How does one give an unbiased, honest appraisal of one’s own husband and have the gall to call it an obituary? Does one resort to clichés? Borrow words from the pens of others? No, one hones in on an aspect seldom seen by the general public – that of an artist, a private man, who worked in solitude and quiet contemplation.
Only someone who took in his tea, (me) and perhaps paused for moments of brief conversation, will notice the subtle changes in the making of a painting from beginning to end.
The painting in this case is a portrait of Tony Hall. Neighbour, friend, journalist, activist, socialist, conservationist, in a word, a mensch.
Tony Hall, oil on canvas, Harold Voigt
The inspiration behind wanting to do a portrait of Tony Hall was a charcoal sketch by John Singer Sargent of General Christiaan de Wet, who bore a remarkable likeness to Tony. Another was the 1832 portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres of Monsieur Louis-François Bertin. Both served as ‘back of the mind’ motivations for the portrait done in 2000. Tony was a charismatic figure with a colourful background and equally striking features.
Harry Voigt Exhibition, 2004
Harold Voigt first had to persuade Tony that a portrait would be a fitting acknowledgement of their friendship. Tony acquiesced, no payment required, just a few hours of his time, during which all Tony had to do was to sit still. A few photographs were taken and good-natured banter ensued until Harry had enough visual information stored in his receptive mind. Months went past during which the portrait slowly took shape. It was Harry mastering his craft, from a spontaneous, loose drawing straight onto a large prepared canvas, to the final measuring by the grid system of a photograph.
The painting took at least 6 months to complete. He would work on other smaller canvasses at the same time, but always be drawn to work on the portrait. He became obsessed with the painting, every now and again calling someone in for confirmation that he was going in the right direction, getting it right. We always tactfully assured him that it was. Although he was supremely confident that his work was good, he often sought a sounding board, someone’s comment, either positive or critical. He seldom took any notice, just wanted interaction with another voice, a viewer with an opinion. Any passer-by or lunch guest would be called in to comment, for Harry to watch their response, if any.
The Studio Chair, Harold Voigt
Nearly all Harold Voigt’s paintings were produced in this way, carefully considered, altered, reconsidered, scrapped, reworked, until suddenly one day I would go into his studio to find it signed.
Harold defined and refined the techniques of the Old Masters. His dog-eared Degas monograph, his second-hand John Singer Sargent open on the table next to his once-white chair, all bore testament to his desperate need to improve, to perfect, to supersede the best of the best, if not for the world, then just for himself.
Last minute touch up
In Harry’s studio, in a home we have lived in for nearly fifty years, his studio was a sanctum; cluttered, redolent with artist’s studio smells; oil paint, turps, oils, books, marble dust and rabbit glue. An alchemist’s laboratory, a craftsman’s workroom. His tools – his brushes, pens, pencils, crayon, chalks, nibs, scrapers, markers, all laid neatly in rows.
‘An alchemist’s laboratory, a craftsman’s workroom’
Studio Green Chair, Harold Voigt (detail)
The windows with some of his aphorisms written in yellow crayon can never be Windolened, his walls never repainted, his stuff never recycled. Here a plaster cast of Mrs Piles, there a child’s zither, a set of Arthur Mee’s encyclopaedia, at least fifteen dusty old telephones, none of which work. His collection of little radios, Sony, Sanyo, Phillips and Grundig, occasionally appeared in his paintings, as did lamps, kettles, spectacles and chairs, plenty of chairs. A simple chair could become an object of sheer beauty, or nostalgia or even loneliness. Günter Schlosser once said Harold Voigt could make something out of nothing. A rusty wheelbarrow tells a story. A spade. A bell.
The Trowel, Harold Voigt
Sketches, scribbles and colour swatches scattered all over the place, taped to the walls, propped against easels, on the floor. Not quite like Francis Bacon’s studio, but pretty close.
Harry was an extraordinary man. Head and shoulders above the rest. With very deep footprints, long strides and with his quiet reliability in a marriage lasting 56 years, he is present in every brick, every nail, every brushstroke and in every curry I make.
The Guest Room Lamp, Harold Voigt
Winter Sunlight, Harold Voigt
Wilderness Blue and Ochre, Harold Voigt
Wheelbarrow, mixed media on canvas, Harold Voigt
Abandoned Building in Desolate Landscape, Harold Voigt
Buffalo Skull and Sheep’s Bell (detail), Harold Voigt
Mrs Piles, 2020, Harold Voigt
After a long and difficult struggle with many health problems, especially Parkinson’s, Harry died in his sleep at 12.15 am, on the 9th October, 2022, in his own bed at home, watched over by his two sons, Max and Walter, and his wife, Leigh.
We shall miss his eccentric, intelligent and creative mind; his extensive knowledge, his guidance and most of all, his presence.
His beautiful paintings, his self-built house and his remarkable self-discipline will serve as a benchmark for his family and future generations, and his paintings will be his legacy.
In the Remote Venda area of Northern South Africa local champions from the village of Gabo meet their counterparts from the neighbouring village of Chifudzi on the other side of a river, to partake in an annual bareknuckle boxing tournament known as the “Musengwa“. It is seen as a test of one’s manhood and is open to all who are considered brave enough to confront their fears; regardless of age, size or strength which only adds extra mayhem to this surprisingly good-natured free-for-all fight fest; that can pit seriously good boxers with light-weight wannabe’s. There are very few rules; the overriding one being that once blood has been drawn, the fight is stopped so as to minimise serious injury.
“Foster” the reigning champion, from Chifudzi village, gets ready for this years tournament (his son looks on). Venda, South Africa. 19/12/08
Old-fashioned honour and the admiration of one’s peers is the only prize for the winners during these wild, chaotic but good-natured contests, in what is deemed the Noble Art.
There are very few rules; the overriding one being that once blood has been drawn, the fight is stopped
This festival of male pugilism begins each day with hundreds of men gathered around a big dusty “ring’ into which a fighter – usually a well-known one with a reputation to uphold and an entourage of his mates shouting encouragement in the crowd – steps up and goads anyone foolish enough to accept his challenge. There can be half a dozen fighters at a time, strutting and sometimes performing a dance, inside this ring; and all the while looking around at the crowd and daring any to step out and take them on.
A fighter steps into the ‘arena’ to challenge all-comers, using the familiar gesture of a raised fist (any willing opponent then steps forward with a nodding gesture). Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
A boxer known as “No hurry”, from the village of Gaba, performs a war dance in order to intimidate potential challengers from Chifudzi village. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
Once the challenges are made and accepted, each fight takes place one after the other. And because, under the watchful eye of the referees, the fights are stopped as soon as blood is drawn; the fights more often than not, turn into lightning quick and vicious 90 second affairs as fists are thrown with the pointed ends of ones knuckles so as to maximise the chance for facial cuts delivered to the opponent.
There can be half a dozen fighters at a time, strutting and sometimes performing a dance, inside this ring
The more practiced fighters with big reputations and training behind them can be a wonderfully agile, even balletic sight to behold; as they launch themselves into the air, fists blazing. This isn’t your average boxing match with the two pugilists circling each other, jabbing and keeping their distance, waiting for the right moment. No, this is usually full-on and high octane. And when it’s two lesser mortals engaged in combat it can be wild and messy; especially as the bouts aren’t separated by weight divisions.
Two bareknuckle fighters display a particular style of fighting using protruding knuckles, so as to make it easier to cut the opponent and thereby win the contest. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
Bareknuckle boxers display their fast and furious techniques during a bout, using a style of punch (with protruding knuckles) aimed at cutting the opponents face. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
Bareknuckle boxers excite the crowd with their dramatic fighting displays.. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
“Foster” (last years overall champion) is knocked out by challenger “Lucas”(orange shirt). Knockouts are rare, as a boxer is usually declared winner if he manages to knock an opponent down rather than out. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
One of my subjects in this picture essay had a big reputation as a skilled and athletic fighter, but came up that year against a large man built like a buffalo who didn’t look in the least fit, but wow, did he pack a punch. So much so, that he knocked out the favourite who lost consciousness before he even touched the ground.
the favourite lost consciousness before he even touched the ground.
