Lessons and Activities on Apartheid

Detentions without Trial during the Apartheid Era By Robert Vassen

Throughout most of the English-speaking world, the writ of habeas corpus was adopted, respected and practiced. Habeas corpus is a Latin term translates as “let us have the body” and was issued to any detaining authority to produce the detained person in court and show just cause for holding this person in detention. If the authority believed it had just cause, a formal charge had to be laid and evidence brought to court to prove the case. If the authority could not justify the detention, the person had to be set free.

In South Africa, this writ was practiced without exception until the end of the 1950s. In fact, the only meaning given to, or associated with, ‘detention’ related to school children in primary or high schools who were held back after regular school hours as punishment or in some cases as a ‘last chance’ to complete unfinished homework assignments.

In 1963, the then Minister of Justice, B.J.Vorster, gave new meaning to ‘detention.’ On the 10th July, 1963, the most senior members of the African National Congress, The High Command, most of whom had been living “underground,” were caught at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia. To accommodate the capture of these senior ANC members, the General Laws Amendment Act, Number 37 of 1963 was rushed through Parliament and applied retroactively to June 27th 1962, mainly but not exclusively so that the people arrested at Rivonia could be detained and held in solitary confinement. On the 6th October, 1963, these Rivonia Trialists were formally fingerprinted and charged. Nelson Mandela, who was already serving a five-year sentence on Robben Island, was brought back to join these senior members and all were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment and flown to Robben Island on the 13th June, 1964 to serve their sentences. It should be remembered that as political prisoners, a life sentence meant life, with no chance of parole.

Under this General Law Amendment Act, the security police, also known as the Special Branch, were given the authority to arrest anyone they suspected of being engaged or involved in any act against the State and to hold them incommunicado for 90 days at a time. The once highly respected and almost sacred habeas corpus fell away. This act, usually referred to as the 90-Day Act, was passed to give the Special Branch the authority to interrogate and to extract information, and the public was not entitled to any information including even the identity or whereabouts of people being detained. Detainees could literally and effectively “disappear.” If no charges were to be laid, the Special Branch had to release the individual or individuals after 90 days. At the time, Vorster boasted that this was repeatable “until this side of eternity.”

In her book, 117 Days, Ruth First gave a vivid account of this repeatable process: of how she had been handed her clothing and possessions and told she was free only to be re-arrested as she exited the police station where she was being held. When this process of being released and then re-arrested proved to be too cumbersome, the government introduced and passed the 180-Day Detention Act (the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act, Number 96 of 1965). Eventually, this 180-day law would be replaced yet again by the Terrorism Act, Number 83 of 1967, which allowed the government to detain individuals indefinitely until all questions had been answered satisfactorily or no further purpose could be achieved by holding the detainees.

The primary aim of the government was to extract as much information from detainees as possible, and the Special Branch resorted to all means possible to get this information. Endless hours of interrogation, where detainees were deprived of sleep, was commonplace. Leaving the lights on 24 hours a day to disorient detainees was another form of coercion. Forcing detainees to stand on their toes with protruding nails on a wooden strip placed under the heels was another form of torture. Where these methods did not work, physical assaults were common. The Special Branch often worked in twos: the ‘good guy’ and the ‘bad guy’ taking turns to inflict both physical and mental torture.

The aim of the detainee was to resist at all costs. This was the most difficult part of detention. Alone and subjected to all sorts of humiliation and physical and mental torture, it was difficult to remain steadfast. Always uppermost in the mind of the detainee was: “Will they break me? Will I cave in and give them what they want to know?” Some did not succumb, while others did. Two who did not ‘break’ were Mac Maharaj and Laloo Chiba, cadres in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress, who served their sentences on Robben Island. Ahmed Kathrada, who was imprisoned with them on Robben Island, wrote:

Both had been severely tortured with electric shocks and beatings, made to stand on the same spot for days on end and verbally abused. It disturbed us greatly to hear how Mac, desperate not to break under this onslaught ‘of the most sadistic and obscene nature’ had tried to slit his wrists with shards of broken eggshell. It was not until Laloo testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that I realized how much he had suffered, but neither man betrayed their comrades. (Ahmed Kathrada, Memoirs, pp. 208-209; 155) It remains a great moral dilemma how the ones who broke and gave information should be regarded. History will have to deal with that.

