PAULINE SHEILA LIPSON - A MEMOIR

A POTTED HISTORY!

Pauline Sheila Lipson was born in Johannesburg on 12 April 1927. Her parents's surname was Spitz, and Pauline and I became "first cousins" when my mother, a widow with two small children, married my stepfather Maurice Spitz on 2 November 1931.

Mo, as my stepfather was known to one and all, was the youngest brother of Pauline's father, Harry, in a family of ten children, six brothers and four sisters.

Pauline was an only child, and we were both 5 years old when my mother married Mo Spitz.

At that stage we lived in an inner city suburb in Johannesburg called Berea, and we were there throughout our school years and until we left school.

We had two schools in the area near us - an all-girls school called the Johannesburg Girls High School, also known as Barnato Park, and an all-boys school called King Edward VII School, and both were in walking distance from our homes in Berea.

We were at each school from our primary years till the end of our secondary years when we matriculated.

Sometimes I was invited to "babysit" because her parents wanted to go out for the evening and the woman who lived there was away for a few days. On one of these occasions her parents, who had wanted reading lamps on either side of their beds had asked me if I could fit some for them as I was known to fiddle around at home doing all sorts of electrical repairs. When they came home from their outing they found some lamps waiting for them on their bedside pedestals.

We used to walk around the corner to visit each other, and on one occasion when I went to visit, Pauline had just had a terrible event which scarred her for life. There was a woman who lived in their house who was a sort of house-keeper/nanny, and one winter's night this woman had put a hot water bottle in Pauline's bed which had just been filled with boiling water. Pauline and this woman had just had a big argument and Pauline was very angry. She went into her bedroom and and banged herself down on the bed and the water-bottle burst. She was not called "Porky" for nothing - she was a heavy girl. As I remember it the wound took months to heal.

While we were schoolchildren our mothers would take us to visit aunts who lived around Johannesburg, and one of these aunts lived in a big house with a fish pond. Pauline and I  would play outside in the garden around the pond while the "grown-ups" were talking inside the house. I was a very timid boy and Pauline was much more of a doer than I was in those days. Pauline, who was full of mischief decided to push me into the pond when we were standing on its edge. For one of the very few times in my very timid life - and I don't know what possessed me - I managed to pull her into the pond after me, and we both got thoroughly soaked, of course.

Our mothers were suitably unimpressed with two soaking brats and put us in the car to take us home to change our clothes. On the way they had to stop at another aunt's house to attend to some fairly urgent matter, and they left us in the car while they went into the Aunt's house. The car was a very old Ford V8 prewar with a bench seat at the front and the leather seats had a binding strap of thin leather along the top covering the joining of two leather pieces. This strap had become loose over the years and it had some tacks which used to hold it in place having come loose. Between us and jumping around in the car from the front seat to the back seat and over the strap where the tacks were sticking out, Pauline managed to rip the length of her leg from the top down! As far as I know the scar remained with her for the rest of her life!

Over those growing up years Pauline and I saw each other regularly - our parents were great bridge players and they had many friends in common, apart from the family connection.

 One of the boys I was at school with lived at the other end of the same street that I lived in and his name was David Marcus. David had a first cousin called Arnold Lipson who was the youngest of 7 children and they lived in a very large house in a suburb some distance from where we lived and the house had a tennis court in the grounds. Occasionally we went there for a game of tennis and so I met Arnie Lipson who a few years later, met Pauline Spitz and married her around the time of Pauline's 21st birthday, in April 1948, and so we became related.

With Pauline being married and me still being at university, we saw each other less and less in those days, but never lost touch.

The next connection was of a totally different sort. When Pauline finished school she became an articled clerk to a lawyer for her practical training to become a lawyer. The lawyer's name was Siegfried Raphaely and he was a cousin of my father Morris De Saxe who had died in 1930 when he was 31 and I was three years old.

When Siegfried retired (or died - I don't remember which sequence of events occurred!) Pauline worked for his son Pat Raphaely, who took over his father's legal practice. I think she worked there until she finished her articles.

I think before Pauline had ever heard of Legal Aid, and during the period after the start of World War II after 1939 when I was at high school in Johannesburg, and helpers in organisations such as Legal Aid were not easy to obtain, I used to work there during my school holidays as a messenger boy and general "dog's body" as people like me were called at the time, running errands from the basement of the Johannesburg Magistrates' Court, where Legal Aid had been "generously" provided with accommodation.

And then the next series of events which brought Pauline into the Legal Aid Bureau in Johannesburg:
My aunt Mary Kuper started work at Legal Aid in the 1930s with Ruth Heyman who was, I think, its first director. When Ruth left, my aunt took over the running of Legal Aid and stayed there until 1948, when she died of leukaemia aged 46. A few years later Pauline went to work at Legal Aid.

One of the other stories I am fond of re-telling is one about books. Pauline was always a great reader, and very often she would borrow books and sometimes forget to return them. On one occasion she had borrowed a book from me which was one of my favourite books and I hadn't seen her for some time so was unable to ask for its return.

Pauline and Arnie had recently moved into a new house and they were having a dinner party. My then wife and I were invited to the party and after dinner I asked Pauline if I could take the book home, as I had seen it in her bookcase. She said I couldn't as the book was hers, so I took it off the shelf and showed her my name and address inside and the date of purchase! So I got my book back and took it home.

Two other items binding us over time were that Pauline's second daughter Margie was born on 17 January 1953, which was the day my grandmother died.  My grandmother lived in my parents' house for five years up to her death, so Margie's birthday is one I don't ever forget! Her youngest daughter Lindsay used to work at a bookshop in Rissik Street, Johannesburg in the 1970s and I used to go to the shop once a week to pick up the weekly journals and comic for myself and my  kids. Lindsay and I used to have long conversations when she was supposed to serve customers in the shop and I was supposed to make my purchases and go back to work, but I don't think it particularly affected either of us!

There was a long period during my marriage when my then wife decided she didn't like the Lipsons and didn't want us to see them any more and that was the situation for many years. Then we came to live in Sydney in Australia and my wife and I separated after 31 years. I was then 58 years old. When I turned 65 and knew of course that Pauline would soon be 65 I waited until her birthday was due and sent a birthday card. She was delighted and we resumed our friendship from them on. Then her three daughters came to live in Australia, one at a time - in Melbourne, and our friendship took on new dimensions.

