chapter35.html

CHAPTER 35: Limbo

CHAPTER 35

Limbo

ON MONDAY 11 JANUARY, WHITEHEAD INSTRUCTS NEIL TO TYPE an index of all the names he has mentioned. The process obliges Neil to review his statement, highlighting key targets of the questions. Gavin and Liz come out on top. Eleven mentions each, followed by Jan with eight, Barbara and Sisa, seven, Oscar, six, Thozamile, five, Sipho, one. It’s surely a relief that Sipho appears low on his interrogators’ radar. So far, nothing suggests that Cronwright’s men are aware of Woodworkers, the Group of 7 and their other discussion groups. In focusing on his ‘life story’, Neil hasn’t been specifically questioned about these, his closest comrades.

What is Neil’s state of mind when he is returned to Cell 209, clocked in at 1.50pm, and left by Whitehead to wait? The only thing of which he is sure is that his statement will be dissected. Having managed to keep ‘revolutionary practice’ out of sight behind his principled unionist stance, perhaps he feels that he hasn’t done too badly, and that his statement coheres well. The impression he gives Auret is one of optimism: ‘He was very confident about his ground. He felt that there was nothing that they could actually incriminate him on or implicate him in. Again ironically this is partly because of Whitehead having monitored him so closely.’1 When Auret picks up a hint from Cronwright that he wants to use them as state witnesses, the pair even speculate whether they might be released in February with a subpoena.

But Neil has also sensed a highly unpredictable dynamic with Whitehead. Not only did Whitehead supervise Van Schalkwyk’s assault, but he plays power games, granting ‘privileges’, then withdrawing them. Neil also talks to Auret about a ‘war of attrition’. Books are given, then taken away. Neil is convinced that his surgery textbooks have arrived but have been blocked. The beady-eyed, pudgy-faced security policeman appears to have a personal obsession with him and Liz. Why aren’t they living more grandly, as would befit successful white doctors? Why aren’t they earning more money? How can they be throwing away all their material advantages? There’s only one explanation. They must be communists and members of the ANC.

The Special Branch conception of the underground is of a hierarchy of control. The Soviet Union and the ‘rooi gevaar’ (red threat) is at the pinnacle, working its way down through the South African Communist Party into the ANC and its lower echelons. Viewed through sharply racialised spectacles, white communists subvert black people on behalf of a foreign power and ideology. Whitehead’s own background and working life in the police are militaristic. The state’s infiltrators into the ANC in exile and MK confirm the existence of hierarchical lines of command. Barbara’s use of a term like ‘under discipline’ will have reinforced the view that the internal political underground is similarly structured.

Although such a crude notion doesn’t fit the more organic, deeply woven networking of activists building alliances across various constituencies, both above-ground and underground, an interrogator intent on proving a theory will stop at nothing. Moreover, Whitehead wants to extract information not only on Neil but on what he knows about others. Gavin slipped out of their net. However, now they have his best buddy. Whitehead is determined not to make the same mistake.

When I ask Gavin what might go through Neil’s mind in that limbo period after writing his first statement, he is struck by how Whitehead leaves Neil for nine days before having him brought up to the tenth floor again:

This is a LONG time to be left … He will have gone through nightmares imagining what they know and don’t know, whether his statement covered things adequately or has opened him up for more probing because they have some detail that will show his statement was devious. And the sheer loneliness means that he will have been almost hungry to talk; this is perhaps the most powerful thing that happened [in interrogation] – to bring to the front of his mind his entire life and ideas and then his recent political thoughts and work, and get him to write down a version, and then leave him to stew. That was a terrifying time for him and apart from all the terror he will have been desperate for ANY human contact. Intense interrogation followed by nothing, day after day and night after night, nothing except the mind churning and relentlessly constructing scenarios of what they know and don’t know and what I’ve given and not given and whether I will be able to hold my head up afterwards. It’s a gruelling time they gave him by being absent (sounds crazy, I know …).

There is little to do apart from reading or exercising in his cell. Occasionally, MacPherson lets Neil run up and down the corridor, and if he’s lucky, and MacPherson isn’t watching, he might snatch a bit of conversation on the way to the shower. Once in a while, Neil gets the chance to communicate with Thabo Lerumo, an 18-year-old student whom MacPherson makes sweep the passages and cells. Neil slips Thabo copies of Anna Karenina, Youth and Heart of Darkness, which MacPherson finds and confiscates.2 When he gets the chance, Neil also lends books to Eric Mntonga, chairman of SAAWU’s East London branch, and probably to others. But most of the time, he is alone, ‘in solitary’.

