The Mission

Bizarre as it may seem, that fate befell Denis Goldberg, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Andrew Mlangeni, in 1963 for plotting to overthrow the apartheid regime.

While all the black defendants were despatched to Robben Island, Goldberg was locked up in Pretoria Central, since prisons too were racially segregated.

When the government offered Goldberg release on condition that he foreswore armed struggle, he sought to discuss the matter with the ANC leadership but was denied contact.

This was a take-it-or-leave-it offer and it was make-your-mind-up time.

He accepted and was taken to the airport to be flown to Israel where his daughter Hilly lived on a kibbutz. After a couple of weeks in Israel, he flew to London to rebuild the relationship with his wife Esmé and to offer himself once more as a full-time worker for the liberation movement.

At a meeting with ANC armed wing chief of staff Joe Slovo, Goldberg was informed that there were some people upset about his release.

In fact, he had already seen the defacement of a poster depicting "our heroes" in the ANC offices in London's Islington where one young comrade, who had never known the inside of a jail, had put a sticker over Goldberg's face, indicating displeasure at his acceptance of the apartheid government's armed struggle condition.

Slovo was cut from a different cloth, understanding the human need of a 52-year-old who had been arrested at the age of 30 and suggesting that he take time to find his feet before reintegration into ANC structures.

Goldberg detected in Slovo a "tolerance for human frailty," which matched his own experience in prison, where "I think I acquired a humanity which I had not had before."

His appreciation of his own personal development, as he learned not to question others' motives and not to seek out differences as a means of driving people away from the movement, also caused him to examine the effects of his long imprisonment on those closest to him, his wife and children.

The movement's emphasis on the campaign to "free our leaders" was understandable, but Esmé sensed a vivid change in attitude towards her after the verdicts were handed down.

"When I pressed Esmé, she told me that the moment the trial was over our comrades found her of no further interest and had little to do with her."

Esmé took on the responsibility of raising their children, becoming a physiotherapist at a ballet school in London, working as a volunteer in the Woodcraft Folk and buying the house in East Finchley in which Denis settled after arriving from Israel.

His misgivings about the movement's treatment of Esmé and his recognition that the pressures on those left on the outside when the political activists are inside are, in many ways, equally difficult puts The Mission in a different category from other books written by heroes of struggle.

Yes, it is heroic - Goldberg's entire life has been dedicated to the communist ideals of struggle and liberation fostered within him by his parents - but his account is distinctive.

He questions, he analyses and he records frankly the conflicts, whether petty non-political frictions based on personality in the London ANC office or the sharp disagreements among the prisoners in Pretoria Central over the plans for a prison break.

His gripping account of the plan, its progress and the tensions surrounding it should be read alongside Escape from Pretoria by the remarkable Tim Jenkin, who successfully broke out with Steve Lee and Alex Moumbaris.

Goldberg also deals frankly with personal problems such as the sexual dysfunction associated with prolonged incarceration and consequent emotional upsets.

But shining through the entire work is his confidence that, in Walter Sisulu's oft-repeated phrase, "unity in action" can effect change for working people.

During his time in London, he identified the need to build up ANC merchandising, not simply to raise much-needed cash but as part of the political struggle to build solidarity so that ANC posters, T-shirts, sweaters, hats, badges, mugs and much else were ubiquitous in Britain and elsewhere in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Goldberg then set up Community HEART to raise material aid for schoolchildren in South Africa, starting the "Book and Ten Pence" campaign, which, at last count, had sent 2.5 million books to schools without libraries.

Following Esmé's death in 2000, Goldberg finally returned home, taking up a post as special adviser with Ronnie Kasrils in the Water Affairs and Forestry ministry.

After having retirement forced upon him, he continues to speak in Cape Town schools as part of a Facing the Past programme to "make the history of the struggle for liberation come alive for young people and for their teachers."

And he encapsulates what the liberation struggle has been about, telling his young compatriots: "And so I say to those born after, I say to posterity, go and build our nation because you are free to do it."

The Mission, complete with accompanying DVD, can be obtained from Community HEART director Isobel McVicar for £18 plus £3 p&p (total £21). Just phone 07876 561-643.