I have just watched one of the 12 movies featured in the two-week (online) South African Film Festival entitled Life is Beautiful. It is a documentary about the defendants in the Rivonia trial, the trial in which Nelson Mandela and others were convicted and sentenced to life, and their formidable defense team – and also about their families and friends and the broader context of the trial in Apartheid South Africa.
The movie is available here:
https://watch.eventive.org/saffusa/play/614d208335b8090b4a86ba7b?m=1
It brought back bad memories of the brutality of Apartheid and the South African police state. To this day I find the claim of some of my contemporaries that "we did not know what was going on" as contemptibly incredible. Unfortunately we all bear some of the moral stain of that bloody period.
The movie is a testament to the courage of a few individuals in the face of unspeakable cruelty, of whom the best known is Nelson Mandela. But he was by no means the only one. The others were drawn from all sectors of South Africa, white, black, Indian, English, Afrikaans (the formidable and remarkable Bram Fischer), Jewish and Christian. They deserve to have their stories known.
In many ways Bram Fischer was as remarkable as Nelson Mandela. Fischer was a scion of the Afrikaner aristocracy. An international rugby player, graduate of Grey’s College (the Eton of South Africa), a brilliant attorney and a man of unimaginable integrity and courage – vilified by a whole generation of Afrikaners as a traitor. He was the lead attorney on the defense team, which contained a collection of superlative legal minds. It was his defense strategy that led to a sentence of life rather than death.
After the trial, he suffered a series of cumulative misfortunes. In an accident in a car he was driving his wife (much beloved as a leader in the anti-apartheid movement) was killed. Bram was charged with treason for his membership of the South African communist party – in truth, he was a Christian, his membership was simply a way to join with, and provide leadership to, the opponents of Apartheid. While out on bail, he decided to go underground and circulated in disguise for about nine months. He was eventually arrested and convicted, and sent to Pretoria prison where he served alongside the people he had defended. Brutally treated, he died of cancer after eight years. Everyone who knew him testifies to his extraordinary humanity, courage and commitment. Nelson Mandela called him an African hero. It is worth watching the movie just to get the details of his story.
On a personal note: watching the movie I remembered something that happened to me. In my second year of university, I sat behind a young man named Paul Fischer. I remember he was very frail. We talked a bit. One day he asked me if I would do him a favor. He was going to have to go into hospital for a while, about a week, and would I be prepared to take notes for him. He gave me some carbon paper so that I could duplicate my notes for him. I said, certainly. So every class I simply placed the carbon paper under my note page and duplicated my very detailed notes for him.
As it turns out, he was gone for quite a lot longer than a week. I think it was for three weeks. When he came back I simply gave him the duplicated notes. He seemed very pleasantly surprised that I had not given up on him, almost tearfully grateful. Being young and stupid I thought nothing of it.
A little later I learned that he was Bram Fisher’s son. I realize now that Bram Fischer was then imprisoned in Pretoria and that Paul’s mother had died tragically a few years before that. I knew he was sick. From the movie I just learned that he had a degenerative disease and died a few years after I had been with him in that class. The news added to his father’s suffering.
I wish I had been more mature and more interested in him so I could perhaps have gotten to know him better, even if not to have been able to have provided some comfort.