The top anti-apartheid human rights lawyer, who was famously part of the legal team that defended Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and Walter Sisulu at the Rivonia Treason Trial, died of ‘natural causes’ on Wednesday at the age of 92.  



When he was once asked to speak about George Bizos, former South African president Nelson Mandela said: “I don’t think words can sufficiently express our indebtedness to men and women like George Bizos.”&nbsp;



The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF), as well as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, confirmed the passing of the lawyer who advocated and campaigned against apartheid.&nbsp;



“Another giant of South African history and of global struggles for justice has fallen,” the foundation’s Chief Executive Sello Hatang said in a statement. &nbsp;



“The news of George Bizos&#8217; passing is sad news for us in South Africa&#8230; He contributed immensely to the attainment of our democracy,” said Ramaphosa, during an engagement with the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) on Wednesday evening. &nbsp;



Ramaphosa also stated in the briefing that he had spoken to Bizos two months ago and it did appear that his “health was already not in good shape”. &nbsp;



“Today, as we mourn George’s passing, we acknowledge his role in shaping the democracy we all enjoy today. He is, without a doubt, a hero of the struggle. South Africa has lost another exceptional son,” said filmmaker Anant Singh, who made the Mandela biopic,&nbsp;The Long Walk to Freedom. &nbsp;



Beyond the trial, Mandela’s and Bizos’s seven-decade friendship was “legendary”. Recalling their friendship in its statement, the NMF noted how in the last years of Mandela’s life, Bizos and the former president were often found together sharing memories or heading off to see places of significance in their life journeys.&nbsp;



“He was really devoted to the cause,” Mandela said of Bizos, according to NMF. “When he appeared for us, he did not do so as a man who is appearing for strangers, he did so as his contribution to a great cause to which we were all committed.”&nbsp;



Bizos met Mandela while studying at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1941. While practicing to be an attorney, Bizos became an activist for the African National Congress. From the 1950s, Bizos was often called to defend Mandela in court, including when he was part of the Madiba defense team for the Rivonia Trial in 1963. &nbsp;



“He had an incisive legal mind and was one of the architects of our constitution,&#8221; Ramaphosa said in his message.

TO GO WITH A STORY BY Abhik Kumar Chanda

Remembering A Hero: South Africans Mourn The Demise Of George Bizos

This FORBES AFRICA photojournalist reflects on that moment when the late struggle hero recounted to him what turned him into a South African revolutionary.



It was in 2017 that I, a 29-year-old FORBES AFRICA photojournalist from Dobsonville, in the sprawling Soweto township of Johannesburg, landed in Cape Town, The Mother City, for the first time.



There were more firsts in store: my first trip to the infamous Long Street in the city for beer and banter with the locals. It was a long night, to be followed the next morning, with my meeting, for the first time, with the legendary Denis Goldberg of the 1963 Rivonia Trial.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The apartheid struggle veteran and hero had escaped the death sentence, along with former South African President, Nelson Mandela. Goldberg was the man who had excitedly shouted, “It’s life, life is wonderful”, after receiving his life sentence verdict.



I was to meet Goldberg at the Castle of Good Hope to speak about his then lawyer, Bram Fischer. It was a windy morning and sprinting towards the castle, I couldn’t keep a South African veteran waiting. 



I was on time, and as he walked towards me, I remember asking myself, ‘why wasn’t this man smoking a pipe and talking to us from his veranda at his home in Hout Bay’?



Our conversation lasted longer than expected; his stories were captivating as they took me to that time and space in my country before democracy.



And then, he took me to his childhood when he recalled vividly, his teacher, Miss Cook.



“Miss Cook was blonde, brilliant, and beautiful, with lovely perfume. I was madly in love at the age of six. But we had a kid in the class that looked different and spoke funny. One morning, Miss Cook’s watch had disappeared from her desk and she was very upset, but she used it to educate us because we blamed Noelen. She got us to understand that we were blaming Noelen not because we saw him [take the watch], but because he was different. He was an outcast, his clothes were dirty; it was a school for white boys in 1939,” recalled Goldberg.



That incident changed his life; it helped turn him into a revolutionary, he said.



Goldberg was in prison for over two decades.



Sadly, the veteran, aged 87, died in South Africa last week. That windy morning in Cape Town will forever be etched on my mental camera.

Denis Goldberg 918

‘My First Time Meeting Denis Goldberg’

Farewell one of Mandela’s last survivors of his band of brothers.



I once asked Denis Goldberg what he thought of one of his high-ranking former comrades taking R500,000 in bribes from a crook.



“What a cheapskate!” came back the reply faster than a gunslinger’s bullet. I expected more pious reply, not with Denis.



“He has sold out his job, his country, his beliefs, his politics and his morals – for half a million bucks?”



Denis said it with that deadpan look on his face. Believe me, he was dead serious and angry, but his expression dissolved into that famous smile of his that made you think we frail human beings all make mistakes.



That was Denis and his attitude in a nutshell – he was principled and far from enamoured, in later years, with all that was going on in the government that he fought to put in power and was never afraid to say so; and yet, he never forgot that we are all human and vulnerable, something that fueled his tireless charity work.



