PRETORIA LOCAL PRISON
NOVEMBER 1962–MAY 1963
For just six months in 1962, while on his clandestine tour out of South Africa to African countries and London, UK, Mandela lived the life of a free man when he was not subjected to apartheid rules and could move around as he chose. On Thursday, 11 January 1962 he secretly left South Africa by road for a tour of the newly independent African states. Mandela was asked by the underground structures of his organisation, the African National Congress, or ANC, to speak at a conference of African nations in Ethiopia and also to travel the continent raising funds and support for the fight ahead. Two years earlier, in 1960, the ANC had been outlawed and a year later it had accepted the inevitability of an armed struggle to campaign for equal rights and democracy in South Africa. In the middle of 1961 the organisation had decided to form an armed wing, and Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) was born. Also known as MK for short, it was launched with a series of explosions of strategic targets with the intent to avoid loss of life.
If this known opponent of the apartheid regime had applied for a passport, it would have been refused. Besides, he was wanted by the police for continuing underground the activities of the illegal ANC.
He travelled under the name David Motsamayi, a name he had borrowed from a client at his law firm, and used at least one fake passport. Ethiopia had provided one and, it is said, so did Senegal.
The journey took him to sixteen independent African countries and in two of them, Morocco and Ethiopia, he underwent military training. In between he visited London for ten days where he caught up with old friends and comrades, including Oliver Tambo and his wife Adelaide. Tambo, who later became president of the ANC in 1967 after the death of Chief Albert Luthuli, had joined Mandela on some of his travels in Africa.
Mandela’s freedom came to an end one Sunday afternoon on a country road near Howick, a small town in the east of South Africa. It was 5 August 1962. He and fellow anti-apartheid activist and theatre director Cecil Williams were en route by car to Johannesburg. Mandela had been in the area to brief ANC president Chief Albert Luthulii and others about his trip. A meal with friends the day before was to be his last celebration for nearly three decades.
As part of his repertoire of disguises, Mandela would often masquerade as the chauffeur of a white man. On that day, however, Williams was behind the wheel of his Austin when the driver of a Ford V8 suddenly overtook them and ordered Williams to stop. It was the police. Dressed in a coat and cap and wearing dark glasses, Mandela denied that he was in fact Nelson Mandela and insisted he was David Motsamayi, but they were sure they had their man and so was he. He considered making a run for it but knew that the game, so to speak, was up. Speaking about it just more than thirty years later, Mandela said: ‘I was very fit those days, and I could virtually climb any wall. And then I looked at the back, just at the rearview mirror. I saw there were two cars behind, then I felt that no it would be ridiculous for me to try and escape, they’ll shoot me. And we stopped.’18
The men summarily were arrested and the police drove them back some 9 miles to Pietermaritzburg where Mandela was held overnight, appearing briefly before a local magistrate the next morning. He was driven on to Johannesburg and locked up at the Old Fort Prison, preserved today as a museum within the precint of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Over the next ten days Mandela appeared twice in the Johannesburg Magistrates’ Court and his case was remanded for trial on 15 October. On Saturday, 13 October he was informed that he would be moved to the city of Pretoria, where, on Monday, 15 October, he appeared in the Old Synagogue, temporarily named a ‘special regional court’, for his trial. His appearance stunned the public gallery and officials alike. Around his broad shoulders he wore a kaross made of multiple jackal skins sewn together on a large piece of fabric. The rest of his ensemble included a T-shirt, khaki trousers, sandals, and a yellow and green beaded necklace. He wanted to be seen as African in an unequal society.19
The lawyer Mandela who, having passed the requisite attorneys’ admission examination in 1952, had practised in his own firm for years, defended himself, taking advice from Advocate Bob Hepple,i who, ironically, would join him and nine others on trial for sabotage the next year. Mandela employed the tactic of speaking from the dock, which freed him from testifying under cross-examination. In his first speech to the court, on 22 October 1962, he called for the recusal of the magistrate, Mr. W. A. van Helsdingen, saying that as a black man he would not get a fair trial.20 After hearing his plea, Van Helsdingen refused to step down.
