A Life for Freedom: The Mission to End Racial Injustice in South Africa by Denis Goldberg

Author:Denis Goldberg [Goldberg, Denis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Social Activists, history, Africa, South, Republic of South Africa, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9780813166865
Google: 5mY1EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2016-03-18T00:11:08.114523+00:00

14

Out of Prison

Life Number 6; Born 28 February 1985

as a Free Person

Once I knew I was being released, I had a problem: I needed to buy clothes. Under guard, I was taken shopping in Pretoria by Hillary, and that was exciting, disturbing, and exhausting. It was lovely sitting in the back of a car looking at the city with her, holding hands. Very new, but as old as the hills! Smelling her perfume was heaven. But after a time in the shop I was so tired. The prison officials were happy for me to stay out longer, but I was quite exhausted from the noise and the kaleidoscope of colors. I asked to go back to the prison, where I had to wait for the paperwork to be done.

My life had consisted of life before prison, and then four terms of life imprisonment; now I was about to be ejected from the unfriendly womb of the prison. By my calculation it had been a long gestation of 7,904 days. I felt some trepidation. It is true that I had been outside the prison walls from time to time, when I had been taken to a hospital or to a medical specialist for treatment, but they were fleeting glances, and now I was exhausted by the short shopping expedition.

On 28 February I was dressed and ready to go. The prison guards insisted I sit with my comrades who were remaining behind, and the conversation became ever more stilted. We had said our good-byes. It was unsettling for them and for me. I had experienced the pleasure of those who had been released and the intense sense of longing to be getting out of there. Lewis Baker, who had been tried in the Bram Fischer trial, in particular had been very tearful when he left us many years before after serving a three-year sentence. That mixture of pleasure and pain is what seems to give life its special flavor, such as sweet and sour, or the bite of strong curry tempered with yogurt. We had been together for years and now suddenly there was no more to say. I asked the guards to take me out of there.

I was going directly from prison to the airport to see my daughter, who lived on a kibbutz in Israel. Even though I had a receipt for myself signed by the authorities saying that I was free again, the commanding officer used his own car to take me to the airport, still guarded by prison officers. We were in a convoy with lead and trail cars packed with police officers. Other plainclothes police had kept a parking place free at the departures terminal. My car pulled in and was surrounded by the plainclothes policemen. There had been a verbal agreement that there would be no press releases until the plane taking me abroad had landed, and they were ensuring that I spoke to no one, and especially the press. I was rushed into a VIP lounge, where I found Hillary with her husband, Denis Kuny, and their son, Neil.

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