Return to Contents PageBy August 1978, apart from Alex, Steve and myself, only Jeremy had expressed any interest in the escape project. At that point in time we had not formulated any concrete plans as we wanted first to improve our ability to open locks. Jeremy approached the matter from an altogether different perspective: he insisted that we first work out a detailed plan so that our energies were not wasted on experimenting with keys which might never be needed. This difference in approach led to considerable tension and controversy, especially after others joined the escape group.
We believed that getting out was essentially a technical problem and as the comrades professed to be believers in the unity of theory and practice it surprised us - perhaps wrongly - that some of them looked at it as an intellectual problem. Theory, as we understood it, was to inform practice but practice had to serve as the basis on which the theory was to be constructed. Many of the comrades believed that the entire escape could be planned beforehand in the mind without knowing if or how it could be achieved in a practical sense.
Without wishing to divide ourselves into 'pragmatists' and 'intellectuals', our approach proved in the end the folly of trying to concoct complete escape plans before knowing everything that lies before you and the limits of your own capabilities. In August 1978, and for many months after, no one would have dreamt of escaping in the way that we finally did. The route eventually taken was not even considered as a remote possibility; it would have seemed a total fantasy. It was only after a long, frustrating process of experimenting and testing that we were able to overcome the barriers across our path. Our developing technical abilities suggested the route to take, not the converse.
Some of the schemes put forward by the comrades would have led to certain disaster. One suggestion was for us to sneak through the yard gate while the Captain was conducting his morning inspection of the stokkies in their yard. While inspections took place the armed guard on the pos stood to attention and it was thought that he might not notice a handful of prisoners making a quick getaway through the yard gate. Another plan proposed waiting for summer and a thunder-shower and then when there was no warder in the yard and the pos-warder was sheltering in his enclosed corner we would sneak out of the same yard gate.
At this early stage most of the comrades were reluctant to identify with us because they believed that our dabbling with locks and keys was but an expression of our anger at the sentences we'd been given. They told us later that they had expected us to carry on experimenting and looking for escape routes for a short while and then either get bored or give up when we found out that in fact it was impossible to get out. Our fanaticism was expected to wear off in due course.
For this reason there were at first no attempts to formalise the escape: no suggestions of establishing an escape committee or of planning the necessary steps collectively. In a sense this made our activities 'undemocratic' because they were carried on without consultation with the others. But from very early on we realised that if we took each problem to the 'yard' (i.e. to everyone) the day of departure would have been delayed and the screws would have been alerted. Besides, our problems at that stage were purely technical and none of the others were capable of offering much assistance.
The comrades' reluctance to participate was buttressed by the fear that these 'new guys' were going to upset things by getting themselves caught. These fears were reasonable enough, especially from those who'd been inside for a long time. It had taken them 15 years of hard struggle to achieve the conditions which prevailed in the prison. The 'privileges' which had been won over the years could easily be removed and then it would be back to square one; the stable relationship with the prison staff, which at best was no more than a precarious state of truce, could easily be reversed. They could not stomach the thought of having to fight all the old battles again.
From August until November 1978 practically all escape-related activity was spent in attempting to open door two. For more than a month I struggled for up to two hours at night to open my door. I had made about six number two keys in the hope of getting one to work by trial and error. There was no other way. I would try each key, file it a bit or build it up with epoxy and then try again, over and over. Each evening I was forced to stop, not by impending inspections, but by an aching arm caused by holding the crank out of my passage window for too long.
During the day I would make every effort to stare at the warders' number two keys in an attempt to capture a mental image which I could then 'measure'. But I couldn't see any difference: our keys looked exactly the same. After a while I began to wonder if there was some hidden secret we couldn't see. Alex persuaded me not to get superstitious.
Towards the end of October I finally managed to get key two to turn in my door. It was almost annoying how smoothly and easily it suddenly turned, as if there had been no problem all along. It could at least have jammed or nearly turned to let me know that I was getting close! The excitement combined with relief as the crank effortlessly turned the key was exhilarating. I felt dizzy with success and couldn't stop myself dancing a jig on my bed.
