Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Contents
- Biography of Rusty Bernstein
- Foreword: Thabo Mbeki
- The Rivonia Trial Attorney Remembers: Lord Joel Joffe
- Prologue
- 1 Starting Blocks
- 2 Time at the Crossroads
- 3 A Foot in Each Camp
- 4 Across the Divide
- 5 Spoils of War
- 6 Warning Winds
- 7 A Line in the Sand
- 8 Goodbye to All That
- 9 Overground – Underground
- 10 To Speak of Freedom
- 11 Power, Treason & Plot
- 12 Cracking the Fortress Wall
- 13 Exercise Behind Bars
- 14 To Put Up or Shut Up
- 15 Things Fall Apart
- 16 To Sit in Solemn Silence
- 17 In a Deep Dark Dock
- 18 Telling it as it was
- 19 In a Closing Net
- 20 Over, and Out
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
16 - To Sit in Solemn Silence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2018
- Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Contents
- Biography of Rusty Bernstein
- Foreword: Thabo Mbeki
- The Rivonia Trial Attorney Remembers: Lord Joel Joffe
- Prologue
- 1 Starting Blocks
- 2 Time at the Crossroads
- 3 A Foot in Each Camp
- 4 Across the Divide
- 5 Spoils of War
- 6 Warning Winds
- 7 A Line in the Sand
- 8 Goodbye to All That
- 9 Overground – Underground
- 10 To Speak of Freedom
- 11 Power, Treason & Plot
- 12 Cracking the Fortress Wall
- 13 Exercise Behind Bars
- 14 To Put Up or Shut Up
- 15 Things Fall Apart
- 16 To Sit in Solemn Silence
- 17 In a Deep Dark Dock
- 18 Telling it as it was
- 19 In a Closing Net
- 20 Over, and Out
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
Summary
1963
I am locked into a tiny cell in the prison wing which once housed Pratt's army. It contains a small wooden table, a wooden stool, a chamber pot and a sleeping mat. By piling the stool on the table I can climb up and peer through the barred window opening, though that is strictly verbode.
Several of the glass louvres are broken and the sharp Highveld wind whistles through. Through bars and dusty mesh I can see the yard and the windows of the dormitory I was in three years before. The warder in charge of the detainees is a baby-faced thirty year old, very hostile, but controlled. It is rumoured around the prison that he has been denied any promotion because he once assaulted a prisoner. He is easily roused to a rage which drains the blood from his face and turns him deathly white. He understands English but only speaks Afrikaans to me – to give orders.
There are rules about everything. Blankets and felt sleeping mat must be folded in a prescribed pattern after the early morning bell. They must stay that way till after supper. Shoes are to be left outside the cell door at all times. A small steel bowl for drinking water may be filled during exercise periods; it must last for twenty-four hours.
All noise, whistling, singing or calling out is forbidden. Everyone has obviously been ordered not to speak to us except to issue instructions. Nothing happens without the noise of keys clanking, boots thundering down corridors, doors slamming. But without words.
Three times a day the cell door opens fractionally, a boot from outside propels a bowl of food through the opening, and the door slams shut. Twice a day, in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, the door clangs open, a warder says: ‘Kom!’ and I am led down the corridor and into a yard. It is enclosed by three-storey- high cell blocks on its long sides and by high barbed-wire- topped walls at each end.
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- Information
- Memory Against ForgettingMemoir of a Time in South African Politics 1938 – 1964, pp. 237 - 256Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017