By the time he had come out of the ambulance 15 minutes later – the first time they had employed any proper medical professional (thankfully up and conscious again) – a crowd had gathered near him; and the defeated fighter with no anger or regret in him, declared and joked that he had died and seen heaven. To which a man replied, “tell us brother, what colour was Jesus?”. Bout after bout would take place until sunset, after which new champions were born and new reputations and admirers were made. And even though blood was spilt and each village goaded the other as to who’s champions were more fearsome, all was done in good spirits.
A fighter feels the pain of defeat as well as cut and swollen eye. Fights are immediately stopped and a winner declared if a boxer is cut, for fear of the spread of HIV/AIDS. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
The champion bareknuckle boxer known as ” Senior” is held aloft by his fellow Gaba villagers after he wins yet another bout. Adoration from his peers is his only prize. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
I did this photo essay some 20 years ago now, and since then rightfully, women have been allowed to attend as well, and the Musengwa boxing tournament has become more regulated and less dangerous, but no less interesting.
A boxer known as “Senior”, from the village of Gaba,surrounded by admirers, is about to take on his next victim. He is this years hot favourite for the title of overall champion.. Venda, South Africa. 20/12/08
Andy Hallis based in London and has been a freelance photographer since 1989. His work has taken him on a wide range of commissioned news for numerous publications around the world. Andy is contracted to the Observer and the Guardian, but he has also published numerous times in newspapers and magazines like The Times magazine, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent, the Independent on Sunday and the New York Times Magazine. He has also been commissioned by Red Bulletin Magazine, Newsweek, GQ Magazine and Der Speigel Magazine. He publishes photo-essays with Ars Notoria.
We bought Araminta the day after the doctor told us we would soon be the proud parents of twins. Until then, we’d found our scooter perfectly adequate – it was simply a matter of wedging our two-year-old son between driver and pillion passenger. But by no stretch of ingenuity could we fit a family of five on a two-saddle scooter. It was time, we decided, to move into the car-owning bracket.
And so, for £45, we became the puffed-up possessors of a thirty-year-old Austin 10 saloon, Araminta. Her name came with her pedigree. She was small, dark green, square and lady-like; an old gentlewoman, fallen on hard times, hiding her patches, darns and brittle bones under turquoise corduroy seat covers with red piping and a dignified, glossy bonnet.
Life had obviously dealt her some hard knocks. South African roads in the 30’s weren’t geared to smooth driving. There were ruts, potholes and seasonal rivers – with either dry stony beds or foot high torrents. All lay in a small car’s path with horrible caprice. Araminta had negotiated them with well-bred dignity, but life’s roughness had left its marks. The silky, tarred roads of the 60’s were kinder to her delicately spoked wheels, but she could only cope with gentle outings.
She was to be mine; the two of us would ride daintily to the shopping centres, we would take my son to the park and make fortnightly visits to the hospital. On Sundays, Araminta shuddered a little as my six foot two-inch husband lowered himself gingerly into one of her bucket seats; but she accepted the extra burden with a sigh, and a slight sag.
Time had lowered Araminta’s standards. We found out that almost any small, flat instrument could be used to switch on her ignition and set her purring.
Life with Araminta was sometimes pleasant. She empathised with my breeding mood. Pregnancy has always sharpened and altered my sense of smell and she billowed fumes from her dashboard that smelt terrible to others, but delightful to me. Our reliable petrol gauge was a long bamboo pole that we indelicately poked into her petrol tank – a six-inch mark meant almost a week’s fuel inside her, while a damp patch at the end meant she was in dire need of nourishment.
Time had lowered Araminta’s standards. We found out that almost any small, flat instrument could be used to switch on her ignition and set her purring. If I mislaid my keys, she would, obligingly, allow herself to be turned on with a nail file, a screwdriver, or a knife. She was a little cranky; her windscreen wipers only worked manually. It was uncomfortable to steer her with one hand and with the other to have to rhythmically turn a large wiper knob back and forth, almost as if I were spinning a top. This happened whenever I was caught in one of Johannesburg’s violent summer storms.
Sadly, Aramínta’s terminals were worn. At first; I called mechanic whenever, abruptly, her engine faded away; but I soon found out how to revive her without expert aid. Surrounded by buses and home-going rush-hour cars, all hooting and jeering at my inert Araminta, I waddled out serenely, stomach to the fore, lifted her bonnet, and jiggled each terminal for 20 seconds. Araminta once more came back to life as I turned the nail file, and with my young son waving his podgy hand at the angry motorists, we could chug off once more.
Araminta and I parted company for a while, when my stomach grew too large to fit behind the steering wheel. My legs were too short to reach her pedals when the seat was shoved back. My husband took over the wheel and I became a passenger, which I think she resented. But on the day the twins heralded their arrival, she took us to the hospital with gentleness and despatch.
Araminta greeted the slimmer me with coolness. She was hard put to accommodate the two carry-cots with their noisy occupants and a bouncing toddler, and she groaned under the weight of the huge shopping bags. I think she found the atmosphere of fecundity indelicate, and she particularly resented our Sunday outings when five people and their paraphernalia strained her springs to the point of twanging.
She registered her first protest without warning. As we went over a slight bump in the road, her back window quietly fell out and vanished between the back seat and the boot. We fished it out and tried to squeeze it back into its original position, but the slightest jolt always brought it down again. We tried plastic sheeting too, but it wasn’t completely successful, and then agreed that the best plan was to add an umbrella as a permanent fixture. The umbrella was stored at our feet alongside the petrol gauge, and when the heavens broke open (as they often do in the high veld) I sat on the back seat and held the umbrella over the sleeping twins.
Araminta and I grew further apart. The heady fumes I had so enjoyed when I was pregnant now made me feel dizzy, and I was worried in case they should poison the children. Her terminals had to be jiggled more and more often, and a trip of two miles sometimes left me exhausted with the exercise of constantly hopping in and out of the car. Her back seat sloped in such a way that no matter which way the carry cots were placed, the twins were always lying at an angle, with their feet up high and their heads lower down, jammed into a corner.
The orange box that held up the front passenger seat snagged stockings and it meant that any additional passengers could choose between riding astride the box, or sitting buddha like, cross-legged, on the seat – a very uncomfortable position to maintain if you happen to be holding an umbrella over two carry cots.
Then, one crowded, eventful Sunday, Araminta greeted us with a flat right back tyre. Surprisingly enough, she had never had a puncture before. This was fortunate because there was no spare wheel.
A friend towed limping Araminta to a garage where she was greeted with the usual hilarity, mingled with pity and disbelief; cars in South Africa in the 60s tended to be large and American, glittering with chrome. They lived fast and died young.
An attendant whipped off Araminta’s wheel, patched up the tube, and put it back on again. With a light laugh, disdainfully, he waved us away accepting no money. We were obviously deserving of charity.
We re-loaded children, bottles, parcels of nappies and bathing suits and set off once more. People on the pavements and drivers in big flashy cars stared at us as we began to weave our way through the weekend traffic. They waved energetically, They even hooted. We were used to attracting attention, and so we waved back with fine grace, smiling at their friendliness and enthusiasm. They carried on waving. Some of them seemed to be shouting.
“You know” said my husband “I think they’re trying to tell us something.”
That made us both thoughtful. No smoke was pouring fore or aft. Nothing rattled more than it usually did. Was her gait perhaps a little unsteady? Rocking slightly, we reached the top of a steep hill. At the bottom of the hill, perhaps 500 yards away, was a garage.
“I’ll coast down to it”.
Silently now, carefully, engine off, we rolled down the hill. Araminta was hobbling now. The garage attendants stood at the bottom of the hill looking up at us as we descended. They were openmouthed. A small crowd had gathered. We pulled into the garage and came to a stop.
Araminta lurched, tipping back at an angle as the right rear wheel detached and rolled forwards for a few yards. It spun lazily and came to rest against a petrol pump.
The pump attendants started laughing, which startled the children making them wail. My husband murmured ‘Christ!’ and reached, hands trembling, for a cigarette.
It wasn’t Araminta’s fault, of course. The wheel had been carelessly put back on.
But this incident was the beginning of the end. Over the next few months, Araminta shed more of her parts. She also started discharging her batteries every time we took her out, leaving us stranded and then tired. We made one last attempt to save her, but the mechanic told us it would cost £100 to have Araminta rewired. We decided to part company. We gave her to a young man who lived down the road.
