepared by one or two persons in Umkhonto as part and parcel of the ideas contained in Operation Mayibuye. This document was never shown to the Central Committee and to the best of my knowledge was never distributed.

101. This matter was raised again at a subsequent meeting of the Central Committee. It was at that meeting we were informed that Umkhonto had decided to send Slovo abroad and the A.N.C. had decided that it needed one more senior member to represent it outside the country. After some discussion it was agreed that we should not try to prevent them from going. As far as OM (Umkhonto) was concerned it was merely reported that Umkhonto had not yet done anything about this. The senior A.N.C. man, J.B. Marks, was as far as I know never associated with Umkhonto.

102. I was never asked to contribute Communist Party funds to Slovo for Umkhonto purposes and I never did so.

103. I deny that I ever suggested the burning of crops. This would in fact have been contrary to the principles adopted by Umkhonto. It would have constituted an attack on individual white farmers, and it could not possibly have helped to achieve the objects which Umkhonto had set itself. It could only exacerbate race relations and lead to a spread of undisciplined violence. Hlapane's evidence on this point is a deliberate lie.

104. I might here refer to Exhibit A.F. 7 (Draft Discussion Statement) which was found in my house when I was arrested. I am not prepared to say who the author of this document was, but I can state that I support most of what it contains. I am certainly in agreement with the passage relating to sabotage contained in paragraph 7.

105. (a) I wish to refer to some of the Exhibits which have been put in. Exhibit A.F. 191, A.F. 192 and A.F. 209 are obviously incomplete drafts. I have no knowledge of them. I do not know who prepared them. I cannot remember in what form they finally emerged or, indeed, whether they eventually emerged at all. I know that some of the topics they deal with were discussed at various times. Exhibit A.F. 192, from its contents, appears clearly to be a draft for some A.N.C. statement. It deals with a subject which I know the A.N.C. was discussing in 1963, viz., whether its members should take part in the boycott the Transkeian elections for the Transkeian Territorial Authority (see 4th paragraph, page 3)⁶ .
(b) As to Exhibit A.F. 197 : I did not see this document until it was produced at the Rivonia Trial. I then discovered that it had been issued by a couple of the A.N.C. men without the consent of their Executive, that it had been strongly disapproved of that in many parts of the Transvaal and the whole of Natal the A.N.C. refused to distribute it and that, as far as I know, it never reached the Free State or the Cape at all.
(c) Exhibit A.F. 198: This document likewise, I saw for the first time during the Rivonia Trial. There it was explained in evidence as a document drawn up by an individual who was in hiding - not at the Rivionia Trial but elsewhere - who wished to put his thoughts on paper, that it was never considered by any committee and was not issued to anyone.
(d) Exhibits A.F. 15 and A.F. 16 were received by me through the post shortly before I received the African Communist (Exhibit A.F. 23). I did not draft or have anything to do with the drafting of these documents. The notes to which Captain Broodryk referred (Exhibit A.F. --- ) were notes I made for my own purposes from these documents not in order to draft them.

106. Lilliesleaf Farm was purchased purely for Communist Party use. I had nothing to do with its purchase or the financing of the purchase. The first departure form the principle that it was to be used for meetings of the Central Committee only, was when we agreed to give Mandela shelter after he had been in hiding for some time. Thereafter in November 1962, I moved a resolution which was agreed to that the farm should again be used for Central Committee purposes and this was done for some months only. Subsequent events showed that this resolution was not complied with because when Sisulu and then Mbeki in 1963 went into hiding, they too were given shelter there. And at a later date, in about June, 1963, I found that Mkwayi was also there in hiding. At that stage I knew Mkwayi as a leading A.N.C. member from Port Elizabeth. I did not know that he was connected to Umkhonto. That was the only occasion, as I learned later, that Lilliesleaf was used for carrying on certain A.N.C. and Umkhonto work. But that was only temporary, for in the meanwhile a place called Travallyn had been purchased by Umkhonto and these people were in the process of moving there when the Rivionia arrests occurred.

107. Hlapane is not correct therefore when he says that Travallyn was bought by the Communist Party. I would have known had this been the case. To this day I do not even know where it is and the Communist Party had nothing whatsoever to do with this transaction. He is correct, however, when he says that a cottage in Mountainview was hired by the Communist Party. This was done in order to have a separate meeting place so that Lilliesleaf could be kept for the Central Committee only. The Central Committee members never met at the Mountainview cottage.

108. It will be seen from Beyleveld's evidence that a certain amount of money became available to us. I cannot remember now precisely how this was dealt with but I know that the bulk of it was spent apart from wages of organisers like Hlapane and expenses⁸ -

(a) on the dependents of political prisoners and exiles; and
(b) by way of loans to the A.N.C. , the reason for which I shall mention more fully when I return to Hlapane's evidence.

It was for these purposes that considerable sums were paid to Tloomo who was a senior A.N.C. man of considerable standing.

