BRAM FISCHER

POFILE OF AN AFRIKANER

by

Hilda Bernstein

THE SECURITY POLICE in Johannesburg have announced the capture of the former leading South African advocate and Queen's Counsel, Abram Fischer, who has been hiding since January of this year. Abram Fischer was recently removed from the Roll of Advocates on the grounds of misconduct; he had entreated bail of £5,000 and disappeared while on trial with 13 other men and women on charges under the Suppression of Communism Act. All except one of the 13 have since been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

How did this remarkable man, possessing all the personal attributes of greatness, and every opportunity for material success, become a hunted fugitive who succeeded in eluding the powerful Secutity Police for ten months?

His story is extraordinary and unique; it embodies both the triumph and the tragedy of South Africa today.

Abram Fischer---‘Bram'---comes from a family whose ancestors arrived in South Africa in the 18 th century. His grandfather, a burger of the Orange River Republic long before there was a Union of South Africa, rose to be President of the Republic in the days when South Africa was changing from a geographical expression towards nationhood. His father, a barrister like Bram, rose to the highest rank: Judge-President of the Orange Free State . They were bitter opponents of the British, and true Afrikaner nationalists.

Fischer could have followed the family pattern, gaining high political and social honours for himself. He has all the personal attributes: a personality that attracts people to him plus powerful connections both in his own right and through his wife who was a niece of General Smuts. The editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times wrote: “In this well-loved, much-admired family, Bram was himself a model of gentleness and respectability. A brilliant scholar, an outstanding sportsman, a man of character and immense personal shoulders above his fellows. With his background, his family connections and his own brilliance, his future success was looked upon as a formality. Would he be Prime Minister or Chief Justice? That was the only question.”

But Bram Fischer chose a different, harder path. He deliberately cast aside the great material and professional rewards that were for his taking. For among his many qualities was a complete and undeviating honesty that impelled him to do what he believed to be right, regardless of any personal difficulties. All his life ha has followed unhesitatingly this call of conscience and of his honest beliefs; and this is the trial that has led him away from the high and lucrative honours that have fallen on much lesser men.

In the thirties he joined the Communist Party, when it was still illegal, finding it the only organization that uncompromisingly rejected the colour-bar and admitted all races on an equal basis. He never claimed special consideration because of his social status and profession; he spoke from a soap-box on the Johannesburg City Hall steps, gave out leaflets at factory gates, and met with illiterate workers in back rooms. In 1946 he stood trial on a charge of assisting a strike of African mineworkers and pleaded guilty because he believed in the essential justice of the miner's action, although he himself had been away on holiday at the time of the strike.

The Communist Party was made illegal in 1950 but he continued political activities through other means. In 1953 he was scheduled to make the opening address at a national peace conference when he received banning notices from the Government prohibiting him from attending any more meetings or belonging to organisations. Even this did not prevent him from carrying on the struggle against racial discrimination in other ways, and through his professional work.

His former membership of the Communist Party was widely known, his views never disguised, yet in spite of this he was a most successful and sought-after lawyer. His clients included large mining-houses and big monopoly companies who profited from his keen brain and meticulous methods of work, turning a blind eye to his politics.

He took, also, an increasing number of political cases for which he usually refused to accept fees.

At this time he lived the fullest possible life. He had a large and beautiful house and garden. His wife Molly shared his views and every aspect of his life. They had a very large circle of friends; his personal friends and political associates who loved and admired him, professional colleagues who appreciated his intelligence, and his sincerity; and others, many deeply opposed to his politics, people of every strata and race. His home was open to all and everyone in trouble came to Bram Fischer at any hour of day or night. Everything was brought to him: Indians losing homes and businesses through Group Areas Act; Africans in conflict with race laws; and Whites, too, with every problem, from a husband and wife fight to larger issues. There will never be a record of the number of people indebted to the Fischers. Bram had the knack of making each one feel that his problems were Bram's personal concern; Molly had the ability of making people feel they were doing her a favour by allowing her to help them.

He was one of the defending lawyers during the four and a half year long Treason Trial that began in 1956 and during that period brought many of the men and women on trial to his home. But they years of open house and innumerable visitors were drawing to a close as South Africa plunged swiftly and deeply into a great sea of reactionary laws. Many of his closest friends were in jail, others left the country. Police kept a constant watch of his home and intimidated his visitors, even to the extent of warning the families of young men who came to court his two attractive daughters.

Sharpeville, 1960! Police swooped as a state of emergency was declared and netted in thousands of political prisoners including all the best-known former members of the banned Communist Party. For some reason Bram Fischer was left, although his wife was taken. With all well-known political people in jail everyone outside went to Bram for help and to each he gave that personal attention and assistance they wanted, always with unfailing gentle courtesy. He was irritable, never unkind, except when people left the country. He felt very strongly it was the duty of all to stay and fight, no matter what the consequences. The steely-hard core to his sweet and generous nature, the core from which springs his unbounded courage and sense of purpose, only revealed itself in this relentless determination to carry on the struggle at all costs and to persuade those around him to stay and fight.

The organizations that had once used his home for fund-raising parties were all underground; his political associates increasingly in trouble. Yet his legal practice continued to flourish.

