A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalist�s Memories of Exile and Apartheid [1 ed.] 9783905758542, 9783905758399

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Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Ruth Weiss | A Path Through Hard Grass

A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalists Memories of Exile and Apartheid, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

With my son Alexander (Sacha) in Nyanga (Zimbabwe) in the mid-eighties

A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalists Memories of Exile and Apartheid, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Ruth Weiss A Path Through Hard Grass | A Journalist's Memories of Exile and Apartheid

Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

With a foreword by Nadine Gordimer

Basel | Basler Afrika Bibliographien | 2014

A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalists Memories of Exile and Apartheid, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

© the authors © the photographers © Basler Afrika Bibliographien PO Box 2037 CH-4001 Basel Switzerland www.baslerafrika.ch All rights reserved. Cover photograph: Interviewing Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole in Geneva in 1976 during the Rhodesia Constitutional Conference. Sithole, a founder of the Zimbabwean liberation party ZANU and its first President, became a political opponent of Robert Mugabe during the transitional period of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1979/80. Photograph by Günter Wolff (Hamburg). ISBN 978-3-905758-39-9

A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalists Memories of Exile and Apartheid, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Contents

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Foreword by Nadine Gordimer

7

A Note Regarding Language

10

Prologue

11

I

From Fürth to Johannesburg

13

II

An Unjust Society

30

III

New Customs

44

IV

Teenage Years

57

V

Johannesburg, Jewburg, and E'Goli

62

VI

Troubled Years

80

VII

Experience with Boers

83

VIII

The Fifties

90

IX

A New Beginning

100

X

Career Moves

108

XI

The Sixties

1 16

XII

Flight and Travel

144

XIII

New Friendships and Love

161

XIV

Fleet Street, Salisbury, London

181

XV

Zambia — Life in a Frontline State

202

XVI

Voice of Germany

218

XVII

London and Lancaster House

229

A Path Through Hard Grass : A Journalists Memories of Exile and Apartheid, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,

XVIII

An Unusual Journey

236

IXX

Zimbabwe

243

XX

South Africa

250

XXI

Later Years

259 27 1

Acronyms and Abbrevations

27 1

Photographs

273

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Postscript

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FOREWORD by Nadine Gordimer The writer of this book is one of that company whose very existence hangs by a question that can never be answered. Why did the little girl escape an end to life in a gas chamber, almost before it began? Why did her parents take lonely flight with her to an unknown country, just in time, while others lingered fatally? Fate, destiny – we do not know from where the instinct for survival comes, the very antithesis of the homing instinct. To leave home is to live.

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But not necessarily happily ever after. Ruth Weiss found herself growing up in a country where the mark of the victim was not the yellow star but the black skin. Being white, she could have been content, in South Africa, with being accepted for full citizenship denied blacks. Although there was poverty in the immigrant family, she had the automatic privilege of superior, whites-only education. Being white, she could have taken unquestioningly, for the whole of her life, the automatic privileges of segregated transport, libraries, theatres, hotels, freedom to live and seek what employment she pleased wherever she wished – something again denied, to blacks. But what emerges in the gentle voice of this strong and striking autobiography is a girl and then a woman who took on the responsibilities of her situation in a country of adoption just as if she had been born to that situation. And furthermore, as many, many whites born to it have not. I have to say that Ruth Weiss is a most unexpected personality, and hers is an unexpected book. This is a personal reaction that goes back more than thirty years, in respect of her persona, and that has been renewed in respect of the book she has now written. The shy young woman I met in the shadow of a highly intellectual husband many years her senior revealed no hint, in her lack of self-assertion, of an innovative intelligence, political acumen, and courage to take risks which were there within her. The natural modesty that has remained with the mature woman in the self-confidence of her independence, her years of achievement, has made it seem unlikely that this woman, who is so deeply involved in the lives and destinies of others, would ever confide herself to the pages of an autobiography. I know – knowing her so well, so long – that she has not been prompted by vanity; nothing could be further from her nature. I believe that, considering her life, she came to see, as anyone reading this book will, that fate, chance, an accident of birth and the drama of history – call it what you will – have woven her life into a pattern belonging specifically to our century, a piece of social history that should not be kept to herself, but set down for us, her contemporaries. For a

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life shaped and directed principally by two (the third being the rise and fall of socialism) of the characterising events of the twentieth century, facism/ racism in Europe, and the apogee of all racism in its phase in South Africa, is something of a paradigm of the human condition in our century. The time for summing-up is here in the tenth decade. It was unexpected to find out, as I eventually did, that the shy young woman, apparently meek disciple at her husband’s feet, was in fact writing the articles of political analysis of the 1950s and 60s in South Africa that appeared under his byline in prominent German newspapers. This is not to deny that she learned a great deal from him; but it is an early example of how Ruth Weiss, all through her life, has been wonderfully open to learning, and had the capacity to grow from it. She, so uncaring about money, and always having so little of it herself, became a financial journalist of repute in both Africa and England. She, a white and a European, listened to and learned from blacks in her own country, South Africa, and in Zambia, Zimbabwe, where she became a shrewd and greatly trusted interpreter of African thought, aims and strategies, and a friend of many black leaders and – perhaps more important – ordinary people. She has passed on her journalistic skills to a whole generation of young Africans studying the media.

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Her account of this (continuing) phase in her life is the answer to those who throw up their hands and ask, what can a white do in Africa? Her identification with the problems of Africa, and in particular those of the people of the southern African states, is more than a matter of applied intelligence: she has proved herself to be, and is totally accepted by Africans as, one of themselves. Africanness is not only a matter of skin; it’s a matter of heart and human commitment, and she has both. This quiet woman has been daring in her political associations and acts. These arose out of the almost frightening honesty that characterises her: what she knows to be right, she acts upon, in full awareness of the consequences. As a result of her opposition to apartheid she was prohibited from entry to her home, South Africa, for the years when she was working in other parts of Africa and in Europe. I visited her in Zimbabwe and found her small house open, as usual, to anyone in need of a bed and a meal – and sometimes shelter of another kind. Her homes, in Africa or London, have always been “safe houses” for exiles and refugees. Does this come from her own distant experience as a refugee immigrant herself, in childhood? I don’t think so. She has the kind of compassion that extends to needs widely different from those she once experienced. Although I am her friend, I can say quite objectively she is the most humane woman I have ever met.

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Speaking of her as a woman, although she is by no means a strident feminist, she has demonstrated in the living of her life the brave and difficult path of a woman’s self-emancipation. Once she stopped writing in the nineteenth century tradition of the Brontes and George Eliot, under a man’s name – and her husband’s, what’s more – she took on a man’s world, the male-dominated one of financial journalism and political comment. And in her private life, divorced, she was not content to stunt her emotions and give up the right to motherhood, but decided to become a single parent. I remember very well her coming to me to discuss this decision, for decision it was – Ruth is brave but she has not lived her life by hazard; the right to make her own decisions in a world where too many decisions about her life have been made by dictators and governments, is precious to her. I was the one who was doubtful: I pointed out that she had no family, no nest-egg of money, to support her while working full-time and bringing up a child alone. But she had more courage than my counsel, and the result was her son, a delightful child grown into a fine man. The devotion between them is one of the warmly assuring aspects of this book, which is full of anecdotes and characters, from the cafe talk of German Jewish intellectuals gathering in exile in Johannesburg, and the white colonial bohemia of the fifties, to the dramatic meetings and friendships with black political figures all over southern Africa. Ruth’s is a discursive muse, bringing to life the voices and faces behind political changes. At the end of 1992 Ruth Weiss was allowed by the South African government to enter South Africa, and on a mission that surely shows how the apartheid regime was crumbling. She came as a member of a World Council of Churches’ ecumenical team to monitor the politically-fostered violence prevailing in areas of South Africa occupied by blacks. The girl-child who had escaped the ghetto came back to live for some weeks in the vast black ghettoes created by apartheid. She spent a few days with me after this experience, deeply distressed by what she had witnessed in terms of the despair and suffering of the people. In the conclusion of her book she writes: “… No matter what may trigger any particular incident, there is only one root cause for it all: apartheid. Its legacy of poverty, deprivation and distrust, the stultifying effect on the economy – all of that will be with South Africa and its hinterland for at least a generation to come.” Then she sums up her life thus: “… Two things will always be with me: my son’s love and mine for him, and for Africa.” This book will reveal to anyone who reads it how much of involvement, seeking, patient understanding, tolerance, courage and warmth that simple statement encompasses in the life of one woman.

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A NOTE REGARDING LANGUAGE With this text, as with most pieces I’ve had to write about southern Africa, I’ve had some problems with nomenclature (that is, with terms referring to different ethnic or national groups).   Writing in German about “Afrikaner” fails to differentiate between black and white Africans, so I learnt to take refuge in words such as “Afrikaaner” for white South Africans of Boer descent or the invention “Afrikander”, reserving “Afrikaner” for black Africans. But this very word posed difficulties for those of Boer descent with virulent white nationalist views; they laid claim to  being the first to use the term, refusing to extend the honour to black South Africans.   The first word I heard applied to black people in the Johannesburg suburb in which we lived as immigrants, was “kaffir” at a time when officially such persons were “natives”. One of my friends, a lawyer, was later to argue in a court case concerning a native of a country other than South Africa, that this word did not describe an ethnic group, but described everyone, because everyone was a native of his or her birth country.  Later “Bantu” displaced “native”, while “white” replaced the previous usage of  “European” (which flew in the face of the Afrikaner claim and of those white South Africans proud of not belonging to any European country.) At one point, the Ministry of Native Affairs suffered under the title of Ministry of Plural Affairs, which highlighted the difficulty and added to the theatre of the absurd, which apartheid became.  Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

And finally there was the term “Coloured” in all its variety … Coloured people could be descended from white and black, or white and Asian, or black and Asian forebears (with “Asian” referring to anyone from that vast continent, including Chinese, Indian, Japanese – the latter until trade relations turned them officially into “honorary whites”). One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting – Andrè Zaaiman – told me that he, a white man, was actually descended from the first Khoi-Khoi woman who married several Dutch settlers, with whom she had children – the “Eve” of the Coloured people of the Cape.  So with all this racial prejudice and verbal confusion, I am grateful to my editor who has decided to use lower case for “black” and “white” and, in acknowledgement of the Coloured people as a  cohesive group, “Coloured” with a capital C. 

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PROLOGUE “Right. You’ve heard about Nicaragua; you’ve listened to the lovely spirituals of our sisters from Tanzania. You’ve danced to the drummers from Ghana. And now you’ll hear something quite different. About South Africa. About apartheid. You may have heard of it … ” The clergyman, young and be-jeaned, with brilliant white T-shirt bearing a slogan I can’t see, beckons me to join him at the mic. I’m taken by surprise. I’d no longer expected to be called for my five-minute talk since this so-called “Third World Party” had long ago lost its sense of timing. The hall, an enormous tent, was packed with some fifteen to twenty thousand youngsters. Even now, thousands more were besieging every door. This event, one of many hundreds at the 1979 church rally at Nürnberg (Nuremberg) with over a hundred thousand visitors, was a huge success. The first of these mass gatherings of Protestant Christians took place in 1949 in Hannover. From 1950 they were organised by laymen every two years in different German cities. The young man beams. I hadn’t met him before that evening. He hands me the mic. “Hi, Ruth Weiss. I’m not sure how to introduce you; you speak German like a German, but you’ve come here to talk about South Africa. Can you explain? Introduce yourself?” I gulp. This wasn’t in the script. I listen to the next question: “Where do you come from?”

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Introduce myself? To this vast crowd of youngsters? My eyes search for the one face I know, that of my young son. It is to him I speak, even if I can’t see him in this crowd of strangers. “It isn’t quite the question I’d expected … ‘where do you come from?’ A stone’s throw from here. I was born next door to Nürnberg, so to speak, in Fürth in 1924. And left with my family in 1936. I don’t think I need to tell you why … ” Not a sound. They had come to have fun. Suddenly they’re confronted with something else: the past. Their parents’ past, over which their parents had thrown a veil of silence. I stumble on, overwhelmed by their attention. They are listening! To me, a Jewess, a woman at least three times their age. In 1979, the time was yet to come when local historians would search eagerly through the archives. “From Fürth to Johannesburg: a long journey? No, not really. I don’t have to tell you that Nürnberg is well known for more than its famous Christmas

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market and spicy Christmas cakes. Over thirty years ago, it hosted rallies somewhat different from this church gathering. Nürnberg was the City of the Reich for the Nazi Party. Here they held their mammoth rallies. It was here that the racial laws were passed. It was in this city that the war trials were held. And it’s also the city where I spent my early childhood.” They listen. I speak of those years, explaining what it meant to be a small unwanted girl in Hitler’s Germany. I also tell them what it means to be a black child in apartheid South Africa. Two young Africans I had met earlier that day, who had asked to join me, suddenly appear. The crowd parts to let them pass. They climb up onto the platform and stand beside me. Two youngsters from Soweto – that huge town which, until 1976, had not been marked on any map. I once tried to phone someone in Soweto. The South African telephone operator insisted there was no such number, until I explained and he exclaimed in the guttural accent I loved to imitate, “Christ, man, why didn’t you say it was a location?” One didn’t ring locations, especially not in 1976. I talk about a special day in 1976 – 16 June – and pull the two youngsters towards the mic. These two say they were there on that day; they were among the twenty thousand children of Soweto, as many as are packed into this very hall. All they had planned was a peaceful demonstration, but they were met with bullets. The children had defied the bullets, and they continued to defy the “system”, as they called the apartheid state. Some were killed; thousands were imprisoned. Others, like these two, went into exile.

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I stare at the upturned faces. “Blacks under apartheid – Jews under the swastika. Was it all that different?” It was a question I had to ask myself a long time ago. Racism is unacceptable. Social injustice is unacceptable. Anywhere. Everywhere. That is what I’ve had to learn. One of the two, Mazibuko, speaks in English and asks me to translate. Strong words. Slogans. Raised fists. I hand the mic back to the clergyman. Sit down, and listen to the waves of thunderous applause. Why do they clap? I said so little. How can one explain the inexplicable? That only chance saved someone like myself from the fate of millions? Mere chance took me from near Nürnberg to Johannesburg, to escape the Shoah (the Holocaust) and muddle on through life in exile. For this is the only permanent thing in my life: that I am a perpetual outsider.

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I

FROM FÜRTH TO JOHANNESBURG

We couldn’t guess that a boy named Heinz in my sister’s class at the Israelitische Realschule (Jewish high school) in Fürth would change his name to Henry and make history. His younger brother, Walter Kissinger, was born in 1924 like me. Nor could I have known, when I said goodbye to my best friend Leah, that she would breathe lethal gas with her final gasps. One among the millions. At a 1992 New York reunion of former Fürther and Nürnberger citizens, I saw a list of those almost one  thousand people who had been deported from Fürth. I wept over one entry, though I had mourned her long before then: “Leah Jacobi, 23 March 1923. Deported to Izbica 22 March 1942. Declared deceased 7 March 1953”.

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Declared deceased. Of course. Records had to be put to rest. Much later, when I returned to Germany, I became used to such entries. The third postwar generation now asked questions which the first generation had never answered and the second had scarcely asked. First their children in the 1960s and then their grandchildren in the 1980s and beyond were delving into history which the criminals had buried in the years of Germany’s economic miracle. I had escaped because my father was more fortunate than Leah’s father, a Shochet (butcher), who slaughtered animals according to Jewish rites. He had left for Holland but could not get his family out. His wife and daughters died in Izbica. Richard Löwenthal, my father, had a job in Nürnberg’s toy industry, which he lost within two months of Hitler’s advent to power in 1933. The Löwenthals had relatives in South Africa; a cousin or uncle wrote from Johannesburg that he’d heard the Jews were in some trouble in Germany, and he was prepared to stand guarantor for anyone interested in coming to South Africa. Vati (Dad) accepted the invitation at once. It had been a shock to be kicked out of a job where a ten-year contract had suddenly become a worthless scrap of paper, along with other, more important documents. Humiliating to be forced to move with one’s wife and two daughters into the cramped Fürther flat of one’s parents-in-law, which was also the home of two single sisters- and a brother-in-law.

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I can still see my father walk downstairs that last time as I sat at the top of the stairs in that dark tenement building, leaning against my mother’s shapely legs. It somehow seemed right that Vati never once looked up.

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Three years later we were reunited as a family. That was in 1936, the same year in which South Africa’s Afrikaner government stopped Jewish emigration from Germany or anywhere else. Initially, of course, they’d been delighted with the influx of Europeans, but then realised that although we had the right skin, we had the wrong religion. The objection was raised by a man named Hendrik Verwoerd, a psychologist graduate from Heidelberg, who as prime minister later became the architect of classic apartheid. Thanks to his efforts, only Jews with close blood relations were allowed to enter white South Africa after that year, and we were among those lucky immigrants.

The wedding of my parents Selma Cohen and Richard Löwenthal in Fürth in 1922

The Jewish Agency had chartered two ships to beat the deadline, one of which was the Stuttgart, the last refugee boat to arrive. The passengers had some difficulty in believing they had actually crossed an ocean and escaped from their homes. They were met in Cape Town by young men in grey uniforms, which matched those in brown they’d left behind. These “Greyshirts” also chanted an all too familiar slogan: “Juden Raus!” (Jews out!) The newcomers knew nothing of South Africa and less about its history or current politics. They had no idea that the nationalism of the Boer Afrikaners (descendants of the Hollanders who had been the first Europeans to settle

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at the Cape) was in step with German nationalism. This had fostered antiSemitism in specific sections of Afrikaner society. These extremist Afrikaners felt close to Germans – many were of German extraction – and their collective memory included the fond recollection that the Kaiser had supported the Boers during Britain’s last imperial war, the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902. Nor could the newcomers have known that the Greyshirts’ leader, a man with a German background named LT Weichardt, was destined to become a National Party senator after that party’s victory at the polls in 1948.

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Odd, this thing about history repeating itself. The very day in 1986 when I received a letter from a friend describing the commemoration in Cape Town of the arrival of the Stuttgart in 1936, I was watching on TV the antics of a latter-day Boer leader aptly named Eugene Terre’Blanche. A khaki-clad Terre’Blanche, gesticulating and mouthing anti-Semitic, racist threats, was surrounded by his storm hawks who were furiously waving flags with lookalike swastika symbols. In the thirties, Jews had little reason to love Boer extremism. It ran its course during the apartheid era, while the nineties ensured that Terre’Blanche and his like were destined for the bins of history, meriting barely a footnote. I had met his prototypes. In 1933 we lived in a village near Nürnberg. My father had also been born in a village and felt uncomfortable in a city. I attended the village school where I was considered a somewhat exotic outsider, though I didn’t quite know why, and first thought it was because we lived in a new housing development. I couldn’t skate very well, unlike my schoolmates; however, I enjoyed school. We all sat in one large room; I had many friends and more often than not, was able to answer the teachers’ questions. My exercise books made the rounds, probably because it so happened that I’d learnt to read at an early age – not because I was precocious, but because my maternal grandfather was a bookbinder. Reading had happened as easily as breathing. It seemed inevitable. I used to sit in his workshop underneath the table, where it took some time for the pages to move between workers. One girl swiftly separated book pages, tossing them under the table into a basket. If I read quickly enough, I usually managed to read the page before the girl who did the sewing picked it up, as her job took a little longer. So I had no option but to become a fast reader. At a reunion of former schoolmates in New York, I met a woman who was older than my contemporaries. She told me that when she emigrated she had terminated her apprenticeship. I asked what trade she’d been learning. “I worked for Max Cohen; he was a bookbinder.”

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“And my Großpapa, my grandfather!” I said. She peered at me and smiled. “Ah, of course, the little girl under the table!” My sister loved the workshop too. She was artistic and helped our grandfather whenever she could, eventually designing the paper used as backing sheets for the books. I was proud of my grandfather and the beautiful bindings of his books. I wrote once to Henry Kissinger’s father and he replied, saying that he still had some of Großpapa’s books. Most Jewish homes in Fürth had books bound by him. Another woman at the reunion told me that she bought all her pencils, exercise books and rubbers at Cohen’s stationery shop. I hadn’t known (or had forgotten) that there had been a shop. It had closed down early in 1933, a victim of the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. I was happy in the village. I remember the day when Hitler became chancellor. My parents spoke in whispers; my mother was red-eyed and subdued. I knew something wasn’t right and was reluctant to go to school, but Mutti (Mum) told me to hurry or else I’d be late. On the way to school I passed the sports club the day Hitler had taken power, and I saw a flag with the swastika outside the club for the first time. Someone shouted at me as I passed.

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That was nothing; it was much worse at school. I sat down, and at first hardly noticed that I was on my own. I thought, I’m early, not late. It was only when Herr Reuter, our teacher, began speaking that I realised everything had changed. I no longer had any friends; everyone sat as far away from me as possible. During the break, no one came near me. The girls huddled together whispering; the boys walked around, hands in their pockets, whistling. It was all very odd. I wanted to cry, but there wasn’t anything to cry about, was there? The next lesson was German; I’d learnt Goethe’s poem, Erlkönig, and expected Reuter to call on me as usual. He ignored me. He simply didn’t see my hand, even when I wanted to visit the bathroom. I cried on my way home. However Prinz, my dog, rushed to greet me as usual and we walked into the forest as so often before. I had my poetry album with me; some of the boys had promised to write something in it. I paged through the book and there they were, my dear friends. The last entry was signed by Bettie, who had fought to sit next to me. But today she hadn’t sat on my bench. I threw the book under a tree. Prinz barked. Later that afternoon I went to fetch it again. Later I realised that Franconia, the region where I had been born, had been immediately affected by the change of regime. The Franconian Gauleiter –

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the Nazi name for district head – was himself a virulent Nazi, and had been a member of the NSDAP (National Socialist Democratic Labour Party) from its inception. He also published the scurrilous paper Die Stürmer, devoted almost entirely to anti-Semitic propaganda. He had early put his mark on the area. I had no idea, at first, what it was about. I knew nothing, then, of the huge victory rally of 30 January, when the brown hordes of hundreds of thousands flocked to Berlin to march triumphantly with their torches from Alexanderplatz along Unter den Linden through the Brandenburg Gate to hail their Führer. Nor could I foresee that on the anniversary of that day, sixty years later in 1993, I would walk with a group of German women from the same Alexanderplatz to join hundreds of thousands of Germans at the Brandenburg Gate. We would hold candles, shielding them against the wind, to spell together the message: NEVER AGAIN.

With my sister Margot (left) in our garden in Rückersdorf, 1933

After January 1933 life was never the same again. Herr Reuter, who lived next door to us, no longer greeted my father. And the following weekend something awful happened.

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My sister Margot was beautiful. She had style and elegance; quite different to me. Even after a bath and dressed in a clean dress, I managed to look untidy within minutes. Besides, I didn’t have the same small, well-shaped nose that graced my sister’s oval face nor her fine, straight hair. Mine was thick and curly and always looked untidy. When we were together, people would turn to look at us, not on my account. Margot was the striking one. This was something the village boys had also noticed. During the week, Margot attended the Israelitische Realschule in Fürth and she stayed with our grandparents who lived literally round the corner from the school. In fact, that was how our parents had met. Vati was the youngest of a large family and had been sent to this school in Fürth, boarding at the Jewish orphanage nearby. From her bedroom, Mutti used to watch the boys play football in the school’s courtyard and somehow she caught Vati’s eye. By the time they happened to meet in the street, they were already in loveby-sight. Later Vati stood up to his family and insisted on marrying Selma Cohen. It was one of the few times my timid father asserted himself. Mutti had no dowry, but he told his family that he would marry no one else, so that was that.

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Margot came home every Friday. At first I would meet her at the station, but later I gave up because there were always boys to meet her and usually they would fight over who would carry her bag. That first weekend after 30 January I was not at the station (something I later regretted, though I doubt that I’d have been able to do anything). There were boys to meet her, though probably not those who usually came. I did know that Margot liked one boy in particular – Herr Reuter’s son, Hans. That day, no one carried her case. Instead, they shouted insults, even Hans, as they followed Margot to our house. Finally they pelted her with stones and muck … no shortage of that in any village. The evening was spent washing her hair. I can still smell it, the stink of shit and wet hair. After that it was only a matter of weeks before we moved to Fürth to our grandparents and I was sent to the prep school of the Israelitische Realschule. There were a few incidents before that; one was unforgettable. Uncle Jakob, Mutti’s younger brother, had a non-Jewish girlfriend in Nürnberg. One evening when he was walking her home, he was attacked and badly beaten. Someone brought him to our house and I watched as he was carried inside, where my mother took care of him as best she could. Shortly afterwards I saw from my window Vati crossing the road into the forest. He was carrying his revolver, a souvenir of the First World War. Patriot that he was, he had fought for Kaiser and fatherland, just like a hundred thousand

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other German Jews. It had suddenly become dangerous for a Jew to have a weapon, so he had gone into the woods to get rid of the revolver, which he threw into a pond. However, he kept his Iron Cross Second Class. After his death, Margot found it and sent it to me: the only object of his that I have. Vati had a hard time in South Africa; he never managed to really get onto his feet. It was Margot and her husband who looked after our parents, in their old age and before. My uncle later crossed the border and made his way to Palestine where he settled and married Bruna. During the eighties, I eventually met their daughter, my only cousin Nitza, who lives in Haifa with her family. We keep in touch.

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I enjoyed the three years I spent at the Israelitische Realschule, even if my memory is somewhat hazy. I remember one teacher called Adolf Kohn who, I seem to think, also emigrated to Palestine, as did another named Heinemann. One teacher was a young man named something like Steinberger … memory is deceptive. My aunt later told me that this teacher had bravely agreed to act as a Shochet, as he had attended a Yeshiva (a school of Talmudic learning). The official Shochet (my friend Leah’s father) had been banned from carrying out his job. This young man knew he was taking a risk and, before long, he found himself in Dachau. He was not one of the survivors. This happened long before the war and mass deportation. At that time, people like my father thought that Dachau was a labour camp for criminals and communists. In Fürth, a working-class town, a flourishing Jewish community had developed from the sixteenth century onwards. When Jews were expelled from imperial cities such as Nürnberg, they found refuge in Fürth thanks to the conflict between three authorities who claimed control there: the City of Nürnberg, the Catholic Bishop of Bamberg and the Protestant Count of Ansbach. If Jews were refused a Schutzbrief (a residence permit for which they paid heavily) by one authority, they could be sure of receiving it from another. Fürth had no ghetto; Jews lived among Christian neighbours. The town also boasted a famous orphanage – the first in Franconia, a hospital, some six synagogues, a Mikve (ritual bath), Hebrew printing works and two cemeteries. A new cemetery was opened in the early nineteenth century, it being the custom that Jewish graves are left undisturbed. In the 1860s an Israelitische Bürgerschule (Jewish citizen school) was founded, which in 1889 became the Israelitische Realschule. I returned to my birthplace for the first time in December 1975. I had been sent by my then boss, the head of the Africa–English department of the

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Deutsche Welle, to cover the ceremony of Henry Kissinger receiving Fürth’s golden citizen award (which was bestowed on me many years later). In 1998 he was made an honorary citizen. I visited Fürth again in 1990 in response to an invitation to speak at the opening of an exhibition on asylum, emigration and immigration. At the end of my talk, a woman came up to me and said, “There wasn’t anyone called Weiss in the Realschule. What was your maiden name?” When I told her, she asked, “Did you know someone called Margot Löwenthal?” “My sister,” I replied, whereupon she hugged me. Margot had been her best friend and when she returned to Fürth, she had asked everyone if they knew what had happened to her. By that time my sister was living in Melbourne; she and my brother-in-law had followed their two children who had left South Africa for Australia with their spouses and children. Though messages were passed from one to the other, the two friends were not to meet again.

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Her name was Bella Rosenkranz. She’d been deported in October 1938, when Polish Jews had been rounded up and sent back to Poland. Bella, who was born in Germany of a Polish father and German mother, had suffered greatly. When the part of Poland where she found herself was taken over by the Soviet Union, she was accused by the Russians of being a German spy, as she spoke neither Polish nor Yiddish. As a result, she spent five years in a Siberian camp. In the sixties she managed to return from the Soviet Union to Fürth, where she still lives. Her story was included in the exhibition as that of someone who had left and returned. The following day, I collected Bella from her flat building (formerly the Jewish Hospital) in the Theaterstraße. Arm in arm we strolled down the street, passing the site of the former school, now the office of the Jewish community. Bella said, “The orphanage is down there. I lived there.” I knew that, because the orphanage children had attended our school. “You were in the orphanage?” “Yes. I was seventeen when they took two of us. We had no idea that we were being deported. We left in the clothes we wore at the time.” She pointed to the street sign opposite. “Hallemannstraße – they’ve named the street after our director. He stayed behind with the children and went with thirty-three

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others to the gas chamber.” Dr Isaak Hallemann, his wife and two daughters perished with the children. A son and daughter survived; they had left Germany for Palestine. I knew that by 29 October 1938, all Polish Jews had been rounded up without warning and taken to the Polish border. At the time, my mother’s youngest sister, Martha, was the secretary of the Jewish community. She had just arrived at the office that day, when someone phoned to tell her what had happened during the night. My aunt had previously placed some three thousand Reichsmark in the safe to pay the staff. Without hesitation, she took this money and caught the tram to Nürnberg’s main station, where she asked where the Polish group was. No one knew anything, but she found them at a siding. One of our relatives had married a Polish Jew and he was indeed among the group. My aunt handed the deportees the money. I asked Bella, “Did you know my aunt? She was secretary of the Jewish community and she … ”

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She interrupted me. “That was your aunt? She saved our lives! She gave everyone ten Reichsmark and when we got to the border, one of us who spoke Polish collected the money for tickets and food. Then we took the train to Poland and I went to an uncle in Lodz. The next day the Polish government sealed the border.” Most of the others were less fortunate: they had no money and were forced to remain in no man’s land. Among those unfortunates were the parents of young Herschel Grynszpan, who in despair shot a German diplomat in Paris, thus providing Hitler with an excuse to launch the first Nazi pogrom on the night of 9 November 1938. I was sad that my aunt never learnt of the effect of her action. She was able to join us in South Africa, and after the war, had to provide an affidavit to declare what she had done with the money … bureaucracy was alive and well, even after the Final Solution. The day of my talk at the church rally in 1979, my hosts drove me to the Dutzendteich, which I remembered as a picnic spot. Hitler had turned it into a huge parade ground, where the giant Reichsparteitagsgelände (the area for his mass rallies) was built. It was still there: despised, unwanted, a monstrous monument. We climbed weather-worn steps to the platform and stood where the Führer had once stood, hailed by excited multitudes of uniformed followers. The arena was later occasionally used for sporting events such as motor racing, or as a venue for music festivals. The adjoining coliseum to

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house Nazi athletes was never completed, and several businesses used it as a warehouse. Nürnberg seemed unable to deal with this legacy; only in 2001 did the site become a documentation centre. At the end of this visit I went back to Theaterstraße on my own to walk into the courtyard of No 17: a dull, grey building like the others in the street. Both Margot and I were born there, in our grandparents’ third floor flat. I didn’t know until much later that Jakob Wassermann, a Jewish writer regarded as one of Fürth’s greatest sons, had once lived for several years in a flat one floor below, where his beloved mother had died. One of his novels was based on the famous story of Kaspar Hauser, a youth who suddenly appeared in Nürnberg during the early nineteenth century, apparently unable to speak, having been in solitary confinement in a cellar from birth. No one knew who he was or where he had come from. His story remained an unsolved mystery. I was to remember my talk with Bella a few years later in 1995, when I was invited by the city council to join a group of fourteen other former Fürther residents. A group of young people had put up plaques at various spots in the town to commemorate the fifty years after the end of World War II. I trailed a little behind the group on the first conducted tour, which had started in the Theaterstraße and had gone on to the area where the synagogues and the community offices had stood until the night of the 1938 pogrom when they were razed to the ground. As I followed the group down Hallemannstraße, I noticed a plaque in front of the former orphanage where the only surviving synagogue is used by the present congregation.

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Everyone had already gone inside … no, not quite everyone. One man stood weeping and hugging the plaque. When I came closer, I saw the plaque was a blown-up photo of a little girl. He saw me and exclaimed, “She was my little sister!” It was Raphael Halmon, formerly Ralf Hallemann, the son of the director who had emigrated to Palestine. Ralf (Raffi) had been in my class at the Israelitische Realschule. I remembered some names: Ludolf, Robert, Julius, Margot Gusstein who was one of my sister’s friends. And of course Alexander on whom I had a crush (as I was taught to say, once I could speak English). He was in my sister’s class but I knew he liked me too. Once we were given the choice between two different holiday destinations, these being trips organised by donors. Alex and I entered our names on the same list. But there must have been some muddle because he ended up on the same tour as my sister, to Pfannekuchen in Switzerland, while I went to Bad Kissingen with the same group as Alex’s brother. Embarrassment was added to that injury when my grandmother

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came home one day from synagogue and said she had met Alexander’s mother, who had asked when the Shidduch (wedding) was to be. I ran out of the room to cry my heart out. No one enjoys being teased – and I knew I wasn’t pretty like Margot. When I eventually went back to the living room, I heard my grandfather say that I had nice eyes, which started me crying all over again. Alex once saved me from a group of boys. I was returning to school from lunch (I often went home during the break as we lived close by) when some boys noticed and followed me. The school caretaker locked the door on hearing some commotion in the street, but Alex who knew I had gone home, begged him to open the door as I might be in trouble. Someone had already grabbed my hair but fortunately I only lost a handful or so as Alex pulled me inside.

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I was followed a second time. When I was on my way to synagogue on my own, some kids began to chase me. I ran as fast as I could and finally took refuge in a cellar. Someone in the house turned on the light while I cowered against the wall. The kids stared at me; I stared back – and nothing happened. Then they ran away and I picked up my Siddur (prayer book), kissed it and made my way to synagogue. One day Alexander vanished. I was upset but could ask no one where he was. We never spoke about emigration or about things that were happening outside. We accepted such disappearances as part of our lives. After all, I knew that sooner or later Mutti, Margot and I would join Vati in South Africa, wherever that was. Years later, on returning from her first visit to Israel, Aunt Martha told me that she had visited my father’s best friend. He had asked her if she had a niece named Ruth. She had replied Yes, why? Whereupon the friend called his son, Alexander, and said: “He wants to know.” I had no idea Alex’s father and mine had been friends. One didn’t communicate much with one’s parents in those far-off days. Alex had been in the Palmach (the Zionist army), had fought in Israel’s War of Independence as a captain in Israel’s navy and was now happily married. Sadly, his son had died as one of the last casualties of the Yom Kippur War, leaving behind a widow and much beloved grandson for Alexander and his wife. I learnt all this and more, years later, when we were both in our late sixties and finally met up with each other during my first visit to Nitza in Haifa. Though we knew very little as children, we did know we were shunned by our neighbours because we were Jews. We also knew that our parents were

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afraid, just as we knew all about Nürnberg’s top Nazi, Gauleiter Julius Streicher, whom I’ve mentioned. How could we not know? The air around us was infected … One day I encountered the man himself. I had been visiting an aunt in Nürnberg, when I saw him strutting along the main street holding a whip, surrounded by his followers. Terrified, I hid in a nearby entrance. This too was something I did not talk about. I realised very much later that Nürnberg was some way ahead with Jew baiting, thanks to Herr Streicher and also to Nürnberg’s role in Nazi mythology as the City of the Third Reich. When all Jewish civil servants were summarily dismissed in April of 1933, Streicher “suggested” to Aryan firms that it would be a good idea to sack their Jewish employees too. That was how my father lost his job – which of course turned out to be a stroke of luck. Vati would never have left Germany of his own accord. Like so many others, he thought that the Hitler regime would sooner or later be followed by another. I daresay he also thought he would be safe anyway, like other veterans of World War I. He had been seventeen when he offered his services to the Kaiser.

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Uncle Jakob, like his father (my grandfather) attended the small, orthodox Klaus synagogue. I loved the Klaus: its musty smells, the ancient rituals on high festival days. I knew that on such days the Cohanim (descendants of the high priests) performed their special duties, blessing the congregation. Women and children were separated from men and sat upstairs, hidden behind a beautifully carved wooden screen to which I crept as close as possible to watch the Cohanim as they veiled themselves in their prayer shawls, chanting the traditional prayers. I not only knew the way they spread their hands during the blessing (the four fingers separated in the centre), but practised it myself. I remember how surprised I was when I watched the cult TV series Star Trek and saw the alien Mr Spock use this as the alleged greeting of his galaxy! In the nineties, a Jewish museum was opened in Fürth. Shortly before the opening, someone phoned the director to tell him that an old Hebrew book was for sale at a local second-hand bookshop. He decided to take a look and was amazed. It was a unique book: Memory Book of the Klaus, the first entry of which was made in 1630 in Vienna; the last in Fürth in 1933. Many synagogues kept such books which contained daily prayers and recorded the names of congregational office bearers and important members of the congregations, together with major current events. The Nürnberg Memory Books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also list the names of Jews murdered in pogroms during this period. The Klaus Memory Book had

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arrived in Fürth from Vienna with the expulsion of Jews in 1690. A family named Fränkel had escaped from Vienna with the book and founded the Klaus in Fürth.

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When I visited my grandfather’s grave after the church rally, I was touched to see the praying hands on the headstone. A clergyman had been in attendance at the rally and had taken the trouble to find out where my grandfather was buried. He had contacted me and had driven me to Fürth, so that I could stand at this graveside. “Max Meyer Cohen. Born 1869. Deceased 1936.” He had died shortly after our arrival in Johannesburg. I mourned at the time as I was devoted to him with the love children have for special people. Vati was a gentle, timid man as I have said; easy to love, and love him I did. But it was my grandfather, the patriarch, whom I adored. Later I was grateful he had been allowed to die a natural death. Großpapa, a small man with hands hardened by work, deeply devoted to his religion, had little interest in wealth. He taught me whatever I know of Judaism. As a child I understood, as he did, that belief in the Almighty gave life its meaning; life without faith was an empty shell. Both faith and religion provided security in an insecure world. At the time, however, I was ignorant of the fierce conflict within German Jewry between orthodoxy and reform, or of feminists’ rejection of orthodox gender attitudes. I simply accepted that my grandmother wore a Sheitl (a token wig) and that my mother and her sisters did not. I was taught to thank Hashem for everything, from the water to wash my hands to the food we ate. Such belief seemed right and fitting. I met my first black man at my grandfather’s table: an Ethiopian Jew who studied in Nürnberg and who had been invited for the Shabbat meal. Years later my aunt told me that they had kept in touch and that our visitor had been a pilot who had died for his country in Mussolini’s war in 1937. Our lives were confined within the family and congregation. Family events and the Jewish festivals punctuated my Fürther childhood. The week began and ended with the celebration of the Sabbath, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar with the exception of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Others more skilled with words than I have described such traditions too well for me to attempt a repeat. I enjoyed it all. I duly fasted, though children broke the fast before the adults did, on Yom Kippur and Tisha b’av. The ninth day of the month of Av – usually sometime in June – marks the destruction of both temples as well as the expulsion of Jews from Spain. The Passover festival to commemorate the flight from Egypt and slavery, which usually takes place in February, always caused exciting upheaval and spring clean-

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ing. The flat had to be thoroughly scrubbed and prepared for the festival. Jews eat only unleavened bread during Pessach, to remind them of the hurried exodus from Egypt when no leavened bread could be taken. My grandfather would go from room to room on the eve of the festival to search for breadcrumbs. It was custom to leave some for him to find and burn ceremoniously, to signify that the house was now clean. I would follow him and watch him burn the offending crumbs. I loved Seder, the evening feasts when the tale of the exodus from Egypt is told, with the promise that “next year we will celebrate in Jerusalem”; when songs and prayers are mixed with good food and sweet kosher wine. Surrounded as we were by hatred and exclusion, I longed for the promise of “next year in Jerusalem” to turn into reality. In Fürth, Margot and I joined Esra, a religious Zionist group which had been organised by Dr Hallemann. By then Vati had left Germany. We never discussed Zionism. At the time I had no idea that one of Vati’s relatives, a lawyer who lived with his family in Nürnberg – my uncle Alfons – was a fervent Zionist who was to help Jews escape to Palestine illegally when it had become difficult to find a country of refuge.

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Much later I learnt of two journalists who both reported from Paris at the time of the Dreyfus trial in France: Theodor Herzl worked for an Austrian paper and Theodor Wolff for the Berliner Tageblatt, a Berlin daily of which he was to become editor-in-chief. Both came from affluent, assimilated Jewish families and knew little of orthodoxy. Herzl concluded that the only answer to “the Jewish question” was to return to the homeland. He later wrote a book on the Jewish state and became the founding father of modern Zionism. Wolff saw assimilation as the only solution. He fled to Vichy France during the thirties, and died in a German concentration camp. Neither Herzl nor Wolff was able to solve the Jewish question. Today a prestigious German journalism award bears Theodor Wolff’s name. I’m often amazed at the way circles close. Hans Leopold Weiss, whom I was to meet in South Africa, had worked under Wolff on the Berliner Tageblatt, which was published by the Mosse Verlag (publishing house). Much later, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, two of my novels were published in Berlin by Mosse Verlag (mark two), being Berlin publishers who issue a weekly Jewish paper and were permitted to use the name by the Mosse family in the USA. In time to come I was to learn more of my family history, possibly even more than my parents knew. From around the eighties, young Germans were anxious to break down the walls of silence built by the generations before them.

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They dusted off the files in archives in search of local Jewish history. One young man sent me background about my grandfather’s birthplace of Aurich in Friesland. Großpapa had been one of a family of ten siblings. His father and grandfather were listed in the parish registers as “poor Jews”. His father made umbrellas and worked as the synagogue’s Shames (caretaker). He seemed to have married well above himself. His bride was Reisje Ballin, the daughter of a wealthy merchant; however Reisje’s parents had not signed the marriage contract. One wonders why. Was it because her eldest child was an eight-month baby, as the records indicate? Had she enjoyed an illicit affair with someone other than my great-grandfather, and a poor Jew had been paid to turn her into a respectable woman? Or had she been angrily rejected when she wanted to marry this poor Jew, whom she loved but who was unacceptable as a son-in-law? Records are silent on such matters. In view of the ten children, I opt for the love affair between Reisje and my greatgrandfather.

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My aunt Martha (who had been secretary to the community) had done a certain amount of research and discovered that the Cohens were descendants of Conversos: Spanish Jews who had fled at the time of the Inquisition. They arrived in Aurich during the sixteenth century after the expulsion of Jews in 1492, which means they must have been Marranos: Jews who pretended to be Christian converts. Family legend has it that they were on a boat heading for the Netherlands, when a storm blew them off course so that they landed on German soil. The shipwrecked survivors walked towards a village and heard the chanting of Jewish prayers. As they entered the small hut that served as a synagogue, a miracle took place: an image of an eagle with spread wings appeared in the wall above the Torah shrine. The records have no comment on that either. My grandfather, the fourth son, having learnt his trade, set off as a journeyman and stopped in towns and cities where he could work under Jewish masters. In Fürth he became a master bookbinder and married Paula Behr with whom he had four children, of whom my mother was the eldest. Later I found out more about my paternal family, again thanks to the work of a local historian – this time an Israeli named Oded Zingher, who had settled in Hörstein where my father was born. Zingher still lives with his family in nearby Aschaffenburg. Vati was the youngest child of a prosperous family whose ancestor had settled in Hörstein during the eighteenth century. The Löwenthals were weavers at the beginning of the nineteenth century and branched off into farming, and in my childhood I remember they had owned some vineyards, like everyone else in the village. Today wine is produced on

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a co-operative basis. I seem to recall that the family also owned a store. My grandfather had died by the time I was born. He had remarried after the death of his first wife, and Vati and two sisters were the result of this second union. His eldest half-brother, Mathias, founded a department store in Aschaffenburg in the early years of the twentieth century, which developed into the largest store in town. The family must have been inordinately fond of the names Josef and Mathias, as both are rotated throughout the records dug up by Zhinger. Uncle Mathias, together with his wife Bertha, eldest son Ludwig, daughterin-law Erna and his grandchildren Ruth and Joachim, all made it to Johannesburg. But Vati’s second half-brother Salomon (Salli) and sister-inlaw Eva, who had stayed on in Hörstein, both perished. My grandmother’s family moved to Fürth during the Jewish migration from country to town in the last years of the nineteenth century. They too were a family of modest means. Only one of my mother’s relatives made it into the professions: one of her cousins, who insisted on recording both his PhDs on his visiting card. My mother infuriated him by regularly introducing him as “Herr Dr Dr Stefan Behr, no I don’t stutter, the third doctorate is on its way.”

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For me the certainties of childhood have long faded. Yet I know I am a Jew. The question “What is a Jew?” is posed so often that it would be presumptuous of me to try to answer it. Once when my son was a toddler, he called out: “What’s a Jew?” and I shouted from the kitchen, “A Jew? You’re a Jew!” whereupon he began to cry. I rushed into the living room and saw he’d been watching TV. “That man, he says he’s a Jew. All these things … he says they’re only happening to him because he’s a Jew!” I caught a glimpse of an ugly old man on the television screen: a caricature of a Jew with hook nose and leery eyes. Charles Dickens’s Fagin? An early version of Ivanhoe perhaps? I picked up my small child and tried to comfort him, realising that I had taught him too little about his background. Everyone has the right to know who and what they are. Since that awful moment, I have tried to give him a sense of identity, of self-esteem, though it was impossible for me to pass on the beliefs of my childhood. They belonged to another time in another country. I had long since learnt to respect the culture of others as well as my own. Because my childhood was steeped in tradition, I think that I understand the problems of people in developing countries who must adapt to new ways while leaving behind a traditional way of life in which they were certain of their roles.

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My childhood gave me security and the certainty of identity: I’m a Jew. For me it is coupled with love and affection, with tradition and warmth. I knew that Friday evening belonged to my grandmother and my mother as they lit the Sabbath candles. The Sabbath itself belonged to Hashem, and Sabbath evening to Großpapa as he said the prayers, a silver spice box in hand, before dousing a coloured candle at the end of the holy day to mark the fading of light into darkness.

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Alexander’s Bar Mitzvah in London, 1980

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II

AN UNJUST SOCIETY

Early in 1936 we left for Hamburg where we had lived earlier for three years when I was a toddler. Vati had then been employed in the advertising department of an import-export company, but had returned to Nürnberg when he was offered the job from which he was summarily sacked in 1933. I recall a little of that time in Hamburg: a trip on the Elbe, a holiday at Blankenese, our modern flat, the huge port and the sea. I also remember with affection one of my father’s friends who later also emigrated to South Africa. Unlike my hardworking father, Erwin Ballin was a wealthy playboy, nephew of shipping magnate Albert Ballin who founded Hapag-Lloyd: the company which carried hundreds of thousands of Jews to America. Ballin, an admirer and close associate of the Kaiser, had committed suicide when his Kaiser lost the Great War. I never discovered if this Ballin was connected with the similarly named family into which my maternal great-grandfather had married. I also remember a visit to Hagenbeck Zoo where we saw a black family exhibited as “South West African Bushmen”. Some of the adults were squatting outside a thatched hut while a small naked boy ran towards me, shaking a cigar box and shouting, “Money, money!” My mother was distressed that people were exhibited like animals and pulled us away from this interesting exhibit.

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South West Africa – South Africa! We were actually on our way. The Tanganyika on which we sailed, owned by the Woermann shipping line, was later sunk by the British navy during World War II. The name Woermann was inextricably linked with Africa. Adolf Woermann had established a thriving business selling alcoholic spirits in the Congo and had been one of the businessmen who urged Bismarck to adopt colonisation. He later acted as an advisor at the Berlin Conference of 1884, which created the rules for the “Scramble for Africa”. Woermann’s ships delivered everything that colonies needed: arms, equipment, alcohol – and even ropes used for whipping “cheeky kaffirs”. In 1970 I was about to take up a job in Zambia and had decided to travel by sea to Africa with my then four-year-old son. The travel agents had booked me from Holland but were unable to advise me of the port of departure, day of sailing or the the ship itself until a few days before departure. By then sea journeys were no longer the norm. Three days before we left for the Continent, I received the tickets for a Woermann ship named Tanganyika. The new boat had been named after the one lost at sea. This second trip, where we disembarked at Mombasa, was as different from the first as 1936

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was from 1970. My offspring and I were the only passengers; we had the run of two cabins (I wrote a book in one) and dined at the captain’s table. That is, I did. My son, more often than not, was with the crew. They spoiled him rotten, erecting a small pool on deck so that he spent hours swimming. He was as happy on that long six week trip as …well, as a sailor. In 1936 we refugees – twenty adults, five children – had been unwanted thirdclass passengers, isolated from those in first and second class. We lacked proper passports and cash because of the restriction of ten marks per emigrant. The passage had to be paid in marks, hence the choice of a German ship. Some of the crew avoided us, others were downright rude; a few were great. The real passengers barely knew of our existence. I made friends with a Swedish girl whose parents were missionaries. They disembarked at a West African port, but not before they had insisted that the children from third class were also invited to Neptune’s Crossing the Equator party. We splashed in the pool, bobbed for apples and enjoyed ourselves. I could hardly remember the last time I had simply had fun.

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It was a long journey and that was just as well; it meant we were able to get to know the continent, our new home. The Tanganyika was a cargo boat which called at many ports: Southampton, Madeira, Pointe Noir, Dakar, Accra, Windhoek. Each stop was an adventure. We watched agile black youngsters diving for coins thrown from the upper class decks, tried to talk to black passengers who had been taken on deck at Dakar and travelled with us to the next port, and played with their children. “Kaffirs,” a crewman said in the same tone used for “Jew”. We were fascinated by the “kaffirs” who cooked meals on deck which they offered to share with us – which I shyly refused as I then ate strictly kosher. Surprisingly the boat carried kosher food for us; they had stocked up on tins in Hamburg. I have no idea how the adults spent their time during those long weeks. I discovered the ship’s library and devoured the books. As a result I became a fervent supporter of the Boers and their cause, and was equally fervently antiBritish. The books had been selected with a different readership than me in mind: good solid (German) South West Africans. It was at that time that I first learnt of the Berlin Conference which Bismarck had convened in 1884, following his decision to declare South West Africa a German protectorate. This covered an area north of the Cape, in which the Bremen merchant Adolf Lüderitz had acquired land concessions. I read too that South Africa had defeated German South West Africa during the first of the world wars and

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had been given a League of Nations mandate to administer the former German colony. I was not to guess that the territory would only achieve independence as Namibia as late as 1990. When I wrote a book with a friend on the Berlin Conference in 1984, I suddenly remembered that trip. Had my interest been subconsciously fed by the books I had read on that initial voyage? There was little in that library to teach me about the “kaffirs”; only an occasional mention was made of Hottentots and Bushmen. There was a little more about Hereros and Namas, who had dared to organise an uprising against the German colonists. The terrible punishment meted out to them could only be described as “genocide” – a word which then did not exist as a political concept, and one that German politicians were still skirting around in 2011 as far as Namibia was concerned. Nor did the books breathe a word about the flight on horseback to Walvis Bay of the German governor-general at the time, one Heinrich Ernst Göring, who had been taken by surprise by the Herero onslaught. The name of his son, Hermann, I only learnt much later.

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One of our fellow travellers had the bright idea to teach us English. I used to listen to the conversation of the passengers on the upper decks and was pleased when I understood a few words. Once when we were docking at Dakar, I heard an Englishman exclaim, “Damn it!” and I could translate that. I also understood the word “foreigner” but couldn’t make out why he was talking about “those damned foreigners”, as it was obvious he was talking about the locals. I was puzzled. I thought Dakar was a French possession. Didn’t that mean that he was the foreigner? Besides, he was white and as this was the continent of black people, weren’t all white people foreigners? How was I to know that for many an Englishman, nationals of all countries other than Britain were considered foreigners? I had yet to learn a new vocabulary which included “wogs”, “frogs” and “krauts”. Mostly out of date by now, of course, which is just as well – except that new labels are in use today such as “Paki”. Prejudices never die. And of course “bloody Jew” is unlikely ever to date. A book of San–Bushmen stories fascinated me; I had found a goldmine. Margot demanded that I told her bedtime stories, and when I had run out of those I knew, I made up others. Margot had an irritating habit of asking, “… and then?” whenever I had finished a story. She always wanted to hear another. The San tales kept us both happy for some time. My reading raised questions. For instance I read something entitled The Million Mark Conspiracy, a blatantly pro-British treatise which argued that

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German bankers and financiers were conspiring to take over the rich southern African region from Britain. I couldn’t make out what was fact, what fiction. Several names had a non-Aryan ring: names such as Fritz Hirschorn, Sigmund Neumann, Ernst Oppenheimer. I discovered that Oppenheimer was born in Friedberg, Hessen and had learnt his trade as a diamantiere in London before he was sent to South Africa – where he made it to the top of the world’s diamond monopoly, De Beers. He had also established his own company, Anglo American Corporation, which was destined to become South Africa’s largest company, only pulling out and establishing its headquarters in London after the arrival of democratic rule in the nineties. During World War I the same man (whose name sounded Jewish to me) had been demonised as a German. He gave up his post as mayor of Kimberley because of his German nationality. But then my own father had fought for the Kaiser at that time. All most confusing. I was fascinated by Oppenheimer. Much later I discovered that he had converted to Christianity, which meant that technically he was no longer a Jew. But such technicalities never made much of an impact at any time in history. The South African media used to caricature Oppenheimer as Hoggenheimer. One day in the late fifties, during my lunch hour I stumbled across a small chapel in Johannesburg’s city centre where Ernst Oppenheimer (by then “Sir Ernest”) prayed, as I was subsequently told. I met the man himself around the same time; he was an avid collector of Africana and a customer at Selected Books (the co-owner of which was Hans Weiss) where I worked for the four years of its existence. Oppenheimer also dealt with an Africana dealer named Eva Thorne, a widow who had taken over her husband’s business. I worked for her occasionally. One lunchtime she told me that she expected a Mr Sobukwe, a black lecturer at Witwatersrand University, who had ordered a book. I was to charge him less than the catalogued price “because he actually reads the books”. I thus served a man named Robert Sobukwe, later to lead the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – the breakaway faction of the African National Congress. At the time the name meant nothing to me, ignorant as I was of black politics as a teenager. I was more interested in Oppenheimer and wondered if he was a collector as well as a reader of Mrs Thorne’s books. I also discovered in the sixties that his son and heir, the equally legendary Harry, had some objection to Jews. When his daughter had a flirtation with an architect (one in my circles of friends), father wasn’t happy because of the man’s Jewish background. It was also said that the personnel policy of Oppenheimer companies strictly favoured non-Jewish Oxbridge graduates. By this time I knew a little about the Oppenheimer empire since sixty per

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cent of shares traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange were linked to Anglo American. When the company moved its headquarters from 44 Main Street Johannesburg to London in 1998, I was surprised how little the papers made of it. For me it was a milestone in South Africa’s economic history. However, on board the Tanganyika (mark one) I was much too shy to discuss my reading material with any adult. Perhaps one or other might have talked to me because, as an incident in Walvis Bay proved, the adults were thoroughly bored. Walvis Bay in those days was a backward spot. Its houses were built on stilts to stop the penetration of sand. We stayed there longer than scheduled as the British king had just died. Many passengers were British and it was seen as a mark of respect to stop an extra day or so. The crew and other passengers either went to Swakopmund or played football. We, the refugees, discovered that a few Jewish families living in Walvis Bay seemed pleased to see us, though communication was difficult as we had no Yiddish and almost no English – and they had no German. The younger men amused themselves with a practical joke. They told one young man that a German Jewish family in South West had heard of eligible young men on board. On being provided with his name and biography, this family had decided that he was the right man for their daughter. The young man believed it. So did I. I kept wondering if the girl knew of her parents’ plan. Would she agree? What was she like? Naturally I imagined that she had a good dowry. I hoped they would fall in love and live happily ever after. However, the young man was horrified at the thought of an arranged marriage and to my disappointment, couldn’t leave Walvis Bay quickly enough. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

In 1992 shortly after I moved to the Isle of Wight, I had an unexpected telephone call. A voice asked if I remembered him; he had been on the Tanganyika way back in 1936 … Of course I remembered him; he was the reluctant bridegroom! I knew he had kept in touch with my sister who had told him of my latest move. During a visit to the UK he had phoned for a chat. Worlds as well as a lifetime separated that Tanganyika trip from tranquil Ventnor, my idyllic one-time fishing village home on the Isle of Wight. The non-groom had settled down to a good marriage and career in South Africa, while I … well, that’s what I’m trying to write about. I wondered after that phone call whether there hadn’t been a grain of truth in the story of the eager bride. German Jews were in the minority among the South African Jewry. The majority of the then hundred-thousand-strong community were descendants of Eastern European Jews who had fled from

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the misery and pogroms of Tsarist Russia. Most of them had come from Lithuania or Latvia. German Jews had looked down their much-abused noses at their poor Eastern European brothers. I understood that because of this, German Jews were not welcomed with open arms in South Africa by the earlier settlers. They helped financially and in other ways but they didn’t exactly want close friendships. I remember that when my parents were approached by an intermediary to ask if my sister would consider marriage to one of two young men, she had explained that German Jews had problems finding a wife among the non-German Jewish community. In 1936 when we arrived in South Africa, the word “apartheid” was not yet coined. However, racial discrimination and racial separation had been born with the arrival of the first settlers at the Cape of Good Hope. The pattern of white man as master, black man as servant – one superior, the other inferior – had been set a long time ago; first by the Dutch who created a slave-owning society and subsequently by the British who added their own racial prejudices to the existing mix.

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The Dutch and some German settlers as employees of the Dutch East India Company arrived in 1652, four years after the end of the disastrous Thirty Years War which had laid central Europe waste. Their mission was to plant a vegetable garden and to supply passing ships with fresh produce, water and meat. These gardeners gradually became Boers (farmers) and displaced the indigenous people, the Khoi-Khoi, whom they contemptuously labelled “Hottentots”. They also hunted and killed the oldest hunter–gatherer inhabitants, the San, whom they called “Bushmen”. Slaves were mainly imported from Indonesia. As the settlers moved onto the land, spreading ever further, they developed a local dialect – Afrikaans, which was culled mainly from Dutch, German, and a touch of French thanks to the influx of French Huguenots. So-called “Coloureds” evolved as offspring of white masters and slaves mixed with Khoi-Khoi. The Coloured people, described as “God’s stepchildren”, can perhaps be regarded as the only true South Africans. The arrival of the British at the Cape during the course of the Napoleonic wars led to their later acquisition of the Cape and subsequently to the end of slavery in 1834. In turn this contributed to the Boer exodus – the Great Trek – with some ten thousand leaving the Cape, mainly the Eastern region, over the next ten years. Frontier Boers had competed fiercely with Xhosas (Nguni-speaking people) for grazing and agricultural land, water, game and cattle. Clashes were inevitable, resulting in the nineteenth century so-called

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“Kaffir Wars”, usually the result of cattle raids and reprisals by settler commandos. Many Boers anxiously trekked away from such pressures, taking with them their families, servants, ox wagons, guns and the Bible … but no clergy. The Dutch Reformed Church had refused permission as the trek was not sanctioned by the Cape authorities. The Great Trek gave birth to and became the myth of Boer nationalism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A people reared on the Bible, they believed they were the chosen people to civilise the “savage blacks”. The Great Trek was seen as the exodus from Egypt, with the ox wagon becoming its symbol. Boers fought indigenous people or bargained with them to allow settlements in various regions. A number of Boer republics were founded. One, later named Natal, was annexed by the British. Two others – the Orange Free State (OFS) and the South African Republic (Transvaal) – survived for a time, later to be defeated in the second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). This era was known by the Boers as a century of wrongs wrought by imperial Britain.

