Albie, mother and brother on beach

IN ALBIE’S WORDS: I would have been about two and my brother six months. I had fair hair then. I see my mom had a nice haircut. The beach also became very important in growing up with a sense of freedom. We had very modest living circumstances. Our aunties would knit us jerseys. We would never think of going to a restaurant to eat, it'd be too expensive. I'd never stayed in a hotel until aged 20 when I went to stay with my dad in London in 1954 and he was looking for a place that I could be with him. So, we stayed in a hotel. I’ve never lost that sense of freedom you get growing up with the sand between your toes, and there was a big rock on the beach. You’d see the big boys jumping off it, you’re waiting til you’re old enough to do so, and one day, I’m much younger than them, and I'm jumping for the first time. An unforgettable, triumphant jump. Next, the casual meetings on the beach. Then, as a young advocate, I would know how to put my towel down in a way that gave me maximum freedom but could be attractive to girls. And just getting the space on the beach to imagine and dream was very great.

My mom would move every six months because we could get a lease for six months in a basement. So, I remember staying at Fourth Beach. And I also remember staying at First Beach quite vividly. I remember staying above the road for a couple of years. It's completely different. I don't remember staying in the area where we are now, Third Beach.

When the plane landed [in South Africa], after 24 years and three months and so many days and so many hours and so many seconds since I'd left for exile, and I'm at what was then called the DF Malan airport, the question is, ‘Albie where do you want to go now?’ I'm going to work immediately with Dullah Omar at the Community Law Centre as Professor Albie Sachs, not waiting interminably in London for the ANC to say ‘Comrade Albie, you can now go home’. And then Dullah says I could stay with him and Farieda in Rylands (on the Cape Flats in an area then classified as for coloured people under the Group Areas Act), I could stay with his colleague at the Community Law Centre, Bulelani Ngcuka, in Gugulethu (then classified as a black township), or I could stay with my mom, Ray, in the Gardens (overlooking the Cape Town CBD in an area reserved for white people). And that question wasn't simply, ‘where do you want to stay?’, it was, ‘who are you?’ And I would obviously spend time with my mom, but I didn't want to be a rebel in a white area. I didn't know Bulelani and his family. Apart from knowing the words of some freedom songs in isiXhosa, the mother tongue of the people in his neighbourhood, I’d never learnt the language. So, it would be complicated staying with him. Dullah I’d known from before. So, I said I'll spend time with my mom, but that I'd like to live with Dullah and Farieda.

I remember with amusement how cross I was when I spent time with my mom, and she would say ‘Albie, it’s cold outside, you must put on a jersey.’ The reason I was cross was that it was cold outside, and I didn’t wear a jersey.

So, I’m back now for maybe a week the first time, and then two weeks the second time, going back and forth between London and Cape Town. Somebody would have to meet me at the airport, and for a number of visits, it was, oh what was her name….? Her husband was a lawyer and attorney. He became a judge afterwards. Essa Moosa! He died a few years back, such a lovely guy on the Constitutional Committee of the ANC, and his wife would come and meet me at the airport and take me to Rylands or wherever I'm going. Several months passed and I visit a friend in Clifton.

Her name was Dusty. She had been Dusty Goldberg. She was now Dusty Holloway. And then maybe on my fifth journey back to Cape Town, I felt my rage against the white areas had diminished, and Dusty had a spare room at Third Beach, just up the steps from where I'm recording this now. So, I would stay there and reconnect with Clifton. After a year or two, I decided I would actually like a place of my own. There was a small bungalow on the spot where I'm speaking now, owned by a distant friend of mine, his name is Philip Goodman, who had married Dawn, who was the niece of a very close friend and comrade, Wolfie Kodesh. When I had left to go into exile in ’66, Philip had been a bit of a happy beach bum, just enjoying life, and he’d bought a bungalow, he'd redone it, and then married Dawn. They had moved out, and now the bungalow was to let, and the near-hippy had become a well-established estate agent.

So now I'm living in my own space in Clifton. And then in 1994, the City of Cape Town decides that they're going to sell off the plots, instead of having a 99-year lease, which had been the position before. And Philip was saying, ‘Albie you'll have to leave. I want to sell it.’ I said, ‘Philip, I'll give you market value, and we can get an independent person to give us a price’. I had a flat in Maida Vale in London that I’d been able to buy with a deposit with the proceeds of a benefit performance at The Young Vic, by four British actors who had each played the role of Albie in The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs. I sold the flat, and my brother Johnny helped me with some money, so when he came here, he would have somewhere to stay. So, I was able to buy the bungalow. And then when Vanessa moved in some years later and Oliver was born, we decided it was just too small. The building was crumbling, and we had to redo it. Vanessa had gone back to high school to complete her matriculation, qualified as an architect, and designed the exceptionally beautiful and well-appointed bungalow in which we live today.