They came at three in the morning. The bell rang in an aggressive way and there was a loud banging on the front door. Instinctively we knew who it was. Stephen said to Feroza, who was sleeping with him that night, that he thought it must be the police, but he was thinking of a different sort of police to the sort she was thinking of. She leapt out of bed and made herself a 'separate' bed of blankets on the floor - she was thinking that she was about to be done for 'immorality'.
I sombrely climbed out of bed and made for the front door. What about all those contingency plans you've made for the day they come? Leap out the window, barricade yourself in your room and shoot at the bastards through the door! It all seemed a bit unrealistic just then and I found myself moving lemming-like towards my doom. Stephen parted the curtains above his bed and peered out into the street. The place was surrounded with police and police cars.
I could see torches waving about through the glass-panelled front door. I loosened the latch and immediately the door was pushed open. A beam of light shone in my face and someone asked if I was Timothy Jenkin. I replied in the affirmative, thinking fleetingly that maybe I should have said 'No, he's out!' A crowd of nasty faces leered at me. One of them formally pronounced: 'We have reason to believe that you have been engaged in terrorist activities. We're coming in to search.' Whereupon six or seven brutes barged in and began to tear the place apart. Whatever happened to search warrants?
The one who had spoken to me was dressed in clothes which were covered in blood. If this was meant to intimidate us, it did. When I saw it I thought, Oh god! that must be the blood of some poor bastard he's been torturing. Soon mine'll be on there too. Later we found out that this blood-bespattered security policeman, who seemed to be heading the investigation, was the notorious 'Spyker' ('Nails') van Wyk. His name cropped up in practically every major political case and especially whenever allegations of torture were heard. A self-confessed admirer of Hitler, he sported a little moustache like the Fuehrer's but parted his dark, greasy hair down the centre. He was widely regarded by those who had the misfortune to find themselves in his company as a pathological sadist, the ideal-type interrogator of a totalitarian regime. The blood on his clothes could have come from a torture victim but it would not have surprised me if he had bought a pound of prime beef and squeezed the blood onto his trousers and shirt. His name must definitely go near the top of the list of apartheid criminals.
I sat cross-legged on top of my bed and watched dejectedly as two or three of them emptied my drawers and wardrobe. The bookrack was a source of considerable fascination and all 'suspect' books were put to one side. I had always been careful to have only the most innocuous books on the shelves but different people have different ideas of what constitutes innocuous.
Two policewomen walked past my bedroom door accompanying Feroza. They took her outside, presumably to an awaiting car. Then Klaus was taken out, with a rather bewildered look on his face. Lucky thing that Heri moved out last week, I thought. He wouldn't have liked getting tangled up in something like this.
The chest at the end of my bed was locked so they demanded the key. I picked up from my bedside table the bunch of house and car keys which contained the key for the padlock on the chest and tossed it to the cop. The chest was opened and the bunch of keys pocketed. As he did so a vision still lingering on my retina made me look back at the bedside table. On it lay the bunch of keys for the secret flat, the garage where all our equipment was stored and for all the trunks and toolboxes in it. It was a personal rule that those keys were never to be brought into the flat; they were always to be hidden in the springs under the front seat of my car. And never before had they been brought into the flat, except on that night. Life is cussed.
Inside the chest were about fifteen volumes of carefully pasted and bound newspaper clippings, the main source of our articles for Vukani-Awake!. Between the volumes the cop retrieved what at that moment seemed like a big 'find' - my 9 mm Star pistol.
I had bought the pistol on the instructions of the ANC and with ANC money at the height of the Soweto uprisings in 1976. The day I went to the gunshop to buy it there were so many scared whites clamouring for firearms that there were three rows of people against the counter. When I finally made it to the front they presented the Star and said that it was all they had left. It looked suitable to my untrained eye so I paid three hundred Rand for it and forced my way out of the shop.
