44
MY NEXT ADDRESS was more of a sanctuary than a hideout: Liliesleaf Farm, located in Rivonia, a bucolic northern suburb of Johannesburg, and I moved there in October. In those days Rivonia consisted mainly of farms and smallholdings. The farmhouse and property had been purchased by the movement for the purpose of having a safe house for those underground. It was an old house that needed work and no one lived there.
I moved in under the pretext that I was the houseboy or caretaker who would look after the place until my master took possession. I had taken the alias David Motsamayi, the name of one of my former clients. At the farm, I wore the simple blue overalls that were the uniform of the black male servant. During the day, the place was busy with workers, builders, and painters who were repairing the main house and extending the outbuildings. We wanted to have a number of small rooms added to the house so more people could stay. The workers were all Africans from Alexandra township and they called me “waiter” or “boy” (they never bothered to ask my name). I prepared breakfast for them and made them tea in the late morning and afternoon. They also sent me on errands about the farm, or ordered me to sweep the floor or pick up trash.
One afternoon, I informed them that I had prepared tea in the kitchen. They came in and I passed around a tray with cups, tea, milk and sugar. Each man took a cup, and helped himself. As I was carrying the tray I came to one fellow who was in the middle of telling a story. He took a cup of tea, but he was concentrating more on his story than on me, and he simply held his teaspoon in the air while he was talking, using it to gesture and tell his tale rather than help himself to some sugar. I stood there for what seemed like several minutes and finally, in mild exasperation, I started to move away. At that point he noticed me, and said sharply, “Waiter, come back here, I didn’t say you could leave.”
Many people have painted an idealistic picture of the egalitarian nature of African society, and while in general I agree with this portrait, the fact is that Africans do not always treat each other as equals. Industrialization has played a large role in introducing the urban African to the perceptions of status common to white society. To those men, I was an inferior, a servant, a person without a trade, and therefore to be treated with disdain. I played the role so well that none of them suspected I was anything other than what I seemed.
Every day, at sunset, the workers would return to their homes and I would be alone until the next morning. I relished these hours of quiet, but on most evenings I would leave the property to attend meetings, returning in the middle of the night. I often felt uneasy coming back at such hours to a place I did not know well and where I was living illegally under an assumed name. I recall being frightened one night when I thought I saw someone lurking in the bushes; although I investigated, I found nothing. An underground freedom fighter sleeps very lightly.
After a number of weeks I was joined at the farm by Raymond Mhlaba, who had journeyed up from Port Elizabeth. Ray was a staunch trade unionist, a member of the Cape executive and the Communist Party, and the first ANC leader to be arrested in the Defiance Campaign. He had been chosen by the ANC to be one of the first recruits for Umkhonto we Sizwe. He had come to prepare for his departure, with three others, for military training in the People’s Republic of China; we had renewed the contacts that Walter had made back in 1952. Ray stayed with me for a fortnight and provided me with a clearer picture of the problems the ANC was having in the eastern Cape. I also enlisted his assistance in writing the MK constitution. We were joined by Joe Slovo as well as Rusty Bernstein, who both had hands in drafting it.
After Raymond left, I was joined for a brief time by Michael Harmel, a key figure in the underground Communist Party, a founding member of the Congress of Democrats, and an editor of the magazine Liberation. Michael was a brilliant theorist and was working on policy matters for the Communist Party and needed a quiet and safe place to work on this full-time.
During the day, I kept my distance from Michael as it would have seemed exceedingly curious if a white professional man and an African houseboy were having regular conversations. But at night, after the workers left, we had long conversations about the relationship between the Communist Party and the ANC. One night I returned to the farm late after a meeting. When I was there alone, I made sure that all the gates were locked and the lights were out. I took quite a few precautions because a black man driving a car into a smallholding in Rivonia in the middle of the night would attract unwanted questions. But I saw that the house lights were on, and as I approached the house I heard a radio blaring. The front door was open and I walked in and found Michael in bed fast asleep. I was furious at this breach of security, and I woke him up and said, “Man, how can you leave the lights on and the radio playing!” He was groggy but angry. “Nel, must you disturb my sleep? Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” I said it couldn’t, it was a matter of security, and I reprimanded him for his lax conduct.
Soon after this Arthur Goldreich and his family moved into the main house as official tenants and I took over the newly built domestic workers’ cottage. Arthur’s presence provided a safe cover for our activities. Arthur was an artist and designer by profession, a member of the Congress of Democrats and one of the first members of MK. His politics were unknown to the police and he had never before been questioned or raided. In the 1940s, Arthur had fought with the Palmach, the military wing of the Jewish National Movement in Palestine. He was knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and helped fill many gaps in my knowledge. Arthur was a flamboyant person and he gave the farm a buoyant atmosphere.
The final addition to the regular group at the farm was Mr. Jelliman, an amiable white pensioner and old friend of the movement who became the farm foreman. Mr. Jelliman brought in several young workers from Sekhukhuneland, and the place soon appeared to be like any other smallholding in the country. Jelliman was not a member of the ANC, but he was loyal, discreet, and hardworking. I used to prepare breakfast for him as well as supper, and he was unfailingly gracious. Much later, Jelliman risked his own life and livelihood in a courageous attempt to help me.
The loveliest times at the farm were when I was visited by my wife and family. Once the Goldreichs were in residence, Winnie would visit me on weekends. We were careful about her movements, and she would be picked up by one driver, dropped off at another place, and then picked up by a second driver before finally being delivered to the farm. Later, she would drive herself and the children, taking the most circuitous route possible. The police were not yet following her every move.
On these weekends time would sometimes seem to stop as we pretended that these stolen moments together were the rule not the exception of our lives. Ironically, we had more privacy at Liliesleaf than we ever had at home. The children could run about and play, and we were secure, however briefly, in this idyllic bubble.
Winnie brought me an old air rifle that I had in Orlando and Arthur and I would use it for target practice or hunting doves on the farm. One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur’s wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit my target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs’ son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, “David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad.” My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army.