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In 1910 the Cape and Natal colonies were merged with the two Boer republics to form the Union which is today the Republic of South Africa. The Union’s constitution was not colour-blind as the 1852 Cape constitution had been when it based the franchise on status and income, irrespective of colour. The Transkei, home of the Xhosa people, was excluded from the new system. In 1909 the British acceded to the Boer demand for a “whites-only” constitution, with the exception of a pathetic handful of “non-whites” on the Cape and Natal electoral rolls . This excluded the majority of the population, namely the ten indigenous nations who had lost most of their land in wars against white people. It also excluded Coloured people living outside the Cape as well as those from India who had been imported in 1860 by the British as indentured labourers for Natal’s sugar plantations. The new Land Act of 1913 deprived Africans of land. Of the total land area, only 7.5 per cent was allocated for black “reserves”, the hard core of the socalled “homelands” under apartheid. Cape franchise rights under the 1909 constitution were lost in the thirties. Pass laws affecting black adult males, first introduced in the Cape during the British occupation, were strengthened after the creation of the Union. This forced every black person to carry a pass recording full personal details, including place of residence and work – even the latest tax receipt. Thousands of black people found themselves in jail due to offences against these laws, which were finally abolished only in the 1980s.

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When we arrived in South Africa the pattern of social and economic life had been set. The agrarian economy had already evolved into an industrial phase thanks to the discovery of diamonds in 1866 and gold some twenty years later. Non-whites had no access to these resources and were exploited as labour. English-speaking South Africans (about forty per cent of the white population) dominated the economy, in particular the complex network of mining finance corporations closely linked with foreign capital. The Boers produced the early prime ministers who were all former generals during the Boer War: Louis Botha, JBM Hertzog and Jan Christiaan Smuts. Botha and Smuts had thrown in their lot with English-speaking South Africans. Hertzog, on the other hand, founded the Boers’ National Party in 1912 and was prime minister at the time of our arrival. The Cape Boers who had not joined the trek had become wealthy wine and fruit farmers. They were better off and better educated than their sheeprearing brothers in the OFS and the maize-growers of the Transvaal.

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During the thirties, the country suffered under global recession. Rural Boers were badly off. They lacked the basic education of their English-speaking compatriots and had suffered the destruction of their farms during the Boer War. They were also excluded from craft unions which were jealously guarded by their members, usually English-speaking craftsmen. A class emerged known as “poor whites” who were deemed to have rights above those of non-whites. With industrialisation, poor whites drifted into the urban areas. Wealthy Boers set up a reddingsdaadbond: a fund to assist poor whites, while many took jobs in government structures such as ports, railways, post offices, police and prisons. Many poor whites worked on the mines as shift bosses in charge of hundreds of black mineworkers who were recruited on contract from the black reserves and neighbouring countries, and were then confined inside mine property. There they lived communally without families, contrary to traditional life. Only white workers were able to join trade unions. And only a white mineworker could set off explosive charges. This situation remained until the turbulent eighties with the emergence of a strong mineworkers’ union. Industrialisation also attracted black people to urban areas, especially to Johannesburg (e’Goli – the city of gold). “Locations”, developed by municipal authorities to house the migrants, soon burst their boundaries. Wild locations mushroomed and were also brought under municipal control. Inevitably these overcrowded areas turned into slums. Orlando, the largest location

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south of Johannesburg, became the centre of what was later styled the South Western Townships or Soweto. My father’s relatives were settled and comfortably off. An aunt welcomed us when we finally disembarked at Cape Town: a good-looking, dark-haired woman, brisk and businesslike. She looked approvingly at Margot and me and said, “Excellent, the girls have wonderful white skins! We must get you both sun umbrellas.” We failed to share her delight, as we had envied the tan of the ladies on the upper decks. Our aunt, however, thought that girls from an immigrant family without dowries stood a better chance of a good match if they were light-skinned. Cape Town, with its awesome Table Mountain, its cliffs and surf, did not detain us long. The Cape Town aunt had organised everything perfectly. A day after setting foot on South African soil, we caught the train to travel two sticky days and as many nights to Johannesburg, to Vati, his shop and our new home.

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In Johannesburg we lived on the wrong side of the tracks, in a suburb populated by poor whites. Mayfair, where Vati’s relatives had found him a shop, bore no resemblance to London’s Mayfair. Our Mayfair in the west of Johannesburg consisted of narrow streets and small houses, each sporting a verandah and a few feet of front garden. The backyard contained a coal shed and a “boy’s” room, which more often than not was inhabited by a “girl”. No matter how poor a white family was, it couldn’t do without a “girl”. Each Monday the family laundry, together with a piece of blue or yellow soap, was collected by a washerwoman for delivery on Thursday, duly washed and ironed. When I subsequently visited a location and saw the filthy water in the trickling streams, I was amazed at the complacency about hygiene on the part of the “madams” who apparently had never bothered to find out where and how their laundry was washed. I recalled the arguments on the verandah, when the “missis” complained that the washerwoman was using too much soap. The laziness of the “kaffirs” was a never-ending conversation topic. Not only in Mayfair. Town planners had used little imagination when developing Mayfair. One set of parallel roads were named avenues; another set of intersecting roads were streets. One set was numbered, the other bore names. We lived on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Princess Street. The general dealer store my father had acquired was on the corner; we lived in the adjoining house, linked by a corridor to the shop.

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Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

When I visited Mayfair in 1990 for the first time since the mid-sixties, I found that it had become gentrified and much sought after. The suburb had been turned into a “grey area” in the last apartheid decade when Asians in particular moved into the suburb. Theoretically they couldn’t own property in a designated white suburb, but an astute lawyer thought that because a company could act legally like a person, it could therefore purchase a house. Innumerable companies were registered, each of which acquired Mayfair properties. There was nothing the authorities could do about it. By 1990, liberal-minded white South Africans also moved to Mayfair.

In Mayfair, the suburb in which we lived in Johannesburg, 1941

The language of the Mayfair I had known was Afrikaans; it was the first foreign language I picked up in the street. English I learnt at school. Most of our neighbours were Afrikaans-speaking; many of them worked in nearby Crown Mines. The adjoining, older suburb of Fordsburg had a mixed population of Coloureds and Asians as well as some poor whites. However no white people inhabited Vrededorp, another neighbouring suburb, which housed black, Coloured and Indian people. This was considered a dangerous area; I heard talk of the Amalaitas (a gang of criminals) and “big boys” – the receivers of stolen goods. Some elegant white women risked shopping in Vrededorp for the beautiful material imported from Asia.

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The white residents of Mayfair considered Vrededorp forbidden ground while Fordsburg was just about permissible. The tram used to rattle along Main Street through Fordsburg, where in 1922, striking white mineworkers fought pitched battles with the army. The strikers’ curious slogan “Workers of the world unite – keep South Africa white” had paid off. Some two hundred people were killed and the ringleaders executed and others deported; yet white mineworkers succeeded in keeping black workers out of skilled and semi-skilled work on the mines. In 1979 the old slogan flickered once more when a small group of white mineworkers, afraid of the swart gevaar (black danger), staged a brief strike. At that time, waves of strikes by black industrial workers had engulfed the mines when ninety per cent of the workforce, who were black, had finally been allowed an official union.

My parents in 1950 in Johannesburg

Vrededorp was declared a black spot during the apartheid era and its inhabitants forcefully removed. However, unlike the better-known removal in Sophiatown (after which, houses for white lower-income families were built), Vrededorp remained a sad sight with many houses being bulldozed to the ground but few new houses being built to replace them.

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Two days after we arrived in the house at Sixth Avenue corner Princess Street, I discovered that “equal rights for all” meant “for all except blacks”, just as in Fürth there had been equal rights for all except Jews. My mother was to work in the shop, so she decided she needed a “girl” in the house. A woman named Jenny arrived for an interview, carrying a baby in a blanket on her back, to the delight of Margot and myself. The interview took place on the stoep (verandah). Jenny loosened the blanket and spread it out on the red-polished floor. While she talked with Mutti we played with the child, which gurgled happily the way babies do. The women came to an agreement; Mutti picked up the baby and held it in her arms until Jenny tucked it onto her back. That was all. But an hour later we had visitors. Four ladies. They were carefully dressed in dark clothes and hats, as later I saw them dressed for church. They talked slowly in English and Vati came from the shop to translate. “They said they’ve decided to come and see us, even if we’ve only just arrived.” My mother acknowledged her gratitude. They also explained that they were certain she was not yet ready for visitors, so they had brought a cake. This was unwrapped, which was my first sight of a melktert, which looked like a poor relation of a cheesecake. It also tasted like it. But it was an Afrikaner treat and was well meant.

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“They have come as they realised that we were foreigners,” Vati explained while I made tea, struggling with the unfamiliar coal stove. “They say in foreign countries there are always customs one has to learn.” My mother agreed and said she was only too willing to learn. It would be an honour. “Good. Then everything will be in order.” “But of course!” At last I arrived with the tea. It was very quiet in the room. The ladies sat on chairs which my father had bought from the previous owner, and we on some boxes he had brought from the shop. A larger box served as a table. “What do they mean?” I asked Vati.

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He was embarrassed. He had lived in the country for three years and knew what this was all about. Finally he said, “One doesn’t touch black children. It’s against the custom.” Silence. Vati said that we had understood. The ladies took their leave. Perhaps my tea was too strong. “In the village the German kids weren’t allowed to play with me,” I said. “That was against the custom too.” Neither of my parents disagreed. They never really accepted apartheid, even if they did nothing about it. I was fortunate. They never reproached me when my more radical views seemed to them dangerous, as indeed they were. The relationship between Jenny and my mother worked from the start. Mutti never learnt English as it should be properly spoken. On the other hand, within a few weeks Jenny was able to express herself in the clearest Fürther dialect. My father’s shop was dark and small, but clean. He said he had changed little in it since taking it over; that wasn’t hard to believe. The shelves were old and looked ready to collapse under the weight of maize meal, sugar, flour and some of the basics which were always in demand. Packets of Five Roses tea were neatly stacked next to the tins of jam and marmalade. The counter was always cluttered, with huge jars filled with sweets. Bread, neatly stacked, was delivered daily and was much in demand.

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Before leaving for school we helped as much as we could because early morning was a busy time. Mutti also had some problems with the strange money to begin with, but eventually learnt to count in twelves instead of tens. Margot was particularly good with clothing. When the “girls” or their “madams” came to buy overalls, it was usually Margot who made the sale. The clothes, ranging from small to XO (extra outsize) were in a rack near the entrance. XO was a bestseller, since both “girls” and “madams” tended towards thickness around the middle. Tackies (white cloth shoes) were another good seller; they were cheap and light on the feet. The snag was that they needed to be polished daily. We sold innumerable tackies and tins of white polish. Vati was a poor businessman. Jews are supposed to be born with cash tills in mind, but he wasn’t good with money and neither was I. He was meticu-

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lous in his dealings, like the German he was. The customers were always right – and once he discovered how poor they were, he began dividing pounds of butter into quarter-pound portions. The final quarter was always the smallest and landed up in our kitchen or had to be thrown out. He also kept a “book” (he gave credit) and was forever worried because of the mounting outstanding and only too often bad debts.

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It would have been a miracle if he hadn’t been forced to close the shop eventually. He refused to declare bankruptcy and even after closing down and working for a pittance in another shop, he paid off every penny he owed. My sister despaired of our poverty, but somehow it didn’t bother me. It was school that I had to get used to.

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III NEW CUSTOMS It took time to adapt to the new society and to Mayfair Intermediate School. This was a school intended for the less ambitious or less gifted – in other words, for poor whites. If one failed to achieve the school-leaving certificate, it hardly mattered; one left school at fifteen anyway. The language of tuition was English, whereas the home language of most children was Afrikaans. The girls’ ambitions were limited to aspiring to become hairdressers or shop assistants or, better still, to be married early. The boys followed their fathers to the mines or opted for an apprenticeship in a garage. A few Jewish families still lived in Mayfair where a synagogue bore witness to a previous, larger congregation. Many were shopkeepers; a few had not yet moved up the economic scale to make it to Yeoville (a first step up the social ladder). In my class were several Jewish girls. One was Betty Skikne whose cousin, Larry Skikne, became better known in Hollywood as Lawrence Harvey. Betty too achieved fame of sorts by marrying a Jewish national rugby hero. Jewish families made certain that boys attended high schools. Like Jews everywhere, South African Jews believe that knowledge is the key to a good life. Whatever was stored inside one’s head could not be taken away. Perhaps … but I remember our family doctor, who travelled by tram from a northern suburb to treat me for tonsillitis and my sister for a dislocated knee. In Germany he’d been a highly qualified specialist, but his degree was not recognised in South Africa. While studying to re-take his degree, he treated other German Jews, asking ridiculously low fees. It helped both parties.

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The synagogue proved disappointing. Insecure as I was, I tried desperately to cling to life as I’d known it. I insisted on going to synagogue on the Sabbath and found myself virtually alone in the women’s section with only a few old women, and with rarely more than the ten men below, this being the necessary Minyan (number) to enable the service to proceed. Traditionally ten Jewish males form the quorum for readings from the Torah to take place. Mayfair’s Jewish community had shrunk and was being phased out. I once walked to the main synagogue in town, but it was a two-hour walk each way and I did not repeat the attempt. I still refused to work on Shabbat and though I accepted that my parents had no choice but to open the shop, this distressed me. I was also upset that Jewish children, like other kids, played tennis or went swimming on the Sabbath. On the Isle of Wight I met a woman who had come to Britain with the Kindertransport after the November 1938 pogrom. She had been adopted by Methodists. As her parents had been orthodox Jews, she tried to eat no meat for six months, until she realised

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that it was impossible to maintain this regimen. My experience wasn’t all that different. In new surroundings one adapts. Apart from Margot and me, there was one other foreigner at the Mayfair school: a large-boned Dutch boy who was asked to look after us. My form mistress was a Miss Schlesin, a kind woman, who tried to cure me of my shyness, but with little success. However, without my knowledge, she later asked the headmaster to arrange for me to attend a high school, which was not normal procedure for a pupil at an intermediate school. Indeed Margot left school at fifteen to give me a chance to complete my matric, something for which I was always grateful.

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I later discovered that Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary during the twenty formative years Gandhi spent in South Africa (from 1894 to 1914) – was called Sonia Schlesin. Gandhi had become aware of the racist nature of South African society after an encounter with a railway employee who physically threw him out of a first-class compartment because “coolies travel third class.” It was in South Africa that he developed his policy of passive resistance and civil disobedience. Gandhi’s secretary was the niece of his German architect friend named Kallenbach. I never discovered whether “my” Miss Schlesin had had anything to do with Gandhi. I learnt this in the sixties, when a friend researched the Gandhi story. She found that Gandhi’s secretary had died in the fifties and unfortunately – indeed unforgivably – her sister had destroyed all her papers. In 1995 I had the pleasure of interviewing Eli Gandhi, the great man’s granddaughter, who was at the time an African National Congress (ANC) Member of Parliament, (the ANC by then being the ruling party). At the end of the interview I asked her if she had ever come across the name of Schlesin. “Ah,” she said, “was Sonia Schlesin your teacher?” The answer is that I have no idea. Miss Schlesin was German-speaking, though she only once used that language in my presence. Margot and I had no problem learning English or keeping up at school. At first we had been placed in classes below our age group, but were soon moved up. We had many advantages. The Fürther school had been outstanding and our parents were interested in our schooling. There were also always books around the house. Our neighbours were not very interested in what they called “book learning” and rarely encouraged their children in this pastime. Margot settled down much more happily than I did. She was a good sportswoman, played hockey and was soon made head of her house. This school in

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Mayfair, attended mainly by poor whites, aped the British school system like all English-medium schools in South Africa at the time. The rule was for British-style uniforms to be worn and, though we were a day-school, each child belonged to an imaginary house, for which we were supposed to collect points at sport. I’m afraid I wasn’t much use. I once entered an egg-andspoon race on sports day, having been nagged into it by Margot. I was stumbling along, having lost the egg innumerable times, when someone rushed up and lifted my arm to announce me the winner. It took a few minutes to sort this out; I had come last in the previous heat, not first of those who had started behind me.

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At Mayfair Intermediary school in 1937, with me holding the board “6 A”

I made a friend named Nellie who, to my surprise, had no other friends. Nellie was pretty and a good student. Sometimes when we walked home, some of the boys would shout insults at us. Nellie dealt with them by shouting “Voetsak!” – an impolite way of saying “Go away”. Nellie often visited me, but never asked me to her home. Then one day I had to go there because my father asked me to take an overdue account to her mother. I knocked and it took a while before anyone answered. Then an old lady opened the door, a so-called “Coloured” woman. I began to apologise and asked for Nellie. At that moment my friend rushed along the corridor; I still remember the highly polished linoleum on which she almost slipped.

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I started saying something like: “Nellie, for heaven’s sake!” but she wouldn’t listen. She took the envelope out of my hand and pushed it into her pocket. Then she walked me back to our house in silence. She was clearly very upset. Finally my sister solved the puzzle. One of the girls in her class told her that Nellie shouldn’t be in our school – she wasn’t white. Neither of us really understood. Anyway, Nellie wasn’t at school that day and when I asked someone during the break where she was, they shouted at me, “Why do you go with her, man?” “She’s my friend.” “Kaffirboetie!” This was the first but not the last time that someone called me that. Boetie means little brother; I was someone who treated black people like brothers. They were crowding me towards the fence, jeering. I lashed out, defending myself with fists and legs. Suddenly I felt a searing pain in my arm, at the same time that the bell rang. The girls vanished; I was left on my own in the playground and went to the toilet, blood dripping from my arm. The caretaker came; someone had told her where I was. She cleaned the wound with iodine, bandaged it and sent for the Dutch boy to walk me home.

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I knew what had happened. Our wooden desks were old and everyone seemed to write and carve something onto them: a clue to help in a test, a swear-word, a caricature of a teacher. Once a month we had to clean the desks, usually with a razor blade. Someone had probably held such a blade in her hand and I was scratched by it. I don’t believe it was intentional. I stayed at home the following day and Miss Schlesin came to the house: the only time she did so. I could hear her quavering voice as she talked with my mother in German – which was how I found out she was German speaking. I was in our parents’ bedroom, which was often the case when we were ill. It gave us a kind of comfort. I recall a huge wardrobe in the room which my mother had brought from Vati’s village home in Germany. “Why can’t I play with Nellie, Miss Schlesin?” I asked when she finally came to talk to me. “You won’t be able to. She has left school.” “But she wanted to take the school leaving certificate!”

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“That won’t be necessary. She’s got a good job. Her father, Meneer (Mr) van Niekerk, is a tram driver. Nellie found a job at the municipal office.” I was disappointed. “When I’m better, I’ll visit her.” Miss Schlesin said softly: “That won’t be possible. The van Niekerks have moved – to Vrededorp.” Vrededorp: the suburb a few streets away where no white people lived or visited, except the ladies from the northern suburbs to buy their silks. “Why?” Miss Schlesin tried to explain. “Meneer van Niekerk married a woman from the Cape. She looks white, doesn’t she?” I nodded, remembering that Mevrou (Mrs) van Niekerk was very good-looking. “A few weeks ago she was ill and her mother came to visit her … you came in at the wrong moment. They’d intended to pass the old lady off as their servant.” “I didn’t know that.”

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“Well, Nellie thinks you knew that was her grandmother. And she thought it would prove that she was actually a Coloured. She didn’t want to be kicked out of school so she chose to leave on her own.” “Is it forbidden to marry Coloureds?” Miss Schlesin replied reluctantly, “Not yet.” Her words were well chosen. In 1927 extramarital sex between the races was forbidden for the first time. After the 1948 election triumph of the National Party (NP) under the banner of apartheid, the Mixed Marriages Act came into force in 1950. This Act made marriage between partners of different races illegal, reinforced later by the Immorality Act which opened the bedroom door to police. I never met Nellie again. Perhaps she, like her mother, tried to pass for white. Some so-called Coloureds who looked white left their families and tried to

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Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

make a life for themselves in the white community. Sometimes this was referred to as “catching the Kimberley train”. Kimberley, the diamond town, was easily reached by train from Cape Town, offering employment and a new start. I learnt a good deal about South Africa in Mayfair. I began to understand Boer customs, religion and politics. Living where we did meant adding flesh to the bones of my reading on the boat. I began to realise the hatred many Boers felt for the Engelse (English) who had brought ungodly customs to their land and had deprived them of their independence. The parents of my schoolmates truly believed that God had created mense (people) and skepsels (creatures), meaning black people. I learnt to dislike apartheid long before it had that name. In 1948 I was not as surprised by the political victory as were most of my English-speaking friends, nor by the euphoria of the party faithfuls. I was, however, surprised in the early sixties by the furore over the secret brotherhood of Afrikaners, the Afrikaner broederbond. I knew of its existence thanks to my years in Mayfair. I’d been told that in 1918 a group of railway workers in Johannesburg had founded a cultural organisation which, five years later, had become a secret society. An overt network of organisations had also been also formed through which the broederbond tried to control Boer society, including the NP. Like all secret societies, it was composed of cells. Members were chosen carefully; they had to be wellrespected members of one of the Dutch Reformed Churches: pillars of society with good jobs and impeccable family trees without Catholic or British ancestry. Whenever a job became vacant in a member’s company or civil servant department, he would report it to the broederbond who would then try to infiltrate one of their members into the job. In this way they infiltrated the church, the national broadcaster (the SABC), the judiciary and the civil service. Every NP prime minister and president and most NP cabinet members had been broeders, including President FW de Klerk who finally ended apartheid in 1990. In Mayfair we also came into contact with bywoners (poor Afrikaner farmers who squatted on large estates). Bywoners often came to town and parked their large ox wagons at the edge of our suburb, while the women and children sold their produce house-to-house: peaches, pawpaws, bananas, mangoes and similar fruit. The whole family slept in the wagon, just as their grandparents and great-grandparents had done on their treks. Our neighbour Japie Robinson (an Afrikaner despite the English surname) sometimes visited his family on their farm. Lettie, the daughter, described the farm’s open spaces and maize fields, the chickens scrabbling in the back-

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yard, and the compound where the labourers lived with their families. She also told me about the special cow for the “kaffirs”. Her grandmother had explained that “kaffirs” couldn’t drink milk from the same cow as whites. On Sundays Lettie’s grandfather, flanked by his sons and dressed in a black suit and hat, stood on the stoep to hold the Sunday service for his family and workers. The men stood in front; behind them stood the white women and children while black men knelt at the back. Everyone was served coffee from a huge pot. When the black workers offered their tin mugs, the grandmother would lift the pot as high as she could so that there would be no contamination. One night we were woken by Japie Robinson, who had discovered a hole in our shop window after returning from a hard night’s drinking. Unfortunately our shop was constantly being burgled. After the fifth time, Vati could no longer get insurance cover: one of the contributing reasons for his difficulties. He thanked Robinson, who threatened that he’d “get the bloody kaffir”. Sure enough, half an hour later he was back. Margot crept deeper under her blanket, murmuring: “Another burglary?” We had become used to it. Vati meanwhile was trying to deal with Robinson, who was holding a trembling African, blood dripping from nose and ears. He insisted that this was the burglar and that my father should call the police. Vati protested. What proof did he have this was the criminal? Robinson shouted: “Man, I waited! They always return to see if there’s anything they can grab. I saw this kaffir and rushed out to get him!”

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Vati had no choice; he had to call the police, if only to protect the poor man, he thought. The following day he had to go to the police station, where he refused to lay charges. He said he could not possibly claim that this was the man who had thrown a brick through his window. “He’s admitted it,” the policeman told him. Vati was shaken. The man was terrified; he’d obviously been badly beaten and would have admitted to anything. Vati added thoughtfully, “The night before we went over the top at Verdun we were scared stiff, just like that poor fellow. They gave us so much to drink that we were as drunk as Japie Robinson was last night.” Verdun. That’s where he got his Iron Cross. My parents never spoke of Africans as if they were subhuman. Vati was angry and upset after his visit to the police station. “He couldn’t hear; they’d hit him so hard that his eardrums were shattered,” Vati said. The alleged

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burglar was not released. He was sent to jail for a fortnight for breaking the curfew. I knew about that, even if I didn’t understand it. Africans were not allowed in the streets after six in the evenings. Whenever Jenny wanted to go out I had to give her a piece of paper saying: “Please pass Jenny …” giving her destination, when she was due back, adding the date and my name. I knew men had to have their passes with them at all times. Sometimes it seemed as if the police did nothing except arrest men on pass offences. I used to see them in Main Street, dragging a row of handcuffed “boys”, shuffling miserably along in the wake of policemen who were stopping others to ask for their passes. Jenny couldn’t explain why women needed no passes at this time. Later I learnt about a brave woman named Charlotte Maxeke who had been fortunate enough to study in the United States, thanks to a visit with a church choir. Charlotte Maxeke had protested against passes for women as long ago as 1913 when she had organised a demonstration with other women in Bloemfontein and succeeded in exempting women from the pass laws. That is, until the fifties when new laws also forced black women to carry passes.

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Sometimes the police raided our backyard, looking for skokiaan (illegal home-brewed beer) or to see if anyone was sleeping illegally in the “girl’s” room. We could hear them stumbling through the dark and cursing the “verdomde Jood” (“damn Jew”), when they tripped over Vati’s bags of coal. Women who brewed “kaffir beer” from maize plus their own special ingredients, were named “shebeen queens”. In the villages women brewed beer and this was permitted in “native reserves”. In urban areas, however, alcohol was forbidden for Africans as they were considered savages who would lose control if drunk. No wonder illegal shebeens existed in the backyards of houses such as ours, in the garages of office blocks and of course in the black slums. The municipal authorities owned township beer halls: huge halls filled with benches and tables where they sold legal kaffir beer. The revenue paid for the upkeep of the locations. The shebeen queens were competition and therefore were savagely discouraged. Some nonetheless became successful businesswomen, who survived by bribing police officers. If caught, they paid heavy fines or went to prison, but their businesses continued. Some shebeens were political meeting places; others attracted musicians who began to mix traditional music with modern sounds, giving birth to the joyous township jazz of the fifties. As for the shebeen queens, they became a force to be

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reckoned with, using their political muscle during the seventies; eventually some gained licences during the turbulent eighties. In the Cape, wine farmers positively fostered alcoholism among their mainly Coloured workforce by means of the invidious tot system, which meant paying wages partly in kind, with tots of wine. Johannesburg – Joburg – e’Goli (today part of Gauteng) was a place apart: a mining town that had outgrown itself. In Mayfair we knew that we lived near an operative mine. We were surrounded by mine dumps, huge yellow piles of sand with nearby “pans” (ponds) formed by underground water. When the wind blew, sand invaded our homes, infiltrating clothes, skin, noses, ears. We played in the mine dumps, discovering caves in which, we were told, some Chinese had hidden to escape forced repatriation. Shortly after the end of the Boer War, Chinese labourers had been imported as mineworkers but they soon posed too many problems and were sent back. Many were addicted gamblers, which often led to fierce and bloody fights – which caused some of the problems.

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Everyone had dreams of great wealth and sometimes these dreams were fulfilled. We were friendly with a family named Katz. They owned a fish-andchips shop in Main Street, one of those traditions inherited from the British. Today, when I pass a fish-and-chips shop in an English town, I’m reminded of the one in Main Street. Mr Katz presided over the hot oven while Mrs Katz served the customers, wrapping fish and chips in newspaper at a price of threepence (later sixpence). Mr Katz was round, pink and Jewish. Mrs Katz was tall, thin and Aryan with a wart on her chin and a slightly dripping nose. They had two children, a girl and a boy. The girl, younger than I was, developed a crush on me which flattered me enormously. She often visited me and I occasionally helped with her school work. One Friday afternoon, we called at the shop to invite the family for tea and found Mrs Katz on her own. The shop was busy and Mrs Katz was flustered. Mutti instantly went behind the counter to lend a hand. When she came to tea that Sunday, Mrs Katz explained that her husband had left Joburg for a while. “Left? You mean … ” My beloved mother, unsophisticated as she was, believed in family values. Mrs Katz flapped her hands. “I don’t mean he’s left us. He’ll be back when the money’s run out. You needn’t worry. Do you think the girls could help in the shop next Friday?”

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I could hardly wait and asked immediately where Mr Katz was. Mrs. Katz looked at me, her nose dribbling worse than ever. “Your mother didn’t tell you? He’s in the desert looking for diamonds. He says this time he’s certain he’ll find them. He’s been searching for ages.”

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That was how they had met. Mr Katz was working in a Windhoek bar, the only job he could find in South West Africa (Namibia) in the twenties. One day a man couldn’t pay his bill and asked Katz to lend him the money. “I’ve got something that’s worth more than that. More than a tip too.” The barman was not interested until the customer pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. To Mr Katz’s amazement it turned out to be a prospecting licence. He knew all about that; he’d come to South West convinced that diamonds could also be found outside the Sperrgebiet (the diamond area) where only authorised persons were allowed to enter. Diamonds had literally been found in the sand during the time when the area was under German control. De Beers, the international diamond concern, had taken over the diamond concession. However some prospecting licences were issued for areas outside the concession area, and the one that the customer showed Mr Katz covered a specific district outside Lüderitz. Mr Katz paid the customer’s bill, accepted the piece of paper and had it properly registered in his name. Two days later he travelled with two mules into the desert and located his concession, only to find that others had preceded him without success. He met a family who farmed nearby and made friends with their daughter who yearned for the world outside. As she told her future husband, she’d only once been to Windhoek and had only occasionally made it to Lüderitz. No beauty, she had long ago given up hope of marriage – until Mr Katz turned up. After the wedding they moved to Lüderitz, where he worked once more as a barman. Now and then he found someone who was prepared to invest in his diamond concession, whereupon he would take off for a few weeks or months depending on his resources. Inevitably he would return empty-handed. Eventually they moved to Johannesburg: “That’s where bankers and financiers are, the ones who invest in mining prospects.” Mrs Katz agreed to the move, though she doubted that Johannesburg bankers and financiers would be keen to back her husband. With her savings they bought the fish-and-chips shop. Mr Katz continued to look for backers. Occasionally he would manage it and vanish for some time. We also became used to these disappearances, from which he would return weary and disappointed.

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One day it was a different story. We heard a knock late one evening. Vati, remembering the incident with Robinson, opened the door only reluctantly. I heard him greet Mr Katz, who followed Vati to the living room, where they spent some time. The following morning Vati told us that Katz had made him an offer. “He had a little bag which he threw on the table. He said, as I was a trained businessman and he a diamond man, he wanted me to take on the job of general manager of his company. He also told me I could buy some of the company shares.” I hardly dared to breathe. “What happened?” Vati shrugged. “It’s all a lot of nonsense. Diamonds! You know that Mrs Katz always says he’s meshugge, crazy.” It was the only chance my father ever had of becoming wealthy. A few days later I passed the fish-and-chips shop. It was shut. I ran to their home. That too was locked. I peered through the window and saw that everything looked as I remembered it: an old armchair near the window, next to it a low stool. But there was no one inside – and that’s how it remained. The day after he had called on my father, Mr Katz registered his company, immediately found buyers for his shares and instantly bought a house in an elegant northern suburb. Not only did he purchase the building with its large garden, but also the entire contents including furniture and books. The house had belonged to one of the first Joburg Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Mr Katz had truly struck it rich. He had found his diamonds. The new company was soon set up in business, a road was constructed, houses and offices built. The family never returned to Mayfair, not even to say goodbye. That chapter had been closed. Their daughter was sent to an elite boarding school, little George to a private day-school. Mr Katz himself rarely visited their Johannesburg home, which Mrs Katz had to keep ready for him and his occasional guests, as well as for company meetings. From the moment he had found his treasure trove, he lived either on the mine or in Windhoek. One day Mutti was walking along Main Street when a Rolls Royce pulled up beside her. Someone waved to her and as Mutti approached hesitantly, she recognised Mrs Katz – without wart and dripping nose – well manicured and elegant. She invited Mutti to visit her and duly sent the car to collect her on Sunday afternoon.

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Of course Mutti had to tell us all about the visit: every single detail. I recognised the house she described, a huge mansion, hidden behind bougainvillea and other tropical shrubs. I used to pass it by bus on the way to high school. My former friend was in Switzerland, my mother said, and George was in a school in Britain. Despite her wealth, Mrs Katz was lonely. She had not made many friends in her neighbourhood. There was no happy end to this tale, as I discovered one Christmas many years later. By then I no longer lived with my parents, who had moved closer to my then married sister. Indeed Vati worked for his son-in-law in the latter’s clothing shop in a small Witwatersrand mining town near Joburg. By marrying early, Margot led a life less turbulent than mine. I wasn’t fond of Christmas with its curious mix of European tradition and luxurious South African lifestyle. There were numerous Christmas parties held beside equally numerous swimming pools: lavish braais (barbecues) with white-gloved African waiters in starched white uniforms, complete with red sashes. By this time I had rejected apartheid, white lifestyles and Johannesburg. Douglas Portway, an artist and friend who, like me, felt uncomfortable at such gatherings, said he knew of a quiet place. The owners were away overseas; he had the keys and we could picnic in the grounds.

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When we arrived, I exclaimed: “This is the Katz home!” Douglas was surprised that I knew the family. He had been giving private art lessons to Diane, the Katz daughter and my one-time friend, who was recently divorced. It seemed that Mr Katz had spoilt his children, particularly Diane, who had been given everything a young girl could desire: her own apartment, a Porsche, a generous allowance. He had invited her to the mine and taken her on a desert safari, an invitation never issued to his wife. One morning Diane had woken up beside a man she wanted to marry: a handsome man, built like a Greek god. As she was still under age she flew to Windhoek to get her father’s consent, where she booked herself into a luxury hotel, only to discover there was no need to travel to the mine. Her father had a permanent suite in the same hotel which he occupied together with a charming young woman scarcely older than his daughter. Mrs Katz started divorce proceedings and received a handsome settlement. However, the long years in glaring desert sand had affected Mr Katz’s eyes. When he asked his lady friend to marry him, she laughed. “Are you crazy? Do you think I’d marry an old man, a Jew who is going blind?”

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Shortly after this, Mr Katz stopped at a garage in Johannesburg. A garage hostess who was young, slender, pretty and of the same poor white background as his former companion, asked if she could do anything for him. “Yes,” he said, “Marry me. Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. Just rich.” She thought it over for a few minutes … took off her uniform and jumped into the passenger seat. Naturally he was anxious to return to Windhoek with his gorgeous bride. He wanted to make a point. It made me sad. I remembered that Mrs Katz had said when we were wrapping up the fish and chips: “He’s crazy, but I love him.”

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I swam in her pool but I didn’t go inside her house, nor did I ever visit her. She had made a new life. I didn’t want to remind Mrs Katz of Main Street.

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IV TEENAGE YEARS The high school I attended for my two final school years was Parktown Girls High near Zoo Lake. The school had a wealthy catchment area where most houses were equipped with swimming pools and garages to house the family cars, including those of older children. I didn’t envy the girls from such homes; however, they intimidated me. It was just as well that we wore uniforms because I could still wear the white shirts and black skirt I’d worn in Mayfair; only the tie and jacket badge were different. There were of course more subtle differences: the other girls wore good watches – also bracelets – and their skirts weren’t as shiny as mine. It was awkward to join a closed group. Most of the girls had known each other since primary school and the more recent others since high school. They had their groups of friends while I was on my own, once more an outsider. In the village I’d been the only Jew; in Fürth, the only girl from a village; in Mayfair, a foreigner. And now I was the girl from a poor white suburb.

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One of the teachers began to look after me, perhaps because she taught maths which was one of my best subjects. She had a deep voice, a Scottish accent and was always surrounded by her fans. She was also in charge of the drama group and once cast me in a major part – to help me overcome my shyness. I was terrified but somehow I coped, and almost enjoyed it in the end. Though I was hardly Hollywood material, through the play I got to know some of the other girls. When rehearsals were scheduled in the early evening I couldn’t attend; the distance made it impossible. Besides, it would have meant extra bus fare so I stayed away without giving an adequate excuse. I did make some friends eventually, one of whom – Rosa – remained a lifelong friend. Another friend was Tania, a self-assured girl from a well-to-do family, whose grandparents had come from Eastern Europe. She put me right on many things as we sat near Zoo Lake waiting for my bus and watching the graceful swans and the boats (for whites only) which could be hired from a boathouse nearby. “Parktown is an improvement on Mayfair,” my friend remarked. “ For one thing, we have tiled roofs. I think it makes a difference.” She was right. When it rained on our corrugated iron roof, it sounded as if the house was cracking up. “True,” I said. “But some houses have marvellous ceilings. Styled like the ones in eighteenth century palaces.”

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“I know. My grandparents lived in a place like that in Doornfontein. It was close to the railway line. There was only an outside loo.” She glanced at me. “What does your father do?” I told her. She listened quietly, then said, “Just as I thought. I’m a communist, you know.” I giggled. The thought was ridiculous. “Do you think I can’t be a communist because we’re rich? Nonsense. People like your father don’t understand the way the capitalist system works.” I protested, saying that Vati was badly off because he gave people credit and they didn’t pay within the thirty days he had for settling his own debt with the wholesalers. Tania said, “Forget it. I think your father will soon go bankrupt. You have to get it right. I bet you’ve read Goethe, Schiller and all that stuff; I know you people. But you haven’t read Karl Marx! You see, my father was born in Russia before the revolution. His parents emigrated but they didn’t make it to the States so they came here. My father’s in wholesale; we’re wealthy, but he’d prefer to be back there, in Russia.” She repeated earnestly: “Your father has to play inside the system. That means cheating the customers a little but it can’t be helped. That’s the way it works.”

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It was a little difficult for me to understand all that and to grasp that a communist was advising me how to exploit customers. Tania did her best. “It isn’t the case of an individual. It’s the system. Haven’t you realised that this country reflects the ugliest picture of capitalism? All whites, even the poorest, are members of the bourgeois class. Their living conditions will improve but those of the black Lumpenproletariat (lowest slum dwellers) won’t ever change. The system will see to that. Only the revolution will free them.” I sighed and thought of the many evenings when we weighed sugar, flour and maize meal behind the shop’s locked door and Vati made sure that every kilo was correct. I was certain that I would not be able to convert my father to communism by cheating on weight. Outraged as I was by the income gap and other injustices, I now quietly listened to someone analysing them. “The diamond discovery attracted foreign capital. By then the social norms were already established. Blacks were the proletariat and that was that. The same happened when gold was discovered – blacks became labourers in the goldmines, just as they had been labourers in the diamond fields. The revolution will change that. That will come. In ten

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years’ time it’ll all be over.” She looked at me. “You came in 1936. Do you know why that’s an important year for this country?” Thanks to Miss Schlesin – and to Tania’s delight – I did know. It was the year in which black people lost the vote and were only represented indirectly in Parliament through white “native senators”. Tania later studied medicine and when last heard of, had made her home in America. I dare say she changed her mind about some of her left-wing teenage beliefs.

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Apart from Rosa, I lost contact with all my classmates. During the nineties I visited my sister’s children and grandchildren in Australia – unfortunately soon after my sister had died after a long illness – and met an Israeli who was visiting her Australian relatives. She remembered me from school and was surprised I’d made my living from writing “because I’d expected you to do something with maths … you gave me maths lessons which helped me pass matric!” I’d forgotten that I earned my pocket money by coaching a few girls in my class, some of whom had problems with maths. I had problems of my own at the time, mainly with sport. Tennis was compulsory but I had never played nor did I own a racquet. Odd, I thought, how they forced me to play tennis yet wouldn’t allow me to catch up with French! Instead I was told I should write my matric in German. So I sat in the library reading during French lessons. I had a feeling I might more easily have learnt some French; I certainly didn’t learn much tennis. I finally acquired a racquet and the correct tennis outfit, but was forced to play with the First Form girls who hated this as much as I did. I finally persuaded them to let me act as ball girl and then when we saw the tennis coach approach, I would pretend to play. Mrs Norgarb’s son was a Springbok tennis ace and she terrified me more than most people. I wasn’t envious of my classmates, nor did I compare my home or parents to theirs. I hated any criticism of my father and felt secure at home. Of course I was aware of the wide gap between Mayfair and these lush northern “garden suburbs”. From the top of the bus I could glimpse the well-kept lawns and blooming flowers, the rock gardens and swimming pools. The gardens were mini-parks, where children played in the care of black servants. Most households were staffed by at least four servants: a nanny, domestic cleaner, cook and gardener.

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Jenny, our maid, had become a friend. She was small, plump and jolly – and often spoke of her home in the northern Transvaal. She was a Shonaspeaker, a minority in South Africa but the majority in Southern Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe. Jenny was essentially a rural woman who firmly believed in the traditional system, though heaven knows there was little system in her life. She had to send her child to her mother who brought her up. I never found out if she had a steady partner. She definitely had many friends because she secretly brewed skokiaan in our coal shed. Mutti of course put Jenny’s visitors down to her popularity. She never found out about Jenny’s shebeen, which was just as well. Soon after I started at my new school, Jenny became ill. Our illegal German physician diagnosed a serious womb infection and tried to persuade her to go to the General Hospital for a checkup. He couldn’t refer her, so he gave us the name of a colleague with a native practice in Fordsburg. Of course this colleague also had elite rooms in Jeppe Street (Joburg’s version of Harley Street). Black people were not only the majority of the population but, being poor, they were often ill. As official medical facilities were inadequate, this type of practice was a little goldmine. More black than white patients could be seen in an hour’s surgery. Black patients were grateful and were prepared to pay two shillings for a few minutes’ consultation and a prescription. Jenny, however, refused to go to any doctor. To my mother’s disappointment she handed in her notice and explained that she had to return home. She was unmarried and therefore had to consult her family. They would decide what was to be done.

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I told Tania about it. She was interested. “Naturally. Why shouldn’t she go home? The family provides security. Perhaps she is really ill and needs comfort, like any creature.” She added: “She’ll consult a traditional healer of course: a witchdoctor. If she’s lucky he will really know some herbs which could help. If he’s a quack or doesn’t know enough or if she has cancer, she’ll die.” I envied Tania’s confidence and was sad when we lost touch. My other school friend, Rosa, married Walter, one of my emigrant friends. We too lost touch, but re-established contact decades later when I lived in Britain. In December 1998 their daughter rang to tell me of her father’s sudden death … a marvellous death. They had been sitting quietly when Walter looked out at the peaceful garden and remarked, “You’ve turned this into a beautiful place. Actually, my life changed completely from the moment you married me. You’ve made me very happy.” A few minutes later they walked

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to the car – and Walter collapsed. He was already dead when Rosa bent over him.

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I remember Walter and his sense of humour with affection. He and two other young men were part of my teenage years. Rosa studied chemistry and became a pharmacist; Walter was an engineer. The reason why I lost touch with my contemporaries was that they were able to go to university while I could not. There simply was no money. Soon after I matriculated in 1940 I became involved with a group of German immigrants: an involvement that was about to have a profound effect on me.

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V JOHANNESBURG, JEWBURG AND E’GOLI Johannesburg was born in 1886. When diamonds had been discovered some twenty years earlier, there had been a rush to the diamond fields and Kimberley was founded. In the 1880s even more treasure hunters streamed into the Witwatersrand – the “Reef” – after the three Georges (three prospectors all named George) discovered gold on the highveld of the South African Republic. The three pioneers are a mere footnote in history. Others made the running, namely the mining magnates known as Randlords, some of whom had made their fortunes in Kimberley. Financiers and adventurers, small miners and geologists, mining experts and speculators all thronged to the Reef. A mining camp mushroomed when the early discoveries were confirmed. Houses replaced tents; the camp became a town. The Boer government in Pretoria was aghast. President Kruger, affectionately known as Oom (Uncle) Paul, was deeply suspicious of uitlanders (foreigners) even if his regime was saved from bankruptcy by the gold revenue. Oom Paul, a true fundamentalist, believed the earth was flat. He hated both uitlanders and gold and would have liked nothing better than to close down the mines.

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Eastern European Jews as well as a handful of German Jews were among the uitlanders and several were ranked among the Randlords. However, the influx of German Jews happened after Hitler became chancellor. Between 1933 and the outbreak of war, 5 330 German Jews arrived, the majority having arrived before 1936. An Act was passed that year restricting Jewish immigration and it was reinforced in 1939. When I mentioned this in the course of a talk I delivered in Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum in 1992, a man got up and told us that his parents were concentration camp survivors who had met and married in Holland and wanted to leave Europe. They considered going to South Africa, only to be told that the laws regulating Jewish immigration were still on the statute book. Therefore they brazenly claimed to be members of the Dutch Reformed Church. “That’s how I came to be educated in an Afrikaans school,” he said, adding that he had hated his parents’ deception. He got involved in student politics and went into exile, like many South Africans at the time. This young man lacked something that the immigrants of my day had: a community. Those emigrants came from different worlds. Small-town Jews like my parents, who observed Jewish custom and whose daily life followed the rhythm of the Jewish calendar, had little in common with “assimilated” Jews, who came mainly from cities such as Berlin or Munich. Among these were academics, also so-called half-Jews and non-Jews. The latter had fled for political reasons or because they were homosexual.

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A favourite Jewish joke is the one about the Jew who was shipwrecked on an island. When he was rescued, it was found that he’d built two synagogues. “Why two?” asked the puzzled rescuers, whereupon he pointed to one and said proudly, “That’s the one I won’t go to…” Jews feel comfortable in social groups but are known to be cantankerous, while Germans are great organisers. German Jews, therefore, combine these characteristics. So while the observant Jews founded their synagogue, the assimilated lot, academics, artists and “politicals” founded a cultural club in Johannesburg: the Unabhängige Kulturvereinigung (UKV) otherwise known as the Independent Cultural Association.

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Another joke, told about New York, could be applied to Johannesburg: “Give them Jerusalem, as long as they let us keep Joburg!” or “Jewburg” as nonJews derisively called the place – this city of gold, of diamond cutters and dealers, the stock exchange and international financiers. German immigrants spoke no Yiddish and little English in contrast to the earlier, settled immigrants from Eastern Europe. Therefore they felt more comfortable among their own. In Joburg it was usual for white people to own their houses – something that immigrants could only dream of. They lived in rented accommodation in Hillbrow and Hospital Hill: two adjoining suburbs close to the city centre which are today a centre of black city life. Several families or a number of singles often shared a flat. And, as in London’s Hampstead, German Jewish boarding houses were opened in Hillbrow along with a German Jewish kosher restaurant, a small sausage and salami factory, and a delicatessen shop which sold home-made potato salad and in which everyone spoke German, including the black staff. Mutti worked behind the counter in the shop for a time. Eventually a German Jewish old age home, “Our Parents’ Home” was also founded. As everyone had a job of one sort or another, it had become difficult for the community to look after their aged. Language was problematic for German Jews in the Jewish Old Age Home, hence the need for this special home. Gusti Hecht, who had been an editor on the Berliner Tageblatt, a close friend of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky, opened a stylish cafe in which she served coffee with cream and Sachertorte (genuine Austrian style) baked by her Viennese Mama. Joubert Park, a small park close to the city centre used mainly by black nannies and their white charges, became the favourite spot for elderly German Jews to take their daily constitutional, just as they had walked in city parks back home. The park housed the municipal art gallery, where I discovered the Cassirer collection and thus encountered French impressionists for the first time. Mrs Lottie Fürstenberg, a

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member of the well-known Berlin Cassirer family, had lent the city the Cassirer art collection or, more accurately, those paintings and sculptures she had been able to get out of Germany. New professions were introduced such as interior decorating and window dressing. Two young men started a lending library. The fee was low and the books (in German) were delivered to the house. As we lived out of town, the gentlemen always stayed for coffee. During my 1992 talk in Frankfurt, I encountered the past in the shape of Klaus Kaminsky, one of the two who had supplied us with books. The other man had been his brother-in-law, Alfred Futran, a good friend of Hans Weiss. Alfred had returned to Germany after the death of his first wife. Like so many of his generation and indeed like Hans, he had been an ardent communist. I still keep in touch with Alfred’s second wife, Erica Futran, a lively lady about the same age as I am. Hebrew lessons followed by coffee and cake were organised for children in the home of one of Vati’s relations. Here I made some new friends. I shared an interest in literature and writing with one of my new acquaintances, only to find our parents had little in common. Her father swiftly became one of the most successful of the newcomers, whereas mine – well, he had his problems, as I have said.

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The German Jews made a contribution to their new home. South Africa was a developing country and benefitted from the skills of immigrants. The restriction of Jewish immigration was purely political. The National Party of the thirties and forties was anti-Semitic and its ideology of apartheid was in line with Nazi beliefs in the purity of race and blood. As mentioned, medical qualifications of immigrants were not accepted and some medical practitioners turned to other occupations such as the invention of cosmetics. A dentist, the mother of one of my friends, worked as a dressmaker. No one could afford holidays at sea level, considered important in view of Johannesburg’s altitude of six thousand feet. The Jewish community therefore organised a holiday camp near Parys on the Vaal River for immigrant children, which was great. I also loved another holiday destination: Mr Rosen’s orange plantation in the Northern Transvaal. This was close to the Kruger National Park, which we visited before its international fame. I have to confess that I didn’t take to life in the wilds or “bush-bashing” as one of my friends, who still spends weeks in the bush, calls it. I simply failed to get excited by a glimpse of the long neck of a giraffe or a lioness yawning her head off, while we peered at her from behind a car window. I never was one for the great outdoors.

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Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Rosen, a so-called half-Jew and member of the famous Richthoffen Staffel (squadron) during the first of the world wars, was a great raconteur and cook. Hard to say which I enjoyed more, his stories and gourmet food – or the company of the other kids. Rosen’s only son joined the South African air force during the war and was killed on D-Day in Normandy. His father never recovered from his loss. However he still flew his sports plane until one day, while waiting for take-off, he was decapitated by the landing gear of an amateur landing too low. A terrible death. And yet – he would have wanted to die in a flying accident, since flying had been his life. He had been feted as a hero post-World War I, like all members of Richthoffen’s squadron and then he suddenly became the “enemy” like all Germans with Jewish background. Although his farm was successful, it wasn’t the life he’d chosen and after the death of his son, he became very depressed. Although established German Jews thought we should integrate, blend in, they had their own eccentric characters who stood out. One was our uncle Adolf, though I was never able to establish our exact relationship. Apart from our family, others also claimed kinship. Uncle Adolf, a wealthy bachelor of fixed habits, had retired early from active business life and invested his savings prudently. He set aside a small sum to gamble on the stock exchange – for fun. His little hobby soon became more profitable than his other investments. Uncle Adolf lived in a two-roomed flat close to Joubert Park. He used only one room while storing newspapers in the other. Each day he neatly placed the day’s paper on top of the pile, equally carefully extracting the oldest. The papers served him well, from toilet paper to tablecloths. As Vati was one of the first, if not the very first of the newcomers, Uncle Adolf took him under his wing and insisted on accompanying him each week to visit the wholesalers. When he moved from one flat to the one next door, he peered through the doorway and said, “I can’t go out today. I have to acclimatise myself to the new flat.” Soon there was a brisk market in Uncle Adolf stories. Several middle-aged and elderly ladies knitted, crocheted and sewed for him and he no longer needed his all-purpose newspapers. Whenever acknowledging a gift, he would say, “Thank you, I’ll remember you in my will.” Perhaps it gave the ladies some comfort. But they received none when he suddenly died – Uncle Adolf had failed to make a will. He was convinced that writing a will meant the same as announcing his death. His equally wealthy brother ended up as the beneficiary. Aunt Eva was another character and one of Vati’s relatives. In her youth she had been considered a remarkable beauty. Two brothers who had made their

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fortunes in South Africa had decided that first the elder, then the younger, would return to Germany to find a bride. Eva was duly chosen by the older brother and as she had no dowry, her family was delighted at the offer. Several months later her train arrived at Johannesburg’s Park Station where the two brothers were waiting for her. She could not remember which one was her chosen, so she kissed them both for good measure and held both their hands on the way home. That was that. The younger brother never bothered to find his own bride and settled down happily with his brother and Eva. One day she told her “men” that she had arranged for a lodger to move in. They protested. They didn’t need the money! It was too much work for her! She laughed and the lodger arrived: a handsome Dutch diamond cutter. Whenever Eva was invited anywhere, places were set for four. When her brother-in-law became terminally ill, Eva nursed him with devotion. She performed the same duty for her husband some years later. She also survived the lodger, but before he departed from this planet, she accompanied him on several overseas business trips. Immigrants had many problems. They were anxious to get family members out of Germany, which was difficult because of the new restrictions, so inevitably pseudo-marriages were arranged. Everything possible was offered for a marriage partner: money, early divorce, separate homes. South Africans who agreed to such arrangements never did so for money but to save someone’s life. The authorities eventually became suspicious of the many brides whose bridegrooms happened to have lived in South Africa all their lives. Police raided newlyweds to find out if they really cohabited. This was before the computer age, but someone calculated that the divorce rate among immigrants was disproportionately high. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Endless stories ranged around the subject. Everyone was amused to hear that a bride had stated that she would only accept her beloved’s hand in marriage if he first married her sister – and divorced her six months later. Not all such arrangements were simple. One sad case happened in our family. A South African advertised in the Jüdisches Familienblatt that he wished to marry a German Jewish woman. He almost drowned in the mass of replies and eventually chose one whose photo he liked. The lady was sitting at her desk, smiling happily. He proposed telegraphically; she instantly took ship from Hamburg. She ate very little on the long journey, so that the steward at her table became concerned. “I’d like to lose some weight,” she explained. The steward could understand that, but must have thought that a pound or two would make very little difference; she was really somewhat corpulent. Hence the photo behind a desk. As the ship was about to dock, the bride

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asked another woman – a giant lady from Holland – to walk in front of her. She thought, perhaps the comparison … When she saw her betrothed, she fell instantly and hopelessly in love. The bridegroom, however, dropped the flowers in shock. Still, they had to get married three months later before her visa ran out. He chose to spend the wedding night and the honeymoon elsewhere while she came to us. The couple never met again. Years later, she filed for divorce. It took some time before immigrants morphed into South Africans; some never adjusted. Many UKV members belonged to the group of intellectuals who came from the larger cities such as Berlin or Munich where they had been academics, artists, writers, musicians. They emigrated too late and found no refuge other than South Africa. The last boat, the Stuttgart which arrived to beat the deadline of the new law, had many such immigrants on board.

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A university education was the norm among UKV members and this alone intimidated my small-town parents. But of course their main concern was the fact that politics dominated all discussion at the UKV. They managed to accept, even if they thought it odd, that I was interested in listening to a talk on architecture by the Bauhaus architect Steffen Ahrends. After all, I was unlikely to build a house! But their real worry concerned politics and they were alarmed that I might become involved. They equated “political” with “communist” and felt this to be dangerous in the country in which we found ourselves, just as it had been dangerous in Germany. In Johannesburg the intellectuals felt isolated since it was a city in which one made money. However, they made music, organised concerts and put on plays – I saw the first English version of the Threepenny Opera in Johannesburg before it appeared in New York – and held discussion evenings. Inevitably they became interested in domestic politics and were appalled by the social structures and the exploitation of black workers.They considered the Labour Party a travesty of that name, representing as it did the interests of white workers only. A few joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) which had been formed in 1921.Others, like Hans Weiss, had already moved on, having discovered communism’s feet of clay. He had left the party in Europe and criticised the SACP as a rigid Stalinist party. As a journalist, he had contact with local colleagues such as Colin Legum who edited the Labour Party paper before emigrating to Britain after the war. Legum became The Observer’s Africa editor, the doyen of African journalists as the first British journalist to write on African affairs. Colin also

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established the African Contemporary Record, now a biannual record of African affairs, for which I had written since the early seventies and continued to do so into the twenty-first century. In the thirties, Africa was not on the international political map. The political folk were aware of that. Besides, their interest was focused on Europe. They knew Hitler wanted war – and living where they did, they felt helplessly sidelined. They had left mainstream politics and Europe behind. When war came, they experienced it only at second hand. Indeed, we knew nothing of the horrors of the Holocaust until the war was over. Nonetheless, my contact with the UKV was stimulating. I joined the UKV youth group by chance and felt I was an insider for the first time, instead of a perpetual outsider. I was fascinated by some of the UKV members, many of whom had left successful careers behind them. Rosen was one of these, as was Brigitte “Gigi” Wild, a concert pianist and former student of the internationally known Claudio Arrau. She was a non-Jew with a Jewish spouse. In Johannesburg she ran a cosmetics salon. One of her employees, Daisy, another non-Jewish immigrant, had worked in Berlin at a salon frequented by many famous actors and actresses of the twenties and thirties. Others were professional musicians, such as the cellist Franz Wallerstein who became a businessman, and the conductor Joseph Trauneck, the first immigrant to visit the African locations in search of African music. Trauneck returned with his beautiful wife to Germany after the war, but found employment only in the then German Democratic Republic (GDR), where he worked for a while before returning to his home town of Vienna.

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Everyone was competing with everyone else and everyone exaggerated the achievements of the past. Every actor or actress had worked for the film company UFA or had been intimate with Max Reinhard. Every clerk had been manager at Tietz, the huge department store. The story of a German dachshund and a Rhodesian ridgeback meeting in Joubert Park illustrated this.The ridgeback barked: “My word, aren’t you tiny!” Whereupon the dachshund yapped: “Ah, but you should have seen me in Germany; there I was a Great Dane!” Some stories were true. Bruno Vogel, a non-Jew of working-class background, had written a bestseller as a young man: Long Live The War, a scathing account of his years in the trenches. He was lionised by Berlin’s literary society. Bruno went into exile and found his way to South Africa. He wrote brilliant short stories but was unable to interest a publisher. Bruno, like Trauneck, discovered the locations and made black friends, but inevitably

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this forced him into exile a second time. In the fifties, Bruno went to Britain. I was pleased when I was contacted by a historian after I had moved back to Germany in 2002, who was busy writing Bruno’s biography, which has since been published.

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Many immigrants led complex lives. Thus Ilse Prager, ex-wife of the Austrian photographer Fred Prager, married Dr Yusuf Dadoo, a leading member of the South African Indian Congress, who became head of the SACP in exile. They too divorced and Ilse returned with their daughter Shireen to the then GDR. At first she was treated with some suspicion as a returnee from the west. However, she met and married Gottfried Lessing, former husband of Doris Lessing, who had spent his exile years in Southern Rhodesia. During the eighties, I met Shireen in London. To Lessing’s fury, she had become a dissident during her student years in Moscow. However, her stepfather helped her to leave the GDR and go to Britain, where she enjoyed a brief marriage. We became friends, but sadly we lost touch when I returned to Africa. Losing touch with people for whom I cared, was the price I often paid for my own turbulent life. Fred Prager later married my first flatmate Ruth Katz. She was the widow of another immigrant, who had been an established Expressionist before 1933: Hanns Ludwig Katz, whose work enjoyed a revival in Germany in the nineties. The 1992 talk I have mentioned was given on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition of Katz’s paintings at the Frankfurt Jewish Museum. It was odd to see the paintings hung and admired, that I used to push aside each evening so that I could get into my bed – there was little space in our shared flat. Hanns Katz had died several years before I moved from my parents’ house to Ruth’s Hillbrow flat in the early forties. I sometimes heard of old UKV friends. During the eighties a former accountant, Ronald Parry, happened to see me on a German TV breakfast show. He put me in touch with a one-time actor, Walter Baumgärtel, who had owned a music store in Johannesburg before he joined up to fight in Italy. Walter, who had been a good-looking actor with the correct Aryan looks, returned to Munich after the war and opened a theatrical agency. The enterprise failed to prosper, partly because Walter was met with resentment since he had fought against Hitler. We had seen a great deal of each other during 1953 when we both lived in London. At that time Walter answered an advertisement in The Times which offered the sale of a hotel in Uganda’s Mountains of the Moon. Africa always exercises its charm on those who have once lived on that continent. Walter ran the hotel successfully for decades. He pioneered the observation of gorillas in the nearby mountains, and his book on the subject makes fascinating reading. He would have stayed, had it not been for General Idi Amin. Forced to flee from Uganda, Walter returned to

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Germany. This was no easy matter as he was refused both a German passport and a pension. Resentment for a German taking up arms against Nazi Germany had remained. UKV members such as these ensured that the claim of being a “cultural” association was justified. My parents too enjoyed the plays if not the concerts – and of course they never attended any discussions or lectures. But I was drawn to them like a magnet. I needed the stimulus I did not find at home, plus the social contacts which were missing in my life. Had I been able to study as I had hoped, everything would have been different. Until I met the older UKV immigrants, my horizon was narrow. Now I met homosexuals and couples who lived together without a marriage licence, both of which horrified my parents. The UKV is best summed up by a quotation from a speech of the association’s founding father and life-president, the spokesperson for German immigrants, Dr Hans Oscar Simon. This lawyer from Bonn, a half-Jew, wrote in 1944: “We have shown that those who carry part of their inherited and acquired culture and civilization with them, adjust to a new environment and contribute to its development, in economic, psychological and social terms, unlike the spiritually rootless or culturally homeless.”