I had been instructed to take a gun on leaflet bomb missions and to use it on such occasions if accosted. I took it along once - on the time we did the banner - but never again because it was so bulky under my jacket it would have prevented me making a quick getaway. I probably couldn't have fired it in defence anyway - not for a leaflet bomb.
The cop who found the gun asked what I intended to use it for, but wasn't interested enough to wait for a reply. They must have known that I had a licence because no issue was made of it, and the gun was even handed back to my parents after our trial. The clippings seemed to be of more interest. The volumes were tied together and carted away, most of them never to be seen again.
After about half an hour I was told to get dressed and was then accompanied outside to an awaiting car in which Stephen was already sitting. In a convoy we headed for Caledon Square Police Station, the head office of the Security Branch in Cape Town.
Up till then nothing too bad had happened but when we arrived at Caledon Square the weight of what was happening suddenly descended upon me: I was in the hands of South Africa's security police, a gang of thugs with not a happy reputation. What we had always thought about was now really happening and the reality of it was far more frightening than I'd ever imagined.
Events began to connect: all those strange phonecalls; the dark characters lurking about outside the flat. Why the hell didn't we trust our suspicions? If they've arrested us now they must have been watching us for the past several days or weeks. They must have seen us moving all the equipment, seen where our secret flat was. They must know everything!
At Caledon Square Stephen and I were separated. I was taken into a room which was bare, save for a couple of tables and chairs. My right arm was handcuffed to the backrest of one of the chairs and I was told to sit. The cops vacated the room except for a tall, lanky and thick-looking one. He sat himself on the other chair and began to read his newspaper, as if what was happening was quite normal in his day's work. Stephen was being processed in another room.
I was left in the room like this for about half an hour before they came back. Some of them I recognised as from the party that had invaded our flat; the others were new. One of them seated himself next to me while the others crowded around behind. Without saying anything the sitting cop dropped the offending bunch of keys (the ones I'd forgotten to hide) on the table in front of me. The clever bastards! How are you going to get out of this one? In front of me lay not just a bunch of keys for doors and padlocks, but the keys to unlock us - the keys to our entire case.
I sat staring at the keys for a long time not believing my rotten luck. I admonished myself: If only you'd been more disciplined and made sure the keys were put in their place under the front seat of your car. But you've always put them there. How did they know to come on the one night you forgot?
Eventually the sitting cop asked what the keys were for. To make sure I gave the right answer he whisked my bunch of flat and car keys out of his coat pocket, jingled them in front of my nose and said that the keys on the table were neither for my flat nor my car - they had been tested. I looked at his mean face and swallowed, but said nothing. I stared at the keys again. The silence was terrible. I wanted to speak, just to hear a friendly voice, but couldn't. Everything I'd read and been told about interrogation suddenly came back to me: Hold out as long as you can so that your comrades can get away. But there are no comrades to get away; we've both been captured. Be strong, never admit a thing and deny everything. But it's obvious they know what the keys are for, otherwise why would they use them for their opening move? Well just for your own self-respect don't speak to the fascist bastards.
I sat staring at the keys for what must have been the best part of half an hour. They seemed to be in no immediate hurry. The interrogator did not become vicious, and remained remarkably patient. He pointed to a particular key on the bunch and asked what it was used for. 'What about this one? And these ones here?' I refused to respond.
Some of the spectators could not contain their curiosity and began to egg on the interrogator. 'Perhaps his tongue needs a little loosening? Should we bring some oil? We'll make your tongue start wagging. Soon you won't be able to stop talking.' In response the interrogator appeared to become a bit impatient and started to raise his voice, which cut at the nerves in my stomach. The others joined in in chorus. Then the name-calling and racist taunts started - the usual fare of South African interrogation sessions. 'This little kaffir-lover must speak to us now. He's been naai-ing Coloured girls again' (from the Afrikaans to 'sew', meaning to have sex with). 'Can't find a white meisie (girl) so he's got to screw kaffir meide (maids). This one likes to naai with the dame on top. The other one likes to do it standing. You piece of communist filth, you shouldn't be allowed to live. You're just wasting air. Let's muck him up.'
