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Contents PageThe feeling of freedom after escaping from a political prison is almost impossible to describe in terms of the experiences of everyday life. It is a feeling known only by an exclusive club of people who have released themselves from custody with the knowledge that their action was not a flight from justice but a political act. The sudden relief from the constraints of captivity, the sudden expansion into the wall-less world outside released from us an explosion of emotion, a feeling of the most sublime elation. It was as if we were walking on air, floating, flying, and invisible to the world. Stephen recalled later that he felt like flapping his arms and flying off like a bird.
The distance to the traffic lights at Potgieter Street was only about 100 metres but the sudden ability to see that far, and further, was a most curious sensation. For nearly two years Stephen and I, and Alex for nearly seven, had not been able to see further than the end of the prison yard. Now suddenly the world seemed so big, seemed to stretch so far into the distance that it would quickly swallow us up and prevent anyone from finding us.
Alex crossed the road and walked down the left side of Soetdoring Street, the street in front of the prison, while Steve and I continued on the prison side. Near the lights a car was parked in which a warder sat talking to another in the street who was leaning on his elbow against the car. The warders paid no attention to the three characters walking past, as they looked no different to any of the other pedestrians making their way home that evening. At the lights another warder was standing waiting for a lift. He also did not bat an eyelid. Their lack of response confirmed that we were invisible and gave a tremendous boost to our confidence and sense of defiance.
Alex had trouble crossing Potgieter Street as the rush- hour traffic frightened him. But he somehow managed to get over and once across we made our way down a sidestreet which we knew led in the direction of Pretoria's main railway station. We had studied maps of the area cut out of the smuggled newspapers, so had a reasonably good idea of where we were heading. To our left were marshalling yards, goods sheds and many rail tracks. Our maps had not shown how we would be able to get across to the station on the far side; we'd imagined we'd have to scramble over the tracks and climb a few fences. But to our surprise we came to a footbridge leading over the tracks. A sign indicated that it led to Pretoria Station. We pulled our caps lower and walked across in single file, not daring to look up for we were still in hot prison territory. There were a great number of people crossing the bridge as it was about 6 p.m.: with each person who passed the more confident we grew, so that by the time we reached the other end we were walking proudly with our heads held high (see Diagram 12 and Map 2).
The bridge terminated at the top of some stairs and from there it was as if we were looking at the promised land. In front of us was the station forecourt and at the bottom of the steps rows of taxis waiting to carry us away. Alex scrambled down the steps and approached the first taxi he came to and asked the driver how much he would charge to take us to Kempton Park (we were still too scared to ask to be taken to the exact place we wanted to go to - Jan Smuts Airport). He quoted a fee of R28, which we accepted without argument because it was not too large a chunk out of our money. The driver, who was black, was very friendly and suspected nothing odd about his prospective passengers. And why should he have?
We drove through the outskirts of the city that had been a stern host to us since the time we started our respective terms, but were not unhappy to see the last of that citadel of apartheid. Soon we came out onto a motorway and were travelling well over the speed limit in the direction of Kempton Park. The Transvaal in December is green and very beautiful. Alex could not refrain from repeatedly commenting so, but after seven years of concrete corridors and yards anything would have looked beautiful to him.
About half way to Kempton Park we informed the driver that we had changed our minds about going there and asked him to take us on to Jan Smuts instead. Since Jan Smuts is only a short distance beyond Kempton Park he had no objection and cheerfully carried on in the same direction. He probably found himself discussing subjects not usually broached by his usual customers but we could not restrain ourselves from talking. The sudden ability to converse without smelling the foul breath of a warder over your shoulder released with a gush our suppressed desire for normal verbal intercourse.
When we reached the airport we paid the driver R36 with our outdated money. He accepted it quite readily, confirming that the notes were still legal tender. Just to be absolutely certain Steve and I made Alex go inside the airport terminal to ask if the money was still in circulation. The task fell on his shoulders because he was less likely to bump into someone he knew and he looked and sounded more like a 'foreigner' than either of us. As such it was more excusable for him to ask a question that could have been a stupid one. He returned to confirm that the money was still in use. We then sent him back inside to find out if it would be possible to hire a car with a driver from one of the car-hire firms at the airport. Unfortunately this service was not available so we sent him off once again to purchase tickets for the airport bus to Johannesburg.
