Profiles of the Accused

Accused Number 1

FARID AHMED ADAMS

Born in India, Farid came to South Africa in June 1935 when he was two years old. During 1947–1948, while still a schoolboy, he became interested in the Congress movement when the Indian people in South Africa were carrying on a relentless battle against the Asiatic Land Tenure Act, known as the “Ghetto Act”. It was not until May Day 1950 that he first took an active part, and started distributing leaflets, and canvassing. On May Day he picketed his school and various other schools and felt proud that his school had a 100 per cent “stay-away”. On this day he had his first encounter with the police, when he was thrown into a pick-up and taken to the Fordsburg police station, where his name was taken by the police for the first time. Instead of being scared, this youngster of seventeen became yet more determined to take an active part.

In June 1952 the Defiance Campaign began, and Farid helped in collecting food and money for the families whose breadwinners had gone to gaol.

At the beginning of the Campaign against the Western Areas Removal, he, together with AM Kathrada, Accused Number 3, was arrested in Sophiatown and charged with “incitement to public violence”. But both were acquitted. In October 1955, he was arrested with three others for painting slogans on a wall, convicted and fined £50.

In October 1956, he took up employment as a clerk, but was arrested in the big swoop on 5 December 1956 on the charge of “high treason”.

In June 1960, after the accused had decided to dispense with their Counsel during the State of Emergency and conducted their own defense, it was Farid who led the evidence of Accused Number 2, Helen Joseph. The first of the accused to lead or question a witness, he remained on his feet for five full days in court. When he appealed to the Court for guidance, Judge Rumpff pointed out with a smile that he had adequate legal advice with an attorney on one side of him and an advocate on the other! (Mandela and Nokwe sat on his right and his left.)

Almost two months to the day after his acquittal on the Treason Trial, Farid was again arrested and held in gaol for twelve days without bail before being charged with incitement to an unlawful strike, but after three appearances in court during June, the charge was withdrawn. On 27 July, Farid was served with a banning order, prohibiting him from attending any gathering for a period of five years. Thereafter, in April 1962, he was served with further banning orders, in terms of which, inter alia, he was not allowed to leave the magisterial district of Johannesburg. On 1 July 1963, he wrote to the Minister of Justice requesting permission to travel 35 kilo­metres to Lenasia to get married on 28 July 1963. He was granted permission subject to the condition that he would contain his activities to matters relating to his marriage.

He lives in Lenasia and is currently a member of the Lenasia branch executive of the ANC and has been involved in community issues.

Accused Number 2

HELEN JOSEPH

Helen Joseph was born in Midhurst, Sussex, England. She was educated at a convent and took a BA Hons, degree in English at King’s College, University of London, in 1927. From 1927 to 1930 she taught at the Mahbubia Girls’ School in Hyderabad, Decan, India. In 1931 she came to South Africa, teaching for a year in Durban. She then married and settled there. She loved India and the Indian people and in 1939 became the Honorary Organiser of the Indian Women’s Club in Durban.

In 1942 she joined the Women’s Auxilliary Air Force as a Welfare and Information Officer. When she was demobilised in 1948 she took up an appointment as Acting Director of the John Gray Community Centre in a slum district of Johannesburg, making an extensive study of the conditions of low-income Europeans. At the same time she studied at the Witwatersrand University for a postgraduate diploma in Social Studies. In 1949, she was appointed Supervisor of Community Centres in Cape Town by the National War Memorial Health Foundation. There she established and expanded two community centres amongst the coloured people, establishing crèches, nursery schools, discussion clubs, co-operative vegetable and food clubs, juvenile and adult educational and recreational groups.

In 1951, she returned to Johannesburg as Secretary of the Transvaal Clothing Industry Medical Aid Society, and held this position throughout the trial, making up the lost office hours by working very early in the morning before Court, and until late at night after her return from Pretoria.

Political consciousness came to Helen Joseph not through reading books – her favourite authors were Jane Austen and Charles Morgan – but through the “hard facts of life”, to quote a phrase used by Mr Justice Rumpff when she was under severe and prolonged cross-examination. It was years of daily contact with misery, poverty and racial oppression that provided Helen with her political education, not the hundreds of “subversive” publications the Crown produced at the trial in their attempt to prove the charge of high treason.

After spending some months in gaol, including nineteen days solitary confinement when the Emergency regulations were proclaimed in April 1960, Helen was called as a witness for the Defence in June 1960. Defence Counsel had already withdrawn at the request of the accused on account of the conditions arising from the State of Emergency. Accused Number 1 led her evidence-in-chief:

Mr F Adams: “When did you become interested in politics?”

Helen Joseph: “I first became interested in politics as such when I was an information officer in the Air Force, because it was part of my duty to give lectures in political education. Then I became a social worker, both amongst the Europeans in Johannesburg and particularly among the coloured people, when I took up another position as a supervisor of a community centre in Cape Town. It became clear to me that the social work in itself is nothing more than a palliative for the ills which beset so many people. It was then that I began to turn my attention to the causes of these ills, and I became convinced that I could no longer be satisfied merely with social work, but that I must play an active part in the political life of South Africa.”

Helen then joined the Labour Party, and shortly afterwards was invited to join a committee that was engaged in forming what afterwards became the Congress of Democrats, and was elected to the National Executive Committee. In 1954, the multiracial Federation of South African Women was established and she became the first Transvaal Regional Secretary and, in 1956, National Secretary. She held both these positions throughout the trial.

In 1957, a few months after the Treason Trial had opened, she was served with two banning orders, the first prohibiting her from attending any gathering for five years and the second forbidding her to leave Johannesburg, also for five years.

In her evidence-in-chief, Helen stated:

I was very deeply influenced by the Defiance Cam­paign. At that time I was already a member of the Labour Party, but I cannot say that I was really playing an active part. I had, however, for some years been deeply moved by the hardships and sufferings of the millions of non-white people in South Africa.

When the Defiance Campaign was launched, I fol­lowed it with deep interest although I must say, to my sorrow, at a distance. I observed the thousands of people who were prepared to suffer the hardships of impris­on­ment in order to improve the hardness of their life, in order to show the injustices under which they were suffering.

As the Campaign went on, I became more deeply impressed with the courage and determination and what appeared then and still appears to me as the justice of this cause. I was particularly struck by the Defiance Campaign, because of the years that I had myself spent in India, where I had become very deeply conscious of the passive resistance campaign in that country.

Towards the end of the Defiance Campaign, I felt that I could no longer stand aside from the struggles of the non-white people and that I must align myself with them. It was therefore, My Lords, in this mood that I so willingly accepted the invitation to join the provisional committee to establish the Congress of Demo­crats, for in the Congress of Democrats I found an organisation that stood uncompromisingly for equality and for justice for all people.

In August 1956 Helen, together with Lilian Ngoyi and other women leaders, organised the mass demonstrations of 20 000 women of all races to the Union Buildings to protest to the prime minister against the issuing of passes to African women. This magnificent disciplined demonstration was hailed through­out South Africa for its controlled militancy and dignity.

As soon as she entered the witness box, Helen declared that she had no confidence whatsoever in the bona fides of the Minister of Justice, and did not accept his assurances that the Emergency regulations at that time would not be used to imperil her further; and she said that there were only two alternatives before her, either she must close her case or she must give evidence in peril of being further detained. Her decision was: “My Lords, I am compelled to the latter choice.”

Led by Accused Number 1 on her views on non-violence, Helen replied: “I think that in this country the universal franchise can be brought about and I hope very much that it will be brought about through a non-violent programme. I have already outlined the methods and the ways in which I think this can happen. It will be through both moral and economic pressure being brought to bear on the present white electorate to concede that the vote must be extended to the non-white people.

The attitude of the Congress to the existing state and its apparatus is that while we accept its form, we condemn its com­position. We condemn its composition because it is confined to one racial group only.”

Mr Adams: “When do you envisage this change might come about?”

Helen: “It is impossible to put into any term of years. This yielding of the white electorate to the pressure, that . . . many others foresee, may not come for some time. But as I see other countries in Africa obtaining their independence, so I see that in South Africa the time is also coming.”

Her bans were lifted on 30 April 1962 when she undertook a trip of some 12 000 kilometres to the banished – people who had been banished to remote rural areas and were not given any specific reason for their banishment. She was elected Honorary National Vice-President of the South African Congress of Democrats. The Congress of Democrats was declared an illegal organisation in September 1962. On 13 October 1962, she became the first person in South Africa to be placed under house arrest. She was arrested and convicted for failing to report to the police station one Saturday, which carried a compulsory minimum sentence of twelve months in gaol. The sentence, except for four days, was suspended.

She was arrested in 1964 for possessing banned literature and for furthering the aims of a banned organisation, the ANC, and acquitted on both charges.

Her book, Tomorrow’s Sun, was published in 1966 and she was served with additional banning orders prohibiting her from preparing any material for publication or even assisting in doing so and was prohibited from entering any building that housed the offices of a trade union. Her office at the Medical Aid Society was in the building that housed the Garment Workers’ Union and her employment was terminated. After six months, she was employed at Vanguard bookshop. On 27 October 1967, four days before her restrictions were to expire, she was placed under a further five years’ house arrest.