After Arnie died their daughters and us - my partner and I - we had visited Pauline in Johannesburg in 1997, so she had already met him - tried to nag Pauline to come and live in Melbourne, as we had come to live in Melbourne in 2001, and because her whole life had been in Johannesburg, she couldn't make up her mind to leave. Finally, in about 2005, and because she realised that as she was ageing and health issues might became a major issue, it might be a good idea to be near her family, so she came to live in Melbourne and we had regular contact until her death.

I am six months older than Pauline, and we have been friends from the age of 5 until her death in Melbourne a few weeks ago, on 30 July 2017, when she was 90 years old. She will be sadly missed!

The photo below was taken at the bottom of the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens on Sydney Harbour when Pauline and Arnold Lipson visited me in Sydney for the first time in early 1993:

We placed this notice in The Age newspaper on Friday 4 AUGUST 2017:

(this is  a work in progress as at 27 August 2017)

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On 10 April 2001 Pauline was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of the Witwatersrand , Johannesburg.

The Order of Procedure for the Conferment of the honorary degree is the fourth item down:

HONORARY DEGREE

Doctor of Laws

Presented by Professor W D Reekie Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management BCom (Edin) PhD(Strath)

Pauline Sheila Lipson

The Citation:

PAULINE SHEILA LIPSON

Pauline Lipson was born in Johannesburg in 1927 and attended the Johannesburg High School for Girls. In 1945, she entered into articles of clerkship with a firm of attorneys. In 1946 and 1947, while doing her articles, she studied law part-time at the University of the Witwatersrand. She completed her professional qualifications in 1950.

At the end of that year, she was approached to take over the running of the Johannesburg Legal Aid Bureau on a temporary basis until a suitable permanent director was appointed. There was no need to look any further. The Legal Aid had found its permanent director.

The Legal Aid Bureau, founded in 1937, provided legal advice to underprivileged clients and secured them representation in court long before it was fashionable to do so. Its survival through the second half of the twentieth century was entirely due to Pauline Lipson's resourcefulness and dedication, her tenaciousness and her courage.

Lipson's first child was born in June 1950, shortly before she joined the Bureau. She took maternity leave in 1953 and 1955 (sic) to have two further children but her involvement never wavered. Thanks to her stewardship the Bureau grew into one of the most significant providers of legal services to indigent South Africans and by April 1999 it was staffed by sixteen paid employees and a large number of volunteer workers.

As Director, her duties included giving legal advice and assistance in a diverse range of fields. She negotiated with employers, with other practitioners, with welfare and non-governmental organisations, and with government departments. She also became expert in training law students and provided 'in-house' tutelage to students from Wits University, the University of the North and the University of Zululand.

Her chosen career required her to have superhuman qualities - tact, persistence, a sense of humour and what can only be described as great-heartedness. She applied legendary powers of persuasion in getting legal practitioners in Johannesburg to become actively involved in the Bureau's work and in raising funds for it. These attributes have, with the passage of time, led to her becoming an icon among legal practitioners in Johannesburg. Few other lawyers are as widely known among ordinary people, or as deeply respected for their contribution to the welfare of the less privileged members of our society.

Constitutional Court President, Justice Arthur Chaskalson, has said of Lipson:

                 If we are to address our past in a meaningful way and transform our
                 society into one in which the constitutional aspirations of
                 democracy, human dignity, equality and freedom are to be realised
                 in substance as well as form, our country needs people like Pauline
                 Lipson who, in different fields of endeavour, are willing to commit
                 themselves to doing what is necessary to create a fair and just
                 society. In acknowledging Lipson's lifetime commitment to justice,
                 and the sacrifices she has made in pursuit of that end, Wits is
                 identifying with and recognising the importance of such a
                 contribution.

In a letter to the Chancellor of this university in support of the proposal that an honorary doctorate be conferred upon Pauline Lipson, former President Nelson Mandela writes as follows:

                 I first became aware of her work as Director of the Legal Aid
                 Bureau during the early 1950s. At the time, and for a number of
                 years thereafter, the Bureau was the only body to whom the indigent
                 could turn for legal assistance. Pauline Lipson dedicated herself to
                 the task. I still remember when the Legal Aid Bureau's offices were
                 in the Old Post Office building in Rissik Street. The 'Native'
                 Divorce Court was also there. The offices of Mandela and Tambo
                 were in Chancellor House opposite the Magistrate's Court - too far
                 for me to go back during short adjournments. I availed myself of
                 Pauline Lipson's friendship and hospitality. I went to her office to
                 make urgent telephone calls and to have tea. The waiting room was
                 full of men and women who had come for help. Pauline would
                 interrupt a busy schedule of interviewing people and urging young
                 members of the Bar and attorneys to appear on behalf of her non-
                 paying clients. She was a persuasive lady to whom few of us could
                 say no.

Pauline Lipson is one of the unsung heroines of the struggle for a just and equitable legal system in South Africa. She has been a champion who devoted her entire professional life to an attempt to provide indigent persons with access to justice. It is fitting that this university should pay tribute to her contribution bu conferring upon her the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.

I believe the person on the left is the other PhD graduand - Joy ChristineNalukwago Lwanga-Lumu.

From left to right I believe we have: Chairman of Council The Honourable Justice E Cameron, Joy Christine Nalukwago Lwanga-Lumu, Pauline Sheila Lipson, President of Convocation Professor John Shochot.


   

CECIL WILLIAMS - FREEDOM FIGHTER

CECIL WILLIAMS – FREEDOM FIGHTER

6 February 2017

Mark Gevisser is a South African writer and journalist. In about 1997 Gevisser made a film called “The Man Who Drove With Mandela which was issued originally on a VCR and in 1998 it was issued in DVD format.

I went to school in Johannesburg, South Africa from 1933 to 1943. The school had a primary school and a secondary school, each with their own premises on separate but related pieces of land next to each other. In those days they were called prep. (preparatory) school and high school, and I went to High school in 1939, the year the second world war started.

The school was called King Edward VII School because it was founded in the new mining town of Johannesburg in 1905 and King Edward VII was on the throne in Great Britain and South Africa was a colony of Great Britain after Great Britain had won the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

In 1910 the four colonies in South Africa were combined and South Africa became a dominion of Great Britain and joined other dominions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Our school was very “English” in its education and teachers, and some of our teachers in High School actually came from Britain.

When I got to high school in 1939 we were divided up into different classes from what we had had in primary school, so we had different teachers for different subjects.

One of the teachers of English was, in fact, an Englishman called Cecil Williams, and it was only as time went on during the war and after the war ended in 1945 that Cecil Williams’ name became very well known in South Africa.