I first met Denis at his home near the crashing waves of Hout Bay, near Cape Town, the city where he was born and should have lived out his days as a comfortable engineer in the suburbs. Instead, he spent years training revolutionaries in the art of warfare and making bombs.



We got to know each other during the making of a three-hour documentary, Liliesleaf – The Untold Story, for CNBC Africa on the Rivonia trial, in 1963, where he faced the death penalty with Nelson Mandela. We kept in touch down the years with lunch, a phone call and the odd laugh about the absurdity of politics.



I shall never forget the warm, human story he told on that summer day back in 2009 about how he sneaked small squares of chocolate to a chained and emaciated Mandela, in short trousers, who police had dragged from prison to face sabotage charges.



“You don’t get sweeteners in prison,” said Goldberg with a smile.



Alongside Mandela, on that day, were the leading lights of the liberation movement: Walter Sisulu; Govan Mbeki; Ray Mhlaba; Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada. Only Mlangeni, who will be 95 in June, survives. &nbsp;



The authorities hoped they would put them away forever. They nearly succeeded and certainly set back the liberation of South Africa by decades by incarcerating the leaders of the movement for life.



“’There was Mandela standing in the dock defiantly and forcing the judge to look him in the eye,” Goldberg said as if the hearing were yesterday at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.



For some reason, Denis and I got on like a house on fire. He reminded me of my grandfathers – a hard man ready to fight for what was right, yet humane and compassionate with it.



The tough side of him came out in that interview. He told how the special branch officers used to taunt him across the courtroom, as the evidence was presented, by running their forefingers across their throats with a grin of death.



“I had to think about how to respond and in the end I did this back…” says Denis giving it the middle finger. Anyone who can give the finger to their captors in the shadow of death is tough enough.



Then, when he was relating the harrowing tale of his fractured relationship with his daughter, Hilary, came out the old soldier hide of granite.



It was a sorrowful tale. Denis’s daughter worshipped him from afar as a latter day Robin Hood in the 20 years he was in prison. When he was released in 1984, they were reunited in Israel. A few months later, the two fell out. It started when Hilary filtered the pile of hate mail from his daily post.



“I told her, Hilary, Hilly, you are trying to control me like they did in prison,” he said.&nbsp;



It all blew up. An angry Hilary told her father he had never been around and was always away fighting the struggle, you could see the pain on Denis’s face.



“It took five years and a lot of counseling, but we reconciled. Unfortunately, shortly after that, she died.”



By this time, both the young cameraman and myself, I am not ashamed to say this, had cast off our professional masks and had tears rolling down our cheeks.



“What’s the matter with you guys?” shot back Goldberg in mock outrage.



“I thought journalists were supposed to be tough. I don’t know, the journalists of today!”



Then we all laughed, once again Denis had made people feel they would see the sun tomorrow.



His humour was legendary, as was his compassion. He once told me that he was handed three life sentences but was given a bulk discount and only served one. On the other side of the coin, he told me of the horror of lying in his cell listening to condemned men screaming as warders dragged them to the gallows. It was pure Denis that he learned the guitar so he could play a heartfelt musical tribute to the condemned.



Only Denis could have led the laughter in court when he and his comrades slipped the noose.



“Life and life is wonderful,” he called out when someone asked the verdict of the dock.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Amid all the laughter, sound and fury of the life of Denis Goldberg, there is one cool winter’s afternoon that I will always remember him by. It was at Liliesleaf , in 2013, at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the raid on Rivonia that led him to spending 20 years in prison.



It was a draining day for an 80-year-old. There were journalists asking questions and taking pictures everywhere. Denis was patient and explained his story to those too young and green to know, but as the day wore on, I could see he was getting tired. It was a Rivonia reunion with lawyers Joel Joffe, who became an insurance tycoon in Britain, and George Bizos, still fighting the good fight, there to reminisce with the men they saved from the noose.



On top of that, Denis had to settle a 50-year-old grudge with the late Bob Hepple, a former comrade who was up to his neck in the sabotage trial. He had negotiated his way out of police cells with a decision to turn state witness that led to him skipping the country to a knighthood and a comfortable life as a professor at Cambridge University.



“At the time, I told him you do this and people will cross the street to avoid you,” Denis told me.



To rub salt in the wound, Hepple sent Denis, insensitively, a Christmas card in prison in his first year of incarceration. Fifty years later, Denis shook hands with Hepple and buried the grudge with good humour.



My abiding memory of Denis came later on that day as the sunlight dimmed along with his fading energy. A young schoolgirl, in uniform, who must have been about 13, approached him as he was heading for the car to take him to the hotel.



“Excuse me, Mr Goldberg, I am doing my school project on the Rivonia trial, can I talk to you?” she says. Even I thought an exhausted Denis was going to decline politely, but he sat down and smiled.



More than an hour later I saw Denis sitting at the table telling patiently his story to the school girl making copious notes. Maybe she will fight for freedom one day too.



