Contents

Portrait of Klaas de Jonge

Pretoria Journal

How I ended up in South Africa

Assignments for the ANC

The arrest and the trialsThe flight

Life in the embassy

Afterword

Portrait of Klaas de Jonge

by Karel Roskam

Klaas de Jonge was arrested in South Africa on 23 June 1985 on charges of terrorism. Some people thought it must be a mistake. His colleagues had always known Klaas as a pacifist; they could hardly imagine him as an arms smuggler. Others thought it unlikely that Klaas had carried out secret operations for the African National Congress, because he had always given the impression that he had no secrets. He was a genial man who talked a lot and liked talking. He was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve and would be very likely to give secrets away.

From his journal, however, it appears that Klaas de Jonge was very different to the impression some of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances had of him. Despite all his talk, this wine connoisseur who delighted in company, girlfriends and adventure somehow managed for years to keep the secret of his involvement in underground operations on behalf of the ANC.

What could motivate a Dutch person who sympathised with the ANC to make an active contribution to a violent campaign against apartheid in South Africa? Why would a Dutch social scientist support Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC? Why would a Dutch anthropologist undertake activities in South Africa that might lead to his incarceration in the dungeons of the notorious South African secret police?

In short: what got into Klaas de Jonge? What drove this Dutchman, who spent more than two years – from 19 July 1985 to September 1987 – holed up in the (former) Dutch embassy in Pretoria, besieged there by thirty men of the South African security police? Who is Klaas de Jonge?

For white supporters of the apartheid government, the answer would have been clear: Klaas de Jonge was a dangerous terrorist; a communist, a traitor, a client of Moscow, a KGB agent. That is how supporters of apartheid, with their blurred vision, saw him. But who was Klaas de Jonge really?

As it happens, he himself compiled a list of the character traits that people saw in him from letters that he received from friends and acquaintances. Some saw him as a manipulator, a fighter, a man who liked to put things in context, a confrontational man, a man who enjoyed doing things with other people. Others saw him as a man who chased girls and fantasised that he was Tintin. Yet others saw him as a man without emotion, or as a casual and somewhat insecure fellow.

Was he a self-aware scholar with a predeliction for good causes? An engagé intellectual? Was he a prisoner whose capacity for calm saw him through his incarceration? Was he an untrustworthy liar, a pleasant and playful fellow, a joyless, sorrowful man? Was he a charmer or a practically-minded radical? Was he a non-fanatical pacifist with nuanced views? Was he good-natured, and an anti-authoritarian by conviction? Intelligent, undogmatic, vehement and warm?

Klaas de Jonge says that he doesn’t recognise himself in this confused summary of the character traits ascribed to him by friends and acquaintances. Rather, he sees himself as a non-bourgeois who wants the freedom to go his own way and accept his own responsibility for doing so. This is what shapes his behaviour and it will often negatively affect his relationships. Klaas de Jonge is not always an easy person to get on with, and he admits this.

He was born in Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, on 5 September 1937. His parents were ardent social democrats, but never members of a political party. The atmosphere in which he grew up was intellectual, artistic and anti-colonial.

Even as a boy, he showed signs of being remarkably headstrong. His mother recalls that it was impossible to punish Klaas when he was little; there was no point in threatening to send him straight to bed when he misbehaved. He would immediately repeat whatever had got him into trouble and say cheerfully: ‘Well, I was sleepy anyway!’ Even the threat that his sweets allowance would be withdrawn had no effect on him. This was shortly after the war, when sweets were scarce and rationed. ‘I didn’t feel like eating sweets anyway!’ he would say.

Klaas wasn’t a contrarian, and he wasn’t a difficult child, but he had strong desire for personal freedom. He would always insist on going his own way and hated being forced to do anything. Even when young, he showed that he would not accept things as they were, but would always want to fit a situation to his own purposes. His obstinacy in this was certainly a consequence of the way he was educated. His parents emphasised an awareness of individual responsibility and the necessity of making choices for himself.

As a child, Klaas loved adventure, excitement and challenges. He would enjoy shuddering with fear when told a scary story, but he wouldn’t actually be scared. He remembers his father carrying him upstairs on his shoulder one day, and his mother following them pretending to be a scary witch, but it is only a pleasurable memory of being childishly scared. On another occasion, he encountered three dogs fighting on the street and tried to separate them without being at all afraid.

What is the source of his lack of fear? His parents never discussed this with him, but they think they have an explanation. As a young boy, Klaas was often mistaken for a girl. People would sometimes remarked on it, which irritated him. In his parents’ view, the experience made him afraid to be thought ‘soft’.

His father, Herman recalls an incident during Klaas’s first year at a grammar school in Haarlem. On his first day there, he indulged himself in some overly exuberant high jinks and was sent to the school principal, who called his father. Later, his father realised that Klaas hadn’t wanted to come across to his new classmates as a polite, well-brought-up teacher’s son. After that incident he had no need to prove himself, and was never kicked out of the classroom again.

He never got involved in fights – not on the street, and not at school. On occasion, he could put his engaging personality to good use. Once, he and his friends kicked a ball through the window of a grouchy neighbour. None of the other lads dared to do anything, but Klaas had the panache to go to the neighbour and politely ask for the ball – which he was given.

Klaas liked taking risks and he wasn’t afraid of the consequences. Yet he never threw himself into things unprepared, and he never did anything thoughtlessly. When he was due to do his military service, his mother – who knew that he disliked violence –indicated gently that he might choose to refuse to serve. Klaas would not hear of it. ‘If there were a war, it would be wrong to let others do the job!’ he said. To refuse to serve would have been weak and dishonest.