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I’ve already mentioned that I was friendly with three teenagers my own age: Walter Meyer, who married my friend Rose, Fred Plaat and Franz Auerbach. Together we produced a magazine named Molecule and vied with each other to write short stories and poems. Fred later became an editor at Penguin Books, but died young. Franz launched himself on an admirable career. He studied part-time while working, and when he achieved the needed qualifications, he became a teacher who played an important part in African education. He was a well-known anti-apartheid lobbyist in Jewish society. Fred, Walter and I became near-permanent guests at Geraldine Court, where Hans Weiss shared a flat with his partner and later wife, Margot, and two young men, Erwin Reismann and Ulli Simon. Margot, who was a tiny, darkhaired woman, earned more as a physiotherapist than anyone else in the flat. Warm-hearted and generous, she mothered her flatmates and everyone else who came along, including me. Erwin organised the youth group. Slightly built, he was an intelligent man with left-wing leanings. He was related to Rosa Luxemburg and loved to say that she had dandled him on her knee as a child. After the war Erwin married Sonia, the German daughter of a well-known writer, Werner Ackermann, who had likewise found refuge in

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South Africa. After the NP election victory in 1948, Erwin moved to Swaziland where Sonia and their children still live. The UKV, though not a replacement for university, nevertheless compensated me partly for my lack of formal tertiary education. On the strength of my matric results I had obtained a bursary to pay a first-year university fee, but I needed more support since I had to live, buy books and so on. My headmistress advised me to apply for an education ministry loan. It meant I would have to teach for five years to repay the loan. I thought that during those years I could then study law part-time. However, it was not to be. I registered at the university and the same afternoon received a phone-call: they had noticed that I had said I was born in Germany. Had I become a South African? The answer was no. So how could I have been naturalised? This was 1941 and South Africa was at war with Germany. “Sorry,” the voice said, “then we must turn down the application.”

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I was devastated. My father was helpless. Later I realised that he should have asked his relatives or the Jewish organisations for help, but I expect he was embarrassed and saw himself as a failure because of our poverty. After he closed the shop, he earned fifteen pounds a month, with Mutti working at the delicatessen store. A day after the shattering phone call, I spotted an advertisement for an articled clerk in a solicitor’s office. I had no idea what that was; I knew nothing of the system of solicitors and barristers. But I applied for the job and to my delight, I was accepted. When my two new bosses discovered that I had registered at university, they advised me to take a Bachelor of Arts degree parttime and ensure that I obtained at least one credit for Latin, to enable me to study law. This would have made me not a solicitor, but a barrister and would have taken five years. I agreed happily and during that first year took German, English and Latin. I had learnt no Latin at school and only managed that credit because the professor, understanding my problem, handed me a Latin version of the German classic Struwwelpeter, which he claimed would teach me basic grammar. He also advised me to learn poems of Ovid and Homer by heart. I followed that advice and managed a pass, of which I was very proud. Naturally I hadn’t learnt Latin. I had simply passed an academic hurdle. Meanwhile I suffered another disappointment. As I was the first female articled clerk taken on by the bosses, we had agreed on a lengthy probationary period. At the end of this, we went to Court to sign the articles – only to dis-

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cover that I could not swear allegiance to the British crown and therefore could not work in the courts, as I was technically German (technically, because emigrants were deprived of their citizenship by the Nazi regime). I was devastated. My bosses too were disappointed but told me that I could stay on as an employee. I should continue my studies; the war would not last for ever; five years wasn’t a lifetime. My salary as an ordinary clerk rose from three to twelve pounds. This advice was of course good. However, I stupidly did not take it. By that time, I had joined the UKV and had come under the spell of my new friends. I discussed my predicament with them – and unfortunately took the advice of Hans Weiss. I can’t blame him; everyone is responsible for their own decisions. I know it was one of the worst decisions I made, which influenced everything I did or did not do after that. But nothing is as devastating as persisting in thinking “If only…”

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Hans Leopold Weiss was an extraordinary, intelligent and complex man, the central figure in my group of friends. His background was that of a Berlin upper-class Jewish family, which he had rejected, together with a formal education. As a thirteen-year-old he had joined the Communist Party and had run away from home to live with comrades in Berlin’s “Red Wedding”. He jobbed for several years, was totally self-taught and despised the education system. After landing a job as a messenger with the Berliner Tageblatt, he swiftlyclimbed the career ladder and eventually was appointed to the political desk. He fled Berlin with his then wife Gertrude – Gertie – the day after the Reichstag fire, an event he and the head of the political desk, Wolfgang Brettholz, had witnessed. He and Gertie arrived in South Africa in 1936 but he found that he had no desire to live in what he considered a developing country. So he returned alone to Europe and lived for some years in Paris. Then when he realised that war was inevitable and imminent, he returned to Johannesburg but not to Gertie. Instead he moved into the flat of her best friend Margot. When I met Hans, he was in his early thirties, phenomenally well read and erudite. There was little he had not read and he could speak authoritatively on many subjects apart from politics and current events. He could discuss art and architecture with Steffen Ahrends, literature with Nadine Gordimer or Freudian and Jungian theories with psychiatrists. His political analyses were brilliant and often ahead of his time. Hans was dismissive of my five-year study plan. I was young; I should enjoy life now since I had not enjoyed my childhood. Besides, I was bound to marry;

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I had no need of a degree. Few married white women worked at that time – immigrants were the exception and after all I wouldn’t remain an immigrant for ever. He also suggested I should study something practical such as shorthand, typing or bookkeeping to increase my earning capacity. My bosses disapproved of my dropping my studies. I stayed with the firm for a further year, which gave me some invaluable experience before I took on a new job. This was in a bookshop – with Hans Weiss and his partner Dr Hans Oskar Simon. They founded the shop in the centre of Johannesburg, selling both new and antiquarian books. It was a good concept; the premises were spacious, with a reading corner where coffee was served – but there was insufficient capital – a problem I faced almost all my life, even in old age. However, at that point I was young, ambitious and energetic.

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It was thanks to Dr Simon that no German Jews were interned in South Africa, as had happened in Britain. Dr Simon convinced the Smuts government that no Jew would fight for Hitler. Still, we had the status of enemy aliens and had to report regularly to the alien police in Balgownie House, but with an odd difference: we were labelled as “friendly enemy aliens”. Once I had to pay an unscheduled visit to this place. The fourth inhabitant of the Geraldine Court flat was Ulli Simon. He began to invite me regularly to the cinema on Saturday evenings. We were still living in Mayfair and perhaps our name struck the censor as unusual or German or somehow suspicious. Our mail was censored. This irritated me because I corresponded with several friends in the forces. Moreover, one of my UKV friends was deaf, so that the only way we could communicate was by letter. As mine were delayed by the censor, I sometimes missed appointments with her. I mentioned this to Ulli. “There isn’t anything interesting in my mail,” I complained. “The gentleman must be bored to tears!” Ulli suggested that we should cheer him up by giving him something exciting to read. I agreed – and then forgot about it. The following Saturday Ulli came to collect me as usual. He kept glancing at me, until he finally couldn’t stand the strain and asked, “ Did you read my letter?” “What letter?” I had received no mail that week. Ulli paled visibly. “Surely … you’re having me on …” I assured him I was not. I’d received no letter.

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When I came home on Monday, I found my mother in tears. The police had called; I was to be at Balgownie House the following morning at eight o’clock precisely. Disturbed, I rang Ulli and asked what exactly he had written. He admitted that he’d written something to cheer up the censor – something he considered a joke. He promised to call Dr Simon (no relation) who agreed to accompany me to the police. I knew I was in good hands. Apart from his various jobs, Dr Simon also ran a refugee centre where immigrants received free-of-charge advice. Herr Doktor was an imposing figure: tall, emaciated, with taut skin across facial bones and deep-set eyes resembling a skull. I cannot remember seeing him without a cigar. When I worked at the bookshop, I walked downstairs with him every day to point him in the direction of the nearby hotel where he enjoyed his morning coffee; he claimed to lack any sense of direction.

Selected Books of Hans O. Simon and Hans L. Weiss, Johannesburg

That day on the way to Balgownie House I was frightened. I didn’t want to be arrested or interned. The police were surprised and angry when I turned up with Dr Simon. One man took me into a narrow, windowless interview room, the walls an ugly green. There was only a table and two chairs. “So, you’re a spy.”

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“No.” Did I have friends in the army? Yes. Many of my friends had joined up. I could not join up, my parents would not give me permission to do so, I was not yet of age. Army service was voluntary. There was strong NP opposition to the war, because many Afrikaners considered General Smuts a traitor who had denied them the chance of ridding themselves of the hated British who were preventing them from establishing a republic. Seven members of the coalition government had voted in favour of declaring war, six had been against. Parliament voted eighty to sixty-seven in favour, whereupon General Hertzog resigned and General Smuts became Prime Minister. The pro-Smuts Governor General, Sir Patrick Duncan, refused to follow Hertzog’s advice and dissolve Parliament. Instead he gave Smuts the green light to declare war. The opposition founded the “shirt movement”, the Brown, Black and Greyshirts, but more importantly the anti-war group founded the Ossewabrandwag (OB – ox wagon patrol) organisation with which the shirts merged, and which actively tried to sabotage the war effort. Among those OB members who were interned was John Vorster, later an NP prime minister. The thought of being interned with such people terrified me. “Right. You’re not a spy. You don’t try and find our secret information from your friends.”

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“No. I don’t think my friends have access to such information.” One of my friends was my fifteen-year-old cousin Joachim (Joe) who had claimed he was seventeen to be able to join the air force. Joe and his sister Ruth had stayed with us when they first arrived in Johannesburg. I had a soft spot for Joe. “If you didn’t ask, how do you know that they have no such information?” I replied desperately that I knew what this conversation was about. “It’s the letter! Ulli Simon, a friend … he sent me some stupid letter, to annoy the censor – as a practical joke …” Next door Dr Simon was saying much the same thing. The policeman opened a thin file. I saw Ulli’s handwriting. “It was only a joke? Do you know what he wrote?” “Vaguely. Something about a meeting when the clock strikes twelve … and greetings – Heil, Blut und Boden – hail blood and soil …”

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“What does that mean? ” I tried to explain the silly Nazi jargon. Hmm. The policeman vanished, taking the file with him. He went to see Ulli at work and asked him what he had written and why. I was finally allowed to leave; the letter would be sent on. It never arrived – a pity; it would have made a good souvenir.

My invitation card 1944

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I met Ulli again in 1991. I was staying with Nadine and she took me to the Market Theatre, where she was speaking. While sitting on my own at a table, I heard someone call my name. An elderly man at a neighbouring table smiled and introduced me to his wife, Irene. I suddenly recognised Ulli and remembered Irene from youth group days. Ulli invited me to lunch the following day. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said, almost as soon as we sat down. “Why did you never give me an answer to my proposal?” I’d forgotten what had happened. Ulli had indeed proposed to me. That was soon after the fiasco with the letter and shortly after I had started work in the bookshop. I hadn’t known what to do. Did I want to marry him? I was very quiet that day and Hans asked me what was wrong. I told him, and as with my studies, he advised against it. He repeated that I was too young, too inexperienced. “If you make a mistake … if you were really in love, you wouldn’t have any doubts.” He was probably right. Ulli moved out of Geraldine Court soon after this and made new friends. Until the moment he questioned me, I hadn’t realised that I had never given him my answer.

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I told him about the relationship with Hans, into which I had drifted almost unwillingly and unwittingly, and about what had happened as a result: about my life. It turned into a long afternoon. “I think he knew he wanted you,” Ulli said. “Even before I went out with Irene, Hans invited her once to coffee and told her what a nice guy I was.” When we arrived at my hotel, he commented that I would probably have been bored with him. Bored? Who knows? In any case no one can turn the clock back. I knew that at the time I was very insecure and yes, I did feel drawn to an older, mature man.

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Had Hans really planned from the beginning to involve me in his life? I don’t know. I don’t like to think of him as Machiavellian, but I do know that he failed to provide – and had never been in a position to provide – the security which I sought. He was sensitive, neurotic and egocentric. He needed me, shaped me until I became his creature. I learnt a great deal from him, even about love. For almost twenty years there was no other authority in my life apart from Hans. In 1926 Hans had married for the first time, then merely eighteen. His wife Grete, who was later killed by the Nazis, was older than he was. It was a short-lived marriage between comrades. The day Hans and Gertie were married, Hans unconventional as he was, asked Gertie to collect his divorce papers on the way to court, as he was too busy to do so. The couple stayed in Berlin until 1933 – to be precise, until the day after the Reichtstag (Parliament) fire, which he had covered for the paper. Hans had been on duty that evening, together with Dr Wolfgang Brettholz. Someone rang to say the Reichstag was burning. They took it as a joke at first. The previous week when they had also both been on duty, someone had told them that the Schloss (the palace) was on fire. When they got there, they found that only a window frame was ablaze. This time was different. As they stepped onto the Friedrichstraße they saw the red glow in the sky. Pushing their way through the crowd shouting “Press!” they found, to their surprise, a policeman making way for them. He told them that communists were responsible. The culprit, a Dutch communist, had already been arrested. Hans, as a one-time messenger, knew his way around. He led Brettholz to the rear of the building. As they reached it, the gate opened and a group of young men wearing trenchcoats and workmen’s caps, ran towards a waiting truck which instantly drove off. The two journalists could see the jackboots below the coats and realised these were no workmen; these were trained Brownshirts – the SA.

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Hans and Brettholz ran into the empty building. The flames had not yet reached this area but the smell of petrol was unmistakable. The men returned to the office and found Theodor Wolff, who told them to write their stories. The presses were already running when the first ever directive from Goebbels was delivered; nothing was to be published other than his ministry’s official press releases. Hans took the message to Wolff in the printing works. He read it, handed it to Hans and said, “Weiss, you stop the presses … I can’t …” The following morning Hans and Gertie left Berlin, ostensibly for a weekend of skiing in Czechoslovakia. Many of Berlin’s communists caught the same train. A week later Hans returned, wanting to help Brettholz because he had read that the paper had been banned because of a published piece by Brettholz. The Gestapo were looking for the writer. Hans found Brettholz at a girlfriend’s house and together they crossed the mountains into Czechoslovakia. They were very lucky. In the early morning, as they zigzagged across no man’s land, German snipers shot at them. They made it across, but Brettholz suffered from severe frostbite and had to be hospitalised. Hans and Gertie moved from one country to another, spending most time in France. Gertie had relatives in South Africa who arranged visas for the couple, but as I said, Hans only stayed for a short time. When I met him, he was living with Margot at Geraldine Court, though they were not yet married.

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My three friends and I loved that flat. It was filled with books, music, people and endless discussions about anything and everything. Hans lent us books; we were all great readers. During the conversation, I usually sat beneath a glass table so that I could watch and listen. These were years that shaped my life. The flat kept an open door and was the centre of many gatherings of UKV friends. Some, like Bruno Vogel and Margot’s former husband, had enlisted and when they were on leave, stayed at Geraldine Court. I was always amazed how the small space could be expanded. There was no dining room; we ate in the passage. And if no bed was free, a mattress or blankets on the floor served the purpose. Margot asked me one day to babysit a guest: one of Bruno’s Norwegian friends who had fled to Britain when Norway was occupied, and had come to South Africa where he enlisted in the army. He was on leave that day and had become ill with a bad dose of flu. Hans and Margot had to go out, hence the

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call for help. When I tiptoed into the sickroom, I found that my patient was an Aryan dream – tall, blonde, blue-eyed – and I promptly fell in love.

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Gudmund responded. He called me his “black lily” and took me out a few times, then turned his attention elsewhere. Margot later told me that she had warned him that I was susceptible: very young, totally inexperienced and naïve. She didn’t want me to suffer a broken heart, for not only was there a war on, with Gudmund bound to be sent to the front – he was soon fighting against Rommel – but he hoped to return to his country at the end of the war and had no serious intention of getting close to anyone at this stage. Perhaps she was right.

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VI TROUBLED YEARS As I had told Ulli, I had been attracted to Hans who as Ulli maintained, had been interested in me before I was aware of it. When he offered me the job at Selected Books, I accepted and spent the next four years as maid-ofmany-things at the bookshop. I doubt that Hans remembered that he had said I should give up evening studies, as studying would stop me from enjoying my youth. I no longer had time for anything other than work. I was responsible for the accounts, the orders from publishers, deliveries, innumerable cups of coffee for customers enjoying our reading corner and occasionally also selling books. We worked late on most days. These were intense years, when I learnt a great deal that was to stand me in good stead for years to come. But it was also stressful after I realised I was embarking on an affair with a married man. And not only that, but a man married to someone I loved and who loved me. Margot, his wife, was childless but with a heart large enough to accommodate a dozen children and I was one of her surrogate children. It was part of the gossip in emigrant society to marvel at the “Weiss women” – Gertie, Margot and I – who remained good friends even after Hans swapped one for the other. Margot was later one of the guardians of my son. Not only had she been aware of my affair with Hans, but when I tried to disengage from it and went to London, she wrote a letter delivered by a mutual friend on a visit to the UK, asking me to return and marry Hans who had fallen into a depression after I had left.

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That was still to come, when I worked at Selected Books. Soon after I started, I left my parental home and moved to the Hillbrow flat of Ruth Katz, an artist and interior decorator. Ruth was a warm-hearted woman, older than I was, as were most of my UKV friends, and a great flatmate. We got on splendidly together. She was a wonderful cook and we enjoyed many meals in our small kitchen, though sad to say, I failed to emulate her culinary skills. During the war, some UKV members had been in touch with a group of young Germans, thanks to Dr Simon who was concerned about some of those interned by the South Africans. Nazis and non-Nazis had been interned together and after some murders took place, the two groups were separated. Dr Simon discovered that there was a youth group in the latter camp and made contact with them. They were members of the Nerother Bund Youth Group, which had been founded by the brothers Robert and Karl Ölbermann. After 1933 the group was dissolved under pressure, but meetings continued to take place at Burg Waldeck, the group’s castle refuge on the Rhine. In 1936 the castle was occupied by Nazis, by which time Robert Ölbermann was

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already imprisoned. He died in a concentration camp in 1941. Karl Ölbermann led a group of teenage boys to Tanganyika and from there to South Africa, where they were interned when war broke out. Fortunately some professors were also interned and organised schooling for the boys up to Abitur (A-level) which was later accepted by the German educational authorities. We supported the group by sending German books and exchanging letters. When I visited Tanganyika for the first time, I stayed with Willi Knoob, one of the Ölbermann group, who had studied in Cologne on his return home and who was press secretary at the German embassy at the time.

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Willi was one among those who found their way to Geraldine Court. Hans soon became the centre of this latest group and spent many hours in discussion with them, just as he had done previously with his UKV circle. Indeed, it seemed he was neglecting old friends in favour of the young men, which bothered me a good deal. He was forever ill or unavailable when someone rang if he had no wish to meet them. Later I described it as Hans’s way of wringing people out like a lemon, until he no longer enjoyed their company and dropped them for someone else. Hans’s disloyalty to old friends was not the only thing that troubled me. I was concerned about the bookshop which could not compete with a chain such as the Central News Agency, nor with other independent booksellers as it lacked the capital to stock new books. Often there was a run on a book which we hadn’t ordered in sufficient numbers. As most books were then imported from the UK, it took weeks for a new consignment to arrive, by which time the market for it was saturated. We worked harder than ever, with ever longer hours. I scarcely had time to visit my parents, particularly after my father began to work for my brother-in-law whose business was in Brakpan, one of the small mining towns on the Reef. I also lost touch with my contemporaries including Rosa and my UKV friends, who attended university. My real concern was my relationship with Hans. I was devoted to him, yet deeply unhappy. He refused to discuss the future or talk openly about our relationship. We were constantly together in the shop. I had drifted into an intimacy almost without realising it and was spending more and more time with Hans alone, rather than at Geraldine Court. He was secretive by nature, which I did not understand at the time. He wanted me to himself; he was jealous of my time away from him and jealous of anyone I met. One day he compared himself to the dwarf in one of Grimm’s fairy tales, who said he was happy that no one knew his name. Hans wanted to shut himself away from the rest of humanity.

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By 1948, the troubles at the bookshop became too great to continue. One morning Hans put on his hat and said he was leaving. Asked where he was going, he answered, “Home. You’d better sell the shop.”

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He never returned and I did indeed sell the shop. That is to say, I found a German bookseller in Swakopmund who took over the stock, which enabled me to settle the shop’s debts. Dr Simon, too, managed to find a new job. Because he lived across the road from Geraldine Court, he and Hans still met. Hans kept the valuable Africana books and began to work from the small top floor of an office building, selling books by mail order. Needless to say, I worked for him whenever I could after I had found another job. It was this job which unexpectedly and miraculously opened a door for me into a new world.

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VII EXPERIENCE WITH THE BOERS The 1948 elections were a watershed for South Africa, which embarked on a new and dangerous course. They ended the dreams, both of World War II veterans who had fought for a better world, and of the ANC that a democratic South Africa was about to emerge. NP Prime Minister Malan won the elections on the apartheid ticket. His successors, Hans Strijdom and the fanatically racist Hendrik Verwoerd, did all they could to keep the black majority out of mainstream politics and society, and permanently create Afrikaner dominance. The Boers who were still marching against the Brits, now also marched against the blacks. The broederbond had infiltrated every aspect of public life and had prepared the ground for Boer supremacy. When apartheid legislation was passed, the main aim had been fulfilled. It was only a matter of time before links with Britain were severed and a republic established.

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In the sixties, articles about the Boers’ secret society began to appear in the press. Twenty years later the broederbond went public, but by then it had lost most of its influence. Nonetheless, its private papers suggest that the bond helped to shape the policy for the reforms of 1989 which President Frederik Willem De Klerk set in motion, which were to lead to Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990 and to his presidency and democratic rule in 1994. The decades between these two events – Malan’s political triumph and the first democratic elections – were dominated by apartheid. Ironically, I began to work for an Afrikaner precisely at the time of the NP victory. Once the bookshop had been sold, I looked for a part-time job, mainly because Hans needed me for his mail-order business. I saw an advertisement for a parttime bookkeeper who was fluent in Afrikaans. I had both qualifications, applied, and got the job. My new boss was a man named John Adriaan Fourie, a member of an elite Cape family. Fourie’s wife was related to General Smuts and was a close friend of Smuts’s finance minister Klasie Havenga. Fourie (the “old man” as I called him) grew up on a farm and only became literate at the age of eleven, when an itinerant teacher stayed on the farm for some time. Within four years, he passed his matric after which he was articled to a solicitor in Cape Town. He broke his articles to join his northern brothers during the Boer War. At the end of the war, he lived in the OFS where he too became an itinerant teacher moving from one Afrikaner farm to another. After marrying a farm-

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er’s daughter, he took her to Johannesburg to visit his sister. She had married an Englishman who worked for an insurance company and he suggested that Fourie should become an insurance agent and sell his company’s sickness and accident policies. He handed his brother-in-law a batch of application forms, briefly instructed him on how to achieve a sale, shook his hand and felt he had rid himself of a nuisance.

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Legal coverage of accidents at work did not exist in South Africa at that time. The families of white miners, therefore, became vulnerable once the breadwinner fell ill or suffered an accident. Britain then dominated the insurance industry worldwide, meaning that this industry was in the hands of Englishspeaking agents working for British companies. Fourie literally got on his bicycle and rode to the Reef mining towns. The next evening, he called once more on his brother-in-law to ask what he should do next. He produced the application forms, duly completed, together with the premiums he had collected. The brother-in-law was overwhelmed. His young relative by marriage had sold more policies in a day than the average agent managed in a month. Fourie’s success was easily explained. He was a tall, rawboned man, handsome and charming – and he was a Boer. He gained easy entrance to the homes of poor whites, entrance denied to any Engelse agent. The brother-in-law was astute enough to understand this. He introduced Fourie to his bosses, who instantly appointed him as a full-time agent. In no time at all, Fourie set up his own network of sub-agents throughout the Reef, selling accident and sickness policies and, in time, other insurance cover. He never stopped selling, just as he never grew too important for a house call, a chat over coffee or a little flirtation with the lady of the house. When I met him, he was in his mid-sixties, a large man, white-haired with twinkling blue eyes as sharp as his brain and a handshake that swallowed mine. He was the epitome of the Boer patriarch, who had trekked into the interior with his ox wagon, gun and Bible. Fourie seemed larger than life, God-fearing, committed to his people’s cause. At no time did any of his three sons, even larger than himself, address him in the first person. It was always “as Pa wishes … if Pa thinks …” Fourie succeeded in the profession thrust upon him and so did his agents. He also became the owner of several farms. He soon recognised that his strength lay in his control of the Afrikaans agents, who had the trust of their clients. By maintaining both agents and their clients, he held the whip hand in any company for which he worked. Hot-tempered as he was, he was often in conflict with company managers, whereupon he would pick up his hat and take his business elsewhere. In the early 1940s he had decided to move to an insurance company run by a trade union umbrella organisation and was shaking hands on the deal, when the manager remarked that it would take a

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few weeks before everything was in place. They had to arrange to pay the statutory deposit to the government first, as Fourie’s policies contained a life assurance clause. “What for?” asked Fourie. “If one of the assured dies, there’s a payment of five hundred pounds to be made. We’ve never carried life cover until now,” explained the manager. “And you pay the government, so that you can write these policies?” “Not pay. We place the money on deposit – as a reserve. Every type of insurance requires a sum for reserves.”

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This was news to Fourie, who had never before questioned the structure of an insurance company. He drove immediately to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to see Minister Havenga and asked, “Klasie, is it true that if I pay the government a specified sum, I can write life policies? And for every other kind of policy I pay less than what’s needed for life cover?” Havenga confirmed this, explaining the principle of statutory reserves. Fourie had heard enough. He had the required cash available. In a short time he had registered his Suidafrikaanse Myn en Algemene Versekeringsmaatskappy or South African Mining and General Insurance Company (SAMA). Within months, he was in business. Naturally he needed managers and equally naturally, there were plenty of Brits and English-speaking South Africans who were insurance experts. He quarrelled with all of them. The day I had my interview was the current manager’s last day at work. Six months later I literally sat in that man’s chair. The company, South Africa’s only privately owned insurance company at the time, was then four years old. I was surprised when I was told to appear for my interview at 7.30 am – an unusual hour before offices normally opened. Fourie was an early riser; he kept farm hours, as he said. When I arrived, there was no one in the office apart from a huge Boer who didn’t introduce himself and a haggard-looking individual – the manager I was to replace – who began to interview me in English. Suddenly the Boer leant forward and asked in Afrikaans, “Wanneer kan u begin werk … when can you start work?” I replied in Afrikaans that I could start the following week. Fourie was satisfied. The interview ended. The following morning at 5 am, the phone rang. The old man, asking me how I was. Trying to sound as if it was absolutely

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normal to be woken by a phone call from a future boss, I replied I was well and how was he? “Goed. As ek weet u kom seker, gaan dit met my baie goed.” Flattering: if he knew I was definitely coming to work for him, he was very well! “Natuurlik kom ek!” I told him that of course I would be there and he rang off. I later became used to his early morning calls. When I reported for work, Fourie pushed a pile of papers across his desk and told me that these concerned his private affairs. To his annoyance he had been asked to make a return of his farm income, something he had never bothered to do. He had been given a deadline for handing in the documents and needed someone he could trust. “I always get on with Jews,” he told me, laughing at my embarrassment. “My father said that no Jew ever cheated him. Once he was furious when he found that a dealer had cheated him at an auction over an ox. He picked up the ox and held it, until the Jew who would give him a fair price, came rushing up. Don’t laugh! My father was a giant; he was the strongest man in the district – he was jukskei (disc) champion!” He sighed. “He married for the third time at seventy-five. My stepmother was twenty years younger than me.”

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I was still giggling when I began to sort out the papers. It took me a week to get them sorted out: a tricky business. Many of the vouchers were missing, and phone calls to the farms were difficult because most were connected to party lines. I managed it somehow and was finally able to hand the old man a receipt from the Receiver of Revenue for the completed return. It was the start of a fascinating job. I continued to look after the old man’s private business, but he soon gave me a full-time job in the company and a short time later promoted me to company secretary. This job meant I was the most senior employee, second only to the old man, who refused to appoint any more managers. Naturally it meant that I had to acquire a good deal of know-how, which I did through evening studies, learning about insurance, insurance law, maritime law and economics. Unfortunately I was too busy to study systematically for the exams of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries. I worked hard, studied hard – but I also needed time for Hans, who was proud of me on one hand, but resented how busy I was on the other. So I cut down the time I spent studying as much as I could. I stayed with SAMA for almost eleven years, interrupted by a stint in London between 1953 and 1954, when I tried to end my relationship with Hans – and

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with South Africa. But I returned, to both Hans and the job. I carried enormous responsibility while still young. At just twenty-four when I began to work for SAMA, I was younger than most male insurance executives. I valued my good luck. Most female office staff were secretaries, receptionists or bookkeepers at best, so I owed Fourie a great deal. I think he appointed me because I was a woman and a European. The old man felt safe enough to show his weaknesses to me, which he would never have done with a man, particularly not a British man. He confided, for instance, that he could only speak Afrikaans; he could not read it as he had only learnt to read Dutch. So I read the paper daily and summarised important articles; sometimes I read to him. In the same way, the old man had never studied insurance issues. He knew every clause of his accident and sickness policy, but that was as far as his knowledge went. I think this was why he had so many rows with his managers. I had to explain new regulations to him, something he would never have allowed a man to do.

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One of the jobs I loved was reinsurance. Once I went to a reinsurance conference in Monte Carlo and discovered that I was the only female executive among about a thousand men. Apart from one woman lawyer, all the women present were secretaries. Male colleagues began to treat me with respect, even at Lloyds, where I was accorded the honour of visiting the Room, a male preserve at the time, where the bell which had been in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house, was hung. Once I was invited to Zurich by the Swiss Reinsurance Company. I have to admit, I loved breaking into these conservative male circles. I had not expected that the job could turn into something as exciting as it did, nor that I would stay in South Africa. I wanted to leave the country. I disliked Johannesburg, hated apartheid and more than anything else, I hated my affair with Hans. I could not understand why it had to be so secretive, which made it messy. If he loved me as passionately as he claimed, why could he not tell Margot? He told me that I was his ideal woman (and what was worse, Margot said so as well). Yet he made no effort to straighten things out. In time it became unbearable. I was also lonely; I no longer saw any of my old friends, as I could not be frank with them. Hans had sworn me to secrecy. I even felt guilty when I visited my parents. Hans gave me little gifts and his undivided attention – yet I spent every evening alone at home, unless I was at Geraldine Court. And I began to hate that: hated deceiving Margot whom I loved. I was trapped in a situation that offered only grief and suffering.

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Hans would not make decisions, so he blurred everything with a veil of secrecy. He had never told his parents (who had miraculously survived concentration camp and were living in Germany) that his marriage to Gertie had ended and that he had remarried. Gertie had meanwhile embarked on a successful career, first as a major in the army and then with a degree in personnel management. She was now personnel officer in a major Cape Town company: a job with great responsibility. Gertie accepted Hans’s deception and wrote letters like the dutiful daughter-in-law she no longer was. She and Margot were still close friends, just as I was close to Margot – and also to Gertie though I’d seen less of her because she lived in the Cape. Then I met with an unexpected stroke of luck. In 1952, I won a hundred pounds in the Rhodesian Sweep! Gambling was forbidden in South Africa, but everyone had a flutter in the Rhodesian Sweep. (And later, more than a flutter in the homeland casinos – about the only flourishing industry in those deprived areas.) I took three months’ leave due to me, and for forty-nine pounds bought a ticket for a berth on a Union Castle intermediate boat – not on a mail ship and therefore cheaper – from Cape Town to London. I did not hand in my notice; I was in a difficult position. On one hand I had become an efficient businesswoman and top executive. On the other hand I was a liberal, not to say leftwing, who was dismayed at what was happening in the country. I denounced apartheid legislation, the banning of the Communist Party in 1950 and the plans to introduce passes for women, with more restrictions and oppression to come. Something happened just before my departure which confirmed that I had made the right decision. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Johannesburg is built on top of gold mines which, at the time, were being closed down. As the earth settled, one heard it rumble and felt the occasional tremor. Joburgers were used to it and often the tremors amounted to no more than the bathwater spilling over, or a cocktail landing on someone’s dress. One morning, Ruth and I were woken in the early hours by a guest who was sleeping in our entrance hall. He was convinced we were suffering an earthquake and begged us to rush outside before the building tumbled down. When we explained that this was simply the rocks grinding into some new position, he thought we were crazy. He was packed and ready to leave the following morning; he couldn’t get to the airport fast enough. Sometimes the tremors were more severe and denoted an accident underground. This happened while I was in a meeting with Fourie. We were very concerned; after all, our business was mining accident insurance. We were

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just discussing this when an agent, a man named Jan Verster, burst in. He was greatly agitated and told us that there had been a rockfall at Robinson Deep, one of the few mines below Johannesburg still in operation. “One of the shafts has collapsed. A fire has broken out behind the rocks.” I said what anyone would have said: “How dreadful!” He turned to me with a smile and said soothingly, “Moenie worrie nie Juffrou, daar is geen mense daar nie, net twintig kaffirs.” (Miss, you needn’t worry – there are no people there, only twenty kaffirs.)

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I was stunned. A “kaffir” was not a person. Yet only a few days before, I had arrived early as usual to open the office and found Verster in the passage, squatting on his heels African-fashion, as he clicked his way through a fluent conversation with one of the Zulu cleaners. I was impressed. To my disgrace I have to admit that in all my years in Africa, I failed to learn any of the African languages. As with so many other omissions, I can only plead that I had little time for anything other than work. Verster had followed me into the office to explain that he had met a “homeboy”. He had been born on a farm in Zululand and this young man came from a village nearby. Our offices were in a Barclays Bank building where security was strict. Cleaning was done under strict supervision at night and in the early morning by a group of migrant Zulu workers, who lived in rooms at the top of the building, as was then the custom. These “boys’ rooms” and “girls’ rooms” on top of office and apartment blocks were known as locations-inthe-sky and were later cleared under apartheid regulations. The staff was moved to single men’s and single women’s hostels at the edge of the townships. Sometimes I would climb up to the roof at lunchtime to enjoy my sandwiches in the sun and watch the young handsome men doing their chores: washing, cooking, cleaning. I always regretted not being able to talk to them; they spoke no English, I no Zulu. All we could do was smile at each other, which we did. Now I had discovered that Verster, who had been so happy to meet a “homeboy”, did not regard this man as a person. I thereupon handed in my notice. The old man refused to accept it and told me that I would be back – and he was right. I returned after a year and stayed, until politics made the decision for me. A few years later I also severed my relationship with Hans and finally in 1966 I shook the dust of the apartheid republic off my feet. But some difficult years lay ahead before I reached that point.

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VIII THE FIFTIES During the fifties the NP government tried to make apartheid theory work. New structures were created to underpin racial segregation. Legislation included such measures as the Immorality Act (which made it a crime for persons of different races to enjoy sex with each other), passes for black women and ending the Coloured franchise. Former “reserves” were turned into ten black “homelands”, labelled Bantustans by apartheid opponents. The idea was to expel all black people from urban areas and send them to Bantustans, except for those needed as workers, who were regarded as “temporary sojourners” in white South Africa. All this and more – which went hand in hand with township clearances and the dumping of people on empty veld in remote rural areas (the “ethnic cleansing” of the era) – has been well documented. So has the action of the opposition. The ANC swung into action in 1952 with a defiance campaign led in the Transvaal by Nelson Mandela. In response to the hated laws forcing women to carry passes, the newly formed multiracial South African Women’s Federation organised a mass demonstration on the steps of the Union Buildings of twenty thousand women from all parts of the country. The organisation of Congress Alliances was formed and held its famous People’s Congress to pass the Freedom Charter, the blueprint for democratic government. A treason trial which began in 1956 against one hundred and fifty-seven leaders of all races, collapsed after four years.

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The government consolidated its power with increasingly tough measures to silence opposition. Many white liberals emigrated. I too wanted to escape from this unbearable period of exiling black political activists to remote areas, arrests, detentions – and serving banning orders on ANC leaders such as Lilian Ngoyi and the indomitable Helen Joseph, a devout Anglican and pacifist. Banned persons were placed under house arrest and isolated from friends and workplace. I realised that white South Africans were guilty by association unless one was an active opponent and viewed apartheid as an economic system that had created a class society based on colour. Thanks to my lottery ticket I was able to leave. I kept to myself on board ship as I had little money to spend. I thought a great deal about Hans, who had given me a farewell present in the shape of a ticket to Cape Town on the famous Blue Train and had stood, pale, next to my window, his head bowed. I had tried to open the window but that wasn’t an option in an air-conditioned train. We looked at each other as the train departed; he seemed to shrink as we pulled out of the station. I cried bitterly for hours.

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We finally arrived in the port of London on a cold winter’s day. The passengers were on deck, anxious to disembark as we watched the grey skies, the outline of the warehouses looming out of the fog and listened to the sound of sirens. Suddenly I was overawed. London! I was in London, one of the great cities of the world. How could I cope with this new life? It took a while to reach the inner city. A terrible storm had struck in the night, so that the railway lines were flooded. It was only in the afternoon that eventually I reached the small Marble Arch hotel where I had booked a room for one night, courtesy of Union Castle. A bunch of flowers awaited me: typical of Hans. He was always short of money, yet he spent it on such luxuries. During the next few months I received flowers regularly, as soon as he found out where I was living. He also wrote daily – sad love letters, tender and affectionate – the neat handwriting decreasing in size as time passed, as if he himself was shrinking.

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I registered immediately with a job agency and embarked on a series of temporary jobs, earning one pound a day after the agency had taken its cut. With the help of a South African friend I found a small room with a gas ring, so that I could prepare my own meals. It was close to Hyde Park and cost three pounds a week, which left me two pounds: just enough for food and transport. I was surprised to find that each day when I returned from work, a number of young women would be walking their dogs along the street next to the park. Late one afternoon, one of them accosted and cross-examined me. The ladies thought I might be encroaching on their beat. This was before legislation forced the oldest profession in the world off the London streets and indoors. During Easter I attended an economics course and met a young woman who had suffered a war injury. She had a car and asked me to drive her to Cornwall to visit her sister. In those days few English girls could drive; in South Africa it was impossible to get around if one didn’t have a licence. It was a tremendous experience. As my new friend, Brenda, was unable to sit for long in a car, we drove no more than fifty miles a day, ambling from Bath through Devon and Cornwall. We cooked and ate at the roadside or in a field, slept in farms and boarding houses (bed and breakfasts costing all of seven and sixpence or twelve shillings and sixpence at most). The beds weren’t all that great, but the huge English breakfasts certainly compensated! When we reached Penzance, we discovered that Brenda’s sister was visiting the Scilly Islands, so we followed her and spent several relaxing, wonderful days on the islands. Perhaps my decision to retire to the Isle of Wight was pure nostalgia for those days – one of the few holidays I was ever able to enjoy. During that

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year in London, I was relaxed, felt young and carefree for the only time of my life. I tried to forget South Africa and the past and not to think of the future. It proved impossible. In South Africa a great deal was happening, with the defiance campaign well under way. While I followed this news closely, I found few of my new English acquaintances knew much about Africa or were interested. I expect I irritated them with my constant talk about apartheid. South Africans were envied; they had suffered no bombing, food shortages or loss of close friends and family. Unless of course one was a Jew. South African Jewry had escaped the Holocaust, but it had engulfed their European families, many of whom were totally wiped out. This was something with which it was hard to come to terms. As for Europe, the effect of the war was visible and tangible. My first job in London was in the Ministry of Food, which was only then winding down rationing. Bomb sites were still visible, particularly in the city. During another trip, this time to Scotland, I finally decided to stay in Europe and wrote to Hans, breaking off our relationship. It was after this letter that I was invited to lunch by a visiting South African friend who then handed me Margot’s letter, begging me to return and marry Hans.

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On my return to London from Edinburgh, I had a stroke of luck. The agency sent me to replace a secretary at a publishing firm called Paul Elek, a name familiar to me from my Selected Books days. On my first morning, Mr Elek dictated a letter to a man named Richard Pape care of The Star in Johannesburg, a letter to the Johannesburg headquarters of the Central News Agency and other letters to my one-time home town, getting some of the addresses wrong. I corrected both the addresses and the boss’s English, which he spoke with a heavy Hungarian accent. Richard (Dick) Pape, whose plane had been shot down over Holland, had written about his escape from a prisoner of war camp, hence the correspondence. Elek was certain it would be a bestseller – and he was proved right. After lunch on that first day, he sent for me and said, “You don’t seem to be the usual kind of temp.” I shrugged, thinking of my position at SAMA and the fifty or so staff, not counting the agents and sub-agents for whom I had been totally responsible. This measly pound-a-day hardly compared with my large Johannesburg pay cheque. That morning, Elek’s door was opened by a supercilious young woman who was obviously dismissive of temps, and who seemed to spend

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the rest of the day filing her nails. Later I discovered that she was an “Honourable”. It was useful for Elek’s image to have a debutante as a receptionist. As for the Hon Penny … well, publishing was the “in thing” at the time for debs. “I’m from Nuremberg via Johannesburg,” I explained.

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Elek smiled broadly. He had escaped from Budapest with his family and had gone into publishing after the war. Within days he offered me a permanent job, which I accepted with delight. When his secretary returned, we found we too had a great deal in common. We were both single, Jewish, with unhappy love affairs behind us. We both needed accommodation and very soon we managed to find a flat to share in West Hampstead. It was a perfect arrangement. My flatmate, Faith Henry, had striking good looks and I wasn’t surprised to learn that she had been an actress before the war. She had been seconded to the Americans at one stage and had met and married an American, who was a Harvard professor. The marriage had ended when Faith’s husband, who was obsessively jealous of his beautiful wife, falsely accused her of having an affair – and denounced her to the McCarthy committee as a pre-war communist. Faith was totally apolitical; she had indeed joined the party, but only because it gave her entry to their Unity theatre. After I left the flat, she married my successor, the writer Jacob Lind. We got on well with each other, often went together to the theatre and kept open house, which was somewhat chaotic as neither of us could cook and we had little cash to spare for entertaining. But we often had guests, many of whom were writers or journalists who usually brought food or drink – and everyone enjoyed themselves. Then one day Hans arrived. He was visiting his parents in Bad Nauheim and came to London to see me. He persuaded me to visit Bad Nauheim with him, which I did. My resolve to leave him and not return to South Africa weakened. As Margot had written, he had reacted badly to my decision and his depression affected me. I’ve always hated to hurt anyone and eventually I agreed to return with him. It was supposed to be brief; I had asked Elek for a fortnight’s leave, without giving notice. Hans had promised everything I wanted: marriage, living in London, children and time for me to study parttime. I can blame no one but myself and my sentimental stupidity for the decision to go back to him. Hans’s mother told me later that she could no longer bear his depression because of “that young woman in London” and had told him to get on a plane to see me. At first I’d found his mother intim-

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idating; it took time to appreciate her forthrightness and intelligence, though I intuitively admired her courage and enjoyed the sense of humour of her intellectual husband. Hans’s relationship with his parents was more complex than most. It’s a cliché to say we carry the legacy of our childhood with us, but it is true nonetheless. Hans lived in the shadow of his childhood, though he would never have admitted it. A psychologist friend once said of him that it was his misfortune to have succeeded in running away from home – which many of us dream of – as it saddled him with an unresolved conflict. Hans had had little hope that his aged parents would survive the Holocaust. His father was born in 1867, two years before my grandfather; his mother was twenty years younger. So he was overwhelmed with relief when he learned that they had indeed survived. A Red Cross message reached him two years after the war, saying that Dr Elizabeth Weiss was looking for her son. Hans told them his mother’s name was Hannah. He heard nothing further for some time until a second message arrived, this time with the correct names of both parents and his own date of birth. He visited them for the first time in 1948. By this time his mother was working for the US administration in Friedberg and they lived in nearby Bad Nauheim. When he entered their flat he was astonished to see familiar furniture, carpets and paintings. Friends had looked after their property for them.

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I never discovered the full story, only fragments of their miraculous escape. Hans’s father had come to Berlin from Hungary at the age of seventeen. (Even at the age of ninety-four he still spoke fluent Hungarian.) He was the offspring of a typical upper-class Jewish Eastern European family. His greatgrandfather, a peddler, had founded a successful business, which had been developed by the next generation into a major concern and the family into a dynasty. Part of the family converted to Christianity and acquired an aristocratic title. They kept in touch with the Jewish family to which Hans’s father belonged. Though a successful businessman, he would have preferred to have been an academic. He retired early and devoted himself to his studies. At the end of the Kaiser’s war in which he had fought, his wife had taken a university course. Hans enjoyed the childhood usual in such circles, with a foreign nanny, governess and little contact with his parents. “Enjoy” is the wrong term. He hated it; loathed the little sailor suits he had to wear and above all, resented what he considered his mother’s distance. He thought she did not love him, and became stubborn and difficult as a result. “I thought he was stupid,” she

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told me. “He didn’t seem to want to learn to read or write. Hans – stupid. Funny, that!” No, not funny. Tragic – for Hans and for all those who were close to him. He punished his mother by his treatment of women, said the psychiatrist. He never grew up; he remained the child seeking warmth and protection. After he had run away from home, Hans gave his parents an option. They could either report him to the police (who would trace and return him, in which case he would continue to run away) or they could accept the situation. If they accepted it, he promised he would appear regularly on Sundays, properly dressed so as not to embarrass their “bourgeois friends”.

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His mother never talked about those days; I only have Hans’s side of the story. He said his parents accepted the compromise. He stayed with his friends in Wedding and worked at odd jobs: one in a factory where he hurt his arm; another when he carried coal in Kiel’s port. On his first payday he had to pay for a round of drinks during the break. Not being used to such delights, he was a little dizzy, with the result that he slipped into the filthy water. The sack also slipped, which saved him from drowning, but it was the end of that job. He was forced to return to Berlin where he managed to get a job as messenger boy at the Berliner Tageblatt, which set him on course for journalism. All this was a great disappointment to his parents, as was his membership of the Communist Party. Ironically this saved their lives, for it was on account of this that his father’s application for German citizenship was refused. As Hungarian citizens, they were not deported. In 1940 they managed to get to Frankfurt, where they owned a house and were allowed by the caretaker to live secretly in the attic. One day the police, not the Gestapo, arrested Hans’s mother, allegedly because she was involved with people helping Jews to escape to Hungary. I never discovered if this was true. She told the policeman that her husband was old and sick, whereupon he too was arrested and landed in the jail’s hospital. She was kept in solitary confinement for six months and was under constant interrogation. Once she was placed against a wall and in an effort to intimidate her, was told she would be shot. Eventually the interrogator released her. Dr Weiss, although no beauty, was an intelligent, interesting person and this man, no Nazi, was apparently impressed by her. She told him that release would mean immediate arrest by the Gestapo. He saw the point. And that night he arranged for them to be taken to the Hungarian border, from where they made their way to Budapest.

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They were looked after by the Jewish community, but when Hungarian Jews were rounded up, they landed in a transit camp. Fortunately this was bombed and together with a young man they made their escape. The old man, a tall, imposing figure, claimed their home had been bombed and that his wife had lost her voice as a result of a serious throat infection. During their wandering, they rested in a village church, where they told the young priest the truth. He took them to a parishioner’s home and in the morning handed them baptismal papers of a deceased couple, whose birth dates were similar to theirs. These documents helped them to survive and also accounted for the “Elizabeth” in the Red Cross message: a name she was to retain. They suffered further arrests, more camps and separation when each thought the other was dead, until they were finally reunited after the war. After living in various camps for displaced persons, they returned to Frankfurt. Dr Weiss travelled to Bad Nauheim in search of accommodation and was accosted by an American soldier who was delighted to find someone who spoke English and was a displaced person. He took her to Friedberg and found her a job and flat, where they were to remain till their deaths. She worked first as a trustee for Jewish property, which led to the post of manager of the Groedel Trust. This gave her the responsibility of building the Groedel Clinic, which, like most Bad Nauheim medical establishments, specialised in heart diseases. She held that job until she died.

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Hans and I visited his parents in 1957 to celebrate his father’s ninetieth birthday. In those days flights were not as simple as today. We had several transit stops and experienced other problems on the trip so that I arrived somewhat shattered. The following day was the important birthday. I tried on a suit which Hans had bought for me during a business trip. Elegant though it was (with price to match, which we couldn’t actually afford) I thought I’d change into a dress before the guests arrived. However, no sooner had we sat down to breakfast than the doorbell rang. A floral delivery. My by then mother-in-law told me that vases were in the next room. “When these are filled, the next lot can go into the bedroom.” More flowers? I was not used to such floral offerings. Indeed, I was not used to celebrating birthdays. In South Africa no one seemed to bother and in any case, Africans themselves often were uncertain about their precise birthdays. I hadn’t even celebrated my twenty-first birthday. However, Germans take birthdays seriously. The doorbell never stopped. One bouquet after another was delivered and I was kept busy, trotting backwards and forwards. I could barely find vases or room for all the flowers and even had to move

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chairs to create some space. “We’ll take them to the hospital tomorrow,” mother-in-law said. “The guests will want to see them today.” Guests? This disconcerted me as much as the flowers. I had expected a small lunch party, but from 10 am onwards they began to arrive: elegant ladies with their equally well-groomed husbands. Some Weiss family members arrived from the US and Israel; I was kept busy with more flowers, was introduced, shook hands. “Do you like my niece’s dress?” mother-in-law asked and I said yes, very nice, but was not particularly interested. A child approached the old man who sat in his armchair, smiling broadly, his budgie on his shoulder. The child recited a poem; someone from the Red Cross spoke, as did some minister who had come to grace the occasion. The old man looked around the room. He no longer smiled.

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He addressed the gathering, ending with the words: “ … I can’t help thinking what my birthday would have been like, had I been in a camp in Hungary.” Silence. No one moved. “I survived; millions did not. Let us honour them. Ladies, gentlemen – to the dead!” An awkward silence. Everyone silently lifted their glass. In those days, to talk of what had happened was not the order of the day. Three days later, Hans and I went to the theatre in Frankfurt. When we called on the parents to say goodbye, mother-in-law exclaimed reproachfully, “You do have a dress!” I said, yes, of course. “Why didn’t you wear it on father’s birthday?” So that was why she had drawn attention to her niece’s dress! She was offended that I had worn a suit. I explained that I had expected to have time to change. She kissed me and said, “I didn’t really mean to criticise … I thought you had no dresses, so I’ve asked my dressmaker to make you some.” We got to like each other, though we were very different people, not only because of the age gap. Status mattered to her, for instance, while it had no meaning for me. Hans’s father died four years after our visit. He knew nothing of our marital problems. My mother-in-law did, and she understood. I always phoned her whenever I was in Europe. I was saddened by her death, also because I knew that Hans would be hurt by it. I grieved for them both. They taught me about the values and lifestyles of a past generation. When he visited Germany in 1962 after his father’s death, Hans wrote daily. The letters explained his feelings about his parents. “Father was terribly tidy, even in extreme old age. He never smelled like an old man and though dying, he lost none of his elegance. There was no sweat, no complaint; he was

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composed. At the end, he was distressed because he could not go to the bathroom on his own and had to be washed. The day before he died, he insisted on being shaved. Now that he is no longer physically present, I feel no contact with him. He was a hypocrite who set himself up as a judge of all things and proved his inadequacy by acting the role of the wise patriarch, which mother demanded. That made him a suitable consort for her as the ruling queen.” Ugly words which shook me at the time and even more so when I found his letters while writing these pages. In his first letter he wrote that his father clutched his hand after he had arrived and asked, “Where is Ruth?” never releasing the hand until he sank into a coma. The plane had been delayed, the old man had been dying for hours and literally had held on until he could hold his son’s hand. I never discovered how this equated with his remarks about his father’s last days and his “neatness”. I believed all the promises Hans had made when I had first visited his parents. I refused to listen to the advice of friends and returned with Hans to Johannesburg, temporarily, as I thought. Ruth Katz and her then partner collected us at the airport. Ruth told me she would take me to the Victoria Hotel, where she had booked a room. “What about Hans? Where is he staying?” Ruth was surprised. “At home of course.” Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Home. That meant Geraldine Court! He and Margot were not separated, as I had assumed. I was hurt and wanted to take the next plane back to London, but unfortunately that was impossible. I couldn’t leave without seeing my parents. A bunch of flowers awaited me in the hotel room. Red roses. With love, from Margot. I think she did love me, as I loved her. When Ruth Katz died in Vienna in 1978 after a short illness, I wanted only one thing: to speak to Margot. She recognised my voice immediately; she knew I needed her comfort. “Ruth suffered a great deal,” she said, with the familiar, brisk voice I knew so well. “She didn’t enjoy much happiness.” I wept into the receiver, desperately unhappy, and told her that I blamed myself for not seeing Ruth more often,

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that I’d only been to Vienna once when I was there because Prime Minister Vorster met the US vice president. Margot comforted me. “Don’t reproach yourself. We each have our own life …” and then the words slipped out that I had never used before: “Margot – I do love you.” “And I love you,” she said. We each put down the phone. It had needed the loss of our mutual friend to make my words possible.

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We corresponded regularly until her sudden death while on a visit to Germany in the eighties. She had remembered me. In her will she left a bequest to my son.

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IX

A NEW BEGINNING

I should have expected it: Hans persuaded me to delay my return to London. Nothing came of his promises – except that we did get married – eventually, and hardly conventionally. As I said, I returned to my job at SAMA. Hans moved out of Geraldine Court and we took a furnished flat in Berea. This was too small for Hans so I looked for something else and found a delightful cottage in Orange Grove, which I was able to purchase thanks to my employer’s help. Somehow we also acquired five cats. For the first time, I now had my own home. One Friday morning Hans rang. Could I come to court during my lunch hour? Together with Meneer Fourie? It was Friday the 13th of January. Hans said he thought that few couples would dare to marry on this ominous day, so he had applied for a special licence and booked the date. I duly turned up at the magistrate’s court with Fourie and returned to the office with an orchid on my business suit. The piece of paper was important, not for myself, but for my parents. They had been greatly disturbed that I was living with Hans. “You can’t tell them yet,” Hans remarked after the brief ceremony. “I don’t want to hurt Margot; the divorce was only final last week.” I hadn’t known about that either. Hans believed in keeping things to himself. Six months later he asked me to buy a sack of oranges. “I’ve got the champagne.”

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“Champagne? What for?” “The wedding breakfast.” Surprised, I asked who was getting married. He smiled. “We were married; have you forgotten? But we didn’t celebrate …” He had invited a number of friends including Ruth Katz, Nadine and Reinhold Cassirer. At last I could tell my parents that I was now an honest woman. I don’t know why I was so totally wrapped up in Hans. He was my friend, lover, mentor. He filled my life, yet I don’t think I was ever in love. I loved him deeply, perhaps too much; it wasn’t love for an equal partner, but for someone on whom I was dependent. I needed an anchor, and needed to be valued. I suppose it took me a long time to grow up.

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Hans had a part-time job at a bookshop and wrote for German papers and radio stations, but he earned much less than I did. It was my car which we drove, my house in which we lived. Ours was no easy relationship. We eventually left the cottage as quickly as we had moved out of Berea. The cottage was a charming, dreamy place – old and set in a large garden with trees, shrubs and the cats. I should have known this was not Hans’s style. “I can’t bear it,” he said one day. “The house is too bourgeois. I want to own nothing. Possessions are a burden.” One day when I returned home, I found a message to say he had moved to the nearby Orange Grove Hotel. Naturally I joined him and we lived for some time in a rondavel in the hotel grounds. Shortly after this, we went to Germany to visit his parents and his media contacts. I let the cottage to one of our insurance staff, a German woman named Ingrid.

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That proved to be a mistake. When we returned the house was empty, the furniture had been sold, the cats were gone and of course the rent was unpaid. Fourie called me into his office and said he had heard I had problems. He then informed me that the woman had lied to me. She had not been on her own, as she had said, but lived with a partner, an Afrikaner. Both drank heavily. “Did you know that she was a Nazi?” I did not. We had never discussed the past. “She told me that you were a member of the ANC. She found your membership card.” That was absurd. No white person could join the ANC at the time. What she had found and destroyed was my Esra membership card from Fürth, one of the few mementos of my childhood. The woman simply wanted me to get into trouble. I was surprised she didn’t claim to have found my Communist Party membership. Ingrid had disappeared and I’d received no money for the rent or for the missing furniture. I had to sell the house hurriedly, at well below market value. Ownership was a burden, Hans had said. Now we no longer owned anything. I was already helping him by writing his economics articles, as economics didn’t interest him. When he became ill again, I also took over his other journalistic work without his knowledge, since we needed the money. This became the pattern of our lives; when he was ill, I would write all his articles – otherwise I only dealt with economics reporting. My German was far from perfect; after the age of eleven-and-a-half I no longer had any formal German lessons, so I could only try my best. Hans also delegated all business affairs to me such as tax returns, budgeting and settling all our accounts.

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Sometimes I barely slept from worry. Hans never kept to the budget but spent money liberally. Our new friends were all wealthy, while we had nothing except our monthly income and our debts. Helping Hans also meant travelling on his behalf now and then. Some of the papers for which Hans wrote, also wanted coverage of other African countries. In Germany, public interest in Africa was limited. He undertook some trips, and sent me on others. Thus I visited Southern Rhodesia and for the first time interviewed Sir Raphael “Roy” Welensky, the second prime minister of the short-lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. I was to meet him often during the time I lived in Salisbury in the sixties, when the former prime minister was in the political wilderness. While in office, he had tried to stall Britain’s moves towards majority rule and came down hard on African nationalists. The visit to Salisbury in 1959 was my entry into African politics north of the Limpopo. Once I decided to stay in Joburg, I found life with Hans was different to the life we had previously led. Before my London trip, Hans had insisted on keeping me to himself; now, we were constantly going out, either visiting or entertaining friends. We went to plays, concerts, art exhibitions. Life became a round of parties. This posed problems for me. I hardly touched alcohol, a legacy of my puritan upbringing and my rejection of the luxurious lifestyle of these new friends. I met old friends, such as Margot or Ruth, on my own because I was fond of them, while Hans had lost interest in them and chose to spend his time with his new friends. He had become the centre of a group of young writers and artists, just as before he had been the centre of the UKV group and then of the young Germans. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

I had to admit that many of his new friends were interesting. Some became well-known, such as the sculptor Edouardo Villa, the painter Douglas Portway who died in 1993 in the UK, and the author Jillian Bekker who wrote a controversial account of Germany’s Red Army faction which she titled provocatively Hitler’s Children. Later she became director of a right-wing institute concerned with terrorism. And of course Nadine Gordimer, who was to become a friend of mine. I found my job increasingly demanding, particularly as Hans resented it and wanted me to work only part-time. I started work at seven in the morning so that I could be home mid- or late afternoon to help him with his work. I no longer had any time to myself. I often had to bring work home, and except for the months we spent at the hotel, I also had to take care of the housekeeping for we rented a far too expensive flat in Parktown. The endless

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round of parties tired me. These new friends were in no way interested in me. I was a grey mouse who made coffee, sat next to Hans and sometimes fell asleep halfway through an evening, unable to concentrate on discussions about Impressionism, communism and various other “isms”.

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At home in Orange Grove, Johannesburg, 1959

No one took any notice of me; as always, Hans was the attraction. At the same time, though, I was well ahead of women of my generation. By chance I had found myself in a man’s world where I negotiated on equal terms with other insurance executives, travelled to the city of London and represented my company in court cases. Most white women in South Africa did not have to work, not even in the house. They had time for golf, bridge, charity work and anything they chose, while complaining about their black staff. I didn’t fit in with these friends. I had to work, though Hans would have preferred it if I hadn’t. I had begun to develop and was becoming my own person. The following years were filled with work, politics and the endless complex love affairs of these young friends. I couldn’t compete with their interests. I couldn’t even compete in the cooking arena, which the young women with

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little else to do turned into a hobby. I confined myself to basic dishes and my imagination.