Keeping in mind the earlier disaster with number two, I turned the key one and a half times only and then relocked it. Fortunately it relocked all the way. If it had not done so it wouldn't have been too serious as the door would still have been locked one turn. I could not have been blamed for it being unmastered and even if the warders had suspected something there would have been no evidence that I had tampered with the lock as I would have disposed of all the keys down my toilet.
To make sure that it had not been a fluke that the key had worked I immediately filed all the other number two keys to the same dimensions as the one that had worked and tried them out. All worked with equal facility. I shouted to Alex and he stuck his shaving mirror out of his window to see what I was carrying on about. When I gave a thumbs-up - the agreed sign for a success - he shouted back to confirm that I had indeed achieved the long-awaited breakthrough. He was so overjoyed at the news that he for a long time after he could be heard praising the Lord.
The excitement was short-lived though. The following night Alex tried the keys in his number two and found that not one of them worked. This had us completely baffled because we knew that the warders used the same key in his number two as in mine. Why our keys should then have worked in my door and not in his we could not understand.
I took the keys back the next day and made some alterations for him to try the next night. Again none of them worked. Disappointment on top of the recent success caused a serious ebb in morale, but we kept at it. One night Alex would try out some of the keys while I modified the others; the next night he would try out the ones I'd altered while I changed the ones he'd tried the previous night. This procedure went on for another month. It was a slow and tedious process, but eventually he got one to turn. I knew because I could hear him singing in his cell that night.
I tried the successful key in my own door the following night and found that it turned as easily as the one I'd got to work a month earlier. I then cut all the other number twos to the same dimensions as the successful one and found them to work in both our doors. At last we were certain that we'd got the measurements right.
The problem as far as we could work out was caused by not having the overall heights of the key-cuts correct: the relative heights having been established when the first one worked in my door. There seemed to be some tolerance in the overall dimensions but there was no way of knowing this at the time, forcing us to employ the trial and error methods that we did.
It had been discovered early on that not all the number two doors used the same key. Starting from my cell at the beginning of the section, each alternate cell used the same number two key which had given us so much trouble; the others used a number one key. Why this was so we could never figure out. Perhaps it was to confuse new warders who found it inordinately difficult to get the sections unlocked.
This duplication of keys actually simplified matters for us because it allowed us to use our number one keys, of which we'd made several. They were of a much simpler and robust design than the complicated number twos. It was also possible to test them during shower-time and on Fridays from the open-door position. All appeared to work, but as experience had taught us, there was no certainty they would work from the door-closed position.
Stephen's was one of these number one key number two doors but the prospect of having to go through the same rigmarole to test a key in it that we'd gone through to test our own drove us to think of an alternative scheme.
During October those prisoners who were allowed to study could remain in their cells over weekends to complete their studies before exams. Alex was one of these 'students' so he requested one Saturday to be locked in his cell 'to catch up on some work'. The usual practice when this happened was for the grille to be locked but for the outer door (number two) to be left open. Stephen happened to 'fall ill' on the same day and asked to be locked in his cell. He requested that his outer door be locked 'to prevent draughts'. I remained in the yard - the normal place to be on a Saturday - to signal to Alex when it looked like the warders were relaxing and unlikely to enter our section. When I gave the all-clear by lifting from the ground the book I was reading, Alex opened his grille with the number one key he had with him, crept down the passage to Stephen's cell and tested his number two lock with the same key. It worked perfectly.
After successfully opening our number twos Denis and Dave K wondered if the keys would work in their doors. We were sure they would but our earlier experiences informed us that to be certain they had to be tested.