For Klaas, if you were aware of injustice, you could not simply stay on the side-lines and do nothing about it. All the same, he would think the matter through for himself. He would, for instance, want to make up his own mind as to whether a war was unjust or not. At that time, he was certain that he did not want to help defend Dutch interests in New Guinea.

In 1955 he spent three weeks working in a refugee camp in the Danish town of Vejle, and was interviewed about the experience by the Haarlems Dagblad on 23 December. ‘When you have experienced something like this, you realise that you have to do something about it,’ he told the paper. ‘You feel that you are involved somehow, and that everyone should be concerned.’ Similarly, he did not want to stand on the side-lines when he later found himself in South Africa and saw the injustices there.

Even as a young boy, Klaas liked to talk a lot. He never avoided a subject, no matter how difficult – not even with his own parents. He would often express his rage at the injustices he perceived in the world around him, but he sometimes dismissed his own vehemence and commitment as a ‘longing for adventure’ or a ‘need for excitement’. He certainly did not want to come across as ‘sensitive’, which he would have thought a sort of arrogance. But regarding his deeper feelings, he remained mostly closed, even to his parents.

The De Jonge family was not enthusiastic about colonialism. His parents had lived in the former Dutch East Indies; both his brother Jan and his sister Rieks were born there. Klaas had few memories of his biological father. His parents were divorced when he was still an infant and his mother, Truus married Herman, who became the father to Klaas that he still is. When Klaas went to high school, his brother, who was ten years older than him, was working in Indonesia. Klaas became more and more interested in that country, and wanted to travel there one day.

After his military service, Klaas went to Amsterdam to study,registering at the ‘red’ department of political and social sciences of the university. Among the lectures he attended were those by Professor Wertheim, which further stimulated his interest in Indonesia. However, few opportunities were available for Dutch researchers in that country, due to the bad relations between the two countries at the time, and his interest shifted to India and the Philippines.

During this time, Klaas also became aware of another continent, and his contact with Africa would profoundly change his life. At first, his interest wasn’t at the level of social research, but rather in Africa’s human and emotional aspects.

He met African people for the first time during a study period in Paris, and also came into contact with African music and lifestyles. Attending African parties, he noticed that men did not occupy a privileged position; men and women interacted ‘normally’ with each other and there was no question of a caste system. His commitment to Africa was emotional, but he never regretted it. If anything, it strengthened his dislike of racism and apartheid. And indeed, these feelings would later bring him to participate in the struggle against the South African regime.

During his studies during the 1960s in Amsterdam and Paris, Klaas became an engagé social scientist. It was tumultuous period, when liberation movements were gaining influence in the West. It was time, for instance, of demonstrations against the colonial war then being fought in Algeria. There were ‘teach-ins’ about Cuba, China, Vietnam. Under the influence of his time in Paris – Jean-Paul Sartre had a lasting effect – and his experience as member of the editorial staff of De Groene Amsterdammer, where he worked as a journalist, Klaas developed as a radical socialist – though he was critical of Soviet ideas and practices.

He became interested in the [history of the] guerrilla war in China led by Mao-Tse Tung, in Vo Nguyen Giap’s Vietnamese campaign, and in the ideas of the African Amilcar Cabral and the South American Che Guevara. He also developed his knowledge of the African liberation movements. While pursuing his studies in demography, he realised that questions of population should not answered by dealing with them as problems of development, but rather that demographic factors derived from underlying problems that related to poverty. In other words, people weren’t poor because they had a lot of children; rather, they had a lot of children because they were poor.

When I was a young Africanist, De Jonge convinced me of this when he came to work at the Africa Study Centre in Leiden. I had briefly been a teacher of history in Nigeria, and we discovered that we held the same opinions regarding the war between Nigeria and Biafra.

At that time, opinion in the Netherlands was sharply divided about the terrible events going on in that part of the world. We found justification for our views in the unambiguous standpoint of the Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, who was admired in left-Africanist circles for his wisdom. Tanzanian socialism was welcomed as a worthy attempt to alleviate poverty.

In 1968 Klaas went to Tanzania to take up his first project for the ACS, in the district of Rungwe. Dares-Salaam, the country’s capital, was his first acquaintance with Africa. He liked it straight away. In the evenings he could be found dancing to a band that played good Tanzanian music in the inner courtyard of the cheap little hotel where he was staying. It was swelteringly hot, that January in 1968, but he liked his room with its mosquito net and slow revolving ceiling fan.

After spending a few days there, Klaas went to Rungwe, north of Lake Malawi, to live among the Nyakusa people. The aim of ASC project was to study the factors that stimulated or curbed the agricultural economy in the district. He was keen to apply his background in population studies, and he conducted several studies in villages in the area.

At first he was alone there, but later his wife Puck and their one-year-old son Enno joined him. They travelled around, stopping in different villages for three months at a time. Klaas spent most of his time observing life in the villages, talking with their inhabitants, dancing, eating and generally taking part in life with the people he met. With that experience, Africa became his abiding interest – not out of romanticism, but because he liked the people and the landscapes he found there. The problem of underdevelopment, and Nyerere’s approach to solving it, also fascinated him.

His second project took him to the other side of Africa, to Senegal in West Africa. This time he drove there from the Netherlands, right through the Sahara. Historically and culturally he found West Africa more stimulating than Tanzania, which had interested him mainly for its politics. It must be said that his work there wasn’t hugely productive. ‘I love wandering around Africa,’ he wrote.