On the road to Johannesburg we were in high spirits. The other two accused me of looking like an escaped convict. I removed my cap and couldn't help agreeing that it did look a bit out of place in the midst of the haute couture of the rest of the passengers. The passengers pretended to ignore our joyful remarks and looked down their noses at us as if we were just a bunch of scruffy drunkards taking a joy-ride.
It must have been about 8 p.m. when the bus arrived at the terminus at Johannesburg central station as it was already dark. Vermeulen would be doing his inspection round and if our absence had not already been discovered some of the comrades would be wondering if we were going to return to our cells in a short while. As we stood in the centre of the city with neon light flashing all around we laughed to ourselves that they were soon going to be kicking themselves for not joining us.
Our planning did not extend as far as covering the situation in which we then found ourselves, so we held a gathering in the station carpark to decide our next moves. Alex was still keen to make directly for the Swaziland border and wanted to do so immediately. Stephen, finding himself in Johannesburg and in what he considered to be home territory, thought that he would try to make contact with some of his friends. In the light of this I felt that it would be better to accompany Alex because we could not all throw ourselves on Steve's friends and Alex would be at a disadvantage if he went off on his own. He spoke no Afrikaans and was not as familiar with place names and routes as either Steve or I were. There was not much else to discuss so we shook hands, wished each other luck and said we would meet again in London.
Having reached the end of the planned part of the escape we turned our thoughts to absorbing some of the benefits of freedom. The first thing that came to mind was food - food of our own choice. I fancied a juicy grilled steak but Alex was more concerned with making our newly-gained freedom more secure - he would allow no more than the purchase of a steak and kidney pie and a coke from a station kiosk in the huge 'whites-only' concourse. Although in normal times one would only buy such food in desperation, the fact that we had chosen to buy it ourselves and were able to eat it in our own time made it one of the most memorable 'meals' we could both remember. Also acquired from the kiosk was a pocket-sized map-book of the roads of South Africa.
Alex wanted to head east in the direction of Swaziland but the furthest any train was going in that direction that night was to Springs on the East Rand. Although Springs was only 60 kilometres away, going there was better than standing looking at the departures board so we bought two tickets in the hope that once we got there we would be able to get a bus to take us further. I felt somewhat uneasy about this plan as I could envisage a situation where we would find ourselves stuck out in the night with no transport to take us further. But the alternative of spending the whole night wandering aimlessly around Johannesburg did not serve any useful purpose.
The train was almost empty so we sat down in a section that was unoccupied and proceeded to discard out of the window our escape equipment and dozens of keys. Why we had doubted at one stage that the wooden keys would be strong enough to open the prison's locks I don't know, because when we tried to break them with our hands it was almost impossible to do so. Each one had to be split open with the chisel and then painfully chipped into unrecognisable pieces. It was sad in a way to have to destroy the keys like that: they embodied so many hours of painstaking labour and had been hidden and tended so carefully for so long. It was also hard to believe that after a few minutes' use they had given up their useful function and would never be needed again. After arriving at Springs we buried the remaining tools in a churchyard, apart from the trusty chisel which was retained as a weapon to supplement the 'pea'.
Springs bus station was totally deserted. There was no sign of any buses, nor were there any people waiting for them. Our hearts sank as we surveyed the empty, oily ranks. We had visualised ourselves being over or near the border before daybreak. Now the vision of being on safe territory for breakfast faded and the prospect of having to get to the border under cover of the darkness of several nights loomed. Freedom was not going to be as easy as we'd thought: we were going to have to struggle for it. But one thing was for sure: we were not going to allow ourselves to get caught - we would crawl on hands and knees to the border if we had to.
If you have no wheels the only way to get somewhere is on foot. So we set off eastwards. To sustain us on our journey we stopped at a shop and bought some sweets, a large slice of cheese and two cartons of milk. After the skimmed, powdered 'milk' we'd had in prison the fresh, creamy milk glided down our throats like nectar.