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Unlike the women in the group, I had no interest in fashion. It was Hans who wanted to see me well dressed, who went shopping with or for me and who chose my clothes. He had excellent but expensive taste. Our budget and the price of clothes only once matched each other. Among our friends was the wife of an architect who worked for the millionaire John “Johnny” Schlesinger. Papa had made his fortune in insurance, but though the son took over his father’s companies, he had little interest in managing them. Johnny was a playboy. One of his properties was the well-known luxury Polana hotel in Lourenço Marques – today’s Maputo. He spent his honeymoon at the hotel, but for some inexplicable reason took a dislike to the furniture in his suite – and threw it out of the window, terrifying staff and guests alike.

Hans Weiss 1959 in Orange Grove

The wife of the architect did us all a great favour. She asked John’s current girlfriend, Claire, if she had any clothes to be sold to African women for some charity she was organising. Claire had worked as a model and had won a beauty contest, judged by Johnny, who had instantly invited her for dinner

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and the rest … A chauffeur arrived in due course with several cases of “old” clothes. Everything was virtually new: evening gowns, day dresses, swimsuits, even hardly worn shoes. Our friend was overwhelmed. “No black woman would buy these things,” she told us. What she really meant was that they were too good for blacks! Excited, we rummaged through the things, enjoying ourselves as we tried them on. We asked how much they cost since no one had any idea about prices. We paid a few pounds for what were one-off models. I remember a white dress which fitted me to perfection; it looked as if it had been designed for a classic Greek play. The following day Claire asked how much her clothes had fetched. When she was told fifty pounds, she was amazed. She asked hesitantly if we would be interested in other “deliveries”. Were we just! But why did she ask?

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Claire explained: “Johnny pays for everything – the apartment, food and so on, but he doesn’t give me any cash. Except two hundred pounds a month for clothes, which he insists I spend. It’s impossible! I can’t spend that much; I can’t buy a fur coat every month, can I? Besides, I get my shoes free when I model them … you’ve no idea how hard it is to spend so much money on clothes. Johnny doesn’t like it if I wear a dress more than twice.” Claire had been with Johnny for five years at this stage. Of course we were delighted with the offer and gratefully accepted the deliveries which kept coming. For an entire year I was incredibly well dressed, as were all our female friends, and for decades I wore some of Claire’s blouses. One New Year’s Eve I wore one of the dresses to a huge Schlesinger party on Johnny’s farm near Hartebeespoort. Most of our friends also arrived in Claire’s castoffs. I was nervous when the couple greeted us, but Johnny didn’t recognise any of the clothes he had paid for. This was an evening when I was sorely troubled by the white South African lifestyle. I dare say that when compared with the parties of today thrown by the seriously rich, parties such as Johnny’s that night would be considered a minor affair. However I was oppressed by its opulence, the enormous outdoor buffet, the huge barbecue, well-stocked bar and various jazz bands which played until dawn. A breathtaking fireworks display marked New Year at midnight, lighting the veld and the dark sky. The rich were very rich indeed, and enjoyed their wealth. One evening I found myself in a gathering which included five millionaires. I was speaking

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to one millionaire wife who told me that she was considering flying to New York – just for a night – because she felt like seeing Funny Girl on Broadway. I wasn’t dazzled, just furious. Around this time Johnny sold the Carlton Hotel, a jewel in his company’s crown. The hotel was historic; it had been built and used by the Randlords and was beautifully maintained. But times changed and Johnny sold the site for many millions. At the same time a new Carlton Centre was to arise Phoenix-like nearby, though it had nothing to do with Schlesinger. I saw it in the mid-nineties, an enormous shopping centre, with the beautifully appointed five-star hotel a landmark. Alas, times had indeed changed: it had all become a white elephant. This part of town had been taken over by tsotsis, black thugs, and it was unsafe even to put a nose out of a Carlton hotel door. The day before the demolishing teams moved in on the old Carlton, Johnny gave a ball in the wonderful old ballroom, staying on after the last guest had gone, weeping and getting drunk. In the afternoon we all had coffee in the lounge. Somehow it happened that Hans paid for all that. I even remember the sum: forty pounds. I almost wept. This was about Hans’s monthly income – he had no sense of money. I think the hectic atmosphere, the endless round of parties, even the love affairs were due to political tension. No one felt at ease, certainly few of those I knew. In the fifties, older Afrikaners still believed that God had placed them at the tip of the black continent as guardians of the blacks – as if these were children incapable of looking after themselves.

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But many white South Africans thought otherwise. These included members of the Liberal Party (founded by the author Alan Paton) and members of the conservative Progressive Party to which the well-known politician Helen Suzman belonged. Relationships across the colour bar were tricky. Occasionally one could meet in shebeens in Sophiatown before this black spot was razed to the ground, or in the homes of liberals to which Africans, Indians and Coloureds were occasionally invited. Township jazz had arrived in the northern suburbs to everyone’s delight. The bookshop in which Hans worked for a while and above which he later had an office, was situated in Loveday Street, close to the City Hall. The steps of that building were the counterpart to London’s Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner. One evening I saw white women demonstrating on the steps. Holding

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torches and sporting black sashes, they were protesting against the death of democracy. Black Sash women began to appear whenever a politician was billed as a public speaker. They would stand silently, heads bowed, a symbol of resistance. Later the Black Sash turned into an advice bureau for urban black people who had to find their way through the maze and jungle of apartheid legislation. That could not to be guessed at this night. A horde of young white thugs suddenly stormed towards the women, pelting them with rotten eggs, tomatoes and stink bombs. The shouts of “Vrystaat!”, usually heard in football stadiums, were loud enough to terrify anyone. Police simply stood by, doing nothing except laughing.

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Such aggression was unexpected. South Africans usually respected women and until that evening I had not seen women being attacked here. But of course they were not viewed as “normal” South African women. They were kaffirboeties and not at all like the male ideal of the quiet woman in the background. I found myself in the midst of the crowd, could smell the sweat and fear of Africans, who were pushed back by the police, making way for the thugs. A woman collapsed; all around there was chaos, fighting, anger and a sense of helplessness. The following day the women returned, this time with men behind and beside them – battle lines were drawn. But it was merely one incident among many. It was almost impossible to report on every event, particularly since we knew of the limited interest of German readers in African matters. Economic issues were another matter. German–South African trade relations had strengthened because Afrikaners preferred to do business with nonBrits. Germans and the Swiss were both ideal partners. Only too often German visitors told us, “This is like Europe with an ideal climate. A wonderful country; one could easily live here.”

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X CAREER MOVES I became increasingly depressed working for an Afrikaner company. However I knew that I owed Fourie a great deal for allowing me to enter a male preserve. He and I had become good friends and he told me a great deal about himself, particularly after his second marriage. After the death of his first wife, he had turned into a merry widower. He was still an attractive man and looked around for a wife. A good-looking, younger woman was able to charm him. An anglicised Afrikaner, she too was widowed. They married soon after they had met which was too early for his sons, being not long after their mother’s death. Fourie adored his new wife. As soon as he arrived at the office, he would be on the phone to her. He became insanely jealous and was convinced that every man desired her. Inevitably the marriage failed and after a few years they were divorced. The ex-wife had a daughter, Elizabeth (Beth) who lived in England and had married a filmmaker named Richard Aubrey. They went to Wales where Aubrey wanted to make a documentary. Money ran out and Beth turned to her new stepfather for help. He then asked me to arrange a loan and I had to explain that SAMA was a company and he could not simply draw on its resources as if it was his private property. We found a compromise by issuing an insurance policy against which Aubrey could borrow money, while I tried to keep down a possible loss to SAMA by re-insuring the policy with Lloyds. Aubrey cashed the policy, never to return to Wales or Beth. Fourie had to pay her return fare to South Africa and I instructed someone in London to search for Aubrey.

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This had repercussions later on. Fourie told me a little about his youth. He had been his father’s favourite. His father was then a widower and the family had decided he should remarry. They had also chosen a bride for him, a widow whose farm adjoined their own. One day his father took him on a visit to this neighbouring farm. “He wasn’t too keen,” Fourie recalled, remembering that this tannie (aunty) was supposed to be right for his father; she was hard-working and efficient. The family also talked of other ladies, none of them under thirty-five. His father was no youngster himself. “So off we went, with him dressed in his black Sunday suit and black hat. I think he took me along as a kind of witness. Coffee and cake was to be served on the stoep, where the widow’s brother met us. My father addressed the brother as “oom” – you know we call older people “oom” and “tannie” (uncle and aunt) as a mark of respect –

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and announced that he had come to make oom’s sister a proposal of marriage. “The brother invited us to sit down but my father shook his head and said, ‘No, I don’t want to waste time. I would like to tell you what I offer.’ After more persuasion, he agreed to have a cup of coffee and smoke his pipe. He then explained his proposal. He was willing to marry Tannie Lettie provided the two farms were merged and his eldest son would inherit both properties. The other children would then have to be paid out.” This was of course an impossible proposition, as Fourie noted with a huge grin. “My father said this was non-negotiable. He would return in a week at precisely the same time to receive the reply, which had to be either yes or no. The widow had three sons and they would never agree to these conditions. Anyway, a week later we went back to the farm, punctually to the minute. We were again served coffee and cake and my father asked if they had considered his proposal. ‘Yes,’ the brother said, ‘but …’

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“My father said, ‘No buts. A straight yes or no.’ Of course it was no. We left immediately in our cart. The next day my father arrived home with a pretty young girl. She was sixteen years old, the daughter of a bywoner (tenant) who had recently settled on our farm. My father looked at us. He had a whip in his hand and glanced at each of us, his adult children, and told us this was our new stepmother – and whoever didn’t call her mother or show respect would get the whip. My father was a real man!” As I said, Fourie was the archetypal patriarch. Around the time of his marriage, the business developed by leaps and bounds. Up to 1948 it had been simple for Fourie to run the company. He knew most of the clients by name and he insisted on being kept informed of claims, as far as his old policies were concerned. Then when the NP election victory brought increased business to Afrikaner companies, SAMA turned from a medium business into a major enterprise almost overnight. The systems were outmoded. We needed accounting machines and additional trained personnel, both of which I organised. Fourie became alarmed; it was all getting too complicated for him. He began to think of retiring. He found a suitable buyer in Chris Bischoff, a one-time teacher turned entrepreneur who had established an Afrikaans automobile association to rival

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the established English one. He wanted to offer his members insurance cover and approached Fourie, who initially refused to sell his shares, but in the end agreed to do so. He was no longer on top of things and his new wife persuaded him that he would have more time – and money – if he sold his company. One morning Bischoff came into my office. I knew about the negotiations and greeted him in Afrikaans. He responded sharply in English, sat down and said, “I know you can speak my language.” I said nothing so he continued, “I’ll speak in English to you. I’ll be taking over this company shortly. It’s only a matter of time: weeks, maybe two months. SAMA will then become a subsidiary of Rondalia, my company for motorists.” “I know,” I replied. “I want you to teach me about insurance. Oh, I know you’re Jewish and no doubt a liberal who objects to apartheid. I don’t care. What about you? Will you work for a Nat?”

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I thought about it. As I said, everyone in the office knew that I opposed apartheid; there was no need to be timid about it. I told Bischoff that politics was part of my life. I hated apartheid and would have preferred to emigrate. Unfortunately my husband’s health was delicate and he was therefore reluctant to leave. “I don’t like your system, I think it’s unjust and must be abolished. You as a nationalist should be able to understand African nationalists.” He laughed and said that at least I wasn’t afraid to speak my mind, and that he didn’t give a damn about my political views; all he cared about was my know-how. He intended to send some of his young people to me for training. “They’re all graduates,” he added. “Odd, isn’t it? The British didn’t think a businessman needed to be educated. We’re ambitious. Every Boer wants his son to study, even if he only takes up teaching like I did.” “It’s the same with Jews,” I replied. “We think that whatever one has in one’s head can’t be taken away. Though even that can happen in the end.” He knew at once that I was referring to the Holocaust and reminded me that Boers too had been sent to concentration camps. “Our mothers and children died in British camps during the Boer War. They never understood that this was why we hated them. We’ll always hate them!” I was shocked by the look of hatred in his face. “Mr Bischoff, you weren’t even born then! Surely you can’t transfer hate and guilt from one generation to the next?”

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He slammed his fist on the desk. “Why not, hey? Man, that’s what’s wrong with your lot – you went like sheep to the gas chambers! Because you’re so understanding … you can’t even hate properly!” He stared at me in disgust, adding: “You’ll tell me that one has to try and understand. I’m telling you, there’s nothing to understand as far as the British are concerned. They oppressed my people. We’re still fighting the Boer War, don’t you see? It will only end when we have our fair share of the GDP – sixty per cent, no less.” I had never seen Fourie display such hatred or utter such furious words and he had actually fought in that Boer War. Yet Bischoff meant every word. Moreover he kept his promise never to speak to me in Afrikaans. As for me, I taught him the principles of insurance and trained his young men, as he had asked.

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A year after taking over SAMA, he moved the company head office to Pretoria because, as he maintained, “The heart of our people beats in Pretoria, not Johannesburg”. I continued to run the Johannesburg office. One day when I returned from leave, I discovered that the new staff had forgotten to make certain statutory returns to the authorities. I rang Bischoff (now Chris), who agreed that I should apply for a postponement. Meanwhile I was to arrange how I could best get the work done, even if it meant appointing temporary staff. I did just that. While I was processing the applications, I noticed that one girl had a bookkeeping diploma. I sent for her. She was eighteen and planning to go to Britain for further education. I asked if she could stay for three months. One of our old colleagues needed medical treatment and I planned to keep the job open for her. The young girl was delighted and we came to an arrangement. The following day several young men arrived from head office; some I recognised from my training class. I noticed one man who kept staring at me; once he actually came to the office door, but he walked away without speaking. In the afternoon he came once more and this time he said, “I want to know why you have appointed all these English girls.” I looked at him. Actually it was none of his business: I was his senior. However, I said, “Mr Viljoen, I only appointed South Africans. There are no English girls here.” He gestured impatiently. “English-speaking South Africans, what’s the difference? I want to know why.”

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I hesitated, and then replied, “Mr Bischoff knows precisely why. It makes no difference what language the girls speak. The important thing is that they can use a typewriter.” “Very well. But what about her?” He pointed to the young girl I had placed in the accounting section. I was puzzled. “What do you mean?” He mumbled something and walked away. The following morning the phone rang as I entered the office. It was Chris, asking what was all this about English girls. Viljoen had made his report. I told my boss that these were the temporary typists I needed and he laughed.“Yes, that’s what I thought. We had an agreement; I didn’t think you’d let me down.” I had promised him not to allow anyone who couldn’t speak Afrikaans fluently to come into contact with the public. I would also give Afrikaners preference when appointing staff. He added, “But that girl has to go. Today!” I was puzzled and annoyed. “What’s wrong with her? Her qualifications are fine.”

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He was annoyed and banged down the receiver. I ran upstairs to see our reinsurance broker, a Brit, a former Lloyds man. He had worked with Fourie for a long time, got on well with Bischoff and was one of our board members. As I walked along the corridor, I heard him speaking on the phone, obviously to Chris. “Oh, she’ll understand. Maybe I ought to take a look at her, what? I bet she’s pretty, you know what these Frogs are like!” He saw me at the door and quickly ended the call. Like Chris, he said, “You have to dismiss her. At once.” “Why?” He looked uncomfortable. “The girls complained to Viljoen. They don’t want to use the same toilet. They say with someone from Mauritius … you can’t be sure.” So that was it! They couldn’t be sure she wasn’t Coloured! I remembered noticing Mauritius as her birthplace on her application form. Once a French colony, it had become British during the Napoleonic era, but had retained its French culture. Our girls obviously were convinced that our temporary staff member was of mixed race.

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I said: “She went to college in this country.” He sighed. “That proves nothing. You know that Boers can smell if someone has a touch of the tar brush.” Suddenly I remembered Nellie’s pale face and her fury when she had dragged me away from her Coloured grandmother. I nodded. “Very well. May I use your phone?” I rang Chris. “Right, so she may not be white,” I said. “I think there are many of your people with a similar family history … You once told me that I couldn’t hate properly. Maybe so, but I’ve learnt to hate prejudice. Apart from that, it all reminds me too much of my own background … Yes, I’ll give her notice. But I’ll pay her in full for this month and the next in lieu of notice. I’ll also take her out to lunch to tell her, at the company’s expense. And you’ll have my notice by tomorrow.” He spoke to me in Afrikaans for the first time. “Don’t do that. Please! I need you. You know that I’ve asked the board to appoint you as my personal assistant, not just for the insurance side, but for the company.” “Chris, thank you. I appreciate it – but it had to happen sometime. It was a matter of time before we had our differences, and now it’s happened.”

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“Maybe you’re right. Can you come to Pretoria tomorrow?” I went to Pretoria; we had a long discussion, mainly about politics and there was no meeting of minds. I handed in my notice and left after three months. I had two choices: to join one of the insurance company’s rivals, as Chris had feared – or to change course completely. I opted for the latter and in 1960 became a full-time economic journalist. I saw no problem in that; I had already handled all Hans’s economic reporting. And thanks to my job, I now had many contacts in the business world as well as in government. My first journalistic job was that of business editor of a small fortnightly magazine, Newscheck, which tried unsuccessfully to become South Africa’s Time Magazine. From there I joined the Financial Mail, which was originally a joint venture of the UK’s Investor’s Chronicle, the Financial Times and the South African morning newspaper group. This group published papers such as Johannesburg’s Rand Daily Mail. The Financial Mail is still a major economic magazine. I kept contact with old colleagues, in particular with Chris. He was younger than I, a rightwing Nat who was labelled verkrampte (as opposed to a liberal

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verligte) yet we got on with each other. We kept in touch even after I had left the country – and I was truly upset when I heard of his premature death after a heart attack. While I still lived in Johannesburg I often went to see him; he was a good contact as one in a group of economic advisors to the prime minister. We always went out to lunch to argue fiercely about politics. I sometimes wonder what Chris would make of today’s developments. I suspect he would have supported De Klerk and his decision to end the failed apartheid policies. After lunch one day we walked along Pretoria street and stopped at a traffic light about to change from green to red. Two black youths ran past us across the street as the light turned yellow and just made it before it turned red. A middle-aged man with a typical farmer’s slouch hat stood next to us. He looked lost; it was obvious that the city traffic confused him. Chris said, “You see, that’s why we need apartheid – because of this man. He can’t even follow our English conversation; we’re speaking too fast. You can tell he’s from the platteland, the rural area. Now I can get a job anywhere, anytime and so can my children. But not this man, nor his children. It is up to me to protect him against … them.” He pointed to the black youngsters, who were more than halfway down the street by then. Perhaps it was a good reason for Chris Bischoff to defend apartheid. For me it was merely another sign that Afrikaners couldn’t see beyond their noses.

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Among our friends were individuals who personified the tragedy of South African society. One was an Indian born in Mauritius. He had studied medicine in Scotland and married a Scottish woman. Their son had followed in his father’s footsteps and he too married a Scottish woman. Their only child was a girl, classified as Coloured; a pretty girl who looked more white than many Afrikaner women. Father and son were excellent physicians with a practice in Jeppe Street and waiting rooms which were always crowded. Most of their patients were Afrikaners. Both families had apartments in the same building which they owned and which had naturally been registered in the names of their white wives, because under the Group Areas Act no Indian could own a building in central Johannesburg. (This Act was to be one of the final pieces of legislation abolished as part of De Klerk’s reforms.) The families usually dined together. We visited them regularly but we could never go out together because we could not go to the same cinemas or restaurants. The families had also bought a home in one of the northern suburbs but in the end decided against moving there; they were afraid of trouble with the neighbours. Whenever the doctors made house calls in the

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evening, our friends took their families with them for the drive. It was one of their few pastimes. The two families belonged nowhere in that divided society. The pretty daughter attended a private school, took language courses and found a job with an airline. A colleague invited her to go out with him and eventually she invited him home to dinner. “He was very nice; we got on well. We even talked a bit about politics,” she told me. I knew she was interested in politics. “He knew we lived in the city centre and he couldn’t understand why. Maybe he thought it was because of Dad’s busy practice. When he arrived, I introduced him to my mother, and that was fine. You know we have our own entrance, so we don’t disturb the patients. When Daddy came in, my friend looked a little surprised. Then we went into the dining room.” At this point, she started crying and could no longer talk. I did my best to comfort her and then asked, “What happened when he saw your grandfather?” She looked at me, grief-stricken. “He fainted.” The authorities wanted to get rid of this family and managed it. A new patient arrived one day to see the “younger doctor”, was duly examined and made a new appointment. The following day she rang to say that her husband was very angry because of what had happened.

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The doctor should have put down the receiver but he was too surprised to think of that, as nothing unusual had happened during the examination. He didn’t realise that he was being blackmailed, for the woman went on speaking and accused him of “interfering” with her. She threatened that her husband would go to the police. “He won’t have it! A filthy Indian raping his wife!” It was a setup – police were taping the conversation. All they wanted was to force the multiracial family to leave the country. Our friend was duly arrested, charged and released on bail. We could do so very little – only listen, be there for them and lend support. In the end the younger couple and their daughter left the country. The older couple decided that they could not manage a new start and stayed. But we lost touch as so often happens. One day years later I was travelling on a London tube, and I saw my young friend at the same moment she saw me … but she was in a passing train going the other way. We waved to each other, but couldn’t make contact.

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XI

THE SIXTIES

The fifties were the prologue to apartheid; the curtain only opened in the sixties. By then all the pillars of apartheid legislation were in place; all that remained was implementation, which truly began early in 1960. This was the year when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke of the “winds of change” in his famous Cape Town speech, winds which southern African whites did their best to stop from blowing past their borders. One month after Macmillan’s trip on 21 March 1960, the massacre of peaceful anti-pass law demonstrators in a township named Sharpeville near the industrial town of Vereeniging, hit the world’s news pages. For the first time apartheid penetrated international consciousness. Ironically, the tragic event of sixty-nine slaughtered and one-hundred-and-eighty injured which rightly caused such great anguish and set so much in train, would by today’s grim standards constitute a “small” massacre. The increasing violence of our world heralds a terrifying future. The dissolution of the Federation of Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (the Central African Federation) took place two years later. The independence of the republics of Zambia and Malawi followed. Southern Rhodesia took a longer, bloodier path before it became Zimbabwe in 1980. White Rhodesian settlers, white South and South West Africans, and the Portuguese colonists in Portugal’s southern African territories of Angola and Mozambique, were all implacably opposed to change. Moreover, South Africa governed South West Africa (Namibia) as though it was its fifth province and part of its territory. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

During the sixties, Britain granted independence to its three southern African high commission territories: Basutoland (Lesotho), Bechuanaland (Botswana) and Swaziland – and wars were fought in five southern African countries. The peoples of Namibia opposed the South African occupation under the banner of the South West African Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO). In 1965 Southern Rhodesia’s white Prime Minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally and illegally declared the independence (UDI) of his country from Britain. UDI was jubilantly welcomed in South Africa, where change followed swiftly on the heels of Sharpeville. The authorities detained thousands, banning the African nationalist parties of the ANC and its offshoot, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). These were only legalised in 1990. PAC, founded by Robert Sobukwe in 1959, had spearheaded the anti-pass protests which led to Sharpeville. Both parties were forced underground and organised military wings. New security legislation was introduced and the police were given the

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power to arrest anyone deemed to be in possession of information that allegedly threatened state security. Such persons could be kept in solitary confinement for questioning for one-hundred-and-eighty days without access to legal or any other aid. House arrests and banning orders to confine individuals to their homes,which forbade contact with others or participation in any group activities, were part of the package. Helen Joseph, the first to suffer house arrest, was to languish under her ban for nine years. She refused to be driven out of the country and in the end was able to participate in the process that led, after her death, to the 1994 democratic government. Her funeral in January 1993 was fittingly that of a national heroine. The secret service became all-powerful, infiltrating groups such as the ANC’s Umkontho we Sizwe or MK (“the spear of the nation”), PACS’s Poqo (pure), and the Armed Resistance Move (ARM), the latter being composed mainly of young white liberals.

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Capital fled the country immediately after Sharpeville, only to return with greater vigour when the tough measures were seen to stabilise the country. The sixties became a period of economic boom. At the end of the long-drawn-out Treason Trial (1956—1960), Mandela with one of the accused as well as a member of the defence team, made one more public appearance before going underground. Eighteen months later he was betrayed, arrested and sentenced for illegally crossing the border. MK members were arrested on 11 June 1963 on the farm Lillisleaf in the peri-urban suburb of Rivonia in Johannesburg, leading to the famous Rivonia Trial of 1964, in which Mandela and others were sentenced to life imprisonment. Two of those arrested had escaped; one was acquitted. A political vacuum in African politics followed, to be filled four years later by Steve Biko and his Black Consciousness movement. Urban youth was politicised, providing them with renewed confidence and leading to uprisings of the black ghettos. These met with bloody police reprisal on 16 June 1976, when twenty thousand Soweto schoolchildren demonstrated against the compulsary use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. Against this background, the life of white South Africans continued undisturbed. We continued to live in our Parktown flat, the upper part of a private residence. I’d have opted for cheaper accommodation at a less prestigious address, but Hans had chosen the apartment and felt comfortable in it,

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though it meant that I had to work harder than ever to cover expenses. Working for Newscheck meant that I began to write under my own name, while continuing to work for Hans and his German media. I also began to write short stories again. Hans was always ready to give advice and analysis. However, he didn’t think much of my first novel and said I was a better journalist than a creative writer, so I gave up the latter and only returned to writing novels in old age.

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In March 1960 we had a German visitor, a journalist working for the economic section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). His editor told him that apartheid was already well covered; he should find other topics to write about. After all, this South Africa was the fabled country of gold and diamonds with a wonderful climate. However, the young man still accompanied us on Sunday 20 March to a PAC press conference in Orlando. The PAC had begun a protest against the pass laws and had declared 21 March as a day of boycott. Masses responded. They stayed away from work, burnt passes and defied police to arrest them for carrying no passes. Sobukwe and his closest associates went to the police station to declare that they had no passes. They were not arrested, however, because the police had instructions not to make arrests since the demonstration had attracted international interest. In Sharpeville a crowd had gathered around the police station; it was rumoured that some VIP was to address the people. Terrified by the gathering crowd, the policemen called for reinforcements, which arrived in the shape of an armed vehicle. People stepped aside to allow it to enter the fenced police compound but one young policeman suddenly lost his nerve. He fired a shot and instantly the rest followed, firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Later the police claimed they had been under attack, but this was disproved, not least by photos shot by Ian Berry, a well-known photographer working for the black magazine Drum. When the firing began, he had hurled himself to the ground, while continuing to take photographs. His pictures made news internationally. Hans and his colleague had more than enough happenings to report on. The FAZ man’s articles, by-lined by “our man on the spot” made the front pages. One morning he asked his editor if he still wanted articles about the wonderful climate. There was no response. The two men travelled to Cape Town and happened to stand on the steps of Parliament during the march of the men of Langa. This township was home to hundreds of thousands of black migrant workers, most of whom marched that day to Parliament led by Philip Kgosane, a young PAC leader. They

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marched in silence, unusual for an African group, grimly determined to hand an anti-pass petition to the Minister of Justice. Inside Parliament the atmosphere was tense. Mounted police barred the streets. At a road block police and the marchers faced each other. An officer asked through a megaphone what the men wanted. “To see the minister.” “We cannot grant permission for that.” “Then we will march.” “We will shoot!” “You already have!”

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Stalemate. The police conferred, then asked for the leaders to come forward. Kgosane, dressed in shorts and flanked by several older men, walked across to negotiate. They refused to disperse and continued to insist on meeting the Justice Minister. The officer in command promised a meeting for the following day if they returned home peacefully. Philip Kgosane believed him. He returned to the men and was lifted on the shoulders of others to address the three thousand marchers. He said they had been promised an interview with Minister Erasmus the next day and appealed to the men to disperse peacefully. At first many demurred and wanted to continue the march. Kgosane persuaded them otherwise, telling them that as citizens they had a right to be heard and had been given a solemn promise for their leaders to meet the Justice Minister. The men turned. As quietly as they had come, so they departed. That same night, Kgosane was arrested together with several other PAC men. In Europe, whenever I was told at anti-apartheid meetings that one had to be patient and that violence was not the answer, I remembered Kgosane and his reasonable response to a firm promise. The white people had broken their word. I too was convinced that a government which used violence to silence opposition, could only be challenged by violence. Between 21 March and 9 April eighty-three people were killed and three-hundred-and-sixty-five injured. The numbers seem insignificant compared with the horrendous death toll during the transitional period that followed

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Mandela’s release in 1990, but the impact of Sharpeville cannot be underestimated. It heralded both the NP government’s determination to implement apartheid and the armed defiance of the black opposition. After Sharpeville the acting Prime Minister, Paul Sauer, temporarily lifted the pass restrictions and spoke of “a new page opening in South Africa’s history”. Liberals were jubilant, but the sense of triumph was short-lived. Prime Minister Verwoerd returned and everything went into reverse. Verwoerd, the inventor of classic apartheid, had spearheaded “Bantu education” and now fought dissent with an iron fist. He declared a state of emergency, during which many thousands were detained. On 5 October that year, Verwoerd came to Johannesburg to open an annual agricultural show. The sound of something like an airgun was heard as he sat down after his speech, when photographers had already packed up their gear. I was standing at the rear of the crowd and realised there was some sort of commotion on the platform and in the front rows. It took a few minutes to realise what had happened: Verwoerd had been shot. He was seriously injured and was rushed to a Pretoria hospital. The wouldbe assassin was a white farmer who had been outraged by Verwoerd’s policies.

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I left as quickly as I could to drive to the office of Newscheck. As I passed the building in which the liberal Rand Daily Mail was housed with other papers – and where I was to work shortly – a small Volkswagen drove past and I saw a passenger fire a shot into the foyer. The Mail was seen as a bastion of liberal opinion and was much hated by government supporters. However, as it was Saturday, there were few people about and no one was hurt. Later that afternoon the porter was approached by a diffident man, who said he had something that might interest the journalists. It was a box camera which contained a picture that became known internationally. It showed Verwoerd slumped in his seat, blood pouring from his face. None of the photographers had managed to get a picture of the fateful moment. The journalists who were present hurriedly searched their pockets and together produced eight hundred pounds, which the amateur happily pocketed. The journalists did very well out of their stake. That evening there was a knock at our door. One of my former colleagues from SAMA stood outside, a broad-shouldered middle-aged man, our former chief agent. He shuddered visibly at our abstract paintings before he said, “I’ve brought you something. A gas pistol. You don’t need a licence for it.” He

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pressed it into my hand and insisted that I should take it. “I think you leftwingers need protection. If Verwoerd dies, there’ll be a bloodbath, I’m telling you. I wanted to warn you.” He refused to stay, shook my hand warmly and left. I had the weapon for a long time, as a keepsake. Verwoerd miraculously survived. Afrikaners said that God had chosen this man to carry out His command to maintain the purity of His people. However, eventually he was to die a violent death in 1963 when a Coloured messenger stabbed him in Parliament. Verwoerd’s successor was John Vorster, a former justice minister, who had introduced tough security legislation in the wake of Sharpeville. It was an exciting and busy time for the media. We covered the emergence of MK (the military wing of the ANC and the CP) the arrests and detentions, and the government’s decision to leave the Commonwealth and turn South Africa into a republic on 31 May 1961.

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I was also able to travel abroad for Newscheck. One trip took me to Nigeria, where I went to Ibadan to interview Ulli Beier, an expert on African art. Born 1922 in Germany, he studied in the UK after the war, before going to Nigeria to teach. He became interested in the work of African artists, musicians and writers, founding the literary journal Black Orpheus in 1956. Beier was not in Ibadan, but I visited the Mbari-Mbayo Club, which he had founded a year before my visit, where I met Nigerian writers. I was also able to be present at the enstooling of a Yoruba Oba, an exciting occasion for a white South African ignorant of African tradition. During the same journey I visited Ghana where I met South African exiles, including Bettie du Toit, who was then working for Ghana radio. Together we set off by bus to Kumasi, a journey we thoroughly enjoyed. After a night in a government guesthouse, we were collected by a government vehicle to travel to the Ashanti gold mine. On the way our road was blocked by a fallen tree, which our driver attacked with an axe while some local women watched, mocking him for his poor performance. However, they invited us to stay for a palmwine feast to which all surrounding villages had been invited – such trees weren’t tapped every day. Bettie and I had a great time dancing with the women, until our driver suddenly whisked us away under a pretext. When we objected that we hadn’t said goodbye, he reluctantly told us that the chief wanted to buy us and was getting alarmingly angry when he was told we weren’t for sale. We laughed all the way to the mine. Unfortunately we never discovered the price he was prepared to pay.

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In Accra I stayed with friends – a young couple who had been forced to leave South Africa as they had been about to be arrested and charged under the Immorality Act which criminalised relations between people of different races. Dr Allistair Mundy-Castle was white, his partner Dolly was a so-called Coloured. 1962 proved to be a disastrous year for me. Hans had made close friends with a couple I will call Lang. Joan and Robert belonged to the group of friends he had made while I was in London. We once spent a long weekend together with several others at a beach house owned by Joan’s family. I had taken to neither of the couple; I disliked Joan’s flirtations and found Robert’s ideas on child rearing somewhat odd. He believed that all children should be educated at home – an impossible proposition. The Langs moved to Livingstone in Northern Rhodesia and occasionally visited Johannesburg, when they stayed with Joan’s parents. Sometimes we met at one of the many parties.

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In 1961, the Langs spent more time than usual in Johannesburg with their three children and Hans began to see a good deal of them. It began one afternoon when I returned home to find Hans talking to Joan. I was both surprised and pleased because, as so often before, he had been ill, hardly speaking for weeks, eating little and rarely bothering to get up or even shave. He was deeply depressed. Listless and complaining of pain, he had refused to see a doctor. So I was glad that he was up, shaven and talking to Joan. She had come to ask him to help Robert with a catalogue of African artifacts which Robert sold to tourist outlets such as the Kruger National Park. After this, Hans and the Langs were constantly together. At the same time we had a visitor: Dr Brettholz, Hans’s one-time boss who had shared his experience of the Reichstag fire. He had come to this country to cover South Africa’s break with the Commonwealth, and of course to see Hans. I had arranged a trip to the Northern Transvaal and in the end we made up a large party. Apart from Hans, Brettholz and a Swiss photographer, we were joined by the Langs and Margot. We visited Turfloop, one of the then new “bush universities” and were present at an initiation ceremony in Venda, where we watched a snake dance by young Venda girls. We also attended an Easter service at the Church of Zion, the largest of the African independent churches and sects and also visited Modjadji, the Lovedu rain queen. The Lovedu were an offshoot of the Luanda kingdom of Congo. Many legends were woven around the queen. Modjadji the First was said to have

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moved into the region in the early nineteenth century and was believed to be the offspring of a powerful king and his daughter, who had borne his child. One night his daughter-lover stole the king’s magic charms and fled with her daughter, together with faithful followers to find a home in the mountains of the Northern Transvaal. Modjadji, the daughter, possessed magic powers and was immortal. As goddess and rainmaker, she was unable to marry, though no doubt she had both lovers and children. Supported by a group of councillors, she was secretly married to one of these, who was never openly acknowledged as her husband.

With Hans in northern Transvaal, 1961

The children who lived in Modjadji’s kraal were allegedly those of Modjadji’s brides. Chiefs who paid her tribute also presented her with young girls who were considered to be her brides. Sometimes Modjadji presented one of these girls to a follower. When Modjadji’s powers waned, she took poison and her councillors instantly presented a reincarnation of the rain queen to the people, who would be chosen from the children of the royal kraal. No one

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would know who the successor would be or indeed that it was a successor, as Modjadji was considered immortal. She was the inspiration for Rider Haggard’s famous novel She. We drove as high up as we could before we climbed the rest of the way to Modjadji’s kraal. This was surrounded by a huge fence, with each pole an impressive totem, beautifully carved. We were greeted by several councillors who led us to their queen and entered her stone house barefoot. We too discarded our shoes. Modjadji received us with dignity and ceremony on the verandah, acknowledged our gifts with thanks and answered our questions patiently through an interpreter. A good-looking woman in her middle age, she was every inch a queen. Later she allowed me to climb up to her sacred garden, where she performed her annual rainmaking ceremony. In times of drought, many people made the pilgrimage to the rain queen. It was said that she had never failed to bring rain. When God and the ancestors were angry and they refused to send rain, it was only Modjadji who could reach them and make the peoples’ peace with God and the spirits they had offended. Even the great Zulu king, Chaka, paid tribute to Modjadji. The apartheid regime accepted Modjadji as a tribal chief in the area they had designated as the “homeland” of Lebowa. During our visit, Modjadji told us the story of the coming of the white people, which was translated for us.

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“When the first Boers came and fought the Sotho people, they retreated into the mountains. The people of Modjadji were never defeated and have never paid tribute to any nation. One of the Boer leaders wanted to see the face of Modjadji. He sent many messengers to her kraal. She refused. One day men on horseback rode up the hill. They threatened violence, unless the queen accompanied them to their leader. The councillors asked Modjadji for advice. She told them to be brave. Shortly afterwards a veiled woman dressed like the queen went with the white men to their leader. He threw back the veil. The woman spoke. ‘I am here, master.’ But the Boer knew this was not so. This woman did not bear the mark of a queen. Angrily he told his men to take her to a tent, exclaiming, ‘You have been cheated!’ When the men entered the tent they found the false Modjadji dead on the ground. She had taken poison. No other messengers ventured again into the mountains.” I had heard the tale before. The leader was allegedly Piet Retief, who was later murdered by the Zulu King Dingaan in 1838, which led to the terrible battle of Blood River on 16 December, when Boer rifles successfully defended

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a handful of their people against thousands of Zulus, whose bodies were swept downstream. For over a hundred years Dingaan’s Day was celebrated by white South Africans. Later the day was renamed Day of the Covenant and today it is the Day of Reconciliation. Under apartheid, Modjadji’s male representatives in the townships were known as “mothers”. As we left her kraal, we saw the clouds drift above the ridge. The interpreter, the native commissioner, explained that there were always clouds above those mountains, the Wolkeberge, the mountain of clouds.

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I soon settled into my job at Newscheck. The editor, Otto Krause, who described himself as the only Afrikaner Nationalist acceptable to liberals, was well educated and open to new ideas. One of my other colleagues was a young man named Harald Pakendorf, offspring of a German mission family. He too was a fervent Nationalist and was to become editor-in-chief of the Vaderland, an NP paper. Later he changed sides and was sacked because of his anti-apartheid comments. Harald became a respected commentator on South African affairs, one of several journalists who lost their jobs because of their anti-apartheid views. Among these was the last editor-in-chief of the Rand Daily Mail, Allister Sparks, author and long-term correspondent of the Washington Post and Observer. Another was Anthony (Tony) Heard, a onetime member of the Financial Mail staff in Cape Town, who became editor-inchief of the Cape Times. Tony was sacked after he published an interview with the ANC’s president in exile, Oliver Tambo. I met Harald in 1976 when we both covered the conference on Rhodesia’s constitution in Geneva, and Tony in 1995 when he was advisor to a government minister. At the time of Newscheck, Harald was young and inexperienced. He was about to get married and was looking for a suitable house to rent. I happened to know of a cottage available in an Afrikaner suburb and mentioned it to him. Shortly after the wedding, I went on one of my African trips and was away for some time. When I returned, I thought that Harald was keeping his distance from me and wondered why. Eventually I asked if anything was wrong. He said nothing. I waited. Then he burst out with: “Who owns that house?” “You must know that; you’ve signed the contract.” “Yes, but who is the real owner?” I knew that the owner of the cottage had been married and divorced and guessed that the house was registered under her married name. This was not the one by which she was known.

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Harald said, “Odd things happened.” “Such as?” “Stones thrown on the roof. Several blacks calling to ask for a job. Insults shouted at Lettie. Odd noises on the phone.” Harald’s wife was also a staunch NP member and a journalist working on an Afrikaans paper. I replied that it was usual for Africans to call on newcomers in an area in the hope of a job. “True, but we already have a servant and still people come.” One evening Harald’s phone rang but when he answered, no one responded. He shouted down the line, “Who is there?” Eventually a voice said in Afrikaans: “Meneer, you’d better come down to the station tomorrow.” He did. He was immediately asked how he came to rent the house. I dare say he mentioned my name, but I wasn’t concerned, as by this time Hans and I were known to be among the troublemakers and the police already had files on us both.

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The policeman replied that the owner was Bettie du Toit and at last Harald understood the odd happenings. Though an Afrikaner, Bettie was fiercely opposed to apartheid. Growing up as an orphan in a Dutch Reformed institution, she had worked in the garment industry, as did many poor Afrikaner women. She became involved in the Garment Workers Union and was subsequently employed by the union’s charismatic general secretary, Solly Sachs, father of the lawyer and later judge, Albert “Albie” Sachs. He had been expelled from the CP because of ideological differences. Bettie did not confine herself to trade union affairs, but was involved with the political system in general. She became the type of young Afrikaner whom other Afrikaners loved to hate. Named as a communist, she had been arrested on several occasions. She fought for the rights of Indian sugar plantation workers and in the fifties had taken part in the ANC’s defiance campaign. Nothing seemed to daunt her. Nadine Gordimer, our mutual friend, portrayed a Bettie-like figure in one of her novels. In 1978 Bettie wrote a book on trade unionism in South Africa with a foreword by Nadine, who paid tribute to Bettie’s immense courage. By then Bettie had long been exiled and had become blind. In the early sixties she fled the country – hence her cottage had been available. In 1992 Bettie was frail but determined to spend her final years at home, so with Nadine’s help she returned to South Africa.

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My own life took a new turn once Brettholz had returned to Zurich. Hans began to spend most of his time with the Langs. I have no idea how much work on Robert’s catalogue was actually achieved; it seemed to me that they simply enjoyed each other’s company. The Langs arrived each day at the flat to collect Hans after I had left for work. They sat for hours in Hans’s office, in coffee bars or restaurants, discussing the world’s problems. They also spent a good deal of time at the home of Joan’s parents. Joan’s father was a mining magnate with status and wealth to match. Hans often joined the Langs for dinner, after which they went to concerts, theatres or night clubs. Hans would ring me at lunchtime to ask if I wanted to join them. I did so once, at the city’s country club, but I had to get back to the office and couldn’t enjoy a leisurely lunch. I was also unable to join the evening activities, as I had to get up early. Once Robert said that he envied me. “You have no idea how lucky you are. You enjoy your job. I don’t enjoy anything much.”

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I said that I worked as I did because I needed to earn money, a remark to which he had no reply as the husband of an immensely wealthy woman. He and Joan belonged to a different class, which was one of the reasons I was puzzled by Hans’s friendship with them. I had good reason to be puzzled. Before his father’s death a year earlier, Hans had met up with old friends and took me to visit them in Lugano for a few days at the end of a business trip. His friends were Vilma von Roechling, the divorced wife of one of the Rhineland’s iron and steel magnates whom Hans had met during the thirties, and her one-time young lover, whom she subsequently adopted as her son. Frau von Röchling must have been enchanting in her youth. When I met her as an old woman, she still spent hours each day at her toilet to get ready to face the world. I thought she was too old and fragile to be burdened with our problems. She once told me that she could not imagine how any woman could live without a husband and lovers. She thought I was much too shy and too unconcerned with my femininity. Hans was much too faithful, she said, and advised me that relationships thrive on stress, jealousy and strife. A day before our departure Hans asked me to sort out his expenses for the bookshop, for which he had undertaken the European trip. Apart from receipts, I found three unopened letters, which I opened. At first I couldn’t understand the content, until it suddenly struck me that these were love letters. From Joan Lang.

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Hans had embarked on another affair! When I returned with him from London, I had asked him to tell me if he ever wanted another woman, as I couldn’t bear to be deceived. He had earnestly assured me I was the only woman who meant anything to him. He had never felt for anyone else the way he did for me. I had believed him. I was greatly distressed. I packed and took a taxi to the station, wanting to get to London as quickly as possible. However there was only one train later that evening. I was in tears and when a man tried to pick me up, I became almost hysterical. Then I remembered that I had a brooch which belonged to our hostess – we were staying at a hotel as her flat could not accommodate visitors. I therefore had to return to the hotel, where I found Hans who was greatly agitated. At first I refused to tell him why I was leaving. But I finally told him that he had again broken his word and had told me nothing of his friendship with Joan. He claimed not to know what I was talking about. When I mentioned the letters he laughed and said he knew she had a crush on him, but he had never given her cause to think that he was interested. Did I think he’d have anything to with “a little rich bitch” who constantly needed a new thrill? Joan was in the habit of falling in love; she had not only had lovers, but also enjoyed a close friendship with a woman and more recently with an older man and now the focus happened to be on Hans. “I didn’t bother to open the letters,” he protested and when I gave them to him, he tore them up.

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This was the reason why the Lang’s lengthy Johannesburg visit and their devotion to Hans had disturbed me. During the trip to the Northern Transvaal it was obvious, to Robert’s distress, that Joan was attracted to Brettholz who was even older than Hans – Joan was not yet thirty at this stage, seven years younger than I was. Since the Langs’ arrival in Johannesburg, I found myself living as a single. I saw Hans only rarely; he also kept away from other friends. Fortunately during this time I could rely on friends such as Ruth Katz, Margot Weiss and also Nadine. I was grateful to have such friends who cared about me, as I cared about them. Was I as good to others as my friends were to me? I don’t know. I did what I could, when needed. I provided advice and sympathy, but was always absorbed with daily chores, so that I could never do as much as I would have liked. I felt comfortable in Nadine and Rheinhold Cassirer’s beautiful home, an old two-storey house in Parktown, which today is no longer one of the

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fashionable suburbs, but where Nadine still lives. The well-kept garden with its unique view of Johannesburg reflects the tranquility she needs. Her study is a tiny room where she works regularly in the mornings. She still used an old portable typewriter until recently when she was no longer able to find ribbons for it and had to switch to a computer. No one would dream of disturbing her during her working hours.

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In northern Transvaal, 1961. From left to right: the “Native Commissioner” (seated), behind him Hans Weiss (seated), me leaning at the car; standing at the table is Margot Weiss, seated in front is Dr. W. Brettholz

In the course of my first visit to the Cassirer house – which Nadine shared with her husband Reinhold and their children before the latter left home – I admired a picture which hung above the fireplace and said this was the best Daumier print I had ever seen. Hans laughed. It was no print. This was the original. The Cassirer collection belonged to Reinhold’s mother, who had married the Berlin banker Fürstenberg after the death of her first husband, Rheinhold’s father. Before I had met either Nadine or her son, I had worked for Lottie Fürstenberg for some time, helping with her correspondence. I found her fascinating and loved to listen to her tales of fashionable Berlin and some of its characters, one of whom was Lottie’s sister-in-law, the famous actress Tilla Derieux, wife of Paul Cassirer, whom Lottie disliked. When Tilla divorced him, Paul committed suicide in his solicitor’s office. Once Lottie sighed: “Every time one of my sons gets divorced, it costs me a

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Cezanne!” The Cassirers were not snobs and never made me feel uncomfortable. Unlike Hans and me, Nadine and Rheinhold led well-regulated lives. They appreciated Hans’s intellect and understood his frequent depressions; in other words, they were good friends. When I returned to Johannesburg in 1990 for the first time in twenty-five years and stayed for a few days with them, I felt as much at home as in the past. I had the same feeling on a visit in 2009, when I again stayed with Nadine for a few days. Her husband had died a few years before.

New Year’s Eve 1961 at the nightclub Ciros, Johannesburg: from right to left: next to me my brotherin-law Walter Schloss, Margot Weiss, Robert Lang, my sister Margot Schloss, Mr. Morgenroth and Ruth Katz

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Way back in the early sixties, my sister realised something was wrong with my marriage. She came to see me and offered me money to enable me to return to London, but I didn’t accept her generous offer. Yet that meeting turned into an exchange of confidences, the only time in our adult lives that we talked openly with each other. Margot had decided to marry very young to escape the poverty in which we lived. When our father retired (after working for his son-in-law as I mentioned) Margot was there for our parents, while I was never in a position to help. Sometimes she understandably resented that, just as she disliked my choice of someone as unconventional as Hans – someone who, like our father, was unable to earn an adequate living. Nonetheless Margot and I were fond of each other and until her death, she worried about me, frequently sending me clothes apart from her regular letters. The Langs stayed in Johannesburg until New Year’s Eve: a night which turned out to be the last of my married life. At the time we were friendly with

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Adam Leslie, an actor, and his wife, the artist Judith Gluckmann. Judith and Ruth Katz had also been close friends. One of Judith’s watercolours had pride of place in our living room. She had been very ill for a long time and passed away a few months before that year’s end. Adam had to continue with his work – the show must go on. This was particularly difficult for him on New Year’s Eve, as it was also his wedding anniversary. I had helped Adam with his accounting (as with Lottchen Fürstenberg, I was always keen to have extra jobs) and he asked me to organise a party of friends at the club that night, to give him the support he needed. Our party was an odd mix, including the Langs, Margot, Ruth, my sister and brother-in-law and other friends. Perhaps that night and its aftermath is the reason why I never really enjoy New Year celebrations. Hans danced several times with Joan, but somehow managed not to dance with me. We all stayed at the club until dawn, when we went to Adam’s lovely house for breakfast before going home. I had scarcely fallen asleep when someone knocked at the door. Hans got up and returned to tell me that the Langs had called to say goodbye; they were returning to Livingstone.

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Great news. I thought this intense friendship was another passing phase in Hans’s life. I had gone through several such episodes with him. Once Hans had been obsessed with music and he went to every possible concert, with or without me. At another time art was the only topic that interested him. I also remembered our UKV friends and the young Germans he had befriended and then as suddenly dropped. Now, I thought, he’d get over the Langs. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Shortly after the Langs’ departure, Hans again became withdrawn and ill. Then a telegram arrived: Hans’s father was terminally ill. So I packed, bought the ticket, made sure he caught the plane – and he arrived in time to see his father before he died. They had never understood each other, father and son, but they loved each other, no matter how much Hans denied it. I was happy that Hans wrote daily at the time, confiding his thoughts and feelings which was something he hadn’t done for months. I read each letter several times, glad that the Lang friendship was a thing of the past. My hopes of emigrating were revived. Our lifestyle was not that of the average white South African, so it was not this which had held Hans in

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Johannesburg. It had more to do with his insecurity and fear of change. I was confident enough to think I could find work outside South Africa. I had done so once and could do it again. I hated this society, where income depended on the colour of one’s skin. Though we were involved in politics and did what we could, above all, reporting the effect of apartheid, it was not enough to rid me of my feeling of guilt to be living there. Two days after the death of Hans’s father, I was woken up at one in the morning by a telephone call. A voice I recognised as that of Douglas Portway, said very quickly: “I have to talk to you. Open the door when you hear my car.” Douglas no longer lived in Johannesburg; he had come to visit his mother. A few minutes later I heard the car. The coffee was ready. “The police have searched Hans’s office. Gerritt, from the bookshop downstairs, saw them. He noticed the lights and thought Hans had forgotten to turn them off. He was on his way upstairs, when he was stopped by the caretaker who was drunk and said, ‘The police are there.’ So I came to warn you, in case they come to arrest you. Hans mustn’t come back here.”

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I agreed. Our writing made us suspect, apart from contact with activists and African friends. I wasn’t arrested and wrote to Hans at the private address of a journalist, Werner Holzer of the Frankfurter Rundschau, later its editor-inchief, as I was sure the police had his mother’s address and those of the papers and radio stations for which he worked. I told him about the raid and said that he should remain where he was. I would sort everything out before joining him in a few months’ time, adding that we had nothing to lose, except our debts. If he didn’t wish to live in Germany, we could go to London where I was sure I would find a job. There was no reply. This was disturbing, as he had written every day until then. I heard nothing until a week later when a brief telegram arrived: “Travelling to Switzerland for few days. To relax. Stressed by father’s death.” Why Switzerland? How could he afford it? I had to assume that his mother was footing the bill; that perhaps she was travelling with him to Switzerland. I rang Douglas. “He’s coming back.” We both met Hans at the airport. I had spoken to a lawyer just in case, but in the event he was not needed. Hans was not arrested on arrival. A few days later he was ordered to report to Greys’ Building, where he was interrogat-

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ed. Who did he work for, who were his sources, why did he retain German citizenship? It was unpleasant, a warning shot across the bows. From the moment Hans met me at the airport I sensed something had happened. In the car he was silent, speaking neither to me nor to Douglas, who had been one of his closest friends and whom he had not seen for some time. As soon as we reached the flat, he withdrew to the bedroom, where he remained secluded for several days. At the opening of an exhibition of Eduoardo Villa’s sculptures, I explained that Hans was ill, when he suddenly turned up and within minutes was once more the life and soul of the party. The following day he invited me to dinner. Odd. The invitation was formal as if we were merely acquaintances. He took me to a restaurant with a dance floor, and as we ate, we watched the dancing. Hans suddenly said, “I keep thinking about father’s death.” “I understand.” He went on talking, as if we were in the middle of a discussion on the subject. “Everyone is alone from the cradle to the grave. One can’t live through someone else. I tried to do that with you. Now you have to get used to being on your own. I think that one isn’t responsible for anyone else other than oneself.”

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I was both dismayed and confused. “What is that supposed to mean?” He sighed. Ordered coffee. Said: “I knew you wouldn’t understand,” and added, “Of course I don’t intend to divorce you.” I was on the verge of tears. Nothing made any sense. The previous months had been difficult with his constant togetherness with the Langs, the death of his father … but what did that have to do with us and our marriage? Perhaps he had been living second-hand through me as he claimed – but what had changed? I began to weep. The remark about divorce had hit me.“What is it you want?” I asked helplessly. “To be independent. Every person has the right to freedom.”

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He would say no more. I drove back slowly, barely able to see the street. I still remember the name of the restaurant: Balalaika, which was situated on the outskirts of the city. About a week later Joan turned up in my office. Could she speak to Hans? She had left Northern Rhodesia, as Robert had gone overseas on a business trip and in the light of the political situation in the country, it wasn’t a good idea for a white woman and children to stay on their own. I told her that Hans would ring shortly; he always phoned around lunchtime. When he did so, they arranged to meet. I was suddenly suspicious and rang the hotel where Joan was staying. She had said that she wasn’t with her parents. Yes, she had arrived that morning. I felt ashamed of my suspicion. In a few days, the same pattern emerged as before. Hans would be out late and was still asleep when I got up. Joan would collect him, as previously he had been collected by Joan and Robert. I no longer had the feeling that we shared a home. After a few months of this I felt defeated. I poured out my misery to Margot, who was going to Europe on a refresher course for six weeks. She offered me her flat during that time, so I left a note for Hans, saying that I still had not understood what he had meant about needing to be free. It seemed his idea of freedom meant giving up work so that he could spend the time with his friend. As I couldn’t tolerate this, I would stay at Geraldine Court for six weeks.

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This brought him to my office. It was the first time in weeks that I saw him awake. He looked pale; the furrows in his cheeks were deeper than ever. “I don’t want you to move,” he said. “People might think there’s something wrong with our marriage.” This was so ridiculous that I had to laugh. That made him angry. “Don’t you see! If you move out, it would seem to confirm it – I need to be with someone. You’re always busy and working!” I said sharply, “Someone has to pay the rent.” “Very well, if you insist. I will move out. If someone rings, you can say I’m on a trip and I’ll be back in six weeks.” I hardly knew what to say. “Six weeks?”

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“Well, that’s what you said. That you wanted to be on your own for six weeks.” I was too upset to explain that this was merely the period Margot would be overseas. Hans took a flat on a short-term lease and I helped him move. I asked hesitantly if he and Joan had meanwhile become a couple. He denied any intimacy and said he wasn’t interested in sex; he was too ill and depressed. To my surprise, he asked me to continue to ghost for him. Perhaps it was even more surprising that I agreed. He used to bring me the material, explain what he thought should be said and leave me to do the writing. Our temporary separation was supposed to be secret. However, a few days later I received a phone call from Robert Lang – from Livingstone. He knew that Hans had moved out. “I’m coming to Johannesburg on Friday. I’m going to shoot Joan and Hans and the children. And of course myself.” He spoke calmly, as though saying nothing out of the ordinary. I clutched the receiver. “Robert, this is crazy! We must talk. Hans is difficult and at the moment he’s ill and depressed.” He scarcely listened. “I’ll be arriving tomorrow evening.”

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“When? I’ll meet you.” I replaced the receiver, feeling faint. A few minutes later the phone rang again. It was a friend with whom I had discussed my problems. “Did Robert ring you? I thought so. He phoned me and when I told him you and Hans were separated, he said he had waited for something like that. Now he could commit suicide!” I took a deep breath. “He told me he would shoot them: Joan, Hans, the children, himself. This is impossible; he’s sick … worse than Hans!” She asked: “You don’t really know anything about Robert, do you? He was an orphan, or semi-orphan. Joan was his first love and the marriage was his first home. If he lost her and the children he wouldn’t be able to bear it.” “I’m meeting him at the airport.”

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“Good. Bring him to our place.” She and her husband lived close to the airport. I was due to spend the weekend in the home of a friend in Rivonia. She too was leaving on an overseas trip and had offered me her lovely house and garden. I barely slept that night; I had a searing headache as well as toothache. When I dragged myself into the bathroom in the morning I barely recognised myself. My cheek was swollen, my eyes were almost invisible. I looked like the caricature of a patient in a dentist’s waiting room. Instead of going to the office, I went to my dentist (another old friend) who was horrified when she saw me. When she touched the tooth, I almost jumped out of my skin. I survived the treatment and she took me to a private room, tucked me under a blanket and gave me a drug. “Go to sleep. When you wake up, you can go home.” She touched my forehead and asked, “You’re very upset; what is it? Hans? I hardly expected anything else.” She belonged to the group of friends from the UKV days. “When you wake up, I’ll give you a box of tablets. One tablet will ease the pain; two will send you to sleep. If you take any more, it might send you permanently to sleep. Take care.” I woke after some hours and felt strong enough to drive to Rivonia. My friend was ready to go to the airport. I accompanied her, as her chauffeur was supposed to bring Robert and me back to her house. “Don’t forget he lives in Alex – he has to be home in good time. Don’t keep him too long.” It was Friday. I knew it would be dangerous for anyone to be out late. Friday night was the night of the tsotsis,when they were on the lookout for workers and their pay packets.

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My Rivonia friend was a young widow, a successful businesswoman. At the airport, to her fury, she spotted a familiar face: it seemed she would be on the same flight as a sworn enemy, a woman named Cilly. The two women had once been rivals. I also knew Cilly: she had been one of Hans’s girlfriends while I was in London. He had admitted it, saying he needed someone after I’d left him. She saw me at once and asked, “Are you going to the Lufthansa party? I saw Hans there just now.” Hans was at the airport! And Robert due in a few hours! I was terrified. I couldn’t face a public scene. It occurred to me that Robert might have a gun, but then told myself that this was impossible; no one was allowed to travel by air with a firearm.“What party?”

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“Lufthansa’s inaugural flight. The Chief Rabbi of Germany will be on board. Hans is doing an interview. Didn’t he tell you?” Hardly. We no longer lived together. I stammered something, pointed to my swollen cheek and wished her a good flight. I realised that Hans didn’t know Robert was due to arrive shortly … it was one of those silly coincidences. All I could do was to hope that we wouldn’t meet, that no one would tell him they’d seen me. My tooth ached. I felt terrible while I sat waiting for two hours after my friend’s departure, until the arrival of Robert’s flight. I saw him at once, a slim, light-haired Englishman, coat slung over his shoulder. He looked absolutely normal. I sighed with relief and greeted him. Neither of us seemed to have much to say. “I’ve got a car waiting,” I explained. “The poor driver should have been home ages ago.”