Perhaps it is also during these long nine days that Auret recalls Neil talking about Liz. In the waiting hours, does he wonder how she’s coping? Does he feel responsible, even partly, for her arrest? Why hadn’t he warned her earlier about her name on Barbara’s list? He knows that he has hurt her. Yet, in spite of tensions and breakdowns, their relationship has lasted nine years since they first came together in the cottage up in Eagle’s Nest. Here, in this cell, there are no barriers to obstruct a resurgence of angry, frustrated, loving, painful words from the past. Since arriving in Johannesburg, Neil has had little time for this kind of personal self-exploration. But in this obligatory lull, it must be difficult to avoid regrets, doubts and unanswered questions about friendships, family and future.

* * *

The second-floor register for the following week shows three brief interruptions to Neil’s solitary confinement. On Monday 18 January, he receives a visit from Magistrate AGJ Wessels. The report, marked ‘GEHEIM’ (secret), is sent to the Director General of Justice, the Commissioner of Police, and the Commander of Security Police at John Vorster Square.

COMPLAINTS:	No.
REQUESTS:	‘I would like my relatives to send two books. One is “Emergency Surgery”. It is a text book by Bailey. The other book is “Accident and Emergency Medicine”. It is a text book by Rutherford. It is at the flat of Doug Hindson. The first book my parents know of its whereabouts.’
HEALTH:	Good.
INJURIES:	‘I had injuries on 4.1.82. I injured my back and left ribs as a result of an assault. I also cut my right forearm. Assault was by a sergeant of Railway Security Police. His first name is Schalk. This was on 10th Floor of John Vorster Square.’3

While most detainees keep quiet, Neil officially records his assault without registering it as a direct complaint and accusation. He knows the risk but goes ahead, on principle. This is also his third time asking for Bailey’s Emergency Surgery. Sergeant Michael Joubert takes down Neil’s request that he ring and ask David Dison for the two books, a jacket, a pair of trousers and a portable radio. The phone call will only be made 11 days later. Neil also tells Auret that he has a bloodstain on his pants and is thinking how he can get them out to Yvette with a message not to wash them. The stain would provide evidence for charging his interrogators after he is released. Neil has obviously said nothing to the magistrate about this further evidence of the assault. His captors could destroy it in a trice.

The second interruption that week is an ominously brief session on Wednesday 20 January with Whitehead, on the tenth floor. Neil is taken out at 10.22am by Constable Maqubela, and returned at 11.38am. At the inquest, Whitehead will say that he simply tells Neil there are points in his statement ‘to clarify’. Through Auret, we hear a different story:

Also about in the middle of January Whitehead started telling him that we know you are lying and you must expect me to come back to you. He actually said to him ‘I am going to come and fetch you late one night and I am going to take you out and we are going to give you an incredibly rough time.’4

It’s a bully’s threat, designed to prey on a detainee’s imagination.

On Friday 22 January, the Inspector of Detainees visits the cells and speaks to Neil for the first time after eight weeks in detention. Neil has not been ‘available’ on either of his two previous visits, nor did the Inspector ask for him to be made available. His report to ‘The Honourable the Minister of Justice’ resounds with omissions and silences:

Dear Minister

DETAINEE IN TERMS OF SECTION 6: Neil AGGETT

DATE OF DETENTION: 10.12.1981

NAME OF INTERPRETER: -

The above named was interviewed by me for the 3rd time at John Vorster Square police station on the 22nd January 1982. The 2nd visit was on 4.1.1982. My report dated 6.1.1982 refers.

The detainee commented as follows in regard to:

His health: I am allright and don’t wish to see a doctor.

The food: Is good – I have no complaints.

The treatment: I have no complaints.

Other complaints: None.

Requests: I need a pair of shorts and a jersey. Home address is 420a Fox Street, Jeppe.

Remarks and recommendations: The request was conveyed to the security police at John Vorster Square.

Yours faithfully

INSPECTOR OF DETAINEES 5

As the Inspector disappears from sight, Neil knows that he is about to enter an almighty storm. If he slips, he brings others tumbling down. That, I imagine, is his worst fear.