We discovered a signpost pointing the way to Ermelo, a town our map indicated we would have to pass through, so set off in that direction. For about an hour and a half as we walked through and out of Springs we held out our thumbs in the hope that someone would stop and give us a lift. But at night motorists in South Africa (most of whom are white) grow paranoid and are loath to stop on dark roads to offer assistance to stranded hitch-hikers.
Outside Springs at a place called Largo the road crossed over a railway line and from the bridge we could see flashing lights in the distance. A roadblock, was our immediate simultaneous thought. And if that's what it was then it meant that our absence had been discovered and we would have to face the full might of the 'security forces' all the way to the border. Standing on top of a bridge while the cops were looking for us was dangerous, so we ran to the bottom and turned into and made our way down a rough farm track leading off the road at right angles. We climbed through a fence and walked across a ploughed field. There was no moon or stars that night and as we stumbled in the furrows it suddenly occurred to us how absurd it was to be scrambling blindly across the countryside after our meticulously conceived plans had got us out of the prison and to that point so effortlessly. My morale dropped to a low ebb and I suggested turning back to spend the night in Springs. Alex would have none of it and angrily urged me onward. There's no doubt that without his irrepressible determination we would have remained in Pretoria Prison for very much longer.
When we finally reached the road again, a short distance beyond where the suspected danger had appeared to be, there were no flashing lights and no sign of cars being stopped. Puzzled but relieved we shrugged our shoulders and proceeded along the road in the direction of the next town, a place called Devon. The night was warm and calm and walking through the fresh air was invigorating after years of breathing stale wall-bound prison air. The sense of freedom was intoxicating and we felt like singing. For several hours we joked and laughed about incidents leading up to the escape and tried to imagine how the warders would respond in the morning when they opened our cells and found only dummies in our beds. We could see them going berserk and crowds of security police invading the place to figure how we'd managed to get out. The escape had been like a catharsis to us and suddenly all our pent-up emotions were flooding out.
At about two o'clock in the morning we suddenly noticed the flashing lights again, but this time coming from behind us. We couldn't understand it as we had just come down that road. Could it be a roving roadblock?, we thought. To avoid whatever it was we dived into the nearest bush. The flashing light was very slow moving and took about twenty minutes to reach us. It was also very noisy, making a sort of rumbling, puffing noise like a steam engine. The 'roadblock' eventually reached us: it was a line-painting machine which was repainting sections of the white lines down the centre of the road. It went past us and stopped about 100 metres further on. The flashing light went off and the workers climbed down from the monster and started to pull out their thermos flasks and sandwiches. It was a coffee break. We waited another 10 minutes and then decided it would be safe to carry on. There were several smallholdings behind us, so we reasoned it would not seem too strange for a couple of white men to be walking about at that time of night. The workers ignored us as we trudged past - we must still have been invisible.
At about five when the sun was just beginning to light the distant horizon, we reached Devon. The walk from Springs had been more than forty kilometres so we were beginning to feel the strain on our feet. Strangely though, we did not feel tired. The excitement of the night had kept the pangs of sleep at bay.
At the town we made our way to the railway station to find out if there were any trains or buses to Ermelo. The lone guard in attendance informed us, much to our dismay, that there were no buses out of the town and only one train a day - at midnight. He suggested that we try hitching, but after our experience the previous night we were not impressed by the suggestion. On the other hand, the thought of walking the more than two hundred kilometres to the Swaziland border was not inviting, so we thought we would at least give hitching another try. It was daylight now and people would probably be more willing to pick us up. After only a few minutes of thumbs-out someone stopped and offered us a lift. It was a different matter now that our white faces could be seen.
On the way our driver stopped at a caf to buy his breakfast. We took the opportunity to replenish our supplies and buy a newspaper to see if there was any mention of the escape. But there was nothing, which made us feel much easier. It was a curious sensation to hold and possess a whole newspaper, but because it didn't arrive in an envelope under the cell door the news seemed flat and boring. As soon as we set off again I commented to Alex that there was nothing in the news 'as usual', in the hope of provoking our driver into mentioning the escape of three dangerous 'terrorists', if he had heard about it on a radio or TV. But he had obviously heard nothing.