The other important factor in detention for the detainees was how to hold on to one’s sanity. These people were in solitary confinement and held under the worst of conditions with only a copy of the Bible. In such circumstances, how does a person retain their sanity and try to remain rational? Stories abound of individuals reciting all the poems they had ever learned in school; others made chess boards with whatever was at their disposal and spent hours playing. Yet others, who could find nothing to make marks with, played mental chess. Stories are told of detainees singing all the songs they heard or remembered. Whatever came to mind they would utilize just to keep a firm grip of reality and the world outside.

Tragically, a great many detainees would be killed in detention while under intense interrogation and torture. It was not uncommon for the authorities to inform the press that so-and-so had slipped on a bar of soap, suffered concussion and died, while others had purportedly committed suicide. Hundreds came to such tragic ends; Kathrada wrote about one of them, Suliman ‘Babla’ Saloojee, who was his close friend:

Suliman Saloojee, my dearest friend Babla, was dead, killed by the police. This most gentle of men, this inveterate prankster, my comrade and source of strength, had been picked up under the ninety-day detention law, brutally interrogated and tortured to death - by the sadistic Rooi Rus Swanepoel - then flung from a window on the seventh floor of Gray’s Building, Johannesburg headquarters of the security police, on Wednesday 9 September 1964…

Not surprisingly, the so-called inquest accepted the police version that Babla had committed suicide by jumping to his death. I have never doubted, however, that he died under interrogation, and that his body was then thrown out of the window… The magistrate found that ‘nothing in the evidence suggested that Saloojee had been assaulted or that methods of interrogating him were in any way irregular. He found that no one was to blame for his death. Ahmed Kathrada, Memoirs (p. 207)

In his notes in Memoirs, Ahmed Kathrada notes: “In later years, inquest after inquest - in the cases of Imam Haron, Ahmed Timol, Neil Aggett, to name but a few - returned verdicts of suicide. I cannot recall a single case among the scores of deaths under 90-day detention in which an inquest magistrate held the security police responsible” (page 384).

There were others who were more fortunate and were eventually released. Many threw themselves back into the struggle while others went into exile, either on orders or self-imposed. In exile, the vast majority continued to be active in working for the struggle.

Life as a Political Prisoner By Robert Vassen

We, that is the Rivonia group [Mandela, Mbeki, Sisulu, Kathrada, Mhlaba, Mlangeni, and Motsoaledi], arrived on Robben Island on the 13th of June 1964. It was a Saturday – cold, windy, raining. We cannot forget the first months at the quarry where we mined stone – we came back with blisters, bloody hands, and sore muscles. And we cannot forget the dozen years or more when we were forced to sleep on the cold cement floors with three blankets and a thin sisal mat. Also we cannot forget the cold showers for 13 or 14 year. There is so much more that one can recall, much more that we have found in ourselves to forgive, but these we will never forget.

Ahmed Kathrada on opening the “Esiqithini: The Robben Island Exhibition” 26 May 1993

The prison authorities had told these political prisoners sentenced to life in 1964 at the Rivonia Trial and other political prisoners that work in the quarry would be for a few months only. They would work there for 13 years. Another form of hard labor was breaking stone. In his Memoirs, Kathrada recounts how from 8:00am to 4:00pm daily they would sit on concrete blocks breaking stones into gravel, which was then used for construction. He wryly remarks that, “in effect, the prisoners built their own jail”. (Memoirs, (p. 205)

Those cold cement floors on which they slept measured about 6 by 8 feet; in one corner stood a bucket for ablutions, which had to be emptied and cleaned first thing every morning. The only other item in the cell was a basin of water for drinking, washing, and shaving. The water for showering was cold sea water of the Atlantic.

When they arrived on the island they were given prison garb, and even here, apartheid was in evidence: the non-Africans were given long trousers and socks, while the Africans were given short trousers and no socks. This was both calculated and sinister in intent. In the South Africa of the time, all Africans regardless of age were referred to, and often even called, “girls” or “boys.” The message was loud and clear: “Boys wear short trousers!” To complete this wardrobe, all prisoners were given a canvas jacket, a shirt, and a jersey (or sweater).

When political prisoners entered prison they were automatically placed in “D” category, while common-law prisoners, including murderers, bank robbers, and rapists, were placed in the higher “B” category. Every six months the political prisoners would appear before a prison board of senior police officials. The prisoners would be questioned, reports from their warders would be considered, and an assessment and decision would finally be made: they could be promoted to the next category or demoted, or remain the same. In a letter to a friend, Eddie Daniels, who served a 15-year sentence, wrote that it took him four years to be promoted from “D” to “C” and that, within months, he was demoted back to “D”. Those who got to “A” category, and who had the financial means, could buy additional foods such as cookies, candy, and beverages. They also could purchase tobacco and newspapers and magazines.