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It was the same as on the phone; he didn’t listen to anything I said. “Can we go to the Bertrams?” This was the couple who had invited us to visit them. Robert spoke to the driver and asked politely if he could drive us to our friends. Resigned, the man nodded and told me that he would have to sleep in Rivonia as it was too late for him to return to Alexandra Township. He seemed to understand that this was not a normal kind of evening. While we were with our friends, Robert behaved impeccably. He spoke of the political developments in Northern Rhodesia, where the ANC under the teacher-turned-politician Harry Nkumbula had been overtaken by the more vigorous United National Independence Party (Unip) led by Kenneth David Kaunda. Robert said that Kaunda would become the country’s first prime minister. Unip, an offshoot of the ANC, had been formed in 1959 by a group of young men who found Nkumbula’s policies towards Britain too meek and conciliatory. I had become more familiar with regional politics, thanks to my trips into neighbouring countries, during which I had also met and interviewed Dr Hastings (later “Kamuzu”) Banda, leader of the Nyasaland Congress Party and others including Roy Welensky, then still head of the moribund Central African Federation. Robert hadn’t been serious, I decided; he must have been joking on the phone. An odd joke, but still … he sounded calm. Normal. I was relieved and thought once we got to Rivonia, Robert wouldn’t stay long. I expected he’d booked a hotel room and would leave after the obligatory cup of tea.

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When we arrived, I realised that Robert was ravenous and glad of the food which had been left for us. I still felt sick and my head ached. “You can take my car,” I suggested. “Then you could come back tomorrow for lunch in the garden. What about twelve? Where are you staying?” He replied tonelessly: “I always stay in Illovo.” That had me worried. His parents-in-law lived in Illovo; that was where Joan was staying with the children. “I thought they didn’t know you were coming?” His hands trembled. “No, no, they mustn’t know! I’m going to kill them.” I quickly poured him another cup of tea and walked through the L-shaped house to search for a suitable bedroom. The guest wing was locked – I couldn’t find the key. I had the use of the master bedroom, and finally found a small bedroom, some blankets and made up a bed for Robert. I returned to the living room where Robert was sitting, staring into space. “You can stay here for the night,” I told him. “You’ll have to use my bathroom.” I was very tired. Robert got up, like a child doing as it was told. I waited while he was in the bath and then I slipped into a dressing gown. My toothache had returned, so I decided to take some of the painkillers. I couldn’t find them. Suddenly I remembered that I had told Robert about them, had repeated my friend’s warning: one for pain, two for sleep, more for …

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Fortunately he hadn’t locked the bathroom. I opened the door. Robert stood naked at the taps, the bottle of pills open on a stool beside him. The bath water was spilling onto the floor and into the bedroom. I turned off the taps, picked up the tablets, realising he had swallowed a few. I pulled towels out of the linen cupboard, trying to wipe up the water. Robert stood silent and trembling. Only then did I understand how deeply disturbed he really was. He was shivering. I threw a gown over him, found a jumper and gave that to him. Still behaving like a child, he put both on. “I’ll make some coffee,” I said. “Come into the kitchen, it’ll be warm there.” It gets chilly at night on the Highveld; this was May, the start of the cold season. The coffee was strong. I thought we both needed that. Robert gulped the first cup down; I poured another. Suddenly he rushed into the garden, where he was violently sick. When he returned, he asked if he could possibly have another cup of tea. I thought that was possible. I also thought it was time to talk. He rested his

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arms on the kitchen table, lowered his head and began to weep. “I … I kept wanting to talk to you. But they wouldn’t let me. She said … she said you mustn’t ever find out. Otherwise Hans would be angry. And, and … if I told you, she wouldn’t let me see the kids again.” It was as if a dam had burst. Once he had begun to talk, he didn’t stop. He talked as if his life depended on it. All night. Past dawn until eight in the morning.

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Robert talked about his life. He was an orphan, had been born in India where his father was an army officer. His mother had died in childbirth; he had been sent back to England to be brought up by a maiden aunt and a stern Victorian grandfather. He spent a cold, loveless childhood, was sent at a young age to boarding school, and spent holidays at his grandfather’s home. He had been a lonely, unhappy boy who hated school. Only the art master was kind to him. His father had remarried and had other children, but did not take Robert into the family. After school, he served his national service with a cavalry regiment near Hamburg, which he enjoyed. Cambridge followed and after graduation he taught English in a Swiss school. There he met Joan, then sixteen and the girlfriend of a colleague. Joan had been sent to Switzerland to school. When her mother heard of the affair with Robert, she came to Switzerland, approved of Robert and took both her daughter and her friend to South Africa. The wedding was the social event of that year. Robert refused to join his father-in-law’s mining finance company and took a job at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The marriage proved difficult. The stories Robert told of Joan’s affairs sounded fantastic. Perhaps Hans had been right. Had I lived a sheltered and protected life after all? In Northern Rhodesia Robert had created a small artists’ village where Africans produced carvings, which he marketed worldwide. “Joan got to know Hans when she asked his advice while she was having an affair with an older, married man – a German. When he became ill, they both flew to Johannesburg, where he died.” I remembered Hans saying in Lugano that Joan always needed a new toy, a dog, a new girlfriend, an affair. Now she’d had a European intellectual, thirty years her senior. “Last year I asked Hans to help with the catalogue of the carvings. But we never got down to it; we kept going out, spending every day with each other.

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We’d go to his office, yes, but our talks over coffee and other meals were more important. The children were looked after, either at kindergarten or at home.” I said: “Somehow it seems as if Hans was having an affair with you both … all three of you betrayed me.”

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In the 1960s

He nodded. Told me that he forced Joan to leave on New Year’s day for Livingstone. When they reached their home, Joan refused to have anything to do with him and locked him out of the bedroom. In despair he rang Hans. (Naturally, I thought bleakly.) Hans, his best friend, comforted Robert and told him to be patient. His wife was under stress; her thirtieth birthday was approaching and she felt desperate, certain this would mean the end of her youth. He told Robert he was certain that it would work out in the end. Robert discovered by chance the reason for Joan’s rejection: she wanted Hans. She told Robert that she was going to Johannesburg, to be close to Hans. That was all she wanted, she said, nothing else. “How did you react?”

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He hesitated. “I told her I didn’t care. I wanted to be with her. They are both important to me. You must understand, I didn’t want to be alone! And then she went to meet him.” “Meet him?” “Yes. He was in Frankfurt, wasn’t he?” Of course. The Swiss trip suddenly made sense. The strange behaviour on his return. It also explained his return to South Africa. He wanted to be close to Joan. He hadn’t been concerned about my warning; he had already decided to stop writing, so he saw no harm in returning. Robert was still speaking. “She came back after a short while but didn’t stay – she immediately left for Joburg.” “That can’t be right. She only came here a week afterwards. She came to the office to ask for Hans.” “That was only pretence. It was getting difficult for them to meet without you finding out. They had to let you know that she was here. She moved from the Carlton to another hotel.”

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So my suspicion had been right after all. I swallowed another tablet. Now I knew. How stupid I had been, how gullible. And how arrogant, to think that I could achieve something that no one else had managed: to create an open relationship with Hans. I rang a friend, a pathologist, the brother of Judith Gluckman, who was married to Joan’s step-sister. I told him that Robert needed help urgently. Could he find a psychiatrist? Robert made no objection, took my car and said he would return in the evening. I went to sleep, dazed by everything that had happened. Late that afternoon Robert returned. He had seen a psychiatrist, he said and then he too went to sleep. The visit to the psychiatrist turned out to have been a major tactical error. Shortly after Robert’s return, the phone rang. “Puttchen!” Hans’s familiar voice. Calling me by the pet name he had invented. Puttchen, little chicken. Said he had telephoned my office on Friday to be told I was ill, whereupon he had gone to the flat, where the servant said I had gone “to the farm”. Rivonia

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was a peri-urban area where farms still existed, such as Lilliesleaf, the ANC’s secret headquarters. At the airport, he was told I was there as well. He had searched for me, afraid that I was leaving the country. “Really?” I was amazed that I could speak normally. “How was I going to pay for the ticket? With our debts?” He told me he had been concerned when the psychiatrist told Joan that Robert was in town and that he had talked to me. That was how he had finally found out where I was. I asked what had happened after the psychiatrist had phoned Joan. “She rang her lawyer. The children are hers according to British law. She can’t be forced to return to her husband. But this has nothing to do with us.” Didn’t it? I was still hazy from too little sleep, too much emotion. Robert stayed in Rivonia for the rest of the weekend. Then we cleaned the house. I think the servants must have been amazed at the pile of towels we hung out to dry. Robert planned to stay with friends. He hoped to see his children and talk to Joan. When I walked out of the dentist’s consulting room on Monday morning, Hans was waiting for me. We talked; I said I was all right; we made an appointment. I was on the point of saying, come back – if you really care for me, let’s try again. But it was not to be. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

I suddenly had the urge to do something to cheer me up and to be nice to myself. Nearby was a small boutique, where we sometimes bought a blouse or some similar item. I usually paid a deposit and saved up until I could pay the balance. I had asked them to put a jacket aside for me so now I went to the shop to collect it. I paid the balance and they wrapped up my present to myself. The saleslady talked: “I know you chose this with your husband. He has amazing good taste. When he brought this young woman, a new customer, he proved it. He knew exactly what would suit her. I must say, we were very pleased – it isn’t every day we have a customer who can afford to spend two hundred pounds on one shopping expedition.” I felt this as the biggest betrayal of all. Hans had discovered this shop, had been delighted when the first clothes I had tried on had fitted me perfectly.

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Now he had taken Joan there. And needless to say, she did not have to save for six months before she could buy a jacket for ten pounds. I went to the office, rang a lawyer friend and told him I wanted to divorce Hans. At once.

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XII

FLIGHT AND TRAVEL

My decision to divorce Hans naturally changed everything. But before this happened, I undertook various trips for Newscheck. My travels that year were even more interesting than those I had previously undertaken. My first stop was Northern Rhodesia, as Robert had returned to Livingstone. He had meanwhile met Joan at her parents’ home where they had quarrelled and he had lost his temper. He said she had teased him by playing the piano while he tried to talk to her. Whatever the truth of the matter, Joan had called for help and he had been literally thrown out of the house. As she had warned, he was never allowed to see his children again – not then nor at any other time after that. Joan said she wanted no further contact with Robert; that she couldn’t explain it, but that’s how she felt. As for the children, the court could decide who was to be given custody. Shortly after this, Robert plunged into a love affair with the wife of one of his friends. I was appalled when he told me. Another marriage would be destroyed! Did Robert have to prove that he was still attractive to women? I thought that his wounded pride was stupid and told him so. However, shortly before Robert returned to Livingstone, Joan called on me to ask a favour. “I know Robert listens to you. Please talk to him. He told us he’s threatening to commit suicide. I can’t bear the thought …”

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Hans had sent her – Hans, who knew me better than anyone else. He knew that I could not and would not refuse. I rang Robert while Joan was still with me. He sounded upset, almost incoherent. “Yes,” he said, “I told her she would have to search for me; this was the last time she’d be speaking to me.” I suddenly understood why Joan was desperate. Robert was truly beside himself and sounded utterly distraught. His love affair was irrelevant; only his relationship with Joan and the children really mattered. I said, “Robert, you don’t really mean that.” “I do mean it!” Then he abruptly changed the subject, asking if I would come to Livingstone. I immediately agreed. Joan thanked me; we were both relieved that his threats hadn’t been serious. A few days later he rang to tell me that he had persuaded his half-sister Pamela to visit him. He also talked of his new lover, who had told her husband about Robert and had come to an arrangement with him. She was to visit Robert and live with him “on trial” for two months. It seemed ridiculous to me – but then I hadn’t exactly proved to be a success in relationships.

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Robert met me at the airport in Livingstone. At that time it was no more than a landing strip and an old colonial-style Nissen hut, probably a hangover from the war, when RAF airmen used to train in Rhodesia. We drove along the red dust roads and to my delight, Robert talked and seemed happier, less tense. He took me to see something: a wonderful view of one of the world’s most marvellous sights, the Victoria Falls. Robert knew the area well. He led the way to a spot from where we could see – and listen to – the thunder of the water cascading over the rocks. It was an unforgettable experience. David Livingstone called them “angels in flight” when he first set eyes on these stupendous falls, and Zambians aptly named them Mosi-oa-Tunya, the “smoke which thunders”. From the Falls we drove to a township. I was a journalist and a great deal was happening in Northern Rhodesia which was of interest to journalists. We approached a huge crowd; everywhere I saw people who stood, sat and listened. A man on a makeshift platform was addressing the crowd.

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Robert knew him. “Sikota Wina,” he said. “One of the two Wina brothers from Barotseland – good friends of Kaunda.” That afternoon was to be my introduction to Zambian politics. I saw police everywhere, white men dressed in the colonial style of khaki shirts, jackets and shorts with knee-high socks. They listened carefully, watching every movement. The crowd made way for us; someone on the platform had recognised Robert. I whispered in Robert’s ear, “Why are the police here? It’s only a matter of months before the first election.” It was a foregone conclusion that the United National Independence Party (Unip) would form the first black government. All African nationalist parties in the three countries that made up the Central African Federation had opposed the federation which was now being dissolved. At the time I did not expect the long and bloody bush war in Southern Rhodesia, which was only to end in 1979. The meeting was part of Unip’s election campaign. The party had an easy ride to power, but sadly, it did not to lead the country to prosperity. At this point, Northern Rhodesia was considered a wealthy country. The Copperbelt close to the Congo border had led to the industrialisation of the northern region. However, the new government faced many problems, not the least of which was the fragmentation of the population into small nations; some experts put the number at seventy-two, but several of these were merely large extended families or clans. The country was geographically divided. The important nations were the Tonga in the south, the Lozi in the west (in Barotseland which became the Western Province), Nguni-speaking groups in

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the east, and the Bemba in the north, with Nianja being spoken in the central area.

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Kenneth Kaunda was born in the North, the son of a Bemba mother and a missionary father from Nyasaland (later Malawi) who had settled among the Bemba. This made him an outsider, able to disassociate himself from ethnic loyalty – which was a good thing at the time but became a seed for discontent in later years. The issue of what constituted a “true” Zambian was still alive in the late nineties during the days of Kaunda’s successor, Frederick Chiluba, whose party defeated Unip in the 1991 elections. “KK”, as his friends called him, remained in power for almost thirty years. I liked, admired but also criticised him. He was immensely charming, which explained his popularity despite many disastrous decisions and policies. Kaunda failed above all to exploit the country’s agricultural base; investments from copper were ploughed back into the industry instead.

Kenneth Kaunda shortly before Zambia’s independence 1964

More was still to come. Livingstone, the border town between Southern and Northern Rhodesia, was home to both Tonga and Lozi. Sikota Wina spoke to the audience in both languages, occasionally slipping into English. The Lozi, a proudly independent people who were devoted to their King (the Litunga),

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had been reluctant to support a Nationalist-governed republic. Men such as the Winas were opposed by Lozi traditionalists. I was to learn the intricacies of Zambian politics in time to come. Robert had brought me to the meeting because he sympathised with and supported African aspirations. Though typically English, Robert was hardly a typical white Northern Rhodesian, understanding as he did that the future of both Rhodesias was black. During the colonial era, the Copperbelt had been a magnet for white engineers, metallurgists and technicians. All mining staff were white as in South Africa; black people were labourers only. White people were employed as contract workers and were extremely well paid. Many spent their money mainly on alcohol and black women. Among the white staff were many Afrikaners, who traditionally moved northwards. In Kenya I had met several who lived in Eldoret, where they had carved out farms for themselves. At independence most of them returned to southern Africa.

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Constitutional talks on Northern Rhodesia had taken place while Robert was in London, so Robert had phoned Kaunda’s hotel to wish the delegation good luck. In a typical gesture, Kaunda impulsively sent for the young man. They instantly liked each other. The Unip leaders who came to Robert’s home after the meeting, told me that they needed friends like Robert. I met three Unip leaders that night: Sikota Wina, Reuben Kamanga and Dingiswayo Banda. All three were destined to play a major part in the country’s affairs. Wina later became a long-serving Minister of Information and, in the fullness of time, a controversial figure who fell out with Kaunda. He married a Lozi princess and both were allegedly involved with drug trafficking. Sikota’s wife, the Princess Nkatindi, had worked as a secretary in the office of the Times of Zambia while I was business editor of that paper in the seventies. Sikota’s brother Arthur became a successful Finance Minister. Decades later, all three became founding members of the Unip opposition party led by Chiluba. Dingiswayo Banda became Minister of Labour. Reuben Kamanga, a major figure in the Eastern Province and a stalwart KK man, was a permanent member of Kaunda’s government, no matter how often he changed his cabinet. Such events were yet to come. That day, they were enthusiastic young men looking forward to a bright future for their country and for themselves. None of us could foresee the dark times ahead, or the deep economic crisis into which Zambia was to be plunged, partly through KK’s economic policies.

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I was happy that the Unip men considered Robert as a friend. They stayed overnight after we spent a stimulating evening together. The country was on the brink of a new era in which Robert’s guests would play a part. I also liked Robert’s sister and was glad that she had come to support her brother. The following day we left for Lusaka, where I hoped to interview Kaunda. We drove along the dangerous strip roads, which terrified me. Northern Rhodesia was a vast, sparsely populated country, so the administration had saved money on road-building by tarring two strips on secondary roads. This meant that one had to watch out for oncoming traffic and take evasive action. Vehicles passing each other had to drive with two wheels on an asphalt strip and two wheels on sand, as a result of which, cars tended on occasion to spin out of control. Sometimes it was difficult to gauge the distance or be certain that the other vehicle would really get off the strip. I found this hair-raising, so instead concentrated on the landscape with its sparse shrubs and endless expanse of thorn trees, on the occasional villages we passed, and on the sad sight of children with stomachs bloated from malnutrition.

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We stayed at the Ridgeway Hotel, situated on a hill overlooking the city centre. The hotel belonged to South Africa’s multinational Anglo American Corporation, which had a major stake in the country’s copper mines. During dinner a waiter whispered something in Robert’s ear. Harry Nkumbgula was holding an election meeting that evening. Immediately after dinner we drove to a nearby township, where we spent a memorable evening. We joined the crowd in a hall, enjoying the dancing and singing before Nkumbula arrived to the roar of the crowd and the ululating of the women. He noticed our white faces and we were duly introduced and invited to his nearby home, where I interviewed him. In the seventies, Nkumbgula’s daughter married one of my friends, Robert (Bob) Liebenthal, one of the bright young economists Kaunda had appointed as his consultants. Bob was the son of German Jews who had fled to Britain. Bob and Ompie later lived with their children in the United States, where Bob was employed by the World Bank. When I visited Zambia in 2009, the couple were living in Lusaka in retirement, but still involved in the current affairs of their country. “Kaunda is no racist,” Robert Lang told me. “Zambia won’t have anything like Mau Mau.” He was referring to the revolt of the Kikuyu against the white Kenyan settlers. “My Unip friends call the opposition to Federation ‘chachacha’ time.” Northern Rhodesia was spared a bloody anti-settler campaign, with only a small number of victims of the chachacha days. Later, when I walked through Lusaka’s Chachacha Road, I was reminded of Robert. South

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Africa’s ANC under President Oliver Tambo had established its exile headquarters in this narrow, unpaved lane adjoining the main Cairo Road. In the last days of apartheid, the world beat a path to those gates, which until then had been shielded in secrecy.

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We enjoyed a friendly reception at Unip’s Freedom House, a shabby building later vacated for more imposing premises in Cairo Road. Mainza Chona, the party’s Secretary General – a chubby man with a perpetual smile – received us. He had been acting president when Unip was formed and kept the seat warm for Kaunda’s release from prison. Chona held many appointments over a long period in KK’s administration, while his younger brother Mark, whom I was also to meet, became known as KK’s “Grey Eminence”, the man behind the scenes at State House who made things happen. It was Mark Chona who was involved in the decade-long negotiations concerning the conflicts in southern Africa, when Kaunda acted as peace broker.

President Kenneth Kaunda as referee of the Zambian parliamentary football team, with Tom Mboya and Reuben Kamanga, the captain of the team

Kaunda had returned only hours earlier from a visit to the Copperbelt, where he had held urgent talks with the mineworkers’ trade union to avert a strike. Shades of events to come: Chiluba had been a trade union leader before he turned to politics. There were sometimes marked differences between the

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interests of mineworkers and the government. At that time Robert was upset by the mineworkers’ position. “They’re on the same side as Unip; they should be united. If they’re being difficult now, what will happen when Unip forms a government and becomes the mine management?” His fears were justified. KK took over the mines in 1968 before the country was ready for this move, as it lacked technical and managerial skills at the time. The decision was to be reversed in the nineties. Before my departure, Pam and I persuaded Robert to join Unip. We thought it would give him a new interest and divert him from his preoccupation with his unhappy marriage. He missed his children. When he spoke of his new love, I again thought that this was no more than an interlude to bolster his masculine pride. He was not in love. I hoped this temporary affair would not break up his friends’ marriage. The idea of a “trial visit” was still being pursued. By the time I left, it seemed that Robert had come to terms with the end of his relationship with Joan, just as I had come to terms with the fact that Hans was no longer part of my life. I missed him. What was worse, I still loved him. It is impossible to turn off love from one moment to the next. My travels were important for me. I learnt a great deal and for the first time realised what Africa meant to me. I said that I was no outdoor person and had never been on a safari, but I enjoyed the peace of the African countryside – the dramatic landscape. It was great to sit on a granite rock, doing nothing much except enjoying the sight of a village and exchanging greetings with its people, while cattle grazed lazily nearby, the inevitable tickbirds on their backs. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

My next stop was Nairobi. I spent the evening with a few South African journalists and asked at the hotel to be woken up early, as I had an appointment with a trade unionist at eight the next morning. I was deeply asleep when someone knocked. I jumped out of bed and slipped on a mat on the concrete floor, so that I fell and knocked myself out on the sharp edge of the metal bed. When I gingerly touched my aching head, I felt warm blood trickling over my hand, so I grabbed a towel and ran into the corridor. I found help, returned to bed and an hour later was looked after by an Indian doctor who sewed up the wound. It took only a few days to recover. The kind doctor had laughed when I told him that I had never been on a safari, so he took me to a nearby game park, where we sat watching lions at play.

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The next day I drove to Freedom House, where I had an appointment. I was wearing a smart bandage around my head and while I waited, I heard a commotion in the yard below. A group of dancing, ululating women were welcoming Tom Mboya, the popular politician who had returned from a trip to London. He spotted me and my bandage and was told I was a South African journalist. He probably thought that I had been hurt in political violence, because he sent for me. I was grateful to the bandage; I had not expected to meet Mboya or his wife. We talked for a long time; I was delighted for this opportunity to interview him. He in turn was interested to hear about South African affairs. Much much later I found that after Independence he had initiated a programme which enabled young Kenyans to study in the US; one of them was Mboya’s friend and fellow Luo, Barack Obama (Senior).

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I later discovered that Joe (my cousin Joachim) who had meanwhile moved to Kenya and was living with his second wife in Nairobi, was friendly with Mboya. Or rather, Joe’s wife was in Nairobi; he was in Addis Ababa working for TWA, the American company which was operating Ethiopian Airlines. Joe sent me a telegram to invite me to Addis. I hesitated. My ticket was issued for Nairobi to Athens and from there to Tel Aviv and Johannesburg. I had no spare money for other air fares. However, the ticket was rewritten and so I made my way to Addis Ababa, where I stayed at the Ras Hotel. Joe was a great host. He introduced me to his friends, young Ethiopians – members of the elite – intelligent and amazingly beautiful men and equally bright, beautiful women. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many beautiful people together as in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sadly, I also saw poverty, the tremendous gap between rich and poor, and the hopeless situation of women. My cousin admitted that there was much injustice, though he loved the country deeply and remained happily in Addis until the fall of Emperor Haile Selassi. Joe, with his handsome dark looks, was not unlike an Ethiopian. He took me to nightclubs and restaurants and showed me the sights. Everywhere I saw the sign of the Lion of Judah, the symbol of the Queen of Sheba. Legend had it that she had visited King Solomon who had become her lover. Their son was allegedly the ancestor of Ethiopia’s royal rulers. Did the Song of Songs not say: “I am black but comely, oh you daughters of Jerusalem”? When the queen returned to her country, her entourage included Hebrews. Joe told me about the Ethiopian Jews, allegedly descendants of this entourage, who were black and were integrated into the society, except that they were practising Jews. During the course of Operation Magic Carpet in which Joe had a hand, many of these people were airlifted to Israel. Unfortunately they found that white-skinned Jews were not without racism. Many only found good jobs in the army.

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When I was about to leave Addis, I discovered that the problem with my ticket had not been resolved. I had to pay fifty pounds if I wanted to fly to Athens. Joe suggested that I should travel to Cairo and from there to the old part of Jerusalem where I could walk through the Mandelbaum Gate into Israel. I objected. This was the height of the Nasser period and I was Jewish. Joe waved this aside. He too was Jewish, yet he visited Cairo regularly. “What are you? A mouse or a journalist? Journalists are supposed to cope with problems!” I decided I was a journalist and took the flight to Cairo. First I flew to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, as I wanted to write about that country’s struggle for independence from Ethiopia – a struggle that had by no means ended when the emperor fell. Both countries were to experience dark, bloody days in the decades ahead. Thanks to Joe, I had no problems in Cairo. I entered with a visa, had a hotel room booked and slept late, for the first time in weeks. Then I explored this marvellous city. It was only on the second day, when my tourist curiosity waned somewhat, that I called at the German Embassy. I told them I wished to travel to Jerusalem. “Why?” “I want to go to Israel.”

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They looked at me with concern. “From here?” There was no need for my religion to be listed in my passport. It was obvious: born in 1924 in Fürth. Surname Löwenthal. First name Ruth. “It would be best if you travel to Athens and take a flight from there to Tel Aviv. Get out of here. It’s dangerous.” I was aware of that, but the flight cost fifty pounds which I couldn’t spare. My trips had to pay for themselves; I couldn’t end up with a deficit. The following day I boarded a plane to Jerusalem. The plane was filled with nuns, pilgrims and a few American tourists. Before we landed, the passports were collected. I was stopped at immigration control. While I waited I talked to one of the policemen, told him I was a tourist who wanted to see the Middle East and that I planned to go to Damascus. It took ages before they

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sent for me. Two policemen and a civilian interrogated me. I answered their questions, almost without lying. Four hours later they released me, or better said, they sent for a taxi, booked a room for me at a hotel and told me that they would find a guide for me. The next day I needed a doctor; it was time that the stitches in my head were removed. Apparently I was not allowed out of the hotel alone, because a doctor came to my room, a short, tubby Palestinian who invited me to accompany him to the camps. Of course I accepted, overwhelmed. I had expected nothing like that.

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We visited several refugee camps and I was horrified at the conditions under which the people lived. I asked if they could not be moved to Arab countries, out of the camps, only to be told that this was the wrong policy. The eyes of the world had to be drawn to the refugees’ misery. Since those days, the Palestinian question and Israeli policies have continued to dominate world politics. I saw as much as I could of Jerusalem during two memorable weeks, which were also two weeks of stress. I knew I was being watched, my calls monitored. I wrote nothing, only letters which I never posted. I slept with my passport and my Israeli visa (a separate piece of paper not entered in the document itself) under my pillow. I was frightened as a Jewess in a hostile Arab country. Yet the worst were the sexual advances. Because I was on my own, I apparently seemed open to offers. I was jostled in the markets; someone once touched my bosom. Another time my guide, whom I disliked anyway, almost raped me while we walked through a dark lane. One terrifying evening I found the hotel telephonist in my room and I was almost hysterical before I was able to get rid of him. I began to loathe men during those two weeks. I kept thinking about Hans and was desperately unhappy. Later I realised that I had taken the risks that I did on this crazy journey, because I was so unhappy, so emotionally numb. Nothing really mattered. Had they arrested me, detained me as a spy, shot me – I wouldn’t have cared. I felt incapable of planning. I was thirty-eight; I’d spent the best part of my life with a man who had meant everything to me. I had no idea what I would do next. I felt emotionally drained. I rang the German Embassy in Aman and told them that I needed an exit visa. Silence. No one returned my call. But eventually I received a message giving the name of a monastery and the name of a German monk.

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My gaolers allowed me to go for walks; apparently the guide was only responsible for trips by car. I found the monastery, also the monk – a huge man who towered above me. I gave him my passport and told him how I’d managed to get myself into this mess. He smiled, said little and told me to come back in two days’ time. He solved my problem, telling me to call on the Spanish consulate, where I handed in my passport which was returned to me with a message. I was to go to a certain office, where a certain official would issue an exit visa. I memorised a name. The consul, as tiny and thin as the German monk had been tall and heavy, added that I should not forget to place a five pound note inside the passport on the page where the exit stamp was to be entered. An hour later I had what I needed. My guide never asked where I had been. A few nerve-wracking days followed. This was a Thursday; on a Friday nothing happens in an Arab country and on a Saturday, Sabbath, nothing happens in Israel. I had to wait until Sunday morning. I got up early, settled my account and called for a taxi. My guide arrived. I was leaving, I told him. To the airport? No, I said, to the Mandelbaum Gate. He looked surprised. “You need a visa!” “Yes, thank you. I’ve got that.” He was silent.

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We drove to the Mandelbaum Gate. I got out and took my case. I had given him money, which he took without thanks, refusing to speak and looking away. Then he spat in front of me. I understood but was also distressed. Why could we not live peacefully with each other? A man suddenly hated me because I was going to Israel. A small brown boy took my case through no man’s land across the street. He stopped half-way and dropped it. Another small brown boy came rushing up to take the case. They were so much alike, they could have been brothers: one an Arab, the other a Jew. Ahead of me were two nuns. Their passports were examined and they walked on. I handed my passport through the window of the immigration point together with my crumpled visa. “Where do you come from?” The Israeli addressed me in German.

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“South Africa.” “No, I mean, where have you come from now?” “Ethiopia, Egypt. Jordan.” “Impossible! You’re Jewish.” Not a question; a statement. He paged through my passport. “Yes.” He closed the window. “You’d better come inside.” Inside were several young men. I told them my story. They listened silently. “I was frightened. But, well, my cousin asked if I was a journalist or a mouse and I decided I was a journalist. But now I know I’m a mouse. All I want is a hole I can creep into.”

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They laughed and one said with a touch of admiration, “Still, you didn’t do that. You told yourself you were a Jew who’d never been to Israel and that you could travel through the Arab world, so you did just that. I’m impressed. You realise, don’t you, that they could have shot you out of hand.” One of them took me to town to a small hotel. He spoke to the owner, explained something and left. I suddenly realised that I was really in Israel! I, who had been a Jew in the Diaspora for so long, felt excited and suddenly proud of that young man, his handsome looks and confidence. A Sabra – an Israeli-born Jew. In 1962 there weren’t that many about, and they were not as tough as the later generations. The hotelier looked at me. “You arrived this morning through the Mandelbaum Gate? You’re a Jew?” I replied yes. He asked me if I had been to the Wailing Wall and if I had touched it. Again I replied yes. I’d “done” all the tourist spots. The Wall, the holiest relic of Judaism had been one, with only a few tourists milling about in front of it – without the crowd of praying men, with women praying at another section, which one was to see later after the Six Day War. The hotelier disappeared to return with an old lady. His mother. She grasped my hands and kissed them to my embarrassment, because these had touched the Wailing Wall.

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During the next few days I had to repeat the story of my adventures several times. I first contacted one of my father’s nephews, the younger son of his older half-brother Mathias. Uncle Alfons, as I called him, was the same age as my father, his uncle! He was also Joe’s uncle, brother of Joe’s father Ludwig. Uncle Alfons worked at the Ministry of Labour and as I’ve mentioned, had been a fervent Zionist in Nürnberg where he had helped Jews to leave Germany. Like my father, he was a veteran of the First World War, but he had refused to accept the medal they had wanted to award him for exceptional bravery. He felt no patriotism for the Kaiser’s Reich or the Weimar Republic. Alfons was furious that Joe had exposed me to danger and told him so in a letter. Perhaps as a result of this, I didn’t hear from Joe for ages, until 1994 when he rang me at my Isle of Wight flat. Joe was then in Germany, after an adventurous life. He and his German wife Rosemarie visited me on the island and we kept in touch. Joe was ill when I too moved to Germany in 2002. I visited him several times before his death. Through Joe I met his son Uzi, who lives in Tel Aviv with his family.

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During this Israel visit in the sixties, I also visited my mother’s brother, uncle Jakob and his family in Haifa and met my cousin Nitza. I spent a few days at a kibbutz founded by a group of friends whom I had met when I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair in Johannesburg. They had made aliyah (emigrated to Israel) in the late forties to found their kibbutz. Not everyone had stayed on; some had moved to a town or left Israel. The kibbutz, however, was a success: it had acquired a factory to augment the traditional kibbutz income from agrarian produce. I discussed the future of kibbutzims with my friends. As a teenager I had first belonged to Habonim, before joining the more leftwing Hashomer Hatzair. I wondered if I could live in a kibbutz, but decided that I was too old to make a new start and learn to speak Hebrew. I was uncertain that I could become a kibbutznik, even if they had accepted me, which was by no means a matter of form. I refused to write the story of my Arab adventure for the Jerusalem Post. The Palestinian doctor had been kind to me, as had others. I wanted no one to get into trouble on my account. Jews in the Diaspora feel ambivalent about Israel and its Palestinian policies. Yet no matter how critical I may be of these, I feel that Israel has the right to exist. As a Jew, I am drawn to the country. I remembered a story one of those Johannesburg millionaires told me once. His father had been a Zionist and had always supported a village for children. He had problems with his eyesight and asked his son to go to Israel on his behalf. The day after he arrived he strolled through the street and realised he had no Israeli money, so he

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went to a bank where the cashier asked his name. “Cohen,” he replied and became aware that for the first time, he could utter his name without a sense of embarrassment. Here he was a Cohen among thousands of other Cohens, he said and smiled. “I suddenly felt at home.” I was surprised at the time. I knew that this particular Cohen was powerful, thanks to his family business. Stanley Cohen was the son of the founder of OK Bazaars and joint MD of the business with his cousin. He could demand access to anyone, even to those in the Nationalist government. And yet he said he felt embarrassed about his name, which meant he was embarrassed to be a Jew.

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It is impossible to explain this sense of inferiority – to know that one is different and unwanted. Jews are said to be extroverts, but the reality is so often different. I travelled through Israel in search of myself and my beliefs and learnt that I would not be able to make it my home. I had seen and met Palestinians and had learnt how strongly they felt about Israel. Further conflict was inevitable. Later I was to be appalled by Israel’s collaboration with the apartheid government. A friend who worked in the Foreign Affairs Ministry told me that this might happen. If the Arabs succeeded in alienating African governments and isolating Israel in Africa, Israel had no alternative but to forge links with Pretoria, he told me. During the Yom Kippur war and the resulting oil crisis, this was precisely what happened. I found it hurtful. Inevitably, the phase of idealistic and romantic Zionism had to end. And with it, the socialist-style kibbutz movement was also bound to decline. On my return from Israel, Hans visited me. I asked him what had gone wrong in our relationship. He searched for a response. Finally he said, “You promised that I could die at home and would never have to go to a hospital.” “Yes. What about it?” He considered his reply. Then he said: “You once called a doctor. At the time of Brettholz’s visit, when I was ill.” I remembered. I had asked a friend, a psychiatrist, to visit Hans. I had been desperately worried about his condition. It was the worst depression I had yet seen him experience, when he would turn his face towards the wall and refuse to speak, except to say that he wanted nothing and had nothing to say to anyone. These attacks, as I saw them, were terrible. I couldn’t understand how it was possible for someone who worked frantically for days on end on a project, or sat up all night talking and debating, never without a cigarette,

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could suddenly just stop functioning. The psychiatrist came in response to my call and gave me a prescription. It was impossible to do more without the consent of the patient. He was the first to suggest that Hans suffered from manic depression. I now learnt that Hans had resented the fact that I’d sought medical help. He added that he also resented how much I worked, which meant that I had very little time for him. It was hard for me to accept. I worked as I did because he did not. He told me that it was up to me if I wanted to continue our relationship. He loved me as he had always loved me. As for Joan, well, it was impossible to say how long his need for her would last. I thought it over, but I couldn’t see a future for our marriage. I still wanted to leave South Africa but doubted Hans was prepared to do so. I hated apartheid and white society’s lifestyle. As for Hans and his newfound relationship, I was by then convinced that once he tired of Joan, he would find something or someone else to take her place. I knew I was being used and had been used for a long time. No, I finally decided, no. I wanted to end all this. I rang Robert, who was delighted to hear from me. “I’ll come and see you soon – next week, after the elections.” He was standing as Unip’s candidate in Livingstone, as Pamela and I had urged him to do. I congratulated him and said that I was certain he would win.

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“Do you really think so? I’m not so sure. I mean, yes, I’ll win, but I’m not certain that I’m the right person for Unip. For Kaunda. Someone like me …” His voice trailed away. I felt a touch of alarm. Robert sounded depressed, uninterested, his voice was toneless. “What is wrong?” He answered slowly. “She didn’t come. It’s probably for the best. Measles.” He laughed. “One of her children has measles. No mother can leave her child if he’s ill – not for a trial run with a new boyfriend.” The new girlfriend! She had given up that crazy idea of a trial run. It sounded as if Robert had taken it badly. On Monday Hans arrived at my office. He was pale; I thought his back was more bent than usual. He said abruptly: “I have to speak to you. Before you read it in the paper.”

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I was instantly alert. Knew, even before he spoke. “Robert? He is dead!” “Yes.” I held onto the edge of the desk, not allowing him to say anything. I hissed: “Get out. I never want to see you again. Never! You killed him. Both of you!” He left. I simply sat, too shaken to cry. I booked a call to Livingstone. Pam, Robert’s sister, came immediately to the phone when she heard who it was. “Robert was very withdrawn during the past few weeks. He often talked about you. He said if he could talk to you, you might help him; you might get Hans to ask Joan to let him see the children – or persuade her to talk to him. She’d always refused to meet him. Robert’s work for Unip helped; it distracted him, it was something positive. And then …” She couldn’t go on. I waited. “There was a huge meeting last Saturday. Robert was the main speaker. Some VIPs came from Lusaka. He got up; I could see he was shaking – he couldn’t get a word out. Not a single word. You know what a marvellous speaker he was. Only this time he simply couldn’t utter a word.”

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I could picture the scene. The huge area, where we had sat only a few months before, the crowds, the people sitting under the trees. I understood the panic which had made him unable to speak. “One of the others took over – another white man. He took the microphone and talked as if nothing was wrong. Robert sat down; he was so pale I thought he might faint. Afterwards we all came here, all of us, the leaders from Lusaka and me. We told him it didn’t matter; this sort of thing could happen to anyone, sometimes even opera singers lost their voice during a performance. I gave him a tranquilliser and around four in the morning we went to bed. When we woke up, Robert had gone. At first we thought he would be in the village or the office – he hadn’t had much time for business. He didn’t come back and I got worried. The police helped us to look for him. They found him. In his car. He had …” She couldn’t go on speaking. I saw it all vividly. The veld with its thorn bushes, the thunder of the Victoria Falls. The angels in flight. Pam finally began to speak again. “He had been dead for hours. He left three letters. To Kenneth Kaunda. Me. Hans and Joan.”

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Later the police gave her the letter. Robert asked for her forgiveness, for everything that had happened. He had come to a point where he could not go on, he had failed, as husband, father, politician, friend. He would write to Kaunda and apologise; he was certain that Unip would find a man better than himself. That evening I saw a brief mention in the Johannesburg Star that a white Unip candidate had been found dead two days before the elections. Suicide. There was no political motive. Joan did not attend the funeral nor did she send flowers. Her brother-in-law, the medical practitioner I had phoned when Robert was desperate, represented the family. I did not see Joan for many years. We met again in 1990, a year after Hans’s death. After I’d left Johannesburg, Joan had become a close friend of Nadine and managed her secretarial work, and it was in Nadine’s home that we met. Nadine had told me long before then, that I’d been fortunate to leave Hans when I did. He and Joan had lived in adjoining flats; he had helped to bring up her children; he and Joan had often travelled to Europe. Inevitably he had become ill and finally Joan led her own life, engaging a nurse for Hans. Ironic: the man who accused me of having betrayed him by calling a doctor, spent the last ten years of his life going from one medical man to the next. I was also to outlive Joan, who died of a brain tumour.

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In 1963 I was granted a divorce. Hans asked me not to cite Joan as corespondent, as it would have made the gossip pages, her father being who he was. I therefore sued him for desertion. My lawyer told me that I had to ask Hans to return to me, even if this was only a matter of form. I rang him from the lawyer’s office, made my request and realised I meant what I said: “Hans, what have I really done that was unacceptable?” He did not reply for a while. I began to think he had rung off. Then he said slowly, “Your concept of marriage was too bourgeois.” When I repeated this in court, the judge thumped his gavel angrily and instantly ruled in my favour. What about me? After Robert’s death, I suddenly understood the demands Hans had made on me. Because I’d been so concerned about Robert, I was able to get over my own despair, my pain and resentment, my own sense of failure as a woman. I had little time to brood on these things. There was only one thing to be done: pick up the pieces and start again.

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XIII

NEW FRIENDSHIPS AND LOVE

I renewed old friendships which I had lost while I was with Hans. And best of all, I started a new job with the Financial Mail. .

At the same time something unexpected happened. I fell in love – with someone younger than me – a former colleague at the insurance company. Karl was an English-speaking South African: sporty, good-looking, superficial and uninterested in politics. For a long time he’d paid me a lot of attention, impressed as he said, by my “intelligence”. His wife Beth had been my secretary for a few years; they had two children. He also had children from a previous marriage. I had not taken him seriously – but now everyone advised me to go out, to have fun. I should try to forget Hans, make new friends. I thought, well, why not? This man wasn’t serious; a relationship with him could only be temporary. We were very different people, and I needed to forget Hans.

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I met Karl at a time when I was terribly depressed, insecure and unhappy. So when he rang to invite me out, I agreed. Everything happened as we had both expected, except for the fact that I fell seriously in love. Karl was everything which Hans was not. He was not a complex near-genius, moody, sensitive, highly strung. He lived for the day, enjoyed fast cars, music and women. He was good at golf, cricket and sailing; he knew nothing whatever about world affairs and gave apartheid no thought. At first he did not take our relationship seriously either. Later he laughed and told me that he’d heard a Jewish woman was supposed to bring luck. “I didn’t love you; I liked you a lot and wanted to comfort you. I’d never seen anyone so unhappy. I had always admired you, the way you ran that company all on your own. And Beth – you know she doesn’t get on with women as a rule – she thought you were a terrific boss. Well, I never knew how to comfort a woman, except one way …” I’d never considered sex important before. Now, for the first time I was enjoying the tenderness, the excited anticipation before a date, the secret language which lovers invent. What of his marriage? I knew he had serious problems with Beth, but the situation became unbearable as our relationship became more important. I told Karl that I could not remain in South Africa, which he found difficult to understand. He believed that a booming economy would have a trickle-down effect and benefit Africans. I told him that this was not the way apartheid worked; the system created an unjust society determined to entrench white

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rule. I also had personal reasons for wanting to emigrate. I didn’t want to live in the same city as Hans, nor did I want to influence Karl’s marriage. He protested: “I don’t want you to go; I don’t want to lose you! I’ve never felt about anyone as I feel about you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I’m serious.” Yes, so was I. Which was precisely why I had to leave. During this discussion he suddenly said, “Haven’t you thought of having a child? You’ll be forty soon – without a child! Every woman should have children.” Karl loved his children; he was a proud and good father. I had wanted children, but Hans did not; it had been for the best. A child with our genes – his depressions and my naiveté – I think would have been a disaster. Karl repeated: “You should have a child. Ours.” A child. I talked to my doctor and to several women who had brought up children on their own. Usually they had money, but I had nothing, no savings at all. As always, money was an issue. Nonetheless I did nothing to prevent conception. And nothing happened. I thought it was not to be; I was too old and decided it had been crazy to think of it in the first place.

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I moved into a small flat in the city centre close to the office. This was not without its hazards; my Moore Street flat was in the part of town known as “murder mile”. It was impossible to walk through the streets at night or drive into the garage after dark. I would park my car in the street and as soon as it became light, I would rush down to park in the garage. I also made new friends and kept contacts with old ones. I tried to reshape my life, and to enjoy it. My travels through Africa had taught me how little white southern Africans knew about the continent. South Africa’s government continued to cut any links between the racial groups and to come down hard on those who crossed the colour bar. When the mass Treason Trial ended with a whimper (for the authorities, that is) and MK sabotage began, detentions increased. I hated living in a police state. It was dangerous to be in touch with banned people. Once I discovered a man cowering in the bushes when I was visiting a friend. He cursed as I drove off, and damned the “bloody Jews”. My friend’s house had been under surveillance by the Special Branch; he hated that I had spotted him.

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I never parked in front of certain houses. Telephone calls were kept short and to the point. The multi-racial parties of the fifties were a thing of the past. Nat Nkasa, a black writer and journalist, once told me that he was tired of having to dash into his white friend’s kitchen every time there was a knock at the door, or having to hide under the bed of a white girlfriend for the same reason. Nat, who also wrote a popular column for the Rand Daily Mail, later went into exile in the States. He had not known that racism existed outside South Africa and was shocked to discover that white people everywhere were prone to racism. Depressed and disillusioned, Nat took his own life: he walked out of the window of a skyscraper. The atmosphere was tense. I was having dinner at a friend’s house when her cook came in and whispered something to her. She excused herself and returned a few minutes later, asking if I could help her in the kitchen. A large man was sitting at the table, enjoying a plate of soup. He smiled at us. Nelson Mandela. At that time he was on the run.

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It was the first time I saw this great man. The next time was at a press conference in Lusaka, some thirty years later. Some of those arrested with the accused at the Rivonia Trial were white: Lionel Bernstein, James (Jimmy) Kantor, Denis Goldberg, Harold Wolpe and Arthur Goldreich. Denis Goldberg was charged with Mandela and others and served twenty-two years in prison. The architect Bernstein was acquitted; Kantor was released because he was innocent of everything, except of being the brother-in-law of Harold Wolpe who had escaped from custody with Goldreich. They had bribed a warder, managed to obtain some disguises and escaped to Bechuanaland. The plane which was to take them to Tanganyika was blown up by the secret service, but they still managed to get away. Goldreich had been one of the group of artists with whom Hans was friendly. I had no idea he had been a member of the underground Communist Party. Arthur and his family had lived on Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia, which had been bought by Julius First, Ruth First’s father. I liked and admired Ruth, the wife of Joe Slovo, a CP leader and an MK officer. Joe, a hero of the people, now lies buried in a Johannesburg township. One of their daughters, a gifted and successful writer, produced an excellent film about her life as a child in a political household. Ruth was killed by a secret service letter bomb in Maputo on 18 August 1982, the same year in which another white activist, Barbara Anne Hogan, was sent to prison. Esme, Denis Goldberg’s resolute wife, single-handedly brought up their children. She once asked me to contact Henry Kissinger, then in Nixon’s admin-

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istration, to try and have Denis released. I did, though in the end it wasn’t the Americans but the Israeli government who managed it. Denis joined his family in London, where he worked tirelessly for the ANC. He was one of the VIP guests invited to President Mandela’s inauguration, but chose to stay in England with his family. He had missed his wife, had not seen his children grow up and wanted to be near them and his grandchildren. I was fortunate to have them regularly visit the Isle of Wight. In Germany I was honoured by occasionally sharing a platform with Denis. He created a non-profit organisation after 1994 called Community HEART (Health Education And Reconstruction Training) – of which I became one of the less important trustees – to assist schools, universities and community projects. Esme was to succumb to a virulent illness. After her death, Denis remarried and this time decided to return to South Africa, where his expertise was needed and appreciated. After working some years for a ministry, he retired, becoming involved in grassroots projects in his home area. He is an amazing personality; cheerful, witty, yet sensitive and kind. He suffered another adversity when his second wife contracted cancer and also passed away, as did his daughter. He finally wrote his biography in 2009. He often visits Germany to give one of his informative talks, which he does with charm and wit, or to read from his book. The German government recognised his services by bestowing the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Honour) on him in 2011. The year before that, he honoured me by giving the laudation at a school in Aschaffenburg which had adopted my name.

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Hilda, wife of Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein and writer, artist and politician, wrote a book about the Rivonia Trial. I was sitting with both Bernsteins in the hall of Zimbabwe’s University when Mandela received his honorary degree from that institution in 1990, one of the numerous honours he received during his incarceration. At the end of the moving ceremony, Lionel approached Mandela, who exclaimed with delight as they fell into each other’s arms. They had not met since they parted in that courtroom, when one went back to prison and the other walked free. The feeling of being surrounded by enemies was never absent during those days; it was impossible to know whom to trust. Poqo, said to be close to the PAC, was active, as was MK. Political journalists like my friend and colleague Ann Cavill were among the best-informed of white South Africans at that time. I left the downtown flat to share a house in Bedfordview with Ann. We were close to some members of the ARM (Armed Resistance Movement) group of white liberals, who felt that one could not leave active opposition to Africans and communists alone. ARM was a small group of amateurs, but deeply committed and sincere. One of Nadine Gordimer’s novels, The Late

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Bourgeois World, portrays the atmosphere in which white liberals lived at that time. Events moved swiftly and sometimes seemed overwhelming. Gerald Ludi, one of Ann’s colleagues who had been considered a left-winger, revealed himself the morning after the Rivonia raid as being a member of the secret police. He walked into the Rand Daily Mail editorial office and shouted at the journalists working at a table, telling them he was a “Q”man, code 003. When they laughed at the shades of James Bond, he was furious, drew his pistol and threw it on the table. Rhoda and Fred Prager were among my friends who were political activists. Rhoda, a beautiful, elegant woman was born in South Africa; her brother was a well-known financial journalist. I have already mentioned Fred, whose former wife Ilse returned to the German Democratic Republic. I made friends with Raymond (Ramon) Eisenstein, whom I met at their home. A survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, he had been smuggled out as a baby. A Polish woman looked after him and handed him to a UN relief agency after the war. He found his way to France, where he was educated and later to South Africa, where he worked on the financial pages of the Rand Daily Mail.

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The evening before another of my African trips, this time to East Africa, a number of people came to say goodbye. Ruth Katz arrived, upset and crying. She said: “Rhoda is dead. She’s had a heart attack.” Rhoda’s women friends looked after Fred, who was devastated. And yet, somehow it seemed a happy release. Rhoda had been a member of ARM. Rhoda in prison, Rhoda under torture – it did not bear thinking about. A year later most ARM members were rounded up. The organisation had been infiltrated and one woman turned state witness under extreme pressure. On 24 July 1964, a bomb exploded in Park Station. The bomber, a teacher named John Harris, rang the police but the call was ignored. An elderly woman was killed and a baby injured, which unleashed a wave of fury against ARM. Hugh Lewin, a journalist already in custody and held in solitary confinement, was taken to the station to see the damage inflicted by his comrades. Lewin, then a shy, idealistic young man, son of an Anglican clergyman, said in court that he believed all men were equal in the sight of God. That had been the motivation for his activities. John Harris was the only white man to be hanged for anti-apartheid activities and went to his death singing “we shall overcome”.

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Prager, Lewin and Eisenstein were among those arrested. Raymond was brought to the office in handcuffs while the police conducted a search, just as Goldreich had been dragged to his office a year earlier. Ruth, concerned about Fred, borrowed my car to drive from one police station to the next until she found where he was held. She claimed to be his fiancé so that she could bring him food and fresh clothes. Fred wrote about that day in July, when he took off his glasses as they took him in for questioning. “My young friends said that wasn’t necessary. They take them off for you when they start to beat you up. At the time I heard them talking to each other and one said,‘Die ou Jood, hy sal praat. Ons sal die ou Jood doodslaan’ (that old Jew, we’ll make him talk; we’ll kill the old Jew).” They didn’t, quite. Fred along with Raymond, Hugh and Baruch Hirson was charged in November 1964 under the security laws. Baruch Hirson had been the leader of my Hashomer Hatzair group, but he’d left Zionism behind him. Fred was acquitted while Hugh and Raymond were sentenced to seven years each. Baruch, as the oldest, who should have been more responsible according to the judge, received a twelve-year sentence.

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Only seven years! Raymond was delighted. In the event, he was imprisoned for three years as his background provided mitigating circumstances. We met again when we both worked in Fleet Street, I at the Guardian, he at the Investors Chronicle. He settled in London with his French-born wife and we kept contact through the decades. Hugh Lewin, a talented writer and journalist, also went to London after his release and worked on the black paper, Drum, then on the magazine South before making his way with his family to Harare after Zimbabwe’s independence. We were colleagues for a time, training journalists before he established a successful publishing company. He later returned to South Africa, becoming director of a training institute for journalists. He was co-opted as one of the commissioners of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated apartheid crimes. Baruch Hirson also found refuge in London where he made his mark as a historian. After his acquittal, Fred was placed under twenty-four-hour house arrest, which meant he was unable to work. He applied to leave the country, which was eventually permitted thanks to pressure from the Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, whom Fred had known in his youth. When he left, he took his new wife with him – he and Ruth had married while he was under house arrest. He was allowed out of the house for a few hours, time enough for a haircut, the wedding and a great party, which we continued to enjoy after the newlyweds had been forced to leave.

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Fred’s acquittal was due to the evidence of the woman who had been forced to turn state witness. She had been able to escape to Swaziland when the wave of arrests had begun, and was living there as a teacher with her children. She returned home from school one day to find the children had disappeared. Frantic, she rang her estranged husband in Johannesburg and on hearing that he had not seen them either, she drove across the border. She was immediately arrested. The children had been kidnapped by the secret police as bait. She had no alternative but to give evidence against her friends, but she was able to exonerate Fred by placing all the blame on Rhoda, claiming he had only been the husband and had known nothing of what his wife had been up to.

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Apart from Karl, I still had contact with friends from my insurance days. I arrived at the office one morning but found no one in, apart from the receptionist. At the same time a man entered, whom I recognised as a former Luftwaffe pilot who ran a small charter firm in neighbouring Botswana. He asked to see Sid Excell who was another pilot and friend of one of the agents, an Afrikaner named Bill Fortuin. Neither Sid nor Bill was in the office. The man, obviously angry, gave the young woman a note for Sid and left. Almost at once the phone rang. It was Sid. While the receptionist, at his request, read him the message, I listened aghast. It transpired that early that morning Sid should have flown to Lesotho to pick up a man named Patrick Duncan and fly him to Botswana. A new appointment had been made for the same time the following day. The message said that Sid was to pick up Duncan as well as two others; I remember one was named Taylor. Once aboard, Sid was to announce that he had engine trouble and land on South African soil, at which point Taylor and his colleague, both police officers, would arrest Duncan. Patrick Duncan, son of the former Governor General Sir Patrick Duncan, had become an active PAC member and had sought refuge in Lesotho. Now it seemed the South Africans were trying to kidnap him. Clearly the young woman had no idea what she had read out. I slipped out of the office at once to find someone who could pass the message to the veteran Parliamentarian Helen Suzman. No sooner had I got home, than Bill Fortuin arrived. He angrily pushed me through the hall into the living room and forced me onto a chair. “You know about the message to Sid?” I did not deny it. “Did you tell anyone?”

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“No.” He didn’t believe me. I told him that I knew his friend was a former Lufwaffe pilot who was being well paid to fly refugees out of Botswana to Tanzania (the old Tanganyika). Now I also knew that he was selling them out to the South Africans. “You’re all the same, you reds, whether you’re card-carrying communists or not.” Bill was getting furious. “You think we treat kaffirs badly. Man, they’re savages! You should have seen them in the Congo! I’m telling you, they’ve got a different mentality to us.” I pointed out that Sid had worked for a “kaffir”; he’d flown for Tshombe in Katanga. Sid had often claimed that he had been present when Patrice Lumumba was murdered, though I didn’t believe that. No one seemed to know exactly how Lumumba had died. If he despised black people, why did he work for them? “Sid!” Bill spat. “He’s a damn Englishman; what does he know?” “What happens now?” “We wait. There’s a meeting going on at the highest level – because of you.” I said that I was flattered.

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Obviously they were concerned. If the plane made an unscheduled landing and I reported the incident, this could cause unpleasantness. In the early hours of that morning someone rang, with the news that the plane would be able to fly out after all. Bill was depressed; I had the feeling that the whole scheme had been his idea. I decided not to write the story. It made more sense to ensure that the right people were advised, so that they could take further precautions. Duncan was flown out, unaware of his escape. He later contracted a rare disease and died in Algeria. I only heard of Sid Excell once more when it was alleged that he was the pilot who had flown in contract killers hired to carry out a gruesome political murder in South Africa. The perpetrators were never found. It was shortly after this incident that I moved into the Bedfordview cottage with Ann Cavill. She had separated from her husband, one of my colleagues on the Financial Mail, who was also a good friend. The cottage was part of an old farmhouse. The entire property belonged to yet another friend who also

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lived in the grounds. It was situated on the outskirts of the city in a periurban area and had belonged to a man who loved to build. During World War II he had employed Italian prisoners-of-war as a source of cheap labour, to build a series of cottages. This gave the place, with its koppie (hill), a curious Italian-village look. The Italians as war prisoners also felt obliged to dig tunnels, though heaven only knows where they thought they would escape to. The tunnels were tiled and made a marvellous playground for children. We spent a crazy, hectic year in the cottage, so much so that when Ann and I began to correspond by email in later years, she wrote that she had always wanted to write a book about it, but was sure everyone would think she was making it up! Ann had remarried and with her husband, a German architect, had emigrated to Florida where she became a highly successful journalist. Ann, an energetic, highly intelligent woman, was a dear friend. And she was right: we did have more than our share of adventures during our cottagesharing era. Karl was a regular visitor; so was his sister who stayed with us for a time, seeking refuge from a violent boyfriend. We were inundated by visitors whose lifestyles reflected the feverish atmosphere of the time. Everyone seemed to drink, eat and talk too much – and make politics. I, at least, did not drink. I’d never had more than an occasional glass of sherry or wine, but gave it up completely when I became a full-time journalist.

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We had been in the cottage almost a year when I had an accident at work. I slipped from a swivel chair and fell, fracturing my last vertebra. It was a painful experience. I had to lie flat on my back, but was fortunate in that I had no time to be bored as a major insurance scandal had just broken. There was a lengthy inquiry and each day I was brought the material which I had to write up. One evening I had a visitor. Gordon Winter, one of Ann’s colleagues, came into my bedroom and mentioned that he was on his way to the airport to fetch Aubrey. “Aubrey?” I repeated, “Dick Aubrey?” My subconscious had conjured up a name from a long time before. Aubrey, the husband of Fourie’s stepdaughter, Beth; Aubrey who had absconded with the money we had guaranteed. The next moment the door was slammed shut as Gordon twisted my arm behind my back. “What do you know about him?” His face was pressed close to mine; he was very upset. “What has Ann told you?” “I won’t tell you. Let me go!”

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He threatened: “If you don’t talk, I’ll break your arm.” He gave it a twist and I screamed. I believed him. He told me that he had enough on me and my friends to put us all behind bars. This was 1965, a year after the Rivonia Trial. The government seemed to have triumphed. In any event I could not see what harm it could do to tell him about Beth, the film, the money and that we had set detectives on Dick. Gordon listened. When I mentioned Wardour Street in Soho, I could see from his expression that we were indeed talking about the same man. Finally he was satisfied. But I did not tell him something which Ann had told me. A few days before this incident, Ann had returned home in the early hours, upset and excited. She had been moved from the political desk because she had written some hot political stories and her editor had been threatened by the police. She was relegated for a time to work on crime stories with Gordon. On her way to the office she realised that she had left a notebook in Gordon’s flat. Impulsive as she was, she had returned, knocked and immediately opened his door. At that moment someone grasped her arms, held her and swivelled her round to face the centre of the room. Gordon had company. He was standing with a stranger in front of the table, on which Ann could see an open suitcase packed with cash. The invisible man who was holding her, asked: “Who is she?” “Let her go! She’s a colleague; she’s all right,” Gordon said.