For months afterwards, as we sped past his garage in comfort in our new, more streamlined car, with its full complement of fittings and, oddly soundless springs, we saw Araminta in the young man’s driveway: there she was, dismembered and disemboweled, her bonnet gleaming like a polished skull, while the young man whistled happily over her black old bones.
Eve Hall, 1968
Eve Hall in the 70s
Eve Hall was a writer, a fighter, a tireless development worker and a pioneer in income-generating projects for women for the ILO. In Kenya she was the women’s editor of the Daily Nation, In Dar-es-salaam she started the ANC magazine the Voice of Women, in India she worked as Oxfam’s press officer. She spent ten years in Somalia working with refugee women and another ten years working for women and girls in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and South Africa.
Eve grew up in Paris during the war, but moved to South Africa with her mother, Lisa, to rejoin her father. Eve was one of the small group of Congress of Democrats Activists (the white wing of the ANC) who stood up against Apartheid in the early 60s, which resulted in her imprisonment. Her husband Tony, a journalist, was banned and subsequently they took their three children, and travelled from country to country, doing their best to make a contribution to the general human weal. In 1991 Eve and her husband Tony returned to South Africa.
Are you mystified? Well, allow me to enlighten you!
We are watching ordinary South Africans riot as they see Jacob Zuma tried and sentenced to jail for corruption. If you live in the UK or in Europe or in the USA then your media cannot explain to you why this is happening. Why are people defending Jacob Zuma? As Adam Curtis put it, when the media doesn’t inform us properly about what is happening then all we can do is throw up our hands, shrug and say: ‘Oh dear!’
Great Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand are now full of embittered white South Africans who left because Apartheid ended. Don’t let them bend your ear and drip poison into it, either. They are not a reliable source of information on South Africa. When you meet them at work and in pubs or bars, remember who they are and take what they say with a big pinch of salt.
Jacob Zuma earned the respect of the majority of ordinary South Africans the hard way. Jacob Zuma was jailed for 15 years on Robben Island from 14th February 1964 to March 1979. After his release he organised internal resistance for two years and then, after setting up ANC intelligence networks, he joined the Central Committee of the ANC.
Great Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand are now full of embittered white South Africans who left because Apartheid ended.
In comparison to Nelson Mandela (may he rest in peace) Jacob Zuma is what the Chinese would call “an uncarved block”. Although Nelson Mandela was a high-ranking member of the Tembu Royal House who rejected tribal customs and ran away from an arranged marriage. Jacob Zuma, on the other hand, had no formal education. He was self taught, and he behaved and lived like a traditional Zulu chief with six wives and twenty children. In contrast, Nelson Mandela studied law at the University ofWitwatersrand and set up his own Law practice.
Perhaps it was partly this unpolished traditionalism that helped Zuma in the early 1990s, as ANC Chairperson of the Southern Natal Region, persuade the Zulus to turn away from bloody civil war, and to persuade Inkatha to sign peace accords and channel its energies into democratic competition in the elections of 1994. It was not Mandela who stopped the civil war, but Zuma. I can hear some of you now.
Machete and spear-wielding Inkatha party members massacred ANC supporters in Boipatong- June 1992
In succeeding by preventing the civil war, Zuma sabotaged the last gasp effort of the Apartheid regime, in collusion with Inkatha, to Balkanise South Africa: to shatter the new born ‘Rainbow Nation’ and set up black enclaves and white enclaves.
But, five years later, Zuma attracted the enmity of the neoliberal wing of the ANC being groomed by foreign and domestic capital, Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. This enmity started after he began to speak out against Mbeki’s neo-liberal policies and the failure of Thabo Mbeki’s government to redress the structural problems of inequality created by Apartheid.
Zuma sabotaged the last gasp effort of the Apartheid regime, in collusion with Inkatha, to Balkanise South Africa
The riots that you see happening now in South Africa are as a result of these failures. Don’t blame Zuma for the structural inequalities. In criticising neoliberalism, Jacob Zuma, nominally a socialist, also attracted the support of many people on the left in South Africa in the ANC and the Trade Union movement (COSATU) and in the South African Communist Party. The knives came out. Jacob Zuma was now targetted by forces at home in South Africa and abroad.
It was no surprise then when an orchestrated campaign against Jacob Zuma began. Zuma came to represent the alternative to Mbeki. The “Zuma Matter” – as it was known in South Africa – began with a press conference given by Thanda Mngwengwe, the Head of the Scorpions.
Zuma attracted the enmity of the neoliberal wing of the ANC being groomed by foreign and domestic capital, Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa.
Subsequently, the corruption charges brought against Jacob Zuma were dropped. But the attempts to stop him from reaching the presidency continued. On the following two occasions the charges were dropped against Zuma because, according to Judge Chris Nicholson and then Mokotedi Mpshe (head of the National Prosecuting Authority), the judicial process against Zuma was manipulated by Thabo Mbeki.
In the second instance, the accusation was backed up with evidence: recordings of Thabo Mbeki caught discussing how to make political capital out of the Zuma Matter with Leonard McCarthy, the former head of the disbanded and discredited elite anti-crime unit, the Scorpions – initially responsible for bringing Zuma to trial and investigating him.
The opposition appealed and, with the help of judge Azar Cachalia, suspected (and with good reason) of having a personal vendetta against Zuma, and judge Louis Harms, (who conducted the “Harms Commission” in the 1980s in London which effectively exonerated the Apartheid regime of war crimes), they tried to reopen the case.
An enormous effort went into magnifying the charges against Zuma to discredit him. The tactic of domestic corporations and international agencies attempting to get rid of Zuma were successful and Zuma was recalled and replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa, a darling of the corporations. Remember, Zuma din’t lose in an election.
This tactic of highlighting questionable behaviour and corruption by representatives of foreign governments played no part in British foreign policy, for example, when it came to the one billion dollar bribe paid to Saudi officials by a British company to get a contract. But when it came to Zuma, and how he benefitted from being the President of South Africa, it became a priority of the British government to help take Zuma down. He was an opponent of rampant neoliberalism, and, as they perceived it, of British strategic interests in South Africa.
So, when representatives of the western media like Simon Jenkins and Simon Tisdall, and organisations like the Guardian and the BBC sided with the opposition to Jacob Zuma, it is probable that they were not offering high-minded independent opposition to a corrupt and discredited South African politician at all, but behaving as part of the British media-security apparatus.
There is a contradiction. If you don’t take the Guardian or the BBC seriously when it comes to reporting or commenting on socialism in the UK, then why should you take them seriously when it comes to their take on politics in South Africa? Now, because of their lopsided reporting on Jacob Zuma, they have no way of explaining convincingly what is happening.
An earlier version of this article resulted in Ros Taylor, the former Law Editor at the Guardian banning me from writing for that newspaper. It was probably a decision taken by several editors. I am grateful for the help of Dominic Tweedie in the writing of this article.
Phil Hall is a college lecturer. He is a committed socialist and humanitarian. Phil was born in South Africa where his parents were in the ANC. There, his mother was imprisoned and his father was the first journalist from a national paper to be banned. Phil grew up in East Africa and settled in Kingston-upon-Thames. He has also lived and worked in the Ukraine, Spain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Phil has blogged for the Guardian, the Morning Star and several other publications and he has written stories for The London Magazine. He started Ars Notoria in May 2020.
After I was released from jail, but house arrested and banned, I was able to get one of the last exit permits given and went to London, and from there to Canada. When the ANC came to power I asked my daughter if she would come with me to South Africa. She thought about it but said, sadly, she would miss the rain.
This poem was written after a visit to South Africa and my mother’s death.
Homesickness
Ninety nine days out of a hundred
It’s not a clear yearning any more,
Not a burning dream of yellow grass now.
It’s settled down in me to a dull anxiety,
Crouching, unnoticed, like a low grade fever,
So still my cheeks don’t even flush
In this cool place.
After all these years
More years now than there were before,
It is still waiting – patient, quiet.
