Johannesburg - If the security police had raided Rivonia two hours earlier, Nelson Mandela might have been free by 1967. They didn’t, he wasn’t – and it would take the liberation movement more than 13 years to recover from the blow.
Most people know of the Rivonia Raid and the eponymous trial that flowed from it. What they don’t know is that had the police gone earlier and not worried about getting the proper warrants, they would only have caught Ahmed Kathrada – instead of almost the entire high command of the fledgling Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) discussing Operation Mayibuye, the masterplan to overthrow the apartheid regime. And, if those same MK strategists had burnt Mandela’s diary and papers instead of keeping them for posterity, the man who would eventually become the country’s first democratically elected president, might have been freed within five years.
Today Liliesleaf, the original name of the Rivonia farm, operates both as a tourist attraction and a resource centre. Lovingly restored by Nic Wolpe, it’s a centre of memory – ironic because it was largely forgotten after the raid. The area around became urbanised as bits of the 11.3ha farm were sold off and houses built in what is today the upmarket northern Joburg suburb of Rivonia.
“Liliesleaf just faded,” Wolpe remembers.
He started by buying back the original farmhouse and then painstakingly excavating to rediscover the original foundations where the outbuildings had once stood. He had the house restored from the bed and breakfast it had become, and, using archaeologists, was able to rebuild the outbuildings, including the one where Madiba hid out posing as a gardener under the pseudonym David Motsamayi, and the room the Security Police were determined had been the secret transmission station for the banned ANC’s Radio Freedom.
Wolpe’s dad Harold had been the first head of MK’s intelligence unit and had overseen the purchase of the farm as an SACP safe house in his other role as a Joburg lawyer.
The restoration began in mid-2005 and took 18 months to complete. First opened to the public in June 2008, today the house, the outbuildings and the rebuilt thatched cottage form an acclaimed interactive museum, kitted out with interactive displays for an incredible trip down memory lane, explaining not just the complexities of the struggle against apartheid but also the importance of Liliesleaf today. Alongside and around in separate buildings is a conference centre, a fully equipped resource centre and library and restaurant.
“Liliesleaf became the hub of the liberation struggle,” explains Wolpe. “It started out as a meeting place of the SACP and then evolved into the high command of MK. I call it the diaspora of the struggle because the diaspora came into Liliesleaf.”
The house was bought in August 1961 by an SACP front company and Mandela stayed there at various times after he went underground, leaving the country in secret to muster raise funds and support for the ANC in the rest of Africa.
When Liliesleaf was raided on July 11, 1963, he’d already been in jail for nine months of a five-year sentence, but the damning evidence the police seized led to him being arraigned as Accused No 1 in the trial that followed.
The police arrested Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Rusty Bernstein, Denis Goldberg, Bob Hepple and Arthur Goldreich at the farm. Goldreich and Wolpe escaped with two other ANC comrades from Marshall Square police station in Joburg, where they were being held, and made it over the border to Botswana and exile. The others all joined Mandela in the dock.
The raid on Liliesleaf was part of a desperate bid to shut down Radio Freedom, which broadcast for the first time only 18 days before. Tambo was in exile, Mandela was in jail and it was left to Sisulu to man the station.
The broadcast on June 26, 1963 was a sensation. The actual broadcast had taken place from a house in Parktown. In fact, Wolpe is one of many people who believe it was the American CIA who tipped off the security police about the existence of the safe house.
Once again, fate intervened. The original raid had been scheduled for 1.30pm but the police wanted to get a search warrant first. If they’d gone when they had planned they would only have found Kathrada there. Instead, they walked straight into an MK high command meeting that had been adjourned the Saturday before to allow Bernstein to report to the police as part of his house arrest.
This was to have been the final session at Liliesleaf before MK abandoned it and moved its activities to Trevelyan Farm, which Goldberg had bought for the purpose. As for Sisulu, he wasn’t even hiding out at Liliesleaf, but actually at Trevelyan.
That trick of fate would cost most of them the rest of their productive lives.
Wolpe dreams of celebrating their sacrifice by buying up the surrounding properties to create enough space to build a “school of democracy, enlightenment and learning” to inculcate the ideals of the Rivonia trialists.
“These were unique leaders with selfless aspirations, who epitomised the spirit of ubuntu. My dream is that one day it will become a site of memory, a centre of understanding, reflection and dialogue.”
l Liliesleaf is open from 8.30am to 5pm from Monday to Friday and from 9am to 4pm on weekends.
TIMELINE
June 26, 1955 Freedom Charter adopted in Kliptown, Soweto.
March 21, 1960 69 people shot dead in Sharpeville during a PAC anti-pass law campaign.
March 28, 1960 Oliver Tambo goes into exile.
March 30, 1960 State of Emergency declared, 12 000 people detained.
December 10, 1961 Albert Luthuli receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
December 16, 1961 Umkhonto we Sizwe announces its arrival.
January 1962 Nelson Mandela secretly leaves South Africa to set up MK training bases.
July 24, 1962 Mandela consults Luthuli.
August 5, 1962 Mandela arrested in Howick, KwaZulu-Natal.
November 7, 1962 Mandela jailed for five years.
June 24, 1963 Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni arrested for ferrying MK recruits across the border.
June 26, 1963 First Radio Freedom broadcast.
July 11, 1963 Liliesleaf raided: Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Ahmed Kathrada, Denis Goldberg, Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, Bob Hepple and Arthur Goldreich arrested.
August 11, 1963 Goldreich and Wolpe, together with Abdullah Jassat and Mosei Moola, escape from Marshalltown police station.
October 9, 1963 Rivonia Trial starts.
June 12, 1964 Rivonia Trial ends: Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Motsoaledi, Mlangeni, Mhlaba, Goldberg and Kathrada jailed for life. Bernstein and Kantor were acquitted and Hepple fled the country.
February 28, 1985 Goldberg released.
November 5, 1987 Mbeki released.
October 15, 1988 Kathrada, Mhlaba, Mlangeni, Motsoaledi and Sisulu released.
February 11, 1990 Mandela released.
May 10, 1994 Mandela inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratic president.
Kevin Ritchie, Saturday Star