The Senegal project concerned the causes and effects of migration from the African countryside, but for Klaas it was a disappointment. He wanted the study to be based on neo-Marxist principles, but he understood that the aim was to contribute to an understanding of regional development. These two approaches could not be combined in Senegal. The country was a neo-colony oriented towards capitalism, and it would hardly be interested in a study based on neo-Marxist principles. But he enjoyed the fieldwork, and lived in Ousyouye (a Diola village) and in Birkama (a Balante settlement).

In the meantime, he and Puck had had a second son, Arjen. This time the family stayed in the Netherlands, visiting him every so often in Senegal. (To this day, he has still not written up much of the material he collected there.)

Between 1974 and 1976 Klaas visited Guineau-Bissau. He spent time with a guerrilla unit that was taking part in the struggle for independence, and he was also there shortly after independence. This experience got him interested in the idea of working in a socialist country where the scientific and intellectual assumptions of his work would not differ strongly from those of the political environment. Purely academic or scientific work struck him as pointless. From his progressive point of view, academic or scientific research needed to be useful. That was how he came to be interested in Mozambique.

Klaas’s first marriage had in the meanwhile ended in divorce. With his anti-bourgeois need for freedom, he was not suited to a long, monogamous relationship. He enjoyed an intimate and confidential relationship with a woman, but living with her in a shared domestic arrangement made him want to continue to be himself, and to maintain a private space into which others were not invited.

To share everything with someone else, and on a permanent basis – that was unthinkable. He wanted to keep his fears, dreams and hopes for the future to himself. He liked being frank, but not completely; giving up your privacy meant giving up your independence. Without independence, he thought, a relationship would quickly degenerate into possessiveness. ‘I would find it dreadful to have to know someone completely, or to make them my personal possession,’ he wrote.

However, it must be said that Klaas allowed others the freedom that he insisted on for himself. He was seldom jealous, although he knew this could sometimes make his partner insecure and unhappy. He would sometimes be surprised, and wonder in a disarmingly naïve way, why people raised difficulties about his relationships. After all, no one thought it strange that people could love more than one child, did they? Klaas was not a person to pledge eternal faith to anyone. But that did not prevent him from getting into a relationship with Hélène Passtoors, a language specialist.

At that time, Klaas was working with the Eduardo Mondlane Foundation, preparing himself for work in Mozambique. Hélène also got interested and was offered a post as a lecturer at the university of Maputo. The pair travelled to Mozambique, and in 1982 Klaas got a job at the ministry of information in the capital. Just ten days before he arrived in Mozambique, the first attack by a South African hit squad had taken place in Matola, near Maputo. Twelve South Africans were murdered in their sleep.

As part of his work there, Klaas helped to set up local radio stations in communities around the country. Later he joined the Africa Study Centre (Centro de Estudos Africanos) of the university, headed by Aquino de Bragança. (De Bragança would later die with president Samora Machel in an airplane crash over South African territory.) Another member of the staff was the South Africa sociologist, Ruth First, who was director of research.

Klaas learned much through his participation in team research projects there. He acquired a better understanding of the current state of relations between Mozambique and South Africa. He worked in the Mozambique countryside and saw for himself what the MNR rebels were doing there, financed and supplied by South Africa. The car they were using was blown up. Schools, health clinics and local radio stations were destroyed. Murder and torture were common. Cars were shot at, and in one incident a little girl, the friend of his son, who was then six years old, was killed. Bridges were blown up, railway lines destroyed.

During that time Klaas got to know a number of South Africans, mostly members of the ANC, some of whom had been in South African prisons or on Robben Island. He and Hélène became increasingly involved in southern African events. South Africa was sending hit squads into neighbouring countries, supporting, the MNR rebels, and using its economic might to pressure Frontline states. Mozambique would never be really free, he realised, while the South African system continued to exist. Apartheid would therefore have to be confronted.

Klaas would later say Hélène became more emotionally involved than he did, but they both decided to work for the ANC. The South African aggression they saw enraged them, and they were deeply shocked by the murder of Ruth First, who was killed on 17 August 1982 by a letter bomb. They decided that they wanted to contribute to bringing down the apartheid regime.

For Klaas, the possibility of adventure also played a role, as well as the opportunity to experience an independence struggle from within— with the associated opportunity to study its military aspects. The question of violence did not worry him, because he regarded himself as an anti-militarist rather than as a pacifist.

During one of his undercover operations, Klaas spent the night on a South African beach; a patrolling policeman passed by, engaged him in a friendly chat, and then went on his way, suspecting nothing. Klaas had a pistol close to hand, and later said that the policeman had been ‘lucky’. Would he have shot him? He thought he would have – he was certainly not a pacifist. But his mother thinks that his dislike of violence would have won out, and that he would not have shot the man.

As he saw it, the members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, were anti-militarists who made reluctant use of military methods. Klaas had already adopted the position that the apartheid regime could only be overthrown by an armed struggle. The ANC’s position was that violence was a necessary means of mobilising political forces to bring an end to apartheid.

Klaas was never enthusiastic about joining any sort of party or organization. He felt that a person should always accept full responsibility for himself or herself. Religion, political affiliation and personal relationships all prevented that, because each could result in situations involving emotional blackmail. But he also realised that national revolutionary movements required good organisations, such as political parties and trade unions, because good organisation was necessary to bring about structural change.

That was all the more true in situations in which the countervailing forces were strong, as in South Africa — a state with an army, a police force, a legal system and significant control over the economy. He was sympathetic to the ideas of anarchist movements, but they were clearly never going to bring an end to state power. Taking all this into account, Klaas decided that he had no objection to working for the ANC. He felt a strong personal need to take real action against apartheid, a racist system that he abhorred. Despite his dislike of institutions, he was also an activist, even if at times a rather dithering one.