She registered for the external Bachelor of Divinity degree with the University of London. During 1968 she left the bookshop and went to work at a hotel in Roodepoort. In 1971 she was diagnosed with second-stage cancer of the breast and an urgent operation was necessary. The operation was successful and while in hospital her restriction orders were suspended until further notice. She was elected Honorary National President of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). As a listed person, she could not become an office bearer of the organisation and resigned her office. Her resignation was not accepted and the office stood vacant for two years. From 1971 she spoke widely from anti-govemment plat­forms and at the beginning of 1972 she embarked on a national tour of the English-speaking university campuses. Early in 1973 she renounced her British nationality to avoid any chance of her being deported from South Africa after the passing of a law in Parliament that provided for the removal of South African citizenship in the case of citizens who also had the nationality of another country, “when it appeared that it would not be in the public interest that such a person should continue to be a South African citizen.”

In 1975, she earned a London University Diploma of Theology and was elected a Fellow of King’s College, London, in the same year. On 13 October 1977 Helen appeared before a magistrate in Bloemfontein for refusing to testify against Winnie Mandela and was sentenced to four months in gaol. On appeal in February 1978, the conviction was upheld and the sentence reduced to two weeks.

On 25 June 1980, at the age of 75, Helen was banned for a period of two years from attending any political gathering and any gathering of pupils or students assembled for the purpose of being instructed, trained or addressed by her. When she was unbanned, she spoke many times on university campuses. During the launching of the United Democratic Front, Helen spoke and was introduced as “the mother of the struggle” and elected an Honorary Patron.

She died on 25 December 1992.

Accused Number 3

AHMED MAHOMED KATHRADA

“Kathy”, cheerful, good humoured, resilient, good for a laugh and a flash of his white teeth, sometimes pretending to be a playboy – but underneath all this lies the real Kathy, who left school at seventeen immediately after he had matriculated, and gave up a university career to fling himself whole-heartedly, full-time, into the Passive Resistance Campaign, back in 1946. Young as he was, he served a sentence of a month during that great campaign. As one of the organisers of the Defiance Campaign in 1952, he was sentenced with the nineteen others to nine months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Kathrada gave himself completely to the affairs of the Indian Congress, particularly to the Indian Youth Congress in the Transvaal. Banned from gatherings and from participating in the Congress, which was his whole life, he was undaunted, and turned his attention to the Indian Parents Association to build the Indian High School, the defiant protest of the Indian community against the removal of the schools in Lenasia, 35 kilometres from Johannesburg, under the Group Areas Act.

The fortunate holder of a passport obtained before the Nationalists came into power, Kathy left South Africa by the front door in 1951 to travel in Europe, finding out for himself what it was like to be free from the colour bar. Returning, he gathered round himself an enormous circle of friends of all races. Helen Joseph wrote: “If you want to find anyone in the Congress movement you first find out if he has been to Kathy’s.”

At one point in the proceedings of the Treason Trial, while the State of Emergency was in force, Kathy tried the Court’s patience by calling Ahmed Kathrada, a successful Indian busi­nessman and prominent in the struggle. Kathrada, by the way, spoke excellent English:

My Lord, I should at this stage like to place on record that a few days ago this witness informed me that he was more proficient in Urdu than in English, and he expressly requested me to arrange for an interpreter in Urdu. Two days ago, I arranged for the Crown to be informed of the witness’ difficulty and request and the Crown promised to arrange for an interpreter available in Court, and I believe he is available again this morning. It seems to me most strange that Your Lordship should make an order which might have the effect of hamper­ing the witness in giving evidence. I have always been under the impression that a witness was entitled to give evidence in the language in which he is most profi­cient. I should have imagined, My Lord, that this right could be accorded to a witness even in respect of a petty offence. It seems to me unprecedented that a witness should be precluded from testifying in his own language in a capital offense, especially when an inter­preter is available. Would Your Lordship be pleased to explain to me the rights of a witness in regard to the language he is entitled to use in giving evidence in a Court of Law?”

Mr Justice Rumpff: “The witness understands English perfectly, he speaks English well, and you may proceed, Mr Kathrada, leading the witness in English, and he can give his answers in English!”

Judge Rumpff did not escape Kathrada’s pointed leading of his witness in his determination to establish the true significance of the Defiance Campaign.

“Is it also correct that in 1952 you were convicted together with nineteen others under the Suppression of Communism Act of your part in the Defiance Campaign?”

“That’s so.”

“And did you receive a suspended sentence?”

“Yes.”

“You are aware that His Lordship the Presiding Judge was presiding or presided over the Defiance Trial?”

“That is so.”

Mr Justice Rumpff: “Is that a relevant factor at all?”

Mr Kathrada: “I am leading on to the next question. Do you remember if His Lordship made any remarks when he suspended the sentence?”

“Yes, he did, to the effect that the sentence was suspended because the form of the struggle was one of non-violence.”

In 1957, Kathrada was served with a banning order, forbidding him to leave Johannesburg for five years. In January 1961, he went to Schweizer-Reneke, a town in the Orange Free State, to see his mother who was very ill. Because he failed to obtain permission to leave Johannesburg, he was arrested three months later, a few weeks after his acquittal of high treason, for breaking his ban.

He was held in gaol for several weeks without bail, and finally after several appearances in court, he was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment suspended for three years.

At the end of 1961 Ahmed Kathrada became involved in Umkhonto we Sizwe but withdrew early in 1962. He was arrested in 1962 for contravening his banning order. He sued the Minister of Justice, BJ Vorster, for unlawful arrest as his banning order had not been reimposed. An out-of-court settlement was reached and he was paid the sum of £100. He became secretary of the first “Free Mandela Committee” and on 22 October 1962 was placed under twelve-hour house arrest that prohibited him from entering factories, although at the time he was a canvasser for a printing works. During the Rivonia Trial, he was found guilty on one of four counts, sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964, and sent to Robben Island. On Robben Island, he completed a BA degree in Arts and Bibliography and an Honours degree in History and African Politics. In 1982, he was sent to Pollsmoor Prison. He was released unconditionally on 15 October 1989 and appointed a member of the ANC’s National Interim Leadership Committee with the portfolio for publicity and information following the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990. He was a member of the delegation in the first round of talks with the government and is now a Parliamentary Councillor, Office of the State President.

Accused Number 4

LEON LEVY

Born in Johannesburg in 1929, Leon started work at the age of sixteen in a hardware establishment, and came into the Trade Union field through the National Union of Distributive Workers, becoming an executive member of the union. In 1954, he became secretary of the National Union of Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Workers and also Secretary of the Food and Canning Workers’ Union, and in 1956, President of the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Leon’s two absorbing interests are peace and the Trade Union Movement and he has devoted his life to this work, with a passionate concentration. He was utterly single-minded in his devotion to the struggle, and worked day and night, trial or no trial, on union matters.

In the Drill Hall days of the Preparatory Examination, he and his identical twin brother Norman, caused some confusion and discomfiture amongst police witnesses when it came to identification, and popular rumour had it that Norman was discharged because the Crown did not dare to have them both in the Treason Trial itself.

Just a month after he was arrested, Leon was served with two banning orders, one banning him from all gatherings and the other restricting him to Johannesburg for five years. These orders seriously affected his work as National Secretary of Trade Unions, but all appeals to the Minister to allow him to go to other centres were refused.

In October 1961, Leon was saying farewell to a few delegates of the unemployed, passing through Johannesburg on their way to interview the Minister of Labour about unemployment. Special Branch detectives burst into Leon’s office and arrested him for “attending a gathering”. He spent the week­end in gaol and was then released on bail. The charge against him was subsequently withdrawn.

On 15 May 1963, Leon was the first person in South Africa to be detained under the law providing for 90 days’ detention without trial. He was released on 3 July 1963 and went into exile in London after leaving South Africa on an exit permit. He was an organiser of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, which was originally the Boycott Movement and orga­nised national rallies. He was awarded scholarships from a number of trade unions to study at Ruskin College, Oxford, where he read Economics and Political Science. He then went into the Research Department of the Amalgamated Engineering Union of Britain which activity involved dealing in all aspects of British unionism, including early planning structures, nationalisation and National Economic Development Councils. He was seconded by the Amalgamated Engineers Union to the Electoral Planning Committee.

In the 1970s, financial pressures led to Leon working generally in labour relations in commerce where structures of conciliation, mediation and arbitration were put into place. Later on he took to management consultancy and specialised in the motor industry. He returned to live in South Africa in September 1997.

Accused Number 5

STANLEY BASIL LOLLAN

Son of a coloured garment worker and born in 1925 in Johan­nesburg, Stanley Lollan was coloured and his home language was Afrikaans.

From an early age, I was conscious of the conflict between Europeans and non-Europeans, having for so long lived in mixed areas with poor whites. This rela­tionship became confusing when one reached the age of about fourteen to find that you were not as welcome in the homes of your former white playmates. Pre­viously the fights one had on the way to and from school or shops were not really on a racial basis, now they had become racial. About this time I was struck by the prejudice among the coloured people themselves. Various influences began to assert themselves: friends, newspapers, etc., the Defiance Campaign, the Miners’ Strike in 1946. It was then that I saw things more clearly and felt the need for coloured people to take a more active part in an organised fashion in the liberatory struggle.

When the South African Coloured Peoples’ Organi­zation was formed in Cape Town, it was decided to form a branch here and I became the Transvaal Secretary. During the trial, I retained my employment at the Industrial Council for the Clothing Industry by working seven hours a day in addition to appearing at the Pre­paratory Examination and the trial in Pretoria. To do this, it was necessary to work for two hours in the morning before leaving at 8.30 for Pretoria, and to work until 9 pm every night, but I made up every hour that I took from the office!

