Black Consciousness Movement, Black Thoughts and Staffrider, 1966-1979
“The ban [from 1973] meant that I and the other twenty, along with eventually twenty thousand people, couldn’t be in company with more than one person at a time … we were forbidden from participating in social gatherings. No newspaper could quote me, which meant I couldn’t be published. Even worse: The wording said I couldn’t prepare anything for publication, which meant I couldn’t write. But it was probably my most productive years; I wrote and wrote and wrote, and we found ways of hiding and distributing things. We had pseudonyms. We wrote under enormous pressure because we could be found guilty, believe it or not, under the Suppression of Communism Act for being found at home writing. In many ways that was my most creative period.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Yvette Christiansë, 2007
George Hallet’s portrait of Achmat as it appears in the first imprint of Waiting for Leila
History made in front of me
In 1966, after completing school, Achmat moved to District Six for a year and worked as a clerk at the harbour. District Six was declared a white area in 1966 and Achmat once again witnessed apartheid in action. “For me”, Achmat recalled in 2007, “what was frightening was to watch how systematically the bulldozers pushed down this little city street by street, road by road, house by house. I saw history being made in front of me.” At this moment Achmat knew he would be a writer. “In a year” Achmat continued “I had finished a monstrously big novel, which took me ten years to turn into something publishable.”
“I think I always knew I would be a writer, but when I finished high school and for the first time resisted my father’s will and didn’t become an accountant, I went to Cape Town. I lived in District Six. For those of you who know South Africa at all, District Six is almost a mythical place. It was the one place apartheid had to destroy as a symbol of multiracialism. I lived in a room above Hanover Street and watched the world go by, and I had to record it…That’s when I knew—sitting there and recording what I saw in front of me.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Yvette Christiansë, 2007
Rhodes University
Around 1970 Achmat won a scholarship from the Institute for Race Relations, established in 1929, to study literature at Rhodes University. By 1980 about 3685 bursaries had been awarded, mostly to black students since the scheme had been set up in 1935. Achmat recalled “I was given accommodation at the home of one of the Institute of Race Relations activists.”
During his student years, 1970- 1973, Achmat juggled many roles and travelled throughout the country. Aligned to the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), he worked with Bantu Steven Biko and other leaders; was a member of the South African Students Organisation (SASO); a founding member of Black Thoughts and president of the Labour Party’s Youth Organisation (LYO).
Achmat almost certainly knew about Biko’s break with the National Union of South African Students (Nusas) in 1967, which happened at Rhodes. If he was on campus at the time, he might have participated in the 1971 Disobedience Campaign when students broke residence rules they considered archaic and oppressive. He remembered his last year as 1973.
“He talked often about the kinds of low paid jobs he had done in his life, for example, working in a supermarket and stacking shelves at night, I’m not sure if that was in Cape Town? He got a scholarship for University from the Institute of Race Relations. He used to tell this funny story about how he, in his first year, was a lodger at this woman’s house, I think she was a kind of liberal Black Sash activist, a “posh” white lady and how at dinner time they used to sit at different ends of a table and she used to ring a bell for dinner… and Achmat coming from Newclare and into this other world. I think he did two years at Rhodes before he was banned, or two- and a-bit years, so he was never able to graduate. He mentioned the English lecturer was Guy Butler. I think that is where he met Steve Biko.”
Audrey Elster, Achmat’s wife and partner of thirty years
Black Consciousness Movement
The BCM, inspired by Stephen Bantu Biko, swept across black university campuses. By ‘black’ Biko meant all people of colour — all those not classified as white in apartheid South Africa. He argued that liberation should begin with black people liberating their minds from mental oppression. Achmat recalled:
“I grew up in the Black Consciousness Movement, and Steve Biko said: ‘Apartheid has attempted to use our blackness to dehumanise us; let us use our blackness to find our humanity’. In other words, [the struggle] was not an end in itself; it was our path to our humanity. What we South Africans ultimately have to find is our common humanity.”
Achmat played a leading role in the cultural and literary revival inspired by Black Consciousness. Poet and academic Kelwyn Sole, writing in the 1980s, attributed to Achmat an important observation on the value black writers brought to the ideas of Black Consciousness: “Dangor believes that it was the black writers who saved Black Consciousness ‘from being a raw, racist ideology and moulded it into a more sophisticated ideology’… Dangor believes that ‘now that the politicians are stuck on the horizon of Black Consciousness, it is the writers who must take the lead again.’”
“I met someone from the Institute of Race Relations, and they gave me a scholarship and I went to Rhodes University. But in the meantime I also met Steve Biko [through] Mahatma Gandhi’s [grand] daughter [Eli Gandhi] in Natal. They had this little farm and they had kind of a place there that they gave space to people to come together. And this is where all the Black Consciousness Movement people came together, Steve Biko and a whole lot of us came together. And this is where it was a kind of an informal decision, we’re having to go out and conscientize the young black people in this country, all over the country, and teach them that you must be aware of yourself, be aware of humanity and stand up for yourself and literature was one way of doing that.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“In 1968, all of us as South Africans, accepted the designation of people who look like me as ‘Non-whites’, as ‘non-Europeans’. Now the oddity of that didn’t strike our parents, didn’t strike our leaders, including the Mandelas, who were in jail and those who were in exile. It was accepted, that we were ‘Non-white, Non-Europeans’ and it was ‘out of the mouths of babes’ …. one weekend and we realised that you cannot actually liberate yourself from an oppressor that you use as your standard of what it means to be human …. Black Consciousness was the awakening of black people to their worth, their dignity, the sanctity of their humanity, which freed them from the inferiority complex of accepting whiteness as a standard and European as a standard and embrace our identity in our self-identification as black and proud and so this consciousness is an important element of liberation of anybody …”
Mamphela Ramphele, Achmat’s colleague at the Independent Development Trust and Nelson Mandela Foundation
“How do you persuade people that we have the power within us to liberate ourselves from oppression and that, as Steve Biko said, ‘the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressor’. Now this coming from a young twenty something year old, was profound wisdom. I mean he was an extraordinary intellectual but he was also accompanied in his thinking by others, so the leadership style of student activists of the seventies, was a collective leadership style.”
