By Denis Goldberg, Special Adviser to Minister Ronnie Kasrils MP
Members of the Ministry and Department of Water Affairs and Forestry may wonder why we write about this man in Shotha. After all, what did he have to do with water affairs and forestry? I think the answer is that Walter Sisulu, to millions of people Utata, to me and those close to him, Comrade Walter among all the great leaders of the liberation movement, believed in and lived the idea of unity in action. That translated into always finding ways of drawing people together to achieve the ending of racism in South Africa and making it possible for all of us to look forward to sleeping safely at home in our beds at night.
It was my comrade Walter's greatest attribute that despite the rejection that so many young men experience in their families, and for him it was intensified by his white father's denial of his son who was raised by his Gogo, that he transcended all of this to become an adult who genuinely embraced everybody in his vision. I have to say that in my considerable personal contact with him I found a person who was at ease with himself. He was a man who did not need adulation and high office to feel that he was recognised. He knew within himself the value of his contribution as a great leader.
That he was an architect of our new South Africa that would have places for all of us, meant that water and forestry previously seen as a political dead end, would become central to the provision of fundamental and basic services for millions of people who had been denied these things before. That we are now associated with a dynamic Ministry and Department where officials have told me that they too feel liberated to use their skills and experience in creative ways, is in no small part the legacy of the great Walter Sisulu.
I first met my Comrade Walter in Cape Town at a quiet, secret, meeting during July 1961 when he and Comrade Nelson Mandela travelled around the country together after the stay-at-home in 1961. There we discussed the state of the campaign to end apartheid and the need to introduce the armed struggle as a politically directed campaign against the white supremacy government but not against whites as such. That view was the expression of Sisulu's understanding of unity in action, and the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955 at Kliptown, that in its preamble said, "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and white together." That now sounds like a very mild expression, but at the time it was a revolutionary concept. The Freedom Charter's epilogue states, "These freedoms we shall fight for together side by side all our lives, sparing neither strength nor courage, until we have won our liberty." That is what Walter Sisulu lived up to all his life including 26 years in prison after the Rivonia arrests, during the Trial that followed, and in the years thereafter.
In the weeks before our arrest on 11 July 1963 at Lilys Leaf Farm near Sleepy Hollow in Rivonia, we had lived together with the late Govan Mbeki, father of President Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba later Premier of the Eastern Cape, and Wilton Mkwayi, organiser and leader from the Eastern Cape. We had bought a place at Travallyn Agricultural Holdings on the edge of Krugersdorp (Mogale City) as a new hide out because Lilys Leaf had become known to too many people. I have to say that Comrade Walter was an undemanding companion to share a house with. He seemed always lost in thought, always analytical but always good-humoured. He was not a dogmatic person. He preferred to convince you of his views by rational argument and analysis. He did not ever demand acceptance because he was the leader. Yet you knew that he should be, indeed had to be, consulted over just about every significant decision and you did it willingly because he was always worth listening too.
A small incident: on June 16 1963 Walter was to make a broadcast over our Freedom Radio, from Johannesburg. He wanted to sit at the microphone during the broadcast. We insisted that he tape record the speech because he was too valuable a leader to put him at risk in this way. Then he said he needed forty-five minutes to say all that had to be said. I of course wanted to protect the operator too. I was the operator! I explained that during World War 2 Nazi counter espionage could locate a radio transmitter in a matter of minutes. The apartheid security police were not yet expecting us to have a transmitter so I thought we could risk a broadcast of 10 minutes. After discussion Walter quietly said that as I was the "expert" and at risk, he would accept my view, but could he please have a bit longer. That was the man, reasonable and analytical. The speech was a masterpiece of his personal commitment and dedication and a rallying call to people to continue the struggle to make all our people free. He said that he had not given up but had gone underground to continue his struggle.
There were things that I could do because of being white. I could buy a farm, buy a Kombi and have it fitted with curtains to drive my comrades, great leaders all of them, about Johannesburg. Walter Sisulu was worried about me, a young man of 30 living the restricted life of an underground activist. He insisted I visit safe friends, the Sepel family, who had been his host family underground, to play squash or just to visit. He of course warned me to ensure that I was not followed back to Travallyn.
On 11 July, the day of our arrest, we drove back to Lilys Leaf in Rivonia for one absolutely last time. That visit was forced upon us by circumstances even though we knew the risk we were taking. On the way I was asked what we should name our new little farm. I had thought about this and suggested, SHUFISA. "It sounds an African word, they chorused, but it isn't. What does it mean?" I replied, "It is short for Supreme Headquarters United Front in South Africa." There was a great shout of laughter from the others and then Walter said, absolutely seriously, "But Denis, I don't think we have achieved a united front yet." Always the analyst always filled with integrity.
uWalter was out on bail of R6000 pending an appeal against a sentence for continuing the work of the banned ANC. Of course going underground meant that his bail was forfeited. When we were interrogated after our arrest at Rivonia my tormentors offered me that sum of money to betray my comrades. I don't think they hoped to succeed but they always kept trying. Besides one' s own loyalty to a belief in the non-racial future of our country how could one betray people like my great comrade and so many others? It would have been such a victory for the oppressors, the very system that I too wished to repudiate from within the ranks of the system.
After our 90-day detention, together with comrade Nelson Mandela as No. 1 accused we were charged as the National High Command for plotting the overthrow of the state by force of arms, and other related matters. For the next 8 months I sat in the dock between comrades Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki and got to know them exceptionally well. What a source of strength Walter Sisulu was. He was our main defence witness. Here was our leading thinker, a mainly self-educated man up against the notorious prosecutor Dr Percy Yutar. The prosecutor tried all his white superiority tricks to torment and humiliate Sisulu. Sisulu, quietly, by force of personality, dominated the proceedings for a very long four days in the witness box. He set out to explain why we had taken up arms to commit acts of sabotage but had not taken a decision to embark on full-scale guerrilla warfare. Only once did he lose his cool. He cried out, when the prosecutor said life was not so bad for "the Bantu," that he should experience how Africans were forced live before saying such a thing. He shut Yutar up completely. The accused was not supposed to answer the prosecutor so sharply.
In 1989 when he and others were released from Robben Island, I having been released in 1985, met them in Stockholm in Sweden. What a re-union that was. What a spilling over of emotion. We had not seen each other since the day we were sentenced on 12 June 1964. My Black Comrades were kept on Robben Island and I was held in a special prison built for White politicals in Pretoria. Comrade Walter's first inquiry was about who had betrayed us to the security police and then to ask after the Sepels' children. After nearly 30 years his concern was for the children of his protectors.
I could also say that after all those years we had achieved a united front of activists against apartheid. That was his strategy and that of the ANC. That is why we can live together to make a new South Africa.
During my last real conversation with Walter Sisulu, I thanked him for teaching me the greatest lesson of all, "To draw people to us, and not to drive them away." Washing my hands with his hands, he said he was grateful that I had learned this from him.
I shall miss this man who was an unusual leader because he was easy to love.