Then in July 1963 a number of Bram Fischer's closest friends and associates were arrested at Rivonia. Although he now expected to be arrested as well, he refused to leave, and when the accused were brought to court after three month's solitary confinement, the man leading the defence team was Bram Fischer.

He had set himself the task of saving the lives of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and the other Rivonia men who, it was freely rumoured, would get the death sentence. He lived on borrowed time; his home was watched, police followed him everywhere. He could not talk to people in his own home or office for fear of hidden microphones. In consultation with the accused in jail much of the discussion about the case was conducted by notes scribbled on bits of paper, to bypass recordings they knew the police would make. His health deteriorated but he laughed at the danger of arrest, claiming that the Minister of Justice, B. J. Vorster, would be reluctant to arrest Mandela's counsel until the case was over. This proved to be true.

He was lawyer, political colleague, friend, all in one. Together with notes on the case when he left the jail each day his bulging brief-case was filled with other things: a pair of spectacles for which a new frame was needed; a list of books that one of the accused wanted; instructions about the care of another's small children. His wife became full-time, unpaid secretary to the lawyers. He refused fees and was only persuaded to accept a nominal amount when the case finished.

The trial ended after nearly a year, bringing both triumph and terrible tragedy. The triumph was no death sentences---life imprisonment for eight defendants, one acquitted. But the day after judgement he was persuaded to take a short holiday. Driving his own car he swerved to avoid a motor-cyclist, his car plunged over a bridge landed in some water. He and a friend in the front seats managed to scramble out of the windows but Molly was waged in the back, and as they fought to release her the car sank into forty feet of water.

Although he felt he could never again be as productive as in the past, he became more purposeful and dedicated than before.

He was arrested, then released after some hours' questioning; arrested again some time later under the 90-day law, then suddenly released at midnight after 3 days in jail. Finally he was arrested again one day in his chambers and charged with others in being a member of the illegal Communist Party and furthering its activities.

He had been appearing as counsel on behalf of Sterling Drug Inc., of New York , a case in which the giant Bayer Group of Germany was disputing the ownership of trade names with a subsidiary of Sterling in Southern Africa . The American company entered the picture because nany companies in Allied countries during the war seized enemy patents and trade marks. The company had lost the case in a lower court in Rhodesia . Lost the appeal to a High Court, and was now taking an appeal to the Privy Council in England . The giant American drug company, through its South African subsidiary, insisted that Fischer be retained for the final appeal to the Privy Council.

Bram asked for, and obtained, bail and permission to go to England for an appeal. Although fully aware of the charges he faced, the instructing attorney in the state case stated that his American clients has asked the U.S. Ambassador to intervene to secure his liberty to appear before the Privy Council.

He gave his personal undertaking to return to South Africa and stand trial. He won the appeal in England , and he did return. The trial proceeded with Bram among the defendants, until one morning his counsel arose to read a letter announcing that he would be absent himself from the remainder of the trial. In his letter he stated his action was deliberate, but not prompted by fear of punishment. He had made the decision only because he believed if the duty of every true opponent of the Government to “remain in this country and to oppose its monstrous policy of apartheid with every means in his power. That is what I shall do for as long as I can.” He outlined the reasons that had compelled him to take this step, wrote of the thousands of men and women, not criminals, who were in jail as political prisoners; spoke of the bitterness and hate that grows each day, the torture by solitary confinement and worse that had been legalized by Parliament . . .

“To try to avoid this (bloodshed and civil war) becomes a supreme duty, particularly for an Afrikaner, because it is largely the representatives of my fellow-Afrikaners who have been responsible for the worst of these discriminatory laws . . . I can no longer serve justice in the way I have attempted to do during the past 30 years .”

He finished by saying that the court, if it punished his fellow accused, would be punishing them for holding ideas that will be universally accepted tomorrow.

With indecent haste the Johannesburg Bar Council now instituted proceedings to expel him from the Roll of Advocates. But a former judge of the Supreme Court called on them not to expel Fischer, who “despite the terrible handicap of being a named communist in this bitterly anti-communist country has risen by character and ability to the highest practice in the Bar.” The judge cited the celebrated case of Dr. Krause, an Afrikaner, who was found guilty of inciting to murder and served 2 years imprisonment, yet was re-admitted to the South African bar and rose to high public office. He mentioned that Minister of Justice Vorster was himself under detention for 2 years during World War 2, when he was a member of an organisation that planned insurrection with the assistance of Nazi Germany.

So this gentle, lovable and infinitely brave man became a hunted fugitive, described by the police as the most wanted man in South Africa . And now he will be brought to trial, he will be imprisoned, and they will be satisfied.

Yet of all people it is this white man, this Afrikaner, who reminds us of what apartheid rulers would like people to forget: that the struggle against white oppression and racialism is every man's fight; that it is not colour or race, culture or background, that divides men from each other; that black or white, educated or illiterate, there is a common goal of justice to which all aspire.

One day, without a shadow of doubt, together with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu from penal Robben Island , together with the despised and persecuted and jailed, Bram will take his rightful place in the government of a free South Africa .

Transition , no. 23, October 1965.