Rivonia's Children

by Glenn Frankel

Rivonia's Children is the harrowing and inspiring account of a handful of white activists, many of them Jewish, who risked their lives to combat apartheid when, in the 1960s, South Africa plunged into an era of darkness from which it has only recently emerged.. "This is the story of Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, longtime communists so deeply committed to the cause that even the threat of life imprisonment did not stop them; of Ruth First, a fiery activist arrested and held for months without charge; and of AnnMarie Wolpe, an innocent bystander sucked into the maelstrom, who had to decide whether to risk her own freedom and the life of her sick infant by helping her activist husband escape from prison.. "Their underground headquarters was in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb, and it was there that their dream of revolution was shattered after a police raid in 1963. Nelson Mandela, Rusty Bernstein, and eight of their comrades were tried for sabotage and attempting to violently overthrow the government. The Rivonia raid not only destroyed an old order of benign radicalism but thrust radicals into a new, dangerous world of action, leading to the Soweto uprising and the birth of another generation of black activists. The regime turned a corner as well, becoming a full-scale police state that waged a dirty war of brutality and oppression. In the end, freedom triumphed, and the sacrifices of this small group of whites contributed to the miracle of racial reconciliation that is the new South Africa.

Genres: South Africa, History, Nonfiction, Biography

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

As a boy growing boy up in Rochester, NY, I loved movies, especially Westerns and most especially John Ford's The Searchers. Everything about it thrilled and frightened me---most especially John Wayne's towering performance. I grew up to become a journalist and a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, and when I came back to the United States in 2006 I wanted to write a book about America. And what could be more American than The Searchers? The book did surprisingly well, and I found myself working in my own little sub-genre: books that combine the making of a classic film with a momentous era in American history. Next up was the making of High Noon and its connection to the Hollywood blacklist, a time of vicious rhetoric and false allegations not unlike our own troubled decade. Shooting Midnight Cowboy is my third: I’d always loved the movie---the only X-rated film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture---and felt a personal connection: it was filmed largely in New York City in 1968, when I was a freshman at Columbia University. I feel very fortunate that after a wonderful career as a journalist and professor at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin, I’m now finding an exciting new world to explore as an author.

Reviews

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The SACP is the only Communist Party whose logo I am proud to wear. South Africa under Apartheid was an increasingly nasty police state, something like a combination of Nazism and Southern Jim Crow. The whites who actively opposed Apartheid were mostly Jewish and this excellent book is the riveting and sad story of the Jewish Communists who worked with the black activists of the ANC, led by Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Black activists and white leftists struggled, went to trial and finally to prison together, sacrificing their white (and professional) privilege to fight Apartheid. After fifty years of peaceful agitation, a curdling racist police state had led the SACP and the ANC to launch mild acts of sabotage which lands their principled, if amateurish, leaders in solitary detention and trial. The Treason Trial of the early 60s is SA’s Passion Play, with Mandela its noble central figure. Some escape, some turn against their comrades, all of their families are impacted under the strain.

[Babak Fakhamzadeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent account of events surrounding the trial that sentenced Mandela to, eventually, 27 years in prison. The book focuses on specifically three white, communist, families, some of which managed to flee in time before their compatriots were tried in the Rivonia trials, some of which were in the dock with Mandela.
Besides how impressively those chased, fled or convicted stuck to their ideals and were willing to fight and die for them, the book also shows the disturbing extent to which South Africa descended into a horrid police state, starting shortly after the Second World War and only ending in the late 80s, when de Klerk sought an end to minority rule.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this interesting book because I am related to one of the people involved in this story, the late David Kitson.

I met him in London a few years ago, and discussed with him his experiences as a prisoner of the Apartheid regime.

This book is a must for anyone interested in the role that a small proportion of the white population played in the struggle against Apartheid. Most of these Europeans were Jewish, as was Percy Yutar, the Chief Prosecutor, who found Nelson Mandela and his co-conspirators guilty in the Rivonia Treason Trial in 1963.

[Sergio GRANDE · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle saw many white people deeply involved, like Bram Fisher, Joe Slovo and Ruth First.
Many of the activists though, were liberal Jews who opposed Apartheid from the outside the looking in, with their noses against the glass. They spoke loudly but shouted softly and kept their hands clean.
This book follows the tragic stories of three insider families: the Bernsteins, the Wolpes and the Goldreichs.

[Carolien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book which tells the history of the Communist Party in South Africa and the contribution of a number of white liberal South Africans to the anti apartheid struggle in the 1950's and 1960's.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly powerful book for learning about the systemic legal situation in Apartheid South Africa. I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part biographical and part historical.
Gripping, personal narrative.
Great read for those interested in apartheid history / those affected by it.

[Nancy Mcdaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important reading for anyone interested in the history of South Africa and the anti-apartheid movement. Fascinating, horrifying and inspiring!