Island in Chains

Mozambique was such a different world for me in so many ways. I used to say that I got a lot of knowledge in England. I was exposed to people from all over the world. I read things that were beautifully written. I felt very well informed about so many things. But the big discoveries, I made in Mozambique; the deep discoveries; the profound existential themes and issues, that were much more significant to my life, came in Mozambique. And it wasn't through masses of information and being with bright, competent, well-informed people; it was through living so intensely in a country undergoing transition, with people who'd volunteered, who'd come there voluntarily, who were thinking about the world, reshaping the world, exposed to danger, where everything you said and did and thought and connected with had significance, it had meaning, and could literally be life or death. It was strong and profound.

The first phase there, for me, was one of intense joy and recovery, of hope and resilience and courage coming back, and very much connected with the arts movement. The second phase was more complex, trying to build up and create a new justice system in a country that had been ravaged, not only by the oppression of colonialism but by war, and now was being subjected to intense pressure from apartheid South Africa, and racist Rhodesia, to undermine everything that was happening. Attacking the economy, sabotaging electricity supply, attacking and killing ANC people, and in general trying to make the country unworkable, ungovernable, as we had done in a way through our guerrilla tactics in South Africa. Now the governments of neighboring countries were putting an immense squeeze on Mozambique.

Indres Naidoo, a veteran of uMkhonto weSizwe, and who spent ten years on Robben Island for being involved in sabotage attacks in South Africa, was now in exile in Mozambique. A wonderful talker, he could speak about Robben Island and Nelson Mandela and what conditions were like on the Island. He could even speak about his own family. His grandfather had gone to jail with Gandhi, and his grandmother had gone to jail at the time of Gandhi, his father had gone to jail, his mother had gone to jail, he had been to jail, his sister Shanti went to jail, and his brother Prema went to jail. So this was somebody now steeped in the tradition of resistance and his ten years on Robben Island were during the worst days at the beginning. I'd hear him telling these stories, and I said, ‘We've got to write these stories down. They belong to the nation.’

So, we worked out, he would come to my apartment three days a week after work, and he’d dictate stories to me for an hour. First week he's there. Indris was a non-stop smoker. I hated smoke. I actually gave up - in 1960. My eyes got really irritated by smoke, and in that heavy subtropical air, it would be even more difficult. So, he'd sit right in the corner of the room, so that I could hear him, and I'd be taking the notes. And the stories were so evocative, not just filled with factual information, but talking about the relationships, the lives. The one thing he could never tell me was 'Indres, how did you feel when this was happening?' ‘I was shocked,’ he’d say. 'Tell me how did you feel when you saw a warder beating up a prisoner?’ ‘ I was shocked.’ He didn't get terrorised at all.

There were two interconnected reasons why I wanted the story told: The one was for the struggle. People would say free Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, but they had very little knowledge of what was happening on the Island, which is a very important part of our struggle to communicate to the world. And they were exciting stories of resistance, of courage, of doing things together, of thinking things through, and often quaint, strange, odd things that were happening, and sometimes ingenious ways of getting around the guards, and often exceptionally painful moments when abuses were taking place. Hard, hard, hard, but getting through, living through, fighting their way through.

The other reason was very personal. I'd had two books published on my own experiences. Privileged, even in prison, in the sense that yes, I was subjected to sleep deprivation, but I wasn't subjected to the wet bag, I wasn't subjected to electrodes on my genitals, I wasn't hung outside of a window. Privilege followed my white skin, in a way, even into the dungeons. But maybe the strength of the story was its very personal, intimate nature. Turning that into an element of the story I'm telling. But I'm feeling this other story of hundreds, now becoming thousands of people on the Island, that have got to get out. And I, Albie, have a chance now to communicate it through recording interesting stories. So, in a way, it was an antidote, a counterpoint, if you like, to my own prison writing, to now be writing of the experience of the majority of our prisoners, representing the majority of our people. So, it was a very powerful personal motivation for me as Albie the thinker, the writer, the comrade.

The first week he is there, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Second week, he is there Monday, can't make it Wednesday, struggling with Friday. It got more difficult as time went by. And I'm very, very stern, like a school headmaster, and I'm bullying him and pressurising him. And he comes along. He comes along. And maybe that's – I don't know if it's a strength or it's a characteristic of focus – seeing things through, attending to detail, being organised, I suppose all the books I've written have had an element of that, and they all based on a conviction that this story deserves telling. The best way to respond to the necessity is through writing. And writing requires focus, attention, organisation, stamina, shaping, thoughtfulness, stepping back and looking at it and critiquing your own work and looking at it again, and again, and again. So, I had pages and pages and pages of recorded anecdotes, but a selection of anecdotes is not readable, there's got to be energy, there’s got to be flow, there's got to be movement. It's got to be a sense of things developing, evolving over time. And that became my task. As the editor, I imagined nothing at all, but the actual integration of the materials, the coherence given to it, the cadences, the up moments and the down moments, the sense of flow and movement, are things that I had to interpose in the writing and the presentation. The only piece that was actually written by me was the introduction. And when I had the text ready, I spoke to Oliver Tambo and we agreed that the ANC representative in London, Francis Milley, would do the introduction. And he asked me to prepare a draft.

The draft in fact was the whole thing. He took it as it was, and he added one paragraph of his own right at the end. So, it's under his name, but that first part was actually written by me. The very last sentences were written by him. But the rest is all taken from the actual words of Indres Naidoo, and it was magnificent for me, Albie as a comrade, to read about what my comrades on the island were doing, how they organised themselves, the debates they had. One very amusing debate he mentioned to me was when a German millionaire called Gunter Sachs, it was announced, was going to marry Brigitte Bardot, a famous French actress. And he said the comrades would discuss, what could this mean for the struggle? The only issue in any news is, 'What does it mean for the struggle?'

Another part that Oliver Tambo asked me to modify was Indres had some very critical words about Mothopeng, the lead of the PAC. Oliver Tambo said, 'It's up to you and Indres, comrade Albie, but maybe you could think about not criticising,’ and he would have the larger vision that it was much more important in maintaining external unity between the liberation forces, than it was exposing failures for which the PAC might have been responsible.

So, the book, then, is ready for publication, and I think I send it to Penguins in London, and then, it's published in the United States as well. And years later, Indres brought out an edition under his own name. It was his story, and I was more than just a scribe. I pushed him to tell the stories, I organised the material and included many stories and pieces of information, making them into a book. It's a different process. It’s not just getting the words down in sequence, it requires discovering rhythms and connections and cadences and so on. I'm very happy that Indris, and the role that he and that generation played, was honoured. It's a very powerful book, dealing with a very powerful part of our history that's very much under-researched and under-known. Maybe the kind of thing that would give greater insight to young people reading today. It's not just the hardship, but the intensity of the idealism of the older generation; the passion and the commitment; and it may take away some of the cynicism and some of the disdain that is prevalent in the younger generation.