Just as with discrimination in clothing, there was also discrimination in the food prisoners were given depending on their “racial classification”: the non-Africans received a teaspoon of sugar with their morning “pap” (finely ground corn) while the Africans got only a half teaspoonful. Coffee or tea was given twice a day to non-Africans, while Africans got only one cup a day. For lunch, non-Africans were given mealie rice (grits) while Africans got boiled corn. For supper, non-Africans received bread and Africans got none. Non-Africans and Africans were given meat or fish four times a week, but while non-Africans were given 110 grams, Africans got only 60. The one ‘deprivation’ the Africans felt more than any of the others was not being allowed to have bread. In the B-section of the prison, which held more than 30 political prisoners, including the Rivonia group, the non-Africans were able to share their bread with their fellow African comrades. In later years the African political prisoners were allowed one slice of bread a week, and this improved later to three slices a week: one on Wednesdays, one on Saturdays, and one on Sundays. Eventually the political prisoners won the day when everyone was made equal for all of them irrespective of “racial classification”!

One of the boasts of the apartheid government after the Rivonia Trial was that they would see to it that, in a short period of time, South Africa and the world would have forgotten about the Mandelas, the Mbekis, the Sisulus and others. To realize this boast, contact with the outside world was virtually non-existent, while laws in South Africa forbade any information or images from appearing in the media. For the political prisoners this meant no newspapers, no radios, no watches, no television, no books and only a very limited number of no-contact visits by blood relatives only. One 30-minute visit was allowed every six months; only family matters could be discussed and this was closely monitored. Furthermore, no children under 16 were allowed. Of all the privations the people suffered, none was worse than the total absence of children in their confined, male, adult, gray, world. Often permits to visit were ‘mislaid’ by the authorities and the prisoners were powerless to do anything but to accept this with dignity, painful as it was.

When it came to letters, the prison authorities were even more blatant. All letters, incoming and outgoing were heavily censored and in some cases not given to the prisoner or sent on to its destination. Ahmed Kathrada, one of the Rivonia group often quotes the letter sent by his brother in 1964. Kathrada only received it in 1982. The reason it has been withheld for 18 years was because of its political content: the offending sentence in the letter was that there had been a change of government in Britain and Harold Wilson of the Labor Party had come into power.

Quotas and restrictions clogged the lives of all the political prisoners, and letters were not an exception. A prisoner could write one 500-word letter every six months and receive one 500-word letter in the same time period. It was not unusual for wardens to count off what they considered 500-words in an incoming letter and snip off the rest. But soon the wardens tired of this counting and changed and the regulation which allowed for 1 ½ sides. Prisoners soon learned to write in small print. As censorship was so stringent, prisoners soon found ways round this problem: write in code. This was by and large successful and, in this way, the prisoners were able to keep in touch from time to time with what was happening in the outside world and know what SAMAD’S attitude was to AMRIT, or to decode: What America (=Samad=Sam=Uncle Sam) felt about the African National Congress.

Letters from Robben Island [MSU Press 1999], a selection of letters written by Ahmed Kathrada to family and friends, provides the interested readers with a range of areas of interest from education to religion to language to youth, including coded messages and covers the period of his incarceration from 1964-1989. While authorities and the government were bent on breaking the spirits of the prisoners, the prisoners viewed their incarceration as a continuation of their struggle against apartheid on a different terrain.

By the 1980s, the political prisoners had a library; many had studied for and were successful in earning degrees; they had television, magazines, and could order full-length movies. They even put on their own Christmas shows and concerts and were able to cultivate vegetable gardens. After 20 years, Kathrada was allowed to hold a child in his arms! In May 1991, the last political prisoners were removed from the island.

While quarry work was exclusive to Robben Island, conditions generally were similar in the prisons that held white political prisoners – men and women. The association of “white” with “privilege” was unquestionable, that is, until it came to white political prisoners. Just the opposite was true: the white political prisoners were given the most menial, humiliating, and degrading tasks that could be found. They were seen by the white warders and wardresses as traitors to their own people, as people who had thrown in their lot with the swart gevaar (black danger) and the godless communists. Punishment for them was swift, and no allowances were made. Bram Fischer, who was dying of cancer, was not spared from his duties. On the eve of his death, he was allowed to be placed in his brother’s care. And after his funeral, the Security Police stipulated that his ashes had to be returned to the Department of Prisons – his remains were their “property.”

