WITHIN a few days of Nelson Mandela’s arrest on August 5 1962, a decision was taken that everything possible should be done to organise his escape. A commission which included Joe Modise, Harold Wolpe and me was given a full mandate to plan and carry out this task.
We spent session after session at the underground headquarters at Rivonia floating schemes which, in varying degrees, bordered on the unreal and the fantastic. Could not the artist among us, Arthur Goldreich, make a plastic mask which would enable Mandela to change places with another prisoner who was being taken to court on some minor offence? Could we not take advantage of the blanketed emissaries from the Transkei Royal House who came to the Fort to greet their royal cousin? The idea was that Mandela would surreptitiously cover himself in one of the visitor’s blankets and walk out a free man as part of the group.
But we had to find a man who not only had the right kind of physical characteristics but who was also brave enough to remain behind as a hostage. A big enough bribe at a high enough level might do the trick? But could we expect even corrupt white officialdom to become accomplices in the liberation of South Africa’s most celebrated black revolutionary?
In the end we opted for the following scheme: assuming the Fort to be impregnable, we turned our attention to the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court in which Mandela was due to appear. It sounded simple enough. Each day between 12.30 and 2.30 court proceedings are adjourned and the accused are taken down the steps leading from the dock into a basement where they are locked up in individual cells until the court resumes. Nelson must escape during one of these luncheon adjournments. But how? Stage by stage we grappled with the obstacles until, in the end, we knew we would make it!
It is now 12.45 and Nelson is seated on the concrete bunk in his basement cell. Joe Modise’s ex-Sophiatown network extends right into the police force, and one of its members is in charge of the basement cells. He is prepared to leave Nelson’s cell door unlocked, but that is not enough; during the lunch adjournment warder and prisoner cannot get out of the basement until the white custodian of the courtroom key unlocks the door leading from the basement to the dock.
The African interpreter in the very court which interests us happens to be a friendly man, embittered by his experiences of the way in which the white man’s justice works. His name is Mzwai and Harold knows him well enough to risk an approach. We ask him about the vital key. He says: ”No problem.” It appears that the clerk of the court leaves the key every day in the same drawer during the 11am tea adjournment. ”I can pass it to you as long as it is back in place within a few minutes.”
For the next week or two the desk in my chambers is covered with an endless variety of different types of plasticine and other modelling materials. We find just what we are looking for — ; a rather dense sculptor’s modelling clay which hardens extremely fast when exposed to air. Back at the court Mzwai is as good as his word. At 11.05 the key is in my hand. In the lavatory I make two impressions, and, within a few minutes, the clay becomes rock hard and the mould is ready. By the time clerk shouts, ”Silence in the court”, the key is back in its usual place.
Issy Rosenberg owns an engineering works in Ophirton. He is pleased with the mould and the key is safely cast by him personally on a Sunday. A few days later Mzwai arrives at my office beaming; he has tested the key and, as he puts it, ”it’s open sesame”. On our drawing board Nelson is now out of his basement cell and, with the key, enters the deserted courtroom. But there is yet another problem! The external doors of the complex which houses all the courtrooms are apparently kept locked during the adjournment. Joe Modise locks himself into a lavatory and spends more than one lunch hour carrying out reconnaissance. He finds a door, abutting on the lane used by supply trucks, which is open and unguarded. He tests the position by making a few safe exits. The rest is easy: a getaway car and, in our minds’ eye, Nelson is back at Rivonia within 30 minutes.
But what about Nelson’s face, which would be recognised by any one of hundreds of people who fill the streets and pavements outside the court building (including many policemen and court employees)? They would surely raise an alarm long before he reached the getaway car. We begin to work on a disguise.
Over dinner at the Delmonica restaurant in Commissioner Street, Cecil Williams, a Party member and full-time theatre director, introduces me to a professional wigmaker with radical social attitudes. He agrees to make, free of charge, an Indian-looking wig, moustache and beard for a subject whose identity is never discussed. ”A stage job is easy,” he says. ”The footlights and make-up hide glaring defects in the material and the fit.” He has a stock of passable straight black hair but he needs very precise measurements. He is obviously a perfectionist and, through Cecil Williams, I receive a list of intimidating length — the distances between the top lip and the bottom of the nose, and the bottom lip and the tip of the chin, the length of the mouth when in repose, the circumference of the head just above the ears, and so on and so forth.
We face the formidable task of measuring a man under police custody in the Johannesburg Fort. The solution we arrive at clearly would not have the approval of the ethics committee of the Johannesburg Bar Council. I am given the task, as Mandela’s legal representative, of carrying out this mission in the course of my almost daily consultations with him in the jail’s interview room.