Like a dog lying in the grass
But with a biting memory:
There’s a rosy African sun again
That warms the brick wall of your courtyard,
Fluttering on the underside of silver leaves,
Rustling softly in the morning,
Stuttering with the birds,
While we drink our rooibos tea
And there you are.
Just a shakey memory
Hovering ghostlike at the outer edges of my eyes,
Shifting with each blink,
Reeling with the opening and closing of my own lids,
My strong mother.
Now, here I am, here,
I am the strong mother.
After all these years in this place
As many more than my own daughter has lived
These are the ninety nine days
Ann Nicholson
Ann Nicholson was born and (mainly) brought up in South Africa. Entering Art School in Johannesburg she happily made contact with anti-apartheid activists but, unhappily, was refused entry into her third year after being caught red handed putting up an ANC leaflet in the men’s washroom. She was later arrested, tried in the Fischer trial, and jailed. On her release she left South Africa for London, then on to Canada, where, as a single parent, she worked as a teacher and counsellor. On her retirement she finally enrolled at Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver to at last complete her art training.
A car arrived at Tony Hall’s funeral in 2008 with Aggie Msimang. It was sent by the ANC with a message of condolence from Jacob Zuma, ANC President, Kgalema Motlanthe ANC Secretary General, Sankie Mahanyele, Deputy Secretary General, Mendi Msimang, Treasurer General.
Aggie Msimang came to the three sons saying:“You can be assured that by tomorrow morning your father’s 2020 vision will be on the desk of every single ANC leader.” Did the leaders read it? As socialists, did they agree with the 2020 vision? To what extent have they achieved it?
Daring to dream, preparing to act Now is the mandate, now is the opportunity, now is the time. A Quixotic mix of policy guidelines and practical measures to remind us that there are alternatives
– there is a way.
by Tony Hallin 2008
It is the duty of the present generation of leadership, a very broad spectrum in itself – from exile, Robben Island, 1976, MK, COSATU, MDM, SACP and the Youth Leagues – to return to the transformation of society, to lay the base for completing the emancipation of the people. It cannot be left to the young people and coming generations, because they have not experienced the commitment, the sacrifice; they are drifting away from a sense of what national liberation means.
The leadership has time to restore and set all directions in place. It must start now. The situation requires moving away from wrong and dangerous steps, moving back to dynamic people-centred policies and actions. We can waste no more time on analysis and shocked revelations as a substitute for action. Never, since we became a democracy, has the political conjuncture been more openly and clearly described and outlined, in the organs of the ruling Alliance. Even within the mainstream media, often hostile to national liberation, there are clear critical analyses breaking through at times, of the runaway capitalism, elite empowerment and corporate dominance that is beginning to erode the liberation project.
Never has the popular mandate been stronger for resolute action towards meaningful socialist democracy. Never has there been, or will there be again, a collective leadership with a better historical record of commitment and sacrifice, energy and ability, to carry through what is already the most peaceful and massive social transformation in history.
Never has the need been more urgent to promote and complete the emancipation and cooperation of the people of South Africa, and the region.
Daring to dream, preparing to act.
In the following pages is a mix of indicative policy guidelines and practical actions, some in broadstroke, some in detail. Quixotic, eclectic, far from comprehensive, it is nonetheless informed by a vision that is attainable in practice – and crucial as the type of programme to rescue our society from greed and poverty.
Realising a 2020 vision for Southern Africa Immediate steps to be taken by a strengthened Tripartite Alliance of ANC, SACP and COSATU to complete the emancipation of our country and our region:
Economy
1. The Alliance to commit publicly to changing economic policy from monetarism to a Keynesian model, and to instruct Cabinet to act accordingly; endorsing:*
a) the commitment to a fair and open market, recognising the dynamic, innovative role free enterprise can play;*
b) free expression through varied and free – but not corporate-dominated – mainstream media, including public media; controls on advertising;*
c) commitment to strong government and public oversight, mediation and controls, to curb a free economy from becoming a casino economy.
2. Dismantle the GEAR type approach to the economy and restore the RDP.
3. Keep/restore the commanding heights of the economy including infrastructure and essential services, to the public sector, for example and specifically…
4. Restore the Steel industry to majority public ownership, compensating Mittal and other private companies on the basis of value after tax, and reduction of total compensation by the amount of extra profit made by charging ‘world prices’ plus transport, for locally produced steel.
5. Government and Unions each to make up 35 percent of Boards,30 percent to be private sector owned.
6. Directors’ income in all forms to be strictly limited. This formula and these proportions to be followed in all case.
7. Renationalise Sasol, and reduce prices for petrol and diesel, compensating by value after tax, and reduced by amount of overpricing for the past five years.
8. Keep/restore Transnet, Telkom, Eskom and Water in the public sector.
9. Embark on a rehabilitation of national railways, and scrap the Gautrain project.
10. In stages, reduce SAA’s intercontinental operations and expand internal hub and regional services.
11. Nationalise all mines – gold, coal, platinum and others – to 55 per cent state ownership, with NUM providing 20 percent of directorships, government 35 percent.
12. Directors and executive incomes/expenses in all public sector or parastatal institutions to be capped.
13. All foreign investment to be for a minimum of three years, only half original investment to be returned if withdrawn before that.
14. Continue present arrangements with regard to free movement of capital, overseas/foreign personal accounts etc.
15. Allow free movement of all SADC-born citizens in South Africa, with residence subject to two-year renewable work permits until qualifying after ten years for permanent residence permits and/or dual citizenship.
16. Reciprocal arrangements to be negotiated with and between all SADC countries.
Preventative maintenance is the ultimate virtue
17. Present regulations/arrangements be continued with regard to entry/immigration for all other foreign nationals.
18. Illegal immigrants (excluding SADC-born citizens) to be registered, and either deported immediately, or allowed to apply for work/temporary residence permits, subject to certified offers of work for two years, or holding of funds adequate for family living and sufficient for professional/entrepreneurial activity for five years.
19. Negotiate within SADC for free movement of capital and lowering of tariff barriers between all member states.
20. Citizens only to own houses and land.
21. All foreign ownerships to be converted to 50-99 year leases.
22. Encourage all citizens who wish to emigrate to leave South Africa.
23. Encourage white and other citizens who wish to stay and contribute to the country to do so, with offers of jobs-for-skills, pensions, support for entrepreneurial activity and good education and equal career prospects for their children.
24. Encourage immigration on the Australian model for all foreigners with needed skills and capital.
25. All public works and parastatal/public sector institutions at national and local levels to increase job recruitment, and to reduce and strictly control tendering, consultant employment, outsourcing and sub-contracting.
26. Corporate and upper level income tax to be increased.
27. Tax breaks to be increased for companies with active training and empowerment programmes.
28. All national, provincial and local government salaries to be nationally prescribed, capped and monitored by central government.
29. All farms deemed to be productive, with farm workers paid and housed to basic minimum legal standards, are excluded from government takeover, subject to periodic (3-5 year) inspections.
30. Where land claims by clans or individuals are deemed to be valid, claimants are paid out from funds which would be otherwise used to train and equip them to farm productively.
31. Valid claimants with farming experience/skills are assisted through transfers of unused/government land, or willing-buyer/seller deals, training upgrades, credit schemes, farming cooperatives and agricultural extension schemes.
32. Conservation areas are excluded from clan takeovers.
33. A Basic Income Grant (BIG) be provided to all adult SA citizens.
24. Free light and water be provided for all legally recognised high density/low income and farm labour housing.
25. All RDP housing estates and legal settlements be provided, pro rata, with a park, a civic/community centre, sports fields, a library and a spaza/small store shopping centre;these all to be built as public works schemes, employing small building teams under strict public works supervision; tenders, where necessary, be administered under strict central government supervision.
26. Technical/vocational and IT training institutes be increased and facilities and staff upgraded throughout the country, being given high status in education.
27. In these institutes, in classrooms, municipalities, in Eskom, Telkom, Transnet and other public utility buildings everywhere, a large slogan is put up:MAINTENANCE IS NEXT TO GODLINESS.PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE IS THE ULTIMATE VIRTUE.
Culture
1.South African film, theatre, art and culture production to receive full subsidies.
2. All violent ritual, from unhygienic male circumcision and all female circumcision, to witch hunting, hut burning, casting bad spells and use of body parts be banned outright and heavily penalized.