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The man released Ann, who fell. Startled, she got up to be introduced to Charlie and Eddie, two London thugs. They realised she was English and pretty at that and began to flirt with her, bragging of their “manor” and their power. Ann listened, terrified, as they told her of the kind of punishment they meted out to police informers, such as hammering their knees into the ground with nails. Eventually they told her to leave, impressing on her to speak to no one about their meeting. No sooner was Ann at home, than she told me in graphic detail what had happened. “Ann said nothing,” I lied to Gordon, who swore me to secrecy about Aubrey and then left hurriedly. Months later when I was in London, I saw the headlines. A British businessman named Waldeck had been murdered in South Africa. He had answered

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a ring at his front door and when he opened, had met a bullet. The gunman had got away in a waiting car. The empty car and the gun were found, the car having been hired in the name of one Richard Aubrey while the gun was traced to Gordon Winter. In time, the driver of the car was arrested and sentenced to death. Gordon was taken into protective custody and was a state witness at the driver’s trial, which was attended by Scotland Yard detectives. Gordon claimed he had known Aubrey in London and acknowledged that he had lent him his gun, but claimed he knew nothing about the murder. Eventually Gordon was deported to Britain where he worked as a freelance journalist before returning for some years to South Africa.

BOSS spy Gordon Winter and the South African Prime Minister John Vorster (left) in Johannesburg in 1966

I learned a little more of the background when I read a book by Charles Richardson which appeared in the early nineties. The author and his brother Eddie (the London thug) had run the notorious Richardson gang in South London. When they were eventually charged, some of the stories about which they had boasted to Ann turned out to be fact rather than the fiction Ann had assumed. Richardson’s book glossed over the goings-on in his

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“manor”, making it all sound harmless and above board. He had little to say about Aubrey, a small-time member of the gang, nor was he complimentary about Winter whose wife he had seduced and who had left Gordon for Charlie (the other London thug). At the close of the seventies, Gordon reappeared in Europe and confessed to having been an informer for BOSS (Bureau of State Security). Inside Boss, the book with which he hoped to make a fortune, fell flat. It received barely any reviews; Fleet Street felt itself betrayed. It was then that I saw Gordon for the last time, interviewing him in his bolt hole in Ireland at the time of the publication of his book. After recovering from my accident, I flew to Cape Town to cover a story. In the plane on the way back I felt ill. I had never before suffered from sea or air sickness. I was sick again when I arrived at the cottage and was met with the smell of a bacon and egg breakfast. The next day I visited my doctor. Two days later she rang to confirm that I was pregnant – at forty-one! This meant the child would be born when I’d be almost forty-two. I was delighted. So was Karl, who was with me when the phone call came. It was only after he had gone that I began to worry – about my age, my lack of money, my plans to emigrate. Also about the drugs I had taken after the accident, unaware that I was pregnant. The following day something seemed to have gone wrong. I rang my doctor and described the symptoms. She asked if I could drive myself to a nursing home, which I did, taking my typewriter and work with me to a private room. An hour later my doctor arrived together with a specialist. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

He examined me but made no comment, returning some time later on his own. This time he said he had been told I wanted to keep the child. “It would be possible, you understand … your age, the accident … it is possible that you may not have any problems …” He did not have to spell it out; I understood the implication and said, “I only have one question. Can I have this child? I mean, will it be normal?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You say you want to keep it. Are you sure?” I was. In the evening my doctor returned. She was concerned. “It won’t be easy, even if the birth turns out to be all right. How will you live? How can you bring up the child on your own?”

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I said confidently, “The child’s father will help, even if it isn’t in the material sense. I’ve always wanted children. This is my last chance.” “If it is a chance – you almost lost it today!” I looked at her and said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. When I was allowed to get up the following day, I asked the specialist if I would be able to travel to Germany. The Financial Mail wanted me to do a special supplement on South African–German trade relations. “Why not? We can’t do much more for you. If anything goes wrong, book yourself into the nearest clinic and ask for the third doctor.” I looked surprised. He smiled. “The chief will be too busy with his private patients; the second will be trying to get the top job. That’s why the third is the one you want.” Joke … I wasn’t up to joking.

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I went home to bed. Karl visited me, bringing some books. This was Friday; on Monday I was to return to the office. It rained all Saturday long. It had been an unpleasant, cold and rainy July. We lit a huge fire in the living room, which I fed with wood and paper. My bedroom was surprisingly warm, considering it faced west. On Sunday morning I snuggled under the blanket, my cats on top of me together with Ann’s dachshund, Waldi. Ann made tea and sat on my bed to gossip, our favourite occupation. Dick Walker, one of Ann’s friends joined us. I leaned back, looked up – and saw smoke curling from beneath the ceiling. I threw back the blankets and shouted “Fire!” The cats, instantly alarmed, jumped out of the window, Waldi crawled under the bed, Dick ran for the hosepipe, while Ann ran to her room and we both began throwing things out of the window. Dick ran next door to warn our new neighbours, shouting “Fire!” to be met with an odd response: this was the landlord’s business. We rang the fire brigade from the landlord’s home, only to be told that we were not within the city boundaries and they could do nothing to help. We threw more stuff out of the windows – clothes, books, pictures, documents – and dragged Waldi from his hiding place and locked him into Ann’s car. When we returned, the roof fell in on what had been my room. Meanwhile a crowd had collected, the way it always did. Our neighbours in the smaller cottages also frantically cleared their homes; our landlord helped where he could. The fire spread rapidly. I stood and watched, feeling surprisingly calm. Was it because of the child? Everything I possessed was being destroyed: manuscripts, books, old photos; my old life. Ann wept.

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Someone brought us drinks. Eventually the fire brigade arrived, but only to douse the flames to stop them spreading across the road into city properties. They managed to destroy even the things we had managed to salvage. I suddenly remembered my family and realised they would read this in the paper the next day. I ran to the phone to ring my sister. Some forty minutes later my nephew arrived and took me to their Brakpan home. Ann and Waldi had meanwhile also been taken in by friends. I phoned my parents, promising my mother I would visit them the following weekend. I slept badly; borrowed clothes from my sister and went to work the following day. Ann had booked a double room for us in a Hillbrow hotel. Of course the fire was the talking point in our circle. I was dubbed “Calamity Jane” at the office and everyone was very kind. Ann fell ill during the night and I followed suit; the rain and excitement had taken its toll. We reclined in our beds, received visitors, coughed and sneezed. Martin Spring, editor of the special supplements, sent proofs to the hotel for correction. I had been working on a special supplement on Afrikaner business. The young woman who brought the material had a message for me: “Martin says you’re a day over deadline.” I laughed. A day over deadline! After a broken back, a threatened miscarriage, a fire, the flu … Martin Spring, an Englishman who described himself as a fascist, was not my favourite man. He was to be my companion on the proposed trip to Germany. “Tell him the articles will be ready by tonight,” I managed to croak. I kept my promise.

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My father rang and I apologised, saying I wouldn’t be able to make it that weekend after all. He said this was just as well, my mother was also ill. She had collapsed while out shopping. “The doctor says it’s arthritis,” said Vati. It would be best if I came once I was fully recovered. My father rang several times during the next few days and sounded increasingly worried. Mutti was not getting any better. He told me that my sister had arranged for a specialist to come and see her on Monday. This was the first day I was back at work. I went out at lunchtime to buy shoes, the one thing of my sister’s that I couldn’t wear. When I returned, I saw a note on my desk. “Where is Ruth? Her sister has rung three times. Her mother has died.” That was how I found out about Mutti’s death. She had died of a heart attack. The GP had misdiagnosed the first attack as arthritis because she had back pain but no pain in the chest. Deferred pain happened sometimes. The specialist had immediately realised what had happened and

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had ordered an ambulance to take Mutti to my sister’s house, where she could be better looked after. She had died in the ambulance. I drove to Brakpan as if turned to stone; I don’t remember how I got there. Vati collapsed into my arms; he was dazed with shock. I comforted him like a baby. A baby! I hadn’t told my mother I was pregnant. I had intended to do that when I visited them. Now I thanked Hashem I had not done so. Had my mother suffered a heart attack after I had told her, I and everyone else would have been convinced I had caused her death. A few days later I stood at Mutti’s grave, supporting my father. A terrible, much too sudden farewell. I was unable to weep. From the moment I had found the note, I was in shock. I could comfort my father, talk to my sister, to others, but my mother’s sudden death had been one thing too much. I could not come to terms with it. Not then.

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I loved both my parents. Vati, despite his weakness, was gentle and kind; he rarely raised his voice. South Africa had defeated him with its ruthless demands, its pioneer spirit. Mutti, the stronger of the two, had suffered much ill health. She had lost a great deal from emigrating. Margot’s marriage ensured their material well-being, Vati was a reliable employee, yet it must have been galling to have to work for his son-in-law. I said I loved them, as indeed I did, but it was my sister who supported them and coped with their daily concerns. My life had separated me from my family. Two days later I was due to leave for Europe. My editor wanted me to go to Switzerland first to call on the editor of the Weltwoche in Zurich, as he needed to forge links with foreign media. Only Nadine, Margot, Ann and Karl knew I was pregnant. I could tell no one else. How could I? The chances of a normal delivery were almost non-existent. The day before I left, a blood sample showed I was RH-negative – another blow. Had this been a second child, it would most certainly have been a “blue” baby. Even for a first baby it increased the risk of a safe delivery. I was asked to find out the father’s blood group, something I was never to ascertain. Shortly before my departure I discovered that Antony Martin, a colleague and friend, had booked himself on the same flight. I had not expected this; I had wanted to slip quietly out of the country. Now I realised that there would be friends at the airport. I therefore told my sister when I was leaving.

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My guess proved to be correct. At the airport I found myself surrounded by friends. But when I saw my father arrive with my sister and her family, I suddenly lost my composure. I hugged Vati, unable to say anything to anyone, turned and walked through passport control and onto the aircraft. I sensed that Antony was taking a seat next to me. I turned my face to the window and at last began to cry. For hours. Antony sat quietly, pushing paper tissues towards me and passing me drinks which the air hostess placed in front of him. I cried incessantly as far as Nairobi; then felt a little better. Antony nodded sympathetically and ordered himself another whisky. It is difficult to convey the sense of comfort which his presence gave me. I was so very fortunate to have such friendships to sustain me during these terrible weeks and the time to follow. When we parted at Frankfurt airport, Antony going to London and I to Zurich, I did not thank him enough. I think he knew that; this gruff, awkward Irishman, a near genius of great sensitivity. Our paths crossed several times in the coming years, and in the eighties we were once more close colleagues, only to lose touch before his death in the late nineties. Like so many of my friends, I miss him greatly. In Zurich I booked myself into a hotel near the station and asked not to be disturbed. I wept again – told myself that self-pity was self-indulgence and went to sleep. When I awoke, it was the following day. The sun shone; I felt ready to get up and face the world.

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The German trip was a huge success. Hans’s mother was pleased to see me. She did not notice that I had gained some weight, only remarking that I looked well. She asked with some concern about her son. I said very little; there seemed no need to upset her. I knew she wanted us to live in Germany where she was convinced that Hans would find a job. I evaded her questions. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was convinced her son had no intention of ever working again. Indeed, he had already told me so. I did my research and organised interviews, including one with Willy Brandt for which I was joined by Martin Spring. Martin was impressed by Germany and the Germans, just as he had expected from Hitler’s people. One evening we were sitting in a Hamburg restaurant high above the Elbe, when he turned to me and asked, “What is it like, being a Jew?” It left me speechless. What was it like to be a human being? He told me I was the first Jew he had ever talked to. Shortly after that night, Martin returned to South Africa and left me to carry on writing the supplement.

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I wrote to Karl regularly. The letters I received from Ann sounded hurried and breathless, in keeping with her lifestyle; she was forever on the move. I had given Karl my power of attorney. He was to attend to the insurance claim for the fire and to pay out Ann’s share. I also expected my monthly cheques to be paid into my bank account. I was living on an expenses allowance in Germany and was pleased that for the first time in my life I would be able to save a little. I was still paying off the debts which had accumulated during my marriage to Hans. But I was out of luck. Karl had “borrowed” the money in my account when he ran into financial difficulties. He finally admitted this after Ann had written to tell me she was struggling to get him to repay the insurance money due to her. He later gave me an IOU – which was all I was ever to receive from him. The organisation which looked after foreign journalists, invited me to visit Berlin. I accepted with pleasure. Someone gave me the address of a gynaecologist there who examined me and told me the baby had a strong heartbeat for three months. “Three months?” I was shaken. I was at least into the fifth month. “Yes, judging by its size.”

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I immediately phoned my friend Anne Alexander in London. I had met her during the year I worked there and we had become close. A German Jewess like myself, she had been sent to Holland with her brother after the Kristallnacht (the first pogrom in November 1938) and from there to London where her parents had found refuge. Her brother had died in Auschwitz. I had already told Anne of my pregnancy and of my plan to return via London to Johannesburg for the confinement. She listened to everything I said and she asked if I could return to London at once. “Tomorrow would be best.” I had intended to stay a little longer, but now made my excuses to Hans’s mother and flew to London. Anne had already made an appointment with a colleague and booked me into a private clinic. I spent a month at Anne’s home, wrote my articles, corrected the proofs of the articles, sent letters to Karl and to Ann, and asked my editor-in-chief for a few months’ unpaid leave, which he granted. In early January I had an appointment with a specialist – just routine. I lay in a room surrounded by young women waiting for the consultant to arrive on

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his rounds. When he came to me, he tapped my stomach and asked what I was doing there. “I’m due in about a month’s time … I don’t know the exact date.” He raised his bushy eyebrows, examined me and smiled. “In a month’s time? Hmm … I’d say it was closer to three.” I was even more shocked than I had been in Berlin. I walked back to Anne’s home, crying all the way. Something was seriously wrong; the other women were so much larger than I was. Yet the specialist’s diagnosis had to be wrong – I knew that I’d left Johannesburg four months earlier, and somehow doubted I was carrying a twelve-month baby. Ann tried to comfort me. A fortnight later the GP who had looked after me took my blood pressure – and half an hour later I found myself in an ambulance on the way to the clinic. I was wheeled into a private room (which I had not ordered) for observation, I was told. In the evening the consultant arrived, again raising his eyebrows, this time because he had not expected to see me again so soon. He examined me and asked me how I felt about the child. “This is the first time I’ve been pregnant,” I told him. “I want this baby, if possible.” He paced up and down and eventually said, “This is a Catholic clinic. In borderline cases we try to save the mother rather than the child. The baby would have little chance of survival if we induced the birth … it is too small …”

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Apparently he still thought I was only five months pregnant. I said nothing. He looked at me, then decided. “Very well, I’ll give you a chance: twenty-four hours. I’ll give you morphine to bring down your blood pressure. If it goes down, you’ll have to stay here quietly before the birth.” The following morning the nuns busied themselves with me. I could see from their veiled eyes that the morphine hadn’t done the job. In the evening the consultant returned. “I’m sorry. We have to induce the birth to save your life. Do you understand that?” It was impossible for me to speak. He looked at my records. “South Africa!” He smiled. “That country is further developed than other African states. I think it will take a long time before any African can become a good medical practitioner.”

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I was instantly up in arms. “How can you say that? I know many excellent black doctors!” We began to argue. He had once taught at Makerere in Uganda a long time ago, but he had acquired his prejudices and never shed them. I told him about apartheid, which ruled that an African doctor could administer first aid to a white person who had collapsed in the street, could drive the person to hospital, but then would be barred entry because he was black. I mentioned that even blood was segregated according to racial categories. In the end he acknowledged the absurdity of such rules, patted me on the back and said he thought I ought to settle down and worry about my baby. I woke with severe back pain, thinking I ought to have pain somewhere else. Why was I not in a labour ward? I saw the GP, the nurses; breathed deeply as I was told. The pain increased, became unbearable … and then a cry. “Amazing,” one of the nuns murmured. “It is crying! And still attached to the cord!” Crying? So it was no mere foetus, but a child? The pressure eased; I was half unconscious. “Your son,” the doctor said. I looked at his hand which held something which had long dark hair and was screaming.

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“Impossible,” I said and fell asleep. When I woke up, I found flowers next to my bed. One of the nuns pushed me in a wheelchair along the corridor to see my son. He was lying in an incubator, a long emaciated body, his head huge. I looked at him for a long time. “Will he survive?” “He is very tiny,” the nun said. “Perhaps a seven-month baby; we don’t know. He seems to have been starved. If we hadn’t induced the birth, he would have died – and you …” She did not complete the sentence. The specialist gave me hope. If my son survived for four days without a crisis, he had a chance. Visitors arrived. More flowers. I got up to visit my son as often as I was allowed. I tried not to hope and refused even to think of a name. On the fourth day he was still alive. He was sucking from a bottle, no longer through a straw. And he was hungry; never seemed to get enough to

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eat. They gave him additional bottles while I counted the hours. If he made it to the evening, perhaps … He was still alive. I went to bed and decided on a name: Alexander, after Anne. This seemed a big name for this small being and later I gave him the nickname Sacha, a name he shed when he started school and became Alex to his friends. I continued to call him Sacha; I’d grown used to it. I telephoned Johannesburg, spoke to friends, to Karl, to Karl’s sister; both were delighted. Anne fetched me the following day. I was to visit my son in four days’ time and was allowed to phone twice daily; the sister in charge promised to give me truthful accounts. On the fifth day I was waiting for Anne on the landing when I noticed that my legs and left arm somehow had stopped working. I fell, then heard Anne’s husband telephone for help. Someone came to give me an injection and carry me to bed. In the evening Anne told me I had suffered a slight stroke – I had finally succumbed to stress. The advice of all three doctors, the man who had come to my aid, my GP and Anne was the same; I had to change my life and put an end to whatever had caused the stress.

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I had a new responsibility: my son. I would have to make changes to suit him, not myself. Perhaps I should remain in Europe and try and find a job which would let me look after my child. Maybe I could work as a maid. I had never in my life cleaned, washed or ironed, but I could learn. Anne offered me a home, but this I could not accept. She was a busy doctor and her husband a writer who worked from home. I could not disrupt their orderly lives. Karl wrote, delighted about the birth of his son. And then, a miracle. I received a letter from Peter Duminy, the deputy editor of the Financial Mail, asking if I would be interested in taking over the new job of bureau chief in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. Antony Martin had been working there but been asked to leave; his reporting had not suited the UDI regime. If I was interested! It was unbelievable … I couldn’t say yes quickly enough. As for Anne, I could never have managed my life without her help then, as well as later. I was extremely grateful to have such generous and good friends.

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XIV

FLEET STREET, SALISBURY, LONDON

As soon as Sacha was well enough to be discharged from the maternity home, we left London. My son now weighed five pounds and still looked like a newborn baby, but his head no longer seemed too large for his body and his ribs were no longer visible. He was in fact a very pretty baby. The first few weeks were difficult; I had to learn to bathe and feed a baby, change nappies and be on call. During the first weeks he needed two-hourly feeds, which meant broken sleep. By the time we arrived in Johannesburg, Sacha was almost five months old. Karl was thrilled with his son. Vati asked no questions. He simply picked up his grandson and held him in his arms. I straightened out my affairs during the following few days and then said my farewells. The morning I was due to leave, I found Peter Duminy waiting beside my VW. He smiled and asked if I’d really thought they would let me travel a thousand kilometres on my own with a baby. I had to admit I was greatly relieved to see him; I had been a little scared – of the journey, the new country, the future.

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At the border we were welcomed with open arms when we said I had come to live in Rhodesia. At that time, more white people were going than coming. However, after a few phone calls and a lengthy wait, the welcome faded. Instead of the promised six-month visa, I was given exactly seven days. We protested, explaining that we would be travelling via Bulawayo and not making straight for Salisbury; this alone would take four days. But the officials remained adamant. I had seven days in which to apply for a work permit. I was despondent, felt it wouldn’t work, saw myself on a plane back to London and penury … typing addresses, cleaning windows? Possibly. In fact the trip took longer than four days. We had a puncture in Gwelo (Gweru) and had to stay overnight before continuing by train to spend a night at Meikles, Salisbury’s most prestigious hotel at that time. When we arrived the following day at the office in nearby Frankel House, we were greeted by excited staff: “You’re late … Mrs Weiss has an appointment with the finance minister.” I glanced at my watch, realising I could just make it, pushed Sacha’s carrycot onto a desk and handed him over to a secretary, explained about feeding

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bottles and nappies – and vanished. When I returned, three women were playing with the baby: a young journalist named Leonie, a secretary called Fiona and another secretary, Thelma – a woman of about my age. Sacha was having a great time.

In 1966 on my way to Salisbury (Harare) as the Financial Mail’s Rhodesia editor, here at Gwelo (Gweru) station with Sacha in the carrycot with other belongings

I was to share the services of Thelma and Fiona with John Worrall, the Rand Daily Mail’s bureau chief, whose offices and telex I also shared. I had met John before, in the course of my African journeys and we got on well. Leonie was his junior, a bright journalist who knew the Rhodesian scene; her boyfriend was in the British South Africa Police, so that she was well placed for “terrorist” stories. Fiona had been a journalist before losing her job after UDI. She had worked first for the US Information Services and then for Worrall as a secretary. Thelma was the wife of the correspondent serving several major British papers including the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. A BBC studio was also situated on our floor. Whenever there was

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a crisis, the big shots from Fleet Street would fly in and make their way to our offices, where they used our equipment and brought themselves up to date. Inevitably Frankel House was dubbed “mini-Fleet Street”. Peter helped me find a small furnished flat. I was still without a residence or work permit, with my visa continuously being extended by seven days. The journalists who met daily in Meikles Bar began to bet not if, but when, I would be kicked out. I found a day crèche for Sacha, who had become a happy, contented baby. I made new acquaintances and a few new friendships, in particular with two sisters, Paddy and Joan, who often babysat for me and with whose family we spent most of our weekends. At the start of UDI, most journalists analysed the statistics to work out how long Rhodesia could survive the mandatory UN sanctions. By the time I arrived, months had passed since UDI in November 1965 and in theory the country should have been bankrupt. This was far from being so. There was petrol rationing, but everyone received sufficient supplies. I could have bought a bottle of whisky a day had I so desired and was never hampered by shortages of anything. On the contrary, a colleague in Zambia asked me to send him some things which were in short supply in that country.

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I was too busy during the first few weeks, settling in and working, to realise that I hadn’t heard from Karl for some time. We had arranged that he would visit me at least once a month. I rang him. He sounded ill at ease and distracted. “Is anything wrong?” I asked. “No, no. Everything is all right. Only … I’ve written to you …” I asked when he was coming up to see us. “I’ve explained everything in my letter,” he said, ending the call. The letter took so long to arrive that I forgot about it. One morning – it was Thursday, the day I usually took off because the paper was printed on Thursdays – I arrived in the office and saw Karl’s handwriting on one of the letters in my tray. I picked it up and opened it while talking to John Worrall. Glancing through it, one sentence jumped out at me. I gaped at it; felt dizzy. “Anything wrong?”

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“No, no.” I muttered something, rushed into my office and shut the door to read the letter properly. I hadn’t made a mistake. “… and I’m certain she will make me a good wife …” Who? A good wife? He had a wife, didn’t he? I read on. There was no longer any doubt. Karl was talking of a new marriage. His marriage with his wife had long been a sham, something he had never told me before because he hadn’t wanted me to worry about him, he explained now. I read on. He said that while I was in England (“having your child!” I wanted to shout) he had stumbled from one crisis to the next. First there was a difficulty over money, which he solved with my bank account,by borrowing two thousand pounds – more money than I’d ever had. Then came a serious disagreement with his wife, whom he caught with one of his friends. And then “Eve was a great comfort.” Eve. Who was she? An old friend from primary school, I read, whom he had met again by chance. She and her husband and Karl and Beth began to see a good deal of each other; then Eve confided in him. She was desperately unhappy in her marriage – and when Karl found out about his wife’s affair, “Eve was a great comfort.” So much so, that they decided to divorce their partners and marry each other. He also wrote that of course this would not change our relationship! He loved me. I was the most wonderful woman in the world. He was proud of his son and asked how he was.

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I sat, too shaken to move. Then I tried to ring him without success. Eventually I rang Vicky, his sister, who laughed and said I must have misunderstood. Yes, Karl had been going out with this Eve and her husband but that was all. A little while later she phoned back, very subdued. I was right; Karl planned to marry Eve. Apparently he had been astonished at my reaction. Surely nothing had changed, he repeated. He planned to treat Sacha exactly the same as his other children. He loved me; that too was unchanged. “Shall I come?” Vicky asked and then arrived a few days later. Vicky was a better friend to me than her brother was a lover. We stayed in touch for years, even after her marriage. Much later she renewed the contact, when her children were grown and she and her husband had come to live in Britain in the nineties. They came to visit me on the Isle of Wight on their yacht. I somehow had to survive the day. Or did I? Why? So much agony – over Hans and Margot, then my suffering over his lover, and later over Robert’s death. Now Karl had let me down. Something had to be wrong with me to be twice rejected. I was in deep despair, no longer seeing much point in living. Everything I touched turned to dust.

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I went to collect my son. And then, when I had put him to bed and he was kicking and gurgling, I knew that I had to go on; I couldn’t end it all. I had a responsibility – to Sacha. I was about to go to bed, when there was a knock at the door. It was Fiona, carrying a bottle of whisky and a cake. I tried to shut the door in her face, saying I wasn’t well and didn’t want visitors. But she insisted, came inside and made herself comfortable. Naturally I talked. I told her a good deal about Hans, about Karl – more than I intended, less than she asked.

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Several weeks later Karl visited me. I took Sacha to my new friends, Paddy and Joan, so that I could speak to Karl without interruption. We seemed to be on different wavelengths, speaking different languages. He insisted that he adored me, I was the woman of his dreams. But marrying me would be like spanning a racehorse in front of a cart! He was marrying Eve because he was certain she would look after his children as well as her own daughter. Anyway, I had always said we could never marry. What had changed? All he had done was swap one wife for another. An impossible discussion. It was then that he gave me the IOU which was never repaid. That was a great loss. Had he not taken this money, I would have been able to put down a deposit for a house in London two years later, instead of being forced to borrow and make do with smaller, less adequate accommodation. During a visit to Johannesburg in 1990, we met again briefly when Karl came to my hotel. He looked old, had put on weight and had become a born-again Christian. His business affairs had never recovered from the setback he had suffered while I had been in London in 1966. Nor had his marriage to Eve been a success; apparently she had not looked after Karl’s children as he had hoped. They too were divorced. Two more marriages followed. He was to die a few years later, a sad lonely man. I received a letter from him after this meeting, in which he told me that he had never stopped loving me, that he loved me still. Would I come back to him? Hardly something I would contemplate for a single moment. I did tell Sacha that his father had asked if he would write to him, but Sacha refused. “I don’t know this person. What has he to do with me? What have I to say to him?” A few months after this I met Karl’s sister at my London home. We went out to dinner with our sons. When we were seated, Vicky asked her son Brian if Sacha reminded her of anyone. “Yes, Tom,” he said without hesitation. “Sacha is Tom’s half-brother,” Vicky said, and we laughed at Brian’s expression.

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Sacha met Brian and his partner a few times, but both were “too South African” – meaning too racist – for my son, and the relationship failed to flourish. When Karl died six years later, his sister rang to tell me. She too had drifted away from her once-beloved older brother. I seem to have had an unerring ability to choose the wrong men. So I chose from then on never to have anything to do with men other than as colleagues and friends. I shied away from close contact, was delighted to meet men on equal terms in business and friendship, but nothing else. For me, it was the wisest decision. I immersed myself in work. It was always work which helped me through difficult periods; I could switch off from my personal problems and concentrate on other issues. It had helped me through the difficult years with Hans, during the end of our marriage, with my grief over Robert’s death and that of my mother, and also throughout my pregnancy. Now I worked harder than ever, especially when I received a two-year work permit to everyone’s surprise. I began to concentrate on the question of sanction busting. It was obvious that the Rhodesians had found a way around sanctions. As an economic journalist, I could not simply let it go at that; I had to find out what was happening.

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And find out I did. I was invited to a dinner party to make up the numbers when the wife of a guest had been taken ill (white Rhodesians were conservative and always paired their guests). When the host asked the man opposite me at table what he thought of “John”, the guest spluttered in fury, denouncing John and all his house. While listening to his outburst, I suddenly understood that I was listening to an account of sanction busting! The editor of the Rhodesian Herald published the paper each day with blank spaces where stories removed by the censor should have appeared. Some stories appeared with half the headline or part of the text blanked out. Foreign journalists, not yet affected by censorship, always tried to find out the story behind the blanks. That morning a blanked-out story had concerned a man named John Landau who had been refused entry into France, together with a Smith cabinet minister. I realised that they were on a sanction-busting trip, so the following morning I turned up at my fellow guest’s office to ask him to explain his anger. He was surprised both by my visit and my job as a journalist. At that time, a middle-aged woman with a Jewish background rarely worked anywhere in southern Africa apart from in the home. Angry as he was, he actually told me how sanction busting worked! The Smith regime had pre-

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pared for sanctions long before UDI and had created a network of companies for sanction-busting operations. One was named Univex, the name of one of James Bond’s fictitious companies. It even had the telephone number 2008 (since 2007 had not been available, so I was later told). After this, I avidly researched many stories, interviewed businessmen and bankers, people such as Sir Evan Campbell, head of Standard Bank, a former High Commissioner to Britain. I assembled a network of useful contacts and my reporting began to be noticed. Salisbury businessmen would telephone Johannesburg whenever the Financial Mail was banned in Rhodesia, as happened on several occasions, and would ask what the “Rhodesian Roundup” (my column) had to say that week. I went on the trail of paper companies, curious barter deals and secret tobacco sales. Later, sanction-busting stories became major investigations. The 1978 Bingham report into oil deals, to which British companies were party, hit the headlines. But in 1966 such things were hidden and I did my best to ferret them out. It was gratifying to learn many years later that some of my articles provided PhD material.

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I knew of course that this work would not meet with government approval. I simply accepted the risk. I was determined not to return to Johannesburg;I was prepared to do anything to avoid that. I even considered working once more in the insurance industry, naturally at a lower level than at SAMA. The curious thing was that the more I published, the more information was forthcoming. I received anonymous tips. One day I had a phone call advising me to take a scenic drive to the koppie, the hill where Rhodes’ pioneer column had halted to plant the British flag after invading Mashonaland in 1890. They had named the town they founded Salisbury which later reverted to its Shona name Harare, meaning he-who-never-sleeps (a reference to rustling of tree leaves on the hill). I drove to the summit, passing a police station and parked near the spot from which one had a great view of the city and the surrounding countryside. While Sacha played, I looked through the binoculars I had brought, swivelling them from side to side. Bingo! Below I saw an airfield, one of many used by the RAF during the war and now a playground for civilian aircraft. Now I spotted some activity not related to flying. A huge new hangar gleamed in the sun, and what was being loaded into it from a series of trucks, was familiar to anyone living in Rhodesia: sacks of tobacco.

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White Rhodesian farmers had discovered that tobacco, the golden leaf, was a lucrative crop. Several major British companies including Imperial and Gallagher not only bought the Rhodesian-grown product but also ran their own tobacco estates. It was the country’s major export and an important source of revenue and foreign exchange. When UDI and sanctions happened, the famous tobacco auctions went underground overnight. No one knew what was happening to the tobacco output – until I spotted those bags and understood: the regime gambled on sanctions ending and was reluctant to force farmers off the land. The government itself was buying the stuff and storing the bags in this hangar,to which, in the fullness of time, many more sacks were to be added. Tobacco could be stored for some three years before it depreciated. Naturally, as well as storing it, they were also selling it clandestinely well below world market prices when and where they could. Later I also found out that tobacco was being shipped to other countries such as the Netherlands, where it was consigned to the free port to be secretly mixed in the warehouses with tobacco from other countries, to befuddle and confuse the experts as to the real country of origin. Sometimes I wondered why it was that people told me about such things. Perhaps some businessmen had a bad conscience. They did not really approve of Smith, felt uncomfortable as “rebels against the Queen” and would have preferred a peaceful solution, long before Smith himself was forced to the conference table fourteen years after his UDI and a disastrous war. I also think that many businessmen enjoyed this secret James Bond game of evading Britain’s sanction-busting hunters and wanted to tell someone how clever they were. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Naturally I had to protect my sources. Salisbury was a small place. If someone caught a cold in one end of the town, someone at the other end would be sneezing by the afternoon. I developed a simple technique. I would call on one contact, immediately do an interview with someone else and would swap some news, passing on a snippet of the information I had gathered, well aware it would be passed on. By visiting a number of offices and making numerous phone calls, it finally became impossible to track down the original source. There was always something happening; I was never off duty and had no time to be bored or to continue to feel sorry for myself. I also worried about Sacha, who succumbed to all the usual baby illnesses and once managed to contract measles and mumps simultaneously – a dreadful time, during which I thought he would die. He survived and became a beautiful and even-tem-

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pered baby. I still have photos to remind me of that time. I kept him with me as much as possible while we travelled around the country, visited estates, mines, villages. But I was not allowed into the Zambezi Valley near the Zambian border, where troops were entrenched to stop the entry of Nationalist guerrillas. I never dreamed of landing a Fleet Street job; yet I did, to my immense surprise. When Sacha was almost two-and-a-half years old and had passed the critical baby stage, I received an offer from the Guardian to work on the paper’s city pages. I was thrilled, but was still thinking it over when I received an unexpected visitor one evening. Fiona, who had been my secretary when I had first arrived, was calling on me shortly after her return from Portugal. As soon as we were alone, she shouted at me, ”You … you’ve betrayed me!” I was astonished, to say the least. I laughed. She really looked funny, dressed in the fashion of swinging London, which had not yet hit Salisbury. She was furious. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re an enemy of the state.” Well, if she meant the Smith regime, she was right. I asked her to explain. Instead she asked, “Tell me, have you never wondered how you got your two-year work permit?”

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“Sure. I was surprised.” She sighed. “I told them you were okay. You were a disappointed middleaged woman who had love problems. I said that your people had given you this job because they were sorry for you and they liked you.” She shot me an angry glance. “Now they’ve asked me to find out what you’re up to, who you’re sleeping with.” It was my turn to be angry. ”You know better than anyone that I’m not likely to have any more love affairs.” I had told no one about Karl after that terrible day. I was also distressed by what she had said. Fiona, an attractive young woman, had been ideally placed as a secretary in our office to act as an informant for Smith’s secret police. All the visiting Fleet Street firemen who made a beeline for our office, were only too happy to take an attractive woman like Fiona out for a meal or drink, as were the local hacks and both were excellent sources. She suddenly looked tired. I wondered why she had told me all this. I was due to leave anyway; I had no intention of turning down the Guardian job. I repeated, “You know I don’t get my information by sleeping around.”

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She nodded. Of course she knew, she had seen the state I had been in that day. She asked for a drink. I poured her a large whisky – she looked as if she could do with it. “Do you believe me? Look out of the window. What do you see behind the lawn?” “A bus stop, a tree.” She said without moving, “And a man, leaning against the tree.” “Yes.” “A policeman. They’ve been watching the flat for weeks.” I said, “How interesting.” She stamped her foot angrily. “Can’t you be serious? They’re angry with me because I told them you didn’t understand anything about economic issues. And now they want to know about your informer; they think it’s someone in government … a minister.” My heavens! They really thought I’d have something to do with one of these people I despised.

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Fiona departed, warning that my work permit would not be renewed. Well, I hadn’t exactly expected that it would be. The following morning I asked the young woman who helped me in the flat, if anyone had ever entered it when I was not there. She shook her head. “No, Madam, only the police.” I barely managed a smile. Fiona had told me the truth. Tom and Sally, the couple who lived in the flat next door, arrived after breakfast. They had become dear friends and often looked after Sacha for me. Sacha adored them, Sally in particular. They were very worried since Fiona (their friend from university days) had visited them after she’d left me. She had got herself thoroughly drunk and had made a phone call to someone, saying, “I’ve told her everything!” They advised me to leave as soon as I could – if possible, by the weekend. “Then they’ll leave you in peace. We’ll tell Fiona.” Again I discovered that I had many good friends. Someone helped me pack. My successor arrived from Johannesburg and I still had time to introduce

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him to people, attend to sundry chores and say my farewell. At the same time I looked forward to a new job, a new country. I told colleagues about Fiona’s activities, as a result of which she was shut out of media circles. Somehow I felt sorry for her. Sally told me that Fiona had been blackmailed; she’d had an affair with a married man who turned out to be a member of the secret police. She had been threatened with exposure, which at that time would have caused a scandal. White Rhodesia was a conservative society.

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“She hoped that if she told you about it, they would let her off the hook and she’d be rid of them.” I doubted it. It was difficult to live in a country in which there was no democracy. Sadly, Robert Mugabe was also going to refuse his people a democratic system, but I did not anticipate this at the time. I was not allowed to return to Rhodesia nor indeed to South Africa. I received the order forbidding my entry with the threat of instant arrest if I as much as set a foot on Rhodesian soil while I was working at the Guardian. It seemed they were running low on stationery: the document arrived in an envelope with the slogan, “Come To Sunny Rhodesia!” It made a nice paragraph in the Guardian’s miscellaneous column. At the same time I also made it onto a South African blacklist. I discovered this when I wanted to visit my father who was terminally ill and I was not given entry on compassionate grounds. It was only in 1992 that my name was finally removed from the blacklist. Before then, whenever I was in transit in Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg en route to Lesotho or Botswana, the computer would spit at the immigration officer; I would be marched off, questioned and eventually forced to spend the night in a “hotel” (in effect a detention centre) on the airport roof, guarded by a fierce-looking woman. The walls of these rooms on the roof were so high that one could not even glimpse Joburg’s skyscrapers. In 1980 following the Lancaster House talks on Rhodesia which I covered for various media, I returned to Salisbury for the transitional period before the country became Zimbabwe. At the airport the burly immigration officer paged moodily through my passport. He seemed to know my name without reference to any papers and hesitantly gave me a twelve-hour visa, advising me to get my accreditation from the Ministry of Information. The press office was temporarily based at the new Meikles Hotel. I eventually had to wait for permission much longer than any other colleague. It so happened that when I arrived at Meikles and walked upstairs to

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the press office, a woman who looked familiar was walking down the steps. I stopped, recognised Fiona and asked what she was doing there. She replied, bristling with hostility, “I’m on the accreditation desk for foreign journalists … ” So it was hardly surprising that somehow my accreditation was not forthcoming. For several frustrating days I sat outside the briefing rooms, unable to enter – a fate I shared with the journalists from London’s communist Morning Star, Russia’s Tass and the Chinese News Agency – until I finally complained to the office of the British Governor, Lord Soames and was given a permit to stay until the end of the election campaign. After that, I was given an open-ended visa from the Zimbabwe Home Affairs Minister, Herbert Ushewokunze, one of my friends. I had met him in Cecil Square (later African Unity Square) when I was on my way to his ministry. Herbert took the papers out of my hand and scribbled: “application granted” with his name and that had been that. Sadly, Herbert, like so many of his generation, died much too early.

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This chain of events in the sixties thus took me once more to London in 1968. The proverbial English weather posed no problem but London traffic did. Life had been so very different in Africa. In Salisbury, everything happened within a narrow radius – Parliament, ministries, business, banking. I didn’t even need to use a car except to drive to and from my flat in the avenues or when I visited a farm or village. London, with its vast network of suburbs and millions of people was a different thing entirely. I found another house in South London (after finding the house I had wanted but couldn’t afford, thanks to Karl’s “loan”). Though on the map it looked close to the city where I worked, the house was a one-and-a-half hour commute each way. No matter what I did, a combination of train/bus/tube or bus all the way, the result was always the same. Three hours out of the day of a working mum proved impossible; I rarely saw Sacha during the week. He went to kindergarten, later nursery school together with Nicky, the little daughter of a young woman, Rosemary (Rosie) with whom I shared the house and who looked after children and household, while I went to work. This was an ideal arrangement since Sacha now had a little sister and quasi-mother and I a friend and housekeeper. The house was old, but it had room for us all and the garden was wonderful for the children. I didn’t yearn for the house I couldn’t afford; I had learnt long ago that it was pointless to think about something out of reach or which one had lost. Rosemary came from an upper-class family. Her parents disapproved of Nicky, whose father was not white. “Mummy raises Welsh ponies; Daddy is in the city” was the reply when I asked Rosie about her family. I don’t believe

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they were altogether happy about Rosie living with me either – after all, I was Jewish. Prejudices are hard to shed. Rosie and I were aware this was only a temporary solution to our diverse problems. For me it was great to arrive home to a clean house and a meal, with my son well looked after. On weekends it was my turn to look after the children, which I enjoyed. Indeed our years together were very good. Inevitably the time came when Rosie was ready to face life again. As a pretty, young and intelligent woman, she duly found the right partner who happened to be one of my journalist friends. They had other children and are still happily married. Before that happened, Leonie, the journalist who had worked for John Worall in Salisbury, came to Britain and stayed with us. I was greatly relieved, for I was due to leave for Mauritius and Zambia on my first business trip for the Guardian. President Kaunda was nationalising the coppermines and I was the obvious person to cover the event. Leonie and Rosemary were of an age and I felt they would be good company for each other.

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It was an interesting and successful trip. I loved Mauritius, a place I had not yet visited, and I was introduced to the turbulence of its politics. My hosts were charming. Prime Minister Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam even invited me to attend the regular cabinet meeting during my stay. It had also been good to meet several old friends in Zambia, who had left racist Southern Rhodesia. On my return I was met at the airport by my little “family” and forgot to ask about Leonie’s whereabouts. In the early hours of the morning I was woken by the phone ringing. I sleepily picked it up to hear someone say: “Could I speak to Leonie?” A voice with a South African accent. Rosie appeared at the top of the stairs, turned on the light and called out that Leonie had gone to visit relations. I repeated this to the voice. “Could you please tell her that Keith rang.” It was three in the morning. I replaced the receiver, glanced at Rosemary and went back to bed. At the end of the week, Leonie returned from her visit. I remembered the curious call and gave her the message. The following day, Sunday, she asked if she could borrow our car. “I tried to ring Keith. There’s no reply. I’d like to go and see him.” She returned later, looking worried. He had not been at home. Rosie explained the situation. “Leonie was unhappy in Salisbury after she broke up with her boyfriend. In London she met a number of journalists, all

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southern Africans. She’s been going out with them almost every day. One of them is Keith Wallace; he’s in love with her.” I knew that her love affair with her police boyfriend had not worked out and that this was why she had come to Europe, to try and get over it. “Keith told her that his girlfriend had left him and returned to South Africa. He had followed her, only to return to London two days before Leonie arrived here, and then came back on his own. He keeps asking Leonie to marry him. Keith is drinking heavily, Leonie says; he’s under great stress and very unhappy. He tried to persuade her to marry him this week.” Presumably this was why she had dashed off to see her relatives, I thought. On Monday morning Leonie travelled into London with me and was not in the house when I came home. Again the phone rang late that night. I recognised the name of the caller, whom I had known in Johannesburg. He was one of the South Africans Leonie had met. “Did Keith ring you the other day?” I hesitated. “Yes. What is this about?” He sounded distraught. “Keith is dead. You must tell me exactly what he said. Word for word.”

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There was little to tell. He then explained what had happened. Leonie had returned to the building where Keith lived and had seen several milk bottles outside his flat. She had returned with a friend, Julian, who had climbed along a ledge to an open window and jumped into the room to open the door for Leonie. The place was in chaos. A chair was overturned and broken; things were strewn about. Keith’s jacket was on the floor with his keys in one of the pockets. “They went to the police but they weren’t interested … a missing journalist who was probably on a drinking binge somewhere …” “And then what happened?” “They rang us; we went to the flat. Bob happened to look out of the window and saw something that looked like a bundle of clothing below. When he looked closer, he saw – it was Keith.” I knew who Bob was, the journalist Bob Hitchcock, an old South African hand.

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This time the police came. They searched the room, took away the body. Leonie did not return that night. Later I discovered that the men had left her alone in Keith’s room for a while, before taking her to Bob’s wife. I was furious when I heard this. Men! A few days later Leonie collected her things from our house and told us she would stay with the Hitchcocks until the post-mortem. Then she intended to return to Salisbury. I was worried about Leonie. She was in shock and seemed terrified; she spoke only in monosyllables. But she insisted that she was all right, refused my invitation and explained that she had to stay with the Hitchocks as they all had to appear in court. In due course the coroner returned a verdict of accidental death. Keith had been drinking; he was depressed and presumably had somehow fallen out of the open window. A day after the post-mortem Leonie returned to Salisbury. That surprised me, as she had planned a longer trip and had planned to go to Switzerland. Keith’s death had greatly disturbed her.

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Shortly after Leonie left, another South African journalist and one of my friends on the Rand Daily Mail came to visit us. He knew nothing about Leonie, the phone call or anything else, but he had known Keith. “He was an old friend, we were colleagues. He’d been a good journalist – among other things.” “What do you mean, other things?” He did not reply. Just gave me an odd look “You mean … he was …in BOSS?” The Bureau of State Security, South Africa’s secret police, was not unknown in my circles. He nodded. “This accident wasn’t an accident. They killed him. Keith wanted out; that’s why he’d flown to South Africa, to ask them to release him. He didn’t want to work for them any more. But they couldn’t just let him go, so now they’re covering the whole thing up. My father and Keith’s father are friends. At first Keith worked for BOSS out of conviction; he was a patriot. Then later when all these terrible things happened – Mandela’s trial and the rest and even in the office … ”

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I knew he meant the revelation that Ludi was in BOSS. I thought of Ann and Gordon Winter. So Keith had been another informer. Poor Leonie! Years later a journalist dug up the Keith Wallace story. An article appeared in the Observer which said that Wallace had worked for BOSS and had been eliminated when he was no longer trusted. I was living in Zambia by then and after the story appeared, Thelma phoned to tell me the rest. Keith had not only told Leonie that he worked for BOSS and wanted to end his association, but he had been foolish enough to introduce her to his handler. This man had been furious with Keith. Leonie, aware that Keith had been a BOSS agent, was convinced that he had not fallen but had been pushed. That was why she’d been petrified: she was afraid BOSS would also target her. There was an unexpected follow-up for me. Shortly after the Observer had published the article, I was offered a trip to an Anglo American mine in Broken Hill, later Kabwe.The company’s public relations officer in Zambia insisted on accompanying me, even though I said I could get there on my own. No sooner were we on the road than he began to fiddle with the radio knobs. I dislike music while travelling and said so. But he took no notice of me and kept on twiddling. Eventually he said, “I’m trying to get Deutsche Welle – the Voice of Germany. I want to hear if one of your pieces is being transmitted.”

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I was surprised. I hadn’t told anyone that I was writing for Deutsche Welle. Apart from my permanent jobs, I was also freelancing for many papers and magazines at the time. The man went on talking and it became obvious that he knew a great deal about me. He mentioned Leonie and Keith Wallace. Indeed, the conversation kept returning to Keith Wallace. I began to feel frightened. I was alone in the car with someone who was clearly a BOSS agent. “I didn’t know Keith,” I said finally. That surprised him. “Really? I thought … I mean, you’re one of the liberals … you know, it was tough for me in the office. I knew who was who, who were the lefties and who the policemen. I didn’t like either group.” “Policemen?” “Ludi. Keith.” I felt faint. As far as I knew, no one had been aware of Ludi’s real job until the day after the Rivonia raid, when he had appeared in the newsroom and had

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screamed at the “lefties”, hurling his weapon onto the table to force them to listen to him. Eventually he told me that BOSS had instructed Keith to join the Rand Daily Mail. One of the stories he covered was that of a Coloured teacher who had emigrated to Northern Rhodesia. One morning this man had been kidnapped, drugged and taken in the boot of a car across Southern Rhodesia to Johannesburg. A telephone call had alerted the media that a car with interesting contents was standing at the Zoo Lake. Keith had been one of the journalists who was sent to the scene to find the drugged Coloured teacher, still in the boot. He was arrested, but had to be released subsequently because of pressure by the British. The kidnapping was meant to serve as a warning: no government opponent could feel safe anywhere. Keith was later sent by BOSS to retrace the kidnapper’s steps to find out if anyone had noticed anything unusual at the border posts the kidnapper had come through. This meant that Keith had to give up his Johannesburg job. While he was in Rhodesia, he had met and fallen in love with Leonie.

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I tried to work out why this man had told me this story. To frighten me? To gain my confidence? Did he think that Leonie had told me something? Too bad. I really knew nothing, except that South Africans in exile should not trust anyone they meet casually. BOSS, Pretoria’s long arm, became a well-known entity under its ever-changing name. As late as April 1992, when contact had long been established between the NP government and the ANC, the British authorities prevented South African agents from murdering Dirk Coetzee, a one-time colleague and former commander of Vlakplaas, a secret service murder factory near Pretoria, which played an infamous part in the war against ANC fighters. Coetzee had fled the country in 1989 after being interviewed about his activities. He then joined the ANC, which was a victory for the liberation movement. Ruth First had been only one of Pretoria’s victims. Ruth’s boss, Acquino de Braganza, an intellectual and delightful man, director of the research institute at Maputo University, had also been badly injured by the bomb which killed Ruth. Later, he and thirty other people died alongside Mozambique’s President Samora Machel in a plane accident on the Mozambican and South African border. It was suspected the plane had been deliberately misdirected by the South Africans. I had liked and respected him enormously and had met him only a few days before the tragic accident, which robbed Mozambique of some of its finest citizens, apart from its president.

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I happened to be in Angola’s capital Luanda during 1984 when another letter bomb exploded in Lubango, killing Jeanette Schoon and her young daughter. The bomb was intended for Marius Schoon, a gentle Afrikaner artist and anti-apartheid activist, who had gone Luanda on that day. Marius was devastated. The only thing that kept him sane was the miraculous escape of his little son Fritzi, who had run into the corridor to chase a ball when the bomb went off. We talked for hours when he visited me at my hotel. Of course I could not comfort him, but at least I could listen. The funeral of Jeanette and her daughter at a military cemetery in Luanda was one of the most moving I have ever attended. I was able to record Marius’s speech as well as the beautiful voices of the ANC choir. When I returned to Harare, I gave the tape to Hugh Lewin, who was organising a memorial service for the Schoons. In early 1999 I was sad to learn of Marius’s death in South Africa. In 1987 I was working on a manuscript about the ANC and as a result covered a preliminary trial in a London court usually “reserved” for terrorists of the Irish persuasion. The case received little media attention. Only South African colleagues sat next to me on the press benches. Four men had been charged with a bizarre plot to kidnap ANC leaders and take them to South Africa to stand trial. The police had found a death list and a good deal of other material, though the case was never followed through and the men were not brought to full trial, I suspect for political reasons. One of the names on this death list was Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor, whom I had met in Lusaka. Exiles lived dangerously: Mbeki once literally stumbled across an intruder in his home who had come to kill him.

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Violence and brutality. It seemed to be the theme accompanying my life – in Germany, in South Africa, in Zambia, in Zimbabwe. In London I was not deeply involved with exile politics. I concentrated on daily affairs and economic stories and also took freelance jobs as they came along – for the BBC, for feature agencies and magazines. If one had a byline in a national paper, such things were part of life. The little leisure time I had I spent with Sacha, but it was not enough. He had been a delightful baby, but had problems as a toddler. Everyone told me how well behaved he was. Possibly, but not when I was around. He resented my absence and made me feel it. He tried to terrorise me and became demanding and difficult. I knew that I could not label his behaviour as “naughty”. I understood the problem: he was fighting for my attention. He hated it when anyone phoned me at home; he wanted his mother to himself. This was the one thing I could not give him and the one thing he needed.

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I was still wondering what I should do, whether I should again change my job (I had already moved from the Guardian to the Investors Chronicle, from a daily to a weekly paper) when something happened which decided everything for me. I returned home one evening much earlier than usual, since I had covered a story outside London and had phoned it through to the office. I arrived at my doorstep together with our doctor, who had been called by Rosie. Within minutes Sacha, Rosie and I were whisked by ambulance to a children’s hospital. Sacha was to spend the night under observation. Apparently my little boy’s condition – a cold – had deteriorated during the day. Bettie du Toit (who had become blind while living in Ghana) was staying with us. So were Tom and Sally from Salisbury, who were on a European tour. Bettie, concerned about the child, had tried to lift him and realised that he was a dead weight. Sacha was unconscious. A doctor was called, but she couldn’t diagnose the problem and called her boss, the GP who had arrived at the same time as myself.

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They did some tests at the hospital and finally arranged an X-ray, but found nothing wrong. Eventually Sacha was placed in a special observation room for the night. Rosie was sent home, while I was given a bed in the mothers’ house. The following morning at five o’clock I was woken up by one of the other mothers and told to go to the ward if I wanted to see my son alive for the last time. I was there in seconds. But despite the phone call, they wouldn’t let me see my child. When asked if I wanted to ring my husband, I asked that Dr Alexander (Anne) be sent for. Finally I was allowed to see Sacha for two minutes. He was in an oxygen tent; his eyes were shut. I saw tubes and various individuals who busied themselves with the small body. Someone took me outside and gave me that cup of tea which, in Britain, is part of any crisis – but I couldn’t touch it. Anne came and was allowed to join the huddled group of doctors. She eventually explained what had happened. “He’s been unconscious for some time. It happened in the night. The sister who sat next to him took his pulse and temperature regularly and noticed that both rose rapidly, whereupon she had called the doctor on duty … ” They still had not diagnosed the cause of all this. I waited. I found it impossible to cry. I knew only one thing: if Sacha died, there would be no point in going on living. If he survived, I would not stay in London; I would find somewhere else to live. Somewhere, where I could be close to him, could reach him quickly if something happened. I had worked as hard as I did because of him. My success had meant his success. I would be able to give him a good education to make sure that his life was easier than mine.

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I scarcely remember the long, dreadful hours of waiting. They wanted me to move elsewhere; someone suggested I should lie down, but I refused. Finally the ward sister called me. “He is waking up. You’ll want to be there.” I did. Sacha was still in the oxygen tent, the tubes were still visible but they had given him a gown. He began to move. The eyes opened, looked around and found me. The thin arm reached out, stuck in the tent. I was helped by the sister to open a tiny slit – he poked his hand through it and held mine. We sat like that for over an hour. Rosie came and brought Sally. Sacha smiled at Rosie and said, “You’ve got a new jumper!” The first words he had uttered since released from the tent. Then he saw Sally and the smile turned to the wide grin, about which another friend had once remarked that it reached from beyond one ear to beyond the other. When a young doctor came to see him, I told her about the remark and the smile. She smiled in turn and said, “I …we… weren’t sure. He’d been unconscious for so long …” Another coincidence: the doctor had come from Johannesburg, as I’d realised the previous night from her accent. I had known her father. She was married to an Egyptian, a surgeon at the hospital, but because he was dark-skinned they were unable to live in South Africa. It was the surgeon who had forced a plastic tube down my child’s throat during the night. He was only in the hospital because his wife had been on duty. Had he not been there … an unbearable thought.

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Sally, like Ann, was one of the young women I had loved like the daughter I never had. Soon after the European trip, Sally had a child, a girl. A few years later when I lived in Zambia, Tom rang me from Salisbury to tell me that Sally had died of cancer of the spine. I felt her loss deeply. Even today Sacha talks of her. Tom came to see me at my hotel during my Johannesburg trip in 2010 and it seemed as if the years between hadn’t separated us. He had remarried long ago and had become a grandfather. Sonia, the daughter he had with Sally, was living with her family in Brussels. I can’t be grateful enough to those doctors and fate way back in 1970. Sacha could have suffered brain damage; he had been in a coma for a very long time. The reason for the seizure was never discovered. Sacha came home after four days and returned several times to the hospital for further tests, until we decided that there was no point in pursuing these. However, I was still determined to give up my job. This became urgent when Rosie told me she was getting married. I could not inflict another surrogate mother on my son. He needed me.

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The decision to leave the Guardian had been difficult enough. I had enjoyed working for a national daily. Now I had to leave the Investors Chronicle as well, where I had also been happy. I knew that leaving London was a bad career move, but saw no alternative. I also turned down an offer from the Financial Times to work in their syndication department. The problem was London. It was impossible for me to be a Fleet Street journalist at the same time as being a mother and housekeeper. I knew that had I stayed, my byline would have become known – indeed it was already accepted. However, a child came first. Career had to take a back seat.

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I therefore accepted a job as business editor of the Times of Zambia in Lusaka, as well as that of the Financial Times to work as their Zambian correspondent. So I packed my bags once more and set off on a new venture.

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XV

ZAMBIA – LIFE IN A FRONTLINE STATE

The trip to Lusaka was a wonderful holiday. We travelled by boat and were the only passengers on the Tanganyika. The Portuguese were still in control of Mozambique, with the result that I was not allowed to disembark in Beira and drive to Lusaka, as I had planned. I finally disembarked in Mombassa and flew to Zambia, where we were soon installed in a small furnished flat near the main street, Cairo Road, where the Times of Zambia had its offices.

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The Times of Zambia journalists at a Kaunda press seminar in August 1972. I am sitting behind the chief editor Vernon Mwaanga (speaking)

The first half of the seventies which Sacha and I spent in Zambia were important years for southern Africa. In 1972 the bush war in Rhodesia hotted up. Two years later the April coup in Lisbon led to talks and independence of the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique. The newly independent governments supported Namibian and Zimbabwean liberation movements fighting in Angola and Mozambique respectively. The Yom Kippur war isolated Israel in black Africa, bringing Jerusalem and Pretoria closer together, while the oil crisis badly affected Zambia, already hit by falling copper prices. In South Africa, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement grew apace, preparing the ground for the uprising of township youth of 1976 and the exodus of thousands of the youth, who joined the exiled liberation movements.

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For an African journalist, Zambia was the place to be. President Kaunda decided that his country was too vulnerable to allow armed troops on its soil (which did not mean that there weren’t any) and instead offered a forum to liberation movements. A liberation centre was opened in Lusaka, where groups such as South Africa’s ANC, Namibia’s Swapo, Angola’s MPLA, Mozambique’s Frelimo and Zimbabwe’s Zapu and Zanu had their offices – and which, needless to say, was bombed by the South Africans. I remember the terrible blast which rattled our offices in Cairo Road and the sorrow on learning that it had claimed the life of a friend.

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A photograph of Kenneth Kaunda and his wife Betty, dedicated to me by Kaunda: “We value your commitment to the cause of man the world over. Fight on. God’s blessings” State House Lusaka 11 May 1978

I was of course mainly concerned with business and economic coverage for the Times of Zambia for which I produced a special business supplement, together with young Zambian trainee journalists. However, as the Financial Times correspondent, I was also an accredited foreign correspondent and it was great to have a foot in each camp (that is to say, in local and foreign journalism). As there was a paucity of foreign journalists, I soon found myself reporting for a bewildering assortment of media, from Deutsche Welle or the Economist to Gemini, a feature service, filling in on occasion for the BBC correspondent and on a few occasions for Reuters. The Times of Zambia was then still owned by Lonrho. I had already met “Tiny” Rowland in Salisbury, the town from which he made his remarkable

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entry into international business, and I knew of his habit of bankrolling liberation movements with the expectation that these would become governments. Even the obscure Sudan Liberation Army, which was still pitting itself ineffectually against the Khartoum government as late as 1999, had enjoyed Tiny’s help. One of my backbench friends in Salisbury told me that he had been offered a place on Tiny’s payroll “just in case”. I didn’t know Tiny Rowland well, but was intrigued by his colourful personality as was everyone else. I still regret not having acted on the idea of writing his biography – an idea frowned upon by one of his close associates when I first voiced it. Tiny would jet in his private plane to African capitals, Lusaka included, and zoom off to see the head of state before departing as quietly as he had come. In 1973 a group of fellow directors revolted against Tiny’s dictatorial management style and set off a famous boardroom row. I was sent to London to cover the extraordinary shareholders’ meeting, where Tiny triumphed, contrary to predictions by the financial media. Later he was involved in other headline stories including a feud over the ownership of Harrods.

