I intend to be brief and understand my mandate to be an
assessment of the book. I will leave the details of the life of Neil to the
author and my assessment of the quality of her work means that you are in very
good hands.
The short answer to the question of the quality of this book
is that it is a magnificent testament to a life and the quality of its writing
measures up to this portrayal. The book is a serious academic work of 432 pages
and has copious end-notes and a detailed index.
In an age when idealism or utopianism is in decline, if it
has not died completely – certainly in our political life in South Africa – it
is refreshing to learn again how one man tried to take up the cudgels for the
working class.
As a qualified doctor, he did not seek out a comfortable
practice in the centre of the city, catering for the ailments of the rich. He
worked at night at casualty in order to make money to fund his trade union
work.
Where the book is so successful is that not only does it
probe and discuss many of the issues of the time, but it shows how Neil
grappled and fought for what was right and just.
The issues dealt with include whether unions should be
registered and the relationship between unionists and political parties, more
especially the links to SACTU, the ANC based union.
It also poses questions about the balance of the lives of
activists at the time and how much attention was devoted to their partners and
friends.
The brutality of the state is a central theme, more
especially the role of the Security Police, in countering the onslaught of the
disenfranchised on the bastions of Apartheid, by political trials after torture
in detention.
The methods of the police in interrogation including
questioning for more than sixty hours, cruel assaults, lies, falsity and
unrelenting pressure are ventilated with frightening candour.
Two scenarios are posited to try and determine how the
tragic death took place: the first involving a killing by the police and
subsequent hanging in the cell and the second, a suicide.
It is well known that, when torturing victims, the police
were always careful to leave no marks or evidence of what they had done. We
know that to simulate a hanging was but one method and also to hang people out
of windows another.
When things went wrong, there were always plausible
explanations, so the police thought. The case presented at the inquest by the
police was that Neil was remorseful after ratting on his colleagues.
He had allegedly overheard a conversation authorizing the
arrest of his erstwhile friends whom he had betrayed and could not bear the
implications. No evidence was tendered of what he said, nor was mention made of
the persons whom he fingered. When questions were asked about what information
he had divulged, secrecy was invoked on less than convincing grounds, including
prejudicing further investigation.
Why did this torture take place?
Were these policemen doing their duty for their country and
saving us from the clutches of the communists, or were they cruel men who
enjoyed the power of the process?
John Morley in his essay on Robespierre, said the ‘true
inquisitor is a creature of policy, not a man of blood by taste.’
My impression is that some of the interrogators were
fanatically anti-union and anti-communist, but there were also the sadists, who
enjoyed the power they exercised as ill-educated policemen, over a dedicated
activist and doctor.
Always lurking behind the police, were the politicians,
demanding an end to the strikes, demonstrations, and waves of protests by a
seething mass of rightless persons. So dramatic are the descriptions of the
torture that Neil underwent that we are left in no doubt that the most benign
description of his death was an induced suicide. We all know that in the case
of detention suicide is the result of sustained torture and pressure.
The German philosopher Benedict Spinoza said that in normal
people there was no conatus, or drive to self-destruction, but that we – as
humans – were always seeking our own self-preservation.
Neil had a zest for life and was fiercely determined to
spend all his waking moments bettering the lot of workers that everything
pointed to a love of life. Coupled with this was the very natural fear of death
the Greeks called Thanatos.
Nowhere in the book is there any suggestion that Neil was
depressed or emotionally distressed before his detention.
What is particularly compelling in this book is the
avoidance of polemics and sentiment. The effect of this is to heighten the
horror of the death. Lawyers would also argue that there is also a case for
murder or culpable homicide in that the police foresaw from previous suicides
that their torture and treatment would have such a result and carried on
recklessly as to whether it occurred or not.
The forced exercise, nakedness and other ill treatment was
aimed at inducing a confession or at least the implication of others in crimes.
The records of his statements and interrogation show that so much information
was suggested to him by the police, to be included in his statement. An example
is his use of the word ‘communistic’ which is a very clear direct translation
of the Afrikaans equivalent.
The Polish writer Stanislaw Lec said in the war of ideas
people get killed. He also said ‘they tortured him – seeking in him their
thoughts.’
Being a fan of the great German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, I could easily understand his attraction to that thinker. A copy of
the Portable Nietzsche was in his cell when he died and there are several
references to his reading of his works.
Liz Floyd told the author that ‘Neil was doing quite a lot
of searching and landing up with Nietzsche… which I don’t think he ever
outgrew… I suppose it was the idea of transformation, the superman idea,
creating a new person.’
Nietzsche said that, of all that was written, he loved only
that which was written with blood, because blood was spirit.
Beverley’s book is one of those books.
Nietzsche wanted us to surpass ourselves by becoming better
at everything we did. He said something which seems very apposite to what
finally happened to Neil. He said ‘I love him that wills the creation of a
thing beyond himself, and thus perishes.’
Brian Sandberg has written on the internet that Neil would
have risen to the peak of any profession he had chosen. His selfless devotion
meant that he sacrificed that to create a better world.
Although the book is clearly the work of a very thorough
scholar, it is rich with beautiful descriptions and poetic moments.
Although no reader could be unaware of Neil’s death, the
tale is told with such emotional skill that I experienced profound anxiety as
the moment approached. I thought at one
stage that examples of the cross-examination, in the inquest, would produce the
sort of courtroom drama found in some books.
It later became clear how the power of questioning was
stunted – surveillance bugs left in George Bizos’ chambers meant that the
police were forewarned of all questions and lines of cross-examination that
would be taken. It seems clear that once Aggett had made a report of his
assault by the security police the pressure would increase dramatically.
At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings we learn
that, after Neil complained about his torture, Major Arthur Cronwright, who was
described by another security policeman, Paul Erasmus, as a monster, demanded
that his interrogators ‘break Aggett by tomorrow night.’
I never knew Neil Aggett but I have learned so much about
his early youth in Kenya and the role his father played in suppressing the Mau
Mau. The influence of such a conservative background clearly impacted very much
on his decision to enter the trade union movement. The author’s description of
sense of alienation from his family thereafter is very poignant.
His father never visited him in detention and seems to have
rued that fact to his final days. We know from Gandhi that silence becomes
cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting
accordingly. Neil certainly did not allow his family’s conservatism to stand in
his way.
The fact of his death caused a metamorphosis in his father’s
thinking and the family’s attitude to his funeral, which was largely organized
by the trade union movement, is vibrantly told.
We can often speculate what would have become of Neil Aggett
had he survived. I am sure he would have made a major contribution to our
political and economic life. The strikes around the country at present show us
very vividly how much we need the wisdom and courage of a Neil Aggett.
The Eighth century Scholar of Charlemagne Alcuin spoke of
man as the slave of death, a passing wayfarer, a lantern in the wind.
It is important that the light that Neil Aggett shone on the
world so briefly should live on.
For this, we are indebted to this wonderful book which is an
outstanding testament to courage and determination.
So we salute the life of Neil Aggett and applaud the work of
Beverley Naidoo.
Perhaps the final words should be those of Nietzsche that
Neil admired so much:
‘In your dying your spirit and your virtue shall blaze on
like the after-glow of sunset round the world: else hath your dying ill
succeeded.’
C R Nicholson
Durban.
11 October 2012.