109. But there are several facts which Hlapane has forgotten or that he does not know or is untruthful about. In the first place the A.N.C. and Umkhonto had their own sources of revenue - far greater sources than we had. Already prior to the Addis Ababa Conference they were, I believe, receiving moneys from certain of the African States and from elsewhere and after that Conference, where a number of States undertook to contribute one per cent of their revenue to the Freedom Movement, larger sums were I believe received.

110. On occasion, however, these sources apparently had difficulty in transferring money to the A.N.C. Hence at time, the Communist Party advanced moneys to the A.N.C. and were subsequently repaid when the A.N.C. received its own money. This was the position in the middle part of 1964 when we had received certain moneys and, because we had cut down expenses to a minimum, were able to advance sums to the A.N.C. to enable them to pay their functionaries and help support families of prisoners and detainees.

111. What Hlapane has also forgotten is that when he came on the scene again, Tloomo had left or was on the point of banning⁹ and A.N.C. activities, both political and welfare were in the hands, as far as I know, of Mkwayi and others, and that that was why moneys were being handed over to Mkwayi. These moneys being funds which we had received either from our own sources or from the A.N.C. sources as these latter were from time to time able to make payments. The money paid to Hlapane, both by way of wages and for a second hand motor-car, was entirely for Communist Party purposes. I have however, no recollection of handing him any sum as large as R 4900 - 00. I never had so large a sum in my possession and would certainly not have risked handing so large a sum over to him in a single amount.

112. I can remember discussing certain sabotage incidents with Hlapane, though he certainly did not report them to me. There was plainly no duty on him to do so. In fact I learned of such acts only when they were reported in the press and were common knowledge. I certainly never suggested to Hlapane any means of committing sabotage, as he alleges.

113. As for Hlapane's evidence on the ------ ¹⁰ A.N.C. policy, this is an old canard. It formed an important part of the State's case in the Treason Trial. It failed completely. The A.N.C. is a body of members of all shades of political outlook. For over half a century now it has set itself the task of removing racial discrimination from political and economic and social life in South Africa. Its policy has never been changed or decided by the Communist Party. This assertion is only made by those who because of their hatred of this policy wish to smear the A.N.C. with some of the political dirt which has over the years been thrown at the Communist Party.

114. There is finally the evidence which relates to allegations of forgery.

115. It is clear that at different times during 1965 I used different names. I did so solely in order to hide my identity and with no intention of defrauding anyone at all. (I had no wish to defraud anyone, but even apart from that, it would have been utter folly to attract any attention to myself by causing anyone any prejudice.) I did not forge the identity card referred to in Count 14. I certainly never altered it since the police were the only persons besides myself who ever saw it. The same remarks apply to the driver's licence referred to in Count 15. Both these documents were intended only to hide my identity should it have become necessary to use them for that purpose. They were in fact never used.

117. That concludes what I have to say about the facts of this case.

118. I have but two things to add. The first relates to the evidence of Hlapane.

119. I cannot (do not propose to) address any argument to this Court. (That will in due course be done by my Counsel). What I can do is to give the Court certain facts regarding the manner in which the criminal law has come to be administered in political cases in this country. It presents a picture which is horrifying to those brought up with traditional ideas about justice.

120. In July of 1964 I was detained for three days under the 90-day law and was twice interrogated. There was nothing fair or impartial about the interrogation. It was an attempt to extract a statement by (to apply) third degree methods. As for solitary confinement, I can only say that every South African voter should try it on himself. He can do so by locking himself up for a week-end in one small unfurnished room with no window through which he can see, by allowing himself to be taken out twice a day only, by a stranger, to walk around an enclosed yard for half an hour and for the rest to see no-one at all, except the stranger who brings him food three times a day. One week-end would be sufficient to convince him of its callous utter inhumanity - of why, in wiser days its application was strictly limited by the law.

121. For the past 4 ½ months I have also been held in conditions which in some ways amounted to solitary confinement. I was interrogated once only though an extremely unfair method was used to try and extract information from me. It was suggested that by giving this information I could obtain the release of an elderly person in poor health who was then being detained.

122. Compared with others, I have not suffered (It is true that) during these four and a half months I have twice a week been allowed to see my children. I have also been allowed to consult with legal advisers and to obtain reading matter. Nevertheless on the majority of days I have, sleeping and working, had to kill 23 hours a day by myself and I can only state that if under such conditions pressure had applied to me - if I had been made to stand in one spot for 20 or 30 or even 60 hours at the time with batteries of trained men firing questions at me - the "statue" method as it is known - if under those conditions I had given information it could only have been information of the most unreliable character. Solitary confinement in itself is a vicious and inhuman form of treatment.

123. As I say, I cannot testify to the extreme forms of which this "treatment" has taken. But there are facts which the State knows and some of which (would no doubt concede and which) have come before our courts which establish what their consequences have been apart from twisting and distorting human personalities like those of Byleveld and Hlapane. These methods have already produced three suicides, one of them by an Indian ( a person) who was a close friend of mine, a man no one could ever have dreamed would take his own life. They have also produced two serious attempts at suicide by two other close friends. The first was by Mrs. Slovo, the mother of three small daughters, a courageous woman if there ever was one. The other, by Mr Heymann, also a person of outstanding character and courage.