3. The history and origins of traditional practices in all South African communities be researched and libraries and museums established in all traditional homelandswith collections and displays of literature, films, photographs, dance, art, crafts and artefacts.
Street names and monuments
1. Many street names in cities and major towns must be changedto do away with those of apartheid leaders and replace them with struggle heroes and martyrs.
2. It is timely to begin a major renaming exercise in time for the printing of new street maps for the many thousands of extra visitors and tourists during the World Cup period.
3. Johannesburg, for instance has some major streets and long highways with names of apartheid figures, from prime ministers to mere provincial administrators, on signs at every corner. Those to be replaced do not include such boer war generals or pre-apartheid leaders as Jan Smuts, Louis Botha, or General de Wet, or Dan Pienaar.
4. The names of DF Malan, JG Strydom, Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster and PW Botha should be restricted to minor streets in their birthplaces.
5. Lesser figures should appear nowhere, like Ben Schoeman and FC Odendaal, who named highways they ordered to be built, after themselves! They have had decades of undeserved prominence.It is high time that many more anti-apartheid heroes, and African heroes (mostly those deceased), be celebrated in major renamings:
6. The name of Mandela must not be tarnished by overuse at the behest of those seeking to occlude other struggle heroes. Outstanding among those still relegated or neglected after 12 years are:
Nnamdi Azikiwe, Murtala Mohammed, Thomas Sankara, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita
11. Still to be publicly honoured are the many brave people who died for fighting apartheid, or had their moment of leadership in the apartheid era.
12. Those many whose names should be on streets, memorials, buildings around the country include (as they come to mind – you add others):
Solomon Mahlangu, Cassius Make, John Harris, Babla Saloojee, Ahmed Timol, Rick Turner, Neil Aggett, Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkhonto, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mahauli, David Webster, Anton Lubowski, and so many others… Philip Kgosana at the front of the Cape Town anti-pass march, Tsietsie Mashinini, one of the 1976 Soweto leaders.Other leading anti-apartheid fighters to be honoured include JB Marks, Moses Kotane, Z K Matthews, Moses Mabida, Yusuf Dadoo, Jack and Ray Simons, Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, Jack and Rica Hodgson, Yusuf, Amina and Maulvi Cachalia, Dave Kitson, Harry Gwala, Alan Paton, Trevor Huddleston, Ambrose Reeves, Barney Desai, Cissie Gool (add your other choices…)
13. Some veteran South African freedom fighters have said that they don’t expect compensation for fighting in a good cause – but nor do they expect to be forgotten. There must be walls of remembrance around the country, as at least a partial redressing of the shameful neglect suffered by so many Umkhonto militants and other liberation soldiers – both the memory of those who died, and of those still living. The brief of the task force that has worked hard to find graves and identify missing militants, from the apartheid years, and from the third force killings, must be widened and strengthened, so that the name of every person who died or went missing in the struggle, appears in golden letters.
Some veteran South African freedom fighters have said that they don’t expect compensation for fighting in a good cause – but nor do they expect to be forgotten.
14. As MOTH (Memorable Order of Tin Hats) clubs and old age homes went up all over South Africa for (white) World War II veterans, and special suburban plots allocated, so MK and other liberation veterans must be registered and their families given pensions, and access to special community centres, clubs and site and service plots.
15. Corporates which were enriched by cheap labour through the years of white minority rule be called upon to finance these and other social initiatives.
Let the naming and renaming begin now!
16. There are whole suburbs in our cities with streets named after all Afrikaans poets and writers, or all Afrikaans artists. That is fine, but now is our time name other whole sets of streets after South African and African writers, musicians, artists, actors…of all races – and not just in settlement and housing estates, but major suburbs and cities.
17. Complete the research for names to go on the walls of remembrance!
Corporates which were enriched by cheap labour through the years of white minority rule be called upon to finance these and other social initiatives.
Law and Order
1. All accused of violent crime to the level of grievous bodily harm and more to be tried within three months, to be given no bail and if convicted, to receive mandatory long sentences.
2. All forms of gender and sex discrimination are outlawed, and full human rights protected, as in the Constitution.
3. Solitary confinement of prisoners to be banned.
4. Convicted prisoners to work 40 hours weeks at jobs useful to the economy and society, with an element of training for rehabilitation.
5. One major contributor to a culture of violence is the layer of hypocrisy and betrayal covering the recent past in our public life: that many people guilty of apartheid crimes of terror and murder, as leaders, as activists, walk free. Some self-admitted, like Craig Williamson, have profited in recent years from doing business in Angola, the same country in which in apartheid years his parcel bomb killed an ANC woman and her young son. Foot Soldiers of apartheid, again some self-admitted killers, are working for high salaries, effectively mercenaries in ‘security’ companies in occupied Iraq, and in parts of Africa. Adriaan Vlok, Wouter Basson, PW Botha, and so many others have not even come before a court.
The principle of amnesty for such people must be reconsidered, and their cases must be subject to fresh hearings.
6. Those working in these roles abroad must be subject to the full force of the law, amnesties withdrawn, and heavy jail sentences imposed.
7. Meanwhile hundreds, maybe thousands of Umkhonto veterans, are destitute – unknown and uncared for, let alone unhonoured for their commitment and readiness to sacrifice for liberation; some driven by despair to violent crime. So many of the victims of apartheid terror are still to be identified and named, let alone honoured.
Seek out and help these victims, and employ them for their training and experience, to identify and confront violent criminals, and to see that more and more security companies are formed without relying on apartheid veterans.
Region
As preliminary steps to consultations for broad-based reform in Swaziland and Zimbabwe…
Swaziland
1. A Constituent Assembly be set up, under UN/SADC supervision, monitored by the above HOST and DOPs team, to establish a full democratic system, with the king being given the status of a traditional leader, with salary and allowances, and with all ‘royal’ assets taken into the public sector.
2. A national referendum be held on Swaziland being incorporated as a province of South Africa.
Lesotho
1. On the next anniversary of the apartheid army’s raid on Maseru and killing of liberation movement activists and families in the 1980s, the SA President requests he make a state visit that day, on which a monument be unveiled to commemorate the sacrifice, and the Lesotho peoples’ hospitality to the liberation movements. In his speech
a) He pays tribute to the long and brave resistance of the mountain people under the Moshoeshoe dynasty against the raids of SA settler farmers and other invaders through the 19th century, their efforts and sacrifice in hosting liberation movement members through the apartheid era – and their contribution as migrant workers to the South African econoomy.
b) He apologises for South Africa’s share in the loss of lives and property in the SADC forces’ incursion into Lesotho in 1997, though it was at the invitation of the authority there.
2. He proposes talks to invite Lesotho to become a province of South Africa, and to hold a referendum to endorse this.
SADC
1. Propose negotiations for all SADC members to form the Federation of Africa South and East (FASE), as a nucleus for wider membership at a later stage within the framework of AU.
2. FASE states follow a social charter and coordinated economic policies, and allow free movement of people and trade within all member states.
Foreign Policy
some main guidelinesSouth Africa to act…
Bilaterally
Inter-regionally, within the SADC framework
In Africa, within the African Union (AU) framework
Internationally, as a member of the United Nations…as follows:
1. Form the Southern African Liberation Movements Association (SALMA) SALMA should be a treaty-based regional framework that brings together five of the most influential and sustained political movements in history, each of which not only brought their countries to independence and majority rule, but – in alliance against huge imperialist violence and pressure – continue to be the ruling parties of those countries, containing many of the cadres who fought the liberation struggle.They are ZANU (PF) of Zimababwe, MPLA of Angola, FRELIMO of Mozambique, SWAPO of Namibia and ANC of South Africa.
SALMA resolves at its founding meeting:* to honour those who died in their liberation struggles, through full historical research, including into the role of western intelligence, for widespread media and educational publication, and to look after the surviving veterans.
Together these countries contain considerable – even vast – wealth in natural resources, development and people.