I was not fortunate enough to be put in a class taught English by Williams, but somehow – as happens with schoolboys – the boys knew he was homosexual and they also knew where he lived in the City. In those days homosexuals were called queer and many other names, most of which I have now forgotten, and because there are so many different words used in the late 20^th and early 21 centuries.

Williams went from school as a teacher into the Royal Navy during the war, and when he came back to South Africa after 1945 he did not go back to teaching but became a broadcaster for the South African Broadcasting Corporation and also an actor and theatre producer and he was very well known and acclaimed for his productions and acting.

In the mean time there was another side to Williams which most of us didn’t know about and even when we went to university in the mid to late 1940s, he was mostly known for his acting and broadcasting, and basically that is all we know.

Field Marshal Jan Smuts had been one of the generals during the 1899-1902 war and when that war ended he had remained close to the British in his affiliations and politics. When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, Smuts was in opposition in the South African parliament and when a vote was taken by the South African parliament as to whether South Africa should join the war with Britain or should remain outside the war as many South Africans wanted the government to do, the government lost its majority and Smuts won enough to take over the government and thus joined the British war effort.

After the war ended in 1945, Smuts was still the prime minister, but at the election in 1948 Smuts lost power and the Nationalist party came to power, and that was more or less the beginning of official apartheid although of course it had existed since white settlement started in South Africa in 1652 when the Dutch established a colony in the Cape as a half way house to the Dutch East Indies, now called Indonesia.

At that stage in South Africa, in about 1948, the South African population consisted of about 8 million people of whom six million were black and two million were white.

The whites had the power and ruled the country and the blacks were the labourers without any political rights and were treated as third class citizens of their own country.

The next part of the story is recorded in South African History online:

Cecil Williams was born in Cornwall, England in 1906. He left for Johannesburg in 1928 and worked as an English teacher.

During World War II he switched to journalism and then became a theatre director using black and white actors.

Being gay he often got assaulted.

After the war when South African soldiers returned from Italy and other war zones, the ex-servicemen formed an organisation called the Springbok Legion  and War Veterans Action Committee – formed in 1951 - and Williams became an active member and became chairman of the Springbok Legion.

Williams worked closely with Bram Fischer ( a leading barrister at the time) in bringing the Springbok Legion and the Congress of Democrats (COD) together.

In 1953 The Springbok Legion’s offices were raided by the security police, and the Minister of Police ordered Williams and his colleague Alan Lipman to resign from any organisation they belonged to. They were banned from any gathering or meeting for two years.

In 1954, after the formation of the Congress of Democrats (COD) and the newly revived South African Communist Party (SACP), because these organisations were banned by the Nationalist Party government, they operated underground with freedom fighters which included Rusty Bernstein, Ruth First (later murdered in Mozambique by the South African government) Cecil Williams and Rica Hodgson.

Williams served in the first executive committee later serving as vice-chairman and he later became part of the underground unit.

In 1959 Williams was tried for treason but later acquitted.

Involvement in the activities of the banned SACP and opposition to racism led to contact with Nelson Mandela.

After the banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, Williams became involved in underground work of MK. For instance, when Mandela returned from military training in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia), he was met by Williams in Bechuanaland (now Botswana) They continued to work together intil 1962 when Mandela was arrested posing as David Motsemayi – a chauffeur for Williams.

The story of how Mandela was caught got much publicity, but there was not much ever about the man he was driving that day.

Though involved in the struggle, Williams kept that part of his life separate from his personal life. Consequently few knew about his political activities and his lifestyle as a gay person.

After Mandela’s arrest, Williams left South Africa for Britain, where he lived until his death in 1979.

Mandela tells of his friendship with, and assistance from Cecil Williams in his biography LONG WALK TO FREEDOM (published by Abacus in 1995) but once Mandela was imprisoned in 1964 he possibly didn’t have the contacts or ability to find out what had happened to Cecil, as he called him in the book.

The film about the Mandela arrest with Cecil Williams is the first paragraph of this story, but what happened to Williams after he left South Africa? Did he get involved in the UK with the anti-apartheid movement in the UK?  I believe research in the UK will be richly rewarded into the later years of Cecil Williams’ life.

There are probably many facets of Williams’ life and political activities in the latter years of his life, but many of us remember some of his life in South Africa which, as far as we knew, was not political.

Cecil Williams was well known as a broadcaster on the airwaves in South Africa with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, but became more widely known as an actor, producer, director and theatre manager which must have made this a very fulfilling life.

I firmly believe Cecil Williams to have been a freedom fighter of our times and someone for whom recognition of his activities and his bravery in the context of the brutal South African apartheid and police state regime need to be recorded and acknowledged for all to know about.

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I graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1951 and have been receiving alumni journals and magazines over the years.

The alumni journal is called WITSReview and an article in a recent issue was about a sculpture erected at the place Mandela was arrested by apartheid police in 1962.

Here is the article, followed by my letter to the journal a few months later:

WITSReview

March 2015 Volume 31

In 2012, an artist and anarchitect collaborated to create Release,

a sculpture honouring Nelson Mandela at the site where he was

captured in KwaZulu-Natal in 1962. Marco Cianfanelli

and Jeremy Rose regrouped in 2014 to craft falcons and

forests in a mall in Abu Dhabi.

Falcons &

Freedom

Fighters

BY DEBORAH MINORS

ARTIST: MARCO CIANFANELLI. ARCHITECT/ARTISTIC COLLABORATOR: JEREMY ROSE OF MASHABANE ROSE ARCHITECTS. 

RELEASE 2012. PAINTED LASER-CUT MILD STEEL AND STEEL TUBE CONSTRUCTION/TO BE RUSTED: WIDTH: 5.19-METRES |

HEIGHT: 9.48-METRES | LENGTH: 20.8-METRES

March 2015

Joburg-born Cianfanelli graduated with a distinction in Fine Arts from Wits in 1993.

He is an artist “constantly looking to realise art where one doesn’t expect to find it”.

A rambling road in KwaZulu-Natal’s Midlands is one such space. It was on such a road

that Nelson Mandela, operating “underground”, was driving on 5 August 1962, posing as a

chauffeur. Just outside Howick, he was flagged down by apartheid police. They’d been tipped

off about the driver’s real identity. Mandela was exposed, arrested and eventually imprisoned for 27

years. 