For Klaas, it was also clear that the struggle against a totalitarian regime such as that in South Africa would have to be carried out on the basis of the idea that a socialist society was the best available alternative. Even so, he reserved for himself the right to express doubts and concerns about the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique, even in a context of war. He knew that it was only the socialist countries that were prepared to provide arms to liberation movements. He understood that there was a need for ‘certainties and simple truths’, as Milan Kundera puts it, in situations [of popular insurrection]; doubts and criticism could negatively impact the effectiveness of the struggle. Nevertheless, his own freedom to think critically was essential to his existence.

Even given all his doubts, he was convinced, with the ANC, that violence would not bring about a blessed solution, but rather that it was a necessary means to an end. He noted that people were being forced to fight the South African state with inadequate weapons. His basic position might be anti-militarist, but Klaas felt that he could make himself useful by helping to arm the people, which is to say, by helping to supply them with weapons.

His parents had never been the sort of people to believe that toy guns and other military playthings made children aggressive. During the war they saved money in order to buy some toy soldiers that Klaas very much wanted. He was pleased by the gift, but three days later he gave them to a friend who had not been given any by his parents.

Yet Klaas’s parents were not at all put out. Today, they see that small kindness as an early indication of his lack of materialism. He never had the slightest inkling of the idea of religious sense of sin. He could never understand the sense of guilt engendered by both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant varieties of Christianity; even less could he understand the ideas of the Reformed Church, either in the Netherlands or in South Africa. He was also unable to ‘believe’ in communism or Marxism. The only way a religion would have been acceptable to him was in the manner suggested by Heinrich Böll: as a connection between people, as a connection to the human in us all.

Above all, Klaas was interested in his own freedom – in the widest sense of that word. In Pretoria, however, he would be forced to live in a condition that was largely unfree. He was a free man in the sense that the South African security police were not able to lay their hands on him, but he was not free to go where he wanted, or to receive visits from people whom he wanted to see, or even to have telephone conversations with whomever he wanted. No one likes limitations to his freedom. For Klaas, it was very difficult to get used to.

He had always been restless. As a child, he could never keep still for long. When he was at school, and later at university, he would bring friends home to meet his parents — and later his girlfriends and wives — but his parents soon learned not to worry if he didn’t show up at home. They often didn’t know where he was, but they understood that he had a huge need for variety in his life. The same would be true when he became an adult.

Klaas liked being involved in Africa, but he also valued his connections with Paris and Amsterdam. He was happy in Africa because the social life there appealed to him. But as time went by, he felt an increasing longing for Amsterdam.

And then, suddenly, he was stuck in the (former) Dutch embassy in Pretoria – in the heart of the Afrikaner power machine, enduring the stone gaze of Paul Kruger, the former president of the Transvaal. And, of course, also the surveillance by the South African police. He was allowed limited visiting rights, but not everyone wanted to; in white South Africa, to be seen visiting him could give you a bad name. He was allowed to call his lawyer and his family, but it was not enough for a lively, restless, talkative man. Even so, he endured two years of unnatural, hermit-like existence with admirable fortitude, as this journal shows.

Klaas would never write a letter if he could sit up all night talking. Now, in this bizarre situation, he found himself writing. He filled page after page with accounts of his experiences, as well as his reflections and memories of his life. And he wrote with amazing frankness, without exaggeration or pretension.

Personally, I am surprised that such an open man was able to carry out underground operations at all. However, his parents are not in the least surprised. As they see it, Klaas was always good at keeping secrets. As a child, he would never reveal to anyone what presents he had bought for members of the family. In the same way, he kept his work for the ANC secret; only his brother Jan knew anything about it. (This was in case anything went wrong.) When the news of his arrest broke, his parents knew nothing about his involvement. The only unusual thing they noticed was that they received an unusually nice letter from him shortly before it happened, thanking them for everything and telling them how much they meant to him. ‘It seemed to be a sort of farewell letter,’ his mother recalls now.

Now, of course, his parents know a lot more about what their son had been secretly doing during those years, and they are proud of him. They admire his courage and the way he weathered the difficult circumstances in which he found himself. More than anyone, they know how restless he is and how difficult it must have been for him.

Klaas de Jonge does not doubt that he had a right to work for the ANC. For him, it was an act of solidarity of the kind that brought international brigades into the Spanish Civil War, and which led, during the Second World War, to armed underground resistance in Europe.

[Quote]

Klaas de Jonge: ‘’When you have experienced something like this, you realise that you have to do something about it. You feel that you are involved somehow, and that everyone should be concerned.’

1 Lusaka

11 Johannesburg

Homelands:

2 Harare

12 Bapsfontein

a Robben Island

3 Beira

13 Soweto

b Kruger Park

4 Matola

14 Brakpan

c Bophuthatswana

5 Maputo

15 Mbabane

d Lebowa

6 Windhoek

16 Maseru

e Transkei

7 Gaberone

17 Durban

f Ciskei

8 Mafeking

18 Port Elizabeth

g Kangwane

9 Zeerust

19 Cape Town

h KwaZulu

10 Pretoria

20 Pietersburg

i Qwaqwa

Pretoria Journal

How I ended up in South Africa

I have worked in black Africa – particularly Tanzania, Senegal, Mozambique and Zimbabwe – since 1968. I had of course already formed an opinion about the situation in South Africa. In the Netherlands I regularly took part in activities against the apartheid regime. When I lived in the southern African region, I got the opportunity to observe how aggressively the South African regime behaved. In Mozambique I was exposed to the activities of the pro-South African MNR rebels: the murder of Ruth First and the destruction of communities and villages in the countryside.