2. SALMA resolves at its founding meeting:* to honour those who died in their liberation struggles, through full historical research, including into the role of western intelligence, for widespread media and educational publication, and to look after the surviving veterans.
a) to pledge that no party leader among these five countries will serve more than two five-year terms as head of government or party –
c) to restore/keep in the public sector, through majority government holding, all natural resources and infrastructure and public service industries.*
d) to place a moratorium on all short-term foreign investment.*
e) to ensure that none of their citizens are involved in illicit exploitation of Africa’s mineral and other wealth.*
f) to invite other SADC countries to join as SALMA associate members, provided they adhere to all the above terms.
g) SALMA to offer its terms as guidelines for future operations of AU.
South Africa (and SADC) in the African Union (AU)
1. The SA government renounces all those provisions of the New Economic Policy for African Development (NEPAD) which make it subject to the critique that Nepad is little more than a recolonisation of Africa and an extension of GEAR; and that Nepad’s vision is blurred by fixing its sights on increased global integration and rapid private sector growth as an answer to rising poverty, and by its failure to engage with Africa’s people to transform the continent.
2. Government endorses an economic and social programme for Africa which returns to the provisions and strategies of the Lagos Plan of Action and the African Alternative Framework.
The case graphically put in the Framework document:
“It is clear that simply sopping up red ink by cutting government spending and balancing imports and exports will not deal with African underlying problems…they have to be dealt with structurally. They are not purely economistic. They are political and social as well…The central principle of the Lagos Plan is that the worth of economic development is measured only by the well-being of the people.”
3. Government proposes that the AU Secretariat is headed by the most experienced international diplomats, such as Salim Salim of Tanzania, and Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria.
4. All peace negotiations and peacekeeping initiatives within Africa be conducted through the AU, under the auspices of the United Nations.International relations
5. Government maintains strong diplomatic and trade relations with the European Union, particularly with its original core members and with the Scandinavian countries, and strengthens relations with Russia.
6. Strengthens South-South relations,particularly to the east, with Malaysia, India and Turkey,to the west, with Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia.
7. in the Middle East,suspends diplomatic and trade ties with Israel unless:
a) Israel guarantees as a preliminary step to return to its 1967 borders, return East Jerusalem to Palestine, and agrees to the right of return for Palestinians.
b) guarantees to remove all racist laws and religious discrimination – or returns to its 1948 UN-recognised borders, and if it continues as a racist state, is subjected to total sanctions and isolation as were Rhodesia and white South Africa.
Socialism in our lifetime
Tony Hall
Tony Hall was born in Pretoria in 1936. He went to Witwatersrand university and then went on to work as a reporter at the Star. He joined the Congress of Democrats after Sharpeville along with his wife Eve Hall and interviewed Nelson Mandela in Hiding. His wife, Eve, was jailed by the Apartheid regime. Tony Hall was the first journalist to be banned from a major newspaper in South Africa when, after interviewing Potlako Reballo on a forthcoming insurrection, he was questioned and refused to give information to police.
Tony and Eve went into exile in Kenya where both of them worked on the Daily Nation. Tony wrote the column ‘On the Carpet and Eve was the woman’s editor. However, at the request of Ruth First, an intermediary for Odinga Odinga, Tony drafted the platform of KANU. He was appointed Communications Officer for the East African Community, but when his involvement with KANU was discovered he and his family were forced to leave the country.
In the United Kingdom Tony worked for Oxfam and then moved with his family to Tanzania to work as Training Editor for The Standard with Frene Ginwallah as editor. From there Tony was appointed Oxfam information officer for East Africa and was the first to reveal to the world, the 1973 famine in Ethiopia. After Ethiopia Tony and Eve shared the job of Oxfam Information officers in India.
After India Tony Hall worked as an editor of international Newsmagazines focused on the Middle East for eight years. Then he left to join his wife in Somalia where he worked for UNDP starting IMR, a trade magazine. He trained a team of Somali journalists to run the magazine.
In the late 80s Tony and Eve were in Harare. Tony was Editing the Magazine Africa South and East under the aegis of editor-in-chief Govan Mbeki. It was at this time that Mandela was released and Tony and Eve were unbanned. Africa South and East moved its headquarters to Yeoville. When Allister Sparks resigned as head of Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, which he founded, Tony Hall was offered a senior management job at the institute, however, once again, he left to join Eve who was working in Addis Ababa. There Tony become the Communications Director of the Economic Commission for Africa, a branch of the UN.
Tony carefully selected and oriented his replacement and Eve and Tony retired to a nature reserve in Mpumalanga where they lived together for ten years until Eve’s death in October 2007 and Tony’s two months later in January 2008.
Auntie Connie in Pretoria as a child with one of her dolls and her nurse
By Connie Hall
Arthur Lewis Hall was a fellow of the Royal Society, a winner of the Murchison Medal and credited by the makers ofEarth Story, a BBC documentary, with being one of the first geologists to guess the real age of the earth. Auntie Connie, his eldest, was the first female lawyer in South Africa and my Grandfather’s older sister. She wrote about her experiences as a child with her father, mother and brothers in South Africa as they trekked across the highveld and lowveld. I have never read an account like it.
Why on Earth did they do it? What on Earth induced my young parents, who were both members of large, suburban, university-oriented English families, to leave England only two years after my father was appointed science Master at the Dulwich school in London?
What induced the two to set out, toddler in tow, to make a new life three weeks away on a Union Castle liner? Was it the spirit of adventure? Was it a geologist’s desire to see what things looked like in situ? Or was it, as Kipling says:
“Because something is behind the ranges, lost and waiting for you – go”.
The train journey took three days and three nights, with no accommodation at the end of it. We spent a few nights at a dreadful boarding house where the language in the room next door was so strong it almost set the house on fire. Two rooms in the Diocesan School for girls (now a little theatre) were found, followed shortly by a small house in the then very remote suburb of Sunnyside.
We spent six months of every year travelling in a wagon – the most splendid wagon. It was much bigger than any Voortrekker wagon; and you could stand up in it quite easily. The wagon had a large white tent which covered it from front to back and we slept in it most of the time.
When my brothers started to arrive we needed an extra tent. We also had another tent for the African staff. The wagon was normally kept in Pretoria in the yard behind my father’s office, a single story, red brick building on the corner of Bosman and Vermelun Streets where the Post Office headquarters are now.
When it was time for my father to go off into the field in the cooler months of the year, the wagon was loaded with any amount of tinned food, since there were no fridges of any sort and into a Cape Cart. If we were going north the wagon was railed to Pietersburg, and if we were going east, it was railed to Middleburg.
we made quite a cavalcade
The tinned provisions we took with us included: condensed milk, condensed butter, tinned bacon and a variety of other foodstuffs. We also took a big bag of potatoes, tinned cakes, tinned bacon, 2 or 3 bags of mielie meal, a bag of flour and fodder for the mules.
My father needed to plan everything meticulously, since he was not placing his boots into anyone else’s footsteps. The country had been stripped by war of the provisions an expedition like my father’s might need. Country stores had largely vanished and the ones that remained were poorly stocked.
The only shops were properly stocked were the shops owned by Indians and their contribution to the return of normality to post-war Traansvaal cannot be exaggerated. The Indian shopkeepers were frugal and enterprising and they helped many a farmer through a bad patch with barter – which was an acceptable form of exchange to many of them.
My father worked in the area from Pretoria as far north as Pietersburg and a little further and in the east as far as the Lebombo Mountains and the Mozambiquan border into Swaziland. When we arrived at Pietersburg or Middleburg it was usually very late at night or very early in the morning and we went straight off to the local hotel to gather everything for the trek.
The teams of mules were ordered ahead and provided for by the local establishment. We had 12 mules, spanking beautiful creatures they always were; 10 for the wagon and 2 for the Cape Cart. Together with our staff of 3 African men and our own house man, who always came with us, we made quite a cavalcade. Our wagon was about 20 feet long and at least 6 feet wide.
He used a series of Higgins inks and an exceedingly fine steel pen, with which he would indicate the geological structures with incredibly fine and steady strokes.
Then there were my mother and father and our nurse, and of course the growing family of children. If we travelled 10 to 14 miles a day, we did very well. When we had moved sufficiently, we would look for a shady place with water.
For us children the most important thing was to find a large tree with a good bough to take our swing. Of course we didn’t move every day. My father would find a good place and he would work there for about a week, going out on foot with one of the African men and coming back in the evening.
