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Clapperton Mavhunga on Letters from Robben Island: A

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Clapperton Mavhunga on Letters from Robben Island: A A. M. Kathrada. Letters From Robben Island: A Selection of Ahmed Kathrada's Prison Correspondence, 1964-1989. Edited by Robert D Vassen. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999. xxvi + 263 pp. $22.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-87013-527-9. Reviewed by Clapperton Mavhunga Published on H-SAfrica (October, 2001) Most of the books on the liberation struggles letters he wrote (p. xvi). The letters reveal "his en‐ in Southern Africa deal with the bush wars and gaging personality, his uncompromising views, the political struggles. Kathrada chronicles in his and his sharp wit and humor". Kathrada was "a letters the struggle from prison and what it was tower of strength and a source of inspiration to "like as a member of the liberation movement to many prisoners ... across the political spectrum" live in an apartheid jail". The list of Kathrada's ac‐ and, not surprisingly, the recipient of the ANC's quaintances reads like a "who is who" of South highest award for meritorious service to the liber‐ Africa's anti-apartheid heroes--Nelson Mandela, ation struggle, the Isithwalandwe Award. Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo, Bram The book begins with the background to the Fischer--the list is endless. It also gives a social life imprisonment of Kathrada, Mandela, Sisulu, side of prison-life, the question of basic rights, the Dennis Goldberg, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhla‐ breakdown of social contacts outside prison and ba, Elias Motsoaledi, and Andrew Mlangeni--the the creation of more enduring ones in prison. This famous Rivonia Trialists--after being convicted of book is about the multi-racial dynamics of South sabotage. All but Goldberg--who was taken to an Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, indeed a "rain‐ all-white penitentiary--were incarcerated at bow struggle". Robben Island as "security, or political, prisoners". Kathrada's liberation struggle started outside Goldberg was released in 1985, Mbeki in 1988, prison in the 1950s and 1960s. Much of it was Sisulu, Kathrada, Mhlaba, Motsoaledi and Mlan‐ fought from inside jail, and was completed out‐ geni in 1989, and Mandela, the most famous of the side it. This struggle from the prison walls is the Rivonia Trialists, in February 1990. subject of this book. In the Foreword, Walter Sisu‐ The reader needs to understand the letters lu tells us that writing or receiving letters was a within their context and the editor, Robert Vassen, "privilege which we cherished very dearly". For takes us on a journey through the multi-racial pol‐ this reason, Kathrada made and kept copies of all itics of the time. Vassen captures the three-tier H-Net Reviews racial divide in which Kathrada grew up: blacks ing with the same faces day in day out" was shat‐ were the lowest racial group, followed by non-Eu‐ tering. They got "on one another's nerves" quite ropeans, among them Indians, with better racial quickly, having "long exhausted all conversation privileges than blacks, but not allowed to asso‐ relating to our experiences outside. All the jokes ciate with whites, the superior race particularly if have been told; even gossip has become repeti‐ one was Afrikaner. This division would lead to a tive" (p. 47). multi-racial coalition comprising blacks, Indians, The prison is also portrayed as a place of non-Afrikaner whites, and coloreds in 1952 in a irony. It was a place of racial fraternization, an is‐ Defiance Campaign which laid the basis for the land in a sea of racial hatred where white prison Congress Alliance, made up of the ANC, the South wardens and inmates sometimes could eat the African Indian Congress, the South African same food, engage in conversation, and even Coloured People's Organization, and the South share a joke (pp. 47-49). The freedom they sought African Congress of Democrats. This alliance led outside was easy to fnd in prison! Kathrada also to the formation of Umkonto we Siswe (MK), the reveals the irony of struggle between apartheid military wing of the ANC in 1961, consistent with and liberation forces, in which some elements of the general pattern in Southern Africa at the time the latter had become ultra-racist and anti-white. when the Zimbabwe African People's Union "The PAC [Pan Africanist Congress] chaps", he (ZAPU), FRELIMO (Mozambique), and Angola's complains, "have been generally colorless, bigot‐ MPLA were taking up the militant option to liber‐ ed, narrow and racialistic", and "suffer from mas‐ ate themselves. The culmination of this militancy sive inferiority complexes" (p. 48), which are ap‐ was the Rivonia Trial, in which Kathrada and his parent in their "one settler one bullet" ideology. colleagues