CHAPTER 37: The long weekend

CHAPTER 37

The long weekend

AFTER ALLOWING NEIL LESS THAN TWO HOURS BACK IN HIS CELL that Thursday afternoon, at 4.18pm, Whitehead personally collects his quarry from the second floor. He has arranged for other interrogators to assist him over the forthcoming nights and days. Detective Warrant Officers Disré Carr from Newcastle and Karel de Bruin from Ladybrand have already been working with Whitehead on Neil since Monday, making up the threesome seen by Maurice behind the frosted glass. While both are tall, Carr is notably burly. They continue their ‘assistance’ until Saturday 30 January when they are replaced by Captains Johannes Visser and Daniël Swanepoel. This is the same Visser who strangled Auret, then later massaged him. The final duo comprises Lieutenant Joseph Woensdregt and Detective Warrant Officer Nicolaas Deetlefs, the interrogator who struck Barbara, threatening ‘other methods’. The henchmen take turns, allowing Whitehead time to sleep while Neil is kept under 62 uninterrupted hours of interrogation, from Thursday afternoon until the early hours of Sunday morning. At the inquest, each interrogator will claim that Neil has a camp bed for his personal use.

A brief paragraph in the affidavit that Neil dictates to Sergeant Blom the following Thursday tells a very different story:

I was kept awake since the morning 82.01.28 to the 82.01.30. During the night of the 82.01.29 Lt. Whitehead and another security sergeant who’s [sic] name I don’t know and another black male also a policemen [sic] were present when Lt. Whitehead blindfolded me with a towel. They made me sit down and handcuffed me behind my back. I was shocked through the handcuffs. I don’t know what they used to shock me. I was shocked a few times. I have a scratch on my left pulse (radial nerve) where I was injured whilst being handcuffed.1

In trying to reconstruct what happened during Whitehead’s long weekend, we also have Neil’s notes and an unfinished second statement, both in his handwriting. There is also a typewritten version of the second statement with a number of discrepancies that call into doubt who typed it. But Whitehead’s line of attack is best revealed by comparing the first and second statements, relying on Neil’s handwritten version, and especially his notes. The latter are scrawled, enforced jottings made between the firing of questions.

The ten pages of notes show how Whitehead begins by pouncing onto his relationship with Gavin:

1. How I met Gavin

2. Reasons why we read Capital

3. Before FOSATU started – dec. on General Union

4. Ideas were put to the group

5. Also asked B Kay about going into FCWU. Why – Good organiz

6. My support for it initially

7. (Gang of four Opinion)

8. Gavin – couple of discussions – the SACTU position taken

9. Discussions Oscar on FOSATU. Both agreed FOSATU was taking a wrong path.

10. Reasons why Oscar was satisfied with me …

11. Taking Oscar to see Gavin + Sipho2

The first 11 items reveal three major threads that Whitehead wants to extract and tie together as evidence of Neil’s ‘communistic ideology’. Gavin is the first thread. The second is SACTU, including the dissident ‘Gang of five’. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Gang of four’ (because only four were ostensibly ANC supporters in London), these were South African exiles linked to a Trotskyite group in Britain who, for a while, had managed to take over SACTU’s newspaper Workers’ Unity in London.3 Highly critical of the ANC for organising on a nationalist rather than a class basis, they argued that SACTU’s ‘historical task’ was to take the lead in organising the mass of workers, develop revolutionary consciousness through concrete struggles, with the eventual forcible seizure of power by a workers’ army.4 The third thread is the banned ANC itself, and people like Oscar, Barbara, Auret and other activists like Liz, whose role Whitehead is intent on linking to a major treason plot.

Although Barbara has listed Neil and Liz under ‘Advisory/Reference People’, Neil’s stated support for SACTU in his first statement, and its alliance with the ANC as ‘a valid one in the past’, is something Whitehead grasps. Gavin’s inexperienced interrogator Engelbrecht might have thought Alan Fine a ‘slim kêrel’ for asserting his links were with the never-banned SACTU rather than the ANC, but Whitehead is determined to demonstrate that Neil’s stated critique of SACTU going underground (‘It is impossible to have an underground trade union’) is a cosmetic lie. Whitehead is now out to prove that Neil has spun a whole pack of lies – and he is the young blood who will bring Neil spinning down.

From the beginning of these notes, it feels as if the hooks are in. Whitehead latches onto Gavin. How did Neil know him? Why were they reading Capital together? Two copies of Marx’s tome had been seized from Neil’s house, but how does Whitehead know about their reading group? Does he surprise Neil with information from another source? By item 4, Neil is being made to explain the ‘Group of 7’ although he is managing not to call it that. Whitehead now thrusts questions about SACTU and the potential schism, then jumps to Oscar, again pressing Neil to clarify a political line, this time on FOSATU. By item 11, Whitehead has got Neil to make a link between Oscar, Gavin and Sipho.

