The court appearance on the 31st of March served no other purpose than to convert us from detainees into awaiting-trial prisoners. The security police had finished with us and were now placing us in the custody of the Prisons Service. Their preparations for indicting us were not complete but as the real trial was set for the 1st of June, two months away, they had plenty of time to complete their work.
In a sense the appearance in court was a relief. It meant the re-establishment of links with the world and an end to uncertainty. Although our period of detention had been short compared to the average time detainees were held, it had been wearing enough. In fact it was hard to imagine how people managed to put up with the strains of detention for six months or more.
The best part was being able to see some familiar and friendly faces again. In the courtroom were members of our respective families, friends from work and Heri, Klaus and Daphne. The appearance only took a few minutes. The Magistrate announced that we were to be charged under Article 2(1) of the Terrorism Act of 1967 and Article 11(e) of the Internal Security Act of 1950 (formerly called the Suppression of Communism Act). We were not asked to plead to the charges and a state representative handed to the Magistrate an order from the Attorney General stating that we were to be remanded in custody until we appeared for trial in the Cape Town Supreme Court. Bail is seldom granted in political trials, especially when the charges are considered to be ‘serious’.
The security police delivered us personally to Pollsmoor Prison – Cape Town’s main prison – not trusting the courts or Prisons Service to do the job. The new section of Pollsmoor to which we were taken had only been completed two years earlier and looked like a huge square fortress.
Several floors of tiny slatted windows pock-marked the red exterior wall and at each of the four corners of the block was a tall guard-tower staffed by armed guards.
Spyker and Van Aggenbagh accompanied us into the reception room and then left without any human remark, not even a rude one. Hundreds of black prisoners were sitting in rows on the floor waiting for their turn to be fingerprinted and signed in. Those who had had their fingers done, ritualistically wiped their inky thumbs in their hair and were hustled out of the room by impatient warders. There was much shouting and racist cursing, an ugly apartheid scene being repeated in one of the hundreds of prisons across the country.
We felt like queue jumpers when we were told to go to the head of the queue. But then we were white and no white person was to be made to stand in the same queue as blacks. Not only were we treated more speedily but a pair of subdued warders personally accompanied us through the reception process and the maze of corridors to our ‘quarters’.
Unlike most black South Africans, we had never seen the inside of a prison before. We had certain preconceived ideas about them from seeing American cop movies, but this was something different: very long corridors stretching into the distance with highly polished floors and along both walls, every two metres or so, large flush-fitting steel doors looking like giant
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safes in some vast underground bullion vault. The clinical, almost sterile, atmosphere was frightening. It was impossible to imagine how human beings could live in such a place.
This was the awaiting-trial prisoner’s section where unsentenced prisoners who had not been granted bail or who could not afford bail were held. At that time there were at least 20,000 such prisoners in custody in South Africa each day, most of them black.
Stephen and I were placed in two completely isolated cells in the section. They were extremely small, even smaller than the police cells we’d been held in while in detention: about 2 metres by 1.5 metres. The cells were bare save for a tiny stainless steel basin on the one wall, a toilet bowl, and a small metal locker fixed to the opposite wall. High on the outer wall was a sealed, vertically slatted window with frosted glass, and looking into a short corridor was another, smaller, slatted window.
Two prisoners brought us thin rope mats – our beds they informed us – and our bedding. The same two later brought us a ‘meal’ and asked us why we had been placed in the ‘bomb’. At first we thought this meant that we had been placed in special cells set aside for ‘bombers’ like us.
They gave us our first lesson in prisonese: the ‘bomb’ was an isolation section consisting of three cells used for the punishment of prisoners who had infringed prison regulations. Through the door of the ‘bomb’ section we could hear the movements of other prisoners. They did not appear to be confined to their cells like us. So, our punishment was to start here, before we had been sentenced.
Although Steve and I could talk to each other through the locked, barred grilles (inner doors) of our cells (the outer steel panelled doors were left open during the day) both of us wondered how we were going to last two months being cooped up in those tiny cells with only half an hour
‘exercise’ per day. Admittedly things were not as bad as detention as we were permitted visits from relatives, reading matter, food parcels and could write letters. On the other hand the food was worse and the cells more cramped. In fact the food was so awful that it made us vomit after two or three spoonfuls. Everything was boiled in fat and it was as though all the various ingredients had been slung into a giant boiler and cooked for at least six hours. The only way you could distinguish chicken from pork, say, was by the shape of the pieces of bone on which you choked. There was no way of identifying what vegetables, if any, had been thrown into the slop.