Mamphela Ramphele, Achmat’s colleague at the Independent Development Trust and Nelson Mandela Foundation
“If you remember those days (late 1970s), most people who were involved in culture, were in the Black Consciousness Movement, including Achmat. It was sort of a way for, you know, black activists to survive, but I didn’t encounter hostility. I actually encountered a very positive engagement and especially with Achmat. So that’s how I remember him. I always found him very personable and open to seeing a much broader picture and a commitment really, to humanity and rising above the awful conditions of apartheid that determined our lives.
Paul Weinberg, Achmat’s colleague and friend
Achmat’s return home
Achmat returned home in 1971. Zane, Achmat’s youngest brother was not yet at school. He remembers: “it was special in the sense that my mom made a fuss about it, in that ‘He’s coming back. He’s going to stay now with us’, so she was really excited about it.”
Achmat’s siblings said he was able to help support the family and took on a more dominant role. Jessie, his only sister, said at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s memorial for Achmat:
“To us as children, Achmat and my mom and Mohammed, were the bread winners in our family and they described us as ‘the children’ when they talked about us … Achmat couldn’t cook anything, but he made the best jam sandwiches for lunch every day. We had the same jam sandwiches and his description of it was very interesting. He says, ‘This sandwich is clever food. It will taste like honey and melt in your mouth’, the same every single day and that was beautiful.
Achmat’s brother Moosa recalled what it was like to have Achmat at home:
“Achmat did regular things with us. I used to come home from work, from Nestle, before we had supper, we used to play street football outside and he was very humorous as well. After street football, we’d sit with the groups and tease each other … but Achmat’s teasing was always a kind of teaching. We were a bunch of rough guys, but whenever Achmat spoke, everybody kept quiet. Everybody respected him.”
Their mother opened their home to many people in need — sometimes they joined for a meal, other times they stayed longer, including her younger sister Gadija, fondly called Auntie Dija. Achmat’s brother, Abbas, remembered: “there was dinner every night, which was in my mind, when I was 5/6 years old at this point in time, just a raucous occasion, also politics, I just remember it was heated conversations around. I didn’t know it at that time, but it was mainly about politics.”
“[My parents weren’t politically involved] the difference is they grew up in a South Africa that of course was still racially divided but they didn’t have to put up as young people with the kind of apartheid oppression that we put up with. They suffered from a lot of other things. There was in those early days still a denial of licenses for businesses. So, my father couldn’t open a business in a multiracial area. He couldn’t open one in the city centre. Eventually, when his business collapsed in Newclare he went to work in Fietas, he was a manager in a huge shop there and then Fietas was shut down. My mother worked in a factory and that too became affected by the Labour Relations Act and the laws, and so forth. So eventually she became a dressmaker. But they suffered from a different kind of thing rather than the way we did from how apartheid impacted on us. But they did suffer.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“Achmat made it his purpose to ensure that before I go to school, I was going to be able to read. There were no day care centres, there were no crèches. You know you had parents who were working. Those who were working, were working long hours and you know, so he just felt that getting me into books was one way of keeping me off the streets…Newclare was a place where the lingo was always, what we call ‘Tsotsitaal’. We spoke Afrikaans in our house. It was our home language, but Achmat made me read English.”
Zane Dangor, Achmat’s youngest brother
“Achmat took it upon himself, to sit down with me every night, to teach me consonants and vowels and maths. This was my first year at school … I clearly remember the shifting dynamics. My brother Sully or Suleiman, he was the dominant one in the family … He used to try and assert his dominance, but when Achmat moved back in, there was that shift … he took a bit of a back seat, for whatever reason, his voice wasn’t as loud. I mean it was always loud, but not as loud … Mohammed was at home, but he got married shortly after that and moved into the flats across the road”
Abbas Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
“[At one time] there were 27 people living in our home. We were 9 siblings. We had my aunty Dija living in the house, my granny was living in the house, my mom was in hospital one day and she came home with a friend and her friend’s 5 children, 2 boys and 3 girls and they stayed with us for two years in the same house and that was the time when Achmat was roped in to ‘Come and bail the family out here, come and help us out.’ You know, they called our house the ‘Shift up’ house, because whoever needed a place to stay or hide for a while, would come there and my mom would just say, ‘Shift up, shift up, shift up’, that’s how it is. Achmat used to sleep in our lounge.”
Moosa Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
Izwi
Between the middle of the 1950s and the late 1970s, many pathbreaking literary magazines appeared. They were often short-lived. One of them — Izwi/Voice/Stem — followed the lead of an anti-establishment art and literary English and Afrikaans magazine called Wurm (Worm), which closed down in 1970 after it ran out of money. Izwi, which had some of the same staff as Wurm, was however more open to publishing writers from a wide diversity of backgrounds than Wurm had been. Izwi published Achmat’s untitled poem in 1972. Achmat was among the 150 writers and poets whose work was published in the brief four-year life span of the magazine.