Since both had doors which used the problematic number two key, they had to be tested with the crank from the door-closed position - i.e. at night. We gave Dave K the crank and a couple of keys to try out one evening. Our hearts thumped when he missed the keyhole trying to get the key in with the crank. Eventually he managed to get it in but he could not get it to turn. I was sure that he was trying to turn it the wrong way but he swore that he wasn't. Alex and I watched with our mirrors as he struggled for a long time to get the key out. After what felt like a heart-seizing eternity the key suddenly shot out and he pulled the crank back through his window and into his cell. Almost as he did so the night-warder came into the section on an unscheduled inspection round.
After that we decided it would be less risky for Alex or me to come out of our cells one night and test the locks directly. As Denis's and Dave's cells were closest to mine and because I'd gained the most experience in opening doors the task fell upon me.
It was not a difficult mission but it required more courage than I imagined I possessed. Actually coming out of my cell was altogether a different matter to sticking a broomstick out of a window. If a warder came into the section while I was out of my cell it would be the end: there would be no way of turning it into an escape.
But all went well. I opened my doors after the music had stopped, as I'd done many times before, came out when I could hear no movements from downstairs and headed down the passage towards Denis's and Dave's cells. It was an eerie sensation as I stood in the passage: I was experiencing a situation which many prisoners had dreamt about but which no prisoner in that prison had ever experienced. I tried the key in Dave's door first and then in Denis's - it worked perfectly in both. Then back into my cell. I'd never felt more happy to be in my cell than I did then. The whole operation had taken less than a minute, but more than a year off my lifespan.
By the end of 1978 there was a feeling among some of the comrades that we were just messing around and not concentrating on developing a proper plan. Perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the escape planning took a more collectively-inspired course the 'Washing Committee' ('WC') was set up, ostensibly as an escape committee to co-ordinate activities and liaise with the comrades. A point had been reached where it was evident to all that we were serious about our intentions and doubts about our motivations had been dispelled. It was therefore decided by the yard that a committee should be set up to bring our activities under the mantle of the yard democracy. This did not mean that henceforth every move had to have the blessing of the entire yard, but that the yard wanted some connection with the escape group and some say in affairs which would affect everyone in this regard. It was never clear exactly what the mandate of the WC was and it seemed to vary with time and depending on who was considering its functions. However, after a time its functions became accepted and its mandate became structured by practice rather than by a formal constitution.
Alex, Steve and I, at first not too pleased that our wings had been clipped, eventually welcomed the formation of the WC because it seemed to give our activities, if not approval, then at least an air of acceptance.
The committee finally accepted by the yard consisted of Alex and Dave Kitson. One member of the Committee had to be one of the three of us and this fell upon Alex because he was the most vociferous. I was more involved with the technical side and as everyone knew, not much of a negotiator.
Despite what was ever intended for it the WC served in practice a vital function, especially at a later stage when more people were involved in the plans. It became responsible for informing the yard that particular escape activities were to take place and that everyone should be on their guard. It also served as a focus for ideas and suggestions and for spreading these to other members of the escape group.
Before going on to discuss the first concrete escape plans which were contrived before the end of 1978, it would be worth describing in more detail how we went about making our keys, how we managed to smuggle the necessary bits and pieces into and out of our cells and how we concealed the contraband.
Only seven of the ten of us worked in the workshop. Dave K was the official gardener so was excused from workshop duty. Denis used to be one of the best carpenters and even passed a trade test in carpentry while in prison, but was excused by the doctor because he had a gammy back. He had injured it in his youth while playing rugby and standing behind a bench for several hours gave him severe backache. He was the chief dishwasher, tea and milk maker and cleaner, but these were not particularly arduous tasks. He was assisted in this important work by Tony, so the chores were quickly done and the two of them were able to get on with the more important job of keeping themselves amused. Tony was excused from workshop duty because he had a co-ordination problem and could not handle tools at all. A short test proved that he would have severely damaged prison property, that is, himself.