were found guilty of committing "spec‐ Another irony is that of relaxation in a place of ified acts of sabotage" and send to Robben Island hard labor, which many of us think prison life is in 1964. all about. Kathrada admits that "for the past three Kathrada's letters fall into three periods: years we have not really worked .... we just go to 1964-1970; 1971-1980; and 1981-1989. Those writ‐ the quarry and do nothing" (p. 48). Neither is ten to his white girlfriend, Sylvia Neame, an affair there any torture, in contrast to the non-political which under apartheid was illegal, dominate the section, where Robben Island is "a veritable hell" letters between 1964-1970 (p. 1). The spirits of the of "brutal assaults ... broken arms, heads and huge prisoners were not broken by prison censors' weals all over the body" (p. 51). This is a two-sided communication "black out" or the physical exer‐ Robben Island. tions of breaking limestone in the quarry. Instead, The letters written between 1971 and 1980 they immersed themselves in academic studies are both a drive down memory lane and a jour‐ which pushed time and kept their minds "fully oc‐ ney into the future. In one of them, Kathrada cupied." Prison distance-education--at Robben Is‐ takes us back to his childhood days to his home land, as in Rhodesia's Gonakudzingwa, Whawha village of Schweizer Reneke, where "there was a and Salisbury Prisons where political prisoners school for African children and one for white chil‐ were incarcerated--was "the most important con‐ dren but none for 'Indian' children. The law de‐ cession" ever made by the colonial regimes to po‐ manded strict segregation", and coloreds and In‐ litical detainees. But Kathrada quickly jerks our dians were caught up in-between, and Kathrada attention to the psychological effects of life in the was forced to attend school 200 miles away (p. single cell section, where 30 prisoners were kept 58). What he reveals in this soliloquy is a land‐ apart, isolated from the 800-plus other de‐ scape of deprivation on the grounds of race and tainees--400 of them "politicals". The effect of "liv‐ 2 H-Net Reviews color, where it can be worse to be Indian than people which forbid Muslims from marrying non- black. This is a sobering thought for blacks who Muslims. He urges fellow-Muslims in his family to might regard themselves as worse off under exercise tolerance and "to shed the religious and apartheid. racial prejudice" because "in the times in which Most of the author's letters to friends abroad we live in there is absolutely no place for preju‐ in this period are both a reflection on the past and dices based on religion, race or color" (p. 115). In a focus on the future, which together reveal them‐ other words, he implies that South Africans fght‐ selves in the two-sided dilemma facing the ing against apartheid must look at themselves and apartheid regime. It forced into exile many, who disabuse themselves of norms and values that im‐ can only return after its demise, such as detainees pinge on all basic freedoms. The South African like Kathrada who are serving life imprisonment. anti-apartheid struggle should be one that makes Yet apartheid seems to have also imprisoned it‐ a complete break with the restrictive values of the self, that is, through international isolation and past. sanctions out of which it can break only if it abol‐ The letters written between 1981 and 1989 ishes itself as a system. Therefore, apartheid, the give us a new approach towards black stereotypes detainees serving life imprisonment, and exiles of the liberation struggle in South Africa. We are abroad, all have one destiny. Just like exiles who introduced to Indian heroes of the struggle--B.T. feel homesick and return home to South Africa, to Naidoo, Roy Naidoo, M. "Murvy" Thandray, Ismail be jailed on arrival, apartheid cannot escape from Bhana, Essop Pahad, Mac Maharaj, and many oth‐ its "prison" without risking being "detained" by ers. This is important not only to the history of In‐ the winds of change. The letters also reveal dian South Africans, but also in the nation-build‐ Kathrada's vision for the future, epitomized by ing process of the post-apartheid 'Rainbow Na‐ men like Bram Fischer who forsake their white tion', that South Africa is not for blacks alone, nor identity and privileges to fght for a non-racial for Whites alone, but for everyone. We are in‐ South Africa: "a free man who fought against his formed that the anti-apartheid struggle's Indian own people to ensure the freedom of others" (pp. heroes are also the heroes of every South African. 68-69). This is the message that Kathrada wished to put From 1978 onwards, prison segregation laws across to the breed of "nouveau riche" (new rich) were tightened, especially the two-tier dressing Indians who were "alienating themselves from and dietary regulations for different groups.
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