Donga, started by Afrikaans writer Welma Odendaal followed Izwi in 1976. Inspan came after Donga in 1978. It produced two issues and was edited by Isabel Hofmeyr who later became an eminent scholar. Staffrider published by Ravan Press established in 1972 had a much longer life than some. It appeared in 1978 and ceased publication in 1993.
President
During the late 1960s and 1970s, resistance against the apartheid state became more radical with many more strikes, consumer boycotts, stay-aways and student protests, in which Achmat and his siblings participated. Achmat’s first political party involvement was with the Labour Party, formed in 1965 to challenge elections for an apartheid creation known as the Coloured Persons’ Representative Council (CPRC). The Labour Party was anti-apartheid and anti-separate representation. However, the Party believed they would be able to use the CPRC to oppose the government without facing the threat of imprisonment. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been banned in 1960. They and the BCM looked to the Labour Party as a legal entity through which they could work for liberation. After 1969, several individuals from these and other organisations ‘infiltrated’ the Party. Membership was, however restricted to people classified as ‘coloured’ because of restrictions on political parties under the Prohibition of Political Interference Act of 1968.
Achmat and his brother Mohammed (then also a member of the underground ANC); Les du Preez (BCM); Hennie Ferris (ANC); Don Mateman (ANC); Don Mattera (BCM, later Azanian Peoples’ Organisation – AZAPO); Sam Solomon (who later joined the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO); joined the Party and rallied around Rev Allan Hendrickse. They came to be referred to in the press and the Labour Party as the “Militants”.
At a Labour Party conference in Kimberley on 26 June 1971, Achmat was elected president of the Labour Youth Organisation (LYO) and many strategic meetings took place in the family home. Achmat was already being watched by members of the security branch who had noted that at the conference Achmat promised to make greater contact with all “non-white groups”. The Security Branch compiled a dossier (file no 3228) recording Achmat’s activities and citing press articles to support their observations. In less than two years Achmat was banned for contravening the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 and issued with a banning order. He was not the only member of the family being watched. His aunt Gadija Chothia (file number 3046) was too.
In fact, Madiba had written a letter to Hennie Ferrus, who was on Robben Island with Madiba, and his advice to Hennie was, that within the coloured community there needed to be activism and it [Labour Party] seemed to be a vehicle that we needed to infiltrate [and attract] youths. Of course, this is what we did. We came from the Congress background, working there, to see if we couldn’t use it in a different way. They were a protest movement and our mission was to turn it into a radical revolutionary revolt. We didn’t succeed. People saw through us. I remember the Bloemfontein Friend once publishing a headline, “ANC binne die Aarbeidersparty” (ANC inside the Labour Party). All of those that infiltrated left… set up the civic movement. Hennie started things in Worcester like FAWU. He started the boycotts and one day he was driving down the mountain and all four of the wheels of his car fell off and he died. The same week, my company car fell to pieces in the same way.”
Mohammed Dangor, Achmat’s older brother
“Many of the meetings were held in our home in Wanderers Street in Newclare and I sat in as a youngster in many of those meetings. Most of the time Achmat was strategizing about what should be done, how people’s mind-sets should be changed, but we also had many informants amongst us. Friends, people who pretended to be family friends and who visited our home regularly … I remember Achmat ejecting someone out of our lounge one day, physically threw him out and said, ‘Please don’t come and pretend that you’re with us when you listen to what we have to say and then you go and report us to the Security Police.’ So, that was our life basically as we grew up.”
Moosa Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
Aunty Dija
On 24 October 1971, Aunty Dija (Gadija Chothia, later Richards) who was 33 and living with the Dangor family, was arrested for her association with Ahmed Timol and detained at John Vorster Square. In her 2017 affidavit for a new inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol 46 years before, she wrote: “I was politically aware and opposed the policy and injustices of apartheid. I was politically active, and remember inter alia, attending political meetings in Braamfontein.”
Ahmed Timol and Salim Essop had been establishing underground structures, producing and distributing pamphlets and procuring photographic, printing and other equipment. Two days before her arrest, Ahmed had asked Gadija to type out names and addresses on envelopes. When the Security Branch arrived at the Dangor home on 24 October, they searched the premises. Gadija’s son and Achmat Dangor’s cousin Muneer Richards said they then forced Achmat into their vehicle and drove to Gadija’s workplace. She described her arrest in the 2017 affidavit:
“while I was at work two white men arrived. They identified themselves as Security Branch policemen and in a crude and insulting manner arrested me calling me a ‘communist bitch’ in front of my colleagues. They searched my work place but did not seize anything. They then escorted me to our family home in Newclare, and crudely searched our home in a most humiliating manner. They pulled our belongings and clothes, including our underwear, from the cupboards, rudely scattering everything on the floor. When my mother objected a Security Branch policeman slapped her. Our home was left in in a state of complete disarray. The experience traumatised everyone living there, especially the young children.”
Gadija was detained in the women’s section at John Vorster Square (today the Johannesburg Central Police Station) for 120 days. Ahmed Timol’s murder at John Vorster Square later that month led to country-wide demonstrations. Achmat, as leader of the LYO condemned detention without trial. On 9 November 1971, The Rand Daily quoted him: “Some detainees have died under detention. The Security Police is answerable to no one. This is authoritarian abuse of power. These are the very methods used in communist countries to suppress individual freedom.”