My father took with him the official maps that existed, some fine, but none too accurate – as he found to his annoyance. On these maps he noted down his day’s work each evening at a small folding table. He used a series of Higgins inks and an exceedingly fine steel pen, with which he would indicate the geological structures with incredibly fine and steady strokes.
The light that he had to work by was a unique one, shaped like an hourglass. The top half was filled with paraffin in which was set the the metal wick holder. The lower half contained some kind of clockwork mechanism, which was wound up each day to give a most splendid steady light. After the map reading came the final specimen preparation of the rocks brought back to the camp each day. Each was chipped into a regularly shaped rectangle which he carefully labeled and noted in his diary.
The following day, my father would set out again in a large, wide-awake shaped , drill shirt with long sleeves to protect his arms from the sun, riding breeches tucked into shining heavy leggings, ending in heavy hobnailed boots. Round his neck he had his field glasses, water bottle, pouch containing pipe and tobacco and his note book. He was a big, strong man, and, except for tick fever, he was never ill. He always used an Alpine stock, probably a relic of his youth when he was an enthusiastic Alpine climber.
However, apart from his work, he never did any climbing in South Africa. Unless the stock of food in the pantry was running low he never carried a firearm in his daily work, although he had a shotgun and a heavy revolver in the wagon – just in case.
The most beautiful bread used to come out of ant heap ovens.
We used to love to chew the gum from the Mimosa trees when we were in the Lowveld. If there was a suitable ant-heap near our camp, a slice was cut out from the top to bottom of it and it was hollowed out in the centre to make an oven for baking bread. The most beautiful bread used to come out of ant heap ovens. If there was no ant-heap available then we would cook in an enormous cast iron pot. I could hardly get my little arms around it, and it was about 10 inches deep.
When my two brothers arrived we gave up the Cape Cart and got a “Spider”. This was a four wheeled vehicle which had one seat, but it also had a sort of tray underneath the seat. My father had a cushion made for this and we children sat on it. I can remember mile after mile we used to sit there, with our legs swinging over the edge.
We played mouth organs and Jew harps and ate naartjies and oranges – it was wonderful. No child today can have a life that touched ours. My dolls had to be very small because there was not much space to pack them. Two of my dolls were called Teeny-Wee dolls and they were, like my other dolls, made of China. They were dressed in intricate detail in traditional Austrian costume. These dolls, which were only half the size of my little thumb, were constantly getting lost and my tears and trauma that followed prompted my father to keep them in a matchbox in his waistcoat pocket. In the evening, when he returned home, I would be allowed to play with them.
We would often be woken up at night by the roar of lion, but I was more frightened of fires – we always went out in the driest time of the year and I was terrified of the fires that we could see sweeping over the hills. I remember one night we were woken up and went to God’s Window [a high cliff top in the Lowveld with a view] and looked down at a huge forest fire – a spectacular, but terrifying sight. I also didn’t care much for flooding rivers. and we had some frightening experiences crossing them.
One time I remember well, was when we crossed the Blyde River in full spate. The mules were swimming and the water was rushing under the Spider. We had a dog called “Watch”, who adored water and he always insisted on swimming across rivers. This day we had to wait for over half an hour for him to come up the bank after he had been swept downstream by the torrent.
We would often be woken up at night by the roar of lion, but I was more frightened of fires – we always went out in the driest time of the year and I was terrified of the fires that we could see sweeping over the hills.
When we used to go to Sekkukhuniland in the Middleburg district, my mother and I must have been among the first white females to come through the district because we were objects of much interest. The woman came for miles to stand in a big circle round the camp and watch us. They were particularly amused when my mother combed my long red hair and like all little girls, I complained bitterly when the comb stuck in my tangles.
We sometimes went down the Long Tom Pass, of course tar roads were unknown in South Africa at that time. The road used to be bad often, with big dongas cutting it. We would have to look for rocks or sometimes a suitable tree to cut down to fill those gullies in order to keep the wagon reasonably level. On one occasion the wagon fell right over whilst I was inside.
To prevent this sort of problem my father and mother and all the men all had to stand up with long ropes pulling against the fall of the wagon and to keep it reasonably level as we went of these frightfully handmade efforts at mending roads. One morning in the Sekhukhuniland, dawn was just about breaking when we were woken up by a peculiar stamping sound, shouting and general hub-bub outside.
My father was apprehensive because there had been an uprising in the area. So with his revolver handy, he carefully opened one of the flaps in the wagon. He saw a large crowd of African men dressed up in paint, dressed in spears, shields, feathers and skins. There were about 50 to 60 people there. And our men were sitting around the fire calmly chatting to some of these fellows! My father was very worried and he shouted out to our men to find out what was going on. They laughed and said that the local chief’s son was coming out of school now, and that these were his friends going out to meet him. They had seen the white chief’s camp and had come to greet him.
During his attendance as a South African representative to the Geological Congress in Spain. And my father, as the only French speaking member was selected to sit next to the Queen of Spain at the official banquet. He also attended congresses in Russia and the USA as an official delegate as well as undertaking the total organisation of a congress in South Africa. My mother was a sterling woman all the way. They formed a vital partnership. They were guides, helpmates, philosophers, friends and helpmates to each other. Their love and concern for a country they made their own, left a rich heritage for South Africans, for generations to come.
Published in Loco Voco 1986 and edited by C. C. Callaghan.
It was 1961, I was a reporter on the main SA daily newspaper The Star. The African National Congress had been banned by the white Apartheid government, and its leaders house arrested and not allowed to meet or speak publicly. Nelson Mandela, a Johannesburg lawyer, and one of the top leadership, had gone underground, slipped out of the country. He went to London, where he spoke in Trafalgar Square, to other capitals, and to Algeria, one of the countries which supported the ANC, and he addressed the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa. The tour was to announce to the world that the ANC was alive and carrying on the freedom struggle, and by the end of it, Nelson Mandela was a very well known figure. .
Tony Hall & his children in 1963. His wife, Eve Hall, was jailed by the Apartheid regime
He then slipped back into the country, and in disguise, started on a tour of South African centres to mobilise ANC and support from all races for the calling of a National Convention to demand votes for all and a new constitution for majority rule.
In order to be able to move around the country he disguised himself as a chauffeur, complete with the old fashioned dark blue coat with brass buttons, and a traditional chauffeur’s cap. His “employer” grandly sitting in the back of the limousine, was a well known Johannesburg actor named Cecil Williams, who was a secret ANC supporter.
Before they set off on the national tour, I was contacted at my newspaper in Johannesburg by ANC friends and asked to come and interview him , at a secret venue. (They knew that, as a Congress movement member myself, I could be trusted not to reveal his hiding place, or leak it to the police.)
One afternoon, a few blocks from the office, I was picked up in an ordinary car, but with darkened windows, and driven to a small house in what were then the Indian suburbs. I was taken quickly into a very small room where the dignified figure of Nelson Mandela, already becoming known in the media as ‘the black pimpernel’, sat at a dining table. He nodded a greeting. As I sat down opposite him I pulled out my notebook, I was in awe. His bearing was so erect and commanding – as it is to this day, even in his old age – his coat so brushed and the buttons shining, his hair neatly centre parted as it was in those days. I remember thinking to myself, nobody could be fooled into thinking this man could be anybody’s underling.
He spoke of the plan for a three-day nationwide strike, about which the whole country was on tenterhooks, if the demand for a National Convention, and to work out a whole new deal for the people of South Africa, was not met. Johannesburg was tense with expectation.
I went back to the Star newsroom, my stomach turning with excitement at the coming front page story I had. But I promised that, beyond saying that the interview was at ‘a secret venue’, I would not try to report where it was or how he looked. – nothing that could give him away. I would report in detail only what he had to say.
He went on from there, ‘chauffeuring’ all round the country, holding one secret meeting after another to mobilise the leading people in the provinces, but making few more, if any public pronouncements direct to journalists…
…until one day, driving on the road near the Howick Falls in Natal, a following car pulled in front of them, armed men got out and arrested both Nelson Mandela and Cecil Williams. An informer had put the secret police on their trail. Cecil Williams ordeal ended in deportation to Britain. For Nelson Mandela, it was the beginning of his decades in jail.