Reading these notes and Neil’s subsequent statement is painful. It’s not just the reek of physical torment but the humiliation and mental anguish of a deeply principled and gentle young man at the hands of a laddishly pompous, pitiless interrogator with his fastidiously parted hair and slightly flabby schoolboy face.

Numbered items on the first page of Neil’s notes rapidly give way to unnumbered clusters of scrawled phrases and words, revealing the web of Whitehead’s targets. Liz’s name crops up ten times on the next three pages as Whitehead pushes Neil on her views regarding SACTU, registration, the largely white Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA) and FOSATU. Pugnacious questions draw Neil on:

Sympathies in SACTU. Against Registration

Favours strong/democratic/militant/progressive

Militant – aren’t toothless like TUCSA. get some body & strength:

Discussed FOSATU = Criticisms of FOSATU – Undemocratic elements. Registration position not viable. – Liz not trying to break FOSATU – not getting orders.

Having been led to acknowledge Liz’s ‘strong/democratic/militant/progressive’ sympathies with SACTU, Neil attempts to draw a line. No, she is ‘not trying to break FOSATU’, and no, she is ‘not getting orders’ from anyone.

Whitehead switches to Sisa. Neil acknowledges that he has helped Sisa with meetings and transport, but no, he has not written speeches for Sisa. It’s a single sentence, followed by a single phrase, ‘Been to Barbara’s flat once’, before Whitehead swoops back to SACTU:

I support the direction of SACTU + I’m working in the same direction as SACTU but I’m not in SACTU: I’ve got no links to SACTU: I was furthering the aims but I didn’t have any instructions.

For charges to stick in court, Whitehead needs evidence of a line of command. He changes tack, digging into Neil’s perceptions of close friends and their personal lives: Dave Dison, Gavin, and back to Liz. He pressures Neil to make personal judgments:

Liz: Domineering, Moralistic, Strong, also quite soft. Socializes easily with people on superficial level, but does not have close friendship on a deep level. Liz doesn’t fit into my setup. Tension between us.

By now, Whitehead knows very well that he will find nothing to incriminate Liz. However, he’s not only poking and probing to unhinge Neil. He is personally fixated with their relationship. For Neil, caught in the nightmare of torture, discussing an intimate relationship with this bully must have been a source of great distress.

But Whitehead drives on. Does he interweave electric shocks and verbal prods? As Neil is pushed harder one way, then another, sometimes revealing names, afterwards he tries to limit the damage. Thus when Whitehead brings him back to the Capital reading group, Neil adds: ‘Dissolved as soon as we finished reading. No resolutions.’ In other words, this wasn’t a formal study group, nor one that reported to another organisation. It wasn’t a Communist Party cell.

When Whitehead probes into SAAWU, Neil acknowledges that SAAWU is ‘very progressive’ but denies knowledge of links between SAAWU and SACTU. Suddenly, in a lone sentence, midway through the notes, Neil writes: ‘I am sympathetic to the ANC. Not a member of the ANC.’ What provokes this? We can only imagine. Whitehead must finally feel that he’s getting somewhere. So far, the evidence has been nebulous, but with Neil now acknowledging ANC sympathies, Whitehead just needs to bring to light the activities that prove Neil’s union occupation is simply a cover for revolutionary underground work. The interrogation switches sharply to a factory and union focus:

Factory discussion part of group discussion.

Build up organization inside the factory.

Groups of 3 – Meeting – co-ord with other factories

– Underground trade union

Worker’s Unity – put forward this app.

How it would suit Whitehead to align Neil with SACTU’s dissidents! They had slipped into SACTU in London as volunteers helping to edit Workers’ Unity, and attempting a takeover from within. Whitehead’s theory, it seems, is that Neil is a front man for Gavin and others, and together they are developing an ‘underground trade union’ that ultimately aims at the forcible seizure of state power. Having been pushed to acknowledge his familiarity with the SACTU dissidents’ approach, Neil can see where Whitehead is leading him, and valiantly attempts to disprove his theory. Yes, they have discussed the ‘underground trade union’ idea, but they haven’t agreed on its viability:

Gavin and I meeting – TU discussions – Gavin invited myself Dave and Sipho – discussions. Not formal thing:- informal – types of org possible. Not following one or another. Not structured.

I decided	1. Not viable
	2. Anti-democratic no elements of a trade union. Gavin still thought viable.

