11 October 1983
For 24 years I have been closely involved in humanitarian aid to victims of apartheid. I have seen the concept of apartheid grow into the symbol of evil. I have during that time acquired many friends for life inside and outside South Africa. I have been refused re-entry into South Africa, but I have worked for the liberation of the political prisoners and indeed for the majority of the people to the best of my ability, as a close associate during two decades of Canon John Collins, of the International Defence and Aid Fund for South Africa, as the founder in 1959 of the Swedish South Africa Committee, as a member of the Swedish Government Commission on aid to African liberation movements, and most of all as a writer of books and articles on racism.
The South African regime has no other argument than brute force; it does not permit, except to a limited degree, a free exchange of opinions. Many political prisoners - like Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Water Sisulu - are of long standing. Others are not labelled as such by the Government of South Africa, though they clearly belong to that category.
I was baptized into the sufferings and the resistance of Africans when in May 1959 I attended a now legendary meeting in Gandhi Hall in Johannesburg. Chief Albert Luthuli was banned on his arrival; I talked to him at the railway station. In Gandhi Hall leaders like Oliver Tambo, Duma Nokwe and Lilian Ngoyi spoke. Suddenly armed police rushed in and declared the meeting illegal. The audience rose and sang "Nkosi Sikele Afrika". Oliver Tambo urged us to disband quietly, among police and dogs.
Later that week on my way from Orlando in Soweto one evening I saw a group. Of Africans chained to one another at a street corner. I stopped my car and asked the police sergeant what was going on. He looked around in some astonishment and replied "Nothing." "Nothing" - for he could not imagine that I was asking about the Africans. When the reply to what is happening in South Africa is merely "Nothing", then we ourselves, the opponents of apartheid, must provide an answer. And that is what we should do on this day and on all other days until apartheid becomes a word in the history books that children find it difficult to pronounce.
"Silence is full of words we never got to say", wrote Agostinho Neto, the former President of Angola, himself for long a political prisoner. During most of that time he had no other pen than his nails, no paper except the walls. The outer world was only another insensible wall, the retracted breath of indifference, as he wrote.
When one talks to released political prisoners, they often mention three things that have kept them alive: the knowledge that the exterior world has not forgotten them; the conviction that they are gaoled for something meaningful that can be of help to many; and the memories of an everyday life with a freedom of choice they were hardly aware of until they were in prison.
A political prisoner is a face, a voice, a witness, a hope. He is someone existing somewhere right now, awaiting our signal, trusting in our empathy. He dwells in a silence condensed from what he has not been allowed to express.
For us to hear the voices from inside the walls, from the inside of suffering, imagination is needed. Patience is also required, and time, in order to find the wavelengths and to avoid the jamming stations. But we are not the ones who lack time; it is the prisoners who lack time, because they lose time and life.
So when the police sergeant at the street corner in Johannesburg says "Nothing" and sees nobody, though there are prisoners everywhere in his country, it is left to us to provide the answer. "Nothing" to him is everything to us, and nobody is somebody who is imprisoned today for his opinions, under racist laws that insult the dignity of man.