I convey my intentions to Nelson in writing and I pass him a length of cotton. He carefully measures the first position, breaks off the cotton and passes it back to me. I stick the piece with sellotape into an exercise book and record next to it what part of the head or face it has measured. We have to do this slowly and without ostentation, and I spend countless interviews trying to complete the process. In the case of some parts, such as the circumference of the head, the odd nature of the manoeuvre involved may just alert the warder that something is happening outside the normal routine of a lawyer-client relationship. Nelson therefore takes some cotton and carries out some of the measurements in the privacy of his cell. After some weeks the measurements are now complete and over another Wiener Schnitzel at the Delmonica, I deliver the cotton book to our friend.
The only remaining problem is to find a way of delivering the disguise items and the key to Nelson for safe-keeping until D-Day. The plan for this is finalised after Joe Modise sees Winnie. The way in which an accused presents himself in court is of some importance and a well-groomed suit with a matching quiet tie is usually a good start. An ANC tailor in Soweto expertly inserts the items in the shoulder padding of Nelson’s best court suit and he receives it without incident. Nothing more to do except nervously wait out the two weeks which are left for Nelson’s court appearance.
But something else is in the wind, the precise meaning of which is yet unclear. It is a Sunday morning and I receive a telephone call from Attorney Bearman who has an office in Chancellor House, the same building in which the firm of Mandela and Tambo used to conduct their legal practice. He has a message from one of his clients who is awaiting trial on a charge of fraud that the officer in command of the fort would like to see me urgently at his official residence adjacent to the jail. This is an extraordinary request. Has something gone wrong? Am I being trapped? I rush over to Bram Fischer to discuss what my response should be. We both speculate that had there been a leak it would by now have become a police matter. There is no way of guessing what it is about and we decide I should go.
I ring the Colonel from a public phone, and at the arranged time he is waiting for me on the large stoep of his colonial-style residence. I carry a briefcase containing a cassette machine with the record button already depressed. He gestures towards his front door, but I tell him I prefer the garden. He agrees.
”I will be brief,” he begins. ”I take it you people are interested in freeing Mandela?”
I wonder whether he notices the shock waves which pass through me as I mutter the time-gaining stop-gap. ”What do you mean?”
He comes straight to the point. He explains that because of his outspoken support for the opposition United Party he has no hope of further advancement in the prison service. In any case he has had enough of it and would like to opt for early retirement. His mind has turned to small farming: he needs open space after spending the better part of his working life locked up with his prisoners. ”For 7 000 you can have Mandela,” he says.
If this is a trap to implicate me in a corruption charge I must at least have the advantage of the right kind of tape-recorded answer. I tell him that, as an officer of the Supreme Court, I can hardly make myself a party to such a scheme and that in any case, I have every confidence that my client will be acquitted at the end of his trial. He is shrewd enough to suspect the real motive behind my immediate response and asks me, anyway, to give it some thought and to have a cup of tea with him on my next visit to the Fort. The first opportunity I have of replaying the recording is in my motor car, and to my extreme disappointment hardly a word is audible!
That night we discuss and discuss. There is no way we can be certain that the offer is genuine. We are very tempted to follow it up even though the other scheme on which we have been working for months seems poised for success. The political impact of an escape and Nelson’s return to the underground are very weighty factors. As to whether the Colonel can be trusted, there is no outside evidence and, since I have been the sole contact, much depends on my own assessments. My impressions during the interview incline me to believe that the Colonel is in honest search of a dirty penny. We decide to go ahead with the negotiations.
Seven thousand pounds is a goodly proportion of our total resources and we can’t risk losing it through any double-dealing colonel. We also continue to lean primarily on the main scheme. I arrange another meeting with the Colonel in a pub in Hillbrow. I tell him that my client’s friends are ready to go ahead subject to two conditions. They are not prepared to hand over any portion of the money until Nelson is safely in their hands. And, since there is a chance (which we know does not exist) that Nelson might be acquitted, the go-ahead for the plan will be given only when such an outcome appears unlikely. In case we pull off the original plan, we are forced to play for time and money.
Two days before Nelson is due to appear in court I journey to the Fort for another lawyer-client consultation with him. I write out the usual requisition for the prisoner and wait in an interview room. A few minutes later the warder returns: ”Sorry, sir, the prisoner is no longer here. They took him to Pretoria where he will be tried.”
Joe Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography is published by Ravan Press (R59,95)