It was soon clear to me that Mozambique could not be able to develop while the South African regime was in power. So I became involved, when I wasn’t working, in activities that helped to undermine the racist system in South Africa. A country that defies all feeling for democracy and justice must be opposed. South Africa was the only country in the world where basic human rights were withheld from the majority of the population. As a foreigner and a specialist in Africa I felt directly involved in all this.

I was convinced, long before I went to South Africa, that armed struggle was the only way to overthrow the apartheid regime. In 1981 I went to work Mozambique, where I came into contact with the ANC and some of the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation, the military wing of the ANC. At that time they were very actively expanding the underground in South Africa.

The South African government hit back with raids on South African refugees in the neighbouring countries and with murderous attacks on members of the ANC. The ANC started setting up small mobile units in the black townships whose purpose was to training young people in the basic principles of sabotage, as well as setting up and manning barricades. This was always accompanied by political training; for the ANC, political organisation is the basis of everything else. I very much wanted to help, and indeed I thought that it was my duty to do so as an engagé Africa specialist.

Assignments for the ANC

1982. Talks with people from Umkhonto we Sizwe. The special operations unit is responsible for large, spectacular attacks, such as those on the Sasol oil refineries and on the nuclear power station, Koeberg.

I was assigned to do some reconnaissance on a railway bridge. My task was to take photos that were good enough to calculate the measurements of the bridge’s components. I was also tasked with observing and recording the kinds of trains that crossed the bridge and describing the nearby approach and exit roads, and the kind of traffic that used them.

Sometime afterward, I drove into South Africa. You’re always checked at the border. Sometimes there are large road blocks a few kilometres from the border post, manned by heavily armed policemen in camouflage. Sometimes they’ll wave a white man through, sometimes not. This time, though, I did not encounter any sort of a road block within twenty kilometres of the border. I drove right through Natal and then into KwaZulu, Gatsha Buthelezi’s Bantustan.

The landscape there is mountainous, with much bush and few trees. After a day of driving I was getting close to the railway bridge, but towards evening I ran into a road block. A sergeant approached me and asked what I was doing there. I said that I was a Dutch tourist en route to a game reserve, and said that I was astonished to be stopped by the police. He responded by asking, with some surprise, if we did not also have road blocks in the Netherlands. The police then escorted me to a T-junction and showed me the ‘right’ way to go ...

I located the bridge the following day, and worked through the tasks I’d been assigned. Then I hid the notes, photos and sketches and drove back a few days later, feeling very content. I was then asked to transport explosives to the same place. I already had an idea where they could be safely hidden. Over the border I went again, this time with a car full of explosives.

I liked working alone. From a security point of view this isn’t always a good thing because you can’t keep watch while you’re busy unloading and hiding things. On the other hand it forces you to be careful. Then there’s the fact that if things go wrong you can’t betray anyone and no one can betray you.

I was relieved to see the bridge again, but I got the fright of my life: there on the road, near the river, were two SAP Landrovers. Luckily I was driving a different car. I could only hope that they weren’t the policemen who’d manned the road block I’d encountered a few months before. They were rather suspicious of me, but they let me through. The hiding place I’d had in mind was clearly out of the question. I’d have to dig a hole somewhere in this landscape of boulders and stones ...

I found a quiet place where I would be able dig a hole at night and unload my explosives. I left the hole covered in sand, stones and thorn bush. Didn’t see anyone that night. Operation successful. Drove back home. Submitted my report, then back to normal again – work, wife, house, children. At least, so far as the outside world was concerned.

A year later, only, a small group of four guerrillas left to carry out the next phase of the operation. They were arrested. The following day the police announced that the weapons cache had been found – the guerrillas must have been tortured.

Years later, when I was myself arrested, I told the police that I had carried out the reconnaissance and that I had also brought in the explosives. It didn’t matter anymore.

Reconnaissance trips and weapons transports became a routine, but there are a couple that I won’t soon forget.

A city on the coast, sometime in 1984. My mission was to transfer a load without meeting anyone. A bakkie would be standing ready and I knew where to look for the key. I unloaded the weapons from a secret hiding place and began to load them into the car. A patrol of some black policemen with dogs appeared and called at me. called at by. I yawned and stretched as I got out of the car, the back seats of which were covered in weapons.

One of the policemen said: ‘What are you doing?’ Well, the fact was that I was white and he was black. His dog pulled at its lead and growled. The cop stayed at a distance of about five metres from the car. ‘You aren’t allowed to be here,’ he said. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that!’ I replied.

I drove away with the weapons still lying loose on the back seat. I switched the lights on only after I had driven some distance and drove into the city, where I quickly packed everything in the boot. Then I parked the car about a kilometre from the place where the other car was waiting, put on my track suit and jogged to the place where the bakkie was waiting. Being unfamiliar with the vehicle, and I inadvertently sounded the horn, turned on the indicators and set the windscreen wipers going before I found the headlamp switch. Then I drove the delivery vehicle to the car, quickly transferred the load, returned the bakkie to its former parking place, jogged back to the car and drove away, relieved, in my own car. Not long after that a military attack was carried out not far from there. I wondered briefly whether the weapons used were ‘mine’.

During a ‘work’ visit to South Africa, in 1982 I think, I bought a pistol, a Star 9 mm with ammunition. Whites can easily acquire weapons and I had an export licence for the Oshoek border post. I’d never been frisked before, so it seemed best simply to stick it my inner pocket. At the border my car was thoroughly searched, and the customs people started getting interested in me when they found a couple of ‘suspicious’ books.