Stanley Lollan, Transvaal Secretary of the South African Coloured Peoples’ Organisation, the only coloured amongst the 30 accused who faced the actual trial, was one of the Defence witnesses led by Kathrada, Accused Number 3. Despite the questions from the Bench and the wiles of the cross-examiner, he stood his ground and could not be shifted from his affirmation of the Congress policy of non-violence.

He went into exile in Swaziland and later moved to Britain. He suffered a stroke and was cared for by the Salvation Army. He returned to South Africa in 1987, the year he died.

Accused Number 6

NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, son of chief Henry Mandela, born in 1918, was brought up from the age of twelve by the Acting Paramount Chief of Tembuland. He matriculated at Hilltown Training Institution in Ciskei. Although he went to Fort Hare University College, he did not complete his BA there, but gained it later by correspondence.

He studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand and became an articled clerk to a firm of attorneys, qualifying in March 1952, and set up in practice with Oliver Tambo from 1952 until 1960, when he was arrested soon after Tambo had made his way overseas to inaugurate the United Freedom Front. Mandela was compelled then to give up his office and legal practice. He depended after his release from detention on infrequent court work on Saturday mornings. Two of his five children were born during the trial.

A foundation member of the African National Congress Youth League, Mandela was also active in the African National Congress itself, becoming Transvaal President in 1952, and also National Volunteer-in-Chief in the Defiance Campaign. Declared a statutory Communist by virtue of his conviction under the Suppression of Communism Act as one of the leaders of the Defiance Campaign, he was prohibited in 1952 from membership of the African National Congress.

Shortly before his acquittal in the Treason Trial, his five-year ban confining him to Johannesburg and prohibiting him from gatherings expired, thus making it possible for him to address the All-In-Conference in Pietermaritzburg on 26 March 1961, giving a dynamic lead with his call for unity and non-­violent militant action. It was at this conference that the resolution was taken for a programme of non-cooperation in the event of the demand for a national multiracial convention not being met.

He was elected Secretary of the National Action Council formed at this conference to carry on its decisions. He was for a long time South Africa’s Scarlet Pimpernel when, after the Treason Trial, the ANC leadership, in desperation, finally committed itself to armed resistance, and he went into hiding while organising the struggle.

After ten months underground, Nelson Mandela left the country to attend a conference in Ethiopia, and visit other countries in Africa as well as England, and then undergo military training. After eight weeks, as commander of MK, he was recalled back to South Africa. He was arrested on 5 August 1962 while driving from Durban to Johannesburg disguised as a chauffeur. He stood trial on charges of inciting workers to stay at home and of leaving the country without a passport. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, with no possibility of parole, which was then the stiffest sentence yet imposed in South Africa for a political offense. He was sent to Robben Island and then taken back to Pretoria after the Rivonia arrests in July 1963 to stand trial, charged with sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the government by revolution and assisting an armed invasion of South Africa by foreign troops. He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964.

He spent 27 years in prison until his release in 1990 and became the first black head of state in a democratic South Africa following free elections in April 1994. At the time of [original] publication, he is still President of South Africa and has only recently retired as President of the African National Congress, the party synonymous with his name.

Accused Number 7

LESLIE MASSINA

Leslie was born in Pimville, Johannesburg, in 1921 and educated in Natal and the Orange Free State. On leaving school, he went to work in a factory. His 68-year-old father, Mr Luke Massina, had been a member of the African National Congress since 1912 and was still able to participate in its activities until it was outlawed in 1960. Leslie’s mother, Louisa Massina, former school teacher and a deeply religious member of the Anglican Church, has supported Congress strongly for many years.

After working in a toy factory for some time, Leslie took up employment as a checker in a laundry and dry-cleaning establishment in Johannesburg. Working conditions in this industry in 1946 were poor and workers voiced their grievances openly. Leslie came forward and helped his Union to organise a successful strike of 3 000 laundry workers.

His efforts in the strike earned him the post of chairman of the factory committee and later in 1952, after filling the post of Union organiser, he was elected the Secretary of the African Laundering, Cleaning and Dyeing Workers’ Union. During the Defiance Campaign which began in 1952, Leslie served as Deputy Volunteer-in-Chief in the Transvaal province and remained a very prominent member of the African National Congress; he was Transvaal Treasurer in 1953, and he was on the National Executive from 1955. On the formation of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, he was elected General Secretary. During 1954–1955, he too left South Africa by the back door to attend important international trade union conferences and to visit England, the Soviet Union and other European countries.

Arrested on 5 December 1956 on the charge of high treason, he spent two weeks in prison with the others before being released on bail. On 7 January 1957, he was served with an order from the Minister of Justice prohibiting him from attending gatherings for a period of five years and restricting him to the magisterial area of Johannesburg.

His absence from the Union office during the long years of the trial led to a decline in the Union’s finances, and he continued his Union work without pay until his acquittal; his wife helped him maintain the home and his two young daughters at school.

When the trial ended, Leslie eventually obtained work in a printing firm after several months of unemployment. He went into exile in Swaziland in the early 1960s and died in Lusaka, Zambia, in the early eighties.

Accused Number 8

PHILEMON MATHOLE

Philemon Mathole gave the following statement to Helen Joseph:

I was born in Johannesburg in 1916. In the early thirties there used to be political meetings at the Western Native Township second gate on weekends, and as a youngster I used to listen to the speakers. This is where I first got interested in politics. In 1936 certain cinemas in the city sprang up, which discriminated between Africans and other non-European races. This kind of practice caused resentment among the African youth and a Youth League was formed to fight it. Our Youth League consisted of youths in Western areas. I was the Secre­tary and we were extremely national and envisaged an “Africa for Africans”.

I was rather sceptical of our line and consulted other experienced politicians, who advised the futility of follow­ing the line our Youth League was taking. When my views differed from some of our members I decided to do something more politically constructive. I realised that workers in the mines required organising into a trade union. African miners are the most exploited workers in the country, but organising in the mines is very difficult and there was the risk of being arrested when entering the mine compound. The best way was to get employment in the mines and be one of the workers. This I did, my pay being ls 8d a day in a month of about five weeks. In spite of the watchful eyes of the police, we reached the workers and preached unity and the need for organisation.

The years 1944 and 1945 found us highly deter­mined to demand 10 shillings a day for all the African miners. This propaganda circulated among the workers like a whirlwind and in 1946 the situation became tense. Many miners of the Reef, particularly on the East Rand, came out on strike, but because of the lack of suffi­cient organisation, the miners did not stay in the compounds and they formed processions which gave an excuse for the police to open fire on them. Many of our comrades were killed.

Thereafter I was spotted as a Union member and I was then asked by the mine officials to report to them about the Union meetings. This I would not do and had to leave my job on the mines. I left the mines, not in despair, but hopeful that one day the African miners will belong to a mighty Union.

I went to stay in Moroka (Johannesburg) and there started a small grocery business. In 1948, I contested a seat on the Moroka Advisory Board, which I won and this was the beginning of my struggle in Moroka. In 1952, during the Defiance Campaign, when members of the Advisory Boards in Johannesburg would not volunteer to defy the unjust laws, I decided to join those opposed.

I was aware of the fact that liberation had to be worked for; its price is not small – it can even mean one’s life.

Subsequent to the Defiance Campaign, the need for a stronger Congress arose, for the government was more than ever vicious with its imposition of bans on the leaders . . . I had now to make up my mind between the struggle and my family. I have a wife and eight children, a widowed mother and three of my late sister’s children to maintain. I had a little business that man­aged to keep the home fires burning and I got my sister to manage it, whilst I went to the Congress offices as full-time Transvaal Provincial Secretary. This change brought about many new problems. My little business, now under new and inexperienced management, col­lapsed, and I had to rely on my wages from the African National Congress. This was not paid regularly, as there was not enough money, and at times one had to get wages by bits. Things went on this way until our arrest in 1956.

I sold my business in Moroka prior to the trial to pay my losses and debts.

After the trial, Philemon Mathole struggled again with a shop in another of the African townships, trying to build up another business to maintain his large family and his dependents.

He moved to Rustenburg and died in 1996.

Accused Number 9

PATRICK MOSELI MOLAOA

Born in Johannesburg in 1925, Patrick Molaoa started to attend school in Lesotho and then went to school in Sophiatown and Kimberley. Pass raids and the plight of African youth brought him into the African National Congress Youth League in which he became very prominent, finally becoming National President during the trial.

He was employed in the statistics office of the Public Utility Transport Company until his arrest on the charge of treason and then during adjournments. This ended in April 1958 and he was then unemployed for many years.

Molaoa was called as a Defence witness during the trial. As a former resident of Sophiatown where he had lived for many years, and where his children were born, he gave impor­tant testimony on the feelings of the people and the conduct of the African National Congress meetings there at the time of the Western Areas Removal. With other victims he was eventually compelled to move with his wife and family to one of the municipal townships 16 kilometres from Johannesburg.

Following his acquittal, Patrick obtained a position in the sales department of a large mineral water factory.

His commitment, however, was to the political ideals that he cherished and he later offered himself as a volunteer for military training and left South Africa. He was killed in action in 1968 while serving with a guerrilla team in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He was one of the first activists of the ANC to die as a guerrilla fighter.