They didn't muck me up. The mob went away and I was left in peace again. It was obvious that their strategy, apart from trying to frighten the hell out of me, was to make me feel like a piece of worthless rubbish - a well known interrogation tactic. Make them hate themselves; make them lose their self-esteem.
A short while later the second shift came in. At the head of the team was the ubiquitous Spyker van Wyk. This time he was washed, shaved, combed and dressed in a fresh safari suit. No sign of any blood. A clean canvas, I thought. With him was a particularly nasty specimen of a security cop by the name of Van Aggenbach. Torturer's lines were deeply engrained into his prematurely wrinkled face and his drooping mouth uttered suitably vicious threats of actions he would soon be carrying out.
Spyker sat down beside me and grasped the bunch of keys. 'You're going to tell us what these keys are for. I don't care if you won't tell us now. We've got plenty of time. We've got ways of making you talk.' 'Ve haf our vays!' - so fascists really do say these things. I had thought they were only said in caricatures of evil nazi interrogators.
Spyker was the heavy. He was the nasty, course, rough interrogator who frightened the life out of you but to whom you were determined not to say anything. The previous one was the pleasant, civilised, friendly interrogator who pretended almost to be sympathetic with you, in whom you almost felt you could confide after the rough one had done you over. This was the 'hot and cold treatment' we'd read about - another well known interrogation tactic.
Spyker wanted an answer - quickly. The threats increased. He alluded to the previous interrogator by saying that it didn't pay to have patience with the likes of us. Van Aggenbagh in particular wanted action. He wanted Spyker to hand me over to him; he would soon get me singing like a canary.
Their next moves were totally stereotyped: 'We know everything so you may as well speak. Your "comrade" has told us everything. He's not being stubborn like you. This will soon be over if you just co-operate.' Spyker then accompanied me to an adjacent room where piles of intercepted Vukanis were being sorted and processed by a team of typists. 'See how you've been wasting your time. We pick up every pamphlet you send. We've got them all, every one you've ever sent. We've been watching you since the day you put your foot back in South Africa. The ANC just used you people to do their dirty work. Those bastards in London are the ones we'd really like to get our hands on. They're the ones who cause all the trouble, from the comfort of their big mansions. The ANC has forgotten you now. You're all on your own. Nobody cares...'
Then up to the photographic department. A balaclava was pulled over my head and a dozen pictures of different profiles taken with blinding floodlights shining in my eyes. 'That's him. We've got him now. He's the one whose been causing all the trouble. You're in for big shit my friend'.
After about two hours with Spyker and his team I was beginning to feel that there was no longer any reason for not saying what the keys were for. It was obvious that they knew, otherwise why would they be so interested in them. Spyker would not listen to answers that I didn't know what they were for or that they belonged to someone who had left them in my flat by mistake. I could sense that Van Aggenbagh was dying to get on with the tongue-loosening procedure and to prevent Spyker getting any more blood on his clothes I said I would take them to see.
This seemed to please them but it made me hate myself. I felt like a collaborator. But I had no stomach for the sort of violence that would surely have followed. A protected upbringing had not prepared me well for the interrogation room. I had always been one of the smallest at school and soon learned to avoid playground fights. Later I abhorred body sports such as rugby which were compulsory at high school. And quiet suburban life meant that there were no street brawls and scenes of violence to immunise me. It made me realise that in a perverse sort of way black people have an 'advantage' here. Forced to live under the poverty of apartheid, life in the townships is characterised by street life, crime and violence of the worst kind. Knife battles, murders, rapes and gang fights are so common that the unfortunate residents of those places become immune to violence and bloodletting. On top of this they regularly experience police violence and the heavy-handedness of the apartheid authorities.