One was a beautiful book of photos of Senegalese life and people. What was I doing with a book about ‘kaffirs’? Maybe I was a ‘kaffirboetie’ (a friend of blacks)? The next book seemed to confirm their suspicions, since it was about communism in Southern Africa. In fact it was the work of a white pro-apartheid Afrikaner, but this escaped them.

I was taken to the offices of the security police and subjected to an interrogation for hours. What was I doing in South Africa, what were my views on the country? They phoned Pretoria about the suspicious book and my car was searched gain. They found a pistol-cleaning set and asked me if I had a pistol. They got very excited when I said ‘yes’, but I showed them the export licence and told them that the situation in Mozambique was very dangerous; I needed the pistol to protect my wife and children. This was something a white Boer in black Africa could understand, and when Pretoria assured them that the book about communism in southern Africa was in fact very good, they became very friendly.

I should have declared the weapon, they said. Normally they would not allow me to enter Swaziland with it, but this time they would help me out. (I should have left the pistol-cleaning set behind, should have realised that it might betray me, I thought.) I was advised to read the book about communism very carefully – I had after all had the opportunity to see what communists were capable of doing to a beautiful country like Mozambique. Before independence things had been good there. They had all been on holiday to Lourenço Marques and enjoyed the women and the fishing there. Had I met anyone from the ANC? Would I consider gathering a little information about them now and then? I said I would think about it.

After a couple of hours I was allowed to go, with my pistol, and with the best wishes of the security branch. The next time I was in the area, I should stop by.

Beach mission. I had found a good hiding place for an important load in the dunes near a beach that was reserved for Indians, but where it would not be too suspicious for strangers – such as myself or the (possibly) black comrades who would pick up the load – to be seen.

I arrived there quite late, but there were still people in the beach; it appeared that someone had just drowned there. I set up my tent and hoped that I wouldn’t be noticed. By about two in the morning the beach was empty and I could start digging. It started to rain and I was wet, dirty and sweaty from the work. But the job was complete, and the hiding place was well covered. I decided to go for a swim and had just put on my swimming costume when a car drove onto the beach. Two men got out and shone powerful torches in my direction. I hesitated for a moment, and then decided to see what would happen and sat down in the sand.

They were a couple of policemen, one black and the other Indian, and they cautiously approached me, asking in a suspicious tone what I was doing. ‘Camping,’ I said. ‘Are you alone?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Who is in the tent?’ they asked. ‘No one,’ I said. ‘Can we have a look?’

Only shortly before, the tent had been full of weapons, but luckily none of them were visible. Even so, the cops were very suspicious. After all, this was a country where it was a criminal offence for a white man to be with a black woman. They recommended that I go to an official camping site. Then they left without asking for my ID documents; possibly they noted the number plate of my car. I decided to strike the tent and get out of there.

Guerrilla war can be very boring work: digging a large hole somewhere, all by yourself; lying on your belly for hours, making observations; sitting for hours alone in a car. The adventure is in the sense of satisfaction that you get after a successful operation, when you know you’ve outsmarted the enemy. But while in action you’re often tense, scared, cold, lonely and tired. I took a lot of pills to keep myself going for 24 or 36 hours at a stretch, without ever speaking to anyone, waiting, walking, driving and ‘working’.

The arrest and the trials
The flight

I’ll never forget that day. On Sunday, at four in the morning, the alarm clock went off in my hotel room. I got up and a half hour later went to my car. It was cold and still pitch dark. When I started the car, the dashboard lights went out. I had a spare fuse with me, but after ten minutes it alsofailed. So I’d have to drive in the dark without rear lights.

I had to be in Harare that day – 380 km to Mafeking and then about 1 200 km to Harare. I needed to be across the border near Botswana before six that afternoon. I wasn’t looking forward to the long drive, but I did have some pleasant things to think about: my new job, and Beverley, who I would see again that evening.

There was very little traffic, but I didn’t dare drive faster than a hundred because of the defective rear lights; driving faster than the speed limit might attract the attention of the police. I was cold, very cold. When it got lighter, I started driving faster. I could see some cars some distance behind me, but they kept their distance. Some people were standing on the side of the road, hitching, about fifty kilometres from Mafeking. It appeared that they were three policemen who wanted to go to Mafeking.

At about seven, a car passed us and then braked and stayed in front of me. What an idiot, I thought. I wanted to pass him, but then a second car appeared next to my car, while behind me a third appeared. I was boxed in and had to stop. I knew that it was the police, of course, but I wasn’t too worried. They often patrolled borders areas like this. The policeman-hitchers sat very still and did not look around.

My door was suddenly opened and a pistol was aimed at me. I was told to get out. At least six men stood there with weapons in their hands. I was made to lean on the car while they frisked me. When they finished that, I was made to sit on the ground. Only then were the policemen in the car allowed to get out and their addresses noted. Then the cops began to look through the car, very thoroughly.

They found nothing, of course, and I was still hoping that they’d let me go. But there was no question of that. They arrested me, muttering some or other formula about any statements made to them. I was made to get into one of their cars, in the front, next to the driver. I was cold and shivering.

They took me to the office of the South African security police in Zeerust. These offices are often hidden in shopping centres and from the outside you’d never known that they are occupied by members of the most hated branch of the South African police. In Zeerust, their office was right in the middle of the city, above a chemist’s. They checked my passport and car papers, and then we waited for ‘the colonel’. In the afternoon I was given milk and a hamburger. When I wanted to go the toilet, a guard went with me and the door remained open.