Our driver took us a distance of about forty kilometres to the turn-off for the town of Secunda where he worked as a technician at the SASOL oil-from-coal plant. From the point where he dropped us the refinery could clearly be seen in the distance. Six months later it was to be attacked by ANC guerillas with limpet mines causing millions of Rands of damage to one of the most strategic installations in the country and maximum embarrassment to the apartheid regime.
Beyond the drop-off point there was little traffic and most of what there was were large trucks, the drivers of which at the best of times are reluctant to stop for hitch-hikers. The time was about six a.m. and approaching the time when our absence would be discovered, if it had not been already. The countryside was flat and open, so it was imperative for us to make some rapid progress. Alex suddenly hit upon the bright idea of holding up a ten Rand note alongside his thumb when a truck or car passed. The trick worked a wonder. The very first truck that came along pulled up to a rapid halt, its trailer almost skidding off the road. Alex climbed up to the driver's window and asked where he was going. The driver explained that he was going in the direction of Piet Retief to deliver some mining equipment to a mine outside the town, and was going there via Ermelo. Alex shouted the details down to me but as soon as I heard the word 'Ermelo' I told him to accept. We climbed aboard and handed the driver his ten Rand.
The driver's mate climbed over the seat and sat on the bunk at the back of the cab; Alex and I sat in the passenger's seat and watched through the large windscreen as the truck swallowed up the miles below us. In half an hour we'd covered more distance than we'd walked all night. The rapid progress we were suddenly making made us think that we could possibly get right to the border before the authorities had realised what had happened and had mobilised roadblocks that distance away. Between the two of us we still had a considerable amount of money and wondered if we could use it to persuade the driver to take us all the way to Amsterdam, a small town near the Swazi border where we had decided to head for. Piet Retief was south of Amsterdam and to get to both places entailed passing through Ermelo. At Ermelo the road branched south east to Piet Retief or carried straight on to Amsterdam. It was possible to reach Piet Retief via Amsterdam as a road connected the two towns. In other words, to get to Piet Retief from Ermelo via Amsterdam meant travelling two sides of a triangle as opposed to the one side if travelling directly there. From our map-book we calculated that the direct route from Ermelo to Piet Retief was a distance of 97 kilometres and via Amsterdam 132 kilometres. But as the mine where the equipment was to be delivered was a short way up the road toward Amsterdam from Piet Retief, the difference would be less than 30 kilometres (see Map 3).
Observing this fact we told the driver that we needed to get to Amsterdam very urgently to attend to a sick relative and offered him a further R50 if he would take us there. The driver spoke over his shoulder to his mate. We could not understand a word of what they were saying because they spoke in an African language, but guessed that they knew the sick relative story was bullshit as the conversation went on for a long time. Eventually the driver nodded his head and said that it would be OK to take us to Amsterdam.
We passed through Ermelo and followed the signs for Amsterdam. As we did so Alex and I were quietly laughing inside. It was about the time that the warders would be discovering that three prisoners had not woken for the morning inspection. The thought of them throwing back the bedspreads to find not sleeping prisoners but dummies of clothing and books was thrilling to contemplate. Soon we would be in Amsterdam where we could wait for nightfall to make our crossing into Swaziland. So far we'd seen no sign of a roadblock, meaning that our absence had not been discovered during the night.
Our visions of an early arrival at Amsterdam were soon deflated. About forty kilometres out of Ermelo one of the wheels of the trailer burst. The trailer began to slew about but the driver managed to bring the truck to a halt without any incident. Fortunately the wheels of the trailer were double-tyred so it was able to keep on a more or less even course. The driver got out to inspect the damage and then reported that it would take some time to replace the wheel. Not having the time to spare, we paid him the R50 and set off on foot in the same direction, again with our thumbs sticking out.
There was very little traffic on the road at that time of the morning (about seven thirty) and most of it private transport - not easily brought to a halt by our money-method. After about an hour's walking we decided that it was too risky to continue on foot in broad daylight as by that time the word would be getting out on the radio for people to be on the lookout for escaped white prisoners. Further on we spotted a clump of bushes and trees just off the road beyond a fence and headed for it. We entered the bushes and found them to be an ideal hiding place as they were sheltering a sort of gulley around which the road skirted.