Robert Vassen wrote this essay specifically for South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy. Vassen is editor of Letters from Robben Island: A Selection of Ahmed Kathrada's Prison Correspondence, 1964-1989.

Lesson 4: Struggle for Equality

SS7H1C: Explain the roles of Nelson Mandela and F.W. DeKlerk in South Africa

SS7G4C: Evaluate how the literacy rate affects the standard of living

Materials: 2^nd ½ of PowerPoint

Essential questions:

1. 
   What did F.W. DeKlerk and Nelson Mandela do to end apartheid?
   
2. 
   What were their roles in the new government?
   
3. 
   How did denying black South Africans the same education during apartheid impact today’s South African economy and standard of living?
   

Part 1- Intro: Show second video and PowerPoint slides from 2^nd ½ of PowerPoint

Part 2- As a whole group,

1. 
   Discuss the similarities and differences between the US’s Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Apartheid movement.
   
2. 
   Create a Venn diagram comparing MLK to Mandela
   

Part 3- Summative Written activity: Students will write a newspaper article

• 
  You are living in South Africa at the time of the abolishment (outlawing) of apartheid. Write a newspaper article describing what Nelson Mandela and F.W. DeKlerk are doing to create equal rights.
  
• 
  Describe what rights the black South Africans now have due to the new republic and abolishment of apartheid.
  
• 
  Include an illustration (picture) and a headline announcing the “main idea” of your article.
  
• 
  Article needs to be at least 4 paragraphs long. (1^st = life like under apartheid 25 pts, 2^nd = Mandela’s role in abolishing apartheid (25 pts), 3^rd= DeKlerk’s role in abolishing apartheid (25 pts), 4^{th =} what life is like in South Africa Today (25 pts). (Summative assignment)
  

Lesson 5: Democracy Today in South Africa

SS7G2C: Students will explain the structures of the modern governments of Africa

Essential Question: What was the government of South Africa like after the abolishment of Apartheid?

Materials: Copy of the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution, The book Awesome South Africa

Part 1-Intro: Review what a democracy means. Have students give examples of democracy.

Part 2- Activity: Students review documents in small groups

1. 
   Share with students the excerpts from South Africa’s constitution that is in the book Awesome South Africa (pp.62-63).
   
2. 
   Students are to look for language that is similar to what would be found in the US Constitution and the US Declaration of Independence.
   
3. 
   Ask students if they think both exhibit beliefs and ideas that are expressed in the founding documents of our own democracies.
   

Part 3- Discussion: Are your thoughts and opinions of our government similar to or different from the South Africans’ thoughts and opinions?

Model Worksheet for Learning from an Interview

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Before listening to the interview: Note what you already know about the subject and/or person. Make predictions about what information this person will give you; write down any questions you have. What would you like to know about/from this person?

While listening to the interview: Note any answers to your questions you obtain from the interview, the impressions you had, the emotions you felt, and any other facts or insights you can get from the source. Also note the information or statements that you did not expect or were new to you.
After listening to the interview: Comprehension, Evaluate, and Create

Comprehension questions should test understanding of the key facts and memories provided by the interviewee or the topics addressed.

Evaluation questions may include: Is the source credible? Does s/he contradict or support other sources? Is the interview helpful in giving a sense of the history you are studying? How does the source help you understand how historians write history? How does this person’s personal experience influence his or her perspective? Does the amount of time that has elapsed between the event an interviewee is speaking about and the time of the interview influence how he or she describes that event? If so, how?

Create something, such as a journal entry or poem about the source and your reaction to it; an illustration of something the source describes; an essay describing how this source fits into the historical period; or a fictional personal letter or newspaper article drawing on information obtained from the source.

Photograph Analysis Worksheet

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Step 1. Observation

A. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph and then examine individual items. Next, divide the photo into quadrants and study each section to see what new details become visible.

B. In three columns, list people, objects, and activities in the photograph.

Step 2. Inference
Based on what you have observed above, list three things you might infer from this photograph.

Step 3. Questions

A. What questions does this photograph raise in your mind?
B. Where could you find answers to them?

Adapted from worksheet designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408 (with permission).

Resource page:

Adapted from the work of

Bigelow, William. “Witness to Apartheid: A Teaching Guide.” The Southern Africa Media Center. SanFrancisco,

CA, 1987.

Campbell, Derryn. Awesome South Africa, Awesome SA Publishers, 2010.

Garrison, Dana. “South Africa’s Journey to Democracy: A Cross-Curricular Unit for Grade 6.” Ohio. 2010.

www.overcomingapartheid.msu.edu