Conversation with Albie Sachs

Albie Sachs Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by Jane Scherr

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Background: Childhood

Justice Sachs, welcome to Berkeley. Tell us a little about your background, your parents and your family.

Well, I grew up in South Africa, and my first memories are of running on the beach in a very beautiful part of Cape Town called Clifton, and being told "your father's coming," and seeing big white tennis shoes. That was my father. He and my mother were separated at the time. I looked up, up, up. Way up there was a head, a body talking to me. He was a big figure. He was a trade union leader, Solly Sachs, very controversial. Always involved in scraps. He fought the bosses, he fought the government, he fought my mother, he fought his second wife. And when he ran out of everyone else he fought his children. At his funeral in the 1970s, in London, one of the speakers there said, "and I'm quite sure if God exists, Solly's up there arguing with him right now."

So I grew up with that kind of a background. A very strong dad, remote; and my mother would be the one to type up the minutes of the meeting while the men were playing cards. She was very much also in the struggle. Very modest about her own abilities and capacities, but always doing a lot of hard work, getting things done, looking after two little kids. And surrounded by people who were strong personalities, vivacious, interesting, laughing. Many of them women on their own, sometimes with children, sometimes without. Ideas counted for everything.

I didn't know when my birthday was (to this day I don't care for birthdays) but my dad sent me a little card, I think I mentioned in the book: "Dearest Albert on you sixth birthday, many happy returns and may you grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation." That was during the Second World War.

So politics and the struggle was in your blood from the earliest ages.

Yes. I wouldn't even call it politics, it was living. There'd be strikes on, people were painting posters, and things were animated. There was lots of expectation and hope about the future. People mattered. There would be indignation about, "the bosses did this" or "the government did that," or "isn't it terrible." And of course we followed the Second World War with very great interest. There would be maps up on the wall with little flags to show where the Nazi troops were advancing, where they were defeated in Eastern Europe and North Africa. So it was a world of public events, a world where the public and the private interacted a lot. My dad might get into the newspaper for something that happened that involved him. A very lively, vivacious, active world -- that's my basic memory. And me being a dreamy child -- in the reports it would say, "Albert is a dreamy child," and I'm a dreamy adult now. I think these things last with you right through life.

A lot of books. What books influenced you in those days?

The books I remember are of two kinds, the fairy stories and the legends, particularly those involving trials. The trial by ice, people climbing over mountains. The endurance and love. And later on in my life when I was in solitary confinement, I would think back much more on those books, the books of fairy stories from childhood, than I would on the great literary classics.

Do any names come to mind?

No. I just remember that sensation of pushing and pushing, and withstanding the pressures on you to succumb in some of these stories. And winning through. That would be one set of stories. The others were stories about the war, and about pilots who went up into the skies and shot down Messerschmitts, Spitfires shooting down Messerschmitts. There was one chap called Rockfist Rogan who would go up in a plane, shoot down a few Nazi planes. Forced to land in Germany. And he was a boxer as well as a pilot. He would knock out the German heavyweight champion, steal a plane and fly back to Britain. It was that kind of male heroics that played quite a big role as well in my imagination.

How did your parents and experience address the problems of Apartheid at an early age?

I wouldn't say they addressed it. We were different. We lived differently. My mother worked as a secretary for Moses Kotane. He was a very prominent African leader in the African National Congress and South African Communist Party, and she had taught him at night school. He used to say, "Well, Rae taught me to read and write and now I'm her boss," and he found it very amusing. But what was interesting for me was that she would say, "Shhh, keep quiet! Uncle Moses is coming." She had to get something ready for "Uncle Moses" and then he would come in. So I grew up in an atmosphere where it was absolutely normal for a white woman to be working for an African man, to have great respect for him. And he was a very admired figure. It was important when this leading political figure was coming to the house, when one had to ... not show any particular respect, but she would be excited that he was actually coming to pick up some typing from our house.

Next page: Background: College Years