They handcuffed me to another cop and marched me out to an awaiting car in the street. Without me giving them any directions they set off for Mowbray where the garage was located. When the car turned into the narrow cul-de-sac where the garage was situated, there was a grand reception waiting for us. There was Steve, Klaus and - oh no! - Heri too, all waiting with their escorts to whom they were handcuffed, plus a large contingent of police spectators. I felt like the star arriving at the gala opening of the opera.
Despite the reception ceremony directly in front of the suspect garage the charade was kept up. I was handed the bunch of keys and asked to open whatever it was I had brought them along to see. I unlocked the padlock on garage number 50 and swung up the door. There it all stood. All the evidence any prosecutor could ever want. I don't know what they had told Heri and Klaus but I'm sure the two of them were thinking that they'd got themselves tied up in a big-time robbery investigation. A garage full of furniture, metal trunks, toolboxes and household goods. What else could it be?
The detectives moved in. They opened the trunks but did not touch the contents until everything had been photographed. One trunk contained all the banned books we'd accumulated over the years. Goodbye to those. The other trunk contained all our addressing machine stencils - thousands of names - and bits and pieces of partly-made leaflet bombs. The toolboxes contained the specialised collection of tools we'd managed to build up. Goodbye to all that.
One of the cops dug out of the trunk with the books a Russian dictionary I'd bought seven years previously with the intention of learning the language one day. 'Aha!' he exclaimed in seriousness, 'I suppose you're working for the KGB too.'
Vaunting his investigative skills Spyker asked if we had not seen his 10-year-old son watching us the previous Sunday while we were unloading the equipment into the garage. Maybe we had but who would suspect a little kid of spying on you?
On the way back to Caledon Square I wondered what more they could possibly want from us. They already had enough evidence to put us away for life. In our carelessness we'd certainly made things easy for them. I felt embarrassed in a way. In one of our leaflets we'd advised activists how to run an underground cell: 'Don't keep all your equipment in one place; keep revolutionary literature and secret documents hidden...' We had broken all the most obvious and basic rules. We hoped our comrades would never find out.
Back in the office a pad and pen was thrown on the table in front of me and I was told to write: about everything, from the first day till the last.
So I started to write. I wrote four pages and handed it to them. Spyker took one look, smiled, and tore it up. He repeated threateningly that he wanted everything, not just the obvious. He wanted to know how we had got involved with the ANC, what sort of training we had received, what we had done in South Africa. Everything, and lots of names. He especially wanted names.
The next pad I filled completely. It was taken away for scrutiny and I was presented with another and told that I'd be filling many, many such pads before I was finished. I felt as if I was writing an examination.
So I continued to write. I didn't mind writing. So long as I was writing I wasn't being beaten up. I reasoned that if there was going to be any violence it would surely be at this early stage soon after capture. If I was to write about things they obviously knew then it would be possible to write without giving anything away. The things they didn't know about needn't be given away provided I wrote within the realms of the possible. I invented many names, James Bond situations and fantastic 'terrorist' plans to satisfy their insatiable interrogators' appetites.
As soon as I completed each pad it was whisked away for examination and a new one was placed on the table. By the end of the day I had written so much that I was suffering from severe writer's cramp. What I'd written was based on the truth but was mostly lies: how we'd gone abroad to join the ANC, how the organisation had given us months of specialised training in secret hideouts deep in the countryside, how we had been 'indoctrinated' and taught to write 'subversive' literature, how we planned to set up nationwide underground networks and anything else I thought would excite them. I was able to avoid giving away any names by saying that the people who trained us had used noms de guerre.
By late afternoon the cops who had been up all night decided that they'd had enough. I was handed over to three fresher looking specimens and driven to the Milnerton Police Station about 10 kilometres away to be stored for the night. In the charge office my spectacles, watch, belt and shoelaces were removed: they wanted no suicides on their hands.
Then to the cells.
I had never seen a cell before. First a heavy, solid steel door. Then a sort of cage with a barred gate. Through this and into what appeared to be an 'exercise yard': a small concrete rectangle with smooth, high walls and more bars across the top. No helicopter is going to lift you out of here, matey! Then into the cell proper: first another solid steel door, then another cage and grille, and then the cold concrete darkness of the cell itself.