In the workshop were four workbenches. Raymond and Dave R worked at the first next to the door and to where the warder usually sat; I worked alone at the second; Jeremy and Johnny at the next and Steve and Alex at the last. Alex, fortunately, had the best position for making illicit articles. Not only was he against the back wall of the workshop but between him and the wall was a tall rack of shelves on which were kept the parts we had to assemble for the prisons. The shelves and piles of wood gave him excellent hiding places for contraband.
Each bench had its own locker of woodworking tools that was unlocked at the beginning of the day by the warder on duty and in theory should have been relocked by him at the end of the day after checking that all the tools had been replaced. In practice it did not work like this. The prisoners closed their own lockers and seldom were there checks for missing tools. The 'security' cupboard containing the files and hacksaws, amongst other things, stood in the corner next to the door leading into the storeroom. This would be opened on request if anything was needed out of it, but it was easy enough to return less to it than had been taken out.
While the rest of us dutifully sanded our items of prison woodwork, Alex was more often than not busy cutting out the bits of wood needed to make the keys. He would prop up the piece of furniture on which he was meant to be working in such a way that it would obscure what he was really doing. He also had an uncanny ability to appear to be doing the prison's work while actually doing something else. He did take twice as long as everyone else to complete his quota but he had always been the slowest so they did not suspect he was up to anything.
None of the objects Alex made on the side were recognisable to the warders, so even if he had been caught there would have been no serious consequences. In fact he, and for that matter all of us, were regularly 'caught' by the warders making personal things. So long as you had a good excuse, such as that you were making chess pieces or a pen holder, they didn't mind. Sometimes they would even get us to make or mend things for them. Johnny, who had proved himself over the years to be a competent fix-it-all, spent most of his time repairing damaged prison items and doing odd jobs for the warders.
Workshop duty for the warders was a singularly boring task as it involved sitting doing nothing for three hours in the morning and two and a half in the afternoon. Usually the sessions were totally uneventful: only occasionally would one of us speak to them and then only to comment about rugby, the cost of living or some other inane topic. We were generally well behaved and got on with the work, which was probably not the case in most other prisons.
Most of the warders took a turn at workshop duty but one particular warder was assigned more or less permanently to the post. His name was Van Loggerenberg, or 'Loggie' as we called him. He was a fat, lazy hulk of a man with a drooping moustache and pointed pixie ears. I always said that if one were to attach an electroencephalograph to his head there would be an absolutely straight line, except for a slight bump now and then when he sucked on his pipe. He is the only person I've ever known who could sit dead still looking into space for three hours. He must have been asleep with his eyes open. Sometimes in the workshop his eyes would shut but he had a well-tested method of ensuring that this had no serious consequences. He would sit in front of the door and hold onto the door handle, and when he collapsed into his empty stupor his hand would drop off the handle and it would snap up and wake him. Loggie was totally disinterested in what was going on, and for his 'assistance' in this way we are eternally grateful. Thank you Loggie.
The bits and pieces Alex made during the day would be taken out of the workshop before the end of the afternoon work session. They would be deposited either behind the flush tank of the toilet next door or hidden behind some books in the storeroom. At supper-time I would retrieve the pieces and conceal them inside the bottom of my thermos flask. The space in the bottom of my thermos was large enough to hold the pieces of key as well as sandpaper, files and whatever else I needed for an evening's keymaking session. Sometimes when there was too much to carry up in this way I would make 'key sandwiches' out of the five or so slices of bread we were given at supper. In the mornings the reverse procedure applied: I sealed the items in the bottom of my thermos and then hid them in the storeroom or downstairs toilet for later dispersal. Sandpaper and other debris I flushed down my toilet.
At first I kept the completed keys behind a bookrack in the storeroom, then in a tin of sugar or bottle of lavatory cleaner in my cell. These were not very good hiding places compared to some of the places we were later to open up, but they proved adequate at the time. When there were too many keys for these hiding places I hid them in tins of sugar in the dining-room and in 'unopened' boxes of soap powder. When there were just too many for all these places Dave K buried some of them in the garden. They were first sealed in plastic bags, then placed in old jam and coffee jars and buried under particular plants so that they could be found again later.