“I was working and Ahmed [Timol] was a teacher in Roodepoort and I was working in Roodepoort and we became friends, Timol and I, when I think about it, it’s terrible. They [security branch] came to fetch me, I was working at the Jewellery shop. So, he [Achmat] came and showed them where I was … Nobody really knew at that time what was going to happen. When I was released from solitary confinement three months later [I learnt about Ahmed Timol’s death]. So, when I came out, everybody had resigned themselves to the reality of his passing, but it was fresh news for me, it was raw for me.”
Gadija Richards, Achmat’s aunt
“My aunt, Gadija, who worked in a place in Roodepoort, was very close to Ahmed Timol and the day when Timol was murdered, they came and arrested her, to come and talk to her and tell her she must confess about what he was doing, and so forth. And they raided our house, and we all lived together, so my parents went through that, my mother, my father, my grandmother, they all went through this.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“My mom was picked up on the Saturday morning she had already gone to work. My mom was living in Newclare. They came to the house [she] wasn’t there … they ransacked the entire house, put everybody out of the house turned up beds, turned out absolutely everything and two things happened. The one was that they had managed – mom had a lot of pamphlets that she was carrying for Timol – to disposed of the pamphlets before the police got there and the typewriter. Aunty Nazlee [married to Achmat’s older brother Mohammed] and them were living across the road so it got hidden in the stove in the flat across the road. So, they didn’t find that. But they then needed to know where my mom was, so they took Achmat. The police made him take them to her place of work in Roodepoort. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. Mom goes into solitary confinement. The whole family is in upheaval, because she’s the first person to be in prison.”
Muneer Richards, Achmat’s cousin and Gadija’s son
Clandestine activities
The Dangor family were now being closely monitored. Historian Roy Howard Du Pré argues that the “militants” saw the Coloured Representative Council (CRC) as a platform to launch attacks on the government, calling for boycotts until the government was prepared to abandon apartheid. In July 1972 Achmat called for a boycott of wine in South Africa on the grounds that white farmers were exploiting coloured vineyard workers.
However, shortly afterwards, in September, at a meeting of the LYO in Johannesburg, Achmat said: “The CRC has been exposed for what it is, a decaying piece of flesh in the rotting body politics of Apartheid.” The security police could not take action yet because Achmat was undertaking work for the Labour Party, which was legal. Du Pré points out that Mohammed Dangor, Sam Solomon and Hennie Ferris were successful in using the Labour Party as a cover to organise trade unions.
A secret Black Consciousness programme
In 1972, Achmat announced the initiation of a youth programme with the full support of his friend and comrade Don Mattera who from 1971 was the National Public Relations Officer of the Labour Party. On 27 August 1972. The Post quoted Achmat: “Black Consciousness is designed to liberate the thinking of young people from the acceptance of white domination. A secret programme to get this message across to the masses will be instituted.”
The BCM programme was implemented the next year. Achmat explained in a letter dated 5 February: “The LYO will eventually become a black organisation. I accept the concept of black consciousness as a means towards bringing about a change in both white and black thinking. Black consciousness is not racism – it can only become one if the white society denies it its legitimate aspirations of freeing oppressed people from the mental attitude of inferiority. We shall continue our policy of strengthening our ties with our fellow oppressed.” At a Labour Party meeting on 10 February 1973 in Johannesburg, Achmat told the executive committee that the Special Branch had offered him work and a bursary if he would give up his political work. He, Don Mattera and Ralph Peffer called for the Party to initiate civil disobedience. In May, Achmat campaigned for Party membership to be opened to all races. The Post of 6 May carried his appeal:
“I call on all anti-apartheid organisations to sink their petty differences and to pool their resources for the survival of the man in the street. I think the way I do because of the rotten state of affairs in South Africa today. We want to create a political organisation that will embrace all youth, to create trade unions, to create an awareness among workers about their worth to SA economy, the [sic.] consolidate all teachers under one teacher organisation, to stimulate a cultural revolution among peoples to overcome years of indoctrination… Our immediate priority is the mobilisation and organisation of the black community on a scale South Africa has never before known. Unless we become self-reliant, we will fail in our non-violent confrontation with the hypocrisy of this country.”
The security branch noted that Achmat favoured fusion of the LYO and the “Black Youth Cultural Association” to strengthen opposition to the government. Around this time, the writers’ group Black Thoughts was formed. At the 2020 memorial for Achmat, Don Mattera recalled: “We, young people in the Labour party, people like me and Achmat we started the Black Consciousness Movement and we joined Biko and with our poetry and with our minds and our hearts and we were arrested… We had to go to Durban and conscientize, we had to go to PE and conscientise. We did what we did….”
“As I recall it, Achmat was part of a young writers’ and creative group, associated broadly with the left-wing at that stage of the Labour Party, but also with elements of the Black Consciousness Movement. I met quite a couple of that group at the time… one of their mentors was Don Mattera”
Glenn Moss, Achmat’s colleague and friend
‘Black Thoughts’
There were between thirteen and twenty (figures vary) writers, including Achmat, Farouk Asvat,, Mafika Gwala, and Don Mattera amongst others, established ‘Black Thoughts’ as a writer’s cultural group in about 1973. It challenged apartheid education by hosting poetry readings in township schools and churches and introducing communities to the work of banned African writers and books. Achmat recalled:
“The apartheid government had banned [certain] books from school … you couldn’t get books by African writers, Indian writers, Asian writers. And a lot of other books were banned that were considered in inverted commas ‘unhealthy’ by the apartheid government. And these kids in school were deprived of the true learning beginning because literature helps you learn. Black Thoughts went around and we read in churches, in community halls and even illegally. The principals at some schools allowed us to read to the school kids.”