After eating this swill for a few days both of us refused to eat it any longer and persuaded our parents to bring us salad vegetables and tinned meats which we could turn into relatively respectable meals.
It was hard to believe that black prisoners were much worse off than us as far as food was concerned. There were at that time graded diets according to your ‘racial group’. The Prisons Service now claims that such diets have been eliminated and that everyone receives the same diet that is ‘prescribed by professional dieticians...and based on modern requirements for the maintenance of health’. Africans received the worst and least food while ‘Coloureds’ and Indians received intermediary diets below the Grade I ‘white man’s diet’ that we received. Later we were to see black prisoners being made to squat in the exercise yards while they ate their meals. Their diet appeared to consist mainly of mielie pap (maize-meal porridge) with sometimes what could have been a piece of meat floating on top.
At his first visit Stephen’s father brought him, amongst other things, the book Papillon by Henri Charriere. This is the story of the multiple escapes by the author from the French prison colonies on Devils Island and in Guiana. Although reputed to be a true story, much of it is too fantastic to
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be believed. Nonetheless, it is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read and without doubt one that profoundly affected our lives.
Both of us, naturally, had thought about escaping but only in the most reflexive way; Papillon set us on the course of seriously considering the prospect. It taught us a number of valuable lessons that guided our thinking and actions in the months ahead. The first and most important of these was that if you want to escape from prison you have to approach the task with single- minded determination. Every moment of every day has to be devoted to observing, planning and preparation. No escape will be successful if it is approached in a half-hearted manner or if you place it below other objectives.
The second lesson was that while lucky breaks do occur, you couldn’t depend on them. You have to plan your way out with obsessive thoroughness, taking into account every conceivable factor. At every point where something may not go according to plan you have to have a contingency plan. While every plan has to take into account the minutest detail it should also be flexible enough to adapt to changes in routine or security that take place.
The third, and most practical lesson, was that an escape does not end once you are beyond the physical confines of your prison. This point boiled down to the fact that if you want to get away from the immediate vicinity of your prison quickly you must have money.
Papillon warned us to expect to find prisoners who would not be interested in escaping: such people could not face up to the risks involved and were more interested in making their immediate circumstances as comfortable and bearable as they could. This was difficult for us to understand as we had always imagined that prisoners thought of nothing else but escaping. On top of this our fellow prisoners would all be political prisoners who had a duty to escape. It was inconceivable that the struggle should cease while behind bars.
The overall message of the book, as we read it, was that there are two basic philosophies a prisoner can adopt while serving sentence: a ‘getting out’ philosophy or a ‘making out’
philosophy. The former involves thinking of nothing else but how to get out of prison – to the extent that everything else is of little consequence. The latter is the philosophy of acquiescence and resignation. It assists in adapting to the situation and making life as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.
Four days in the isolation cells were as much as we could stand. When the officer-in-charge came around to hear our ‘complaints and requests’ we asked him why we were being kept apart from the other prisoners and subjected to the punishment of segregation before we had been sentenced. His reply surprised us as we had thought that our separate confinement was something that had been prescribed by the security police or because they feared that we would contaminate the other prisoners with our political ideas. He said that he had thought he was doing us a favour by keeping us apart from the ‘scum’ as he could see that we were ‘decent’
people. No, we assured him, we would rather be placed among the other prisoners because we did not wish to be treated differently. He shook his head and went away.
Within an hour we were moved out of the ‘bomb’ and relocated in cells alongside the ‘scum’, although next door to the warders’ office in the section. Life was more bearable after that. Most of our fellow awaiting-trial prisoners were harmless down-and-outs who in most cases were in prison because they could not afford the bail that had been granted them. One poor fellow had been inside for four months because he could not muster the R2 bail. He’d stolen a blanket from a train.
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Some of the other prisoners were out-and-out criminals but interesting to talk to. There was a bloke who had shot his wife with a crossbow, several drug smugglers – one of whom proudly went about displaying the hole between his nostrils caused by sniffing cocaine – some pimps and others who could not explain why they were in prison.
One talkative crook who tried to cultivate our company in order to get at our food told us of the many ingenious methods he had devised to smuggle money out of the country for rich businessmen. On one occasion he hollowed out a pair of cricket pads and re-stuffed them with rolled up banknotes. He flew out of the country with his cricket togs to the accompaniment of well wishes from the passport controller. On another occasion he cut up the frame of a scrambler motorcycle, stuffed the tubes with notes and then welded it together again. He crated the bike and had it lifted aboard the ship on which he was travelling to Britain. He explained to customs that he was a member of the team of motorcyclists who were ‘going to show the Brits how to ride’. Again he was sent off with the blessings of the authorities. His philosophy was that if you were into smuggling you always had to have a reason for travelling which met with the approval of the authorities. That way there would be no problems.
