Our first Christmas on the island was uneventful. We had arrived on the island only two short weeks before, still in a daze, grappling with this new and hostile environment. Besides, we were also preoccupied with our appeal, the last thread of hope left for any reduction of our sentences – we certainly did not expect to be freed; we were not that naïve. Our attorney based our appeal on the grounds that we had been sentenced on the main charge of being members of an unlawful organisation and his contention therefore, was that if we were members of that organisation, it stood to reason that we would promote its objectives. Therefore, he argued, it was redundant to further sentence us to another three years.

But now it was Christmas, and there we were. Before we arrived on the island, the 10th of December 1963, we knew there were other political prisoners there. More than half of the hundreds of prisoners we found there were members of the PAC. Men like Jeff Masemola were charged with conspiracy to commit sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment. With him were Mike Muendane, Dikgang Moseneke, Johnson Mlambo (of the water affair), the three Nyobo brothers, from Kwa-Tshatshu near King Williams Town, the Gwentshe brothers from Tsomo and many others. The Gwentshe brothers were young militant ANC cadres and constantly confronted the feared Kleynhans brothers with equal fervour. Some of these young PAC fellows from the Pretoria Region had been sentenced to natural life terms by the apartheid judges. Among those were prisoners like John Nkosi, Philemon Tefu, Ike Mthimunye and Pro Dimake. It never ceased to amaze me that anyone really expected these people to never again see the light of day – that is, outside of prison walls in their – lifetimes.

We were fortunate to have predecessors. They warned us that the situation on the island was very difficult. But they also encouraged, and prepared us to accept the fact that the suffering would never go away – it was the one constant we could bank on. Timothy Dyantyi had warned us that one of their colleagues from the Eastern Cape, Jimmy Simon had died soon after arriving on the island in February 1963.