Black Thoughts, Farouk Asvat remembers, toured townships in 1973 with Lefifi Tladi’s musical group Dashiki originally named the Malombo Jazz Messengers. In 1973, Black Review reported:
“[the group] is all in for Black Consciousness; to the point of rejecting commercial approaches for the recording of their music. As the group put it, as if with one voice, ‘Our music is too precious to us. We owe it to the hope we hold in our people, the Blacks of this country. For all they have suffered and for a brighter technological machinery to mass produce. And in the process polluting and debasing it’. Dashiki has been seen as an encouraging development in the Black Community.”
It was risky. Achmat and many other Black Thoughts writers were under surveillance. Achmat recalled:
“One day one of the principals warned us. He said, ‘Look, there was a cop here, an SB which is security branch, you’d better be careful.’ That is where the radicalisation [began], because it brought me into contact with a lot of other activists in the Black Consciousness Movement, including the South African Students’ Organisation, called SASO, and people like that.”
“Black Thoughts” Achmat wrote, “eventually disintegrated. Some of us were banned, others went into exile, some settled down to ordinary lives (normality was another enduring myth).” Most of its members were banned at the same time as Achmat.
“Achmat used to take me along to poetry reading. He used to write freedom poetry, him and Don Mattera. The two of them were always dodging the security police.”
Moosa Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
Youth movement for all races
Achmat continued to push the Labour Party to open its membership. Finally, on 23 April 1973 the LYO won a motion to open the youth movement to all Africans. The Black Review (1973), published by the Black Community Programme and edited by BCM leader and poet Mafika Gwala, reported in the: “leaders of LYO threatened that LYO would join the Black People’s Convention unless the motion was passed. The chief movers of the motion were Don Mattera and Achmat Dangor.”
Despite the Party’s constitution asserting that the Labour Party would fight for the rights of all South Africans, Du Pré points out that this was the first time the Party had officially and publicly identified with Africans and the liberation struggle. An influx of 6 000 new members to the LYO followed.
Don Mattera, however resigned from the Labour Party and officially joined the Black People’s Convention. In August 1973, Achmat was appointed by the Institute for Race Relations as a youth organiser to be stationed in Grahamstown (now Makhanda). Achmat was quoted saying: “I regard this appointment as a great challenge to me as I shall be entirely in charge of entertainment and cultural progress of young people in the Eastern Province.” Unbeknown to Achmat, the Security Branch was ready to present its case to the Department of Justice that he should be banned.
“Achmat introduced me to Black Consciousness … he was involved in so many different political organisations, but the one that I remember most clearly was the Labour Youth Organisation … [its] constitution was based on a Coloureds only membership. Achmat taught against this, so he started the Labour Youth Organisation … with the intention of changing the direction of the Labour Party from being a Coloured centred political party to a more open party.”
Moosa Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
“Achmat was a change agent … he played a significant part in the Black Consciousness Movement and the Labour Party, the young labour party, he was a provocateur … he wanted change and he played an active part in that. He used his writing and work as an enabler for change but it was always about the change.”
Abbas Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
Twenty-fifth birthday
Achmat’s position as the IRR’s youth organiser was short-lived. Two months after he started and twenty-four hours after his 25th birthday, he was issued with a banning order for the next five years. Achmat recalled:
“One day I came home to the flat where I had been put up and as I walked into the flat there were these two white guys waiting for me. And one of them said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ His name was Havenga from the Bureau of State Security. He took me down to the car and took me down the road to a café. He sat me down and poured me a coffee and made me an offer: ‘Come and work for us. No one’s going to know about what you’re doing and all you do is you give us information.’ And I said, ‘Excuse me, Sir, that’s is not for me.’ He says, ‘You’d better listen to me,’ and he switched to Afrikaans, ‘Jy moet nou luister.’ And I looked at him and he said, ‘If you don’t do this you are going to get what all the others are going to get.’ So, I just ignored him. I get back to the flat, he comes in, he talks to the other guy. The other guy takes out a document, he shoves it in my face and says I must read it. I looked at it and it’s my banning order. They took me, my bags, immediately put in the back of a bakkie and drove me from Grahamstown all the way to Kimberley and there they put me on a train with another cop and then let me off in Johannesburg with my banning order. I was restricted to Johannesburg [and specifically Newclare) 71 Wanderers Avenue.”
His studies were terminated, Black Thoughts was banned and he was confined to Newclare.
This is a copy of the official notice that would have been handed over to Achmat and includes a list of prohibitions. National Archives and Records Services of South Africa / Achmat Dangor Papers / Historical Papers Research Archives, University of the Witwatersrand
“The study was interrupted it was in my final year. I was doing a BA degree in Arts and Literature and thank goodness there was a professor there who even though I disagreed with him, he always said, “You know, we should get literature out of you.” He was the one who said that the final essay that I wrote, it was in the equivalent of [what was required]. He gave me a letter to say we would still give you the Arts degree.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt 2019
“Quite arrogantly, we thought we would combat the entire apartheid propaganda machine, which claimed there was no such thing as black culture and black writers. This was the 1970s, and postcolonial literature was coming to the fore, so we not only read our subversive poems to township audiences and anyone who would listen to us but we also read the books that were coming out of Africa. We were reading the first wave of neo-colonialist scepticism—Things Fall Apart, books like that. We were taking into the townships culture that students and ordinary people were denied and this was deemed subversive. It was deemed more subversive than standing on a platform and saying “Stand up against apartheid.” So they banned us.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Yvette Christiansë, 2007
Questioning the authorities
Achmat’s banning order signed by M Pelser, Minister of Justice, on 3 October 1973 came with a list of prohibitions: attending gatherings; political gatherings as well as ‘any gathering of pupils or students assembled for the purpose of being instructed, trained or addressed by you.’ Achmat later recalled: “somebody gave me advice and said just challenge it, write to the minister and ask the minister to give you reasons why. So, I wrote a letter and then his response was that they are satisfied that inadvertently or advertently I am furthering Communism, they are satisfied with that.”
