When Joe Gqabi asked me in early 1961 if I was prepared to join the then recently banned ANC, I leapt at the opportunity. But my membership was short-lived and I was told to join the still legal ‘white’ Congress of Democrats. But I also discovered, via another contact in journalism, that there existed fragile bubbles of non-racial reality within the often overwhelming horror of apartheid.
I learned more about South African history and current reality in a few weeks after meeting Joe Gqabi than I ever learned in 12 years of formal schooling. So many things fell into place including what had been, with hindsight, an emotional turning point: the Sharpeville massacre. that the report of Humphrey Tyler was true. Belatedly, the RDM reported that the police had shot down fleeing men, women and children, killing 69 and wounding some 200 more.
And when I told Joe about the futile Sharpeville protest at Germiston Boys’ High he asked if I thought it possible I could recruit other members from among my friends. I felt I could and Joe suggested that, once I had done so, I should contact another group that was being established in a nearby township. We should liaise and see how we could operate together, but I should be careful not to attract any attention by altering my behaviour.
I obviously had much to learn. But, at the time, I saw it as being only about journalism and how best to prepare for my new, clandestine role. So while I continued to work long hours I started reading whatever I could find that I thought might help me. I remember discovering — and learning from — Michael Collins and the Irish rebellion. But there were also tips to be picked up from Paul Brickhill’s.
But all that was to come much later. At the time I concentrated on my journalism, and, in less than six months, was sub-editing one day a week before being elevated to chief reporter, also responsible for designing and laying out the weekly. And the man who mentored me and gave me a crash course in editing, design and newspaper layout was the composer, musical arranger and self-confessed “dried out alcoholic” turned editor, Basil Gray.
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