Accused Number 10

MOOSA MOHAMED MOOLLA (‘Mosey’)

Mosey was the youngest of the 30 left in the trial; he was arrested at 22 for high treason and discharged at 26, so that nearly one-fifth of his life was taken up with the Treason Trial. Already at fifteen he had played truant from school in the first real stay-at-home, May Day 1950, in the protest against unjust laws. Two years later he was again playing “hookey”, this time with his fellow students, to attend the court proceedings against the leaders of the Defiance Campaign. He was expelled from school during his matriculation year for taking part in politics. Arrested with Farid Adams and two others in 1955 for painting Freedom Charter slogans on the walls, Mosey was beaten up by the police at the time of his arrest. Finally, after losing his appeal, he was convicted and fined £50.

Mosey could not at first give himself to the Congress Movement full time, for he had to help support his parents and his young brothers. His father was 89 years old; Mosey one of sixteen children. What little support this youngster had been able to give before fell away during the long years of the trial; even during adjournments it was well nigh impossible for clerical workers to obtain temporary employment against the competition of those who could be permanently employed. So, Mosey no longer assisted his struggling family – instead he had to be helped himself.

He was arrested and tried for incitement at the time of the May 1961 stay-at-home. In May 1963, he was detained under the 90-day law. On 11 August 1964, he and three other detainees bribed a young guard and made a dramatic escape from the cells of the Marshall Square police station in the heart of Johannesburg. He left the country and went to New Delhi as the Asian representative of the ANC in exile. He is presently South Africa’s Ambassador to Iran.

Accused Number 11

JOSEPH MOLEFI

Born in 1930, Joe Molefi joined the African National Congress Youth League while a schoolboy. He helped to organise the Fordsburg Freedom Square meeting at which the Defiance Campaign pledge was taken, and was one of the leaders of the student demonstrations against the trial of the Defiance Campaign leaders.

In 1953 he was detained in gaol for six days after addressing an Alexandra Township meeting, but the charge was later withdrawn. Joe played a leading part as Secretary of the Evaton People’s Transport Council in the Evaton Bus Boycott, which ended in complete victory for the people after a struggle lasting fifteen months. He was arrested on several charges arising out of this boycott, one of them for murder, later reduced to public violence, but during the course of the Treason Trial he, together with other boycott leaders, was acquitted on all charges.

Married, with three children to maintain, Joe had difficulty in maintaining his income during the trial although he was well treated by his employers at that time. A week after the end of the Treason Trial, he was arrested with Buma Nokwe on a charge under the Unlawful Organisations Act. He was the only Pan African Congress member amongst the 30 accused as he joined their ranks when they split from the ANC during the trial. However, even this defection did nothing to break the strong spirit of solidarity between the accused, and Joe was accepted as “one of us”.

In October 1961, Joe Molefi fled from South Africa to escape a new trial (in which the other twelve co-accused were sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment). He had also been arrested on a charge of continuing to associate with the banned Pan African Congress, but left the Republic before this case was heard. The one other accused in that trial was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.

He joined the PAC Executive Committee in Exile when it regrouped in Maseru after fleeing from South Africa in Oc­tober 1961. He later became a press correspondent, covering Lesotho for several South African newspapers, amongst them the Argus, Africa News Service and The World. He was PR Manager of the Lesotho National Development Corporation until 1990. From 1990 to 1994 he was based in Harare, as Director of the Ecumenical Documentation and Information Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa (EDICESA), serving twelve Councils of Churches affiliated to the World Council of Churches. In September 1994, he was appointed to serve as Chairman of the Conference of Editors of Southern Africa Organization in Maputo by the Nordic SADEC Journalism Centre. From 1994 to February 1997 he was employed as Editor of Radio Lesotho. He resisted all attempts by the Lesotho government to deport him in the late 1960s while working for the Lesotho National Broadcasting Corporation. He is still resident in Lesotho and is presently employed on a freelance basis by the Independent Foreign Service, The Sowetan, the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the SA Press Association.

Accused Number 12 (extracted from New Age)

ELIAS MORETSELE (Retse)

Born in Sekhukhuniland in 1897, “Retse” was one of the early veterans of the African National Congress. He joined in 1917 before the end of the First World War, and his participation in African struggle is written in the stories of the 1922 struggle against the increased poll tax; the struggle of the twenties and thirties against Pass laws, notably the struggle of African women against having to carry passes, in 1925.

Twenty-five years later, when the people of Sekhukhuniland rose against passes for women and the Bantu Authorities system, Retse was proved right again, and he stood shoulder to shoulder with the people of Sekhukhuniland in their courageous opposition to Native Affairs Department rule.

By the fifties, when a generation of African freedom fighters had flowed into the Congress movement, they found veteran fighter Retse at their side in the votes-for-all campaign, with them during the Defiance Campaign, with them in the Campaign against Bantu Education, and among the 156 woken from their beds in December 1956 when the Treason Trial started on its interminable and wearying path.

Retse rose to be Transvaal President of the African National Congress and was Treasurer when it was banned. He shared in the taking of many historical decisions, presided over conferences and meetings – but never lost the “common touch”. In years, he was considerably older than most of his colleagues in the political movement, but he was admired above all by the youth for his twinkling, often sarcastic humour.

He died suddenly on 10 March 1961, three weeks before the acquittal of all the accused in the Treason Trial.

Accused Number 13

MANGISI PHENEAS NENE

Born in 1913 in Natal, Nene had become a businessman with a shop in Alexandra Township, where he had been a leading member of the African National Congress, Chairman of the Branch and also of the Anti-Permit Committee. Unable to follow English well, he found the trial an ordeal. Only during the time when the accused conducted their own defence was there full interpretation of the proceedings. Throughout the trial, Nene sat through many dreary hours of not following what was said, depending upon reports from his fellow accused. The following statement was given by him:

From about 1930 I began attending political meetings because I was dissatisfied with the manner in which my African people were treated by Europeans generally. I joined Congress in 1945 because I was satisfied with its policies and programmes of action intended to bring about change for the good of all.

During the Defiance Campaign I was chairman of the Welfare Committee for the Alexandra Defiance Volunteers. I rallied the many Alexandra businessmen to provide funds for the volunteers and their dependants.

About eighteen months after I was arrested for high treason, I was arrested on a charge of murder. It was alleged that I was a member of the Msomi gang, a gang that was responsible for the murder of a number of people in Alexandra Township where I reside. After being kept in custody for many months, I was dis­charged from the Msomi case in June 1959.

When I came back I found that my business (a general dealer’s store) was taken over by order of court and I lost stock worth £500, most of which was not yet paid for. I lost my property, my car and my fur­niture. I have no home and I stay with friends. My position is very bad indeed.

After the end of the treason trial, Nene had to start life again with a small soft goods agency. It was a hard struggle with insecure prospects and little hope of ever again reaching the position he had achieved before he was first arrested.

He left South Africa and went to the ANC School in Ma­zimbu, Tanzania, where he died in exile and is buried in the cemetery not far from the school.

Accused Number 14

LILIAN NGOYI

Here is Lilian’s own story, told to me during the trial.

My name is Lilian Masediba Ngoyi and I was born in Pretoria in 1911. We were very poor. My father worked at first in the Premier Mines near Pretoria and earned £3 in six weeks. Later he worked as a packer in a shop earning £3 a month. We were six children and my mother did washing for a few shillings a day to help make ends meet. My grandfather was a church min­ister in Pretoria and I was told that he gave up his position as chief because he wanted to save people by religion. I was very much impressed by his sacrifice. As I grew up, my parents told us that the hard life we were leading was prepared by God; Man was born sin­ful and could be saved only by prayer. So, I prayed, and as time passed things became worse. We used to eat mealie porridge every day, except one Sunday in a month when we got a piece of meat. I was sent to Kil­nerton Primary School as a boarder; the fees were £12.10s a year and we were always in arrears.

When I was in Standard 6, my parents could no longer afford to keep me at school, so I went to work in a hospital as a probationer nurse. I married but when my only child was three years old, my husband died and I had to work in a clothing factory, where I earned only 15s a week.

When I was in Pretoria as a child I stayed just opposite African National Congress president, Makgatho. I used to listen how Makgatho defied the law and went into the second-class compartment on the train [barred to black people], and I used to admire him very much. This man did not wait in the queue for mercy from God, but he did things for himself. I asked myself, “Supposing I do not go to work and pray for bread, will I get bread?”

As I grew up I did not think of politics, but I looked for some organisation that would put forward our griev­ances, and all the hardships I saw my people suffer. In church, I saw women, how Jesus was treated by the Jews. I felt there was something very wrong, for after weeping nothing would be done. They all waited for some power from God. But in the scriptures it is also said that prayers without deeds mean nothing before God. I longed for a change in the country. As a Christian, I read about women like Esther who saved her nation, women like Lot’s wife who did not see the Promised Land and was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back to her children . . . I said to myself that we are definitely a nation. If we could be given a chance to learn we could definitely do so. But certainly, something must be done, not prayers alone.

In May 1952, I marched with thousands of other garment workers to the City Hall steps to the meeting called about the banning of Solly Sachs, the General Secretary of the Garment Workers’ Union. When Mr Sachs began to speak the police rushed, broke the micro­phone and dragged Mr Sachs into the City Hall. There was such a crowd and we just saw police throw­ing chairs into the air over us and batons charging us. My daughter was hit on the right side by a policeman with a baton.