I smiled and walked away. That was Denis and I was proud to have known him.

Denis Goldberg – The Gentle Lion Of The Struggle

Yvonne Malan still gets threats more than 13 years after a campaign for a posthumous degree for Bram Fischer. She fled her African home for England after the furore that brought down wrath that has left her looking over her shoulder for more than a decade.
In the early years of this century, Malan was a young researcher at Stellenbosch University, in the Western Cape. She nominated lawyer Fischer for an honorary law degree, saying it was long overdue.
Fischer was the leader of the legal team in the Rivonia Trial that saved Nelson Mandela from the gallows in 1964; he was vilified by his own people and suffered, for years, from cancer, in prison. When he died, not even his ashes were handed to his family. The apartheid authorities also tried to erase him from history; his image was banned until South Africa’s transition to democracy.
<blockquote>“As a kid, I saw an old history book with one of the pre-1994 photos with Fischer’s face whitened out. It was terrible, it really shocked me that you could just erase someone from history like that,” says Malan from London.</blockquote>
Malan is the grandchild of refugees who fled Nazi Germany in fear of their lives. Her family was all too aware of people being erased from history, she says.
Years into democracy, Malan nominated Fischer to the university’s council and honorary degrees committee. The nomination was accepted with mixed feelings. The university granted an honorary doctorate in law in 2004. It was received by his daughter Ilse Fischer.
But later, newspapers came out strongly against the degree, kicking off a campaign to have it revoked, says Malan.
“This was led by senior Naspers members, a regular columnist for the Naspers papers, a few apartheid-era National Party ministers and MPs, and the [alumni body]. Since they all knew there was no mechanism for the university to revoke the degree, they used the Naspers papers and what one Stellenbosch University academic described as ‘Stalinist tactics’ to attack Fischer as a person and myself as the nominator.”
Naspers refused to talk to FORBES AFRICA regarding the allegations.
This led to months of death threats and assaults. Attackers cracked her ribs and pushed her around. It forced her, after 300 days of chaos, to leave for Oxford, in 2005, to study. Thirteen years on, Malan still looks over her shoulder.
“As to why Afrikaners became so angry, many saw, and still see, Fischer as a volksveraaier (traitor to his people). Secondly, Naspers journos and certain Afrikaner historians proclaimed that Fischer wanted a race war/genocide in South Africa. They never cited any proof, and had they bothered to read Fischer’s remarkable statement from the dock, they would have known that he wanted to avoid violence. Still, many Naspers readers bought this lie and it played a big role in the so-called Fischer ‘debate’ spinning out of control. Thirdly, they claimed that, as a Communist, he was responsible for all the evils committed in the name of the ideology. And that Communism was far worse than apartheid,” says Malan.
In 2017, on a windy Wednesday morning, we follow the Fischer story to the Castle Of Good Hope, in Cape Town. FORBES AFRICA visits 84-year-old veteran, and one of South Africa’s struggle heroes, Denis Goldberg, who escaped the death sentence with Mandela through a defence led by Fischer. Goldberg was the prisoner who eased the last painful days of Fischer in jail.
Goldberg made a walking stick for him, which was confiscated because prison authorities thought it could be used as a weapon. Fischer spent his dying days in his prison bed with Goldberg at his side.
“Bram Fischer gets arrested, Bram Fischer defended us, he was often at Lilliesleaf (a farm used as an underground hideout in Johannesburg), and the farm workers at Lilliesleaf knew him. And then it was strange seeing a man arrive in his beautiful car, his beautiful hat, suit, tie, and briefcase – the perfect life – come to the headquarters of uMkhonto we Sizwe with geese at the farm. But Bram, being a country boy, just walked through them,” he recalls.
<div id="attachment_32738" style="width: 234px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32738" class="size-medium wp-image-32738" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Bram-Fischer-01-224x300.jpg" alt="Bram Fischer" width="224" height="300" />Bram Fischer (Photo by Jacana Media archives)</div>
The Rivonia Trial could have seen Fischer also facing the death penalty. During the trial, the prosecutor presented documents which had Fischer’s fingerprints, along with prints of other members of the Communist Party, and a letter in Fischer’s handwriting.
“The prosecutor said, ‘There is a document here, that if we knew who the author was, he would be on trial with the accused too.’ while looking at Fischer, because they knew it was his writing,” says Goldberg.
“But they didn’t want to arrest him, so Bram played this political game with them to defend us. I believe by his very careful work and careful understanding of his politics, of what we were doing, was able to convince the judge that while we were talking about an armed uprising, we’d not made that decision, and that was a key moment in that trial.”
With the help of Fischer’s argument in court, the judge gave the accused a life sentence for sabotage instead of death.
“My mother calls up to me and asked what it is. I told her its life, life is wonderful,” laughs Goldberg.
In the end, years later, the authorities got Fischer. They charged him for forging a driver’s license and using a false name and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
“In prison he was absolutely strong. As he develops cancer, he becomes very ill. He was very unhappy that the accused could see that he wasn’t well because Fischer didn’t want to burden anyone with his problems,” says Goldberg.
Fischer was worried about everyone but himself, recalls his cell mate.
<blockquote>“He just wouldn’t show, he wouldn’t show pain, he wouldn’t show pain,” he says.</blockquote>
Fischer eventually got treatment, but it was too late.
Today he is remembered with the Bram Fischer International Airport in Bloemfontein and a play by Harry Kalmer called Bram Fischer Waltz. Plus a disputed honorary degree at Stellenbosch.