The clang of the doors closing on me and the sound of the keys turning suddenly drove home to me the gravity of my situation. I stood for a long time staring disbelievingly at the back of the closed door. Was this really me in this situation? The cell was cold, dank and stark; the two windows so heavily barred and meshed that very little light penetrated from the outside and the cell's lamp so weak that it lit no more than an orange ring around itself.
I thought of those books we'd been made to read while receiving our training. Yes, they were accurate. I almost feel as if I've been here before. What did the prisoners in them do to overcome the nothingness of their situation? They paced up and down. But there's no space to walk in here. Two paces and I'll be up against the wall.
I wasn't going to be like them so I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Spider webs hung from the corners and the paint was grey and peeling. As I looked at it I saw the face of Spyker in the dust and flaking paint. Terror filled my body and I burst into tears.
At no stage of our detention were Stephen and I informed that we had been detained under Section Six of the notorious Terrorism Act. Although we guessed that this was the case, no mention was made of any 'rights' that we might have had, of the nature of our detention or even of why we were being detained. Both of us knew that under Section Six we had no rights at all. No outside people, not even lawyers, family or friends were allowed access to or any information about or from us. No court was allowed to 'pronounce upon the validity of any action take under the section.' In other words we were held incommunicado and at the mercy of the security police in a totally closed system. What happened to the rule of law?
Section Six was created explicitly for interrogation purposes. You were held indefinitely without charge until you had 'satisfactorily replied to all questions' or until 'no useful purpose (was) served by...further detention.' 'No useful purpose' usually meant that you were dead. From June 1967 to July 1982, the period the Act was in force, no less than sixty people died in detention while being held under Section Six. Naturally, the police denied on all occasions being responsible for the deaths and always explained them away as 'suicides' or due to 'natural causes'. Even if this was the case, it was never explained why so many detainees found the need to commit suicide while being held under Section Six.
The Terrorism Act came under such intense criticism that it was replaced in July 1982 by the Internal Security Act. The new Act is a more refined piece of legislation but Section 29 of the Act, which is the equivalent of Section Six, differs very little from the latter as far as detainees are concerned. To mollify public opinion about mistreatment and torture, certain 'safeguards' were added to give the impression that detainees are held under the watchful eye of 'inspectors', doctors and magistrates and thus protected from harm. But in a totally closed system there is no one to check that the 'inspectors' have carried out their duty, and even if they have, no one can know what the outcome of the 'inspections' was or whether any action was taken if it was necessary. In theory there is a maximum detention period of six months built into the Section but this can be overstepped if the police provide reasons to the Minister of Law and Order (euphemism for Police) why the detainee should not be released. Many people have been held for well over the six month period and deaths in detention continue.
These so-called security laws are in fact not laws at all. They are merely a disguise used by the regime to give a legal appearance to arbitrary actions it takes against its opponents. They are the direct antithesis of law, a cover for barbarism, a means to bypass the law altogether.
The interrogation continued the next day. While waiting for them to begin, Stephen was brought into the room. Spyker pointed to Stephen's knee which was swollen and told him to tell me how it had happened. He'd tried to escape! I felt very proud of him at that moment although the object of the demonstration was to try to show me how silly it was to try to get away. Although I was not allowed to know then, Stephen had very nearly broken free of their clutches. The previous day he had complained of a serious stomach-ache and was taken to a doctor who happened to have his rooms on the first floor of a building. In the doctor's surgery Stephen's minders had carelessly not placed themselves between him and the window, for Stephen, seeing his chance, leapt out of the window, onto a ledge outside and then onto a lower building next door. As he made the final leap his knee caved in and he crouched for a moment in agony. This gave the cops their chance. One of them ran to the window and pointed his pistol at Stephen and ordered him to freeze. The cop was so shocked at this brazen escape attempt that his hand was shaking violently, but Stephen reckoned it wisest not to take another chance and raised his hands in submission. He would have got clean away had he landed properly because the next leap to the ground was a short distance and the cops would have had to run from the first floor and a long way around the building to get to the place where he would have reached ground.
