Description
Book Synopsis‘The silence of the cell is less disturbing than the deliberate silence of the human beings who come and go. I know that it is part of the process, designed to break my morale, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I calculate that I am speaking less than twenty words a day, and begin to wonder whether my vocal chords will dry up and wither if this goes on … I have never been very talkative, but now I begin to hunger after talk more strongly than for either food or drink.’
Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, on 11 July 1963 and tried for sabotage, alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other leaders of the African National Congress and Umkhonto we Sizwe in what came to be known as the Rivonia Trial. He was acquitted in June 1964, but was immediately rearrested. After being released on bail, he fl ed with his wife Hilda into exile, followed soon afterwards by their family.
This classic text, fi rst published in 1999, is a remarkable man’s personal memoir of a life in South African resistance politics from the late 1930s to the 1960s. In recalling the events in which he participated, and the way in which the apartheid regime affected the lives of those involved in the opposition movements, Rusty Bernstein provides valuable insights into the social and political history of the era.
Trade ReviewThe memory so eloquently contained in this book tells especially the younger generations of South Africans who live in freedom that they should never forget that, indeed, that freedom was not free.' - Thabo Mbeki, anti-apartheid activist and former President of South Africa, 1994–2008
Table of Contents
- Foreword (by Thabo Mbeki)
- The Rivonia Trial Attorney Remembers (by Lord Joel Joffe)
- Prologue
- 1. Starting Blocks
- 2. Time at the Crossroads
- 3. A Foot in Each Camp
- 4. Across the Divide
- 5. Spoils of War
- 6. Warning Winds
- 7. A Line in the Sand
- 8. Goodbye to All That
- 9. Overground – Underground
- 10. To Speak of Freedom
- 11. Power, Treason and Plot
- 12. Cracking the Fortress Wall
- 13. Exercise Behind Bars
- 14. To Put Up or Shut Up
- 15. Things Fall Apart
- 16. To Sit in Solemn Silence
- 17. In a Deep Dark Dock
- 18. Telling It As It Was
- 19. In A Closing Net
- 20. Over, and Out
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
