Słuszny opór: Konstruktorzy bomb, rebelianci i legendarny proces o zdradę stanu

by Peter Harris, Rafał Lisowski (Translator)

W końcowych latach apartheidu czterej żołnierze Afrykańskiego Kongresu Narodowego przekradają się przez granicę do RPA, którą opuścili jako młodzi chłopcy po zamieszkach w Soweto w 1976 roku. W ciągu dziesięciu miesięcy przeprowadzają szereg zamachów na brutalnych policjantów znęcających się nad czarnoskórą ludnością i polityków wspierających apartheid. Potem decydują się przenieść walkę do dzielnic białych i dokonują ataków bombowych, w których giną również przypadkowi cywile. W końcu zostają zdradzeni i trafiają do aresztu, gdzie są torturowani i zmuszeni do podpisania obciążających ich zeznań.

Fascynująca historia opowiedziana przez ich prawnika stanowi zapis jednego z najgłośniejszych politycznych procesów ubiegłego wieku. Ta opowieść o zwykłych ludziach, którzy doprowadzeni do ostateczności przez opresyjne działania rządu, chwycili za broń, pokazuje dobitnie, jak płynna jest granica między bohaterstwem a zbrodnią.

Książka była nominowana do nagrody „Booksellers’ Choice” (2009) oraz nagrody za Debiut 2008/2009 przyznawanej przez Uniwersytet w Johannesburgu, a także uznana za najlepszą książkę roku w kategorii literatura faktu oraz najlepszą książkę roku 2008 przez Jenny & Co.

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, South Africa, History, Reportage, Politics

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

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Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

If anyone is aware of the true meaning of violence, it is the black peoples of southern Africa. It is we who have been the victims of violence for centuries. Our own experience has taught us to hate violence and it was to terminate the violence against our people, which is inherent in white minority domination, that the ANC was formed (Jabu Masina and The Other Three on trial).

This is by far one of the best books I have read in the last few years. The trial of four ANC MK soldiers, the Delmas four, and their predicament is described in detail by their very lawyer, Peter Harris. Endowed with boundless humanity, judgement and the conviction of his ideas, Harris and his colleagues brave the pathological apartheid state and fight for a just non discriminatory South Africa. Harris provides background and context to the fight of his clients against the terrorist state, but in doing so he never expresses judgement, even when when painfully confronted with the terrible consequences of murder on the surviving relatives. He visits his clients at Robben Island, on Death Row, and in other neighbouring countries to support their cause. He takes testimony from Dirk Coetzee, one of the most eminent figures in the murderous apartheid security police at the time, turned ANC. Real life stories read better than a thriller, but this is all true and all the more compelling. Today South Africa lives with the consequences of hundreds of years of unjust domination and violence. It will take a while for the balance to be redressed, if ever. Harris and his colleagues have contributed significant milestones to the beginning of this road. Some men quietly make history in the courtroom. He is definitely one of them. It is impossible to do justice to this book in a review. It is just a must read.

[Fadillah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Violent can never be the correct solution. However, if circumstances around you forces you to do it, what would happen? Are you innocent enough to be a killer? Are you guilty enough to be persecuted? This is such a thrilling and truly engaging book. It took you into the setting and at the same time, you can join other characters in the jail and courtroom. It's hard to grasp that this is author's first book. I finished it in one day bcause i wanted to know weather all 4 of them survived death by hanging or not.

[Amarjeet Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are so visceral that they ingrain themselves in your very dreams for all time to come. A Just Defiance is one of those books. What makes it all the more lucid, all the more riveting is the fact that it is based on a real event.

The author Peter Harris, a lawyer by nature, undertakes to defend four anti-apartheid resistance fighters in segregation era South Africa in the process inviting the wrath of the entire political machinery against him. Harris is white, his fellow advocates are white and black while the fighters are black. A more combustible mix has never before or since graced South Africa's judiciary.

Against society's better judgement, Harris undertakes to represent the four fighters epitheted as the Delmas four. In the process it is revealed that they are the ANC's (African National Congress's) most effective saboteurs. However, the most brutal revelation is reserved for policeman turned defector Dirk Coetzee who justifies the existence of government sanctioned death squads operating with impunity.

The most conspicuous aspect of this book is the fact that Harris avoids all legal jargon as well as immersion in technicalities to convey his points. Ultimately, the case progresses from being one of waging war against the state to questioning what consists a just war in terms of combating political resistance.

For me, the most poignant moment is at the end when Harris admits that he misses his fellow lawyer who died in an assassination attempt initially targeting him.

[Aga · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've ever read!

[Eliz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've ever read. A story, covering all the emotions, told in a masterful way! Just can't believe it sat on my self, unread, for so long!

[kamild · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mój mózg też wybuchł jakieś 100 razy podczas lektury.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Harris był adwokatem w procesie ludzi organizujących zamachy na osoby związane z aparatem władzy apartheidu pod koniec istnienia systemu. Pokazuje zarówno czarnych konstruktorów bomb i organizatorów zamachów, jak i ich białych przeciwników.

[David Kenvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the stuff of nightmares. It is the true story of the resistance of four young men to apartheid, and the outcome of their trial. The Delmas Treason Trial is one that changed the course of history, exposing the true viciousmess of the apartheid state. It begins with the arrests of four ANC soldiers, who refuse to recognise the authority of the court to try them for treason. Their lawyers, Peter Harris and Bheki Mlangeni, are presented with the seemingly impossible task of saving them from execution in these circumstances. This book, by Peter Harris, follows the trial of Jabu, Ting Ting, Neo and Joseph. Their families are allowed to make a plea of extenuation and, despite a sympathetic presiding judge, they are sentenced to death.

It is then that it all went badly wrong for the apartheid atate. First, the ANC ordered them to appeal. Secondly, they were put in a cell next to Almond Nofomela, a policeman who had been sentenced to death, abandoned by his masters and who told a horrific tale of a clandestine police assassination squad based at Vlakplaas, outside Pretoria. Nofomela was persuaded to appeal against his death sentence and his commander, Dirk Coetzee, broke ranks to give evidence in cold, meticulous detail. This was how the world came to hear about Eugene "Prime Evil" De Kock, the officer in charge at Vlakplaas and of the bombs, the shootings, the stabbings, the poisons, the torchings.

Some of the evidence was given in London because witnesses had fled South Africa to avoid being killed. As a volunteer at the ANC Office in London, I still shudder at the slight peripheral involvement that I had. As this story proves, clandestine murder squads were operating as late as 1993/4.

It is a truly terrifying but very necessary story.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads as if written by a practised author yet it is Harris's first. We should be pleased that he decided to tell the story and he should be highly satisfied with the result. By focussing (largely) on the acts of one band of ANC fighters, what they did and how they were brought to 'justice', Harris not only provides an insight into the methods which the ANC (and indeed the South African police) used, but also portrays the motivations of the fighters and why they were able to bring themselves to undertake cold-blooded killings. Harris also gives an insight into the life of (often White) lawyers whose legal practices defended ANC activists, including those on death row. We get a partial insight too into the lives of some of the leading figures in the ANC, sadly many now dead.

It would have been interesting to have had a further epilogue on what those involved think about the new South Africa as it has since developed. But even without this, the moving (and shocking) conclusion of the book is very well handled, leaving one to think that Harris has found an already well-formed talent for writing as well as having the legal skills that enabled him to fight for justice over so many years.