Cianfanelli’s sculpture Release, of Mandela at this capture site, was unveiled 50 years later on

4 August 2012.

The sculpture is made from 50 steel columns, each about 8-metres tall and planted on a concrete

base. The sculpture comes into focus from 35-metres and the image of Mandela emerges.

 

Viewed from the side, however, the design and arrangement of the columns create a sense of

fracture – or release. The sculpture is affected by the changing light around it, and visually shifts

throughout the day. It both exerts influence on and is part of its surroundings.

 

Silhouettes of human figures, like Release, are characteristic of Cianfanelli’s art – colossal works

in steel. He creates monumental silhouettes that juxtapose with other shapes and enable

unexpected connections in social forces to emerge.

Locating Release in the rolling Midlands landscape was thus not only accurate, but deliberate – and

required an architect.

Jeremy Rose (BArch 1988) is Principal Architect at Mashabane Rose Architects in Johannesburg. His consultancy work focuses on museums and cultural heritage site projects, and has included designing the Apartheid Museum and the Robben Island heritage site.

Cianfanelli and Rose regrouped in May 2014.

A property firm commissioned them to install a

sculpture in Yas Mall, which opened on Yas Island

in the United Arab Emirates in November 2014.

The artwork, currently untitled but referred to as

the

Swooping Falcons, is made of 140 tonnes of

steel. The

Swooping Falcons, like

Release, fluctuate

with the viewer’s perspective.

The mall doors open to a massive sculpture of

six falcons aloft 132 columns, each 18-metres

tall. “The idea is that, as you move around the

sculpture, you see different falcons from different

angles,” explains Cianfanelli. “From any position,

you will see one falcon and the others will

break apart, becoming an expression of rhythm,

movement or flight.”

Whichever way you look at it, this artistic alumni

collaboration continues to soar.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 2015

WITSReview Volume 33

LETTERS

The Man who drove with Mandela

Dear Editor,

Deborah Minors’ article (WR March 2015) about the sculpture Release honouring Nelson Mandela at the

site where he was captured in 1962, in what was then either Zululand or Natal, is part of the story of that

eventful trip which needs to be told in full, and probably needs a sculpture supplemented to honour the man who was with Mandela when the capture took place.

Cecil Williams had gone to fetch Mandela from a meeting in Natal and they were returning to Johannesburg.

Quoting from the DVD called The Man who Drove with Mandela, the story unfolds as follows:

“Driving a gleaming Austin Westminster, Mandela was able to travel around the country by

disguising himself as a chauffeur for an elegant, impeccably dressed white man. That man, Cecil Williams, was a leading Johannesburg theatre director and a committed anti-apartheid freedom fighter.”

In fact, Cecil Williams was so very much more than that. When WWII started on 3 September 1939, he

was teaching English at King Edward VII High School in Johannesburg.

 

He had a flat in Anstey’s Building in Joubert Street and, apart from his gay activities which some of us

at the school had heard about, he was involved with the South African Communist Party. He also broadcast

on SABC and acted in theatre. When the war started he joined the navy (he was an Englishman) and after the war his political activities increased untithe fateful day when he was in the car with Mandela, the whereabouts of whom had been revealed to the South African authorities by those in the USA who didn’t want apartheid to end.

Cecil Williams needs to be recorded historically in the South African anti-apartheid struggle, and the DVD

of this episode is well worth seeing.

Actor Corin Redgrave plays Cecil Williams in the 1998 film directed by Greta Schiller.

Mannie De Saxe (BSc Eng Mech 1951 Wits.), now living in Australia

 

As I am busy researching information for an obituary I am putting together about Cecil Williams, I came across this item from Peter Tatchell in which he makes reference to the connection between Cecil Williams and Nelson Mandela. The article contains an enormous amount of interesting information about the ANC, homophobia, and the people who worked to challenge and change the ANC's responses to the gay and lesbian communities. (Mannie De Saxe)

Peter Tatchell Foundation

Home » LGBT Rights » South Africa: How the ANC was won for LGBT rights

South Africa: How the ANC was won for LGBT rights

posted by Peter Tatchell ... on Tue, 19 APRIL 2016 

 

And how it came to protect LGBT South Africans against discrimination

By Peter Tatchell
London – 20 April 2016

This essay is dedicated to the many heroic South African LGBT and anti-apartheid activists that I worked with during the period of white minority rule - heroes who helped secure the commitment of the African National Congress of South Africa to LGBT human rights, including the enactment of the world’s first constitution to protect LGBT people against discrimination.

As a gay teenager growing up in Melbourne, Australia, my three great passions were men, surfing and politics. All three came together in the summer of 1971, when at the age of 19, I went on my first anti-apartheid protest. It was against the all-white South African Surf Life-Saving tour. At one of my favourite beaches, Lorne, on a blistering hot morning, 40 of us lay down on the sand in a bid to stop the South African team taking their boat out of the boathouse. We succeeded, for a while, making our symbolic point - before being battered and bloodied, and then carted off by the police. So began my two decades of activism against the apartheid regime: pickets, boycotts, marches and sit-ins.

Over those long years, I kept hearing disconcerting stories about homophobic attitudes within the African National Congress - the main liberation movement and the likely governing party of a post-apartheid South Africa. At the left-wing World Youth Festival in East Berlin in 1973, which I attended as a Gay Liberation Front delegate, there were reports of the victimisation of lesbian and gay ANC members, and warnings that queers would have a tough time when the ANC came to power.

Homophobia existed at high levels in the ANC, even though there was a long history of gay people being involved in the struggle against apartheid. The gay theatre director, Cecil Williams, was one such person. He played a key role in aiding Nelson Mandela when he was on the run from the police in the early 1960s. To enable Mandela to carry on his underground activism and avoid detection, Williams had Mandela disguise himself as his chauffeur.

Despite the contributions of courageous lesbian and gay people such as Cecil Williams, the ANC still had a de facto anti-gay policy or, at best, a stance of not supporting LGBT equality.

In those days, only a handful of anti-apartheid activists dared challenge the homophobia - and sexism - of the ANC leadership. There was a near-universal expectation that opposition to apartheid involved uncritical support for the liberation struggle. It was deemed betrayal to question the ANC. Criticism was unwelcome - even when it was constructive and came from friends and allies. We were told by the official Anti-Apartheid Movement that any doubts or concerns had to wait until the white supremacist system was overthrown.

Most anti-apartheid activists duly obliged. I was one of them. My fear was that speaking out would give comfort and succour to the white minority regime, and undermine support for the just cause of the ANC. Although I made my concerns known behind the scenes, publicly I remained silent.