The Painful Price Of Courage

Every morning, as the sun rises over the deep blue of Hout Bay near Cape Town, you can catch a glimpse of one of the last survivors of the men who faced death with Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial in 1964.
Denis Goldberg retired to the light and air of Hout Bay, maybe to banish the dark of his stinking Pretoria prison cell where he was incarcerated for 22 years. Here he learned a few sad notes to feed sad souls. As condemned men waited to hang, they would sing their last song. Goldberg taught himself to play along on guitar and recorder.
“I was never good enough to play by ear, but somehow when those men sang, the chords just came to me. When I left, I felt sad that no one was going to hear those notes from my recorder again,” he says.
Fast forward 50 years to a lighter world above the crashing surf of Hout Bay and yet there is no escape from the ills of South Africa.
“I read the negativity, day after day, because scandals sell newspapers; the newspapers which used to be a place of solid analysis for developing ideas and finding solutions to problems. What you read is the absurdity that South Africa is worse today, than what it was under apartheid. How can that be?”
On the walls around him is African art; an unspoken statement against the bleak walls of prison. Goldberg points to a portrait of an elegant black man writing in a book.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4997" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SONA2016_Jay-Caboz-3-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“He’s not protesting; he’s not toyi-toying; he’s not at a political rally. It turns out that the artist is an anaesthetist and has presumably done a portrait of a colleague in a hospital, writing his diary at the end of the day. A white artist is painting an intellectual activity of a black South African. That for me reflects everything we fought for,” says Goldberg.
These pictures of hope contrast with the less hopeful picture of leadership in Africa.
“Perceptions are important in politics. I have to say President (Jacob) Zuma has played a heroic role in developing the country. He was a herd boy, who gained an education, one way or another, school education, by reading and reading. If you talk to him and speak to him off the cuff, he really is an extremely well-read person in politics. In a discussion, he is fluent and his ideas are fluent. His role in the ANC intelligence apparatus, it was enormous. Creating peace in KwaZulu-Natal, negotiating with leaders brought peace. Mandela started negotiations in Rwanda, Zuma brought them to a climax. That’s his ability. Now, I believe sadly, this circle around him is stealing the democracy of our people.”
Despite misgivings, Goldberg believes that the ANC is the only hope of closing the gap between the rich and poor.
“To oppose the crony economy we have allowed to develop; it’s not going to happen overnight, but we have to start.”
Goldberg says it’s high time to root out corruption.
“[In 1994], one of the first things that happened was new ANC members of Parliament demanded of Nelson Mandela a salary increase&#8230;When I said to leading members, ‘why are you looking for this huge increase in salaries, which puts you at the level of white management?’ Their answer was ‘do you think we are not worthy of it because we are black?’”
In the days when Goldberg fought for education, he never dreamed he would see students wreck universities.
“It angers me that students, who are supposed to be the intellectual leaders of the future, don’t think and don’t know our history. Don’t they understand the history of South Africa, don’t they understand how far we’ve come in only 20 years?&#8230; Students who throw excrement over a statue think they have solved a problem. Does that solve the problem of accommodation or worker’s wages? What does it create&#8230; disgust, and I hope they get charged.”
The protests at Parliament?
“We have serious problems and we reduce them to petty insults, its outrageous behavior. The politics in the media and in Parliament has become politics of personality and not issues.”
Amid the turmoil of politics, Goldberg has a silver lining of his own. He wants to build a center where children can dance, play music and paint in the sea breezes of Hout Bay
“When I watch kids out of the townships, with their patched best clothes, walking up and down with their violins, it’s a joy. Even if they don’t play the damned instrument properly, they had the opportunity to find themselves.”
A search he knew all too well, 50 years ago, when he played along to sad, condemned, voices.

