“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.
“Lieutenant Edwards and I have shared many intimacies,” she said in her affidavit, "and I do not believe that he can objectively and honestly apply his mind to the question of whether or not detention in terms of the emergency regulations is justified." The case did not succeed, but a courageous stand had been taken.
We were disappointed to discover one year that Lloyd and his contingent were holidaying at the same beach resort as we were on the Eastern Cape coast. We were paddling on the river in our canoe, watching a kingfisher diving for fish and a water rat emerge from a hole in the bank, when Lloyd and his pals, beers in hand, roared past us in a boat. On another occasion while swimming in the lagoon I spotted Lloyd’s partner and some other police wives lounging on the bank while a domestic worker in full maid’s uniform served tea. On the tray, I was alarmed to see a gun.
There was an occasion that gave everyone in the struggle community great pleasure and inspired a resurgence of courage. Louise Vale, a Sash member who worked in informal education, had been detained. Her husband Peter tried every available avenue to get her released, from challenging the law and seeking publicity, to petitioning people in high places. All to no avail. One evening Peter went to drown his sorrows at a local hotel. After several drinks he noticed that Lloyd Edwards had appeared at the bar. Striding over to him, with a full tankard in hand, Peter struck a blow for us all by emptying his frothing beer over the surprised policeman's head. The graffiti artists wasted no time. "Down a Lloyd: Feel Satisfied!" they scrawled on the wall of a local supermarket. The parody of Lion beer’s advertising slogan gave us all great satisfaction. Shortly after, while visiting Louise in Port Elizabeth’s North End prison, Peter’s car was stolen. We were convinced that it was not the work of an ordinary car thief.
Various other escapades gave us heart in the fight against the monolithic state. Two American friends of Peter’s simply walked into North End prison one day, claiming to be Louise’s lawyers. They got deep into the building before the sting was detected. In another incident the boyfriend of our detained fieldworker Janet Small dressed up as a dentist's assistant when he heard that Janet was to be brought in to the local surgery for an emergency visit. Unfortunately Mike Kenyon was himself a closely monitored activist and the Special Branch soon arrived to escort him out.
The security police were both canny and brazen in their infiltration of groups, especially on campus. Malvern and I knew several students who had been taken out for drinks and offered financial inducements to act as spies. A local pharmacist told us we would be surprised at the number of students’ chemist bills that were paid for by the police. There was no doubt that a dense network of amateur spies was in operation even in this small town.
A cause célébre on the Rhodes campus was the case of Olivia Forsyth. Olivia belonged to all the activist groups, where she was highly regarded for her strong leadership qualities. She had a habit of disappearing once a month to Port Elizabeth where, she told her friends, she visited an old uncle. In reality she was meeting her police handler. Olivia’s regular reports must have done her so-called comrades much damage. Certainly many of them suffered harassment or detention. She was herself detained for a short period, no doubt to make her cover plausible. It was only after she had left Rhodes amid fanfares of praise that her deceit was eventually exposed.
It turned out that Olivia had been a lieutenant in the security police. Her next mission after leaving Rhodes was to infiltrate the ANC in exile. This did not go smoothly and she landed up being detained in Quatro, the ANC’s prison camp in Angola. She eventually escaped to Britain, where she was reunited with her father.
Malvern concocted many a false application for masters and doctoral projects so that young detainees could have access to literature in jail. He was well respected for his political voice on campus, especially at a time when the principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression were being radically undermined. One particular protest march has left a vivid vignette in my mind. Malvern and a few colleagues were leading a student demonstration against the state’s threat to university subsidies when the police, armed with batons and quirts, charged onto the university lawns. The ensuing clash resembled a football riot, but in the midst of the mayhem the phalanx of academic gowns stood firm. Malvern's thick white hair stood out like a beacon among them.
Malvern's role and image on campus made life difficult for Anna, who did her degree at Rhodes. All eyes were on her to join left-wing activities, but no 19-year old wants to be a clone of her parents and she steadfastly refused to be radical. Meanwhile her brother was undergoing his political blooding at the University of Cape Town. As a member of the Students’ Representative Council he was arrested during a mass demonstration, beaten up and jailed for the night. I was proud of him of course, but secretly relieved that arrest for political protest did not result in a criminal record. I was also grateful that he was never detained. Lucy, our youngest, confessed that she too felt pressure to be involved in anti-apartheid activities, but when she eventually went to UCT she found her niche in non-racial sport. She eschewed the inter-varsity leagues, playing tennis and hockey in township leagues instead, where poor infrastructural facilities were a small price to pay for the authentically South African experiences she was exposed to. She learnt to speak isiXhosa and made more black friends than any of us had ever had. She became active in the organisational side of sport too, and once found herself at a sports congress where she was one of only four white delegates in a gathering of 900.