Stephen set a fine example that first day which set the tone for the future. He planted in our minds the seed which grew into an obsession to find ways of eluding our captors. I wasn't to see him again after that until much later. His interrogation, I found out later, followed much the same pattern as my own.
Meanwhile I was required to continue writing and each completed pad was followed by a question session. After a while they appeared to lose interest in what I was writing. I was making it too easy for them. They appeared also to lose 'respect' for me because I did not resist their demands sufficiently. I was accused of not being properly trained and the names of certain people, who had alleged torture while in detention, were mentioned as examples of people who had been 'well trained'. Plainly I had denied them the opportunity to engage in some wholesome torturing and this had led to their declining interest in me.
What they were most interested in was in laying their hands on the different typewriters we had used in our work since 1975. Only if they could connect the different typewriters to us could they positively identify a particular leaflet or address label as being produced by our cell. If there was no typewriter they could not claim that we were responsible for producing a particular leaflet or for posting it, even if we had admitted to it.
By studying the typefaces of the leaflets and addresses they had identified five different typewriters. One was already in their possession, found in the garage with all the other equipment. It could only be connected to the leaflets and pamphlets produced during the previous year - in other words, our current typewriter. They wanted to know where all the others were.
One I admitted belonged to my parents, so that was immediately fetched. Another was one at the university where I had worked, which had only been used to type some address labels. So into the cars and off in a convoy to the university. At the university the rector, Dr Richard van der Ross, an obdurate stooge, received the delegation. He insisted that I be unhandcuffed and then proudly led the way to the outbuilding where I had worked. As we trooped down the corridor of the Institute, sympathetic (to me) heads peeked out of doorways, but no one said a word. The secretary was busy typing on the offending typewriter and was unceremoniously forced to end her task when the typewriter was unplugged and carried off.
The cops wanted the other two typewriters, one of which they knew had been used to type all our leaflets of 1975 and 1976. The one they had in mind was the one that I had buried, but I was damned if they were going to get it. The fifth one I wasn't sure about: it could have been one of many but probably another one at the university. Because of their eagerness to get the typewriters I told them that the one that we'd used for the leaflets (the buried one) I'd thrown into the sea and the other probably belonged to my brother who was then living in Johannesburg. Being so far away I thought they would just write that one off as it had been used very little. But no. Not only did they get the Johannesburg police to 'arrest' the suspect typewriter, they arrested my brother too.
The typewriter that I said I'd thrown into the sea they wanted too. Some quick thinking was needed. The Cape Peninsula consists of many kilometres of coastline, much of it sandy beaches. It was these parts that I knew best but I couldn't say I threw it into the waves on a flat beach. I had to think of a particular precipitous and rocky place where the water was deep. There was only one such spot that I knew well, a place where I had frequently been to poach crayfish, so I thought I'd try it on. The place was a rocky headland a few kilometres south of the coastal suburb of Camps Bay along the scenic coastal road to Llandudno. At that point the rocks rose steeply out of the sea to the road about 50 metres higher. A short distance down from the road was an ideal place from where it would have been possible to discard a typewriter. The pools below were deep and surrounded by rocks. Invariably the water was rough.
One afternoon they took me to point out the spot. It certainly was splendid to see the sun and waves again after the days and nights in the dark interrogation rooms and police cells. Having pointed out the supposed location and been photographed doing so I imagined that that was the end of the story. Not a chance. Two days later I was driven back to the same spot and there waiting for us was a team of reserve police divers, all kitted out with wetsuits and aqualungs and raring to go.