Lament For A Stolen Dream

Ahmed Kathrada looked frail, but fit and always on the move, as he trod the concrete of his former prison. In the so-called Rivonia Trial, Kathrada was accused number five alongside Nelson Mandela and eight others. They were charged with sabotage and faced death. Instead a young Kathrada and his co-accused were shipped to Robben Island to serve life imprisonment in 1964.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3703" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Robben_Island_Event_LR_058-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“We found out only later that life was to be life,” he says.
Kathrada spent 18 years of hardship and humiliation on Robben Island, followed by spells in other prisons, before he was released in 1990. Now 85, he is one of three survivors of the trial.
As South Africa celebrated 21 years of freedom, in April, Kathrada was back on the island wearing a black baseball cap with the words ‘Long Walk To Freedom’. A sign that this was a trip laden with symbolism. Upon disembarking on the ferry, he rejected a shuttle and walked for about 200 meters to the jail that robbed him of his youth.
As he spoke, standing on concrete patch prisoners used as a tennis court, he held his old cell key in his left hand; to his right was Christo Brand, the jailer who kept his eye on Mandela. Brand was 18 years old when he joined the prison as a warder, he’s now a manager at the island’s museum.
“We have our jailer among us,” smiled Kathrada.
Being a prisoner was no laughing matter. Alongside Kathrada was Vusumzi Mcongo, a former prisoner and now a tour guide on the island.
Mcongo told FORBES AFRICA the guard dogs would attack prisoners when they worked in the quarry. If the prisoners fought back they were punished. Officers thought more of the dogs than the humans they guarded.
“Black prisoners wore shorts because were regarded as boys and the Indians had long trousers,” says Mcongo.
Kathrada was back on Robben Island, now a World Heritage Site, because Google had launched a virtual tour application. It means anyone in the world can tour Robben Island for free.
This is a world away from the years that Kathrada and fellow prisoners spent on the island before they were released in the 1990s; they were still living in the 1960s.
“The technology revolution passed us by. The warden came to us and said ‘we received a fax from Pretoria, you are getting released’, after slight jubilation we asked ‘what is a fax?’” says Kathrada.
When Kathrada came out of prison he had never seen a motorway, nor a computer, not even an ATM.
“Not being able to see or interact with children for 20 years was possibly the most difficult thing to endure during my time on the island. There’s a poetic justice that children in classrooms all over world will now be able to visit Robben Island using this technology,” says Kathrada.
Kathrada, his friends called him Kathy, was a librarian in prison and earned an honours degree in history; he also became a father figure.
“There was a 15-year-old boy here, he was sentenced to 10 years. He did his matric here, his BA here, he started his B Juris here but completed it outside. Today, he’s the Deputy Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court – Justice Dikgang Moseneke – that was the boy,” says Kathrada proudly.
Long before Kathrada and his comrades were arrested, Xhosa Chief, Makana Nxele, was in chains on Robben Island. Nxele led a Xhosa regiment against the British in the Eastern Cape and was captured in 1819. In 1820, in an attempt to escape, Nxele swam from the island; guards caught him when he reached the beach at Blouberg, near Cape Town. The armed guards forced him to swim back. On the way back he drowned. You can google the rest.

Cyberspace Creeps Up  On The Island of Tears

Denis Goldberg, who faced death with Nelson Mandela in the 1964 Rivonia Trial, was in a TV studio in London commenting on the great man’s release from prison.
Goldberg was released before the others after 22 years.
“I was absolutely confident that I was the start of a process. I wanted to be out to play a role in the liberation of South Africa. I was tired of being a symbol locked up in prison and I thought the time had come to move things along. There was the offer of releases and unconditionally releases, I decided to accept because I didn’t want PW Botha’s offer in 1985 just to evaporate into thin air, he made the offer out of weakness not strength, that’s the important part,” says Goldberg.
“I was able to tell the story of how the day we were sentenced, the head of the prison security said we should have been hanged and will never walk out of prison on our own two feet; they’d carry us out in a coffin. And then Nelson Mandela stopped the car he was in and he and his then wife Winnie Mandela walked out holding their hands into freedom, and the rest is history. I was able to tell that story. We survived and the old security colonel had passed away.”
Goldberg has many memories of Mandela but one that sticks in the mind is their first encounter after prison.
“He said to me, ‘hello boy it’s been a long time. He always called me boy because I was so much younger then he was. It was very sweet and touching. I also remember a bit later when we met again in Sweden, my wife and my daughter had to meet him. He greeted my wife rather stiffly not knowing who she is and when I introduced her, he bent down from his great height and whispered to her, ‘the boy is looking good you must be looking after him very well.’”
Zakhe Khuzwayo, Group CFO of InnoVent, was 14 years old and at boarding school at Hilton College in Pietermaritzburg. The school was dismissed early so they could watch Mandela’s first walk as a free man.
“The man was an enigma, I think I had seen a photograph of him when I was younger, I didn’t know what to expect. I guess it was more exciting and anxiety to see who this guy is and see what he actually looks like,” says Khuzwayo.
Twenty five years later, Khuzwayo runs his own company and enjoys much of the freedom ushered in by the release of Mandela.
“His role was instrumental in what this country actually became,”
says Khuzwayo.
Political analyst Thapelo Tselapedi was four years old in 1990 and remembers the humble Toyota Cressida that Mandela rode through Cape Town in. He also remembers seeing the man in the flesh four years later.
“In 1994, when I was eight, we went to the Mafikeng stadium where he was speaking. After he spoke, my sister ran to him to him to try and get an autograph. Nelson Mandela was surrounded by his bodyguards and my brother and I tried to go in and get an autograph but we couldn’t. My sister was the only one who managed to get one. She got in, got her autograph, he shook her hand and then she got out. I was sad that I couldn’t break through, but my sister always kept that autograph in her room, it was very nice,” recalls Tselapedi.
A quarter of a century later, his feelings are bittersweet.
“Sweet because he has to do the impossible to calm down black people but at the same it seemed to not have been enough as it was limited by the interests that the white people had also wanted, he had to find a home for everyone and that meant compromise. The bittersweet part is characterized by where black people are now versus where white people are.”
Like Tselapedi, Goldberg has his opinions.
“I am still optimistic but I am also distressed. I am optimistic because we have achieved so much despite our weakness, despite the legacy of apartheid leaving us with an inadequate civil service, with half the population illiterate, half the population unemployed and we’ve come a long way since then and the conditions of people have undoubtedly improved. My sadness is the corruption and what I call the patronage society,” says Goldberg.
The man who stared down death with Mandela feels his country has a long way
to go.