*****
The peaceful relations that existed between prisoners and prison staff were an important factor in the success of our escape. As I've indicated, a modus vivendi existed based on the principle of 'you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone'. Had any other form of relations prevailed it is doubtful whether an escape could have been pulled off. As the authorities had not for a long time been given cause to suspect that the prisoners were up to anything mischievous, they had allowed their watchfulness to diminish. Relations had been peaceful for so long that they were under the impression that all we wanted to do was read our boring textbooks and talk our intellectual and unintelligible things. They had observed that when they left us alone we gave them no problems and responsibly got on with our affairs.
This state of affairs had not always existed. In the early 'sixties when the first comrades were brought to Pretoria Local, relations between the prisoners and staff were very strained. Vindictive warders made life as difficult as possible by rigidly applying a multitude of petty rules and regulations. The policy was to make the prisoners' lives hell and it appears that to a certain extent they succeeded. Political prisoners were kept for years in the very lowest classification grades, conditions were harsh, 'privileges' few, and hours out of cells short.
On Robben Island the black prisoners were frequently beaten, overworked and starved. Conditions were never quite so bad for the white prisoners, mainly because they were white, but also because most had access to prominent lawyers and the press. The publicity for the authorities would have been too negative if they had violated the prison regulations too seriously. In any case, because of their prejudices they found it more difficult to assault and mistreat white prisoners than black prisoners - not that they had any great sympathy for 'communists', as they saw us.
Over the years the warders' attitudes matured. They learned that by being harsh on the prisoners they made life more difficult for themselves. Bad publicity resulted and the working day was unpleasant. Warders are generally lazy creatures and only join the prisons to get out of military service or because they can't find employment elsewhere. To spend the time chasing prisoners meant less time to read comics and newspapers, to sit and smoke pipes or do nothing. They also learned that if they were more relaxed the prisoners were more relaxed, caused fewer problems and were less inclined to want to get out. A relaxed atmosphere also meant that the prisoners would get on with their affairs openly and not resort to underhand activities.
None of us kowtowed to our jailers but neither did we seek confrontation. Our policy was to maintain a relationship of distance and least contact. This meant seeking a balance between obsequiousness and outright defiance. Some of us tended more towards the one extreme and some to the other. Alex was the most aggressive and defiant; Dave K the least. But on the whole we obeyed the prison regulations and related to our captors in a spirit of firmness and dignity.
In prison situations where the conditions are extremely harsh there is a case for confronting your jailers aggressively and defiantly, especially if there is nothing to lose by doing so and those outside can derive succour from your stand. But where the conditions are not so severe or there is little chance of the outside world hearing of your struggle, a permanent state of war becomes counter-productive. No one's nervous system can take the strain of confrontation for years on end and anyway there is no point in destroying yourself for your jailers' delight. Major political victories are difficult to achieve from inside a prison.
As disciplined members of a revolutionary organisation our duty was to do whatever was best for our organisation, and this was not to destroy ourselves for publicity's sake. We had to ensure that we would be of value to the Movement when we got out and this meant keeping ourselves healthy both physically and mentally. We had to keep ourselves informed of the current situation as best we could and advance our knowledge in such ways that we would be useful to the revolution later on.
Our attitude towards the prison staff paid dividends in that they accorded us with a certain measure of respect and treated us as partly-civilised humans rather than as animals, which was how they treated ordinary prisoners, especially black prisoners. They knew it was unlikely that they would ever be assaulted by one of us and for this reason some of the usual security measures that applied in other prisons did not apply in ours. Searches, for instance, were seldom and perfunctory. Sometimes the only sign that they'd been through your cell was a ruffled bedspread. They never found anything illicit so searches became a matter of mere routine. Never, while I was there at least, were we subjected to a thorough or humiliating body search. Occasionally they would go through our pockets, but even when they did there would be indications beforehand that something was afoot.
