Ivor Markman

Ivor Markman
 
Writing a book is difficult task at the best of times, but writing one containing hurtful experiences about being locked up in prison during the apartheid era is extremely painful, as Rivonia trialist, Denis Goldberg, 76, who served 22 years of a life imprisonment sentence for sabotage in Pretoria prisons, disclosed.
“The book is a personal history against the background of the history of our struggle,” he said.
“I needed distance to be able to write the book, (away) from the details, hurts, pain and the pettiness,” he said.
“When I started writing about 90 day detention and interrogation, I had nightmares and couldn't sleep.
“I wanted to tell the story of my life against the background of the struggle. It's a story of difficulty, of commitment, of courage, of endurance, of growing up in a home where my parents were political activists. I grew up having political comrades in our home and being taught to respect people - just because they're people.    
“For me the struggle years started when I was five or six years old (when I) become aware of racism and exclusion of people,” he said.
As a youngster he heard “awful language” describing people, such as ‘Harvies,’ ‘three-eights,’ ‘two-eights,’ to describe coloured folk. ‘Coolies’ was used to describe those of Indian descent.
“It's undignified to treat people as nothing, I grew up that way. You respect people because they're people,” he said.

“I have a conscience. It's not right, you've got to change it.”
After graduating from UCT as an engineer in 1956, Goldberg became politically active.

He was a member of the Congress of Democrats, working very closely with the African National Congress, the Coloured People's Congress and the Indian Congress.
“I was never banned because I was ordered by my comrades not to speak in public. People who spoke in public got banned as soon as they developed a following,” he said.
In 1963 he was arrested and tried for sabotage and sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment.
He described his book: “It's not a day to day account, there are some broad passages of the daily routine, problems over letters, visits, being cut off from news for 16 years (with) no newspapers, no radio news. There wasn't television at the time,” he said.
While in prison prisoners took the Government to court for the right to have newspapers.
They appealed to the Appeals Court in Bloemfontein, which sat with a five judge bench under acting Chief Justice Wessels.
Their intention, he said, was “to embarrass the government and judges who don't like officials behaving stupidly and embarrassing them in the eyes of the world. The whole point was to show the absurdity of the censorship and the unreasonableness of it,” he said.
Goldberg said the problem was that the Commissioner of Prisons was controlled by the law but the law gave him the right to do as he pleased.
The prisoners lost the case, but afterwards acting Chief Justice Wessels came to see him in jail.

After having said during his judgment he couldn't intervene with the Prisons Department, he told Goldberg he had arranged for the prisoners to get newspapers.
“I read everything, the smalls adverts, and I discovered a thing called a 'body-stocking' and 'mini-skirts' and 'pantyhose' - I didn't know about such things. Of course I read these adverts for psychological reasons,” he said.