In 1987, after nearly 20 years involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle, I felt unable to stay silent any longer. No movement for human liberation has a right to demand unconditional loyalty. Such a demand leads, inexorably, to collusion with injustice. It was, after all, the insistence on uncritical support that resulted in so many people on the left ignoring or excusing the terrible crimes of the Stalin and Mao eras.

True loyalty sometimes involves challenging friends concerning their own shortcomings and mistakes.
My worry was that unless leading members of the ANC were confronted over their homophobia, a post-apartheid ANC-ruled South Africa might pursue the same kind of anti-gay policies that were common in other revolutionary states, such as Cuba, the Soviet Union and China.

This was not an unreasonable fear. When battling to overthrow dictatorship and fascism, most ANC-style liberation movements talked about creating a society with social justice and human rights for all. But after liberation they usually enforced a heterosexist regime that left queers just as victimised - if not more so - than before. Would it be a liberation worthy of the name if a free South Africa perpetuated the homophobia of the apartheid state?

After trying to influence ANC attitudes privately without success, as had many other people before me, I concluded that the only way to change things was by publicly exposing the ANC's rejection of LGBT human rights. My calculation was that the subsequent uproar would embarrass the ANC leadership and this might precipitate its switch to a more gay-sympathetic policy.

Accordingly, in August 1987, on hearing that ANC executive member Ruth Mompati was visiting London to promote South Africa Women's Day, I devised a plan and requested an interview.

A courageous fighter against the apartheid regime, Mompati was one of the leaders of the biggest women's demonstration in South African history. In 1956, 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings - the seat of government in Pretoria - to protest at the extension of the notorious pass laws to women.

Most of my interview with Mompati was about the struggle for women's emancipation, and was duly published in Labour Weekly. But towards the end, I raised the issue of women's sexual emancipation - in particular the human rights of lesbians and their role in the struggle against apartheid. This provoked an astonishing outburst that reconfirmed all the previous horror stories that I had heard about ANC homophobia.

"I hope that in a liberated South Africa people will live a normal life", Mompati told me. "I emphasise the word normal ... Tell me, are lesbians and gays normal? No, it is not normal".

"I cannot even begin to understand why people want lesbian and gay rights. The gays have no problems. They have nice houses and plenty to eat. I don't see them suffering. No one is persecuting them ... We haven't heard about this problem in South Africa until recently. It seems to be fashionable in the West".
When asked her reaction to the formation of LGBT anti-apartheid organisations inside South Africa, Mompati insisted: "They are not doing the liberation struggle a favour by organising separately and campaigning for their rights. The (gay) issue is being brought up to take attention away from the main struggle against apartheid. These other problems can wait until later. They are red herrings".

Mompati justified the ANC's lack of policy on LGBT human rights with the riposte: "We don't have a policy on flower sellers either". While acknowledging that women have special problems and specific interests that need to be addressed by the ANC, she was adamant that "lesbians and gays do not".

Concerned to be fair, in case Mompati's views were unrepresentative of the ANC's position, I contacted its London office and spoke to the liberation movement's then chief representative in Britain, Solly Smith. He expressed similarly offensive opinions: "We don't have a policy. Lesbian and gay rights do not arise in the ANC. We cannot be diverted from our struggle by these issues. We believe in the majority being equal. These people (lesbians and gays) are in the minority. The majority must rule".

When asked if the ANC was opposed to discrimination against homosexuals and if an ANC-led government would repeal the anti-gay laws of the apartheid state, Smith replied: "I have no comment on that".
This was, to my knowledge, the first time anyone had recorded verbatim accounts of the homophobic attitudes of ANC leaders. I knew these quotes would cause the ANC grief and discomfort. But a bit of pain and short term damage was necessary, I reasoned, in order to overturn homophobia within the liberation movement.

Accordingly, my interviews with Ruth Mompati and Solly Smith were published in the London gay weekly newspaper, Capital Gay, on 18 September 1987, under the headline "ANC dashes hopes for gay rights in SA". As I expected, and hoped, Smith's and Mompati's homophobia provoked an outcry in LGBT and liberal circles – even among many anti-apartheid activists.

To globalise the pressure on the ANC, I then circulated my article for republication in the gay and anti-apartheid press world-wide, including South Africa. My aim was to get the ANC inundated with protests that would (hopefully) pressure it to confront the issue of homophobia and eventually to abandon its refusal to support LGBT equality.

My Capital Gay article did, thankfully, result in the ANC and the anti-apartheid movement internationally being deluged with letters of condemnation. People were appalled that a "liberation movement" like the ANC could be so ignorant, bigoted and intolerant. The ANC leadership was hugely embarrassed.

But embarrassing the ANC was not my goal; it was merely a means to an end. My objective was to win the ANC to the cause of LGBT human rights. I therefore devised a plan to offer the leadership a face-saving solution and a constructive way forward. This involved writing a private appeal to the ANC leadership in exile in Lusaka.

My letter, dated 12 October 1987, was addressed to Thabo Mbeki, then the ANC Director of Information. I chose him on the advice of exiled ANC contacts, David and Norma Kitson. They suggested he was the most liberal-minded of the ANC leaders and senior enough to be able to push for a radical rethink of official policy. My letter was challenging, but friendly and constructive. I argued that support for LGBT liberation was consistent with the principles of the ANC's Freedom Charter:

"Dear Thabo Mbeki,
... Given that the Freedom Charter embodies the principle of civil and human rights for all South Africans, surely those rights should also apply to lesbians and gays? And surely the ANC should be committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated South Africa? ... To me, the fight against apartheid and the fight for lesbian and gay rights are part of the same fight for human rights.
Yours in comradeship and solidarity, Peter Tatchell".

When writing to Mbeki I also included a sheaf of my published articles about leading lesbian and gay anti-apartheid activists inside South Africa, including Simon Nkoli and Ivan Toms. Simon, a student activist, was a defendant in one of the great cause celebres of the 1980s, the Delmas Treason Trial. Ivan was a doctor who had won acclaim for his work in the Crossroads squatter camp in Cape Town and was active in the campaign against conscription (he was later jailed for refusing to serve in the army of apartheid).

This information about LGBT involvement in the struggle against apartheid was news to many members of the exiled ANC Executive, and apparently had considerable influence in swinging the vote in favour of a pro-LGBT stance.