In June and July that year, I read in the newspapers about the Defiance Campaign and saw pictures of Afri­cans being loaded into prison vans in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. I had heard of the African National Congress by this time but did not know exactly what it stood for. One day my neighbour called me, “You wanted to know how this is carrying on. Come let us go to a meeting!” I went with him to Orlando Hall. It was packed out. Speaker after speaker asked for volun­teers to come and join Congress and one explained what it stood for. He said that the Congress was the mouthpiece of the African people because we have no vote. This was the only organisation that was trying to make its voice heard by the ruling government. I was very much inspired for I saw men, young and old, and women sacrificing to go to gaol.

I said to myself, Ah, this is the real stuff. I’ve been waiting to draw the attention of the ruling people to our deeds, to show them that we are dissatisfied  . . . I also thought this apartheid was most stupid. We peel the Europeans’ potatoes, we bring up their children, we actually sleep with their children when their mothers and fathers are out in the evening. When it comes to wages, to employment, we are called Kaffirs. And we are told that in Heaven we shall live with them!

After joining the African National Congress, Lilian also became a defiant volunteer and walked boldly into the post office, into the section reserved for whites, and was busy writing a telegram to the prime minister when she was arrested for breaking apartheid regulations. She was, however, discharged.

As a member of the African National Congress she was invited to the First National Conference of women of all races in 1954.

The first impression I got was the placards. “Away with Bantu Education!”, “Women want freedom”, ‘Women want peace all over the world!” . . . Those impressed me very much because I was very much against Bantu Education. We are mothers, brought up in hardship, but somebody else decides what education they should have. I asked myself if it was because we had inferior brains, but my answer was “NO!” At this gathering of women, we could express ourselves and hear views from women from other racial groups. I was elected National Vice-President and later Transvaal President of the Federation of South African Women.

Lilian had also been elected to the Executive Committee of the Garment Workers’ Union and to the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress in which she became both Transvaal and National President of the Women’s League. In 1954, she was elected as a delegate to the world Congress of Mothers to be held in Switzerland and slipped out of South Africa without a passport, returning just before the law was passed making such behaviour an offence carrying a long period of imprisonment.

The journey to other lands was a revelation to Lilian. An entry into a world in which there was no colour bar, a world in which she walked free and equal with others. She travelled to the Soviet Union, to China, to Germany, to England and came back to her own land enriched and inspired. When she landed at the airport on her return she fell on her knees and kissed the ground in her joy at returning to the land of her birth, the land that she herself would help to make as free as those other countries she had visited.

Following her acquittal, Lilian has devoted her whole life to the political struggle, working amongst and organising women. But in October 1961, she received her first banning order prohibiting her from attending any gatherings for five years, so that Congress platforms no longer heard this passionate fiery speaker, who could move her audience to tears or laughter so easily. Within a month of her ban, she was arrested for breaking it – at a party in her own house. She spent a weekend in gaol before being bailed out – the charge against her was withdrawn – after the police had spent fruitless weeks interrogating her many guests, vainly trying to find even one who would agree that the party had been a meeting.

Re-elected National President of the Federation of South African Women in September 1961 and banned a month later, she was confined to Orlando; her ban was renewed for a further five years thereafter. In the mid 1960s, she was gaoled under the 90-day Detention Act and spent 71 days in solitary confinement. Her bans expired in 1972 and were not renewed for three years. In 1975 she was banned again, although the restriction was less severe than before.

She died on 12 March 1980.

Accused Number 15

JOHN K NKADIMENG

I was born in a village, Manganeng, in Sekhukhuniland, Lydenburg district, Eastern Transvaal. I am a Trade Unionist. We were a very proud family. My wife had twins during the trial, born 12 May 1957, but one of them died from malnutrition in September 1958. By the time this child died, we already had a boy who was born on the 25 June 1958.

John Nkadimeng had been a prominent member of both the African National Congress and the South African Congress of Trade Unions; during the Congress of the People, he was Deputy Volunteer-in-Chief in the Transvaal. During the Defiance Campaign John Nkadimeng was arrested, not for breaking the apartheid laws, but on a charge of “conspiracy” even before any laws had been challenged. He remained in prison for 29 days and then was finally discharged before ever coming to the trial. On returning from gaol, his job was gone. He then became a full-time organiser in the Trade Union movement up to the time of the arrest. He was a prominent member of the African National Congress, Deputy Volunteer-in-Chief for the Congress of the People and the Resist Apartheid Campaign.

A keen student, John utilised every moment of his time in Court reading avidly – only occasionally listening to the legal argument of the Crown’s case. But, during the Defence, John followed closely, as we all did.

John is one of those who has dedicated his life to the struggle of his people and his heart is in Trade Union work. But he is ready to go anywhere, to do anything at any time. “I can’t do otherwise,” he says.

On 3 May 1961, John was arrested in Sekhukhuniland for entering his own birthplace without a permit. He was held in gaol for 38 days without bail and finally convicted and fined £25.

He was detained during 1963 under the 90-day law as a suspected saboteur and then banned. The sabotage charges were dropped but he was charged with furthering the aims of an unlawful organisation. He was convicted in May 1964, and served his sentence at a prison in the Orange Free State and was released in 1966. He fled into exile on 24 July 1976, living in Swaziland where he worked for the ANC for two years. He moved to Mozambique where he was chairman of the senior structure of the ANC in the country. He rejoined the ANC National Executive Committee and served as chairman of its political committee until he became general secretary of SACTU on 17 August 1983. He continued to serve on the ANC’s Political and Military Council. He was a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party when it was relaunched on 29 July 1990.

He was appointed South African Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Cuba in August 1995.

Accused Number 16

PHILEMON PEARCE DUMA NOKWE

If you saw a group of accused towering over a small, dynamic, gesturing figure, you would know that they were surrounding Advocate Duma Nokwe, a little man with a great heart and a great brain, and a passionate devotion to the struggle of his people.

A brilliant school record at St Peters, the Anglican college, brought him a first-class matriculation and he was off to Fort Hare College, where he found Joe Matthews, Albert Hutchinson, Henry Makgote and Joe Molefi who went with him from St Peters, their paths crossing and recrossing until they found themselves all on the road to the Treason Trial. From Fort Hare he went into teaching, his first and, he says, his only real love apart from the political struggle. “When we get freedom,” said Duma, “just give me a school again.”

He began to study law as well, surviving on a pittance with a wife and child to support, but nevertheless he paid his own way. A defiant determination to succeed inspired him, for one of his bitterest memories in life was the gratuitous advice he remembered receiving from Professor Hahlo, then Dean of the Faculty of Law at Witwatersrand University, that he should give up law as he was wasting his time, since Africans were incapable of passing the law examinations. From that moment, he says, he felt that he owed it to himself and to his people to succeed. He did so, passing his exams without difficulty and becoming the first African barrister in the Transvaal.

But the battle was not over, for he met with brutal discri­mination when he applied for permission to occupy Chambers in the centre of Johannesburg; as a non-European the Group Areas Act precluded him from this, and the then Chair­man of the Bar Council, IA Maisels, fought a bitter battle on his behalf with the then Minister of Native Affairs, Dr Ver­woerd, to obtain permission for him to practise alongside his white colleagues. Despite the Minister’s refusal to allow this, Maisels ignored the proscription and arranged for him to share chambers with George Bizos, another advocate with a great liberal reputation.

Even before starting to practise, Duma was banned by the Minister of Justice from attending any gatherings and he was also confined to Johannesburg for a period of two years. Again, he fought the Minister for permission to go outside Johannesburg to practise in other courts. In 1959, he was again served with a ban on attending any gatherings for five years and in 1961, after his acquittal, received a further confinement ban, also for five years.

Despite his youth, Duma rocketed to leadership in the political field; National Secretary of the Youth League in 1954, he was on the National Executive of the African National Congress from 1955, and Secretary of the National Working Committee from 1956, following Oliver Tambo as SecretaryGeneral of the ANC. With others who left South Africa by the “back door” in the days when you could do so and still come back without imprisonment, he travelled in Israel, England, China and the Soviet Union.

His gaol baptism was in the Defiance Campaign. In 1956 he was caught up in the treason arrests, and again in the Emergency detentions. In the Treason Trial he appeared in his own defence, an advocate in his own right, and together with Nelson Mandela he played a great part in the preparation of the defence during the Emergency, directing and preparing both the witness and Adams and Kathrada.

Fiery, impetuous, able, Duma had the gift of laughter and good fellowship. He said, “I am confident that the years of struggle of my colleagues, both black and white, have not been wasted and that in the very near future we shall rid South Africa of the scourge of apartheid.” A week after he was freed from the Treason Trial, he was arrested with Joe Molefi, to join those already arrested under the Unlawful Organisations Act. For this he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.

He left South Africa by clandestine means for Dar-es-Salaam in 1963. In 1974, although no longer Secretary-General of the ANC, he visited the United Nations as an ANC spokes­man and travelled through the United States.

He died in Lusaka on 12 January 1978.

Accused Number 17

ROBERT MABILWANE RESHA

Born in 1920 in Queenstown, Robert Resha completed Standard 6 of his primary school and then came to Johannesburg to work in the mines for two years, working underground for thirteen months. He continued his education by correspondence, although he did not complete the course. Beginning with part-time freelance work as a sports reporter, he eventually adopted journalism as his career.

It was through Clements Kadali, the veteran East London leader of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union, that “Robbie” became interested in politics in his youth, joining the African National Congress only in 1939, sometime after he came to Johannesburg. He describes himself as being a “paper member” then, but the protest against the increased train fares to the Western Native Township brought him into active participation. The Defiance Campaign saw him leading a group of defiers to gaol.