124. These are facts that all should know. They bring shame to our country. Few Whites do know them. Most (They) even accept the application (in the same way) of the 180-day law as a normal procedure. But the facts remain and they are a result of an attempt to use the criminal law in order to surpress political beliefs. In such circumstances the administration of criminal law changes its character. It ceases to have integrity. It becomes an Inquisition instead. It leads to the total extinction of freedom. It adds immeasurably to the deep race hatred (which, as I have explained, has always been my chief fear for the future of this country and the most powerful force driving me to what I have considered right.)

125. The last subject I want to mention is personal. Therefore I hesitated before deciding to do so. But I shall not be giving evidence or making a statement in mitigation and perhaps I should acquaint the court with one aspect of my background.

126. I was a Nationalist at the age of six, if not before. I saw violence for the first time when sitting on my father's shoulder, I saw business premises with German names (were) burned to the ground in Bloemfontein including those of some of my own family. I can still remember the weapons collected by my father and his friends were bent on preventing a second outbreak. I saw my father leave with an ambulance unit to try and join the rebel forces. I remained a Nationalist for over twenty years thereafter and became, in 1929, the first Nationalist Prime Minister of a student parliament.

127. I never doubted that the policy of segregation was the only solution to this country's problems until the Hitler theory of race superiority began to threaten the world with genocide and with the greatest disaster in all history. The Court will see that I did not shed my old beliefs with ease.

128. It was when these doubts arose that one night, when I was driving an old A.N.C. leader to his house far out to the west of Johannesburg that I propounded to him the well-worn theory that if you segregate races you diminish the points at which friction between them may occur and hence ensure good relations. His answer was the essence of simplicity. If you place the races of one country into two camps, said he, and cut off contact between them, those in each camp begin to forget that those in the other are ordinary human beings, that each lives and laughs in the same way, that each experience joy and sorrow, pride or humiliation for the same reasons. Thereby each become suspicious of the other and each eventually fear the other, which is the basis for al racialism.

129. I believe no one could more effectively sum up the South African position to-day. Only contact between the races can eliminate suspicion and fear ; only contact and co-operation can breed tolerance and understanding. Segregation or apartheid, however genuinely believed in, can produce only those things it is supposed to avoid; interracial tension and estrangement, intolerance and race hatreds.

130. All the conduct with which I have been charged has been directed towards maintaining contact and understanding between the races of this country. If one day it may help to establish a bridge across which White leaders and the real leaders of the non-Whites can meet to settle the destines of all of us by negotiation and not by force of arms, I shall be able to bear with fortitude any sentence which this Court may impose on me. It will be a fortitude strengthened by this knowledge at least, that for twenty-five years I have taken no part, not even by passive acceptance, in that hideous (monstrous) system of discrimination which we have erected in this country and which has become a by-word in the civilized world to-day.

131. In prophetic words, in February 1881, one of the great Afrikaner leaders, addressed the President and Volksraad of the Orange Free State.
His words are inscribed on the base of the statue of President Kruger in the square in front of this Court. After great agony and suffering after two wars they were eventually fulfilled without force or violence for (of) my people.
President's Kruger's (The) words were:

"Met vertrouen leggen wy onze zaak open voor de geheele wêreld. Het zy wy overwinnen, het zy wy sterven : de vryheid zal in Afrika ryzen als de zon uit de morgenwolken" ¹¹

132. In the meaning which those words bear to-day they are as truly prophetic as they were in 1881. My sole motive in all I have done has been to prevent a repetition of that unnecessary and futile anguish which has already been suffered in one struggle for freedom. ¹²






* This is a retyped version of the statement (from a microfilm copy in the possession of the Stellenbosch University Library). The numbers shown are that of the paragraphs shown in the court documents. On the original document changes to the text are indicated in two sets of handwriting. The first set is small and neat. From paragraph 89 there is a different, more untidy, handwriting. I have indicated the handwritten notes in italics. Paragraphs or sentences that were scrapped are indicated in brackets (these paragraphs/sentences are not indicated in shortened versions of the statement, eg Mary Benson's The Sun will Rise). The original document totals 56 pages; according to the court documents this is the full text.- Yvonne Malan

1 Fischer's brackets
2 All bracket marking exhibits were added by Fischer.
3 Handwritten note added here reads "Draft Diss".
4 Handwritten note reads "statement on our new Draft Prog".
5 Sentence had originally read, "And we did not say then ,whether 1907, 1910, 1931 or 1961, because the West had become decadent."
6 Fischer's brackets.
7 Number of exhibit not indicated.
8 This added sentence is barely legible.
9This added phrase is barely legible.
10Blank space in original ; uncertain whether a word was omitted.
11 "With confidence we lay our case before the whole world. Whether we win or die, freedom will rise in Africa, like the sun from the morning clouds." 12 Abram Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment and was imprisoned in Pretoria. He died on Thursday, 8 May 1975. After his funeral the Security Police confiscated his ashes. It was never recovered.



LitNet: 10 December 2004

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