My letter to Mbeki - following in wake of adverse publicity from my Capital Gay article and subsequent protests - had the desired effect. Within a few weeks, the ANC leadership in exile began a major reevaluation of its stance on LGBT issues. As a result of these internal debates, the ANC officially, for the first time, committed itself to support LGBT equality and human rights.

This new pro-gay rights ANC policy was publicly announced in a telegram to me from Thabo Mbeki, dated 24 November 1987. He wrote:

"Dear Peter,
... The ANC is indeed very firmly committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated South Africa. You are correct to point this out. That commitment must surely extend to the protection of gay rights ... I would like to believe that that my colleagues, Solly Smith and Ruth Mompati, did not want to suggest in any way that a free South Africa would want to see gays discriminated against or subjected to any form of repression. As a movement, we are of the view that the sexual preferences of an individual are a private matter. We would not wish to compromise anybody's right to privacy ... and would therefore not wish to legislate or decree how people should conduct their private lives ... We would like to apologise for any misunderstanding that might have arisen over these issues ...
Yours in the common struggle, Thabo Mbeki". 

Mbeki's statement was not as strong and comprehensive as many of us would have liked, nor had it been agreed by a formal policy-making conference of the ANC. But it was, nevertheless, a watershed moment. The ANC leadership was publicly aligning itself with the struggle for LGBT emancipation. A first!

At Mbeki's own request, I communicated his letter to gay and anti-apartheid movements world-wide. I also sent a copy to members of South African lesbian and gay groups, such as the long-time lesbian anti-apartheid activists, Sheila Lapinsky and Julia Nicol of the Organisation of Lesbian & Gay Activists (OLGA), based in Cape Town. In addition, I forwarded copies to members of the United Democratic Front - the main anti-apartheid coalition inside South Africa.

Long before me, other people had pressured the ANC to change its homophobic stance, but none of them succeeded. It was, it seems, only the huge torrent of negative publicity generated by my Capital Gay article, and my challenging letter to Thabo Mbeki, that prompted the ANC's rethink. My intervention was, perhaps, merely the culmination of earlier efforts by others - the final straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe I was merely the catalyst for changes that had been in the making for a very long time. What is certain is that without the ANC and international anti-apartheid movements being flooded with howls of protest, my letter to Mbeki may have had no impact at all. Due credit must be given to the many people from all over the world who helped pressure the ANC.

Securing the ANC's official opposition to homophobic discrimination gave the struggle for LGBT emancipation inside South Africa new legitimacy and kudos. It was instrumental in helping persuade some individuals and organisations fighting the white minority regime - both within South Africa and in other countries - to embrace LGBT equality - or at least to not oppose it. By giving the cause of LGBT rights political credibility, the ANC's stance helped pave the way for the subsequent inclusion of a ban on sexual orientation discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution.

Outlawing sexuality discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution


Not long after the ANC came out for LGBT rights, exiled ANC leaders based in London began work on drafting a constitution for a free and democratic South Africa. In 1989, I contacted a member of this constitutional working party, Albie Sachs, at the University of London, urging him to include in the ANC's draft constitution a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation.

He was initially rather sceptical. So I provided a draft wording, backed up with examples of anti-discrimination statutes from various European countries, such as Denmark, France and the Netherlands. These countries had laws incorporating either comprehensive protection against discrimination or an explicit ban on discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. These concrete legal precedents apparently helped reassure Sachs, and later also helped convince others in the ANC leadership, that a ban on anti-gay discrimination was feasible and practical.

A little later, I sent my own suggested draft wording - together with samples of anti-discrimination laws from other countries - to LGBT groups inside South Africa (especially OLGA and GLOW - the Gay & Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand). I also arranged for them to write direct to Albie Sachs in London and to lobby the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front inside South Africa.

In December 1989, on my initiative, a meeting was held in London between Sachs and OLGA representatives, Derrick Fine and Niezhaam Sampson. They discussed OLGA's constitutional proposals face-to-face. This personal meeting helped to cement Sachs's backing for a constitutional clause prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. His support later helped win over other key people in the ANC leadership.

After the collapse of the apartheid regime and the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, OLGA held meetings inside South Africa with senior ANC members, Frene Ginwala, Albie Sachs and Kader Asmal, all of whom expressed a positive attitude towards OLGA's constitutional proposals.

Sach's, in particular, continued to have contact with OLGA and other LGBT organisations to further develop the idea of LGBT rights as part of a broad human rights package within South Africa's new constitution. He did, however, warn OLGA that there was "no guarantee" that a majority in the ANC would endorse constitutional protection for LGBTs; an indication that sections of the liberation movement remained unsupportive or ambivalent on the issue of sexual orientation equality.

Undeterred, in September 1990, OLGA made an extensive submission to the ANC's Constitutional Committee, which was in charge of formulating the movement's draft Bill of Rights. This submission was supported by 11 other South African LGBT organisations, including GLOW. It proposed a Bill of Rights that would "protect the fundamental rights of all citizens" and guarantee "equal rights for all individuals, irrespective of race, colour, gender, creed or sexual orientation".

Simultaneously, OLGA, GLOW and other gay organisations used the ANC's previous endorsement of LGBT equality to lobby the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid groups within South Africa. This lobbying helped persuade prominent campaigners in some of these groups to back the inclusion of a constitutional ban on anti-gay discrimination.

These efforts had a successful outcome when, in November 1990, the publication of the ANC's draft post-apartheid constitution included an explicit prohibition on homophobic discrimination.

OLGA also developed and canvassed support for a specific and comprehensive Charter of Lesbian and Gay Rights. In 1993, this proposal won the endorsement of a national conference of LGBT organisations, which had been convened to forge a united campaign for constitutional protection.

The push for LGBT human rights was subsequently carried forward in the post-1994 period by a new umbrella organisation - the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE).

It is thanks to the efforts of these many far-sighted, determined and courageous LGBT people inside South Africa that constitutional rights for LGBTs were finally won; making the South African constitution the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bravo!