I often felt guilty that my involvement took me away from the children too much and once asked Charlotte whether they had felt neglected. “Good heavens, no!” she said. “You would have been too much for us!” Our children know us too well. While Queen Mary was said to have the word “Calais” written on her heart, my children knew that they were most likely to find words like "meeting" and "agenda" engraved on mine. Often, of course, Malvern and I brought our political concerns home with us and many discussions took place around our dining room table, which sometimes bore the brunt of our impassioned conversations. There is a nasty scar where Anna once , in a furious argument about some forgotten topic, scored the tabletop with a fork. There’s also a grease mark down the wall where she threw a salad bowl at her Italian boyfriend, Roberto. After she’d spent her post-matric year in Italy, Roberto came to visit. Unwisely I decided to cook my version of osso bucco for him. When he commented in Italian to Anna that my political activities clearly did my culinary skills no good, she threw the bowl at the startled young man.
We were proud of our four youngsters, and though we were aware that our activities put pressure on them, we felt that the diverse ways in which they were developing bore testimony to a democratic openness in our home. We dispensed many cups of tea in our sitting room to parents of young students who had been detained and were often surprised at how out of touch they were with their young. Some parents, the more politically aware, felt a mixture of pride in their offspring and outrage at the security police; but for many this was their first wake-up call to the reality of living in a police state.
At the beginning of July 1986 the security net tightened to include one of our closest friends. Malvern and I were home for lunch when a phone call came from Katherine, Priscilla Hall’s elder teenage daughter. “The police are here,” she said. “I think they’re taking Priscilla.” I went straight to the house and there in the study stood Lloyd Edwards and his henchmen, searching through her papers.
Priscilla was a formidable and highly respected activist who did especially crucial work in relation to the plight of resettled people, the needs of detainees and later, the area of informal education. We’d had little doubt that the Special Branch was watching her. She’d been subjected to a chilling campaign of anonymous phone calls and in her usual thorough way she’d kept transcripts of them all. An example recorded at 3.21am was a male voice saying, “You are going to be sorry, you bitch.” Her final warning had come a few days before Lloyd's arrival at her door, when a lone security policeman had stepped into the office where she was doing some photocopying after hours. Her heart thumped as he searched her handbag and rifled through some papers. After some pointless picking up and putting down of files, he left the office with the words, "This is just a friendly warning. We don’t want to detain you. You have children and your husband is in England. But these are troubled times, we are in an emergency.” And then he added, “You must lie low for a bit.” Priscilla felt intimidated but it was not in her nature to "lie low". In an affidavit made after the event she said, "I take my family duties very seriously, but I am also convinced of the rightness and urgency of my work, and I intend continuing with it.” Her work on behalf of detainees had been invaluable; now she was to become one herself. She was told that she was being detained under the emergency regulations but was given no reason.
I felt curiously tongue-tied as we stood on the doorstep of the Halls’ house and watched Priscilla being driven off in a police car. I wished so much afterwards that I had given her a hug. Katherine and Ruth, who were remarkably composed, came to stay with us, and during phone calls to Ron in Cambridge, where he was on sabbatical leave, we all dissuaded him from rushing back. For us the day was also marked by the death of our beloved dog, Sparky. Under normal circumstances we would have gone into a period of collective decline, but now we found ourselves with an extended family and little time for mourning a pet. Amongst other things, Ruth succumbed to German measles during this time and had to spend days propped up on the couch surrounded with books. Watching the royal wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson on a borrowed colour television set, because ours was black and white, provided some diversion. I had been a royalist as a child and still loved the pageantry. I was also glad that Ruth was being kept company while the other children were at school.
Throughout her months in detention, Priscilla was never questioned or interrogated. After three days in police cells she was transferred to Fort Glamorgan in East London, the prison where Malvern and I had visited Guy several years before. On her first night she slept in the exercise yard under the bitterly cold July stars, just a thin blanket for protection. For 34 days she was held in solitary confinement, initially with only a Bible to read. After 14 days she was told that the Minister of Justice had signed a warrant authorising her further detention. Eventually she was given privileges such as reading and study material, one letter in and one letter out per fortnight, and contact with two of the other detainees.
