We continue this week with an extract from Bob Newland’s life and experience, and his efforts in fighting the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The first instalment was released in War Diaries Issue 11.
A few weeks later Peter and I set off for South Africa carrying the leaflets, explosive devices and fuses in false bottomed suitcases. These were relined with a dazzling paper which made it almost impossible for anyone who looked inside to see that they were a couple of inches shallower inside than out. As most of the recruits were young working-class lads and lasses, many had not flown before and some including me had never stayed in a hotel. What an adventure it was to be.
We were all anti-Apartheid activists with what we considered to be a good knowledge of the nature of Apartheid. Nothing, however, could prepare me for the reality. An early challenge arose on the first shopping trip for stamps, envelopes and the hardware to make our leaflet bombs. As we walked past a jeweller’s shop with a black guard armed with a shotgun outside, a white man came out of the door. He crossed the pavement and kicked a black man walking near the roadside into the gutter. His crime it turns out was not to step into the gutter to allow the white man to pass freely. My first reaction was to confront the white man for his appalling behaviour. How hard it was to stare straight ahead and walk on as if seeing nothing. We had to keep our eye on the prize and not draw unnecessary attention to ourselves.
Much of our time in South Africa was spent fearing that we would get caught. We were convinced that everyone who looked at us a bit closely was aware of what we were doing. Of course they had no idea – but try telling us that. Every step contained a new challenge. We were posting hundreds of letters to ANC sympathisers around the country as well as a few to newspapers and the security forces so they would be convinced that the ANC was alive and active. We had to buy large numbers of stamps and envelopes. The question arose – do we buy them all in one shop or a few in many places? Which was the riskier? If they all looked the same and we split them up to post would they all arrive in a central sorting office from different locations and be spotted? Such questions were answered in different ways by different teams of recruits. Our ignorance of Apartheid in practice led one recruit to make a terrible blunder. He decided to buy all his stamps in the main post office. On entering he joined the shortest queue as one would. After a few minutes and before he was served someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you a visitor?” “You’re in the wrong line” said the man pointing to the sign over the counter which said ‘Nie-Blankes’ ‘Non-whites’. Apologising profusely he looked at the long whites-only queue, expressed his thanks and said he would come back later. We subsequently heard that many of the letters arrived safely over the years so I guess we were being over cautious.
Despite our extreme caution we had a couple of very close shaves. On the day before the leaflet bombing operation we had the devices all prepared and safely stacked in our car boot. To kill time we decided to take a drive out of town and have a look at Soweto from the outside. We ran up behind a massive black funeral cortege and a policeman indicated to us that we should turn left. Complying with his signal we found ourselves in Soweto an endless shanty town from which we could not see a way out. Now we were frightened. Would the white police stop us for being in Soweto and find our bombs? Would the black population stop us and think we were undercover police and attack or kill us? We drove on hardly daring to look to either side. Suddenly we came across a junction, turned right and drove and drove – fortunately exiting the township unscathed.
In preparation for our 4 bombs we had done a lot of scoping out of the sites. These were to be rail stations, bus stations and taxi ranks where the black workforce of Johannesburg gathered in their thousands to get back to the townships after their day’s labour in the cities. Our route was carefully planned so we did not cross back into the area where our bombs had gone off. Each timer was set to ensure, as instructed, that they went off simultaneously at 5p.m. As we drove away from our last site we ran into an enormous commotion with dozens of police milling around and Africans fleeing in all directions. To maintain the security of the operations Ronnie briefed us on a ‘need to know basis’. What we did not know was that there was another team of ‘Recruits’ operating in Johannesburg at the same time as us. We had inadvertently stumbled across the site of one of their actions. During our debrief I suggested to Ronnie that this was something we may have needed to know.
The next day at the airport for our return journey we saw the headline of the Rand Daily Mail: ‘11 explosions in SA cities. Pamphlet bombs blast again.’ Five cities had been targeted simultaneously. The security forces had no idea who was responsible. It was shocking however, to discover when I attended the Congress of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 2017 to receive a reward on behalf of the ‘Recruits’ that Ahmed Timol ,under interrogation, was accused of setting off our leaflet bombs. Timol, like Steve Biko, was murdered by the security police who threw him from the top floor of their HQ in John Vorster Square.
(Extract from Bob Newland)
Your War Diarists,
Max & Tony
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