‘I Am Still Optimistic But  I Am Also Distressed’

When the music pumped, Andrew Mlangeni jived onto the dance floor – carrying with him the spirit of the men with whom he faced death half a century ago. Fiery and defiant, dancing with the female vocalist of the band. Everyone stood and cheered.
“Mlangeni, wherever your fellow Rivonia peers are, they are proud of you,” says Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, one of the men who played music.
For a moment, you could almost imagine a fortune teller putting his hand on Mlangeni’s shoulder, as he faced the death penalty for sabotage on that cold winter’s morning in April 1964, in Pretoria.
“Don’t worry young man, you will live, see your country free, and 50 years later you will dance in celebration with a woman a third of your age.”
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You couldn’t make up a story like that; a story of Mlangeni, Nelson Mandela and the Rivonia Trial. Indeed, Mlangeni was unlucky to be arrested at all, on that gloomy winter night in July 1963, and even luckier to survive. Mlangeni was asleep at his home in Dube, Soweto, where he lives to this day, when police came to arrest him. They had already picked up his late friend Elias Motsoaledi, who was in the back of the police car. Because the detectives had been brought in from outside Johannesburg, to clamp down on dissent, they didn’t know Soweto and drove past Mlangeni’s home several times.
“Motsoaledi told me that he was saying to himself ‘can’t this man wake up and run?’” says Mlangeni nearly half a century later.
Police eventually found Mlangeni’s back door, for which they had a key, and woke him in bed to tell him he was under 90-day arrest. It was 26 years before he set foot in his home again.
In Johannesburg Fort, that night, special branch officers put a cloth bag over Mlangeni’s head and poured water through it. The water seeped into his lungs and soon he was drowning. Close to the moment of death a special branch officer punched Mlangeni in the stomach. The force of it blew the water from his lungs and saved Mlangeni’s life.
This was the spirit Mlangeni brought to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rivonia Trial at Liliesleaf Farm on April 20. Mlangeni is one of the three survivors of the Rivonia trial &#8211; so called because that is where the arrests were made. Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg are other survivors of the 10 accused. Kathrada and Goldberg were traveling overseas, so Mlangeni held the fort on the dance floor.
The festivities were to commemorate the famous three-hour speech Mandela read from the dock before sentencing. On behalf of his co-accused, Mandela declared he was prepared to die for freedom.
“Comrade Mandela’s job was to make a political statement, about our struggle, about the suffering of our people, about the regime killing our people, banning our people, sending our leaders to exile. He spoke on our behalf when he said those words ‘If it need be, I am prepared to die’. It was a speech that affected the feelings of everybody in the country and abroad,” says Mlangeni.
“When the Rivonia trialists were arrested, I must have been 12 years old. My father walked into the house angry, I knew something was wrong. And this something that remained in our minds for many years… We celebrated it and, at some stage, I felt that that particular speech should resonate with what we do. We should be guided as musicians by those activities,” says Mabuse.
Mlangeni had the crowd in stitches as he recalled how he and his late friend Motsoaledi, father of the health minister Aaron Motsoaledi, could have been easily hanged. The two were responsible for a number of Umkhonto we Sizwe operations, the armed wing of the African National Congress. They took advice not to give evidence.
“All of the other accused took to the witness box, but in the case of comrade Motsoaledi and I, we were not to go to the witness stand. It was felt that if we went to the witness stand, the prosecutor would slaughter us, he would really cut us to pieces.”
Mlangeni is living proof that you cannot suppress a good man forever.

