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IN ALBIE’S WORDS: That's my mom and she's walking in the streets of Cape Town, maybe Adderley Street, with Bill Andrews, who was the chairman of the Communist Party of South Africa. At this time, my mom would have been the typist for Moses Kotane, the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Bill had come as a working-class man from England to fight in the Anglo Boer War. He'd stayed on and he was very highly respected. Comrade Bill he was called. He would have a little wax moustache, English working-class style. And he's carrying one of those little leather tiny suitcases… not suitcases, briefcases we call them today. And I can see my mom’s actually quite well dressed. I don't remember her as being smartly turned out. But she told me that her mother was a seamstress and when she was younger, she was very well dressed. And this would have been a picture taken by a street photographer. They would take a snap of you, and you’d give them some money, and you'd collect the picture afterwards.
Albie's mother, Ray, with Bill Andrews, 11 February 1942. Bill Andrews was a British trade unionist who fought in the Anglo-Boer War, settled in South Africa and became Chairman of the Communist Party.