A few months after my secret interview with Mandela, my wife Eve was arrested for promoting the objects of the banned African National Congress, and spent months in jail. She was then fined for ‘insulting’ the apartheid state president in a protest leaflet which she signed. We were both listed as members of a banned organisation, and could no longer work as journalists. We left as a family, with our three sons, to a life of exile, in UK and around Africa.
The first time I met him again was about thirty years later, at a birthday party in Johannesburg for the famous singer Miriam Makeba, who had become known as ‘Mama Africa’. It was one of those many parties for all of us, to celebrate coming back home, after almost three decades of exile. *
May 1961, The Star
Lawyer Mandela prophesies -This is the start of the head-on clash
Nelson Mandela, in the early 1960s, before he was sentenced in 1964 to life in prison for sabotage.
My undercover interview with Nelson Mandela while he was in hiding. The Star could not admit it was a “live” interview,” as he was banned from talking to the press. I carried out the interview with Nelson Mandela who was disguised as chauffeur, in a small room in an Indian suburb of Johannesburg.
By staff reporter Tony Hall
With the fluctuating changes in Native leadership caused by the banning, exile and imprisonment of one leader after another, it is difficult for even the best informed on Native affairs in South Africa to determine who are the dominant leaders of the Native masses and which man in particular is destined to become their leader-in-Chief.
Today Mr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, secretary of the African Council and chief organizer of the threatened anti-republic demonstrations timed for the end of this month., has assumed the mantle of official spokesman for the Native people.But even Nelson Mandela does not regard himself as leader of the people except in the sense that for the time being he is available to act and speak on their behalf.
Collective
“Native leadership.” he says, “is a collective leadership – a system forced upon the African people by the White authorities.”
Mr. Mandela, who was born at Umtata in 1918, is a member of the Tembu Royal House. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Mpakanyisina Mandela. His father was eventually deposed as chief of the Mvezo Location, Umtata district.The present showpiece chief of the Transkei, 48 year old Chief Kaizer Matanzima, chairman of the Transkeian Territorial Authority, the man to whom the Hon. Hans Abraham , Commisioner-General, formally bows and doffs his silk top hat, is the tribal nephew of Nelson Mandela who, according to tribal custom, chose the chief’s first wife.
Tribal Post
Nelson himself, however, showed little respect for his tribal custom when it affected his own fortunes. As a young man he was being groomed for an important tribal post and a marriage to a daughter of his own royal house.
Recalling his early days, Nelson once described how he revolted at the idea of having his affairs arranged for him. “My guardian , the acting chief of the Tembus, was on the point of paying Lobola for the marriage when precipitated a grade A tribal crisis by objecting to the marriage.”In the resulting confusion I broke away and made a dash for Johannesburg, where I got a job with the City Council.”Nelson has one other relative of distinction. He is a tribal uncle to the Paramount chief of the Tembus, Sabata Dalinyebo, who recently led a faction in defence of the Transkeian Territorial Authority.
Law degree
Mr Mandela began his education first at Clarkebury and later Healdtown in the Eastern Cape. He went on to Port Hare University College and finally the University of the Witwatersand.He also studied with the University of South Africa – much of his studying was done part time.He finally graduated in law and became partner with Mr. Oliver Tambo, former deputy president of the African National Congress and now leader of the United Front in London, in a successful legal firm.
Nelson can be said to have started his political career at Fort Hare, where he distinguished himself by being elected to the students’ Representative Council and becoming vice-chairman of the Athletic Union.
Youth Leaguer
In 1940 he caused a strike at Fort Hare by resigning from the S.R.C in a protest against the decision by the authorities to curb the power of the council.By this time too, he had begun to take an interest in African affairs. By 1948 he was elected general secretary of the African national Congress Youth League – the enfant terrible of the congress movement.Four years later he became national president of the league and in the same year president of the Transvaal division of the African National Congress.That same year, 1952 saw the launching of the defience campaign against the Apartheid laws. Nelson Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief and led the series of defiance acts in Johannesburg.He was arrested, convicted under the Supression of Communism Act and sentenced to nine months imprisonment, suspended for three years. Nelson Mandela, with his conviction, was well on the ladder of Native leadership.But in November 1952 his political career recieived the first inevitable setback. The then Minister of Justice, Mr. C. R. Swart, put a ban on him in terms of the Riotous Assemblies Act to prevent his leaving the magesterial district of Johannesburg.
Mr Mandela’s political wings were now severely clipped. His conviction under the Supression of Communism Act made him a statutory communist and the ban on his movement extended to his association with th African National Congress from which he was ordered to resign.He was also banned from attending meetings for five years. This ban was later extended for a further five years and was expired in March this year, which made his attendance at the All African Conference at Maritzburg two months ago possible.
‘Time for action.’
In December 1951 Mr Mandela who was then the legal advisor to the African National Congress addressed a Bloemfontein conference.He said: “It is time for action in a revolutionary sense. There is a great need for a united Non-White front with Africans as its spearhead.” The immediate aims should be to disorganise the system of Apartheid to make it totally unworkable, to divide the Whites seriously, if possible, and to use the resulting situation to demand further democratic rights.”Today Mandela says of the planned demonstrations for the end of May: “This is the beginning of the head-on clash with apartheid.”Mr Mandela has however, time and time insisted that his policy is not anti-White. “I would be the first to protest at any descrimination by the African people agaisnt the White community.” he has said.
Treason trial
Late in 1956 he was arrested in the nation-wide police swoops that rounded up more than 200 suspects. From then on he has spent most of his time in court as an accused at the treason trial. He was one of those acquitted last month.
With his powerful frame (he weighs 235lb and is an accomplished boxer and physical culturist), he has what one of his friends described as “an animal magnetism that attracts the African masses like pollen attracts bees.”
He does not drink or smoke and devotes a great deal of his time to reading. He is an admirer of Winston Churchill as a forceful militant leader , although he does not admire all Sir Winston’s political theories. Mr. Mandela is keenly interested in the African youth and helps to organise boys clubs and athletic activity.
Tony Hall
Tony Hall was born in Pretoria in 1936. He went to Witwatersrand university and then went on to work as a reporter at the Star. He joined the Congress of Democrats after Sharpeville along with his wife Eve Hall and interviewed Nelson Mandela in Hiding. His wife, Eve, was jailed by the Apartheid regime. Tony Hall was the first journalist to be banned from a major newspaper in South Africa when, after interviewing Potlako Reballo on a forthcoming insurrection, he was questioned and refused to give information to police.
Tony and Eve went into exile in Kenya where both of them worked on the Daily Nation. Tony wrote the column ‘On the Carpet and Eve was the woman’s editor. However, at the request of Ruth First, an intermediary for Odinga Odinga, Tony drafted the platform of KANU. He was appointed Communications Officer for the East African Community, but when his involvement with KANU was discovered he and his family were forced to leave the country.
In the United Kingdom Tony worked for Oxfam and then moved with his family to Tanzania to work as Training Editor for The Standard with Frene Ginwallah as editor. From there Tony was appointed Oxfam information officer for East Africa and was the first to reveal to the world, the 1973 famine in Ethiopia. After Ethiopia Tony and Eve shared the job of Oxfam Information officers in India.
After India Tony Hall worked as an editor of international Newsmagazines focused on the Middle East for eight years. Then he left to join his wife in Somalia where he worked for UNDP starting IMR, a trade magazine. He trained a team of Somali journalists to run the magazine.
In the late 80s Tony and Eve were in Harare. Tony was Editing the Magazine Africa South and East under the aegis of editor-in-chief Govan Mbeki. It was at this time that Mandela was released and Tony and Eve were unbanned. Africa South and East moved its headquarters to Yeoville. When Allister Sparks resigned as head of Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, which he founded, Tony Hall was offered a senior management job at the institute, however, once again, he left to join Eve who was working in Addis Ababa. There Tony become the Communications Director of the Economic Commission for Africa, a branch of the UN.
Tony carefully selected and oriented his replacement and Eve and Tony retired to a nature reserve in Mpumalanga where they lived together for ten years until Eve’s death in October 2007 and Tony’s two months later in January 2008.
The first part of this article was originally in a letter to his Tony’s granddaughter, Lucy Eve Hall
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