57
THE WORLD had been paying attention to the Rivonia Trial. Night-long vigils were held for us at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The students of London University elected me president of their Students’ Union, in absentia. A group of experts at the U.N. urged a national convention for South Africa that would lead to a truly representative parliament, and recommended an amnesty for all opponents of apartheid. Two days before Judge de Wet was due to give his decision, the U.N. Security Council (with four abstentions, including Great Britain and the United States) urged the South African government to end the trial and grant amnesty to the defendants.
In the days before we were due to reconvene, I wrote papers for a set of London University examinations for my LL.B. It might seem odd that I was taking law exams a few days before the verdict. It certainly seemed bizarre to my guards, who said I would not need a law degree where I was going. But I had continued my studies through the trial and I wanted to take the examinations. I was single-minded about it, and I later realized that it was a way to keep myself from thinking negatively. I knew I would not be practicing law again very soon, but I did not want to consider the alternative. I passed the exams.
On Thursday, June 11, We reassembled in the Palace of Justice for the verdict. We knew that for at least six of us, there could be no verdict but guilty. The question was the sentence.
De Wet wasted no time in getting down to business. He spoke in low, rapid tones. “I have recorded the reasons for the conclusions I have come to. I do not propose to read them out.
“Accused number one is found guilty on all four counts. Accused number two is found guilty on all four counts. Accused number three is found guilty on all four counts. . . .”
De Wet pronounced each of the main accused guilty on all counts. Kathy was found guilty on only one of four counts, and Rusty Bernstein was found not guilty and discharged.
“I do not propose to deal with the question of sentence today,” de Wet said. “The state and the defense will be given opportunities to make any submission they want tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.” Court was then adjourned.
We had hoped that Kathy and Mhlaba might escape conviction, but it was another sign, if one was necessary, that the state was taking a harsh line. If he could convict Mhlaba on all four counts with little evidence, could the death sentence be far behind for those of us against whom the evidence was overwhelming?
That night, after a discussion among ourselves, Walter, Govan, and I informed counsel that whatever sentences we received, even the death sentence, we would not appeal. Our decision stunned our lawyers. Walter, Govan, and I believed an appeal would undermine the moral stance we had taken. We had from the first maintained that what we had done, we had done proudly, and for moral reasons. We were not now going to suggest otherwise in an appeal. If a death sentence was passed, we did not want to hamper the mass campaign that would surely spring up. In light of the bold and defiant line we had taken all along, an appeal would seem anticlimactic and even disillusioning. Our message was that no sacrifice was too great in the struggle for freedom.
Counsel were unhappy about our decision, and wanted to talk about an appeal. But Walter, Govan, and I wanted to discuss the mechanics of the sentencing procedure the next day. If we were sentenced to death, what would then happen? We were told that after de Wet pronounced the death sentence, he would ask me, as the first accused, “Have you any reason to advance why the sentence of death should not be passed?” I told Bram, Joel, and Vernon that in that case I would have quite a lot to say. I would tell de Wet that I was prepared to die secure in the knowledge that my death would be an inspiration to the cause for which I was giving my life. My death — our deaths — would not be in vain; if anything we might serve the cause greater in death as martyrs than we ever could in life. Counsel said that such a speech would not be very helpful for an appeal, and I reaffirmed that we would not be appealing.
Even if — especially if — we did not receive the death penalty, there were practical reasons not to appeal. For one thing, we might lose. An appellate court might decide that de Wet had been too lenient and that we deserved the death penalty. An appeal would forestall international pressure to release us.
For the state, a death sentence would be the most practical verdict. We had heard that John Vorster, the minister of justice, had told friends that Prime Minister Smuts’s greatest blunder during the Second World War was not hanging him for his treason. The Nationalists, he said, would not make the same mistake.
I was prepared for the death penalty. To be truly prepared for something, one must actually expect it. One cannot be prepared for something while secretly believing it will not happen. We were all prepared, not because we were brave but because we were realistic. I thought of the line from Shakespeare: “Be absolute for death; for either death or life shall be the sweeter.”