At about three o’clock three men came in: Colonel Erasmus, Colonel Du Toit and Captain Van Wijk. Erasmus presented himself as friendly and understanding. (He was the ‘nice officer’ Ruth First described in her book, who talked to her occasionally during her lonely solitary imprisonment.) Du Toit was a giant of a man, with hands like coal scuttles. Van Wijk was smaller and friendlier, and I never had any trouble from him.

That afternoon Du Toit took me aside. Looking down at me condescendingly – and I can assure you, you have to be very tall to do that – he said: ‘Young man, you are going to talk, believe me.’ Then we went to my car, which was again thoroughly searched. And again they found nothing. But then they brought two explosives dogs, which sniffed the cars and lay down next to a police car and then next to mine.

They searched my car again and finally found the hidden compartment where I’d hidden the radio and my pistol. Shortly after that I was taken away, with Van Wijk driving and Du Toit beside him in the front; the latter immediately fell asleep. Erasmus was sitting next to me. When he leaned forward I saw that his pistol was loose in its holster and that I’d be able to get to it very easily. Van Wijk noticed this in his mirror and made a remark about it.

It was dark when we finally arrived at John Vorster Square, the notorious security branch building in Johannesburg. I was handcuffed and taken to the seventh floor, where a large group of senior security policemen was waiting for us. The first to start asking questions was the fat and pedantic Major Craig Williamson.

They told me that the behaviour of the dogs had shown that I had been transporting explosives. From documents in their possession it appeared that I had contact with a number of senior members of the ANC. Most of their questions after that concerned Hélène. I said that I hadn’t seen her for a long time, that we were divorced and neither of us wanted anything to do with the other again. They showed me a photo of Hélène and me together on some Johannesburg street. It was a recent photo. At that point I realised that something had gone seriously wrong and that it was possible that they might also pick her up.

The interrogation continued until two in the morning. ‘Come with us,’ they said. I was handcuffed again and we went downstairs, taking the stairs. For a moment, I was frightened of being tortured. John Vorster Square is confusing building and – certainly in the evenings, when all the floors are dark and empty – very oppressive. On a lower floor I was shown along narrow corridors. Barred cell door after barred cell door, sometimes resembling the door of a vault. We descended via narrow concrete steps, ever deeper, ever more lonely. The men who were escorting me said nothing. They showed me the way to go by pressing on a shoulder.

I thought, here goes; and tried to prepare myself. But the only thing that happened was that my details were noted, and then I was shown to another floor, where I was put in a cell. I fell asleep almost immediately. After that I was never afraid of being tortured.

It is difficult to describe the constant round of daily interrogations, which were sometimes conducted in the early hours of the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening and sometimes at night. I was made to tell the same stories, time after time. They never wrote anything down. Maybe they didn’t think my stories important, or maybe they recorded everything.

The day after I was arrested I was taken to see a police doctor. I was in exceptionally good health it seemed. After that I was cuffed again and taken upstairs. I had to shuffle along because they’d removed the laces from my shoes; I also had to hold up my trousers with one hand because they’d confiscated my belt. My spectacles had been taken away the night before, but they’d been given back to me.

The previous evening I’d been given a form listing my possessions: belt, laces, bracelets, watch, ring, ballpoint pen. It did not include my car, camera, radio-cassette recorder, car radio, tool kit, camping equipment, luggage, books or calculator included. I can kind of understand that they never returned my pistol, but it was a pity about the rest of my things.

The clothes that I’d been wearing were sent to Pretoria for forensic examination for traces of explosives. I still had the leather jacket that I’d borrowed from Enno. It was great to have something that had been given to me by someone I loved.

None of them ever called me ‘De Jonge’; they always called me ‘Klaas’. I decided never to address any of them as ‘mister’ or ‘sir’. I either used their first name or their rank. A certain Captain Oosthuizen (or Oosterhuizen – I never quite heard his name) had been put in charge of my case. He was ex-military, with years of service against the ANC, and was said to have abducted people from Swaziland. He was very energetic and he’d get very angry on occasion, but for the most part his behaviour was correct. He never struck me, for instance.

You’re very much alone, facing those endless interrogations. You can’t consult with anyone else, and you have to watch out that you don’t caught out by the supposed ‘friendliness’ of your enemy – because that’s what he is and always will be. It was only when I was in that situation that I realised that I’d never really faced any difficulty alone; there were always people available who I trusted and could talk things over with. I’d never been in a situation where the choices available were so utterly, one hundred percent my own.

Well, you communicate with your enemy, but from an unequal position. The interrogator has total power to break you, physically and mentally. However, in my case the cops didn’t dare to treat a foreigner as they had Steve Biko or Neil Aggett. It was soon clear that they weren’t going to torture me. Knowing this gave me some strength. I’d always been afraid of being tortured and I don’t know how I would have reacted to it.

I thought that I was smarter than them, but that proved to be a miscalculation. Afterwards it emerged that I made some mistakes.

I was hoping that my son and my friend in Harare would be worried when I failed to arrive on Sunday evening, as planned. Hopefully they would start making inquiries. But the police foresaw this and sent a telegram in my name saying that I’d had trouble with the car and that I’d be back later than planned. On the Monday they played some recordings of discussion between myself and Hélène – at her house and in her car. I wasn’t surprised when they told me that they’d arrested Hélène and her daughter, Brigitte.

From the beginning I demanded repeatedly that I be allowed to call the embassy, but this was refused. They wanted to know if I worked for the Dutch secret service. What was my connection with the embassy? They were a little uncertain about this. I had a ‘service passport’ of a kind mostly carried by members of diplomatic missions abroad who are not entitled to diplomatic immunity. I’d also registered my car at the address of the Dutch consulate in Johannesburg; this is something Dutch people on their travels often do. Moreover, my Zimbabwean number plate ended in a D, which they first thought might be a diplomatic number. All this explains perhaps why I was so correctly dealt with.