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The Lonrho boardroom row was only one of the memorable stories I covered during this time. I came to know, like and respect President Kaunda (KK) whom I interviewed on innumerable occasions. I enjoyed his company, as did everyone who came into contact with him. He dubbed me Comrade Ruth and no matter what I thought of his policies, I always succumbed to his charm. Unfortunately his philosophy of humanism did little for his country’s development. Nonetheless, his contribution to solving the region’s conflicts was tremendous and will no doubt be analysed in due course by historians. Kaunda governed like a benevolent despot. He disliked criticism and like so many leaders, groomed no successor. He turned his best friend, Simon Kapepwe, into his deadly enemy and created a one-party state. He did try to forge unity among the diverse ethnic factions, but the tactic of moving his ministers around arbitrarily made for inefficient government. He handled nationalisation of the economy ineptly and in the end presided over the downward slide of his country’s economy into dire poverty. In 1964 Zambia had been the world’s third largest copper producer. Sadly, Kaunda did not divert the copper wealth into agricultural investment, which would have ensured a satisfactory economic base. Ironically, after Mugabe’s disastrous “land reform”, some three hundred white ex-Zimbabweans were given land in Zambia – and helped to produce a maize surplus to be exported to Zimbabwe. On 21 June 1990 I happened to be in Lusaka and was invited to celebrate the first birthday party of MMD, the movement for a multi-party democracy. It was strange sitting in a private room of the Pamodzi Hotel surrounded by

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former friends of Kaunda such as John Mwanakatwe, a venerable former Unip Finance Minister; Andrew Kashita, whom I had met when he was a permanent secretary; and later Minister of Mines and Cynthia Zukas, wife of Simon Zukas, a long-time white friend of Zambian Nationalists. These and other founder members of MMD felt that Kaunda’s era had run its course. A few months after this party, the MMD resoundingly beat Kaunda’s Unip and Kaunda handed over the reins of power to Frederick Chiluba. Unfortunately this administration failed to solve the country’s many problems, nor did Chiluba succeed in introducing a democratic system. The euphoria felt by many MMD founding members faded; many left Chiluba’s government. When Kaunda, attempting a political come-back, was arrested and later placed under house arrest, this roused loud protest and anger, as did a failed assassination attempt on the former president in 1999. Chiluba hated KK and spent far too much time fighting against him and not enough on solving the country’s serious economic crisis.

Kenneth Kaunda and his wife Betty, dedicated by Kaunda to my son:“Your mother we consider to be Zambian in spirit & this is more important than being born here. Please join her. God’s blessings.” State House Lusaka 11 May 1978

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Such events were still a long way off. In the seventies, Kaunda reigned supreme and real power lay in State House, not in the copper-roofed Parliament where I spent only a short time. I was fortunate in being able to voice criticism on economic issues, both in my writing and on TV, where for some time I was given a slot called the “Sunday Interview”. The President often travelled with a media entourage or summoned the press to wherever he happened to be. I remember one press conference in a game park, where he sat outside his lodge beneath a gnarled baobab. It was hard to concentrate on Unip politics against this backdrop of natural beauty with a vast expanse of bush, the gurgle of a nearby stream and the proximity of large game. On another occasion we flew to Kasaba Bay where Kaunda was meeting Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu. While they talked, we sailed on the clear waters of the lake, watching hippos disport themselves. Back at the nearby hotel I saw “Zambia”, an elephant, who called daily at the kitchen door and would stroll around ignoring the visitors. I met the same animal again a few months later when I returned with Sacha to enjoy a few days’ rest. We had a great time. Sacha, small as he was, went on a walking safari into the game park with a group of tourists. They saw lions close up and one photo showed my boy, arms akimbo, facing a huge herd of buffalo who seemed as intrigued by him as he was by them. Had I been there, I doubt if I would have been able to let him get so close. I was horrified when I saw the picture.

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Sacha, like me, still suffers from homesickness for Africa.

”Zambia”, the elephant at Kasaba Bay in February 1972

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I enjoyed my years in Zambia, felt at home and was delighted to be described as an “honorary Zambian” by some of my friends. Thanks to African colleagues and friends, I learnt a little about African politics and African tradition. And perhaps because I followed events on the ground, I later became impatient with journalists who analysed events from a distance and claimed to understand cause and effect without reference to the actual actors. I was fortunate that Africans – my colleagues as well as interview partners – took me seriously, despite my sex. Possibly age had something to do with it. I was no longer young and age is respected in African society. So is the mother of a son, which helped me in my visits to villages. I was always interested in the situation of women; I doubt that village women would have talked to me so freely if I had not been a mother.

With Sacha in Lusaka 1972

We did not live in a colonial-style house with swimming pool and garden any more than I had done in Johannesburg or Salisbury. Our flat near the city centre was comfortable, without frills, but always filled with visitors. Not everyone had a telephone; it was easier to simply drop in at people’s homes. As I lived en route to the suburbs, many people came on their way home: colleagues from the office, foreign correspondents, businessmen and also members of the liberation movement. Paolo Jorge and Icko Carreira were

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among the Angolan exiles who visited me regularly. Once Paolo brought President Agosthino Neto to the flat – a tremendous honour. The MPLA guerrillas sometimes arrived in huge armoured vehicles on their way to the border. They offered to take me into the country but I reluctantly declined. It meant walking long distances; I would have had to train for that. But that was not the real problem; I simply felt I could not risk my life. I had a child to consider. Despite the size of the flat (or lack of size) I frequently organised large parties, working on the principle that the flat was too small for a dinner party, but fine for a self-service buffet. I mixed the guests: government ministers, expatriates, members of liberation movements of different countries, foreign and local journalists. Somehow everyone talked to everyone else; I never heard of anyone having been bored. Catering was easy – I discovered a German confectioner who produced delicious cakes. A hotelier friend would deliver huge pots filled with tasty stews, rice and vegetables, together with cutlery, crockery and glasses, which were collected the following day. He also supplied an array of bottles and a barman.

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I was to meet many of my guests again. In 1975 I visited Angola for the first time after its 1974 independence and was not yet familiar with the names of cabinet members. Paolo Jorge, then personal assistant to President Neto, brought me to the airport and accompanied me to a room where he asked me to wait while he attended to some business. I found myself in a large room with many people milling about. To my embarrassment I realised I was in a VIP waiting room, where a group of VIP Mozambicans were waiting for a plane. This was a delegation, which had accompanied the defence ministers of Angola and Mozambique to the Soviet Union. Unexpectedly I was addressed by a woman who addressed me by name and asked how Sacha was. “Does my husband know you are here?” she asked and pulled me towards Icko Carreira. I was delighted to see him; we exchanged some news and gossip. I was about to ask him what he was doing now, when thanks to someone’s remark I realised that he was now the Defence Minister of Angola! His full name and title was General Henrique “Icko” Teles Carreira, born in 1933, the founder and commander of MPLA’s armed wing. He was the first African general to receive a degree from that country. He served as Angola’s Defence Minister from 1975 to 1980. Some years after that visit, in 1982, I was the only journalist attached to a group of European Members of Parliament who were on a fact-finding mission to Angola; their job was to find out if Angolan claims of South African aggression were true. As a non-parliamentarian, I kept myself in the back-

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ground. On the first day we called on the Foreign Minister. I sat close to the door, away from the delegation, uncertain whether I should remain. The Foreign Minister entered and the usual pleasantries were exchanged. Then he asked, “Shall we speak French or English?” Before anyone could reply, he added, “Have you learnt French in the meanwhile, Ruth?” I got up and we embraced; it was Paolo Jorge, then Angola’s Foreign Minister. He asked the delegation to excuse us, we were old friends meeting for the first time in many years.

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At a press conference in Angola in 1982, me sitting at the far right

Both men have since died, Icko after a very long illness. I lost touch with most of my Angolan friends, such as Liz Matos whose husband was high up in the army. They all were caught up in the long, never-ending war which followed independence and South African interference in that country. I saw Paolo once more in 1984, when he was still Foreign Minister and I was living in Harare. He enabled me to visit Cabinda, where I was hosted by the American oil company controlling Cabinda’s offshore oil. I was fortunate to be flown to an oil rig – women were usually considered a bad omen by oilmen – and to spend some time on one of the huge oil tankers, where I enjoyed lunch with the captain and crew. Like other friends of the MPLA, I was distressed that in time corruption became rampant. The long conflict between MPLA and Unita was terrible for Angolans, who suffered fearful deprivations as a result. But Angola’s miner-

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al wealth which included above all, diamonds and oil, failed to benefit the people. Wealth was sucked up by the elite, while the government of Josè Eduardo dos Santos became increasingly corrupt, oppressive and dictatorial.

President Kenneth Kaunda and President Julius Nyerere inspecting the TAZARA railways project

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I continued to travel to other countries during my time in Zambia. One trip I remember vividly. Following sanctions and the closing of the border between Zambia and Southern Rhodesia, Kaunda was anxious to divert his transport routes. The Republic of China then built a new railway line between Zambia and Tanzania, the largest development project in Africa sponsored by the Chinese. It proceeded under a veil of secrecy. The two presidents, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, duly laid a foundation stone and finally journalists were invited to travel on an inaugural journey from Dar es Salaam as far as the Zambian border. It was to be a major media event. I was with the Zambian contingent, which also included the Tass correspondent and the Indian High Commission press spokesman. The Permanent Secretary of the Information Ministry, Milimo Punabantu, at one time my editor-in-chief and a good friend, was in charge of the group. Sixty foreign jour-

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nalists had assembled in Dar es Salaam for the trip. The day before we were due to leave, the Tanzanian Information Minister hosted an enjoyable party. The following morning we rose early, as instructed, but nothing happened. Eventually Punabantu ordered our bus to drive us to the new station. The gleaming new coaches were there – but no engine, nor any staff … only bowing, friendly Chinese, who served us endless rounds of cold drinks. We returned to find that many rumours were circulating. A bomb had destroyed some rails; the Chinese were upset at the large numbers of Westerners; the engine wasn’t ready. We never heard the full story. The following day we were able to leave on the train – that is, Zambians and Tanzanians were able to leave. The rest were left behind, which made me the only Western journalist on the journey, and of course the only woman. No sooner had I taken a seat than I was called into another coach to meet two smiling Chinese women: a doctor and her assistant. They had come along to look after the women on the trip. I assume a male doctor had been provided for the men. Fortunately none of us needed their aid.

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It was a dream journey. At first we travelled slowly along the gleaming new tracks through a game park, watched giraffe nibbling at treetops and herds of buck bounding away from the train. Chinese experts travelled with us, eager to answer our inexpert questions on track-laying, railway operations and anything that came into our minds as we passed the new station buildings – ghost structures not yet filled with staff and passengers. The train was not yet equipped with sleeping accommodation and we spent the night at a mission station, while some of our party slept in a hotel in town – though it was more of a brothel than a hotel, as one of my friends said. Perhaps the lack of accommodation was the reason why the other journalists had been left behind. The Tass man – a charming Russian with a neat sense of humour to whom the press corps was indebted for invitations to the Soviet Embassy – had his own explanation. “It’s my fault,” he claimed. “What do you mean?” “We’re not allowed to take photographs on the train, right?” I nodded. “Well, every time I move, to go to the toilet or anywhere, I find a Chinese comrade close by. Maybe they think I want to photograph the toilet.”

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Politics! Perhaps he was right. Punabantu told me he had to fight for permission to allow everyone in his group, including non-Zambians, to travel on the train. The ghost stations later bustled with travellers, but the line caused problems since the construction had been carried out in haste. As one experienced railwayman told me, to open a rail operation did not mean simply turning a key.

Our train leaving Dar es Salaam in 1973

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An earlier trip had taken me to Uganda in 1972. Zambian experts were to advise Ugandans on mining a discovery of phosphates and my then editorin-chief, Vernon Mwaanga, agreed that I could accompany the party. Vernon had been Zambia’s man at the UN. From the newspaper he was moved into the cabinet as Foreign Affairs Minister, a job he again held under Chiluba from 1991 to 1993. Vernon, a colourful personality later said to have been involved in the drugs industry, gave me various addresses in Uganda, including that of Princess Elizabeth Bogoya whom he had met in the States. She was then Idi Amin’s special envoy and it was said that the President was in love with this beautiful woman. She was in Kampala during my visit and drove me around, showing me some of the sights. I also contacted Philip Short, then a freelance journalist, later a respected BBC man, whom I had met when he was based in Malawi. After the visit to the mine, I planned to spend some time in Kampala, but it was not to be. Philip rang me two days

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after my arrival, asking if I knew whether Martin Meredith had left for Nairobi. Martin Meredith, the Observer and BBC man in Lusaka, was in Kampala to interview President Amin. I made inquiries and was told that he had not arrived in Kenya.

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This worried Philip and in turn worried me. As it turned out, we had every reason for concern. The following morning Princess Elizabeth came to the hotel and suggested that I should take the first plane out. I followed her advice, which was just as well, considering my Jewish background and the later events in Entebbe when an Israeli plane was hijacked and Amin showed his anti-Jewish sentiments.

In Malawi 1973

In Nairobi I heard what had happened. Meredith had interviewed the President – a daunting undertaking, taking place as it did in the presence of the full cabinet and of course the President’s bodyguards. Meredith telexed the story to London and left for the airport. After he had gone through passport control and walked towards the aircraft, he felt a hand on his shoulder. A grim-faced security man told him he was to return to the capital. “The President would like to see you.” Meredith protested, saying that he had already seen him. He was hustled to a waiting car and whisked back to Kampala. Fortunately the car had a puncture and while this was being

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repaired, someone from the British Embassy came by and talked to Martin, who explained he had been summoned back to see Amin. No doubt this saved his life. He was arrested and jailed for several days before being charged with theft of a telephone book from his hotel. Some of his contacts were not as fortunate. They disappeared, including one Asian lawyer whom I too had met and interviewed. Tyrants are the same everywhere. The tragedy is that they inevitably find willing helpers. Soon after the Tazara railway journey, I was among a group of journalists invited by Ethiopian Airlines on an inaugural flight to the People’s Republic of China. This was at a time when the cultural revolution was still happening and before China opened up to the West. I knew that I was extremely fortunate to be one of the twenty-two journalists, mostly from African countries, to accompany an Ethiopian delegation led by one of the daughters of the Emperor and her husband, the Governor of Tigre (an Ethiopian province). Among the European journalists was the great travel writer, Eric Newby, and Margaret Allen of the London Times.

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It was a tremendous experience. We arrived in Canton where our passports were taken from us, as was our luggage which later appeared in our rooms, wherever we were. This was as comfortable a form of travelling as I’ve ever known. The passports were returned on departure. We flew on to Shanghai, then to Beijing, later also to outlying provinces. The sightseeing included the Great Wall where we were the only visitors, just as our plane was always the only aircraft at the airports we touched. We also visited archeological sites, communal farms and some factories. Everywhere we were received by the vice-chairman of something: a housing committee, a harbour committee, a city council or airport. There was after all, only one Chairman, whose little red book was soon in our possession. We (that is, the Ethiopian Imperial family) were feted. Inevitably each speech began with the same words: “Your Imperial Highnesses, we are joined together in the struggle against capitalism, racism and imperialism …” The food we were offered was not to be compared with a Chinese take-away. It worried me, the mountains of delicious dishes set before us, when I saw how little the people owned. Huge wall posters exhorted everyone to “eat one less spoon of rice each meal” to ensure that there was enough rice for a million others.

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The locally accredited journalists envied us. They were not allowed to move around freely and had to live in the same compound as diplomats. In turn, we were unable to file any stories from China; only later could we write about the trip. Margaret Allen decided she would concentrate on women, as the Times had a Chinese expert based in Beijing. Her direct questions upset our guide and interpreter. One day he asked her, “You want to know about our women, I think?” She acknowledged that this was so. “When you return to your hotel rooms, you always find a thermos flask, yes? Filled with tea? The flask is cool to the touch. When you pour the tea, it is boiling hot. That is like our women … cool to the touch, hot inside …”

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In the afternoon after returning from the Great Wall (where we had been the only visitors) we were told to change into formal dress: women into skirts, men into suits. Our bus took us across the road to Tiananmen Square and as we walked up the steps into the Hall of the People, we quickly arranged that the doyen of the English-speaking corps, a man from the Readers Digest and someone among the French, should act as spokesperson. We were sure that we would meet some VIP and that there would not be time for everyone to ask questions. We were ushered into a room where a number of small tables laden with enticing tidbits awaited us. We were tense with expectation. The door opened and Chou en Lai entered, flanked by interpreters. This was a great and unexpected honour. Our spokesperson then posed his question: “Sir – when will the Readers Digest be sold in Beijing?” We could scarcely believe what we were hearing. To ask one of the most powerful men on our planet such a banal question as this was incredible! Henry Kissinger had already visited China and a visit by Nixon was on the cards. Our outrage was palpable. The French-speaking group instantly hurled individual questions at the great man, which he gently fended off. Back at the hotel, the men physically attacked our “spokesperson” and if we three women had not intervened, there would have been blood on the hotel floor. The great man answered diplomatically. This would be a matter for his comrade, the Information Minister. He then walked from one table to the next, so that we were each able to ask a question after all. On our return, I left the group in Bombay, as I had been invited by the Indian government to visit the country – another memorable experience. The Times of Zambia printed my reports and I was very conscious of having been particularly privileged.

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Unfortunately I had not solved my problems with Sacha. He was happy living with me and he loved Zambia, but had problems at school. His teacher at the International School was a South African friend, who said, “Alex comes to school to play, not to learn.” She thought he needed the companionship of other children and the role model of a male. I took her advice and sent him to a boarding school in Britain, but this turned out to be a grave mistake. I think if I had kept him with me, he would eventually have settled down. As it was, he felt rejected and his sad letters worried me, as did his changed personality when he returned on the “Lollipop” plane – the aircraft on which many expatriate and children of Zambian elites travelled to and from their UK schools. I persevered for another year, but when the school’s psychiatrist told me that my sensitive son was “not boarding school material”, I again reviewed the situation. Reluctantly I gave notice and equally reluctantly accepted an offer to work for Deutsche Welle in Cologne as programme editor of the Africa–English department. Sacha would have to learn German, but this was an advantage rather than anything else. He would be able to live at home and that seemed the most important thing at the time. I knew I would miss Zambia with all the excitement, my responsibilities at the paper and the freelance work. Above all I would miss my friends. But as always, Sacha’s interests had to be put above my own.

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In January 1975 I started work in Cologne. As it happened, I was able to travel to Africa during the same year as part of the press corps accompanying the German Foreign Minister Dietrich Genscher, who visited Ghana and Zambia. While the gentlemen breakfasted on the verandah of President Kaunda’s home on the Copperbelt, the press waited nearby. Kaunda glanced towards us, called me and said to the German Minister, “I thought you were bringing the German media. I see you’ve returned a member of the Zambian press!” I met the President again by chance three years later, when I was travelling via Zambia from Mozambique. Kaunda was in the same plane, on his way to the Pope’s funeral. When his security people spotted me, he asked me to join him for a cup of coffee. He was sitting at ease, feet raised and seemed pleased to see me. He said, “Comrade Ruth, are you coming to our party elections in Mulungushi in September?” I had planned no such thing, but of course said yes, provided that he would give me an interview. He laughed and then agreed to my terms. It was a huge

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affair with VIP guests and everyone who was anyone in Zambia. In the afternoon I was strolling through the huge camp, when Kaunda saw me. “Ah, Comrade Ruth, you are here.” He added accusingly, “But you weren’t at the elections this morning!” I told him that I had been there but hadn’t pushed myself into a front row, as this was hardly the right place for an outsider. He smiled and asked when I wanted to do the interview.

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It was by no means our last meeting. When I called at State House for yet another interview early in 1980, shortly before Zimbabwe’s independence, he told me of his plans to call a meeting of regional states on 1 April to set up an economic structure “as the economic arm of the Frontline States”. The presidents of independent southern African states together with Nyerere had formed a group named the Frontline States, that is, states in the frontline of the conflicts of racism in southern Africa. The new economic grouping was named the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), later SADC, the Southern African Development Community. I suggested to the President that this structure should own a magazine to cover the economic news of member states. He took the idea seriously and later asked me to implement it. As it happened, I had by then agreed to work in Zimbabwe as a consultant on economic journalism training. Fortunately Antony Martin was available and willing to take over, having completed a ten-year stint as economic consultant to the government of Papua New Guinea. He was able to obtain Swedish funding and together we founded the Southern African Economist based in Harare in the mid-eighties. Antony remained as a long-term consultant and did a great job under the editor, Dominic Mulaisho (a mutual friend) who later left to take over as Governor of the Bank of Zambia. I stayed as training consultant for as long as I felt I was being useful. I was grateful for my Zambian experience. I had learnt a great deal, made good friends and had come to understand some of the continent’s problems. I left for Germany at the end of December 1974 for a permanent job at Deutsche Welle (DW) and thus financial security. But I went with a heavy heart to settle in the country of my birth, which had been my first home, but which had rejected the likes of me. I noted later in a book entitled Invited I Was Not, that no post-war German government ever invited its former citizens to return and help with the country’s reconstruction.

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XVI

VOICE OF GERMANY

Everything seemed strange in Germany. I felt choked when I tried to shop in the supermarket of a nearby department store, and was overwhelmed by the goods on offer so that I had to beat a hasty retreat. I needed time to get used to everything. The rules and regulations Sacha found in the bathroom of our new flat seemed ridiculous. The work ethic or lack thereof of some colleagues was surprising: they spent as little time as possible in the editorial office and as much as possible on freelance jobs. This applied in particular to the German staff. Deutsche Welle broadcast to the outside world, so that DW journalists did not become known inside the country – hence their urge to write for local media as well. There was also the issue of the past. I was confronted with this on the very day of my arrival. We had travelled from Zambia to Cologne on 30 December. I asked the taxi driver to take us to an inexpensive hotel, where I wanted to stay for a few days before having to start work. He knew of a boarding house near the airport; the owner was glad to take us (although she was theoretically closed) and was ready to provide a light meal and chat. When she heard that I was an economic journalist, she said then I’d be interested in a bank scandal – a bank of “one of those Jews” had gone bust – and innocent people suffered as a result. I was shocked. But when I asked about this in the office a few days later, I was told that no Jew had anything to do with Herstatt, the bank in question.

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I had another encounter shortly after this, when I went house-hunting. I found a beautiful flat in one of the few surviving villas in the city centre. When I called on the owner, who lived in a modernised attic flat, she told me that her father had “bought the house from the Jews. He was a kind man and allowed two of them to stay in the flat you’ll be taking … it was a mother and her mentally handicapped son; it was only a matter of a few months before they would be collected …” Shocked, I took my business elsewhere. We settled down. Sacha first attended the British School which had been opened for British servicemen’s children, but many of the families had moved on and Sacha spent most of his school day learning Scottish reels with German-speaking children keen to start English early. He soon switched to a new comprehensive, and because this was the year it opened, he was simply one new boy among the others. He learnt German, played football instead of cricket and made friends with a group of classmates who all lived nearby.

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I was happy in my job and soon learnt the ropes. In particular I enjoyed the stint of the early shift, when I was collected at 4 am to prepare and transmit the 6 am programme. Sacha loved to get up and share a cup of cocoa with me before going back to sleep. I tried to get home by 7 am with fresh rolls for breakfast before he set off for school. In theory I was then free, but I usually returned to the office to do research and write features for other programmes.

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Fortunately I was able to travel during my DW days, not only to attend conferences or seminars in Germany on Africa, but also abroad. Once I was able to join the press corps of the then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher on his trip to Africa. In Ghana (where Genscher was bestowed with the dignity of an African chief), a diminutive woman was among the ambassadors lined up to greet the German minister at the airport. I couldn’t believe my eyes … there was my childhood idol, Shirley Temple! I had loved her dimpled smile and had seen as many of her films in Johannesburg as I could afford. She stood for everything – such as security – which my childhood had lacked. One evening Mrs Black, as she now was, asked if the journalists would like to come to her home. I don’t think anyone passed up the invitation. I happened to be the only woman present, so I took the opportunity to help her make the coffee. In the kitchen she answered my questions. As we carried the trays into the living room she said, “You ask different things to most journalists,” which pleased me enormously. On another occasion, a trip to Mozambique happened because a young freelance journalist named Carola had applied to the German Development Ministry to visit the newly independent country in company with the DW journalist Ruth Weiss. The application was successful and we spent an interesting time in Maputo, where Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF had meanwhile set up their headquarters. During this time I was also able to meet up with Pamela dos Santos, wife of the Frelimo vice president. Pamela, born in one of Johannesburg’s northern garden suburbs to a Jewish couple, had a forbidden love affair with an African and had to flee the country. In Tanzania she had met and married the Mozambique exile Marcellino dos Santos, later Mozambique’s vice-president. I saw Pamela several times, as the cordonedoff suburb of the Frelimo elite was near the Polana Hotel where we stayed – as indeed was the Zanu PF headquarters. Then, after Angola’s independence in the midst of a South African invasion, I felt the urge to visit my MPLA friends. Because I had holiday time due, I acted on the urge and went to stay with Liz Matos, a British activist who had met and subsequently married an Angolan in Cuba who had become a high-

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ranking officer in MPLA’s military wing. Our friendship dated back to my departure from London for Lusaka in the early seventies. Her husband had been seriously wounded and was then in a Zambian hospital, so a friend – Polly Gaster – asked me to bring Liz some badly needed medicine. Polly, also an activist, moved to Mozambique after independence and contributed to the country’s development. As far as I know, she still lives there. In 1976 I was able to cover the entire ineffectual conference organised by the British government on Southern Rhodesia. It was held in Geneva from October until mid-December of that year. I stayed with South African friends in Geneva and was thus able to have Sacha with me, which was great. Absolutely everyone concerned with Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was present, from the white Rhodesian Front leader Ian Smith and his men, to Joshua Nkomo, leader of the Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union (Zapu) and Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) as well as the Methodist bishop Abel Muzorewa, then head of a party named the African National Council (ANC). I worked incessantly, reporting on daily proceedings and interviewing the participants. This also included the former first ZANU President, Rev Ndabaningi Sithole who under pressures in Smith’ courts had rejected the use of violence. As a result the leadership lost confidence in him and when a number of DARE members (the ZANU executive) were together in Gwelo prison, Edgard Tekere persuaded them to replace Sithole with Robert Mugabe - a fateful decision, as it turned out. I had already interviewed Sithole a year before in Cologne under some secrecy, as he was a guest of German Maoist groups whose activities were frowned upon by the West German government. In Geneva he had joined the little bishop.

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Apart from these leaders, I also knew many of the other delegates by then, such as Zanu’s Edgar Tekere, Eddison Zvobgo, Kumbirai Kangai, Richard Hove, Nathan Shamuyarira and others, who later took ministerial posts. I steered clear only of Smith and his men. Some, such as George Nyondoro, were old friends. George and his lifelong friend James Chikerema, a relative of Mugabe, had founded the City League in the fifties, which had merged with Joshua Nkomo’s African National Congress (which later underwent name changes when banned). When the party split in 1963, James and George remained loyal to Nkomo. In the seventies they joined a new party named Frolizi, which was a vain attempt by the then Frontline presidents of Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique to unify the various parties in exile. In the course of the Anglo–American efforts to end the Southern Rhodesian constitutional crisis, America’s Andy Young and the British David Owen met the Patriotic Front leaders in Malta in April 1977. It was to be my only visit to

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the island. There were no special facilities for the media, so we did what journalists do: we waited – and of course talked to delegates, if we could. I was able to interview a young combatant then calling herself Teurai Ropa, later the wife of the Zimbabwean army commander and subsequent vice president of Zimbabwe, Solomon Mujuru. The following month a two-day meeting took place between the then US Vice President Walter Mondale and South Africa’s Prime Minister John Vorster from 19 to 20 May. I was able to go to Vienna to cover the event. Naturally I was delighted that this gave me a chance to see my dear friend Ruth. These experiences and my continued contact with African leaders enabled me to follow events and accompany their progress towards independence. I think I can say that my bosses appreciated my coverage. One memorable trip, however, gave me a good deal to think about and eventually contributed to my decision to give up what was a safe and lucrative job and return to Africa.

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In March 1977 the then Development Minister Frau Marie Schlei undertook her first visit to Africa, namely Botswana, Zambia and Kenya. Shortly before her departure I was sent to Bonn to attend a briefing, as it was decided that I should represent the Deutsche Welle. Needless to say, I was overjoyed at this chance to be in southern Africa and close to important actors in the region, apart from meeting old friends. I warmed to this Social Democrat minister at once. She was a forthright, nononsense woman with a working class background who had insisted on this portfolio, having rejected the typical ministries usually headed by women. I think everything that happened on this trip was the result of the determination of party colleagues who wanted her shifted from the male preserve of foreign aid. I duly met the ministry’s spokesman and the other journalists at the airport and was surprised that we were not joining the minister, but were leaving earlier in order to visit the Okavango Swamps, a destination for wealthy tourists. From Gaborone – which I had first visited for the Financial Mail before Botswana’s independence, when it was only bare veld and a railway station – we flew by chartered plane to Maun. It was an exciting flight, with herds of animals stampeding in the wide open veld below at the sound of our low flying plane. On arrival, I met an old friend, Frank Krawolitzi (an agricultural expert whom I had last seen in Zambia), who was working on a development project in Maun. I am still in touch with Frank and his wife.

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A few days after this brief holiday, we met Minister Schlei and began to accompany her on her round of talks and visits to development projects. A man from the influential weekly Spiegel was in the same plane as she was; his expenses were not sponsored by her ministry but by his paper. By this time I understood that her appointment had been controversial, with some media expressing doubt about her knowledge of third world issues. The man from the Spiegel certainly set out to do a demolition job on Schlei. One of her visits covered a German skills training centre. At one stage I felt thirsty and spotted an open rondavel where I thought I saw some refreshments. I made a beeline for the place, unaware that Schlei followed me. When I reached the door and glanced inside I said to no one in particular: “How nice – I could live here!” Someone, obviously a European, had turned the small hut into a comfortable living room. It was at this stage that I heard Frau Schlei’s voice and saw the journalists trailing behind her. She too was in search of water, which was soon forthcoming. My remark about the rondavel was later turned into something Schlei was supposed to have said when she visited a chief’s home. She made a tactical error a few moments later. A young trainee asked her as a joke whether she would like one of his curls as a souvenir – and she promptly produced scissors and snipped off a curl. I winced. It was clearly grist to the mill for anyone wishing to ridicule Schlei.

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However, she got on well with Sir Seretse Khama and other Botswana politicians and civil servants, and the rest of her first African encounter went smoothly. By chance, I knew Schlei’s personal assistant Jutta Odida, who was married to a Ugandan. She kept me informed of Schlei’s progress and on the last day told me that the visit had been a great success, and not only because of the money Schlei had promised to provide in development aid. Jutta added that the minister wanted to talk to me that evening, following the German ambassador’s reception. Earlier in the day, I had been dismayed to discover that journalists were not going to Zambia, but were flying directly to Kenya to visit game parks. When I asked Schlei’s press spokesman why he had omitted Lusaka from the media’s itinerary, he said it was too much to expect Bonn’s media to visit three developing countries, one after the other. So I had bought myself a ticket to Lusaka in Gaborone and happened to be booked on Schlei’s plane. I waited in vain for Schlei’s summons after the reception (which I had skipped) and was about to go to bed when Jutta came to apologise. A stupid incident

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had happened while the minister, her personal assistants, private secretary and the press spokesman were enjoying a drink on the hotel’s verandah after the reception. They were in a good mood, “a little high” as Jutta put it, delighted that the first part of the journey had been a resounding success. At one point the private secretary said he felt like a swim and Schlei dared him to jump into the nearby pool. He disappeared to return in his pyjamas and then jumped into the water. Apparently the pyjama pants weren’t tight enough and slipped off while he was in the water, so he had to pull them up again as he got out. The party had failed to notice two journalists at a table nearby in quite a different mood, engaged in serious conversation. They were disgusted by the levity and took their drinks elsewhere. It would have been best to invite them to join the table, but it was left up to the press spokesman to pacify them. This had all taken time, and it ended up being too late to call me.

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The following day Schlei sat next to me on the plane and told me that she had been approached by one of the liberation movements – Zapu – to meet their leader Joshua Nkomo. She was hesitant, hence her idea to talk to me when informed that I knew something about southern Africa. I encouraged her to meet Nkomo and said that she should make an effort to meet Mugabe too, as his Zanu represented the majority of the country, the Shona-speaking people. We got on well with each other and by the time we arrived in Lusaka, I was certain that the Zambians would like her too. I was staying at the same hotel as Schlei but at my own expense because I wanted to meet friends. The delegation had been invited to lunch. I accompanied them to State House, but stayed in the foyer which I knew well, with French doors leading to the garden with its peacocks and KK’s private golf course. When the lunch guests emerged, Kaunda saw me and exclaimed, “Ah, Comrade Ruth, so the Germans have brought you to Zambia again!” He said I should have joined the lunch and that I should now have coffee with the group – which he poured, as he often did. Everyone I talked to praised Minister Schlei and said that she was an unusual German minister. She had achieved instant popularity. On another occasion when I returned from an evening spent with old friends, I found a message asking me to go to the embassy. There I found Marie Schlei and Joshua Nkomo sitting side by side. A German TV crew had arrived from Nairobi, as well as a freelance photographer. Of the accompanying media, only the man from the Spiegel had travelled to Lusaka. After the

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photo opportunity, a hitch arose. This was the first time that a German minister came face to face with one of Rhodesia’s “terrorists”. Because the ambassador was answerable to the minister of foreign affairs, he could not allow his people to deal with the protocol. Could I do that? I could and did. Schlei told me that I was not to reveal anything I heard – only whatever she would sanction – so I became a civil servants for a few hours, taking notes while Schlei and Joshua Nkomo sat side by side in amiable discussion. Schlei told him that she was not responsible for foreign policy, but she would provide half a million deutschmark as humanitarian aid for the refugee camps in neighbouring countries such as Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia – blankets, tent and other items. I typed my notes and dispatched a brief report to Deutsche Welle, also asking them to inform the German news agency DPA about the Schlei–Nkomo meeting, but my request was ignored. The Zambian papers were full of praise for Schlei and appreciation of her promise of aid. It was clear that Zambia was the most interesting part of the trip. The German journalists who met us at the airport where Kenya’s foreign minister welcomed Frau Schlei, were angry to have missed the Schlei–Nkomo meeting and I found myself besieged, as though I was the press spokesperson.

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This time we had hotel accommodation separate from the minister’s delegation. While we were visiting a German water development project in the Abedares Forest, I noticed that one by one the journalists had drifted away. I had been told by one of the Kenyan colleagues whom I knew from previous visits, that for the first time elections were about to take place in Kanu (Kenya African National Union), the only party existing from independence in 1963 until 1992. It promised to be an interesting event and I passed this snippet on to the press spokesman; I assumed one or other journalist would be interested in covering this. I now asked why the journalists were leaving, since the visit had only just begun. “We’re off to the nearby game park,” I was told and was invited to join the party. I declined, as I wanted not only to cover Schlei’s continuing trip, but also the election and its background. After all, I worked for the Africa department of Deutsche Welle. The following day I was busy writing when the receptionist rang, greatly agitated. German newspapers were constantly ringing, but none of the people

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they asked for were around. No, I said, they’re in some game park. Could he put the caller through to me? He’d already phoned several times. It was the Bildzeitung, a notorious popular rag. “What do you know about the private secretary prancing about naked in front of Schlei?” I was asked.

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“Nothing,” I replied. I had no idea what he was talking about. I took his name and number, promising to get the press spokesman to get back to him. This proved more difficult than expected in those pre-cellphone days, when contact with a game park was only possible by radio. Finally a woman rang me. When I told her about Bild and the man’s talk of indecent exposure, she exclaimed, “Shit! We agreed not to write the story till we were at home!”

In Cologne, late 1970s

Copies of the Spiegel were available on the plane, with a devastating article about the Schlei trip. The main item was “the jump into the pool” by the allegedly fully dressed private secretary, who had divested himself of his clothes in the water and then exposed himself in front of Minister Schlei, who had merely laughed. Of course her snipping that curl from the head of an African was also featured, as was her unusual meeting with Nkomo. She was said to “have gone on safari” without first consulting Genscher. And although she had denounced violence and war, she obviously supported both as she gave aid to frontline states as well as providing aid to refugee camps.

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That was bad enough, but to my amazement and anger, all the papers followed the Spiegel’s lead. Yet I was not the only one who had not witnessed the pool incident: the man from the Spiegel had not been there either, nor had a Nairobi-based reporter from the venerable Süddeutsche Zeitung, who also wrote about events which he had heard second-hand. The jump into the pool became the main item, even the serious dailies ran similar stories about Schlei’s ineptitude. No one wrote about the projects or the ministry’s aid programme – and certainly not about Schlei’s personal success, as reported in the African press. Even the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau failed to publish my article: after all, with everyone in step, why should Weiss know better? Eventually I appeared on a TV programme where I said Schlei’s journey had been a great success and not the failure the media made it out to be. No one commented on this in my office. The next morning it was only the caretaker, who emerged from his downstairs cubicle to shake my hand and thank me for my frank remarks! Marie Schlei only lasted a year in this job before she was reshuffled. She became a good personal friend, but sadly not for long. She succumbed to cancer in 1983, by which time I was in Zimbabwe.

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I was upset by the press coverage of Schlei’s African journey, and that no one had the courage to deviate from the lead given by the pacemakers Spiegel and Süddeutsche. Much later it was said that Schlei was one of the first politicians to highlight the need to eradicate poverty in developing countries. Moreover, at Zimbabwe’s independence Genscher said that Germany was the first European country to provide aid for the liberation movements, referring to Schlei’s half a million marks for the refugee camps. I enjoyed my work, but not Germany. There were continuing incidents such as those already mentioned, when I would come up against the past. And I found it hard to accept the attitude of some of my colleagues to their jobs. Although I did make some good friends in DW as well as outside, I didn’t really feel at home. One incident in particular infuriated me. I had been asked by the Zambian Embassy to help with press contacts shortly before Kaunda was expected to arrive on his first state visit. I was given permission to do this and helped to work out a schedule for press conferences and interviews. KK had asked that a round table be organised, which proved a little tricky. The weekend was the only possibility and it wasn’t easy to persuade well-known journalists to give up weekend time. The day before the president’s arrival, a colleague from

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Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) asked me to put three specific questions to KK for the WDR news bulletin. My boss, the departmental head who wrote regularly for a Sunday paper, also asked for an interview at the last moment. As there was no slot available, I suggested he share my DW interview, scheduled at the Zambian Embassy after KK’s lunch with President Walter Scheel. I was about to set off when the Embassy rang: protocol made it impossible to interview KK at the airport since he would only have arrived officially once he had shaken the German president’s hand. Meanwhile a card for the lunch had arrived for me, as I told my boss, who ordered a car to take me to Bonn. However, when I asked the driver to collect me after lunch to go to the Embassy, he told me that he only had instructions to bring me to Bonn and nowhere else. Fortunately I immediately joined the Zambian press, who had the use of a car and promised to take me to my interview. However, the police had escorted the president through Bonn’s busy streets, so that we arrived late to find a worried diplomat at the door, saying that we’d kept the president waiting. I found the interview had started – with my boss! I turned on my recorder and at the end, asked my own question, finally adding that I had three for the local radio station. These with the answers were duly sent from the DW Bonn studio to WDR. We both joined the round table talk and I also covered the rest of KK’s trip. On the last day I received a card from the Zambian High Commission in London, inviting me to breakfast with KK, but my boss refused permission, as he thought “we had too much Zambia” in the programme. No sooner had I regretfully told London that I wouldn’t be there for the breakfast, then I realised that even without this, I should go to London where the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government (CHOGM) was being held, with Rhodesia and Uganda on its agenda. I had accumulated enough overtime to take time off, so I bought a ticket to London where I stayed with friends while attending the summit, sending daily reports to Cologne. As I was setting off for the farewell press party, I had a call from a colleague, asking me to arrange a round table discussion on CHOGM with important journalists. I therefore asked several good friends including Colin Legum of the Observer and Patrick Keatley of the Guardian to join the debate. It meant missing the party, as I had to organise the studio and technicians for the round table, which turned into a lively debate. On my return I found a curt note on my desk that I had to see the DW director. Asked what it was about, my boss said there had been a complaint that I worked for an outside station. I was puzzled, as I did no such thing. My boss then explained that he thought it was about my three WDR questions. I laughed and said he could have told the director’s office that this was a

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favour I had been asked to do. He’d been present after all – besides, he himself wrote for outside media. Ah yes, but he had permission to do so! I was furious. The Deutsche Welle was housed in various buildings at the time, so I had to make arrangements to visit the director’s office. To my surprise he met me at the door with a bow and handshake, claiming he had wanted to meet me for some time, while ushering me to a table with coffee. Yes, some of his men in Bonn had indeed complained that a woman they didn’t know was constantly seen in the presence of a state visitor. However, he had meanwhile realised how much I had produced on the visit and on CHOGM. He thanked me for that and also for my furthering good relations between an African government and DW.

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It left a bad taste as far as I was concerned. I was to meet envy on other occasions, something I hadn’t come across before. I wanted to leave. This time I talked to Sacha who was now old enough to understand. I told him that a move would mean less money and few frills. He replied that he wanted his mum to be happy. So, reckless as ever, I took the plunge and gave notice after three years in Cologne.

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XVII

LONDON AND LANCASTER HOUSE

After leaving Germany in 1978, we found ourselves back in London where I worked as a freelance. Sacha first attended a public school – a crammer – to adjust once more to the British system, before he attended a local secondary school for boys.

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I found freelance work demanding but worthwhile, even if it meant a good deal of travelling and never-ending effort. I initiated a radio project for developing countries with a group of like-minded friends, but sadly was unable to devote the time to it which it deserved, as I had to earn money to cover living expenses. Among my colleagues on the project were the writer Guy Arnold, the then journalist Moeletsi Mbeki (younger brother of the ANC leader Thabo Mbeki), Barbara Weber who worked at the BBC German department and Bernard Mwanza, a Zambian radio technician. I undertook various trips. With Guy Arnold I attended a Commonwealth conference in Monrovia and also went with him to Vienna for a UN project. Guy, whom I had met when he was director of the Africa Bureau, still writes and lectures extensively on Africa and has many erudite books to his credit. We were co-authors of a book on Africa’s strategic highways. We also travelled together to Lusaka for the 1979 Commonwealth Summit, where we heard Mrs Thatcher announce a new initiative on Rhodesia. This time round, the initiative succeeded, unlike the Geneva talks. In September 1979 the Lancaster House talks began between the Zimbabwean nationalist leaders and Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Prime Minister of so-called Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, which was never recognised by anyone except Ian Smith – who, unsurprisingly,was among Muzorewa’s delegation. The talks, which I covered virtually on a twenty-four-hour basis, finally led to the overdue birth of Zimbabwe in 1980. During the Lancaster House talks, our South London home was open to Zimbabwean friends, many of whom were to take up posts as ministers or top civil servants. These included Simon Muzenda, later Zimbabwe’s Deputy Prime Minister and Vice President; Eddison Zobgo, a colourful figure due to become Justice Minister, later taking on other portfolios, and George Nyandoro. George was the close friend and faithful lieutenant of James Chikerema with whom he had founded a fiery Youth League in the fifties before both joined Zapu and later Frolizi, and who was later to become a businessman. Josiah Tongogara was among my frequent visitors –together with his nephew Josiah Tungamirai who would rise to the head of Zimbabwe’s airforce. Tongogara, the charismatic and popular leader of Zanla (Zanu’s

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armed wing), returned to Mozambique at the end of the talks to inform his followers of the decisions taken. He died tragically on 26 December in a motor accident in Chimoio, while on this mission. It was a great loss to his country; I too mourned him. Many had expected him to become the first president, with Mugabe as prime minister.

With Josiah Tongogara, Commander in Chief of ZANLA, during the Lancaster House Conference in my London house, 1979

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My guests were pleased to leave the negotiation battlefield for a few hours to relax over meals, drink and talk. Later I was to meet them in Harare, when I took up the offer of Nathan Shamuyarira, later Information Minister, to train economic journalists. At that stage I also met up once more with my friend Sheilah Hove and her husband Richard (who also became a member of Mugabe’s cabinet). She worked for the BCC banking organisation in Harare. Sheilah was murdered by her farm manager shortly after I had left Harare. I never discovered the reason for the tragedy. I was fond of Sheilah; we went back a long way together, to Zambia where she had worked as a secretary at the Times of Zambia. One of her children had died in Lusaka, drowned in a friend’s swimming pool. Several of my Zambian colleagues turned out to be Zimbabweans who worked in Harare after independence, such as the venerable journalist Bill Saidi, a wonderful writer.

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During Lancaster House I once caused my offspring some grief. I had an interview scheduled at the end of a lengthy session, which I then had to transmit to DW. By that time it was past one in the morning and the driver of a mini-cab I had ordered, failed to find the press centre. As a black cab was too much for my slender purse, I waited until a second mini-cab was sent for. With one thing and the next, I only made it home by four that morning. As we drove into the close where I lived, I saw a police car in front of our house and spotted Sacha’s pale face looking down into the rain-swept street. I hadn’t phoned him because I didn’t want to wake him. In fact he hadn’t been to sleep and had finally alerted the police, to whom I had to apologise as well as to Sacha.

On the repair car of the Benguela railway in Angola 1975 shortly after its independence

It was not his first experience of this kind. After the Portuguese coup in 1974, Angola enjoyed a brief spell of peace. In 1975 an agreement was reached between the three rival groups claiming the right to rule: MPLA, Unita and FNLA. During that year I travelled from Lobito to Zambia via Zaire, courtesy of Tanganyika Concessions which then still owned Benguela Railways and had offered me the beautiful Edwardian coach used by their general manager. I therefore travelled in style from Angola via Zaire to Zambia. I had invited Alan Rake, editor of African Business to join me. The ongoing civil war between MPLA and its rivals Unita and FNLA made travel in Angola precarious. Benguela Railways was accompanied by armed guards. There was no proper timekeeping and I had no idea if I’d ever get to Ndola where the train

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terminated, or whether I would get stuck en route in Angola or the Congo. Sacha was due to arrive in Zambia from the UK by plane. I therefore wrote to June Kashita, a good friend in Lusaka, asking if she could please meet Sacha’s plane should he arrive before me. A copy of the letter went to Sacha’s school. I received no reply from June, but as communication with Lusaka was slow and I had written in good time, I thought all was well. I set off happily to arrive three weeks later in Lusaka, only to find out that June had gone to a party on the evening of Sacha’s arrival, where she had been asked by another guest, Andrew Sardanis, when she was fetching Sacha. “What do you mean?” she had asked. “We found him at the airport this morning when we collected our kids. His papers were made out to you, so we took him home. He’s sleeping there.” My letter had never arrived. It is a story June has never allowed me to forget.

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The independence of the Portuguese territories was to pave the way for the independence of other southern African states and finally to democracy in South Africa. I could return to countries from which I’d been banned: the Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia and the Republic of South Africa.

An appointment with Prime Minister Robert Mugabe shortly after Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations in 1980, together with Nadine Gordimer (right)

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I travelled to Rhodesia immediately after the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement. I had covered Rhodesian events continuously from 1965 onwards, meeting the African leaders outside the country and covering all major international conferences. A Foreign Office spokesman informed us at the final Lancaster House press conference that we were all welcome in Rhodesia, now that the country had temporarily returned to its former colonial status, with Lord Soames as Governor.

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At a media seminar for senior journalists, Salisbury (Harare), 1980

I’ve mentioned my subsequent problems with accreditation. These began at the airport, when the burly immigration officer had growled that they hadn’t been told I was coming. I was surprised. It had all been so long ago, but this man didn’t even look at any files. He had my name; he even knew I had worked in Zambia and that my one-time secretary had delayed my accreditation.The next few weeks were hectic. International observers and journalists roamed the country as fighters arrived at their assembly points and the nationalist parties, Zanu PF and Zapu as well as Muzorewa’s ANC undertook their election campaigns. All parties reported intimidation of voters. White Rhodesians who supported the bishop also took a hand; a car belonging to the security forces, which was carrying explosives, blew up near a Salisbury church.

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I was in Gwelo – later Gweru – when the same security forces blew up the Catholic church’s Mambo Press, the printers of Moto, an anti-Smith publication. Tongogara’s death overshadowed much of the campaign. It is thought that, had he survived, Zimbabwe might have been spared the dark days of Gukurahundi in the early eighties, with Mugabe’s notorious Fifth Brigade massacring some twenty thousand Ndebele.

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I remained in Salisbury for the election and subsequent independence celebrations and was as euphoric as everyone else, hailing Mugabe’s expected victory and subsequent swearing in as prime minister. Along with other commentators, I was certain he would serve his people well. His first address as prime minister-designate was electrifying, with its promise that swords would be turned into ploughshares, with his offering the hand of friendship to white Rhodesians. My friend Joan Cowling, with whom I was staying, had talked of Mugabe as a “devil” until that evening. When I later returned home, she said, “He’s a Christian; he went to mass after the swearing in!” Some farmers were said to have unpacked their goods and chattels after listening to Mugabe. Indeed, the first decade of his government proved beneficial for both black and white Rhodesians.

With Sally Mugabe (left) at the ZANU headquarters in Manica Road, Harare, April 1981

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I spent a good deal of 1980 in Harare but could not stay; I had to wait for Sacha to complete his O levels, which he did in 1982. We then moved to a small but charming cottage in Eastlea near the city centre, close to a golf course and a boys’ school, which Sacha attended for two years before completing his A levels in 1985.

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XVIII

AN UNUSUAL JOURNEY

Before moving to Harare in 1982, I went on a journey in 1978 unconnected with work. I spotted an item in the Daily Telegraph stating that former students of Fürth’s Israelitische Realschule were planning a reunion. On impulse I rang Liesl Vincent, who was quoted in the article. She told me she was a friend of Frank Harris who was a lifelong friend of Henry Kissinger. Like my sister, Frank had been his classmate in Fürth and was organising the meeting at Grossingers in the Catskills. It was in Frank’s mother’s home that Heinz (pardon, Henry) lunched daily during the first phase of his life in the States. Kissinger did not come to Grossingers, but his security people did and decided that the huge complex wasn’t secure enough for a foreign minister.

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The first reunion was riveting. Without Kissinger it might have turned into Hamlet without the prince – but that’s not the way it was. I met a hundred and fifty people there, most of whom lived in the US. Others came from Britain, Canada, France, Holland and of course Israel. Although I remembered no one, we knew each others’ families and many remembered my grandfather. I shared a room with Dottie, whose father had been our doctor. Her life, like those of the others, had been very different from mine. She had been a nurse before marriage and was close to Dr Kissinger’s mother. Dottie, now widowed but a happy grandmother, sent me letters and later e-mails full of her leisure activities – lectures, courses, concerts, visits to friends and relatives in the US and abroad. Naturally her life revolves around the Jewish calendar, which mine stopped doing a long time ago. Frank Harris found that first meeting so important that he persevered with it, keeping in touch with many hundreds and organising regular reunions of Fürth and Nürnberg emigrants, including the next generations. He also publishes an annual newsletter about these former emigrants, including their innumerable and interesting letters. Frank had entered Fürth as an American soldier but after that he refused to visit Fürth or Germany. However, in 2013 he finally decided to accept the honour of Fürth’s golden citizen award. In a moving ceremony which I was glad to attend, the mayor acknowledged Frank’s unique contribution to the town. As the first reunion unfolded, we were all deeply moved by the experience. No matter how enjoyable later reunions were, they could not match the first. For two days we lived in an unreal atmosphere. We did not try to turn back the clock; instead it was time for reflection. Emigrants were spared the horror of the Shoah, which we only learnt of at the end of the war. Nonetheless, all our lives had been affected by the Nazi

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era. We all lost relatives and friends. We had to come to terms with a sense of guilt; we had survived when others had not. It made me determined to do the little I could to fight against the violation of human rights, no matter where. Sadly, as we all know only too well, “never again” was to become “again and again” – although nothing has ever equalled the Nazi factorystyle extermination of Jews in organisation and efficiency.

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Many of the stories told by those present touched us deeply. Jules Wallerstein had been a child when his parents boarded the St Louis, a ship bound for Cuba with a cargo of refugees. They were refused entry in Havana despite their visas which turned out to be invalid, since the man who issued them had no right to do so. He had pocketed the proceeds. The German captain kept his ship in the harbour as long as he could, in the hope that his passengers would be allowed to land. He then he sailed slowly along the North American coast, appealing to the US and other countries to accept his “cargo”. As was the case with the boat people of later horrors, no one wanted them and eventually he had to turn back to Hamburg. Some passengers jumped overboard to their deaths. In the end, just before the ship docked in Hamburg, several governments issued visas including Britain and Holland. But not everyone survived; many were trapped as the Nazi flood swept through Europe. Another man described the murder of his father and brother, days before liberation. He had escaped only because he had typhoid and was too weak to join a roll call for “selection” prior to a move to another camp. He had watched with horror through a window, as his brother and father were beaten to death. He had scarcely finished telling this story when a young man stormed out of the hall. Later I was told that the young man was the speaker’s son who until then had never been told of his father’s experiences in concentration camps. One family named Weinbergerhad found refuge in Holland. After the German occupation, a Dutch woman agreed to take Susie, their baby daughter. The handover was effected when Liesl Weinberger wheeled their baby down the street, with the rescuer appearing at her side and gently taking over the pram’s handle. Both Weinbergers were to survive the nightmare of BergenBelsen concentration camp, which on liberation in 1945 by British troops was to become a symbol of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. It was in Bergen-Belsen that Anne Frank and her sister Margot died. Whenever a transport arrived, the Weinbergers would anxiously search for Susie, but she was safe and happy with her foster parents. So happy in fact, that when her Weinberger parents were able to get to the USA after the war and their

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daughter was reunited with them, Susie pined for her foster parents – she hadn’t known her real parents. The story had a happy end: the foster parents learnt of Susie’s distress and they too emigrated to the States to live near the Weinbergers. An incredible tale was told by Hanne Frank. She and her family were hidden in the attic of a railway cottage near Arnhem. They watched British parachutists attempting to land and saw how they were shot down. Germans took over the cottage as an office shortly afterwards, but fortunately they neglected searching the attic. Hanne and her brother went downstairs every night to copy the documents left on the desks. Members of the Dutch Underground, who supplied them with food, used to collect the papers. We were stunned into silence. Then Stefan Reichsthaler, a cousin of Frank Harris who had come to the meeting, jumped up and said that he too had lived in Holland and had worked in the Dutch Underground under an assumed name. Addressing Hanne he said, “One of my jobs was to collect documents from a railway cottage. Until now, I had no idea who had produced them!” No one could move or even clap. The atmosphere was too heavy with emotion to do either. Then Frank asked me to speak. I had arrived unexpectedly and neither knew nor was related to anyone present. I spoke about Africa and apartheid, describing the poverty, discrimination and the conflict in southern Africa. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

On the last day a service was held, when we remembered the dead and suffering everywhere. I attended another reunion in 1992. This time the atmosphere was different; it was a meeting of friends, not an encounter of strangers. It turned into a huge party with some serious aspects. Two panel discussions had been arranged, in one of which I participated. As it turned out, I was the only panelist to turn up – and set off a controversy. I talked about the problems of developing countries and how the rich needed to understand and respond to the needs of the poor. The following day a panel of the next generation referred to my address. One young man attacked me bitterly. He was the young man who had stormed out during the report of the man who had witnessed the murder of his father and brother.

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Jews should look after their own, he said. I had asked Jews to be tolerant of others, yet no one ever showed tolerance to Jews. Why did I concern myself with suffering of people other than Jews? Jews were once more under attack. Anti-Semitism was increasing with Israel under pressure, international sympathy was with Palestinians, without sufficient understanding of Israel’s need of secure borders. A heated debate began. Many agreed with me that “never again” had to mean “never again” universally. The tragedy of former Yugoslavia made the point, as did events in Ruanda – and so many other events since then. I understood the young man’s anger at the fate of his relatives, but I was depressed to realise that he did not understand that hate and revenge only fuel more violence.

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I was and am aware of anti-Semitism and doubt that it will ever cease to exist. I was once on my way to meet Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Nathan Shamuyarira in Hamburg and took a taxi to get to the meeting. The driver, a woman of my own age, immediately began to grumble about the kind of fares she had to put up with these days, and about Turks and blacks, who were no better than monkeys! One had even called her an old Nazi. “I’ve never seen a Nazi or a Jew,” she exclaimed. I got out, thinking I was about to meet a monkey, while she had at last seen a Jew. Amazing to hear that she grew up in Nazi Germany without ever seeing a Nazi. The past is ever present. In October 1998, a Eurostar journey which I made from Waterloo to Brussels and from there to Hamburg, proved the point. A woman chatted with me on the Eurostar and told me that her mother had been sent to live with strangers, as she had a Jewish background. In the next train to Cologne, a student who sat next to me, told me about his involvement in a radio programme about Oetker, the famous Bielefeld food producer with interests in shipping and insurance. Transmission of the programme was stopped because of pressure from the Oetkers, but a public outcry caused it to be broadcast in the end. This set off another row. The whole controversy concerned the name of the Bielefeld art gallery, partly financed by Oetkers, the largest Bielefeld employer. Rudolf August Oetker, the company’s managing director, had insisted on naming the gallery in honour of his stepfather Richard Koselowsky, killed in a bombing raid. However Koselowsky had been among a select group of industrialists called “friends of Himmler”, who had heavily subsidised the SS. This had generated a heated debate and at the 1968 opening, the glitterati stayed away. The name Koselowsky had not been changed, but was quietly forgotten – that is until 1998 when it was

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revived, leading to renewed controversy between the Oetker family and its opponents, whom one family member described as “leftwing terrorists”. I later read that the name was finally changed in November 1998, whereupon Oetker, who had threatened to move his headquarters from Bielefeld, removed his art loans from the gallery. The company had never researched its own history: it was the first to be named as a “true” Nazi company and was honoured by the Führer . I had another encounter on the final leg of that journey between Cologne and Hamburg. I was joined in the restaurant car by a family who had heard me talking in the Eurostar to the woman with the half-Jewish grandmother. They told me about a row in their village to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the first of the November 1938 pogroms. To mark the occasion, someone had proposed the granting of the freedom of the village to an American Jew, a former inhabitant and frequent visitor. “All sorts of excuses were found not to do so. In a small place like this, everyone knows exactly what everyone else did or did not do. They didn’t want to revisit the past.”

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The Nazis were no anonymous group of evil men. They were ordinary Germans. Besides, even non-Nazis were happy to acquire the silver cutlery or the dinner table of some Jewish neighbour whose confiscated property was properly auctioned by the correct fiscal authorities, as the records show. Nor do memories die easily. During the eighties, a woman journalist I had met in Berlin, visited me in London. She was distraught and had suffered a mental breakdown. This had been set off after discovering that her father had been a member of Hitler’s personal SS guard. Moreover, she then found that both her mother and aunt had worked in concentration camps. She remembered hearing of the Holocaust at school for the first time at the age of eleven. She had run home and asked her parents how this could have happened. Her father hit her and told her that she was not to believe such lies. The subject was never again referred to. She left home after her Abitur (A levels) and rarely visited her parents. It was her brother who had finally told her about the family’s background. The sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children – but they are, by the fathers themselves. As it happened, I visited the country frequently during the nineties, at the invitation of various structures. These included the Ministry of Political Education of North Rhineland/Westphalia, which invited me to read and speak in schools each year over a five-year period. After a reading tour for Germany’s Welthungerhilfe (famine relief) in the autumn of 1998, I was invited to Hamburg and Berlin. The nineties witnessed renewed interest in the Holocaust. The perpetrators had kept silent and it was now the third gener-

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ation asking, wanting to know what had happened. A virtual “Holocaust industry” began, with hundreds of excellent studies, books, documentaries, novels and research. It was now a matter of time, as survivors – both victims and perpetrators – were dying out. One of my friends said that in the late seventies, the Hollywood film Holocaust first roused awareness of the past. This was followed by the socalled historians’ quarrel of the eighties, when academics argued about events and analysis, resulting in the birth of the “Auschwitz lie”. Spielberg’s Schindler film was the media event of the nineties, to be followed by a heated debate over Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial Holocaust book.

