LITMIR.BIZ

      Tafelberg

      For my son, Gibran, named after a great poet,

      I hope one day you will find him in yourself.

      For my daughter, Kaye, named after a great woman,

      I hope one day you will love like she did.

      ‘We walked in wisdom with our shadows,

      in search of the dead part of ourselves,

      which would be our shelter’

      Yvonne Vera

      PART ONE

      In the Belly of the Beast

      1

      I stood at the window of my apartment looking down on the dark streets. It was the end of June 1985, some months into Durban’s temperate winter. I stared at the far end of the street waiting to see them approach. Earlier I had agreed with Yunis and Ebrahim to be the decoy.

      Ebrahim had to be saved. I accepted this decision. I was part of the operation to do that. But alone in the apartment, I had my doubts. The fear that had taken hold of me earlier had returned.

      As I stood motionless looking through the window my anxiety increased. I wanted to run, but I could not move: I could not abandon my mission. So, I stayed transfixed by my apprehension and dread.

      I’d met with Yunis and Ebrahim that afternoon to assess the danger that was closing in on us. I was under surveillance by the Security Branch. Right now, they were parked near my optometry practice. If there was any amusement in the situation it was that the drug dealers who patrolled these night-time streets had slunk off elsewhere.

      My heart was beating fast as I kept watch. I was wracked with anxiety and fear and smoked furiously. I needed the nicotine to steady myself. But also, I felt useful. I had been affirmed by a senior leader of the organisation and that felt good. It excited me. I was torn between these conflicting emotions yet submitted my fate to the direction of my seniors and to the awful thrill of what was to come.

      ‘Is there no other option?’ I’d asked.

      ‘Unfortunately, not. There is no other way out. If you run, we lose control of the situation,’ Ebrahim had replied in his soft, controlled voice honed over years of living in the underground. He kept his gaze fixed on me. I noticed his thick bushy eyebrows. They enhanced his attractiveness. ‘The police don’t have anything other than the details from the roadblock. But if you run, they will suspect more. The legend will hold. I am convinced of this,’ he reassured me.

      I played out that scene in my mind while I waited. I heard his voice, the calm reassurance. In the street there was no movement. In the flats about me, people slept through the night hours.

      And then I saw them coming: a convoy of police reaction unit vehicles streaming down the street, their blue lights flashing. I heard the squeal of tyres, doors slammed, loud voices shouted instructions. I heard the heavy pounding of footsteps getting louder as they thundered up the stairway. And then that banging on the door.

      I tried to convince myself that this was not happening. The angry thumping startled me out of my stupor. I went to the phone and made a call. The shouting at the door could no longer be ignored. They had come for me. They had come for the willing, naive decoy.

      I was under surveillance due to an aborted attempt to cross Ebrahim into Swaziland some days earlier. We’d had to stop at a military roadblock, and our names were recorded. At the time and afterwards, Ebrahim was confident that the ‘legend’ we’d created to explain our trip would hold. But I was no longer sure of this. I knew my arrest would put him at risk. I knew that if he were caught, we would have failed. And failure was unacceptable.

      ‘Maputo’ – the authority supervising Ebrahim’s mission into the country – was adamant that Ebrahim not be captured. He knew too much about the underground units. His capture would risk decades of hard work. With so much at stake, Ebrahim had to be transferred to another unit that could undertake his exit from South Africa.

      As I’d listened to Ebrahim detailing his handler’s orders, I’d realised that I was to be the sacrificial pawn in this game. The players in Maputo had made their move.

      Ebrahim sensed my tension, perhaps he saw the fear in my eyes. If he did, he did not say anything about my alarm. On the contrary he tried to reassure me. He affirmed his belief in me. He evoked the strength of my commitment to the struggle and assured me that all would be well. We repeatedly assessed the details of what we believed the Security Branch knew. We convinced ourselves that they did not know much.

      In the end I accepted that the police had nothing on me. All I had to do was hold out for three days. By that time Ebrahim would be safely out of the country.

      ‘Resist them,’ Yunis and Ebrahim encouraged me.

      This was my mission: to survive detention for three days. Or so I thought. I nodded in agreement.

      ‘So be it,’ said Yunis. ‘Don’t worry. Ebrahim’s right. Without him the cops have nothing. It’ll be okay. I agree that Ebrahim must not get caught under any circumstances. We cannot afford that.’

      Yunis was my immediate senior in the underground and my elder brother. His direction sealed the debate. I was never quite sure in which capacity I accepted his words. It didn’t matter, I was part of the plan.

      Yet the nagging thought of my dispensability had stayed with me while I waited. I had struggled with the idea that I was to be the decoy. To argue otherwise was to show the weakness of my fragile sensitive side. Perhaps I was no longer of use to the unit. Perhaps I was the expendable pawn.

      As quickly as these thoughts ran through my mind, I dismissed them.

      Hadn’t Ebrahim said, ‘The movement has faith in you?’ Hadn’t Yunis been equally as positive? He would not recklessly abandon me, his brother.

      And so, I accepted the decision. Controlled my anxiety, remembered that Ebrahim himself had undergone long periods of detention and torture. Had spent fifteen years on Robben Island for his role in the early sabotage campaigns of the African National Congress. Our trust in the movement’s leadership knew no bounds. They were our lodestars, our heroes, our pathbreakers. We, the foot soldiers, followed, perhaps blindly but willingly. It was the way of the movement. It was the way we lived our lives.

      After this meeting with Yunis and Ebrahim, I had felt the need to see my partner, Soraya, but she had other plans for the night. I did not push her to change them. I should have.

      The reality of my arrest only took hold when I heard the cell’s metal door clang shut. I do not remember being manhandled from the apartment. I do not remember being shoved down the stairs to a waiting van. I do not remember being bundled into the van. Or the drive to the police station. Or the gloating faces of the police as they booked me. I do not remember any of this. I was jarred back to my senses with the sharp turning of the key in the lock. I was alone. Alone with my beating heart. Alone with my nightmares. In the dim light, the emptiness of my cell was overwhelming. The pale olive colour of the walls and the cold concrete floor produced a claustrophobic, engulfing and terrifying silence.

      I had been detained under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act. At the time of my arrest 60 people had already died in detention, Steve Biko among them back in 1977. Torture, both mental and physical, was intrinsic to detention yet the inquests into these deaths found that no one was responsible. South Africa’s security legislation abandoned detainees to the mercy of their interrogators.

      I sat down on the bed and then it struck me: would I survive detention? I shuddered at the thought. The many tales of the torture and suffering of those who had gone before flooded my mind. I could not keep these thoughts away. I could see, in the dim light, their words of anguish written on the walls. I was a victim of my own awareness. My detention was no longer an imaginary event that might or might not occur. It was

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