Aggett inquest brings back terror of detention without trial

TALI FEINBERG

Now, as the inquest into Aggett’s death has been re-opened, memories of that time in detention are resurfacing for Favis and other Jewish detainees. “With the Aggett inquest, a lot has come back. It’s been painful,” she says from her home in Johannesburg.

Favis was arrested because she was an activist on Barbara Hogan’s “close comrades” list that was discovered by the security police at the time, as was Aggett. She was arrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act along with dozens of other anti-apartheid activists and African National Congress (ANC) supporters in November 1981.

“Four of the five months were spent in detention cells in Durban, where all political detainees were held in adjoining cells. We wrote notes to each other on toilet paper with pens nicked from the police. The notes were attached to stones and thrown over courtyard walls or smuggled to other cells through the young offenders who cleaned our cells,” she remembers. Her experience vacillated between periods of deep despair and fear, right through to times of elation, a deep sense of collective joy, and solidarity. “Living out commitment to a larger cause carried a great deal of meaning,” says Favis.

Being detained was a “deeply strengthening experience at a personal level. One learnt to ask basic questions of oneself: ‘How do I survive? What can I create and build from what I have around me in my physical environment, and from what I have within me, emotionally?’ Although I was abused, I was fortunate not to be physically tortured. My white privilege followed me into apartheid’s jails.”

Favis says her Jewish identity “without a doubt” influenced her choice to join the struggle. “Our history of persecution, as well as the strong ethical and compassionate heart of Judaism and the tradition of intellectual endeavour are all powerful ‘pull factors’. Human rights is an indivisible principle that we can’t pick and choose when it suits us. Ethnic supremacy, discrimination, and oppression must be called out, whether this occurs at the hands of Jewish people in Palestine, Hindu people in India, or white Christian supremacists in the United States.”

Asked if she thinks that activists detained during the struggle have been forgotten, Favis says, “It’s a struggle of memory against forgetting, as my comrade, Raymond Suttner, put it. We tend to manipulate the bits of history that are useful to our current interests.

“It needs to be said that me and my family were targeted and attacked by the wider Jewish community as a result of my detention. I was told I was bringing shame upon the community; that we were exposing the community to potential harassment through my actions. I was ostracised and outlawed. The mainstream Jewish community in South Africa was reluctant to formally call out apartheid. Here, there are lessons for the present: To this very day, there are people willing to speak out against, for example, injustices in Israel/Palestine. Are we going to continue to scorn and marginalise people who are driven by compassion and concern for ‘the other’? We need to introspect.”

Another Jewish detainee, Maxine Hart, says Aggett’s death affected her deeply. “I was constantly wondering what they did to him, and what he went through.”

On 11 September 1984, Hart was arrested under the Internal Security Act, “which gave the security police the legal right to detain me without trial for 90 days. It was my birthday, and so 9/11 has become an inauspicious day,” she says, speaking from her home in Newton, Massachusetts.

“I had had contact with members of the ANC which is what led to my arrest. The security police had followed me for several months, as well as a spy who set me up. They had a cut-and-dried case, with a witness and sufficient evidence to have me charged and imprisoned under the Act for furthering the aims of an outlawed organisation.”

Her arrest sent shock waves through the community. “Here I was, a good Jewish girl, and a social worker. I didn’t fit the stereotype of a terrorist threat to the state.”

For the first month, she was detained in the infamous Johannesburg police station, John Vorster Square.

“I would be taken daily for interrogation sessions, and sometimes at night as well. I recall one night at about three in the morning being physically ill, and it was at this time that the security police returned to continue their interrogation. They assumed I would be more vulnerable, and it would be easier to get information out of me.

“Otherwise, the security police tried hard to be decent to me as they were conscious of their image. Afrikaners were for the most part a G-d-fearing people who had a lot of respect for Jews,” she remembers.

After 56 days of interrogation, Hart was charged under the Internal Security Act for furthering the aims of the ANC. “I was moved to the women’s section of the prison in Soweto. I was held without bail as an awaiting trial prisoner, and because there were no other white female political prisoners awaiting trial, they continued to hold me in solitary confinement in a section which they locked and unlocked with five clanging gates each day.

“So deep was the fear and paranoia surrounding political prisoners, that when I was taken from my cell to another part of the prison, should a common-law prisoner pass me in the corridors, I was immediately turned by the prison warder to face the wall. My 12 foot by 7 foot (3.6m by 2.1m) cell became almost my total physical world for three and a half months.”

She was an early adopter of the practice of yoga, so, “when I began to feel that my world was a little shaky, I would practice balancing postures to regain a sense of togetherness. After a long four and a half months in solitary confinement, I was tried and convicted, and given a three-year sentence which incredibly was suspended for five years.”

It was the first case of a political prisoner being given a suspended sentence. “Soon after my release, I resumed my activism, in fact with greater vigour. By 1985, a group of us started Jews for Social Justice. Our first public meeting attracted more than 500 people, which was historic in that white people didn’t usually attend political meetings in meaningful numbers. We understood then that organising as Jews was, in fact, the right thing to be doing at that time.”

In June 1986, Hart was re-arrested along with thousands of others when a State of Emergency was declared. “The security police interrogated me extensively about Jews for Social Justice. This opposition by Jews had clearly hit a raw nerve. During this second detention, I was held for 14 days again in solitary confinement without charge, and was then released.”

During Hart’s time as an activist, “Some of my extended family members distanced themselves from me,” but she also received a lot of support.

To her, the key lesson of her detention is that, “We need to be vigilant against becoming our own ‘prison warders’ so as not to lock ourselves up mentally. And, we need to be willing to confront injustice.”