It was going to be a long wait for sunset so we cleared some ground and lay down to rest our tired bodies. Despite having spent the entire night on foot, neither of us could sleep: our thoughts and the excitement of the day would not let us relax. We were also invaded by huge mosquito-like creatures.
At about midday the sky began to cloud over and the temperature dropped rapidly. The clothing we wore was totally inadequate and we grew progressively colder. Two hours later the skies opened up and within a few minutes we were drenched to the skin. The trees became so waterlogged that they offered no shelter at all. We moved into a deeper part of the gulley in the hope that its steep sides would afford some shelter, but the rain was coming down so heavily that the sides began to slide down on us. The elements decided for us that we had no choice but to move on.
Shortly before we had left the road and hidden in the bushes we had noticed a sign indicating a petrol station one kilometre further on. From our hiding place we had been able to hear voices and cars and lorries stopping and starting, but our reluctance to proceed to the petrol station to seek a lift was suddenly changed by the circumstances.
To our good fortune the petrol station turned out to be a country store as well. A number of Africans were sheltering under the verandah in front of it. They did not seem to find it too strange to see two white men soaked to the core come striding out of the dense rain. Inside the store we asked one of the attendants, who were all black, to sell us some cheese. Instead of immediately responding to our request one of them eyed us up and down and asked us to hold on while she went to call her 'madam'. Momentarily, both of us thought that we had just exposed ourselves and that she was going to the back to call her 'master' who would soon appear with a shotgun and perform the noble duty of arresting us.
Our fears were allayed when a friendly white woman appeared through the door behind the counter and asked us with a genuinely worried look on her face what had happened. Thinking quickly, we explained that our car had broken down some distance back and that we had left it at a farm and were trying to hitch to Amsterdam to meet my brother who had all our luggage there. We'd not been able to hitch a ride and had got caught in the rain when it started - hence our sodden state.
If we'd been black we would probably have been booted out for dripping water all over the floor, but since we were white and apparently in distress she felt sorry for us and brought us two towels to dry ourselves as well as two steaming mugs of coffee to warm us up. It's a shame to think that such a nice person could, had she known of our status, have been prosecuted for assisting escaped prisoners.
Between us we still had quite a sum of money, so we each bought ourselves an anorak to keep out the cold and Alex bought himself a pair of long socks to change into. To keep our bellies full on the journey ahead we bought a stock of cheese, sweets and fruit. If we were to continue hitching in the rain we realised that we'd need raincoats too so asked to be shown the range in stock. All they were able to produce were two plastic raincoats, one light blue and the other bright yellow - the worst possible colours. But having no choice we bought the pair.
Having dried and warmed our bodies we donned our raincoats, thanked the 'madam' and her helper gratefully, and marched out onto the road looking like two ghostly apparitions. Fortunately the very first car that came along stopped and the driver, obviously feeling sorry for us, apologised that he could only give us a lift for 20 kilometres. As this was better than standing in the rain until sunset we gratefully accepted and climbed into the already full car. The occupants were Afrikaans-speaking so Alex was not able to converse with them, but I managed to keep a conversation going and tried subtly to direct the talk in the direction of the day's news. But like our first driver they too appeared not to have heard anything about escaped convicts on the run.
The road passed through dense forest area and at a turn-off to a dam the driver stopped to let us out. He wished us luck in finding another lift and drove off in a cloud of mist. As we stood in the cold and rain contemplating our situation we decided that we'd pushed our luck far enough and would not try for any more lifts. We would hide in the forest until nightfall and then, because it was only about forty kilometres away, proceed on foot to the border. We climbed through a fence and moved into the forest out of view of the road. Not finding it any shelter under the trees we decided there was no point in waiting for dark and proceeded to walk in the same direction as the road, the position of which we were able to judge by the sound of the occasional passing car.
Eventually we came to a path which seemed too well trodden to be a foresters' path, so followed it for some distance until it came out to a small African village. The villagers and even their dogs stared in silence as the two phantoms approached and walked past without saying a word. From the village we followed a track which led back to the main road. As we approached the road it was already dusk, but before coming out onto it we waited in the tall grass for darkness to set in properly. As soon as we judged it to be dark enough (it must have been about seven thirty) we set off along the road in the direction of Amsterdam, a distance of some twenty kilometres.