Resha was a prominent member of the militant Sophiatown branch up to the time of his own forced removal in 1959, when his own home there was demolished for the second time.

Transvaal President of the African National Congress Youth League in 1953, a member of the National Executive of the African National Congress and Acting Transvaal Provincial Secretary in 1955, Resha played a very prominent part in the political field. He was a leading figure in the Campaign Against the Western Townships Removals, and also the National Propaganda Officer for the African National Congress Youth League in 1954 and 1955. He was the Press Relations Officer of the African National Congress in 1955.

In 1959, he received a five-year ban on attending all gatherings and was also confined to Johannesburg for five years.

An extremely able journalist and an unsurpassed speaker, Resha’s contribution to the liberation movement was considerable; prior to his bans he was very well known in Congress in all the main centres of the Union. He reported the treason trial for New Age for the last two years.

He was an uncompromising opponent of Bantu Education. His wife was a prominent women’s leader and served a sentence in 1960 after losing her appeal against a conviction for incitement in 1958. Resha was himself in detention under the Emergency regulations at the time that his wife was in gaol, and when she came to visit him after she was discharged, we welcomed her with pride.

Militant, uncompromising, arrogant, Robbie was a formidable opponent, but a staunch and loyal friend. At times dominated by his passionate anger at the injustices heaped on his people, he accepted intellectually the correctness of the African National Congress policy of non-violence.

When the Treason Trial was over, Resha was sent out of South Africa by the African National Congress to be their “roving ambassador”. He would himself have chosen to stay with his people, but his personal wishes had to give way to the decision of his organisation.

He left South Africa disguised as a priest in 1961 when he was sent into exile by the ANC to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. He was scheduled to go to Algeria to open the first office of the ANC in November 1962 and was put in charge of external affairs of the ANC. In 1966, he was asked to move to London to co-ordinate the work of the former Congress Alliance with that of the ANC. Admitted to Hampstead Hospital (now Royal Free Hospital) for tests in November 1973, the doctors decided to operate on a hydabid cyst on 28 November. The operation did not go well and he was re-admitted to theatre for a second operation.

He died in hospital on 7 December and was laid to rest on 14 December 1973 after a church service held in St Paul’s Cathedral.

Accused Number 18

PETER KAYE SELEPE

Born in 1919, Peter Selepe served in the army during the Second World War, rising to the rank of sergeant, the highest rank permitted to a non-European, commissioned rank being reserved for the whites. While serving in the army he was a member of the militant Springbok Legion.

A member of the Dube Branch of the African National Congress, he was among those who received banning orders not only forbidding him to attend gatherings for five years, but also prohibiting him from ever again being a member of the African National Congress and other organisations.

After sitting through four and a half years of trial during which his name was hardly ever mentioned by the Crown, Peter Selepe received a further banning order just one week before the trial ended. He was forbidden for another five years to attend any meeting, and struggled to re-establish himself in the business world.

He applied for the removal of his name from the list of persons who had been office bearers, officers, members or active supporters of the Communist Party of South Africa, saying that he was never a communist. The application was refused on 31 January 1964.

Nothing is known of him since that time.

Accused Number 19

WALTER MAX SISULU

Walter started his career like thousands of others, leaving his home in the Transkei at the age of seventeen to find work in the gold mines on the Reef. Born a rebel, Walter hated the work and the atmosphere of oppression on the mines. When he returned home, he went to work in the kitchen in East London and then came under the influence of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union and their spell-binding leader, Clements Kadalie.

He moved with his family to Johannesburg and worked in a bakery for 18s a week, while his mother did washing for Euro­peans in Doornfontein. In due course, he led his first strike in the bakery for higher wages, when it was agreed that the workers should put on their best suits so as to make it clear that they were not going to work, and march to the bakery at ten o’clock. The manager, grim faced, met them. Walter spoke on behalf of the workers, but the manager completely ignored him and addressed himself to the workers, one by one, and they all meekly went back to work, best suits and all! Walter was left standing and walked out, head high, but with no job. He laughs as he tells this story, and of how the men were so ashamed afterwards that they had a whip-round of a shilling each for him.

Walter Sisulu has come very far from that day along the hard path of political struggle. By 1949 he was the accepted leader of thousands of African men and women. Along that path Walter saw at first-hand African poverty, police raids, the humiliation of his people everywhere, the constant bawling by policemen, “Kaffir, where is your pass?” In 1940 he joined the African National Congress and together with Oliver Tambo helped to form a Youth Movement; he became the Treasurer of the Youth League, with Oliver as Secretary.

When the Nationalist government came into power in 1948, there were successive waves of further repression, but the resistance of the Africans grew by leaps and bounds. The African National Congress Youth League had grown in importance, showing a spirit of new militancy, and by 1949 changes had taken place in the Congress leadership following from the determination and forcefulness of this growing body of young men. Walter himself was chosen by the African National Congress as Secretary-General and his influence has been long and deeply felt in the Congress movement.

The Defiance Campaign saw Walter Sisulu in the forefront and he was convicted with nineteen others of “furthering the aims of Communism”. The Minister of Justice banned Walter Sisulu as a “statutory” Communist, despite the fact that he had no connection whatsoever with the Communist Party. He was banned from the African National Congress itself. “It is difficult,” he says, “to comprehend what it really means to be forbidden any part in the work to which you have dedicated yourself. To be banned from gatherings is bad, but to be cut off from your life work comes as a spiritual shock. Thereafter there is no middle path. Either a man resigns himself and leaves the political field, as some have done, or he determines to rise above the ban.”

In 1953 Walter received an invitation to visit the USSR, China and other countries of the Communist bloc.

Active struggle brought Walter away from his former, some­what narrow, nationalistic attitude and towards co-operation with all truly democratic sections, irrespective of race. But he says that this was not due to change in himself, but a development that came with confidence in oneself and in others, white or non-white.

Walter Sisulu embodies the finest qualities of African leadership; a big-hearted man, a brilliant mind and a true appreciation of Africa’s role in the new epoch of world history.

No account of Walter would be complete without mention of his handsome and courageous wife, Albertina, who has identified herself with the thorny path of her man throughout their lives together. A trained nurse, her role has been to maintain the family and the home in addition to her own militant work as a women’s leader, and Walter proudly claims that without her, his own contribution would never have been possible.

After his acquittal, the police continued their relentless petty persecution of him. He was, for instance, stopped in a busy Johannesburg street while walking with a friend and his pass demanded. Failure to produce it led to arrest, a few days in the police cells, and a sentence of £15 fine or three months’ imprisonment. Walter was also arrested on a charge of attending a “gathering”, a party at Lilian Ngoyi’s house, and this meant another few days in the cells before being charged and finally having the charge withdrawn.

In 1961, he became a founder member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, and its first Commissar. He was also Secretary-General of the ANC. He was placed under twelve-hour house arrest in October 1962. In March 1963, he was convicted of furthering the aims of the banned ANC and of helping to organise the stay-at-home protest of May 1961 and sentenced to six years. He was released on bail while his appeal was pending and put under 24-hour house arrest. He was instructed by the movement to go underground, from where he was to continue to lead the struggle and on 20 April 1963 he disappeared from his home. On 26 June he made a short broadcast on secret ANC radio transmitters calling for united action and new forms of struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime. When police raided the headquarters of the MK High Command at Rivonia near Johannesburg on 11 July 1963, he was among those caught and was Accused Number 2 in the Rivonia trial. He was found guilty on all four counts, among them planning acts of political sabotage, sedition and revolution. He was sentenced to life imprisonment after the Rivonia Trial on 12 June 1964 and sent to Robben Island.

He was moved to Pollsmoor Prison in 1982 and was released unconditionally on 15 October 1989. After the unban­ning of the ANC in February 1990, Walter Sisulu was charged with the immense responsibility of marshalling the rebirth of the ANC as a legal, mass-based organisation. In July 1991, at the first National Conference of the ANC held in South Africa in more than 30 years, he was elected Deputy President, a post he relinquished in December 1994. For his courageous leadership of the liberation struggle in South Africa, Walter Sisulu has been honored by various organisations, aca­demic institutions and local governments abroad. He is a Freeman of the City of Stoke-on-Trent, and holds Honorary Doctorates of Law from the USSR Academy of Sciences, the University of Durban-Westville, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, York University in Toronto, Canada, and, in 1996, received a Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA).

For their outstanding contribution to the struggle for liberation in South Africa and for justice and human dignity the world over, Walter and Albertina Sisulu jointly received the 1991 Catherine A Dunfey Award from the New England Circle in Boston, Massachusetts, on 9 October 1991.

Walter Sisulu is the recipient of the ANC’s highest award, the Isithwalandwe Separonkoe. On 27 February 1997, he received the Meritorious Award from President Mandela for outstanding service to South Africa. On 20 March 1997, he was granted the Freedom of the City of Johannesburg and resigned as Chancellor of the University of Venda in May 1997.

Accused Number 20

GERT SIBANDE

Born in the Ermelo district 60 years ago, Sibande grew up on the farms in the notorious Bethal district, scene of the dramatic exposure by Michael Scott of farm gaol conditions. Working as a labourer tenant himself, Sibande knew the reality of this particular branch of exploitation. This man, to be known as the “Lion”, never went to school but managed to teach himself to read and write, as he says, “up to a point”. A great believer in the Bible, a devout Christian, he was a lay preacher of the Apostolic Church of Zion of South Africa from 1922. The father of ten children, he was widowed twice; his second wife died during the trial itself, leaving him with the responsibility for a large family of young children.