The official reply, sent over a month later, titled “Notice in force against you in terms of Section 9(1) of the Suppression of Communism Act 1950” read:
“The Minister is satisfied that you engage in engage activities which are furthering or calculated to further the achievement of the objective of communism.
The information which induced the Minister issue the abovementioned notice cannot, in his opinion, be disclosed without detriment to public policy.”
For the next five years Achmat could leave 17 Wanderers Street only to work and to attend church in Riverlea where he would move around until the time that his banning order was lifted.
“We were all banned, 13 writers from Black Thoughts, because we were subverting the apartheid: attempt to indoctrinate school kids. We were breaking the law by introducing them to books that would make them think differently, make them know that there’s another world out there apart from the one that the apartheid government was hoisting on us about what South Africa is. [My banning] had to do with that and also the activism I did in the Eastern Cape when I was at Rhodes University, I think upset them, because I went into communities, African and coloured communities. And I also did some work with white students trying to get people to understand that race and dividing race divides humanity.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“Security police dragged me away, and sadly I had to leave behind my dissertation which was rather cheekily called ‘Against the Butlerisation of Literature’. Guy Butler was the head of the English department – but he was very understanding, years later he gave me a testimonial saying I would have passed – in fact that enabled me to get my first job! Through the US Sullivan code of conduct (promoting social responsibility), it was with Revlon as a packaging engineer!”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Nancy Richards, 2017
Circumventing restrictions
Achmat found ways of continuing with his writing and political work despite being closely watched. “[With] political activity, I had to be very, very careful about who I met and where I met because many of us knew there were informers that people who had succumbed to the threat. So, we had to be very, very careful about that. But we still met quietly in places. Don Mattera was banned as well and we still met. But I focused more on my writing even though I couldn’t publish anything, I was writing quite a lot even while I was working.” His siblings recall him fooling the police and even managing to travel. His brother Moosa remembers:
“During the time that he was banned, for example, if he had a meeting somewhere in Durban, he would just drop a note or tell someone in one of the meetings here, “You know, I’m going to PE and of course what would happen is, the informants would tell the security police that this guy is on his way to PE and they would concentrate on finding him there and he would be in Durban, so that’s how he dodged them.”
“When Achmat was banned, he lived with me in Newclare. Achmat lived with me and Mattera used to visit me and we had a front “stoep” … what do they call it? Mattera and I used to sit on the stoep, on the veranda. Achmat used to sit behind the wall, with the window open, but technically they were not talking to each other. The two banned people couldn’t talk to each other and that’s how they communicated, sitting with me. They were part of Black Consciousness Movement together. I think to a certain degree, they conscientized each other in that. I was more Congress than BC.”
Mohammed Dangor, Achmat’s older brother
“Achmat used to take me along to poetry readings. He used to write freedom poetry, him and Don Mattera. The two of them were always dodging the security police. Achmat was banned, Don was banned. They were not allowed to be together in the first place… they would do their poetry reading and the security police would be outside. Everyone who wanted to listen to the poetry came into the room one at a time we had to come in and go out … this was how they circumvented their banning restrictions”
Moosa Dangor, Achmat’s younger brother
A growing family
Achmat married Beverley Camhee in 1973 and a year later their first child Justine was born. They had a second daughter who passed when she was a baby. Their third child Zain was born in 1980 in Riverlea. Initially they lived at 17 Wanderers Street, but in 1976, they moved to 5 Polliack Street also in Newclare. As a banned person, Achmat’s home was under surveillance and periodically raided and his family was harassed. Achmat recalled:
“It was very stressful for my family. Thank goodness, I had a diversion in literature and I could read and write and things like that. For my family, my ex-wife, she wanted us to have her family [visit]. I would have to go to my room and lock the door. So, the security police would come and would come into the house, and she would say, ‘No, he’s in his room, he’s not in.’ You know, that kind of harassment was quite terrible. My daughter Justine who was going to school, they used to go to her school and say, you must be careful, don’t become like your father. Things like that, harassing my children.”
The Sullivan code
Achmat was desperate to secure employment. Under the Leon Sullivan code, devised by African American Baptist priest and human rights activist, at the American cosmetics company Revlon Inc Johannesburg, Achmat found a job as warehouse supervisor and was trained as a packing engineer. He worked there for nearly 15 years and was promoted to various management positions, ultimately holding position of Director, Material Management & Planning of the South African affiliate. Through the company he was able to travel and he continued with writing and political work. Achmat recalled:
“I met someone who worked at the American company called Revlon the cosmetics company. They were based in the city then. And he had heard about [me looking for work] and he said, ‘Come and talk to us.’ So, I went there, Von Wielligh Street to talk to them. And they said, ‘Well, let’s see how good you are. Show us a few things.’ So, I did one week there of apprenticeship. Under the Sullivan Agreement they gave me a job. I started off as a warehouse clerk, they trained me and I was there for 15 years and the 13th year I was a packaging engineer and designed all kinds of things like lipstick cases. Women used to complain that the lipstick used to fall into their bags and smash. And I worked with a team that developed the thing that covered it.