This trust in us had other small consequences which made life just that much more bearable. Ours was probably the only prison in the country where the prisoners were allowed to eat with knives and forks off proper china plates. In other prisons the prisoners were forced to eat with spoons out of steel dixies and in some of the most dangerous prisons even the handles of the spoons were removed. We were allowed to prepare food for ourselves from purchases made from our allowances and generally possess all manner of objects and substances normally considered dangerous.
As we were generally well-mannered and well-behaved, the warders did not find it necessary to watch over us very closely. In the mornings after opening our cells they would leave us alone in the section before letting us out into the yard. This gave us time to hide any contraband that we'd had out for the night. Most times while we were in the yard there would only be one or two warders in attendance. They paid scant attention to what we were doing and preferred to spend their time talking to each other or dreaming about their cars and girlfriends. In the workshop only one warder watched over us, and as they were not required to give any advice or assistance - and were usually incapable of doing so anyway - they invariably fell into a trance or stood in the doorway looking wistfully into the yard. There were seldom warders in attendance during mealtimes and if there were it was not because they were intent on watching us eat but because they got bored watching nothing in the yard. At shower-time and on Friday mornings when we were cleaning our section there would be no warders in attendance at all. These periods on our own provided us with ample opportunity to get on with our 'illegal' activities.
Our 'good' behaviour fooled our jailers into thinking that we were all totally reconciled to our fate. Some of them even believed that as 'communists' we were proud of being in prison and were using our imprisonment to show the world that we were strong and could cope with any adversity. Stephen and I attempted to appear more resigned than the others but we had an advantage in that we did not have any past history to weigh us down. We kept our cells clean and tidy, dressed neatly and generally avoided giving the warders any cause to criticise us. It was important to make them feel that you respected and feared their authority. The urge to tease and taunt had to be suppressed and responses of anger, rudeness and arrogance avoided. When they spoke to us we attempted to appear intimidated and obediently carried out orders or instructions given to us.
Alex, unfortunately, had a bad reputation among the warders and officers. He was often rude and would visibly display his reluctance to respond to orders. He would laugh at new warders who attempted to throw their weight around or who tried to discipline him. He refused to keep his cell clean and tidy and his appearance was generally scruffy. For this reason he had never been promoted beyond 'B' group in his six years in prison; other prisoners had reached 'A' group within two. Not that this mattered a damn to Alex but his attitude had to change if he was going to give the impression that he was at last 'settling in' and not thriving on thoughts outside the prison.
After the escape idea had taken hold of him, Alex pulled up his socks: he began to dust down his cell. Within a few months his change of heart was noticed and he was 'rewarded' with a promotion to 'A' group. They thought that their magnanimous gesture had won him over, that he had been reformed, that he was going to give no more trouble. Little did they know...
For the first nine months of our sentence Captain Schnepel was the head of the prison. He was a bumptious old dog who imagined he instilled fear into everybody, but whose bark was worse than his bite. He was so grossly overweight and unfit that he had to take a break to catch his breath when he walked across the yard. His face would turn red and his handlebar moustache would twitch up and down in tune with his panting. You could often not make out what he was saying under his snorting and puffing. To get across his message he would shout, but his mind was slower than his voice. He could never tell whether the comrades were having him on or not.
Captain Schnepel - 'Schneppie' we called him - was of the old school of warders. He believed that a bandiet was a bandiet and a 'communist' was a 'communist'. He had only contempt for the young guard who believed that you could look at a prisoner other than as a bandiet and a 'communist' other than as a 'communist'. He had been in charge of the politicals more or less from the start and had only become more lenient towards them because it was in his own interest, not because he had softened towards the 'communists'.
Why Schnepel was placed in charge of political prisoners I could never understand, because the question of political prisoners was a very sensitive one for the regime and he did nothing to make it easier for them. He had an abrasive personality and had annoyed countless visitors with his caprice, unreasonableness and irrationality. Perhaps his tenure had something to do with the internal politics of the Prisons Service, a residue of the old guard in a battle for ascendency by the new school with their degrees and university theories.
