The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs

The impact of solitary confinement is so hard to convey. Nothing I'd read had prepared me for it. In our political culture, we all knew we were likely to end up in jail and could very well be tortured. We'd read books about torture, resisting torture, and people locked up. It doesn't help you. It's so specific to each culture, each person, each body. But the idea of writing came to me, I'm not sure how precisely and how soon, but I thought, there's one good thing that can come out of this hell. I can write. I can become a writer. I'd often dreamt and imagined I'd become a writer, but I'd been so busy with my legal practice and writing those intensely worded, extremely logical kinds of things that didn't want imagination. They wanted a certain kind of connectedness of thoughts and ideas in relation to legal issues, framed in a particular way.

I could become a writer, and I'm having an experience that is so extraordinary, so beyond anything I've ever imagined or been through, and I'm going to tell that story, and I'm going to tell that story to all the Albies out there. They could be in Alaska, they could be in Thailand, they could be in Argentina, they could be in Berlin or London or Nairobi. All involved in freedom struggles, connected in freedom struggles. I can convey what it's like. And then I can even have that kind of special joy, fun, existential elation of writing within this chaos, these feelings of rage and joy, but also of intense, internal sorrow that life can be so wretched and miserable and meaningless.

I can't resist them, I can’t hold out. It's awful. They're stronger than me. They turn the key and lock the door that I'm in. They bring me my food. They allow me out for exercise for 20 minutes a day. They're in charge. But I'm going to be in charge of the story. It's a hugely opportunistic response of turning the negative into the positive. Why? Because I can control those words, I can control my thought and my thinking. I can get some order out of the chaos.

And I think it was on the 27th day. I've now got pencil and paper. Now I can write in prison, and I'm scared. I've been holding onto my thoughts. I've been refusing to answer questions. Anything I write, they can see, they can read. My 90-day period was up. I was released for a few minutes, and I was redetained again. They took away my tie, they took away my watch. I had to depend on hearing chimes of the Cape Town City Hall clock. And after 168 days, I'm released.

I can't believe it. It's true, it's happening this time: ‘It's real. It's real. It's real.’ I'm still under my banning orders, restricted to paradise. I go into my office. I do some legal work, but my head is spinning, ‘I'm going to write. I'm going to write. I'm going to write.’ And it's giving me a certain sense of determination, a certain sense of feeling that I'm in charge, a little bit.

I describe it afterwards as writing behind open curtains. I couldn't go into a dungeon. The police would want to know what's this guy doing. So I'm carrying on my regular daily routine, advocates’ tasks. But I'm starting to write. And I begin with a feeling that I've got to convey to the reader, a little indication of what it's like, the experience. And I'm thinking, ‘Okay, I'm just going to give that little sense of myself now, habituating myself. I'll be now in this cube, concrete cube, and the reader will come in with me.’ I wrote the whole book in the present continuous tense to try and convey the emotion of what it's like through remembering it in the present tense, telling it in the present tense with that continuity and that subjectivity. It's not remembered, it's experienced to convey the experience.

I was released in March. By July, I've got quite far and suddenly the three typists working on the different drafts all contact me and they hand the materials back. Why? Because police raids had been conducted all over Cape Town. And amongst the people picked up would have been Stephanie Kemp, who later on became my client and later on we developed a romantic relationship. And now the typists were worried that they could be in trouble because they were committing a criminal offence by just typing out my notes.

But as time passes, their courage comes back, I'm writing a bit more, people feel more relaxed, and finally, I write the words, the end.

I've written a book, I've written a book. And I know somebody who's going to London and I give them a copy of the manuscript. The next message I get is that the publisher, Mr Collins himself, is coming to Cape Town to meet various authors and he'd like to speak to me. We fix a date.

There's a knock on the door and I see the big guy and I push the door open, and I pull him in. He thinks I'm a little bit berserk, you know, I've been too long in solitary confinement. I say, ‘Terribly sorry, Mr Collins, but my office is probably bugged.’ So we had a little conversation in the corridor and he said, ‘We're planning to publish the book. It might have repercussions for you. What do you feel?’ And I said, ‘Go ahead, go ahead.’ But then I'm locked up a second time and this time it's sleep deprivation, it's much worse, and I couldn't envisage even another year in jail. So the message goes out, wait until I come to England. And fairly soon after my arrival, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs is in my hands and it's one of those feelings I'll never forget.