Horst Kleinschmidt
They were the doldrum years. The winds of change appeared to have been halted from the mid-sixties until the early seventies. In 1966, the last of many resistance organisations were outlawed. Hundreds of people were sent to prisons, others banned, banished and hundreds more forced into exile.
The Security Police, SBs, we called them, had the upper hand and spread fear wherever they perceived dissent. Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement had not yet emerged. The political underground was weak, and nobody recruited amongst the young, new generation, ready for the picking.
With no links or real knowledge of the previous era of Struggle, we rebelled against the injustice that offended us, but we were young and had, initially, no one to temper or teach us. In my “white” world, the remaining tangible role models were liberals and Liberals, but they too were under attack and intimidated into silence.
I was lucky, when, through friends at Wits, I was taken to a Christmas party at Helen Joseph’s house in Fanny Avenue, Norwood, Johannesburg. She was under house arrest (banning order) and the well-wishers in her garden could only see her one by one in her front room. Talking to two people at the same time meant she was breaking the law – and there was no shortage of heavy SBs hanging around, not to mention the likelihood of spies amongst us.
In Helen’s garden, I learnt about the 1956 women’s march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, protesting the extension of the notorious pass laws. Helen became my first teacher who connected me to our rich history of struggle for equality and justice.
In 1972, I was lucky for a second time when I shared a house with the banned Catholic monk, Father Cosmas Desmond. He lived in Fourth Avenue in Parkhurst. He was silenced because he exposed the travesty of forcibly removing black people from their homes and relocating (dumping) them in so-called Black Spots, on rural and invariably dry and exhausted land.
The order restricting him did not deter him from finding ways to support a renewed budding underground. Returning home one night, I found a black woman in “my lounge”, as opposed to the other “Cosmas” lounge. She introduced herself as Winnie Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela. Suddenly, myth and mystique became reality, and I willingly served as the alibi.
The Minister of Police had decreed that banned people were never allowed to speak to each other. So, when there was the knock on the door, Winnie rushed back into “my” lounge, apparently visiting me. Through her repeated visits, I was inducted into a history and underground organisation.
I was lucky a third time. I was a frequent visitor at the Naidoo home in Rocky Street, Doornfontein. In 1969, I was Nusas vice-president and took British politician Denis Healey to meet Indres’ mother Ama and his sister Shanthi. Shanthi had just been released from prison and was recovering from the torture inflicted on her.
Healey had come to deliver the Nusas Academic Freedom lecture. He also wanted to hear first-hand what apartheid was like. At the time, Indres was serving a 10-year prison sentence. I hoped one day to meet this legend of selflessness and courage. In 1973, I had the chance. Indres came home from Robben Island and, as was the practice in those days, he was punished further, when the Minister of Police served a five-year banning order on him.
Over many welcome curry dinners that Ama was famous for, Indres explained that imprisonment and renewed danger did not deter him from continuing the Struggle where he had left off a decade earlier. Would I help him? In their house, I was introduced to another valiant fighter, released at the same time as Indres, who had also served a 10-year sentence. He was Magalies Martin Ramokgadi, from Alexandra township. I was a rookie activist, but being white came in handy. I rented cars that did a triangular journey from Johannesburg to Swaziland, to the Transkei and back to Johannesburg.
In those days, it was next to impossible for black people to rent cars. This was in early 1976, when the ANC underground hoped but failed to prevent the impending “independence” of Matanzima’s Transkei Bantustan.
Indres Naidoo got me involved, beyond just talking about the Struggle. This involvement contributed to my own detention and then having to flee South Africa. Indres fled the same year as I did. We met in exile and when I worked with his sisters, Shanthi and Ramni, in London, we met frequently.
Indres and his family occupy a very special place in South African history. Indres and his four siblings all knew what detention, torture, banning, imprisonment and exile were about. They are the third generation of a family who struggled against inequality and injustice. But why they deserve the highest honours is because they gave their all, selflessly, and never sought glory or riches when it was all over.
I shall remember Indres for the tangible bridge of continuity he provided for me at a time when the apartheid rulers thought they had broken the chain. May all who care for the equality and justice, when it still eludes us, remember him!
l Horst Kleinschmidt is an anti-apartheid and human rights activist, and writer on inequality and restitution