The divers donned their equipment and each chose an area of the seabed to cover. The search went on for a good two hours, but I didn't mind: I was getting a nice tan and knew that I wouldn't be seeing that beautiful place for a long time. Eventually the divers emerged from the water, cold, tired and without a typewriter. The leader of the group wagged an angry finger at me and accused me of misleading them - the nerve. He demanded to know exactly where the machine had been dropped. I could be no more helpful. Maybe it had corroded away or some other divers had found it. This he would not accept, claiming that his team had found wedding rings in muddy dams. I was hurriedly taken away from the place by security policemen mumbling horrible retribution. I expected the worst but nothing more was said about the typewriter. I suppose they had enough evidence without it.
The next stage of the investigation involved our being taken out, separately and without the other knowing, to the places where we had placed leaflet bombs. These 'pointing out' sessions are common in the investigation of political cases in South Africa. They involve the accused being forced to point out the places where they were supposed to have committed their alleged crimes.
In our case they told us to direct them to the places where we had planted the leaflet bombs, even though they knew exactly where most of these were. At the places we were told to stand and point to the exact spot so that a photograph could be taken. While this gave the police evidence for their case against us, it also gave us evidence of how effective their efforts had been in tracing the places where we had placed leaflet bombs. On a number of occasions both of us pointed out spots about which the police knew nothing. This made them really mad because they thought we were having them on. As it turned out the police only knew of 26 of the leaflet bombs while we'd planted at least 10 more. Never had any failed to go off so technical failure could not be an explanation for this disparity. Excited witnesses of the explosions on the undiscovered occasions must have scooped up all the leaflets as well as the remains of the bombs.
Under ordinary law you would of course never allow yourself to be used by your legal opponent to assist in the collecting of their evidence to be used against you. Lawyers would definitely advise against doing so, that is, if you were allowed to receive legal advice while being held in detention. But what can you do when you are in the clutches of the security police and entirely cut off from the outside world? They keep you in detention for as long as it takes them to amass all the evidence they need - and sometimes longer. They are not much concerned about your defence or with the niceties of the law.
After pointing out the scenes of our 'crimes' in Cape Town we were taken by car (separately in two cars) to Johannesburg to point out the places where we'd placed bombs there. Arriving on a Friday evening they deposited us at the notorious John Vorster Square police cells to be lodged over the weekend, while they had a restful two days at a comfortable police residence.
At first the local cops, after issuing us with straw mats, ordered us to undress and hand in our clothes. But when we protested strongly at the prospect of being kept naked for two days, our security police mentors for some reason supported our pleas and we were allowed to remain dressed. Our cells were dreadful - large, dirty and barren. There was no water apart from what you could get from your toilet when you flushed it and they refused to supply any toilet paper. Since I was not accustomed to using my hand to clean myself I was compelled to rip out and use pages of the tatty bible they provided. Forgive me god for it was all I could do!
John Vorster Square is also a police station and the headquarters of the Johannesburg District and Witwatersrand Division of the South African Police. It contains one of the main offices of the security police and from them many floors up a number of detainees have been slung out of windows to meet their death on the pavement below. Both of us were taken up to these offices for further interrogation and, in Stephen's case, for an identification parade. In passing, the distance to the pavement below was pointed out to us.
Stephen's identification parade was a complete farce. The other members of the parade were all well-groomed and well-dressed security policemen while Stephen was haggard and unshaven after spending two days in the cells. It did not take the witness long to put her hand on his shoulder. It was alleged that the witness was a fruitseller who had seen Stephen place a bomb near the black entrance of Johannesburg station nine months earlier.
After returning to Cape Town there were no more interrogation sessions - they'd got all the evidence they needed. I was dumped in the Milnerton police cells to rot while Stephen was kept in the less salubrious cells at Caledon Square. The only reading matter they allowed us was the bible. Stephen managed to read quite far into his but I found it so boring that I gave up after a few pages and preferred to lie against the wall with only my thoughts to comfort me. I dreamed of escaping - I was not going to allow these fascists the privilege of seeing me put away for years. I studied my cell and exercise yard looking for cracks. But without my glasses I couldn't find them. The time would come though. I could be patient.