On his return from sabbatical Ron wrote a letter to all their friends in which he typically took the emphasis off themselves. “Priscilla is only one of an estimated 1 400 detainees in the country (200 plus from Grahamstown alone) most of whom are black. We are comparatively well off and privileged, and have suffered no reduction of income due to the detention; the family’s health, security and standard of living have not been damaged. The position of many thousands of others is far more grim, and just as arbitrary.”
The National Arts Festival that year was marred by the presence of foot patrols with fixed bayonets and army vehicles cruising up and down the crowded streets, making it impossible to forget that the nation was in the grip of another state of emergency. A spate of detentions occurred in the midst of the festivities. One detainee was a student due to appear in a cabaret, while another was a daughter of the family who shared our Hogsback holidays – virtually a daughter of our own.
Melissa de Villiers was almost certainly a victim of Olivia Forsyth’s devious efforts. On the night of her detention I attended the launch of a friend’s book on herbs at the Observatory Museum. The museum was housed in a striking 19th century building that had once been the local clock and watchmaker’s premises. It was full of fascinating old timepieces and relics of Mr Galpin's once-flourishing business. On the roof was the camera obscura which our children loved visiting. They would climb the narrow stairs to the tower where they would observe an image of Grahamstown in the tilting, swiveling mirror. I loved the museum too, but on this particular evening the scene struck me as grotesque. An innovative curator had arranged the Victorian furniture with fair, creating a marvellous hotchpotch of fringes and tassels, candelabra and chamber pots. The hostess was bobbing about with herbs in her hair. People were sipping wine and admiring the artist’s delicate watercolours of marjoram and thyme. I admired both these women greatly, but I was on edge. I wanted to shout, “Don’t you know what is going on? Melissa has been detained. We are at war!” Like the image in the mirror of the camera obscura, this cheerful party presented a weirdly inverted version of what I knew to be the reality of the town. I felt caught between two irreconcilable worlds.
In order to visit Melissa in the police cells of Alexandria, her mother and I had to travel to the Louis le Grange police station in Port Elizabeth to obtain a permit. An imposing tower with rows of windows, the building dominated the city that surrounded it. We entered through a turnstile to find the lobby crowded with African families also awaiting visiting permits. Surprisingly, Nova and I were left to find our own way to the top floor where the security police resided. We soared up in the lift and walked along a corridor where open doors to offices revealed banks of video equipment. There were various policemen around, stockily built, sporting moustaches and speaking in heavy Afrikaans accents – stereotypes of the South African security officer. The view from the top floor was incredible, stretching around Algoa Bay and into the far distance, where we could make out the gold of the Alexandria sand hills, which marked our destination. It was a lovely, cloudless day and we looked down on a city where life seemed to be proceeding normally, apparently untouched by political events. We waited silently, speaking in whispers, until we were finally attended to.
As we drove to Alexandria we found that we had left the lovely day behind. Dark clouds were blowing over and as we entered the small town it began to rain. Nevertheless, we had some good fortune. The young man on duty at the prison was a conscript doing his army service. Apparently sympathetic to his lone female detainee, or perhaps just not overly familiar with the rules, he allowed Nova into Melissa’s cell where they sat together for half an hour – something they would not do again for the next three months. I waited outside amid the drab surroundings. The only cheerful detail was a solitary tree full of pink blossoms, anticipating an early spring. When Nova emerged I caught sight of Melissa with a policewoman at her side being taken off in a car. She was being transferred to North End prison in Port Elizabeth. Our visit had been just in time.
The only cafe we could find amidst Alexandria's garages and agricultural stores was inside a small general dealer. There we huddled over cups of tea at a Formica-topped table roped off from packets of cornflakes, tins of condensed milk and shiny metal buckets. There were several farmers in regulation khaki gathered at the counter. For the second time that day we felt the need to talk in whispers. Nova told me that Melissa had been treated well. The cell was small and all she had to read was the Bible. Her watch had been taken, so apart from the changing light it was difficult for her to establish the time. She had scratched a calendar on the wall to keep track of the days. She had a small exercise yard in which she could do some aerobics each day, and her food was brought from the local hotel.
Our visit to the cells in Alexandria was far better than subsequent ones to Port Elizabeth. North End prison was a bleak fortress bordering on a cemetery. Inside, footsteps echoed along stone corridors and keys clattered in steel doors. Nova met with Melissa in a small cubicle where they talked through a glass partition. I was never allowed to stay and speak to the detainee. Once, after Nova’s visit, we managed to walk around the grounds whistling Yellow Submarine underneath what we hoped were the windows of the women’s cells.