Sibande’s first introduction to the African National Congress was through his father, also a member. He went to his first meeting in 1921 as a boy of nineteen, but it was only years later that he himself joined the organisation in which he was to play so militant a role. His greatest struggle was among the peasants, as their leader and spokesman.

Sibande was recognised as a leader of his people; powerfully built, utterly fearless, and a man of the people and a true son of the soil. In 1957, he was elected Transvaal President of the banned African National Congress, chosen by the townsmen of Johannesburg as well as the people of the rural areas.

Cross-examination by the Crown left Sibande untouched, and he gave his evidence simply, using the language he always used, explaining that it was his custom to use images from the Bible and to refer to the walls of Jericho and the “dark river which we must go through. We do not know what is on the other side. There may be blood in the river.” To him everything fell into place in the context of the Old Testament and the attempts of the Crown to find a sinister violent meaning in the utterances of this man came to no effect.

After the trial, Sibande once again gave himself wholly to the struggle of his people, organising the Transvaal Farm Labourers Union, returning to the men of the fields for whose rights he had fought for so many years.

He was banished to Komatipoort and went into exile in Swaziland. He died in 1987.

Accused Number 21

SIMON TYEKI

Born in 1904, Simon Tyeki first lived and worked as a farm labourer in Bethal, where his own revolt against the treatment of the farm tenants and labourers awakened his interest in politics. A devoted member of the Zion Church, he was a lay preacher for a while and retained his deep religious convictions. By 1951 he had already been in Johannesburg for many years. He gradually built up a local merchant’s business and had acquired a piece of land in Sophiatown, then still a multi-­racial township with freehold property rights for people of all races.

Simon Tyeki took an active part in the Defiance Campaign and by 1953 was on the Executive Committee of the Sophiatown Branch of the African National Congress, one of the biggest, most important in the Transvaal. He was chairman of the branch throughout the period of the campaign against the Western Areas Removal. He himself suffered very severe losses. He would not sell his property until the bitter end, when he was forced to let it go to the government for just enough to pay off the remainder of the bond. But this was only after years of resistance and in losing that little property Simon Tyeki had lost his all.

He found himself an elderly man with no home. At the beginning of the trial he struggled to earn a little money by driving a taxi, but he could not keep up the instalments.

Simon Tyeki had never been to school; he could not read and write. During the trial, he once whispered to me when Maisels was arguing, “It must be very good to be able to understand!” But he was a fiery and inspired speaker himself, a great-hearted leader of his people. At Moretsele’s funeral, he spoke of the comrade with whom he had shared the political struggle for so many years.

“Just as Maisels,” he said, “is our representative at the trial in the Court, so Moretsele has gone to be our representative in Heaven and when he talks to God about it, this case will collapse.” Ten days later the trial was over.

Months of unemployment followed for Simon Tyeki and he disappeared from public life.

Accused Number 22

CJ MAYEKISO

Born in 1913 in Idutywa, Cape Province, Mayekiso became a textile worker and an active trade unionist. He joined the Afri­can National Congress in 1942, and took a leading part during the 1949 bus boycotts in Port Elizabeth; he was one of the organisers of the May Day and 26 June strikes in 1950 in Port Elizabeth. During the Defiance Campaign, he led a batch of 132 Defiance Volunteers and served fourteen days’ imprisonment.

In 1954, he was arrested for incitement to public violence or sedition, but was acquitted. He was convicted in 1955 for organising an illegal May Day meeting in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. National President of the African Textile Workers Union, an active member of the South African Congress of Trade Unions and Volunteer-in-Chief in New Brighton, Maye­kiso was also a prominent member of the African National Congress National Executive.

On 18 April 1958 Mayekiso was discharged from his job through his prolonged absence on the trial and his wife had to take up employment as a domestic servant, earning less than £7 a month to feed and clothe five children.

Once the trial had ended, Mayekiso once more became a trade union organiser. During May 1961 he, together with so many others, was arrested and held without bail for twelve days, but was discharged when his case finally came to court.

He was re-arrested in 1963 on charges of belonging to the banned ANC. He was convicted and jailed for four years. After serving his sentence on Robben Island he was released and re-arrested on 14 May 1969 under the 180-Day Detention Act. A magistrate from Port Elizabeth visited him on 27 May and noted that on that occasion he was “healthy and peaceful and had no complaints”.

He died in detention in June 1969 and the autopsy performed by the district surgeon stated the opinion that he died of “natural causes”, being emphysema (chronic bronchitis and heart failure).

Accused Number 23

B NDIMA

Born in 1921, Ndima came into active politics during the mass removal of the African people from the township of Korsten (Port Elizabeth).

When I went back to Korsten, Port Elizabeth, in August 1957, during an adjournment of the Preparatory Exami­nation of the Treason Trial, I found that the house I was living in was demolished under a Removal Scheme and my family were resettled at Zakhele, a site and service township in Port Elizabeth. After a struggle, I finally found my wife and children.

Such simple words to describe such an upheaval.

Tall, genial, Ndimba was ever ready with a pleasant smile. During our five months’ detention during the State of Emergency, he had to spend most of his time in the gaol hospital, suffering from acute vitamin deficiency. But he said he enjoyed it; he slept on a proper bed and had better food in hospital! He was totally deaf in one ear, and the other ear began to trouble him just when he was returning to normal life. Em­ployment was not easy for a handicapped man and he struggled to re-establish himself after the trial.

Accused Number 24

WILTON MKWAYI

At the time of his arrest, Mkwayi was Secretary of the African Textile Workers Industrial Union, Port Elizabeth Branch, and Cape Volunteer-in-Chief of the African National Congress. He was born in 1923 in a Middledrift district village, under the authority of Chief Velile Sandile. At the age of 20, the oldest of a family of thirteen, he had to leave school in Standard 4 because his parents died. He worked to keep his younger brothers and sisters, first in a dynamite factory and then at the harbour as a stevedore.

In 1950 Mkwayi became a factory worker again and began to organise a trade union, but in 1952 he was sentenced to five days’ imprisonment or £10 for having led an illegal strike of workers. He found employment in another factory but again was dismissed after being convicted of leading an unauthorised procession of the African National Congress early in 1953. He took up full-time Trade Union work and organised the African Textile Workers Industrial Union (Port Elizabeth) when Gladstone Tshume, its organiser, was banned and forbidden to do trade union work.

In the course of his duties as a trade unionist, Mkwayi represented his Union successfully in 1956 in negotiating the settlement of a dispute at one of the branches, and also assisted workers in another factory when they struck in 1954. They were convicted under the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act, but the factory could not subsequently recruit labour and had to close down. Mkwayi could not, however, continue as Secretary of the African Textiles Workers Industrial Union because he had to spend almost all his time in Johannesburg.

When the mass arrests took place during the Emergency, Mkwayi was amongst the twelve accused who appeared in court on 30 March, only to be taken by the police as they left the court. But Mkwayi found to his surprise that he was pushed aside; and he felt that this was no moment to insist on arrest! And so he made his way to other parts of South Africa where he could be of more use than sitting in gaol. By the time that the Emergency was over, Mkwayi had long been sent to represent the militant non-white Trade Unions in other lands, to win support for the liberation struggle in the free trade union world outside South Africa. Mkwayi was no escapee from the trial; as Chief Volunteer of the Eastern Cape, he had expected obedience from those under him, and as a true volunteer he obeyed the orders given to him.

He went into hiding and left South Africa secretly for Morocco and Czechoslovakia where he represented Sactu at the meeting of the World Federation of Trade Unions and spent over a year in Prague. He received military training in the People’s Republic of China and became commander-in-chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe during the Rivonia Trial arrests. He was ordered to return to South Africa. He was hunted by security forces and narrowly escaped arrest in Soweto when police shot him in the side. He was taken to the home of a nurse who treated him. He was arrested in July/August 1964 and convicted of more than 50 acts of sabotage, preparing for guerrilla warfare and furthering the aims of communism in what became known as the “Little Rivonia Trial”. He was jailed for life in 1964 and sent to Robben Island.

He was moved to Pollsmoor Prison in 1982 and in 1987 married Irene, the nurse who had treated him in 1964. Sadly, she died in 1988 before he was released from prison on 15 October 1989. In 1990, he was appointed to the ANC’s Interim Leadership Committee with the portfolio of National Political Organiser. After the 1994 election, he was made an ANC Senator. He remarried in Cape Town in 1996 and is a Member of the Parliamentary Legislature for Bisho.

Accused Number 25

SIMON PAKAMA MKALIPE

Simon Mkalipe represented a new element in the witness box, that of a local branch chairman, an official who did not feature at the high executive level, but carried on the day-to-day work of the organisation. He told his story and gave his testimony simply, unpretentiously, almost diffidently, yet with an unshakeable belief in the rightness of his stand and cause.