In the first half of 1979 Schnepel was replaced by a sour-faced dwarf of a Captain by the name of Venter. Captain Venter had a face that had spent most of its life contorted into a scowl. The grimace had become permanently engraved so that even when he was smiling he looked miserable. He was a more constant personality than Schnepel and for this reason Steve and I guardedly welcomed the change. We had found it almost impossible to communicate with Schnepel, but the older guys said that they'd learned to handle him and that they preferred to stick with the devil they knew.
The advent of Venter brought rumours of 'big changes'. We wondered what these would be. Had he been brought in because the authorities had got wind of what we were planning? Would he scour the prison to start off on a clean sheet? Would he introduce new security measures? Only time would tell.
Within a month or two it became clear that nothing of the sort was about to happen. The atmosphere became more relaxed and the governors became more responsive to our demands and requests. While Venter tried to appear firm and in control he was really a weak man. Clearly he had personal problems, for he would often reek of alcohol. It did not take long for the prison staff to nickname him 'Half-Jack'.
The change of Captains was not the only change in staff during our time: there was a tremendously high turnover of warders. Twice a year there would be an influx of pimply-faced youngsters fresh from prison college. Some of these new recruits were only 18 years of age and found it difficult to address us by the stipulated surname only. Sometimes one of them would preface a name with a 'Mister' and we would laugh them out of our presence in embarrassment.
Warders who served in our prison were thoroughly briefed on how to handle the 'communists': there was to be no talking to them except to give instructions and they were to be watched extra carefully because they were slim - treacherous. It took a few months for them to learn that we were not monsters but ordinary people, not at all like the criminals and gangsters they'd been taught about at college.
This high turnover of staff had both advantages and disadvantages for us. It took a while to get to know the whims and habits of particular warders and consequently we felt more at ease with those who had been around for longer. New warders were unpredictable and some would deliberately do things to try to catch us out. The obverse applied from their perspective: older warders knew our behaviour better and were able to detect changed patterns; new warders would not know what to expect. We were able to use both these factors to our advantage. For instance, we would only test our number twos at night when warders whose behaviour we knew well were on duty. Later on we took advantage of newly-arrived warders to do things which we would not have contemplated had older warders been on duty.
It is probably true of warders throughout the world that they are not the brightest of creatures. This is no doubt due to the fact that the job is one without much status and hence does not attract the nation's geniuses. Some of the specimens who worked in our prison were close to borderline cases. There was one warder, unfortunately named Van der Merwe (a butt of dunce jokes in South Africa), whom Alex nicknamed 'Mongo' after a particularly thick character who rode an ox in the American comedy-western, Blazing Saddles. Van der Merwe was definitely half-man, half-brute. When he was on duty on the pos he would march up and down with his arms flailing to the accompaniment of his own voice shouting 'left, right'. He was once discovered in the toilet attempting to see from how far back his stream of piss would still reach the wall. It must have been a world record. Another time he was found having fisticuffs with a grille and challenging it to hit back.
On the whole it was difficult for us to judge the warders correctly, as they were not really in their element. Most of them were Afrikaans-speaking and could not understand English properly. Although most of us were fairly fluent in Afrikaans we were not familiar with their everyday topics of conversation. Also, ours was not really a prison in the sense in which they had been trained to serve. They were instructed to treat us differently to ordinary prisoners and to avoid human contact as far as possible. As such the job was extremely boring and soul-destroying, which accounted for the large number of resignations and transfers.
Although the warders were just doing a job they were wittingly or unwittingly playing a political role which one day they will have to account for. This applies especially to the officers who knew what the game was all about. They in particular have been responsible for keeping some of our best people behind bars for so long. How many years of lives have they wasted? How much have they contributed to the continued existence of the apartheid regime? ...We know.
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