Years later, looking at these notes and Neil’s subsequent statement, Gavin wryly comments that it had been the other way round. In their discussions around the underground union idea, he recalls having been very sceptical. It had been Neil, in his earlier, less-seasoned days, who thought the idea worth exploring. But with Whitehead hammering him, and Gavin hopefully out of reach in Botswana, Neil reverses their positions. In any event, nothing had come of their discussions and Neil indicates this to Whitehead.

I continued working in Union – discussing now + then with Gavin. He did not give me instructions. Discuss what was happening in the factory. Not a formal group that I left …

But Whitehead isn’t going to let up, returning later to extract from Neil who else was in the group:

An actual underground union was not started, but discussions were started between myself, Dave Dyson [sic], Gavin Andersson, Sipho Kubheka – about 4 discussions.

No minutes gatherings –

Roughly 3-4 months – discussions – dissolved. At that time discussed in group of 7 to get other people into the group (other workers). I pulled out of it, the others may have continued discussion. No such union exists.

Despite Neil’s reiteration that the underground union does not exist, mentioning Sipho’s name in particular, as well as naming the ‘Group of 7’ as such, must have weighed very heavily on Neil. He’s slipping fast, and knows it. Whitehead has forced him to revise the stance of the gradualist trade unionist, while the stilted sentence construction intimates that he is now being pumped with his Afrikaans-speaking interrogators’ words and terminology:

I try to organize workers strongly as a class to be militant + to fight for their rights.

Gavin knows I have an idealistic ideology …

What is an ‘idealistic ideology’? Exhausted, Neil is losing to Whitehead’s thrust:

I know that Gavin was in the movement (ANC) …

Gavin said that Barbara was going into Botswana – Met with G + S. About military training.

Auret van Heerden was in movement but had gone to army.

Is this ANC ‘military training’ or the South African army training that Neil has been avoiding? Although unclear, it’s most likely the latter with the reference to Auret going into the army.

I was aware that Gavin, Auret and Barbara working together – never specifically told that they were in the ANC but I suspected it. I often saw Auret at Gavin’s house …

Neil knows that Gavin hasn’t been working in an ANC cell with Barbara and Auret, as Whitehead wants to imply. Yet Whitehead still hasn’t got what he needs on Neil himself, and returns to SACTU. After getting Neil to say that he has been ‘pushing the SACTU line’, he engineers a long-winded passage on ‘SACTU’s reasons for going underground’. Whitehead wants to tie the knots that will prove Neil is part of a secret plot to ‘organize militant wc [working class] into militant organization that could challenge the existing structure of society’.

In what must have been a major effort for Neil towards the end of three days and nights of interrogation, he struggles to pull himself out of the morass:

I – the last year I was building up the structures of the union – because I saw it important as working legally. I do see Workers Unity has communistic ideology. During this time I didn’t want contact with any political organization – important to develop the union. Being involved in the ANC was dangerous. I wanted

Does Whitehead stop him here, realising what Neil is doing? Neil has just undermined the underground story while signalling his interrogator’s hand in the unlikely, non-English phrase ‘communistic ideology’, reflecting the Afrikaans usage of ‘kommunistiese’. Whitehead hasn’t secured his great coup. Frustrated, he demands to know why Neil has become more active in the last year. In reply, Neil lists boycotts, strikes, discussion with Barbara about the unemployed workers’ union and discussion with Oscar about registration. All legal.

In a final stab, Whitehead accuses Neil of having been recruited to the ANC through Gavin and SACTU. He fixes on the ‘military training’ meeting as evidence. Despite his mental and physical fatigue, Neil finds his foothold:

The meeting that we had on military training was the closest that I came to working in the ANC. I was not recruited. I never made reports to Gavin. I told him about what was going on in the Union. I never wrote anything down for him. I was not aware that Gavin made reports to [‘Botswana’ scratched out] SACTU. I see it as a possibility because he had been to Botswana before to meet with the SACTU people and he could have had regular contact with them.

I’ve never been recruited, though I have communistic ideas. Never been a member of the ANC, SACP and SACTU. I associated myself with SACTU.

Once again, ‘communistic’ reveals dictation. Whitehead has kept Neil awake for some 70 hours since Thursday morning. Yet after all the hours of non-stop ‘fishing’, replete with torture, Whitehead has produced nothing to back his grand theory. At 3.30am on Sunday, he finally allows Neil to be returned in handcuffs to his cell.

1 Aggett, Affidavit to Sgt Blom, 4.2.82, Docket 3.4.1, Record of Inquest.

2 Aggett, Notes under interrogation, 25-28.1.82, Docket 5, 4.2, Record of Inquest.

3 The office was in the flat of John Gaetsewe, whom Pindile Mfeti had taken Gavin Andersson to meet in Botswana, and who was now based in London.

4 ‘Petersen Memorandum address to the National Executive Committee of SACTU’, 8 April 1979.