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Not every synagogue had been destroyed on 9 November 1938. Often these had been used as sheds or some similar purpose. In the nineties, many were restored and used as museums or community centres. Neglected Jewish cemeteries became a focus for research. Plaques were erected at some railway stations to mark the departure of death trains. Later still, the project known as “Stolpersteine” caught on and continues to expand. It was the brilliant idea of a Cologne artist named Günter Demnig, who had first become involved with the Shoah through the commemoration in 1990 of the deportation from Cologne of many Roma and Sinti. These were central European gypsies against whom genocide was also committed by the Nazis, with an estimated two hundred thousand to half a million murdered. In 1995 Demnig dug up a paving stone without permission and inserted it with a metal plaque (which became the Stolperstein hallmark) bearing a victim’s name and dates of birth and death. Since then the project has mushroomed, with many thousands of such plaques having been created by Demnig and placed in front of the house where each victim last resided. The artist’s title of “Stolperstein” – a pavement stone over which one stumbles – is a graphic description. The project is not without controversy, but this has not deterred many individuals in many towns from adopting it. Housewives have become local historians, delving into archives to research individual life stories. Every single plaque represents a combination of donations and this kind of research. In Hamburg, a friend and former teacher Hildegard Thevs, is one of the city’s research team. She has literally devoted years to this ongoing work, the results of which have been published, as indeed is the case in other centres. In the town in which I now live, a Stolperstein committee was created, of which I was a member. The history of the town’s twentyseven Jewish victims for whom Stolpersteine were placed in 2008 to 2009, was researched by Bärbel Zimmer whose imaginative book is one of those filed at Yad Vashem.

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Membership of Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers Party) approached eight-hundred-and-fifty thousand in 1933 and rose to seven-and-a-half million by 1945. Support of the NSDAP and its ideology was widespread and general, with enthusiasm and admiration for the Führer sweeping through the nation after 1933. It was this support and acquiescence that allowed the Nazi government, when in power, to instantly hound the opposition and pursue its virulent anti-Jewish programme in the thirties, leading to the Holocaust of the forties – even though not every German was a Nazi. In the same way, South Africans allowed the National Party government to carry out its apartheid policy without widespread protest. Many white people were shocked by the revelations in the 1998 report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up by Nelson Mandela in 1995. The hope of “never again” after World War II has yet to be fulfilled. Atrocities are globally perpetrated again and again.

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IXX

ZIMBABWE

My stay in Zimbabwe was not to be permanent.

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Initially I was employed by the government, which controlled the news agency to which I was attached as a training consultant. I also taught economic journalism at the local polytechnic. At the same time I was able to travel to neighbouring countries, in particular to Mozambique, which I visited as often as possible. I’ve already mentioned my visit to the Cabinda oilfields, from where I returned a few days before my sixtieth birthday. One interesting journey, however, took me to an unexpected destination. While I was working at the news agency in Harare, I invited foreign embassies to send their press officers to inform the trainees about the economies of their countries. The Cubans sent a genial gentleman named Rodrigues, who later asked me to write for an English journal issued by the state-owned news agency, Prensa Latina. I did so over several years. As a result, in 1985 Rodrigues told me that Prensa Latina wanted to thank me (there had been no fee involved) by inviting me to Cuba. President Fidel Castro felt that in the wake of the financial crisis in Latin America at the time, all international debt by developing countries should be forgiven. A forthcoming conference on “no to the debt” was being organised by Prensa Latina in September and I was cordially invited. I accepted happily – but it all proved a little fraught. I was supposed to catch a Cuban plane from Madrid, but this appeared to be a secret trip; no message about the flight appeared on the board and the information desk was besieged by upset passengers. When I finally managed to pose my query, I was faced with a non-English speaker, but was then hustled along by a member of ground staff indicating that the Cuban airline was looking for me. The result was a first-class seat, with my luggage bundled in behind me so that the plane could depart. On arrival in Havana, I encountered more language problems. The friendly face behind the counter changed to dismay at my lack of Spanish. I was ashamed of my non-existent French, which would have been a help. The problem was not my visa, but my inability to tell her where I was staying. There was no one to meet me. It was by now well past midnight – indeed, in the early hours of morning, all the good people were fast asleep. So I found myself in the VIP lounge where I was plied with endless cups of coffee. Finally two English-speaking gentlemen sat down beside me and we shared another cup of coffee before they took my passport and checked me into a super hotel – one in which all conference guests were accommodated.

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At breakfast in Havana, I recognised some loudly arguing men as conference delegates, followed them to the buses and duly arrived at the conference. I stopped, wondering what to do next. Every delegate was identified by his or her country’s flag. I was still dithering, when I was caught up in a hug by Noll Scott, a good friend from my London days. I’d forgotten that Noll was a Latin American fan, having started journalistic life in Lima. He had come to Cuba to work for Prensa Latina for two years and hadn’t known I’d been invited to the conference. Noll soon found that I had a desk all to myself – behind a tiny West German flag! Needless to say, the conference was interesting, even if I had to rely on simultaneous translation. Fidel Castro opened the proceedings by saying that he was no economist; this was an economic journalists’ conference and he’d only come to listen. He then modestly sat on a chair behind the chairman. This didn’t stop a young journalist from addressing a question through the chair to the Cuban president, whereupon he promptly took the mic – and proceeded to speak nonstop for something like three hours. A pity I couldn’t tape it, but I was too far from the platform. I also doubt whether it would have been permitted; any question had to be put it in writing to the organisers. I didn’t find out if the young journalist had done so, or if she had spoken ad hoc. Either way, the conference was treated to the presidential viewpoint and not only on debt.

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Noll didn’t attend the conference, so on the last day I returned to the hotel with everyone else and was soon packed and ready to go, wondering how to contact him. I also wondered when I would have my passport returned, when unexpectedly Senor Rodrigues arrived. He pointed to my packed luggage and asked, “You are leaving? Don’t you want to see our island?” Of course I did! He asked me what I’d like to see and how long I wished to stay. We settled on a week. Prensa Latina provided a guide: a young American woman with a Jewish background who had visited Cuba some years ago, fallen in love with and married a Cuban. Naturally her family hadn’t approved, but they had accepted it. She first took me to the synagogue, having already told the caretaker that we were coming. The Cuban Jewish community at its zenith had numbered some fifteen thousand, with the majority living in Havana. Most of them emigrated after the revolution while those who remained were either too old or ill, or believed in the revolution. My guide said that the president respected Jews, but opposed Israel. It was a breathtaking week. I met some of Havana’s writers, enjoyed the food, the scenery and beaches as we traversed the whole island, visiting different

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towns and villages, sugar plantations and Isla de la Juventud, the Isle of Youth. Both Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and JM Barrie’s Peter Pan are rooted in this island, thanks to sailors’ accounts of its native and pirate inhabitants and of the long dug-out canoes used by both. My interest in the island was not so much due to the fact that Castro had been imprisoned there, but because a number of schools had been established there for children of southern African freedom fighters. I met and interviewed several students in the Swapo school, including Angeline Nujoma, one of Sam Nujoma’s children. Of course I saw a good deal of Noll during the week and enjoyed his wry humour. It was the last time we would meet; he was to die in 2005 in a car accident in Brazil at the age of fifty-one. Back in Harare, I was concerned with another school, namely Sacha’s. The nearby boys’ school he attended had been a public school – but only for white pupils. This changed overnight when boys were bused in from the black townships. Sacha made new friends and enjoyed the outdoor life of camping, riding and sports. The question of his further education naturally arose during this time and when he completed his A levels, I could scarcely leave him to solve the problems on his own. I therefore left my job and joined him in London. In any event I felt I could not continue in government employ; the events in Matabeleland and the censorship concerning these were distressing. I learnt of these events thanks to a colleague who had visited his village and told me of the unbelievable happenings, that a special group of soldiers, the Fifth Brigade, loyal to Mugabe were waging war against ordinary citizens, terrorizing, beating and killing thousands. Yet he remained mum during the editorial meetings: he knew nothing would be published and he himself sacked or arrested. All news of the terrible massacres were suppressed and not only at the news agency, where it was thus impossible for me to remain. I understood that members of the new elite needed to acquire a new lifestyle, but I was unhappy with the ever-increasing gap between this elite and the impoverished majority. Once Sacha was settled, I returned to Harare to help set up The Southern African Economist with my friend and colleague Antony Martin, who became editorial consultant while I was the training consultant. Antony, who died far too young, was the most intelligent person I have ever met – witty, genial and remarkably without ambition. It was a delight to read his articles, just as it was a delight to listen to him. His Oxford friends concurred that he was the brightest of their generation. After his death they published a wonderful book entitled Antony, to which each contributed his or her Antony story. His sister told me that they had been looking for me but

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couldn`t find me, so I wasn’t among the contributors. I could have told them many tales; for instance of his response after several colleagues and I had travelled to the then Bechuanaland – now Botswana. We returned with the story that we’d found the future capital, Gaborone, to be no more than bare veld, a railway station, a water tower and one building under construction. Antony, who also wrote for the Financial Times, covered the independence ceremony nine months later. Having heard our story, he decided to arrive prepared and arranged with a pigeon breeder in Mafeking to send a troop of carrier pigeons to him in Gaborone. When he reached the new town however, he found that the British had been working overtime. There were indeed new buildings including a press centre equipped with available technology. Undaunted, Antony used his pigeons to send his messages to Mafeking, from where they were dispatched to London, so that for the first time in its history the Financial Times published pieces styled: Pigeon Post, Gaborone. My next project was both unusual and interesting.

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In 1987 the first meeting between white and black South Africans had taken place in Dakar, Senegal. Thabo Mbeki, who on this occasion stated famously: “Ek is ‘n Afrikaner” (I am an Afrikaner), had led seventeen ANC members to meet a delegation of sixty-one white people, mainly Afrikaners – academics, journalists, writers and others – led by Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert of the Institute for a Democratic South Africa (Idasa). The meeting was a major event for all those present, discovering as they did that they had much in common with the “enemy”, who had been built up in their imagination as the devil incarnate. On their return, the two leaders called on President Mugabe to ask him if they could continue such meetings in Zimbabwe. Mugabe said he could not sanction this officially, as he belonged to the Frontline States and was bound by the boycott against Pretoria. However, he happened to be chairman of an NGO and if foreigners decided to organise something under its banner, he could claim this had nothing to do with him. The NGO in question was Cold Comfort Farm Trust (CCFT). Didymus Mutasa, a close Mugabe associate and at the time Speaker of Parliament, asked Dr Helmut Orbon, the local representative of Germany’s volunteer service who was on the point of returning to Germany, to take on the task. Dr Orbon created the Zimbabwe Institute for Southern Africa (Zisa) under the CCFT umbrella and asked Moeletsi Mbeki, Michael (Mike) Overmeyer – a young Coloured man from the Cape – and me to join him. Accommodation was made available on Cold Comfort Farm and we were soon at work. Zisa was to bring black and white South Africans together,

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which meant that clandestine meetings and workshops were organised. Zisa was also charged with informing the movers and shakers in southern Africa about current events inside South Africa. We therefore began to create an archive and to write background notes and fact sheets for distribution to southern African politicians and top civil servants.

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Cold Comfort Farm had an interesting history. The first farm of that name had belonged in the sixties to my close friends Eileen and Michael Haddon, who had planned to share the property with African friends. At that time, Africans could not live in urban areas outside the overcrowded townships. The Haddons wanted several friends such as the Samkanges to build houses for themselves on the farm. This was frustrated by new, hurried legislation to incorporate the area into the city boundaries, whereupon the farm was given to Guy Clutton-Brock, an Anglican clergyman who was to find his resting place in Zimbabwe’s Heroes Acre. Clutton-Brock turned the farm into a multiracial co-operative, with Didymus Mutasa as its chairman. When the Haddons were forced to sell the property, another farm nearby was found by Lord Acton, so that the co-operative could continue. Cold Comfort became an attraction in the sixties for black students, who came to the farm at weekends to work and debate. One of my first public talks was at Cold Comfort in 1966. However, the multiracial aspects as well as the political discussions were too much for Ian Smith – and in the early seventies the farm was confiscated, some members such as Mutasa imprisoned and Guy Clutton-Brock and family deported. After independence, Mutasa revived the concept. As he received foreign aid to start Cold Comfort Farm mark three, the project became a Trust and the farm a model co-operative. It was also a symbol of reconciliation. Zisa was funded mainly by the Swiss government, who relaxed the usual rules for project finance by making the money directly available through the embassy. This was essential because the work was confidential. The arrangement enabled Dr Orbon to finance meetings between members of the liberation movements and South Africans living in South Africa at short notice, without the usual red tape. Zisa was not confined to working with the ANC, but furthered the aims of all liberation movements. The hope that co-operation between all of them could be established came to nothing, though a meeting was indeed arranged, where leaders of different groups met each other, often for the first time. Some meetings took place between no more than two individuals; others were large, such as the conference between fifty members of the ANC Women’s League with white Idasa women and a contingent of Zimbabwean

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delegates, mainly from Zanu PF’s Women’s League. Incidentally, I was asked to join the ANC delegation by Frene Ginwala – later the first non-white Speaker of the House after 1994 – the only time when one of us actually participated in the deliberations. For the rest we were facilitators only, not concerned with the agenda or proceedings of the meetings. There were several other major meetings including those of legal experts as well as conferences of economists. White businessmen also visited Harare several times under the Zisa programme. The work was interesting and stimulating. Secrecy was essential, as shown by the return of Idasa’s delegation from Dakar. Reports of this had made headlines inside South Africa and stirred up a hornet’s nest in Afrikaner circles. Some three hundred members of the extreme right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (resistance movement) thronged to Johannesburg airport to give the delegation a hot welcome. The police said they would be unable to defend the arrivals, so they remained on board to disembark elsewhere. Delegates were demonised and threatened. Moreover, several of the participants at meetings in the early days of Zisa were stopped on their return and subjected to a grilling. The Zimbabwe secret police was of course aware of Zisa and its activities.

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On the morning of 2 February 1990, Moeletsi and I were huddled over the radio listening to a parliamentary speech by President FW De Klerk, with me translating the Afrikaans bits. When I said that De Klerk had just legalised the ANC, PAC and the Communist Party, Moeletsi looked at me with disbelief. He thought I had misheard … could it really be? At the end of the speech we drove to the ANC offices and saw the young cadres dancing in the street. Inside we found Pallo Jordan, who said a little gloomily that he was waiting to see the small print. We had of course heard the death knell of apartheid and the forthcoming release of Mandela. The countdown to a return of the leaders, later of the cadres, had begun and suddenly South African politics were turned upside down. It was an exciting time and Zisa’s work was not yet done. Zisa had slotted into a network of silent contacts over the past three years. The initial stone in the NP barricade had been loosened by Nelson Mandela, when he had written to President PW Botha, suggesting that it was time for Pretoria to talk to the ANC. Botha knew that Mandela was right, though he could not bring himself to begin talks. His invitation to Mandela for tea in 1989 was exactly that, an invitation to share a cup of tea. Nonetheless, secret contacts between his government and Nelson Mandela had already begun in 1985 when Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee visited Nelson Mandela in a Cape Town

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hospital. Further meetings followed between Mandela and the head of the National Intelligence Service, Neil Barnard. At the same time Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki, the man considered to be Tambo’s crown prince, worked on a solution through negotiation. Various mediators tried to bring the two sides together. In 1986 Mbeki met Professor Pieter de Lange, head of the Afrikaner broederbond in New York. Mbeki also held a series of meetings in the UK with Willie Esterhuyse, a Stellenbosch professor and former broederbond member. When Botha suffered a stroke in January 1989, a window of opportunity was opened for the peacemakers. The various efforts to arrange talks about talks were redoubled, with meetings taking place not only in Harare and the UK, but also in Switzerland and Germany. After February 1990, the lengthy four-year transition began, with the first government–ANC meeting held at Groot Schuur. Each side hammered out its negotiation position. Dr Orbon, the mover behind Zisa, became involved in arranging exchange programmes for students, farmers and others. I was able to visit South Africa for the first time since 1966, which entailed the usual unpleasantness at the airport, but that was soon forgotten in the excitement of seeing old friends.

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Nonetheless, I felt that after De Klerk’s speech our job was being overtaken by events. South African institutions already had archives to which academics and politicians now had access. Clandestine meetings were a thing of the past. I finally left in 1992. I thought it unnecessary to burden funds which could be put to better use. At sixty-eight, I was looking forward to a quiet retirement at some peaceful spot and chose to move to the beautiful Isle of Wight. However, retirement was still to elude me.

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XX

SOUTH AFRICA

My first visit to Johannesburg after twenty-five years was a revelation. In 1990 the city was unrecognisable as the city of 1965; only the street names and a few landmarks such as the city hall and public library remained unchanged. In my day there had been no wide motorway, and the city was now black. Soweto had moved to the city centre; street vendors and shops catered for black custom, while white offices and shops had moved north. In Parktown some old houses had given way to new office blocks. When I returned to Salisbury in 1980, I found that many old friends had moved, emigrated or died. This experience was repeated during my return to Johannesburg. Those who had remained lived behind walls, guarded by electronics and private police firms. Only Nadine Gordimer’s lifestyle was unchanged; her home an untouched oasis. I will always remember the beautiful old house in its perfect setting, a peaceful, wonderful garden where my son had taken his first faltering steps. Unfortunately she also suffered a violent burglary, after which she installed an alarm.

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I had enjoyed the bustle and excitement of those early years whenever I visited the ANC’s temporary headquarters before the move to Shell House, now Luthuli House. MK cadres returning home clamoured for attention. Older exiles were learning to find their way around after thirty years of absence. Of course many of those who were milling around the offices were siphoned off after the 1994 elections, moving into cabinet, government and civil service. During one of those visits I was able to get one of my friends in the legal department to scratch my name off the National Party blacklist. It eased my travels to South Africa considerably. During that 1990 visit I met two individuals who had influenced my life: Joan and Karl. Joan had become a serious, intelligent woman. She had ample independent means and a circle of friends and new interests. There was little animosity left between us; it was Joan who wrote to me when Hans died in 1989. I had phoned her and she had expressed her condolences – which seemed the wrong way round since it was she who had spent the last years with Hans. I knew very little of their life together. Hans had not worked again after I left him; there was no need. Joan was wealthy and he had inherited his mother’s estate. He had withdrawn from everyone except Margot, whom he continued to visit until he became bedridden. Joan led her own life during his final years.

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I’ve already mentioned my encounter with Karl, whose life had not brought the success he had hoped to achieve.

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I visited South Africa again in 1992, as a member of World Council of Churches’ ecumenical delegation which was to monitor the peace process between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The rivalry between the two parties had turned into open conflict in 1990. IFP’s leader Mangosutho Buthelezi had been supportive of the ANC until 1979, when differences split the alliance. During the hard talks between the ANC and De Klerk, Buthelezi wanted to make sure that the IFP was not left out in the cold. He had already fought the United Democratic Front (UDF) – the ANC under another coat – which had entered his “turf” during the eighties. Now he took the fight to the Witwatersrand townships. Though Mandela announced the cessation of the armed struggle in August 1990, there was in fact an ongoing bloody war, this time between IFP and ANC. Attacks on ANC township dwellers by Inkatha militants were often passively supported (and on occasion actively supported) by the police. During the four-and-a-half years between Mandela’s release and his presidency in May 1994, more people were killed than during the entire apartheid era of forty-five years. In 1991 a peace accord was signed between all the parties, including the security forces; hence the arrival of outside monitors. During this visit I had the curious experience of living in the home of a clergyman in Sharpeville at the edge of the site of the Sharpeville massacre. It was an odd feeling to push back the curtains each morning to look out on this historic spot, once a killing field. It was still unusual for a white woman to stay overnight in a black township and one evening a huge armoured vehicle drew up beside me, with a giant in police uniform looking down to ask me if I was all right. I assured him that I was. I also attended a hearing of the Goldstone Commission into the causes of violence (in the course of which it became evident that, at best, the security forces were biased in favour of IFP, and at worst, colluded with them). I was to meet Dr Richard Goldstone again when he was chief prosecutor at the Hague and addressed a conference in Nuremberg to mark an anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, where I had the honour of introducing him. After the 1994 election I was in South Africa again with two German women: a journalist and a photographer. We stayed in a boarding house near Cape Town and hired a car. I spent most of my time in and around Parliament. Frene Ginwala, then Parliamentary Speaker, proudly showed me around her domain, telling me of the changes she had made and was making. She also

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invited me to the celebration, when a women’s charter was presented in Parliament on 9 August, the anniversary of the women’s march on the Union Buildings in 1956. I had first met Frene when I visited the ANC office in Dar es Salaam during my 1962 Tanganyika trip. I remember talking to her while she was nursing a broken leg, for which she was later treated in the UK. I subsequently met her several times, also privately, and learnt to respect her intelligence and wisdom. I was also able to meet other friends and acquaintances including Aziz Pahad whom I had met in London, and who was now Deputy Foreign Minister. He took me to lunch in the Parliament Buildings where I literally bumped into Derek Hanekom, then Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, while on my way to interview the genial Kader Asmal, Minister of Water Affairs, whom I had met some years ago during a visit to Ireland where he had started the anti-apartheid movement. I was sad to read of his death in June 2011.

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Our photographer took a snap of Hanekom and me before I proceeded to my interview. My acquaintance with Derek Hanekom dated back to my time in Harare. About a year after I had moved to Zimbabwe, Karlie Hanekom, a South African teacher, visited me unexpectedly late one evening. It happened to be the day before I was due to leave for Europe. He asked me to speak to his brother’s lawyer on the phone so that I could write his brother’s story. I listened and was appalled. Karlie said that his brother Derek and sister-in-law Trish had been arrested together with a friend and were to be tried for high treason by court martial. They had allegedly passed on military secrets to a foreign government. If the trial went ahead, a court martial could pass the death sentence without anyone being aware of it. Karlie explained: “But if the story appears in a foreign paper, they will be forced to bring them to a normal court.” It sounded right, particularly when Karlie went on to explain the background, some of which I knew. Following the 1974 Lisbon coup and before the transfer of power in Mozambique to the Mozambique liberation front – Frelimo, the majority of panic-stricken Portuguese settlers had left the country. Some resentful settlers had hatched a plan with Ian Smith’s security forces to organise an opposition to Frelimo. Smith was happy to destabilise Mozambique in order to stop the country from providing a safe haven for Zanu. There are always individuals out of tune with any government, and because money played a part, it didn’t take long to form such opposition. The Rhodesians named it the Mozambique Resistance Movement – Renamo. Renamo troops soon attacked villages, killed, maimed and raped villagers, forcing survivors to slave for them while children were trained as soldiers. Apparently follow-

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ing Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence, South Africa’s intelligence service took over Renamo, whose activities not only continued but increased. Mozambique’s rural economy was disrupted and the Maputo government was under great pressure. Karlie said that the third accused (I think his name was David Hunter) was doing his military service as a driver in military intelligence. One of his jobs was a regular arms run for Renamo; another was ferrying men in and out of Mozambique for training in South Africa. The driver had either heard of or knew the Hanekoms, who were then running a model farm without black workers. He told them what he knew, so that they could inform the right people in Maputo. In due course the South Africans found out who was responsible for the leak. They made their arrests, but any publicity would embarrass them. Arming and training a dissident group in a sovereign country was likely to do more than just raise a few eyebrows.

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Fortunately I had a young Dutch journalist as a guest. After we had contacted the lawyer, my guest instantly sent off his story. My first port of call in Germany was Lüdinghausen, where I spoke to the local paper which duly published the story. A few days later I was in London at the Swapo offices and passed the story on. Needless to say, I also rang old Fleet Street friends. I have no idea if this spate of publicity had anything to do with it, but a deal was struck. South Africa was not prepared to bring a case to court in which Renamo was mentioned. The Hanekoms languished for nine months in detention before they were tried for political activities and sentenced in 1984. I remember a solidarity meeting organised in Harare at the time. Trish was deported to her birthplace, Zimbabwe, while Derek spent several more years in prison before joining her in 1986 and working in Harare for the Popular History Trust while she studied veterinary science. He first joined Mandela’s government, later becoming Minister of Science and Technology. An important ANC official, he is considered one of the country’s most able politicians. As for Renamo, it later turned itself into a respectable political party. Sadly, in 2013 Renamo threatened to return to war, which would seriously destabilise Mozambique and the region, with Zimbabwe saying it would again assist the Frelimo government. To my surprised delight, I met Tony Heard in Kader Asmal’s office as the Minister’s Special Adviser. Last time we had met was during my exciting encounter in Cape Town with the then Deputy Minister of Agriculture. I also met Peter Duminy, one-time deputy editor of the Financial Mail, who had taken me to Salisbury, with whom I have kept in touch. Peter had spent some

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years in Australia during the apartheid era. He had been sent there by the Financial Mail to set up a similar financial magazine. I had planned to join him, along with John Cavill, Ann’s former husband, and Antony Martin. But the pilot issue was the only one to appear before Rupert Murdoch (the Mail’s partner in the project) pulled out. John went to London; Antony went to Papua New Guinea as advisor to the Finance Ministry; I left for Zambia. Peter remained in Australia to work for a mining company before returning to South Africa.

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With Kenneth Kaunda in Lusaka in 2010

I had requested an interview with the Ministry of Defence and one afternoon was given a message with a number to ring a Major Anderson, which I did. A woman answered and I asked to be put through to Major Anderson, whereupon she exclaimed, “Ruth, it’s me, Muff!” I had known Muff Anderson as a journalist and now discovered she was an MK officer. Naturally this meant another interview. I was also able to interview Barbara Hogan, a brave and impressive woman who had joined the ANC after a demonstration by schoolchildren in 1976 had ended in a massacre. Detained in 1982, she was held in solitary confinement for a year and was the first South African woman found guilty of high treason. Sentenced to ten years, she was among the political prisoners released in 1990. In Johannesburg I stayed with the family of Dr Orbon, who was by then representing GTZ (the official company of the

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German Development Ministry responsible for economic co-operation) and was later a consultant at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Botswana on peace and security issues. I also met friends such as Moeletsi Mbeki, then working for the trade union umbrella Cosatu, and former Financial Mail colleagues such as investment lawyer Trevor McGlashan, with whom I remained in touch. One interview which I sadly declined because of other commitments was with Joe Slovo, which had been offered by his office. I stupidly thought I could take up the offer later – but there was to be no later. The valiant warrior for human rights and racial equality died soon afterwards of cancer on January 6th, 1995.

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In the course of this trip I pondered the question whether or not I should return to South Africa. I decided against it. By this time the ANC–IFP conflict had ended, but crime was rampant and violent, the legacy of a society that had solved all problems with violence throughout its history. As an old woman living on her own, I would have been confined behind electronic walls and I felt that I could not bear such an existence. But more importantly, I was too old to participate in the reconstruction that was needed. This was a task for the young and vigorous. Thanks to the internet, it is possible to keep up to date with South African affairs – and apart from reading books on the country’s continued development, I also read South African newspapers on the net. I therefore knew what awaited me when I gratefully accepted a wonderful eighty-fifth birthday gift from a group of friends (organised by Konrad Kleyboldt) to travel once more to South Africa. I undertook the journey in October and November 2009, first spending some time in Lusaka where I attended a media symposium to mark the twentieth anniversary of a journalist training centre. (Twenty-five years previously, I had written a proposal with a colleague for the centre to be set up by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation). I was also able to interview President Banda whom I had met during my Lusaka days when he headed the Rural Development Corporation. Apart from the interview, we exchanged memories of the seventies. Banda had changed parties and had become Vice-President under Levy Mwanawasa. However he was still on good terms with his former chief and mentor, Zambia’s Citizen No. 1, Kenneth Kaunda – and when I said that I was on my way to him, he sent me off in style in a State House car with my companion, Marina Köhler. It was great interviewing Kaunda, as I had done so often in the past. He told me about the ongoing work for his Aids Foundation; he had been one of the few prominent persons to speak about the disease after the death of one of his sons.

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In Lusaka I first stayed with the veteran politician Simon Zukas and his artist wife Cynthia. Simon had been one of the few white people to support African citizens in Northern Rhodesia against the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and had been deported by the British, returning only after independence. Cynthia Zukas was honoured in 2012 by the Queen for her work promoting the arts in Zambia. I then moved to Ilse Mwanza and her husband Dr Jacob Mwanza, a one-time Central Bank governor and World Bank representative, whom I had met when he was Vice-Chancellor of the University. I regularly email Ilse, who is remarkably knowledgeable about Africa’s fauna and flora and an intrepid explorer of Zambia’s bush and its unknown waterfalls – about which she has published a splendid book with more to come. My companion on this part of the journey was Marina Köhler, whose help was invaluable. In Johannesburg where I attended a conference of writers and artists – of the Goethe Foundation on “cracking the wall” – we were joined by another friend, Sanne Kaperlat, who had organised the trip. I was once more able to visit old friends. Trevor McGlashan gave us a splendid lunch together with Moeletsi Mbeki, the journalist Hugh Lewin and Allister Sparks, the last editor of the liberal Rand Daily Mail, whose excellent analysis and books are obligatory reading for anyone interested in South Africa. I recall sharing a hectic evening with him, when a number of us journalists followed the indefatigable Thabo Mbeki from one eatery in Lusaka to another. I stayed a few days with Nadine before the final leg of our journey, when Marina, Sanne and I enjoyed Peter Duminy’s hospitality in his Plettenberg Bay home, with its spectacular coastline views.

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From there we had intended to stay at the Hokisa (Homes for Kids SA) project in Masiphumelele in Cape Town – but in the end only Sanne made it. The project, which cares for kids with HIV/Aids in a home environment, was founded by Karin Chubb and the writer Lutz van Dijk. I regretted missing the experience, as I would have loved to visit Hokisa and also to see Lutz . He had once worked at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and I admire him both as a wonderful writer and for establishing Hokisa. However, I had to stop off at Stellenbosch to meet Dr Orbon, in whose company I talked to several professors about their views on Zisa. This was in preparation for yet another South African trip a few months later, in February 2010.This had been triggered by the Weltfriedensdienst (WFD), a Berlin-based peace organisation. The WFD wanted to find out if the Zisa model could be applied in other conflict situations. I was asked to interview some of the thousand or so participants who had come to Harare between

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1987 and 1992. I travelled to Johannesburg, Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Durban in the company of the WFD manager and we met and interviewed a number of former participants. These included five Stellenbosch professors; also Mac Maharaj, a colourful personality who had smuggled Mandela’s notes out of Robben Island. A lifelong political activist, he led an adventurous underground ANC team in the last days of apartheid, which led to his arrest. He had subsequently been a successful transport minister in Mandela’s cabinet and was one of President Zuma’s mediation team on Zimbabwe. Mac, whom I had first met in the seventies in Zambia, was not one of Zisa’s participants but he has written and lectured on conflict resolution. Barbara Masikela, well-known activist and ANC official who had been the US Ambassador in 2003, met us for lunch and talked warmly of the 1987 Dakar meeting, saying this had been a revelation for her. She had made new firm friendships at the time with several Afrikaners, something she would never have thought possible.

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I enjoyed meeting other former participants at Harare meetings, such as Justice Dikgang Moseneke who was kind enough to give us some time at his offices. A one-time young PAC prisoner on Robben Island, he opted to stay in the country. Of his first visit to a Zisa meeting in 1987, he commented that his expectations had not been high. However, through them, a measure of trust was built. In his own words: “Those meetings were real encounters between political activists; no subject was taboo.” He ended up changing his mind about some of the people he met and made friends with others, with whom he kept contact. “Had Zisa not existed, then more preliminary work would have had to be done to build confidence” … a point of view that could only please former Zisa workers! One of the most interesting characters I had met during the Zisa days was Andrè Zaaiman, who found the time in his busy schedule to give us an interview. It was a bonus to meet him again. An Afrikaner and a farmer’s son, he had studied at Free State University and was an officer in the South African Defence Force. In 1988 he had resigned as he was no longer sure that South Africa was fighting a just war; he had issued a lengthy statement pleading for the end of apartheid. He was an Idasa official responsible for youth programmes; he had been at the Dakar meeting which had such an explosive impact in South Africa, and he had worked closely with Zisa. During Thabo Mbeki’s presidency he served in the presidential unit concerned with conflict resolution. In the course of our lengthy interview, I discovered facets of his background which I would not have suspected – such as his secret membership of the ANC and close contact with Oliver Tambo, who had entrusted him with a brief to change the Afrikaner point of view on apartheid.

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When we returned, I wrote the reports of the journey and presented these at a WFD Berlin meeting. WFD felt that this was as far as they, as a development aid organisation, could take the project. Both trips had been exciting and thoroughly worthwhile, if also debilitating … long, economy class flights are not to be recommended for the old. But above all, I was able to learn more about post-apartheid life on these visits than I had from my reading.

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The tension between the races had not been eradicated, nor could it have been. Not merely apartheid, but the racial divides over centuries have left a legacy that only future generations can perhaps dismantle. Currently, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor is of major concern, with class having replaced race. The sudden access to resources by the previously disadvantaged has inevitably led to corruption, nepotism and what South Africans call “tenderpreneurship”. Only strong leadership and time can solve such problems. During my 2009 visit, it was impossible to overlook the then ascendancy of colourful ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema. His demagogue style of leadership, demands of instant nationalisation of mining ownership and expropriation of land without compensation appealed to the young, the landless and unemployed. Curiously, Malema’s flamboyant champagne lifestyle did not meet with criticism, but with approval. He was seen in the townships as one of their own. Malema posed a serious challenge to the ANC, highlighting corruption within the leadership and the despair of the poor.

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XXI

LATER YEARS

The parents of one of Sacha’s university friends were “Saints” – citizens of Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon spent the last years of his life – and had chosen another island, the Isle of Wight (IOW) as their home in the UK. While on a visit, Sacha rang me to say he had found my ideal cottage near Ventnor, a delightful town on the island. I had been dreaming of an ivy-covered cottage in an English village as the perfect place to spend my final years. But it had to remain a dream; no stranger feels comfortable in a small village, particularly if one isn’t a member of a local church. However the IOW felt different to me; it was a tourist place, which older people had fond childhood memories of and to which many retired.

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I spent a weekend on the IOW and reluctantly decided the cottage was not for me. The lovely rose garden attached to it, that stretched down to the cliffs above the sea, would soon have suffered under my inexperienced hands. However, on the way back to the town centre I passed a building site, where a nineteenth-century house was being converted into flats. I instantly bought a top floor flat with a view of the sea – a decision I have never regretted. I spent ten years on the island and made friends with an old neighbour, a resolute woman some fifteen years older than me. She and her husband had been small-scale, hard-working farmers and as a widow she had retired to the IOW for health reasons. I never called her anything other than Mrs Simmons, as she hated her first name. She had very little education but a great deal of common sense and I loved her dearly. To my distress, she fell ill and died while I was away from home with my son who needed me at the time, in the wake of an ill-judged and brief marriage. I had acquired an old but serviceable Austin Minor and Mrs Simmonds and I used to meet almost daily. We would go shopping or would drive to one or other spot on the island. The island has a long history and when Queen Victoria had built Osborne House as her summer residence, many Victorians moved and built houses there. An enterprising medical practitioner had turned Ventnor into “the” place to cure TB and similar ailments due to its proximity to the sea and to a nearby hill named St Boniface. Karl Marx was one of the patients who had regularly visited a doctor in Ventnor, and whose family still lived next to our small apartment house. I was told that they had a memento: a letter by the great man in which he said he had to rush to Paris where his daughter was ill; he would settle the account when back in London … which left me wondering if he had to borrow the necessary from his good friend Engels. Indeed the IOW has an interesting literary history and has

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always drawn writers. Dickens wrote part of David Copperfield in Bonchurch, and Tennyson owned an estate on the west of the island, to mention only two. I joined two writing circles and also gave seminars on journalism. But my leisure time soon ended.

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Sacha had turned from a puny baby and unhappy toddler into a thoughtful adolescent and then into a confident man. He had long before overcome his initial difficulties. A late developer, he first “jobbed” when he returned to Europe, then did a college diploma in catering operations before deciding to go to university, where he took a Surrey University degree in hotel management. He followed his interest in sport with a physical education course and worked as manager of a leisure centre at Gatwick Airport, before taking a year out in Israel. His marriage had led to an unsuccessful business venture in response to his wife’s demands for more than his salary could offer. This was to gobble up my savings and was the reason that I began to work once more. My son was no more an entrepreneur than was my father – or Hans for that matter. Contritely he returned to employment. For a while he lived on a houseboat near his work, together with his dog Tiller, whom we had found in an animal home. I loved spending weekends along the banks of the Lea and found life on a boat soothing. But of course it was no long-term solution for my son, particularly when he met and fell in love with Line, a young Danish woman, who had worked in the hotel where Sacha had found employment. He had to decide whether he would remain in Britain or follow Line to Denmark since she was about to begin a university course. He chose Denmark, and moved there in 1999 where he, Line and their son Oliver (born in 2007) still live. I decided to work on a book comparing the conflict solution in Northern Ireland with those in southern Africa. It meant reading a great deal about Ireland and also interviewing experts on the subject. I travelled to Belfast regularly over the next three years before writing Peace In Their Time. I met new and interesting people such as Martin McGuiness, a Sinn Fein leader, and I usually stayed with a Catholic family named Fagan. The father, Artur Fagan, had lost both legs as a teenager when a bomb hit the pub where he was enjoying a drink with friends. They were kind hosts and it was a pleasure to be with them. They once visited me in Ventnor. I stopped travelling to Belfast once the book had been written and wrote to tell them I was moving to Germany, but unfortunately after that I lost touch with the family. I remember them fondly and with gratitude.

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I also published my autobiography in German during the nineties, which resulted in many reading trips to Germany. And eventually I did what I had promised myself long ago: I began writing fiction. I wrote my first novel Night of Terror (about an agent infiltrating the liberation movements) in English and then translated it because the publisher, Horlemann, had no resources for a translation. My next novel has become the best-known. Entitled My Sister Sara, it is based on the life of one of my friends who had been adopted by an Afrikaner family in 1948, when many members of the NP had adopted German war orphans. My friend was born in 1946 in a displaced persons’ camp, where his Jewish parents had met. The man who had adopted him was horrified when he learnt of this background. Sara was chosen in 2007 as a textbook for high schools in Baden-Württemberg, as a result of which I spent three months in that state, reading and talking at one hundred schools.

Reading at the Realschule Erolzheim in Germany in 2007

From 2001 on, I kept writing and publishing novels. Several centre around a character named Miss Emily Moore, an energetic woman of eighty-plus years who lives in fictitious Little Benton On Sea, having led a busy and exciting life. The background is always political, either in African politics, or during the era of World War II. I have also written several historical novels. Though I write more easily in English, the novels have been published in Germany, where I have lived since the end of 2002. I moved here because it proved

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cumbersome as well as expensive to travel to Denmark from Ventnor. The little town in Germany where I live is called Lüdinghausen near Münster, where I found a small garden flat. The trips I had made to Germany following the publications of various books had been increasingly tiring. I decided that not only would I be closer to Denmark, but also that I would be better placed for lectures and readings if I actually lived in Germany. My British friends at first asked, “Lüding-what?” and thought I would have been better off in Hamburg or Berlin. True, but older people like me find it easier to adapt to a small town than to a city with its complex communication. However, I chose this particular small town because of Konrad “Konnie” Kleyboldt and his pretty wife Josefine. Konnie is the chairperson of a thirdworld organisation in Lüdinghausen, which kept in touch with me through the years. I visited the town often during my travels and accompanied a Lüdinghausen group to Zambia in the eighties. The then mayor of Lüdinghausen, Josef Holtermann, was one of the group. He and his wife Ulla are now among my regular visitors, whom I miss when they are out of town. Other “regulars” include my neighbours, Prof Dr Peter and Ulrike Bruck; Peter sees to my weekly shopping. Some “Lüdinghausener” also visited me in Zimbabwe. My diary was filled with commitments to visit schools, attend seminars and similar functions. However, by the time I was eighty-eight, I began to slow down. In 2005 I was fortunate to be numbered among the one thousand women proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour I did not deserve. However, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of the other women, who in their daily lives did so much to further reconciliation and peace. Copyright © 2014. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. All rights reserved.

Life in a small town is by no means dull. One of my friends, Bärbel Zimmer, diligently researched the history of the twenty-seven Lüdinghausen Jews who perished in the Shoah. Bärbel’s book records their stories, typical of many.Thus she wrote that long before the war and the start of mass deportation, one woman had landed in a concentration camp where she eventually perished, because a neighbour overheard heard her complaining of ill treatment during the November 1938 pogrom. Another woman broke a leg while climbing onto the lorry taking her to deportation. She was moved to hospital to be looked after until she was well enough to be deported. A small boy, left in the care of his grandmother, was separated from her and left to face death on his own. I wrote a non-fiction book at that time, which I hope to have published. Thanks to Bärbel’s researches, I was put in touch with Lore Mainzer, who was

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born in 1924 like myself, the widow of a Lüdinghausen Jew living in a kibbutz. Lore was one of four hundred women saved by the industrialist Frits Phillips, then a thirty-five-year-old, who had been in charge of twenty thousand staff of Phillips Electronics in Eindhoven, after Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands. Phillips also ran a workshop in the concentration camp Vught. Like Schindler, Frits Phillips maintained that his workers, including the young women in his radio valve workshop, were essential to his operation and should not be moved. He also insisted that the work was carried out under his men’s supervision and that he would provide a filling meal daily for his workers. When the Germans finally moved Phillips workers to Auschwitz in a stealthy operation, they were in better physical shape than most camp inmates. Thanks to Phillips’ protests to Berlin, five hundred workers of whom four hundred were women, were released from Auschwitz and sent to other factories. After a horrendous journey in bad weather in overcrowded cattle trucks with eight thousand others, they were finally released and sent to Sweden. Another unexpected and equally undeserved honour came my way in 2010 when a girls’ high school in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, decided to name the school after me. My father was born in a village nearby and his eldest brother Mathias had founded the city’s largest department store. The idea was proposed by one of the teachers, Anni Kropf, who had also initiated the school’s regular support of Kasisi, an orphanage in Lusaka. Anni, an energetic woman whose enthusiasm is still boundless, had lived for some years in Zambia, where her husband worked for a German multinational. We met, as she reminded me, when she organised a media workshop for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The students asked that I should be invited to cover economic reporting, which surprised her, realising I was a white woman. She made inquiries and duly invited me. We remained in touch and when she came up with my name to replace the cumbersome “Staatliche Realschule für Mädchen in Aschaffenburg”, students, staff and parents agreed. I accepted the honour in the way it was surely intended, with my name symbolic of the once flourishing Jewish community of the town. The last Jews who were left in the town took their own lives the night before their deportation. Denis Goldberg did me the honour of coming from his Hout Bay home to deliver the main speech. As the day coincided with the annual school festival, it was not merely a matter of listening to official speeches in the town hall. I have since visited the school several times, once on the occasion of the city handing over new and renovated buildings to the school in 2011 after a ten-year building programme; another when the school unveiled a frieze of various scenes from my life.

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I also visited Aschaffenburg on other occasions, including the lively summer street festival of the city’s minority groups. AFKA (Afrika Freundeskreis or Africa Friendship Circle) who regularly participate in the street festival, did me the honour of inviting me twice to their “African village”. On my first visit, the “village headman” (a serious North African) presented me with a lovely African-style dress. Then in July 2013, when wonderful African bands performed throughout the festival, I was asked to come on stage  by Parfait Kikhounga-Ngot, AFKA’s chair and leader of one of the bands. This large, charming Congolese man in flowing traditional robes overwhelmed me with two surprises: he made me an honorary AFKA member – and presented me with a small bottle filled with African soil which he had scooped up outside his home when he had been forced to flee the Congo. I was moved and honoured … Needless to say, this gift of a treasured piece of Africa takes pride of place on my desk.

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One of the guests at the naming ceremony of the Ruth Weiss School in Aschaffenburg was Erica Futran, the widow of Hans Weiss’s friend Alfred. Back in 1962, while Hans and Alfred were at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Erica had accompanied me to the village where my father was born. When we got there, I somehow felt awkward, but Erica insisted that we should call on the mayor to find out exactly where my family had lived. The mayor had then promised to search through the register and suggested we should return after a walk and coffee at a cafe which I remembered from my visits as a child. We did have the stroll and coffee, but never got to the cafe. Instead, we were invited to the house of an elderly woman who had recognised me. (Actually she had confused me with my father’s eldest sister, who I’m said to resemble.) She told us a horrific tale of the November 1938 pogrom, when a mob attacked my father’s brother Salomon (Salli) and his wife Eva, first destroying their property, burning books and furniture in the yard and finally stringing the elderly couple up from a tree. I wanted to get away as quickly as possible, but Erica insisted I must see the mayor once more; he was no more than a civil servant and had nothing to do with those events. He had meanwhile read the register carefully, for by then his office had filled with people who remembered my family. Moreover, the mayor gave me a bottle of wine displaying the label of the village as well as several postcards, all of which showed the house that had once belonged to my family and which I had remembered when I saw it during our stroll through the village. I didn’t stay, but left with Erica for the railway station. Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned to find the mayor hurrying to catch us up. He asked if I was returning to Germany. I said, yes, tomorrow. Would I see my father? Yes, tomorrow. He thereupon grasped my hand and said with

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emotion, “Please give my love to Richard!” When I arrived home, Margot was at the airport and whisked me to the hospital, as Vati had just undergone an emergency operation. When I gave him the wine and postcards, he wept. It is terrible to see one’s father weep. I decided there and then not to tell him about his brother and sister-in-law – and kept to that decision. I only told Margot the story thirty years later. The mayor, Vati said, had been his best friend, always waiting for him to return from school in Fürth so that they could play football together.

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Later I had doubts about the story the old lady told us. In 2010 I talked to Oded Zingher, the Israeli who had lived in the village after World War II and had researched the genealogy of the dead buried in the local Jewish cemetery. He said the old lady who told us the story might have been confused. There had been an attack on one Jew during the night of 9 November; his surname was the same as ours. But as far as Salli and Eva were concerned, the records showed they had been deported, not murdered in the village itself. After my move to Germany I kept meeting the past, just as I had done during the seventies. But by 2000, the older generation was no longer visible or in charge, and the generations of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren feel and are untainted, as are the children’s generation. However, the latter had lived in the shadow of their parents’ past. Like the second generation of the victims of the Holocaust, about whom a great deal of research has been done, they felt a sense of guilt without being able to account for it. This happened also in my close vicinity. A historian in our committee had researched and written about the events in Lüdinghausen during the night of 9 November 1938, which appeared in Bärbel’s book. It mentioned the part played by a policeman, the father of a woman who happened to knock at my door one afternoon in 2011. We got to talking and she asked if I knew anything about her grandfather’s attitude to Jews. I told her to read the book and above all, to speak to the historian, who had used initials rather than names. She was visibly upset that her father, a boy of eight in 1938, had subsequently told his children nothing except that “they’d been against it” – a remark I’ve heard innumerable times from different individuals. The work of local historians has unearthed a great amount of detail about the period. Academics, for their part, have devoted their studies to the period and come up with impressive analyses and theories. The historian Götz Aly has stirred up a good deal of controversy with his work on the economic aspects of the Holocaust. In one detailed study, he shows how Hitler financed his war with wealth confiscated from Jews in Germany and Germanoccupied countries. “Ordinary” Germans also benefitted from auctions of

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Jewish goods held on the doorsteps of former Jewish homes, after the deportation of former owners. In another study published in 2011, he concludes that deeply entrenched anti-Jewish sentiments (from traditional church teachings that Jews had murdered the Saviour), were replaced by the anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century. He attributes this to a sense of envy. Germany was not a unified entity such as France or Italy – it was a number of autonomous states without a common German history, which later had to be dredged up after unification of the country in 1871. Germans were insecure about their identity. Jews emancipated during the Napoleonic era were able to take advantage of industrialisation which was rapidly changing society. At last able to enter secular schools and universities, they outpaced their Christian contemporaries. Many of the latter were children of illiterate peasants who had been forced to leave the land and found it difficult to adjust to urban life, while Jews were literate throughout the centuries, since Jewish men had to be able to read the scriptures and prayers. Traditionally, Jews encouraged their children to study. Long penned up in ghettoes, their emancipation released new energies and ambition. Though an insignificant minority, Jews became “visible” and active in the medical and legal professions, in academia, the arts and also as entrepreneurs. All of this engendered envy, which came to a head after World War I when Germans were a defeated people in need of a scapegoat. By then, Germans had caught up, closing the previous gap between German and Jewish students. I know that I was extremely fortunate to have escaped and then to have been able to lead the life I did. I have understood that disregard of human rights anywhere must be denounced and opposed.

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My involvement with Africa has continued. I still write occasionally for the weekly Zurich paper Die Wochenzeitung, and before the Zimbabwe elections of 2013 I wrote a weekly column for a website over forty weeks of unfolding events: the internet made that possible. It also allows me to delve into international reports and analyses of events and it belongs to my daily routine to turn to specific websites on African affairs. Naturally I reflect on what I read and hear, as everyone does. Young African writers justifiably decry the emergence of repressive, corrupt elites, who have raped the continent of its resources to enrich themselves while impoverishing their people. Writers also call for an end to harking back to colonial times and blaming these for all current ills. I agree with both sentiments – and yet I feel that one must recall the past: the invidious slave trade which robbed the continent of its young; the colo-

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nial oppression and its racist peak in southern Africa labelled as apartheid. As I had written in the nineties, commenting on the horrendous killings during the ANC–IFP conflict, “No matter what may trigger any particular incident, there is only one root cause for it all: apartheid. Its legacy of poverty, deprivation and distrust, the stultifying effect on the economy – all of that will be with South Africa and its hinterland for at least a generation to come.”

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I spoke of “a generation” – but judging by events in those African countries which reached independence earlier, and also by unfolding developments in South Africa, it will take a little longer. Still, it is cheering to know that despite the surviving dictators such as Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, there are more African leaders leaving office after having been been voted out of power. Africa is young, its people impatient. Many of those knocking on the gates of Europe’s fortress come from failed states such as Somalia, but others are striving for better governance at home. Democracy, says The Economist in October 2013, is the best guarantor of peace, which is the best foundation for growth. Democracy has to be learnt; this is what was prevented during the colonial era and apartheid. The Africa about which I began to write in the early Fifties is no more. At that time there was no city with a million inhabitants, today there are well over thirty. Kongo’s Kinshasa had no more than 16 000 or so people, today they number more than ten million, while greater Lagos, which I’d found overwhelmingly crowded back in the early sixties, today numbers over forty million! I remember my horror in the mid-Fifties at the then fast developing slum around Nairobi in Mathare Valley, which has since spread out alarmingly, thanks to the drift from rural areas and globalisation. Indeed the trend is increasing in all African cities, as people are drawn by the bright city lights and hopes of a better life and access to jobs. Alas, such hopes are dimmed, with too few jobs created in the face of rapidly growing populations, so that the unemployed and the informal economy by far outnumber those in formal employment. The elite are waxing fat on politics of patronage and corruption- with rich men who run everything dubbed “Godfathers” in Nigeria having gained control of the vast treasure trove of mineral resources. Yet hope remains: a new middle class is developing that is beginning to be innovative, challenging old structures. Politically the continent has matured, making decisions unconnected with the capitals of the West, even if some new dependency on China has emerged. Africa is rapidly connecting with the rest of the world, thanks to the new technology, with the fastest growth rate in mobile phones and Facebook connections, which mount hourly.

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Problems remain, but Africa is young and the young crave modernisation, which they will hopefully be able to achieve. In my personal life, two issues are paramount: my son’s love for me and mine for him – and for Africa. As he once wrote: In Africa the grass is hard like the feet of a woman the sun as soft as the cheek of a black madonna

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The feet of women are hard and swift to catch the sun – the water – the rhythm of life

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POSTSCRIPT I first wrote my memoirs in 1980 at a time when euphoria over the independence of Zimbabwe was the order of the day. These were published in Germany under the title of “Lied Ohne Musik” (“Song Without Music”). Fourteen years later Peter Hammer Verlag asked me to update the text, which subsequently bore the title of “Wege Im Harten Gras” (“Path Through Hard Grass”). The publisher decided to ask Nadine Gordimer to contribute a foreword. She agreed – but understandably said she’d like to read what I’d written. I hastily penned a translation without considering “good writing” or taking much note of any literal translation. However, it sufficed and Nadine kindly wrote the words, which are also appended to this belated English edition.

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In the early 2000s I transferred my archives, including my surviving manuscripts but also tapes of the many interviews, press conferences and discussions which had been part of my life since the late 1950s to the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB), the Namibia Resource Centre and Southern Africa Library in Switzerland. In 2010 I was to help sort out a number of my taped interviews at the BAB and we realised that many lacked context. Also, almost all my notes had been discarded – or lost, as a result of many moves and I had not kept full records such as diaries or files, nor all my innumerable articles. My only excuse is the pressure under which I worked, in order to fulfil the demands of media to which I contributed or which employed me, while also meeting those of my family life. As we reviewed the BAB tapes, I realised once again how fortunate I was to have lived through the turbulence in southern Africa in the second half of the 20th century, to have been present at some of the events during that turbulence and to meet several of the actors. In discussions with the BAB the suggestion was made that I finally publish my memoirs in English and for a southern African readership. I remembered the unpublished “Gordimer copy” and even found an old computer disc of this, which I now updated by going through the out-of-print German book of 1994, adding events and thoughts of the past 20 years. Ruth Coetzee then carefully edited the manuscript with some help from me. I am particularly happy that during all this I unearthed some photographs of family and friends which I had thought I had lost. Thus this book came into being in the course of my 90th year. When I first began to jot down my reminiscences, I felt a number of persons might not be pleased to see themselves mentioned, so I used a number of

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pseudonyms. By 1994 this consideration was no longer necessary, as sadly several of these individuals were no longer with us. The same remark applies to 2014, so that I have only maintained this discretion with regard to the couple Robert and Joan Lang, whose marriage break-up affected my own and my son’s father. Though all three are deceased, I have no wish to hurt their families.

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ANC ANC ARM BOSS CCFT CHOGM CP DW Frelimo FNLA GDR Idasa IFP IOW Kanu KK MK MMD MPLA

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NP NSDAP OFS PAC Renamo SABC SACP SAMA SADC Swapo UDF UKV Unip

African National Congress African National Council Armed Resistance Movement Bureau of State Security Cold Comfort Farm Trust Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Communist Party Deutsche Welle –Voice of Germany Frente de Libertação de Moçambique – Mozambique liberation front Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola – National front for the liberation of Angola German Democratic Republic Institute for a Democratic South Africa Inkatha Freedom Party Isle of Wight Kenya African National Union Kenneth Kaunda Umkonto we Sizwe – Spear of the nation Movement for Multi-party Democracy Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – People’s movement for the liberation of Angola National Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – National socialist German workers party or NAZI party Orange Free State Pan Africanist Congress Resistência Nacional Moçambicana – Mozambican national resistance South African Broadcasting Corporation South African Communist Party Suidafrikaanse Myn en Algemene Versekeringsmaatskappy – South African mining and general insurance company Southern African Development Community South West Africa People’s Organisation United Democratic Front Unabhängige Kulturvereinigung – Independent cultural association United National Independence Party

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Unita

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WFD WDR Zanla Zanu Zanu PF Zapu Zisa

União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola – National union for the total independence of Angola Weltfriedensdienst – World peace aid Westdeutscher Rundfunk Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army Zimbabwe African National Union Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African Peoples Union Zimbabwe Institute for Southern Africa

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PHOTOGRAPHS All photographs published here are from the private archives of Ruth Weiss, housed at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Switzerland. Efforts were made to trace the copyright holders. We apologise for any incomplete or incorrect acknowledgement. Cover photograph Interviewing Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole in Geneva in 1976 during the Rhodesia Constitutional Conference. Sithole, a founder of the Zimbabwean liberation party ZANU and its first President, became a political opponent of Robert Mugabe during the transitional period of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1979/80. Photograph by Günter Wolff (Hamburg) Frontespiz With my son Alexander (Sacha) in Nyanga (Zimbabwe) in the mid-Eighties Page 14 The wedding of my parents Selma Cohen and Richard Löwenthal in Fürth in 1922

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Seated, from right to left: Bertha Löwenthal (wife of Mathias Löwenthal), Pauline Cohen (my maternal grandmother), Richard Löwenthal (bridegroom) Selma Löwenthal nee Cohen (bride). Hanna Löwenthal (my paternal grandmother), Eva Löwenthal (wife of Salomon Löwenthal). Standing from left to right: Toni Löwenthal (my father’s sister), Salomon Löwenthal (my father’s brother), Martha Cohen (my mother’s sister), unknown person, Rosa Cohen (my mother’s sister), Jakob Cohen (my mother’s brother), Max Cohen (my maternal grandfather), Mathias Löwenthal (my father’s brother) Page 17 With my sister Margot (left) in our garden in Rückersdorf, 1933 Page 29 Alexander’s Bar Mitzvah in London, 1980 Page 39 In Mayfair, the suburb in which we lived in Johannesburg, 1941

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Page 40 My parents in 1950 in Johannesburg Page 46 At Mayfair Intermediary school in 1937, with me holding the board “6 A” Page 74 Selected Books of Hans O. Simon and Hans L. Weiss, Johannesburg. Photographer: Gerhard Cohn Page 76 My invitation card 1944 Page 103 At home in Orange Grove, Johannesburg, 1959 Page 104 Hans Weiss 1959 in Orange Grove Page 123 With Hans in northern Transvaal, 1961 Page 129 In northern Transvaal, 1961. From left to right: the “Native Commissioner” (seated), behind him Hans Weiss (seated), me leaning at the car; standing at the table is Margot Weiss, seated in front is Dr. W. Brettholz

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Page 130 New Year’s Eve 1961 at the nightclub Ciros, Johannesburg: From right to left: next to me my brother-in-law Walter Schloss, Margot Weiss, Robert Lang, my sister Margot Schloss, Mr. Morgenroth and Ruth Katz. Club Photos Page 140 In the 1960s. Page 146 Kenneth Kaunda shortly before Zambia’s independence 1964. Northern Rhodesia Information Department Photograph Page 149 President Kenneth Kaunda as referee of the Zambian parliamentary football

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team, with Tom Mboya and Reuben Kamanga, the captain of the team. Zambia Information Department Page 171 BOSS spy Gordon Winter and the South African Prime Minister John Vorster (left) in Johannesburg in 1966 Page 182 In 1966 on my way to Salisbury (Harare) as the Financial Mail’s Rhodesia editor, here at Gwelo (Gweru) station with Sacha in the carrycot with other belongings. Photographer: Peter Duminy Page 202 The Times of Zambia journalists at a Kaunda press seminar in August 1972. I am sitting behind the chief editor Vernon Mwaanga (speaking) Page 203 A photograph of Kenneth Kaunda and his wife Betty, dedicated to me by Kaunda: “We value your commitment to the cause of man the world over. Fight on. God’s blessings” State House Lusaka 11 May 1978

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Page 205 Kenneth Kaunda and his wife Betty, dedicated by Kaunda to my son:“Your mother we consider to be Zambian in spirit & this is more important than being born here. Please join her. God’s blessings.” State House Lusaka 11 May 1978. Zambian Information Services Page 206 ”Zambia”, the elephant at Kasaba Bay in February 1972 Page 207 With Sacha in Lusaka 1972 Page 209 At a press conference in Angola in 1982, me sitting at the far right. Departamento de Informacio M.P.L.A. Page 210 President Kenneth Kaunda and President Julius Nyerere inspecting the TAZARA railways project. Zambia Information Services

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Page 212 Our train leaving Dar es Salaam in 1973. Zambia Information Services. Photographer: S. Nakalinda Page 213 In Malawi 1973 Page 225 In Cologne, late 1970s Page 230 With Josiah Tongogara, Commander in Chief of ZANLA, during the Lancaster House Conference in my London house, 1979 Page 231 On the repair car of the Benguela railway in Angola 1975 shortly after its independence Page 232 An appointment with Prime Minister Robert Mugabe shortly after Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations in 1980, together with Nadine Gordimer (right) Page 233 At a media seminar for senior journalists, Salisbury (Harare), 1980

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Page 234 With Sally Mugabe (left) at the ZANU headquarters in Manica Road, Harare, April 1981 Page 254 With Kenneth Kaunda in Lusaka in 2010 Page 261 Reading at the Realschule Erolzheim in Germany in 2007

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