The Spirited Survivor Jive

For days, it had been tense in the cells beneath the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, in an eight-month trial punctuated by fear, loathing and laughter. For Nelson Mandela and his co-defendants, it was to prove a harrowing dance with the death penalty. Mandela was convinced he was going to die, according to his fellow defendants, and had started passing on his wishes to his fellow accused Denis Goldberg.
“He thought he was going to hang,” says Goldberg.
There was a good chance that they were going to hang. All were charged with sabotage against the apartheid regime. It was an accusation so serious that, if the prosecution proved a case to answer, the onus was on the accused to prove innocence—rather than being innocent until proven guilty.
The ambitious prosecutor, Percy Yutar, laid on the evidence with a shovel. He painted Mandela and co as desperate terrorists who had enough explosives to blow up Johannesburg. In giving evidence, Yutar would occasionally turn and smile to the special branch men in the gallery. Goldberg recalls how the special branch men would look at him and draw a finger across their throats in a threat of death. Goldberg gestured back with a jerk of the middle finger.
The antagonism worsened. Yutar ventured to the calm intellectual, Walter Sisulu, that life for the black man in 1960s South Africa was not all that bad.
“I wish you could live for just one day as we are forced to do and you would not make such a remark,” flashed back an angry Sisulu.
There was laughter when Ahmed Kathrada, one of the three survivors of the trial, gave evidence in the witness box. He was asked about a man, clearly him, referred to in evidence merely as ‘K’. He was asked did he know anyone with a name beginning with the initial K?
“Khrushchev,” replied Kathrada, referring mischievously to the Soviet premier of the day to the laughter of his fellow accused.
It all led to one moment that was to transform the public perception of those in the dock from terrorists to freedom fighters—the Benjamin Franklins of Africa in the eyes of the world press, in the words of defence team member George Bizos. To kick off the defence, the accused had opted for a statement from the dock. Mandela led the way with a speech that took six hours and went down in history.
&#8220;I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.&#8221;
The late Arthur Chaskalson, then a young member of the defence team, told me in 2010: “There was a dramatic silence you could almost hear the silence in the court, you could feel it. It was absolutely quiet, not a sound.”
When the accused came up the steps to the court on June 12, 1964, they still thought they were going to hang. What they didn’t know was that a combination of the prosecution’s failure to press the case, diplomatic pressure and reluctance by the authorities to make martyrs out of them, was to save the necks of the Rivonia trialists.
When the judge almost whispered a life sentence, instead of death, the relieved trialists looked at each other and laughed out loud.
“Life and life is wonderful,” Goldberg says to his mother in the gallery.
More than 30 years later, Mandela, in one of his many shining acts of reconciliation, invited Yutar, the man who tried to hang him, to tea.
A few years later, Mandela opened the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, on February 14, 1995, that was to be led by Chaskalson. The next day, the court was to debate the death penalty and Mandela knew this was a moment for his impeccable timing.
&#8220;The last time I appeared in court was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death. Fortunately for myself and my colleagues we were not,” says Mandela.
“If he had been executed what would have happened?” asks Chaskalson in 2010.
I dread to think.

Death, Life  And Laughter

On a winter’s afternoon in July two men—born in the same country and infused with the same revolutionary fervor—will shake hands at the spot that changed their lives, to bury a 50-year-old grudge.
The men were among those arrested in the raid on Rivonia on July 11, 1963. Armed police with dogs used a delivery van, as a Trojan horse, to sneak into Liliesleaf Farm, in Rivonia; they arrested the entire leadership of the underground movement. The raid dealt a body blow to the South African liberation movement, not long after it had launched an armed struggle. In the resultant Rivonia Trial, Nelson Mandela, who had been in prison since his arrest in August 1962, was sentenced to life, along with his comrades.
The arrest at Liliesleaf was to send the lives of comrades Bob Hepple and Denis Goldberg spinning in opposite directions.
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Eighty-year-old Denis Goldberg—the bomb maker—who had returned from a trip to procure hand grenades, was arrested as he sat reading in the lounge. All were chained in a circle outside the thatched cottage, while the police encouraged their dogs to snap at them. He spent 22 years in prison after the judge handed him four life sentences.
“They gave me a 75% discount and I served only one,” laughs Goldberg, who often salves pain with humor.
It was a hard time in prison for Goldberg, who nursed the leader of his defense counsel, Bram Fischer, through his final days as he died of cancer. After the Rivonia Trial, Fischer had been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the state and sentenced to nine years.
In the other direction: Hepple suffered under interrogation; agreed to turn state witness; had charges withdrawn; skipped South Africa, via Botswana and Tanzania, for London; enrolled at Cambridge University, where he became a professor and a knight of the British realm.
Back in 1963, Hepple, the son of a former Johannesburg member of Parliament who was a meat wholesaler, Alex Hepple, was an underground activist, who had the misfortune of being at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. Police had also caught the entire leadership of the underground as they held a meeting in a thatched cottage at the back of Liliesleaf: Govan Mbeki; Ahmed Kathrada; Andrew Mlangeni and Walter Sisulu. Behind bars, all were interrogated. The severity of the situation dawned on Hepple.
“The prosecutor told me all of us could expect to be sentenced to death,” says Hepple.
“This was not the reason for my decision. I never intended to give evidence for the state, but saw the prosecution’s offer to release me as an opportunity to escape. I discussed this possibility beforehand with Mandela, who said I had to take a personal decision, but if I could get the prosecution to release me: ‘That would be excellent.’ Had they not released me, I would have refused to testify against the other defendants, when called to the witness box.”
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In the cells, the other defendants were not so comfortable, especially Goldberg.
“At the time it was very distressing, because he might give information about us. His father told him that the minister of police, B.J. Vorster, had said they have enough evidence to hang Bob. And that if he wanted to get out he had to give evidence. I’m very relieved that he left the country and did not give evidence. At the time, it was hard to swallow. Now that I look back over the years, it’s a long time ago and I know, from my own experience, that people can be broken under pressure. And I had to draw the distinction between those who were broken and gave evidence and those who simply stopped and did not give evidence. Bob didn’t give evidence in court anyway.”
Nearly half a century on, Hepple, accused number 11, recalls the moment he walked free from the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.
“As I left the dock, Mlangeni said: ‘I am glad you are getting out of this,’” he says.
A sour taste lingered. Years later, Goldberg says that Hepple sent him a birthday card to the Pretoria prison. Goldberg remembers this with a smile.
“I told my wife that I never want to hear from him ever again,” he says.
Goldberg, who is now retired in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, was released in 1985 and escorted onto a plane to Israel, where his daughter was living. He spent the rest of his struggle days organizing for the ANC in London.
In the early days of freedom, Goldberg went to a party in London where Hepple was also a guest. The host said he didn’t want any trouble and Goldberg assured him there would be none.
“I saw Bob at the party, I held out my hand, but he walked straight past me,” says Goldberg.
Hepple remembers it differently.
“I admire and respect Denis and the other trialists and am always happy to meet them. Denis may have forgotten that we shook hands at a party in London, sometime after his release.”
Hepple thrived in the United Kingdom and enjoyed a distinguished legal career culminating in becoming a Professor of Law at Cambridge University between 1995 and 2001. He was knighted by Prince Charles, who was deputizing for the Queen, in 2004. The irony of a former wild-eyed terrorist being knighted by one of the heads of the British establishment, surely could not have escaped him as he knelt with the sword on his shoulder.
“I honestly can’t remember what was going through my mind. I may have been remembering Mandela’s parting words to me that I will not be judged by the past, but rather how I conduct myself in the future,” says Hepple.
Goldberg could have heeded the same words. He travels the world speaking and raising money for health and education and is at peace with the past.
“It is fifty years ago, I don’t have any anger about it anymore and too many people did too many worse things of betraying us, killing our own people and yet they were accepted back into society. So I have no bitterness against Bob at all. I believe he says we did shake hands, but I don’t remember,” he says.
When the two men shake hands on July 8, at Liliesleaf, near the spot where they were arrested, at a ceremony to commemorate 50 years since the raid; it will be a fitting place to close a circle born of struggle and strife.

