Govan Mbeki

6. The road to Rivonia

104 6 The road to Rivonia Between March 1960 and July 1963 – from Sharpeville to the Rivonia raid – Govan’s life changed decisively. Detained under the State of Emergency, he played a key role in the decision to turn to armed struggle (and was party to long-running controversy over its form); he was a founder member of Umkhonto weSizwe (henceforth MK); ran a sabotage cell in Port Elizabeth; was arrested, charged and acquitted; chaired the ANC’s first exiled conference; went underground; and was rounded up when police swooped on Lilliesleaf farm. On 21 March 1960, Govan Mbeki – in chauffeur’s livery – was driving Tolly Bennun’s big Buick through the Transkei. The previous day, Mbeki – by then persona non grata with Kaiser Matanzima’s Bantustan administration – had met clandestinely with activists in Cala district. Somewhere between Umtata and Durban the men heard a radio bulletin on the 105 shootings at Sharpeville. At the New Age office in Durban, there was a message asking Govan to phone Oliver Tambo; he did so, and was urged to attend an emergency meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee in Johannesburg. He and Bennun drove there the following day, and that evening the available members of the NEC met in Orlando East. The meeting must have been conducted in a blur of confusion, uncertainty and tension. Yet those present made weighty decisions with long-term consequences. The plan that Tambo should leave the country to win support overseas was brought forward. There would be a Day of Mourning on 28 March. Crucially – anticipating that the ANC might be banned – it was agreed that in the event the organisation should continue to operate, illegally. And to make that new mode of existence more feasible, the cumbersome structures of the ANC would be streamlined to just three tiers of leadership, with seven members appointed by the NEC at national, regional and branch levels. The massacre at Sharpeville was followed by what Tom Lodge has called ‘a popular insurrection’ in Cape Town’s townships, and by confrontations and violence in other cities. The state responded swiftly. On Wednesday 30 March a State of Emergency was declared, and that night nearly 2,000 political 106 activists were arrested across the country and detained (that number rose to almost 10,000 by mid-May). By 8 April, the government had rushed through its Unlawful Organisations Act, and both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the ANC were banned. Mbeki, Mhlaba and other Port Elizabeth activists were held in Rooi Hel (as North End Prison was widely known). Conditions were appalling: the prison could not cope with the influx of detainees from Cradock, Grahamstown and elsewhere in the Eastern Cape; men were crammed together in three cells (so overcrowded, said Govan, ‘that no one was able to lie on his back’), their bedding infested with lice, food – bitter pap – served in tin cans, the warders jumpy and hostile. This was Govan’s first extended stay in prison. He was released only on 31 August, when the State of Emergency ended. A vivid sense of his five months in Rooi Hel is available in the diary he kept, and subsequently passed on to Mary Benson. She read excerpts when she gave evidence to the United Nations Committee on Apartheid in March 1964: ‘Perhaps if I quote from it you will see another side to this disciplined and dedicated man.’ Out of detention, Mbeki immediately immersed himself in the familiar mix of journalism, pamphleteering and underground networks. In 107 Govan Mbeki’s prison diary, as recorded by Mary Benson Hewrotewithcompassionaboutoneoldmanin the cell, so rheumatic that his limbs swelled, yet never complaining nor using it as an excuse to tryforrelease.Anotherprisonerwhoconstantly prayed amused Mbeki, who observed that the prayers resembled the demands of workers to their employers for better conditions … Of others again, Mbeki wrote: ‘Every afternoon, we heard beatings from prisoners returning from work. Sometimes they would bellow. We heard the splattering of leather belts as they fell on a body. It is intolerable to listen and one shudders to think what effect this type of treatment must have on those who administer it as well as on the recipients. In the long run it is difficult to see how both can escape being turned into beasts.’ … Yet the diary recorded other facets of their lives as well. They sang freedom songs and had daily discussions on...