Revlon had headquarters, it was called REMEA Revlon Europe, Middle East and Asia, and the company here used to go and meet in Paris quite often and sometimes in Cairo and Jerusalem. And they got me a passport but the passport was stamped only allowed those three countries, nowhere else. I couldn’t go for more than a month, I had to be back. But the security police were still very, very vigilant and watched me…”
“I’m very grateful that I got that job, otherwise I would have been like a lot of other people being destitute. I know of a lot of other people who were banned who couldn’t get jobs because they weren’t allowed to go into a meeting or anywhere and they really suffered. And I actually did help some of my former colleagues, comrades as we used to call them. One was a member of the Black Consciousness Movement. He was really suffering because he had no income, his wife was also suffering, so from my salary I gave him a small amount of money for a while, just to keep them going.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“Achmat used to talk about how difficult it was when he was banned and he was married with a child and he couldn’t work and that they (Revlon) were the only people who would employ him… The one ‘practical’ thing he could do when I met him, was to do a manicure!”
Audrey Elster, Achmat’s wife and partner of thirty years
Staffrider
Throughout his banning, Achmat wrote. Publishing was tricky because it was prohibited under his banning order. Achmat explained how he got around it:
“But more important than formal publishing were the innumerable magazines and township samizdat newspapers. My work, even when I was banned, was being published under pseudonyms in newspapers, leaflets, and magazines. We used to distribute subversive little letters, cyclostyles. We made our own space because the apartheid regime denied it. There was no such thing as black literate culture.”
In 1978, Ravan Press’ literary magazine Staffrider was launched after Mike Kirkwood was appointed by the Christian Institute to lead the Press. The first issue was published in March and almost immediately banned. The next year, Achmat’s banning order expired and some of his poems were published in the July/August issue. Achmat was also refining some of his writings into what would become Waiting for Leila. In 1979 “Waiting for Leila”, won the Mofolo-Plomer Prize, an award for unpublished manuscripts.
In the years following the expiry of Achmat’s banning order, his position at Revlon became more professional and the company made a successful argument for his travel restrictions to be lifted. He also hit the publishing scene. Achmat explains:
“Well, when my banning order expired in 1978 towards the end of October 1978 my job then became a lot more professional. I was able to travel a lot more because the company also then said to the government, you can’t give him this restricted passport anymore. So, I used to go to the US quite a lot and I was able to go and attend scientific classes because being trained as a designer, a product designer required a lot of scientific understanding… I started publishing books and it really inspired my literature.”
“I was writing poetry but I was also working on that novel Waiting for Leila and then The Z Town Trilogy, all of those were written during those years because when you come home from work and you can’t go, I couldn’t go to parties, couldn’t get people to our house for social events because all of that was still illegal, so I had time.”
Achmat Dangor, interview by Karen Hurt, 2019
“Through his work and through the associations with Don Mattera and Farouk Asvat the political currency at the time was very much about Black Consciousness and very much about getting the message out to the world, of the black experience, especially critical of white liberals or well-meaning left people, who would have tried to appropriate that experience, so I think Achmat came from a school that really valued and viewed the expression of black agency and black experience as primary and that was very much what happened through Staffrider. I mean, even the Ravan Press, its founding kind of institution, was founded by white people, it did give expression to black creativity, very much so.”
Paul Weinberg, Achmat’s colleague and friend
“I was aware that he was banned. I think soon after I got to know him, he had become unbanned and Achmat would laugh about it as well. He was working for a corporate and it was kind of against the grain of the sort of left pedagogy … Obviously he had to earn a living but it didn’t deter his commitment to bringing about change or his commitment to being a very diligent and hard-working culture person. He was also detained and arrested … and severely treated and harassed, but he didn’t hold that as a kind of grudge he kind of rose above it and saw beyond it.”
Paul Weinberg, Achmat’s colleague and friend
Select sources
| Achmat Dangor Legacy Project interviews: Abbas Dangor; Mohammed Dangor; Moosa Dangor; Zane Dangor; Audrey Elster; Gadija Richards with Muneer Richards, Paul Weinberg |
| Achmat Dangor Papers: A Dangor (Summary CV); Security Legislation file |
| Achmat Dangor, “Another country”, UK Guardian, 2004 |
| Aghogho Akpome, “‘Human beings are far more layered than you see’ On Complexity, Identities and Otherness in the Creative Writing of Achmat Dangor An Interview” by Research Fellow at the Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa, Africa Institute of South Africa, Africa Insight Vol 44(1) – June 2014 |
| Saleem Badat, “Saso to the Present day” in Frank Talk, Issue 4, May 2012, p. 6. Available online http://www.sbf.org.za/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/4th-Edition-FrankTalk-Journal.pdf |
| Imtiaz Cajee, In Pursuit of Justice published in 2005 can be downloaded from: https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TIMOL_BOOK.pdf |
| Gadija Chothia, 2017 affidavit, available online, https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/H6-Affidavit-Gadija-Chothia.pdf |
| Yvette Christiansë, “Power struggles: Tsitsi Dangarembga & Achmat Dangor”, interview by, published on PEN’s website and dated April 3, 2007, https://pen.org/power-struggles-tsitsi-dangarembga-achmat-dangor/ |