THE POST-APARTHEID CONSTITUTION OF SOUTH AFRICA 

Chapter 2 - Bill of Rights 

Equality 

9.
(1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

(4) No person my unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

Note: 

A version of this essay was published in South Africa under the title: The moment the ANC embraced gay rights, in the book, Sex and Politics in South Africa, Neville Hoad, Karen Martin and Graeme Reid (Editors), Double Storey Books, Cape Town, 2005

ENDS

tags: 

African National Congress

Albie Sachs ANC

anti-apartheid

Cecil Williams

emancipation

Ivan Toms

LGBT equality

liberation

National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality

Nelson Mandela

Organisation of Lesbian & Gay Activists

Peter Tatchell Foundation

Peter Tatchell

Ruth Mompati

Simon Nkoli

Solly Smith

South Africa

Thabo Mbeki

white supremacist

SOUTH AFRICAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTION OUTCOMES - ANC THE BIG LOSER - MESSAGE TO JACOB ZUMA!

South Africa has just had one of the most extraordinary elections in the short history of democracy from 1994.

When Nelson Mandela was elected to be president after the first democratic elections in April 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) had an enormous majority, winning with about 66 percent of the popular vote. Mandela was president for 5 years and did not seek another term of 5 years - very wisely - after 27 years in prison and already being over 70 years old.

However, one of Mandela's big mistakes - an error of judgement if ever there was one - was to anoint his successor in the form of the son of one of the main freedom fighters of the ANC, Govan Mbeki, and so his son Thabo Mbeki became the second president, leading South Africa down the path of AIDS denialism and thus being responsible for one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS affected states, from which, in 2016, it is slowly recovering.

After some years misleading South Africa, Mbeki was forced out of office and a temporary president appointed until a successor could be found to replace him. That successor was/is Jacob Zuma and the path to corruption has been steady and ongoing for at least the last 10 years. If it wasn't for the fact that South Africa has always been rich in diamonds, gold, steel, uranium, platinum and many other minerals which are in constant demand, South Africa would be in an even more parlous state than it is at the moment.

2016 saw national elections for local government areas across the country and the outcome has been a humiliating blow to the ANC, however the analysts try to disguise the results.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) and the EFF - the Economic Freedom Fighters - have reduced the overall vote throughout the country to its worst result so far - about 53 percent. The DA, which already held Cape Town, has now won control of Nelson Mandela Bay, which consists of an amalgamation of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and a few other areas. The DA may also have won Johannesburg and Tshwana, which is an amalgamation of Pretoria and surrounding districts. The DA may have to form a coalition with one or more of the minor parties, but the ANC headquarters are in Johannesburg and it is a devastating blow to their control and prestige.

There is - and has been for some time - a cry for Zuma to go - he owes millions of Rand by court order on illegal alterations to his palace in the country - Nkandla - but so far he is not budging.

One name put forward to replace him is that of Cyril Ramaphosa, previously head of COSATU, the main trade union controlling body in South Africa, But Ramaphosa has become a millionaire business man and mining magnate since leaving COSATU and he was, with Zuma, responsible for the massacre at Marikana, not that long ago.

There are other candidates for the position of president and Zuma and Ramaphosa are not two of them.

Just as in Australia after the recent federal elections on 2 July 2016, South Africa, since the 3 August 2016 Local Government Elections, is in for some interesting times.







Cyril Ramaphosa COSATU

Nelson Mandela’s Howick arrest: Was it all a CIA Effort?

• J Brooks Spector
• South Africa
• 17 May 2016 01:30  from Daily Maverick

A real life half-century-old spy thrilleresque mystery is back in the news. How did the South African police manage to capture Nelson Mandela so easily outside Howick in KwaZulu-Natal? J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look at a new international wrinkle in this story.

This story reads like one of those really convoluted John LeCarre novels, or perhaps Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. But before we even begin to tell this tale, the most recent news from Langley, the town in Northern Virginia where the CIA hangs its hat in the US, concerns the rather embarrassing information that the spies have accidentally managed to destroy their only copy of the US Senate’s report on torture at US hands.

In a rather awkward admission, according to Yahoo News, “The CIA inspector general’s office – the spy agency’s internal watchdog – has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved…. The deletion of the document has been portrayed by agency officials to Senate investigators as an ‘inadvertent’ foul-up by the inspector-general. In what one intelligence community source described as a series of errors straight ‘out of the Keystone Cops’, CIA inspector-general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document, filled with thousands of secret files about the CIA’s use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods.”

Big oops, that one, although they explained later they still had a computer copy squirrelled away somewhere in their puzzle palace. But mistakes do happen. Fortunately for some, at least, the Senate managed to hang onto its copy. And this latest miscue doesn’t count the exploding cigar they once contemplated as Fidel Castro’s last puff.

But internationally at least, almost certainly the worst blow to the CIA’s reputation in recent days surely has come from a reported deathbed confession made to filmmaker John Irvin, for his upcoming UK-SA joint feature film, “Mandela’s Gun”. The film hangs on the Russian-made Makarov pistol Nelson Mandela received from Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in 1962 while he was on his journey through Africa to drum up support for the ANC. Among other places, he was in Ethiopia and then Algeria for hands-on tactical military training, before returning home via Bechuanaland (now Botswana, but at that time a British protectorate).

Interestingly, it seems that during this run of military training, while his first thoughts were that this prized pistol would be his first step in a real revolution, he was, instead, guided into considering the alternative idea that conflict was a means towards reaching an inevitable negotiated settlement, rather than serving as an end in itself for achieving a violent victory. 

This insight apparently came to Mandela decades before he publicly advocated that view and brought it fully into liberation struggle policy, after his release from prison, in tandem with ideas espoused by some other ANC/SACP figures like Joe Slovo.

During this period in the ‘60s, Mandela had earned the popular sobriquet, the “Scarlet Pimpernel”, for his ability to evade the South African authorities in his travels within the country, and by virtue of his ability to evade the authorities as he slipped beyond South Africa’s borders. However, Mandela’s return to South Africa and his subsequent travels in the country before his arrest were also a less than perfect demonstration of clandestine agent-style tradecraft in avoiding detection.

He arrived in Bechuanaland where he met theatre director (and SACP member) Cecil Williams in a pre-arranged rendezvous. Mandela was driven to Johannesburg and the ANC’s secret base at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, without passing through a border passport control gate, while in Williams’ distinctive Austin sedan. Williams and Mandela then used this same car to go on to Durban, and then, after meetings there with Albert Luthuli and others, the plan was to return to Johannesburg, but they were stopped and apprehended by the police at Howick in the Natal Midlands instead.

In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela had written about the night before his departure from Durban, after meeting with Bruno Ntolo’s sabotage group. (Ntolo would later turn state’s witness in the Rivonia Trial, and some have pointed to him as the man who may have helped set up Mandela’s capture.) Mandela wrote of his day before his arrest, “Later that same evening, at the home of the photojournalist GR Naidoo, where I was staying, I was joined by Ismail and Fatima Meer, Monty Naicker, and JN Singh for what was a combination welcome-home party and going-away party” before setting off to Johannesburg. 