Our interrogation had been relatively uneventful compared to what the average detainee had to go through. We were fully aware that it was our white skins that had saved us from the usual mistreatment and torture. It was not that the security police never tortured white detainees - they were just more reluctant to do so. Coming from 'respectable' backgrounds also helped us. My father was an eminent Cape Town anaesthetist and it would not have looked too good for the security police if it had come out in our trial that they had tortured the son of a well-known doctor.
Another factor which helped us, we found out later, was that the security police knew we were the last propaganda cell operating in the Cape. They knew what we had done and that there were no more cells to round up. David Rabkin and Jeremy Cronin before us had had a much rougher passage as the cops knew that there was another group operating at the same time as theirs and wanted to know what they knew about the other group(s) (i.e. us).
The period of detention ended abruptly on the morning of 31st March, four weeks after our arrest, when I was unexpectedly unlocked and told there was a surprise for me. I was taken into the charge office and there waiting for me was my sister and my mother, tearful and looking burdened by the month's traumas. They brought the news that Stephen and I were to appear later that day in the Cape Town Magistrates' Court to face charges and that an attorney had been appointed by my father to look after my affairs. My mother muttered something about whether it was true that I'd been held for planting bombs. As it was too complicated to explain there and then, I could only reply that it was the function of the court to find out.
By prevailing standards our period in detention was almost a record for shortness. We put this down to the same factors that applied to our length of interrogation, but also because we handed the police all the evidence they could want on a platter. The worst aspects of detention, apart from what could happen to you while being interrogated, are not knowing what is going to happen next and the solitary confinement. You always expect the worst but hope for the best. You wait for them to come in and tell you it's all been a terrible mistake, that they don't think what you've done is very serious and you can go home. It's the solitary that messes you up. Left with your disturbed thoughts you are unable to think things through rationally. When they lock you up after a day's interrogation you are happy to be left on your own but if they don't turn up the next day you wonder where they are, when they'll be coming and what they have in store for you.
Solitary is very disorienting, a torture in itself. A week without seeing anyone feels like an eternity but knowing that you might lie there for six months or longer is enough to weaken even the strongest. Certainties give hope; indeterminacy breeds despair. It was a very unpleasant experience but our period was too short and uneventful for me to be able to comment on its long-term effects.
As I have mentioned, our detentions were not the only consequence of the police actions on the 2nd of March and after. Our girlfriends Daphne and Feroza, our flatmate Klaus and ex-flatmate Heri were detained under Section Six for between four and seven days. Klaus was the first to be released, after four days - probably because the German embassy kicked up a stink. Daphne and Feroza were released after six days and Heri after a week. All were held in solitary confinement in separate police cells around Cape Town. They were all thoroughly grilled for information on us but were unable to provide anything the police did not already know. Heri's room in the house he shared with several other students was turned over but was also found to be devoid of any clues about our activities.
My brother Michael was also detained for several days; his typewriter for longer. The reason he was held, apparently, was to find out what he knew of Stephen's acquaintances while Stephen had been living in Johannesburg. The two of them had shared a flat and knew many of the same people. He also provided the police with information about my personal life. I do not hold this against him as he is not a political person and probably did not know why we had been detained. Presumably he thought he was pleading in mitigation for me.
Meanwhile Robin in London had not taken our detentions sitting down. By this stage she was working fulltime in the ANC office and so was in a good position to muster forces. Together with an uncle of Stephen's who was incensed by his his nephew's predicament, friends who knew us while we were in London in 1974/75 and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, she organised a 'Stephen Lee and Tim Jenkin Defence Committee'. Hundreds of postcards protesting at our detentions were printed for sympathisers to send to Prime Minister B J Vorster. The Committee also, amongst other things, commissioned articles about our plight in trade union, left-wing and Catholic newspapers - the latter through the uncle. A demonstration for the start of our trial was planned, to be held outside the South African Embassy in London and calling for our release and the release of all South African political prisoners.