In Alexandria, Melissa told her mother that she had received a visit from Lloyd Edwards. He was not there to interrogate her but to chat in a “friendly” way – mostly about himself. He also told her who the next Grahamstown detainee would be. Nova and I felt, probably naïvely, that we must warn Tim Bouwer of his impending disaster. He was a young teacher at a school in the township, where he was active in the teachers’ union. As soon as we reached town we visited his house. Tim went pale at the news but realised there was nothing he could do. He would wait. An hour later he was detained. Over the ensuing weeks his partner carefully embroidered messages on clothes, which she sent to him in prison.
Among my possessions are two scrappy notes smuggled from prison by detainees during the 1980s. One, on crumpled lavatory paper and barely legible, came from a detained Dependants’ Conference worker, Sox Leleki. “Rosemary,” he writes, “I want to be visited by a legal representative as soon as possible.” The disintegrating paper and the spidery writing convey something of the pathos of the detainee’s lot, sitting day in and day out in prison without being charged and with no prospect of at least appearing in court. Sox’s request was in vain. The Detainees’ Parents Support Committee estimated that 25 000 people were detained between 12 June 1986 and 11 June 1987.
The second note is from our fieldworker, Janet Small. She was detained as late as 1988, on a winter’s day when the snow on the Amatola Mountains was just visible against the skyline. It happened when we were beginning to hope that the detentions might be tailing off after a mass crackdown earlier in the year. In February 1988, 17 anti-apartheid groups had been banned in one blow. Like all the fieldworkers the Black Sash employed over the years, Janet was a model of integrity and serious-mindedness. The crumpled note, much folded and frayed by the time it reached me, read, “I feel very anxious about Sash money being spent on my salary. I deeply appreciate your support, but I think you should consider at least reducing my salary…. Looking on the bright side,” she continued, “I think a restriction order [anticipated upon release from detention] may be a blessing for me. I imagine the culture shock of walking out of solitary confinement into an exuberant Sash meeting! I’m sure I’d be overcome. On a more serious note, please don’t feel too anxious about me. It is very good to experience the reality after all those years of working with ex-detainees. That work had prepared me, but somehow it is different to what I expected. Not worse, different. My heart goes out to those who have been inside for years.”
In Grahamstown there was no pattern to the detentions – except perhaps the signature presence of Lloyd’s hand – but it often seemed that it was the vulnerable who were targeted: single women, students, people with particular family responsibilities. Very special relationships developed among those connected with the detainees, and Black Sash members were hugely supportive of each other. Judy Chalmers, Sue Power and I, Sash chairpersons in Port Elizabeth, East London and Grahamstown respectively, phoned each other almost every day. “Are you still there?” we would ask. We were part of a small but strong group bound by a common purpose and a special camaraderie. I was greatly inspired by the reserves of strength demonstrated and the resilient sense of humour that buoyed the strongest of them, come what may. When so many people around us were kow-towing to the government, this group was a lifeline.
In some circles I was viewed as radical, dangerous even. I once discovered that the mother of one of my children’s friends was discouraged from friendship with me because I was regarded as a communist. I knew that this term was commonly used to tar anyone who was anti-government so I didn’t much mind the label, but in truth my values were very far from the true tenets of communism. Our neighbour, an elderly man who often sat on his stoep watching the world go by, revealed just how disapproving many people were of our lifestyle when he scowled at my friends. Peter Vale once brought Nyami Goniwe, the wife of activist Matthew Goniwe, to a lunch party at our house and cheerfully called out “Good Morning, Oom” as he and Nyami stepped out of their car. The only reply he got was, “I don’t greet those who walk with the black nation.” A friend from university days in England visited us and was amazed to find "fun-loving Rosie turned into a wholehearted political activist”. Moments like these always gave me pause. How wholeheartedly did I really immerse myself? In truth I knew that there was a bit of me that always held back, a part of Rosie that always hovered in the margins.
