Freedom Fighter Paul Trewhela looks back on the struggle

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

Trewhela was an underground journalist and political activist, and served time as a political prisoner. Now living in the United Kingdom, he reflected on his role in the struggle.

Born to a Jewish mother and a Christian father, Trewhela was brought up with no religion. “I had a very mild, generous, and kind upbringing,” he says.

Before starting university, Trewhela became “an honorary game ranger” at Sabi Sands in 1959. “I had a wonderful time, but I also learnt about South Africa’s social conditions,” he recalls. “At the age of 17, I’d been given a revolver and live ammunition and put in charge of adult African men because the young white game ranger wanted to go on holiday – an extraordinary experience for a 17-year-old. I went to university asking, ‘What’s going on in the country?’ This question of power.”

A keen wildlife artist, he initially wanted to study zoology, but soon switched to English and political science.

“In March 1960, came the Sharpeville Massacre, and politically everything changed across the country,” he recalls. “The old non-violent methods of struggle suddenly seemed quite inadequate. Elected as the Eastern Province secretary of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), Trewhela established a connection with Fort Hare University. It was at a meeting there in 1961 that he met people who would become very senior members of the African National Congress (ANC) and uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).

In 1961, Trewhela began his first job as a cub journalist at The Star. Sent to Cape Town for the journalist’s training course, Trewhela and his colleague, Terry Bell, attended a meeting of the Congress of Democrats. “It was addressed by Denis Goldberg, and I became friendly with Denis and his wife. I was arrested and put on trial twice for handing out congress leaflets. Afterwards, I was sacked by The Star. The director asked me, ‘When the revolution comes, which side are you going to be on?’ I hummed and hawed, but he wasn’t fooled.”

Trewhela moved to the Rand Daily Mail in 1962. “It was extraordinary being in companionship with very fine journalists including Benjamin Pogrund and Ray Louw at a time of great drama in the country,” he says.

While working for the Mail, Trewhela began living a double life. “I made contact with Ruth First at the New Age [newspaper’s] office just before it was banned, and worked as an underground journalist. I stayed at the Mail for a year, and became very uncomfortable as we knew we were likely to be arrested, and I didn’t want it to have an impact on the Mail.” Luckily he was offered the post of Africa editor at Newsweek, the only news magazine in South Africa at the time.

Trewhela attended Nelson Mandela’s trial in Pretoria in 1962 at First’s request. Together with Phillipa Levy who was driving First’s car, he was a victim of what he believes was an assassination attempt en route back home from the trial. “On our way back home in rush hour traffic, we were rammed from behind. Due to the angle [of impact], we shot across the road at great speed in front of oncoming traffic, and landed in a ditch on the other side. Fortunately, we weren’t hit. There was no enquiry. The question has always remained: who did it and why? I think, it’s very possible it was the security police.”

In the early 1960s, Trewhela was recruited into the then underground South African Communist Party (SACP) by Joe Slovo. “A few months after the arrests in Rivonia in July 1963, and following her own 117 days in solitary confinement, Ruth came to see me at my flat in Hillbrow. She looked awful – absolutely ashen-faced,” he recalls. “She said that her and Joe’s children were going to be able to leave South Africa shortly, but that someone would get in touch with me a little later.”

Trewhela was later contacted by Hilda Bernstein, the wife of Rusty Bernstein, who was on trial with Mandela, Goldberg, and many others. “She asked me to be editor of the illegal news sheet for MK during the Rivonia Trial. We worked out a title for it – Freedom Fighter. Four issues came out. I never saw one, which was a good thing because when I was eventually arrested myself, there were no tell-tale traces.”

Trewhela and his SACP colleagues were arrested in July 1964. “We were put in solitary confinement under the 90-day detention law. In our cell was an undercover operative of the security police called Gerard Ludi. Ludi had been in a relationship with the daughter of the Bernsteins. The security police gathered information on many people from him.

“While in solitary confinement, we were able to communicate with each other quite well. I remembered a little code from a book I’d read, and we were able to tap messages to each other through the walls or flash messages using shaving mirrors.”

Standing torture and sleep deprivation was used against the prisoners. “We were finally convicted and sentenced in April 1965 after a long trial. I was sentenced to an effective two years in prison.” So too was fellow struggle activist Florence Duncan – who Trewhela reconnected with and married more than 40 years later.

After his release in 1967, Trewhela took up British citizenship, and left the SACP. “The SACP never criticised a single episode in the history of the Soviet Union. It endorsed everything including all the crimes. After World War II, Stalin supported the setting up of the state of Israel, but his policy soon shifted to a very strong anti-Semitic one.

“Anybody who was a Jew could be arrested and killed. That, of course, was endorsed by the SACP, even though it had a strong Jewish presence. The SACP was the only non-racial political organisation in this country for decades, but this endorsement was problematic.”

Moving to Aylesbury, north of London with his family, Trewhela contacted South African friends from the past including Goldberg, and through him, re-established contact with fellow prisoner Baruch Hirson. They decided to form an exile magazine, titled Searchlight South Africa. Between 1988 and 1995, they published 12 issues.

For Searchlight, Trewhela interviewed Panduleni and Ndamona Kali, the twin sisters from Namibia who had been held in prison pits set up by Namibia’s governing party, the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in southern Angola, and uncovered information about the history of MK in that country.

“I got first-hand documentation [about] human-rights abuses in the Quatro prison camp that led to the mutiny in MK in Angola in 1984. We published it in our July 1990 issue. It was banned in South Africa, but we got copies in, which meant a lot of information became available about the bad side of the ANC and the SACP in exile. This was important for human rights.

“So, the problem relating to elections and the accountability of politicians goes back to the time of the ANC in exile,” he concludes. “A long struggle took place for democratic accountability among ANC members in exile, in MK especially. The issues are present with us to this day.”