He was also into fraud. He would hang about the lobbies of large blocks of flats where the post-boxes were situated. After the postman had been he would put his hand into the boxes and feel for credit cards. When he found one he would do a preplanned lightning tour of all the banks in the area where the card was valid and withdraw R50 from each. If he ‘hit’ 30 banks he could take home R1,500 in a day. He could also buy himself a new wardrobe of clothes and much else besides.
There were many other crooked types who were only too eager to boast about their misdemeanours. Most of them were sordid characters who were incapable of separating fact from fantasy. They could all sense that we not ‘ordinary criminals’ and at times we had them queuing up to clean our cells in return for favours of tobacco and food.
Visitors were permitted to see us twice a week for half an hour at a time. There was no physical contact and speech was through a telephone intercom. The panes through which prisoner and visitor viewed each other were of thick bullet-proof glass. To demonstrate the strength of the panes the warders were wont to point out the marks on one of the windows caused by a bullet fired by them at point blank range.
Usually there was a warder in attendance on the visitors’ side but as you sat in a sort of cubicle it was impossible for him to see all the prisoners at the same time. When he was not looking directly at you it was possible to quickly flash up a message written on the palm of your hand or a piece of paper for your visitor to see. This had to be done if you wanted to pass an important or confidential message because conversations through the telephones were recorded. We found this out after my father had read a letter to me during a session when no warder was in attendance. When he left the visiting-room he was severely reprimanded and told that he would be prohibited from visiting me if he did it again. All letters had to be censored first.
Daphne applied for permission to visit me but it was not granted on the grounds that she was a
‘Coloured’ and could not use the ‘whites'‘ visiting room. When I then asked to be able to see her in the ‘Coloureds'‘ visiting room I was told that that too was out of the question because white prisoners could not use the ‘Coloureds'‘ visiting room. They were not being vindictive – just following the rules.
Awaiting-trial prisoners were not only entitled to receive food, books, newspapers and magazines from outside but could send out their dirty clothes for washing and receive clean
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clothes in return. This twice-weekly exchange afforded an excellent opportunity to have sent in all manner of contraband and to send out screeds of uncensored written material.
Theoretically you were allowed to write and receive as many letters as you wished. In practice the censorship was so rigid that very few letters got through in either direction. When they did get through they were so cut to pieces or blanked out that alternative methods of communication were inevitably sought. Many of the other prisoners sent out their letters with prisoners going to court but this had its dangers, as some of them would report the ‘felony’ to a warder in order to ingratiate themselves. Stephen and I, after first using the official channel and finding it unsatisfactory, wrote our letters on sheets of toilet paper and then folded and sewed these into the hems of our trousers to be sent out for washing. Our parents did likewise in the opposite direction. Flashing a message during a visit set up the system. Thereafter a thumbs-up sign meant there was something being sent in or out in the agreed way.
In this manner we were able to send out letters to many people expressing our true feelings and opinions. I was able regularly to communicate with Robin and thereby pass on to the ANC some of our thoughts about the events leading up to our arrest. My mother or sister would copy out the messages and send them on to her using the false names and addresses I had supplied. They would do the reverse with letters from her.
Food parcels, too, permitted a ceaseless flow of contraband, although in one direction only. The first illicit substance we arranged to have sent in was booze. In one of my toilet paper letters I explained to my parents how to remove the plastic cap of a bottle of orange squash without breaking the seal by holding it in steam. Once it was removed half the squash could be emptied out and replaced with a clear spirit such as gin, vodka or cane spirits. With the cap replaced the same way no one could tell the difference. Twice a week Stephen and I would share our bottle of
‘orange juice’ and get totally smashed. The feeling of being drunk in front of the warders was exhilarating, to say the least, and also helped us to get through the day.
Most important of all, the food parcels enabled us to smuggle in money. Stephen managed to persuade his parents to send in a large sum – R360 in total. The money was sent in concealed inside boxes of powdered milk that had been carefully opened and resealed. In Papillon the convicts hid their money up their anuses in what they called ‘chargers’. These were metal tubes with screw-on lids in which the money was rolled and inserted. Borrowing this idea we ‘ordered’
a couple of cigars of the sort which come sealed in aluminium tubes. Neither of us smoked but our parents never questioned our requests. The tubes, about 12 cm long, had plastic pop-fit lids that on test under water were prone to leak slightly. To overcome this problem we ‘ordered’ two rubber sheaths, which were sent in concealed in a packet of sugar.
Letter written on toilet paper