Of that gathering, Fatima Meer described the gathering, saying, “Nelson cut a large military figure in khaki, his laugh booming the familiar welcome as he embraced each friend. They drank and ate and discussed politics. They laughed a lot, excited by their intrigue. The police were looking for Nelson and here they were partying with him, virtually under their noses.” 

Clandestine tradecraft apparently was not much in evidence that evening. Then, the next day, on that return journey, still in the same car, and with Mandela rather casually disguised as Williams’ chauffer, David Motsamayi, the police caught up with the two men on the road, as Williams was driving the car – and the purported chauffeur was in the passenger seat instead.

Mandela biographer Martin Meredith wrote that as soon as word was out that the Pimpernel had been captured, “Everyone was convinced Mandela had been betrayed. Suspicion about who the culprit was ran wild. Even Sisulu was suspected in some quarters, for it was he who had insisted that Mandela should return to South Africa.

“There were persistent rumours that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was involved. Mandela’s links with communists had made him a target for US officials embroiled with the Soviet Union in a murky struggle for influence in a number of newly independent African states and obsessed with the need to contain communist encroachment in Africa. The CIA was active throughout southern Africa, keeping track of the activities of liberation movements there, determined to prevent what it saw as communist-supported armed intervention ‘under the guise of African liberation’. It found an ally in the South African government, which was only too willing to collaborate.

“…The CIA covert-operations section in Johannesburg had expended considerable energy penetrating the ANC. Its chief undercover agent, Millard Shirley, the son of American missionaries who had been born in South Africa had cultivated contacts at all levels of the organisation.”

Back in 1997 when he wrote this biography, Meredith had added that a US vice consul in Durban, Donald Rickard, had been overheard at a party in Durban saying that he had played a key part in Mandela’s arrest. Moreover, Meredith also mentioned a CIA station chief, Paul Eckel, who after his retirement had told a journalist, “We had turned Mandela over to the South African Security Branch. We gave them every detail.” Evaluating all this, Meredith also noted, “Given Mandela’s amateurish conduct in the days before his arrest, it was equally possible that the South African police already knew of his whereabouts from their own efforts.”

Rickard apparently ran with a rather wild crowd in Durban and he had made that comment while apparently inebriated and perhaps given to exaggeration and enthusiasm at a party hosted by the Irish-born “Mad” Mike Hoare. Hoare was the increasingly legendary and thoroughly infamous paratrooper turned mercenary who had carried out a number of raids around the continent for various shady purposes – and eventually carried out at least one coup attempt – in the Seychelles. Interestingly, after Rickard left Durban, despite the persistent rumours – clearly fuelled by his own comments – Rickard spent years denying the story. In 2012, for example, he told the Wall Street Journal, "That story has been floating around for a while. It's untrue. There's no substance to it.”

There things might have stayed, merely unsubstantiated rumours and much quiet finger pointing over who had sold Mandela to the CIA or the SA police, or to both (echoes of the famous line in 1984, “Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me…”), save for the fact that three years ago, in an interview when he was practically on his deathbed, Rickard recanted his repeated recantations and once again embraced his role as the crucial element in Mandela’s capture in 1962.

This interview was carried out for a film directed by John Irvin, a work now nearly finished, and entitled Mandela’s Gun. Rickard was quoted in the media as having told the filmmakers, Mandela was “completely under the control of the Soviet Union, a toy of the communists”. 

Given the nature of the Cold War struggle and a more than an occasional hot one throughout Africa, in Indochina, and given the circumstances of Castro’s Cuba, among other spots, the motivations and actions of CIA operatives, even when they were acting on their own, can be better understood and appreciated, even if not not condoned. Shades of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, perhaps.

The film’s storyline spins out from the now-missing Makarov pistol he had secured while in Ethiopia and Mandela’s travels in Africa on that journey. The point is that Mandela had said he buried it in a secure spot in the garden at Lilliesleaf – but the police never found it then, and it has never been recovered since by the police or anybody else – right until today.

Then, this past weekend, word of Rickard’s final confession in connection with this film leaked out into the world’s media through the British press, stirring up much more than a small cloud of interest, and more than a few frowns in the direction of the CIA – and the US more generally. By the end of the weekend, it had become a lead story on the BBC news broadcasts, and it was being reported globally on many platforms as effective confirmation of the long-circulating rumours about the CIA’s involvement. Yet one more nail in the tattered reputation of that agency, it would seem.

In response to this story, not surprisingly, ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa announced over the weekend, “That revelation confirms what we have always known, that they are working against [us], even today. It's not thumbsucked, it’s not a conspiracy [theory]. It is now confirmed that it did not only start now [a reference to recent ANC charges that US exchange grants such as Mandela Washington Fellows are an element in a regime change agenda], there is a pattern in history.”

In reply, the US Embassy’s press officer, Cynthia Harvey, told us, “The US Embassy in Pretoria is aware of the story. We have no information about the claims made in these media reports. South Africa is a strategic partner and friend of the United States. The United States does not regard the democratically elected government of South Africa, and its strong democratic institutions, as a ‘regime’. Claims that we seek to undermine South African democracy run contrary to the spirit of the proud and longstanding relationship we have with South Africa.” 

It is almost certainly true that no documentation relating to this charge (one way or the other) would remain in the embassy after more than half a century, but elsewhere? There is, in fact, yet another possible element in this story – material that could have some distressing impacts on US-South African relations, 54 years after the event. Several years ago, an American academic researcher, a doctoral candidate at MIT, Ryan Shapiro, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all documents still classified and held by various American government agencies, relating to America’s engagement with Nelson Mandela back in the 1960s. The government declined to comply with initial request on the grounds the request constituted a “fishing expedition”. It was far too broad and, therefore, they could not carry it out.

However, the researcher then went to court in January 2014 to compel the CIA to comply with his original FOIA request. So far, there has been no judgment on his appeal of his FOIA request, yet, let alone any disclosure of documents. But, if such a thing does happen and if they confirm what Rickard said at the end of his life, that will be a rather awkward and embarrassing moment for a number of people – and at least one government. DM

Photo: Dark rain clouds cover the newly erected Nelson Mandela Statue in Howick, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, 06 August 2012. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK.

• J Brooks Spector
• South Africa