| A Dangor, “Slum life and group removals spurred new black author into limelight”, The Star 14/10/81 in Kelwyn Sole, “Culture, Politics and the Black Writer: A Critical Look at Prevailing Assumptions”, English in Africa 10 No.1, May 1983, p. 60. |
| Giovanna Dell’orto, “Leon Sullivan, created anti-apartheid code of ethics” |
| Roy Howard Du Pré, “Confrontation, Cooptation and Collaboration: The Response and Reaction of the Labour Party of South Africa to Government Policy, 1965 – 1984, PhD thesis, Rhodes University December 1994 |
| Michael Gardiner, Time to Talk: Literary Magazines in the Pretoria, Johannesburg Region, 1956 to 1978, available online, https://www.art-archives-southafrica.ch/PDFs/Gardiner_survey-SA-poetry_1956-1978.pdf |
| Stephen Gray, “Death of a little magazine” in Contrast, Vol. 11, No. 2 April 1977 and see A Little Voice in the Apartheid Wilderness (1971 – 1974), online exhibition, Special Collections, University of Johannesburg, https://www.uj.ac.za/library/information-resources/special-collections/online-exhibitions/a-little-voice-in-the-apartheid-wilderness/ |
| Sean Andrew Greyling, “Rhodes University during the Segregation and Apartheid eras, 1933 to 1990”, MA, Rhodes University, December 2007. |
| Freda Hattingh 1970’s & 80’s & David Marks 1972 to 2007, Lefifi Tladi & Mothlabane Mashiangwa Notes, available online https://3rdearmusic.com/hyarchive/hywhere/hywhere13 |
| Karen Hurt, Interview with Achmat Dangor for the Banned People’s Memory Project, 21 November 2019 |
| Jansie Kotze and Ruth Harris, Interview with Achmat Dangor, Litnet archives, available online https://oulitnet.co.za/nosecret/achmat.asp |
| Simon Lewis, “Twenty-Five Years of Politically Committed Publishing in South Africa. And then?” A review of G.E. de Villiers, ed. Ravan Twenty-five Years (1972-1997): A Commemorative Volume of New Writing. Randburg: Ravan Press, 1997, available online, https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3781 |
| Percy Mabandu, “The fugitive collaborations between jazz, art and history accreditation”, https://www.news24.com/life/arts-and-entertainment/arts/the-fugitive-collaborations-between-jazz-art-and-history-20220120 |
| Paul Maylam, Rhodes University, 1904-2016: An Intellectual, Political and Cultural History, Institute for Social and Economic History, Rhodes University, 2017 |
| Frank Meintjies, “Achmat Dangor’s Fiction: Characters and Stories from Times of Dislocation”, June 2023, available online https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371365412_Achmat_Dangor’s_Fiction_Characters_and_Stories_from_Times_of_Dislocation |
| Glenn Moss, The New Radicals: A Generational Memoir of the 1970s, Jacana Media, South Africa, 2014 |
| Nancy Richards “Author interview Achmat Dangor– Dikeledi: Child of tears, No more”, SAfm, country life, circa 2017 |
| Elaine Young, interview with Achmat Dangor, 2002, transcript published in Kunapipi, Vol 24, Issue 1, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/212721601.pdf |
| Journals and literary magazines |
| Black Review 1972, Black Community Programmes (BPC), available online https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/Br1972.0376.4354.000.000.1972.pdf |
| Black Review 1973, Black Community Programmes (BPC), available online, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/Br1973.0376.4354.000.000.1974.pdf |
| Don Mattera, “Out of the twilight Banned 1973-1982, Don Mattera describes his life in an interview with Essop Patel” in Index on Censorship, 3/1983, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228308533527 |
|
Staffrider, Vol. 1, No 1, March 1978, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/stv1n178.pdf |
| Staffrider, Vol 2, No 3, 1979, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/stv2n379.pdf |
| DISA digitised several issues of Staffrider visit https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/st |
| Website articles and entries |
| Achmat Dangor, https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2020/09/06/achmat-dangor-1948-2020-rip/ |
| Apartheid Museum, Steve Biko: The Quest for True Humanity, https://www.apartheidmuseum.org/uploads/files/BIKO-1b.pdf |
| Chris van Wyk poem, https://gimmenotes.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ENG2602-POEM-In-detention.pdf |
| Leon Sullivan, https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Sullivan__Leon |
| Inside South Africa’s radical anti-apartheid zine: the legacy of Staffrider (https://www.huckmag.com/art-andculture/print/inside-south-africas-radical-antiapartheid-zine/ |
| Poetry International entry Mafika Gwala, https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-18109_Gwala |
| Revlon Investors, https://investors.revlon.com/static-files/aa099567-dc6b-4765-96b3-108c0362515c |
| Saflii, “The re-opened inquest into the death of Ahmed Essop Timol (IQ01/2017) [2017] ZAGPPHC 652 (12 October 2017)”, available online https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPPHC/2017/652.html |
| Ulwazi Programme, ‘Ela Gandhi and Phoenix Settlement’, https://www.ulwaziprogramme.org/the-phoenix-settlement/ |
| South African History Online: Mohamed) Farouk Asvat, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mohamed-farouk-asvatMafika Gwala, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mafika-pascal-gwala; Ahmed Timol, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ahmed-timol; Lefifi Tladi, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lefifi-tladi |
| Wikipedia: Don Mattera, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Mattera; Ravan Press, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravan_Press; South African Institute for Race Relations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Institute_of_Race_Relations |
| Videos |
| Achmat Dangor, 1948-2020, An Extraordinary Life, Nelson Mandela Foundation, available online https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/achmat-dangor-1948-to-2020 |
| Ahmed Timol 50th Anniversary posted on YouTube in 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izSL52_7Oxk&t=127s |
| Bantu Stephen Biko interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDPbdpdrtiU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5gofoJ7O04&t=42s |