Mandela recalled how on the last day of the trial, 7 November 1962, the prosecutor, Mr. D. J. Bosch, whom he knew from his days as a lawyer, went to the holding cell and apologised to him about having to ask for his conviction. ‘He then just embraced me and kissed me on the cheeks, and he says, “Today I didn’t want to come to court. For me to come to court to ask for conviction against you is something that upset me.” So I thanked him.’21
Hepple reluctantly left the room while they spoke, and later wrote: ‘When Bosch came out of the cell about five minutes later, I saw tears streaming down his face. I asked Mandela: “What the hell’s going on?” He replied: “You won’t believe this but he asked me to forgive him.” I exclaimed, “Nel, I hope you told him to get stuffed.” To my surprise, Mandela responded: “No, I did not. I told him I knew he was just doing his job, and thanked him for his good wishes.”’22
In his judgment, Van Helsdingen said it was clear that Mandela had been ‘the mastermind’ behind a strike in May 1961 against South Africa’s plans to abandon its membership of the Commonwealth and become a republic.23
Mandela made another lengthy speech from the dock after being convicted on both charges, and said: ‘Whatever sentence you pass on me, you can rest assured that, when it is completed, I will still be moved by my dislike of race discrimination and will take up again the fight against injustices until they are removed once and for all.’24
Van Helsdingen called the case ‘distressing and difficult’ and declared that Mandela’s actions should be ‘put down with a strong hand’. It was clear, he maintained, that what Mandela was really doing was trying to ‘overthrow the Government’.25
At the end of the short trial in which he had mounted no defence apart from his two speeches, Mandela was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on the charge of inciting a strike and to an additional two years’ imprisonment for leaving the country without a South African passport. He was forty-four years old.
Immediately after he was sentenced, Mandela had his status changed from that of a prisoner awaiting trial to that of a convict in the same prison. He was held with Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, a university lecturer and a former ANC colleague who had led a split from the party to found the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC),26 and several other members of that organisation. Sobukwe and his comrades had been sentenced two years earlier for their involvement in an anti-pass protest in which sixty-nine unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by police. It became known as the Sharpeville Massacre.
The first letter in this collection is one Mandela wrote the day before his conviction and sentencing, to Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper, a British advocate sent by the organisation then known as Amnesty to observe the trial. During the case, Mandela applied a second time for the recusal of the magistrate after Blom-Cooper informed him that he had seen Van Helsdingen driving from the court in the company of the investigating officer. Van Helsdingen again rejected the application, saying only that he ‘did not communicate with the two detectives’.27
After his release Mandela described Blom-Cooper as ‘tremendous’, and said of the incident: ‘He behaved just like an Englishman, you know, their desire to challenge anything that looks wrong. Whilst I was cross-examining the state witnesses, the magistrate was seen to leave the courthouse with an investigating officer, and Blom-Cooper immediately prepared an affidavit and went to the registrar to sign it before the registrar of the Supreme Court. And he came to me with this affidavit and he says, “Here is an affidavit.”’28
To the secretary, Amnesty
6.11.62
The Secretary
Amnesty
LONDON
Dear Sir,
We are most grateful to your organisation for sending Mr L Blom Cooper to attend the trial.
His mere presence, as well as the assistance he gave, were a source of tremendous inspiration and encouragement to us.
The fact that he sat next to us furnished yet another proof that honest and upright men, and democratic organisations, throughout the civilised world are on our side in the struggle for a democratic South Africa.
Finally, I must ask you to accept this note as a very firm, warm and hearty handshake from me.
Yours very sincerely,
Nelson
NOTES: Pretoria Local Prison
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i Chief Albert Luthuli (1898–1967), president-general of the ANC, 1952–67 – see the glossary.
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i Bob Hepple (1934–2015), lawyer, academic, and anti-apartheid activist – see the glossary.