Born in Grahamstown in 1913, he was truly a man of the Eastern Cape. Standard 4 marked the limit of his schooling, and he had remained a subordinate employee, working for many years canvassing cigarette sales around the factories. Deeply religious, he nevertheless quarrelled with the Metho­dist Church because the minister had objected to the African National Congress volunteers attending Sunday service in their uniforms. Mkalipe, in his deep slow voice, explained at the trial: “He said that it wasn’t proper to come dressed in uniform to the services of God, uniforms being things that were made for the material things of life, and not for the church services of God. But in 1940 I heard a minister preaching from the pulpit of the Church – I would like to put it in this way rather, My Lord, that the ministers of religion in the army, for instance, preached to people with uniforms on their bodies. Therefore, I found his idea in regard to that . . . I did not agree with that.” To Simon Mkalipe, the things that the minister described as earthly were the concern of the Church, and that was in fact the basis of his whole attitude to religion and the struggle of the African people for freedom.

Life had been hard for Simon Mkalipe. During the trial, his home was demolished under the local removal scheme, when the Western Areas scheme came to Port Elizabeth. Meanwhile his wife and his small children were, as he said, “squatting in my brother’s house”. Two of his children were very young indeed, born during the trial. But he doggedly continued his fight for what he believed to be right.

He was harried and persecuted by the police from the time when he first went to prison during the Defiance Campaign, and had to be discharged on account of the serious condition of his eyes. He was convicted no fewer than five times, for attending illegal meetings, for using a microphone without a permit, for reading extracts from the Bible at a prayer meeting (for this he served four months in gaol because he had no money to pay the fine). And there he was, still in gaol on that fateful morning of the arrests of 5 December 1956, so for Simon it was just a transfer from one gaol to another, and he served out the rest of his sentence in the Johannesburg gaol when we were all released on bail, coming every day to court until he had completed his sentence.

On the day when the Treason Trial ended, Simon was not with us; he was in an eye hospital undergoing lengthy treatment in an attempt to save what was left of his vision. For four and a half years he had been with us in court day after day, unable to read but following every word of the evidence of the argument with fierce attention. He sat just behind me and would nod his head in agreement and say gruffly, “No, no, it was not like that.”

A few months after the end of the trial, Mkalipe was discharged from the eye hospital and returned to Port Elizabeth. But his vision was fast failing. He returned to Port Elizabeth, suffering from failing vision. In 1963, he was served with a banning order. He died in Port Elizabeth.

Accused Number 26

J KAMPENI

Born in 1910 in Korsten, Port Elizabeth, Karapeni became a businessman and joined the African National Congress in 1943. He played an important part in local affairs as Chairman of the local Ratepayers’ Association, which defended African property rights. During the Defiance Campaign he was a mem­ber of the Welfare Committee that catered for the families of protesters and later on was a member of the Education Council formed at the time of the Bantu Education Boycott.

At the conclusion of the Crown evidence against Kampeni, Advocate Plewman made an application for his immediate release, submitting that there was absolutely no evidence against him in the case presented by the Crown. The Court did not agree, requiring further argument.

So Kampeni remained with us until the end. A few weeks more, a few weeks less, by then it had ceased to matter to us personally – after four years.

Accused Number 27

MILNER BONAKELE FRED NTSANGANI

Born in the Eastern Cape in 1923, Fred Ntsangani lived most of his life in Port Elizabeth, until he returned to Middledrift in 1956 to build up a connection as an agent for a Durban commercial firm. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress in Port Elizabeth. His interest in politics was aroused by rent increases and the many other problems of the African people. He became very active and was a group leader in the Defiance Campaign. In the African National Congress Youth League he was the Branch President, and he was also a mem­ber of the National Executive. As a defence witness he was cross-examined by Mr Trengove and put up a very spirited performance. Lively interchanges between the prosecutor and the witness finally led to the accusation by the Crown in argu­ment, that Ntsangani had given his evidence “with studied insolence and impertinence, just as Resha had done.” Ntsangani certainly managed to get under the skin of Trengove with his fiery sarcastic replies and his open contempt, expressed in the very angle of his head and the way he sat in the witness box.

A colourful flamboyant personality, Ntsangani flung himself into everything he did with fantastic energy and enthusiasm. To watch him play draughts was an experience – each move was made with such vigour and bravado. During lunch hours spent down at the court during detention, he became the unchallenged king of the draught board as far as the accused were concerned, defeating all comers, even the Pretoria champion of the non-European police, who came specially to play against this wizard from the Eastern Cape. At the prison too, he was the champion of all the 250 detainees in the Pretoria “local”.

After his acquittal he returned to Durban where he devoted his whole time to the struggle of his people.

He was confined by banning order to Middledrift and died there.

Accused Number 28

TAMSANQA TASQUE TSHUME

Born on 2 April 1925 in Port Elizabeth, “Tami” Tshume came from a political family, the nephew both of the militant Gladstone Tshume and of the Reverend William Tshume, another famous political figure.

“During my early school days at the age of seventeen, I used to help my uncle Gladstone at the Trade Union offices, selling pamphlets on trade unionism, the Con­gress and other workers’ papers.”

For many years Thsume gave all his spare time to Congress and his short, stout figure with the imposing walrus moustache was always to be found when there was Congress work to be done. President of the African National Congress in the Cape, and Cape Secretary of the African National Congress in 1956, he was also on the National Exec­utive of the ANC.

“I defied unjust laws during the Defiance Campaign and served a sentence of imprisonment. I have been arrested many times for holding and addressing illegal meetings and for slogan writing.”

At the end of 1957 his employers decided to discharge him from his employment in the factory where he worked, telling him that he should come and see them when he was through with his case, but his case was to go on for another three years.

In May 1961, Tshume was amongst those arrested and held for twelve days without bail. He was brought to court and charged but before the actual case began Tshume had left the country.

He moved to Lesotho in 1961 at the end of the trial and later returned to South Africa.

Accused Number 29

THEMBEKILE ENOCH KA TSHUNUNGWA

Thembekile Tshunungwa was born in 1923; he comes from the Royal House of Tembuland and was closely related to the Paramount Chief, Kaiser Matanzima.

I was President of the Teachers’ Association which was opposed to the measures to retard Native Education as promulgated in a Departmental Education Gazette on 14 July 1949. In disgust, I decided to leave the class­rooms and came up to Johannesburg where I read more about the African National Congress and then I went to East London. There I found a very active branch of the African National Congress Youth League and I decided to join the movement, and took part in Youth League opposition to East London City Council’s action in imposing a two-shilling lodger fee on tenants.

A member of the African National Congress Executive as well as being Provincial Secretary for the Cape Province, Tshunungwa became the national organiser for the Congress of the People Campaign.

During the five months of detention during the State of Emergency “Thembi”, or “Tshuks” as he was sometimes called, was the financial expert for the accused. All monies were deposited in his name and drawn in small amounts daily by him from the gaol for our tea or coffee and cigarettes at court. We certainly couldn’t do any lavish shopping, though it was quite amazing what we managed to accumulate. With unassailable good humor, he sorted out the accuseds’ allowances, withstanding all arguments and disputes. Tall, volatile, quick of tongue, Tshunungwa made a lively contribution during those months of detention.

After the trial was over, Tshunungwa returned to Queens­town in the Eastern Cape where he endeavoured to rebuild the business that he had started before his arrest four and a half years previously.

He became an aide to Chief Matanzima of the Transkei and a Member of Parliament in the Transkei in the 1970s.

Accused Number 30

DR WZ CONCO (‘ZAMIE’)

Dr Conco’s parents had had a limited education themselves, but they had struggled to send their son to school. He was born in 1919, and grew up among children who were herdboys and who were all offspring of poor, struggling parents. After passing Standard 6 at the local school, he went to Marian­hill Institution where he commenced a teacher-training course in 1934. The training course lasted five years and then he wrote and passed the matriculation exams.

Zamie spent one year at Fort Hare in a pre-medical course and completed his medical degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. His practice in Umzimkhulu in the Transkei was among a community of poor reserve peasants and he was Honorary Medical Officer to a small reserve hospital of 40 beds.

As he was confined to Umzimkhulu by a banning order, Dr Conco developed his practice there, but in addition to the difficulties involved in having to leave his practice when he was arrested on 17/18 May 1959, his home was caught in the worst floods in Umzimkhulu. His personal loss was extensive. All his furniture, books, drugs, instruments as well as his residence were destroyed.

During the trial Dr Conco used to spend every evening struggling to practise wherever he might be staying, Johannesburg or Pretoria. During the last months of the trial he used to drive 600 kilometres to Natal immediately the Court stopped at midday on Fridays so as to be able to have Saturday and Sunday to see patients in Umzimkhulu. He would drive back to Pretoria through the night on Sunday to be in time for court on Monday morning. No wonder he used to sleep in court, tucked away at the back!

Amongst the accused, Zamie was very popular, with his quiet unshakeable good humour and friendly smile. He was a born peacemaker, yet the Crown alleged his gentle soul to be an arch conspirator and advocate of violence.

We called him “The Mayor of Pretoria” as he arrived each day by car, sometimes a few minutes late – even on the last day of all he was nearly too late for his acquittal!

Dr Zamie Conco was Deputy President General of the African National Congress in Natal when Chief Luthuli, the President General became seriously ill. He has also been Presi­dent of the African National Congress Youth League and Treasurer General of the African National Congress. He was the first Defence witness to take the stand, and endured a gruelling cross-examination by Advocate Trengove, lasting for six days.

After his acquittal, he moved to Swaziland in 1961 and decided to establish his medical practice in the Swaziland Protectorate. In 1968 he moved to London, where he became involved in the work of the Luthuli Memorial Foundation. In the early 1970s, he was a psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto, Canada. After the release of Nelson Mandela, he returned to South Africa and practised medicine in Durban.