The Healing Of Handshakes

With a glint in his eye, Nelson Mandela used to introduce Arthur Chaskalson thus.
“This is my lawyer… he managed to get me 27 years in prison!”
Chaskalson used to tell the story, against himself, with a laugh. Like the great man himself, the veteran human rights lawyer was a man of impeccable integrity, who never took himself too seriously. Chaskalson was born in Johannesburg in 1931 and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand from where he graduated in 1954.
In court, Chaskalson was a serious man, who quit a lucrative practice to stand up for the oppressed. For the best part of half a century, he argued for human rights and freedom.
It was a passion forged at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1964, when Chaskalson was a young member of the team that defended Mandela in the famous Rivonia Trial. It was the trial where Mandela and a number of his comrades were accused of sabotage—an offence that carried the death penalty. It was also the trial where world opinion turned in favor of the accused; overnight, criminals transformed into the freedom-seeking Benjamin Franklins of Africa.
“It was mid-winter and I remember he was wearing prison clothes with short trousers. He was in short trousers and the idea of putting people into short trousers was really to humiliate them. But it was impossible to humiliate Mr Mandela, he had this tremendous dignity, which transcended anything anyone could do to him. And from the very beginning of our very first meeting and discussions with everybody, it was clear that everybody respected him and saw him as a leader. Whereas he in turn respected them and insisted on decisions being taken by discussion and consensus not imposed upon anyone. And throughout the trial there was that collegiality and discussion,” Chaskalson told me in 2010.
Chaskalson was also in court when Mandela made his world famous speech from the dock, which took more than more six hours, in which he vowed to die for his beliefs.
“The court was packed, the people were silent and at the very end when he said that these were ideals for which he had struggled and hoped to live for, but if needs be he was prepared to die, there was a dramatic silence which we could actually hear the silence, in the court, and feel it. And it was absolutely quiet, not a sound, and then the judge said Mr Fisher, you can call your next witness.”
The next time Chaskalson saw Mandela across a court room was in 1994. Then President Mandela had made Chaskalson the first president of the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court, and attended the opening ceremony in Johannesburg.
Among the first business to be considered by the new court was an application to restore the death penalty—a weapon that had been used ruthlessly by the apartheid government and abandoned by the new government.
“He sat next to me on the bench and I remember he started by saying: ‘The last time I was in a court it was to hear whether or not I was going to be sentenced to death.’ That’s how he started his comment but the next day we were going to consider whether or not capital punishment was consistent with the Constitution. So it was quite a dramatic, quite a dramatic opening and if he had been executed what would have happened?”
A rhetorical question made possible by brave lawyers, like Arthur Chaskalson, prepared to swim against the dark swirling tide of oppression.

Tag: Rivonia Trial

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