What accounted for this restraint? Was it my foreignness? Was it the spectre of deportation? Was it the fault of my gregarious nature that wished to belong to the community in which I found myself? Although as a family we all believed in the same principles and always felt generally more comfortable with others who were themselves engaged in activism, we were nevertheless also part of the white culture that surrounded us. We maintained friendships and social relationships with many diverse people. We were “ordinary” citizens living “normal” South African lives. I could come home from work, my head full of atrocities, and step into the cool, high-ceilinged rooms of my house, full of furniture and china my grandparents had owned and the books, paintings and music Malvern and I had collected, and the disorder and chaos of the outside world would seem remote and unreal. We had friends who were apolitical. There were conversations we simply didn’t have with them. We socialised with the parents of our children’s boarding school friends, some of whom lived glamorous lives that were positively surreal in apartheid South Africa. There was a particular pair who would arrive exhausted from their professional lives in the city. The mother, artistic and elegant, would recline on the couch in tapered velvet pants and cloak, exotic silver bangles jangling, and talk about the buzz of city life. I loved the sophistication and fair these people brought with them and felt positively frumpish in their presence, but of my other life, the one they seemed not to know about, I could say nothing. It might as well have been another country. Did Lloyd Edwards and his ilk look at this schizophrenic muddle and decide I was not a threat? Was it my respectable bourgeois self that protected me from being detained?
Then, just as suddenly and unpredictably as the detentions of those close to us took place, so the releases occurred. Late one evening in spring, Priscilla and Ron arrived unannounced at our door. We phoned Nova and Peter and drank whisky late into the night, hoping that the release of their loved ones would follow speedily. Then one unforgettable afternoon, I heard a shrieking in the street and the doors of a kombi being pulled back. Melissa and Ann were out. The news spread and an impromptu party erupted in our house. And as always the toast was for those who weren’t with us.
The restrictions imposed on released detainees were severe. Priscilla was not allowed to leave the Albany area for a year and they were all restricted from participating in Sash activities. Gradually they began to take liberties, at first secretly and then more openly, but it was a relief when all restrictions finally expired.
At the 1987 Black Sash conference in Cape Town I was unexpectedly elected one of the organisation’s national vice presidents. I was not only taken completely by surprise but also concluded that I had been elected by default. The national executive was a small body that was usually made up of members who lived in the headquarters region, and I felt quite sure that far stronger women than I would have been elected, had they not been in detention or banned from holding office. Becoming part of this august body terrified me, but I decided that my appointment was important for the Eastern Cape. No one from our rather remote area had been on the national executive before, and as an area that was suffering disproportionately severe repression, it deserved to be kept on the Black Sash national agenda. In the end I loved the meetings and the journeys to Cape Town and found my fellow executive members congenial, stimulating and fun. The national leadership was always in the hands of remarkable women whom I held in awe and all of whom, I am glad to say, became good friends of mine. They were articulate, lucid and calm, and fine public speakers who were able to project both the tenacious and the balanced sides of the Black Sash's character. It was a great privilege finding myself at that level of the organisation with colleagues like Sheena Duncan, Mary Burton, Di Bishop and Jenny de Tolly. Our discussions certainly brought new perspectives to the Grahamstown experience and I think the Eastern Cape Black Sash benefited from this contact. Later, this benefit was further enhanced when our Grahamstown colleague Hilary Southall, a highly insightful and meticulous statistician and I were appointed to management roles in the Black Sash Trust.
The Sash national conference in 1988 was addressed by Frank Chikane, then General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. In the wake of the February bannings he did not mince his words. “Those who are white still have space to cause change,” he said. “If you do not use that space you are responsible for the deaths of the people.” It was a direct challenge to organisations like ours to step into the breach. Chikane’s challenge stirred up considerable debate, as one of our dilemmas at the time was whether the Black Sash should become affiliated to mass-based movements such as the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw). The fact that we had remained non-aligned over three decades had probably ensured the Sash’s survival thus far. Being small, we were remarkably focused and cohesive, and being white perhaps gave us a special duty-cum-licence to speak truth to white power. But given the increasingly polarised nature of our society there was pressure for the organisation to leave the ivory tower of middle-class privilege and join forces with a broad front of women. Chikane seemed to be addressing this issue directly. Emboldened by this, I and my colleague Ina Roux made an impassioned plea for affiliation with Fedsaw. In the end the conference expressed support for the federation, encouraging individual Sash members to participate in and strengthen contacts with the movement, but stopped short of affiliation. With hindsight I could see that it was the right decision. The credibility of our information and our analysis had always lain in our independence, and as the national president reminded us again, being small was our strength.
The Black Sash was anything but shy and had never shirked its duty to “use the space”. The price we paid in the number of members detained and restricted bore witness to that.