Our map told us that it was another 20 kilometres from Amsterdam to the Swazi border gate at Nerston, where we planned to cross. Since we had walked 40 kilometres the previous night we knew that we were capable of covering the distance by daybreak if we walked all night. Our morale was still high although we were more apprehensive than we had been the previous night. We'd been through a lot in the short time we'd been out and, as the period of our freedom lengthened, we became increasingly determined to hang on to it. For the first time we turned our thoughts to wondering what would happen to us if we were recaptured. The prison authorities would surely not take too kindly to the disruption the escape would have caused. Both of us knew that our sentences would be infinitely extended and for at least six months after recapture we would be forced to wear chains and be held in solitary confinement.
There were very few cars on the road that night but we could not allow ourselves to be seen at all. Our guess was that there would be full-scale searches mounted throughout the country and especially near border areas. Every time a car passed the two of us dived off the road and hid in bushes or grass near the verge. There was plenty of time to look for hiding places because, as it was pitch dark and still drizzling, we could see the lights of cars lighting the horizon a great distance off. On a number of occasions we could not find very suitable hiding so we just had to lie flat in the grass and hope for the best. When this happened we had to remove our technicolour raincoats, place them on the ground as a groundsheet and I had to lie on top of Alex to conceal his white shoes and light-coloured socks and shorts. On two occasions we were certain that the passing vehicles were police vans.
At around midnight the lights of Amsterdam made a welcome sight in the distance. Our feet were by this time beginning to suffer the consequences of all the walking, but there was no question of stopping. As we approached the town we considered skirting around it for fear that there would be a roadblock or that police would be positioned in the streets to be on the lookout for fugitives. But the distance around appeared to be great and we did not know if we would end up on the road to the border on the other side. Also, the road into the town was wide and well lit. It dipped down into the centre and up a hill on the other side and from the approach appeared to be completely deserted. To reduce the chances of being seen we walked apart, one on each side of the road, and met at the far side of town where a sign indicated the direction to the border gate. There was a slight scare as we sat down to rest our weary feet: a small car came up the hill towards us but then turned off just before reaching us.
Under the roadsign we removed our shoes and massaged our blistered feet, and ate the last of our cheese. My left foot had developed a disabling cramp and I was beginning to doubt if I would be able to walk the remaining 20 kilometres to the border. But the rest and the fresh air on my soles worked wonders. The walk to the border we knew would be uneventful as there would be no traffic on the road as it led nowhere else and because the border gate was closed at night.
*****
Meanwhile back at the prison... nothing happened until the cells were opened at the normal time the morning after the escape. The night-warders had not reported any prisoners missing and at open-up time there was no state of alert, despite the front door having been found damaged.
The warder who opened the cells that morning only realised that something was wrong when he got to Denis's cell, the third cell along. He suddenly realised that he'd opened two cells and there had not been prisoners standing to attention at either of them. This happening at one cell was not usually taken too seriously as quite frequently a prisoner would oversleep and have to be prodded into life. But when it happened in two consecutive cells there had to be something amiss. The warder went back to Stephen's cell and shouted at him to wake up. When there was no stirring he opened the grille and pulled the bedspread back...
The warder ran out of the section and screamed for the sergeant in charge. He rushed back in and hurriedly opened my cell. Another prisoner gone! The blood drained from his face as he realised what was going on. Complete pandemonium then broke loose. A troop of warders came charging in and the remaining cell doors were hurriedly flung open to see how many more prisoners had turned into lifeless dummies. They got to Alex's and finding another 'sleeping prisoner', realised that three had flown. The remaining prisoners expressed utter surprise at the revelation that some of their fellow prisoners had gone missing during the night.
In no time the prison was invaded by a horde of security police and the remaining comrades placed under close and permanent observation. The entire prison and terrain was overrun and surrounded by police and the call went out to prevent the flight of the three dangerous 'terrorists'.
Within a few days the prison yard was dug up in the search for clues. Every tree, bush, blade of grass and weed was uprooted. Sure enough, a bottle containing keys for every grille and door was soon unearthed from under the cabbage patch...
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