I decided from the beginning not to cooperate, but also not to challenge them or irritate them. Why should I deny that I sometimes encountered members of the ANC? These were people who were well known in Maputo. I admitted that I’d prepared and stocked the weapons cache in KwaZulu because they already knew about it. I made some mistakes. It wasn’t necessary to give them the location of a weapons cache that I knew to be current and fully stocked.

You find yourself taking account of ‘the other’, even though you reject him. I never felt any sort of friendship with them, but we understood each other very well sometimes. There was a moment when the Dutch consul, a certain Mr Meijhuizen handed me a gift with great pomp and circumstance: a plastic bag with an over-ripe banana and a bar of chocolate in it. The captain, his assistant and I laughed about it, later. The consul was an outsider, a ‘real Dutchman’ in the negative sense. But at other times the captain and I agreed that in other circumstances neither of us would haveany problem shooting the other dead, and we both believed it.

I appeared before a magistrate for the first time on Tuesday, 25 June. He told me that I was being held under section 29 of the Internal Security Act of 1982. In South Africa the police can detain you on suspicion of planting a bomb, but they can also detain you for participating in a protest march. They’d caught me more-or-less red-handed. I’d been presented with the evidence of this the previous day. Looking back, I wonder how it is possible that I hadn’t seen the people who must have been following me.

During the interrogations they were mainly interested in the locations of other weapons caches. From my passport they learned that I’d travelled to South Africa at least six times during the previous months. I maintained that I had only ‘done anything’ during my last trip. In January I had taken my sons to the Kruger National Park for a holiday, and after that I had gone to Johannesburg several times to take in the atmosphere of the big city: the cinemas, shops (particularly bookshops), street musicians and discos of Hillbrow.

The interrogator would say: ‘Take the rap, man! You’re a soldier. The game’s up. Just talk. Everyone talks in the end. We’ve broken lots of intellectuals. We only have to put you on ice ...’ But that threat didn’t scare me – I think that I could have held out in solitary confinement for a very long time.

They’d say: ‘You’re a coward, man! You transport weapons and explosives that are used to kill others, blacks and women and children – but not you, somehow. And now you don’t want to stand by what you did. You’re not a soldier, you’re just a cowardly murderer.’ I wasn’t impressed. I never had a moment’s regret about what I did. I would do it again.

They also wanted to know about the letters in the secret compartment in my car and about my contacts with the ANC. I said that I wasn’t a member because I wasn’t South African and knew hardly anything about it. They said I was lying. I had been in command of the external network, Hélène had been in command of the internal network. I said that it wasn’t for nothing that Hélène and I were divorced. We knew absolutely nothing about each other’s lives now.

One day, I think on Wednesday 26 June, I was taken very early from my cell. The captain was very excited. He had something terrible to tell me. Brigitte, he said, wasn’t handling solitary confinement well. She blamed her mother for it, but mainly she blamed me. I’d got her mother into this situation and she couldn’t take it any longer. She had tried to commit suicide by stuffing almost all of a toilet roll into her mouth, but the female guard had heard her choking, and had prevented the worst from happening.

I was shocked. Brigitte was pregnant, something I’d only learned that Saturday. She would naturally be worried about her mother, and about me too, possibly. A young girl like that – in solitary confinement. I suddenly felt angry with Hélène. Why hadn’t she sent Brigitte back to Europe earlier, as we’d agreed?

But then it came out: according to ‘my’ captain, Colonel Erasmus would be prepared to let Brigitte go. Everything depended on me. Hélène had already promised to cooperate and was preparing a full statement. She and her friend would cooperate because that would mean that they would be exchanged for Du Toit, the South African commando who was a prisoner in Angola.

I doubted that the other two would believe this, but that they might cooperate seemed a very likely possibility. I got angry and yelled at him. He was using children to blackmail me for information. It was the kind of thing the Nazis had done. But at the same time I saw that he had me in his power and that I’d have to give in.

‘My’ captain added: ‘And you will tell us about them all. I will not be satisfied with only one location.’

Well, something could be done about that. They didn’t know how many caches there were, and I knew a number of locations that would now be empty. During the afternoon I was taken back to my cell to think for an hour. When they brought up again, I asked Erasmus for confirmation that Brigitte would go Harare the following day, Thursday. The colonel asked if Brigitte had known anything about our activities. I told him the truth – that she hadn’t.

That Wednesday afternoon I gave them the locations of two places. One of them was about thirty kilometres south-west of Johannesburg in a wood not far from Soweto. They believed that straight away, because they’d seen me there with Hélène the previous Saturday. I was taken there with ‘my’ captain, his assistant Rob, two explosives experts, Colonel Erasmus, Brigadier Du Toit from Pretoria and a Major Cronright – a nasty-looking Afrikaner who draped a long, thin strand of hair over his head to hide his baldness. Cronright had apparently followed us that previous Saturday. Aside from them there was a detective, who took the photos and wrote up the statements, and a few others. We went there in a cavalcade of at least six cars.

They began to dig, but the ground was very hard and they became suspicious when they hadn’t found anything after digging to a depth of half a metre. I insisted that we were in the right place, and was made to dig. A decision was taken to bring the dog unit in. A police general with a Dutch background took me aside and said that I was a ‘real Dutch arsehole’ and that they would ‘get’ me. The dog went around the site and after some sniffing lay down in the hole. ‘My’ captain was furious and yelled that you could see from the structure of the soil that there had never been anything here. What about the dog? I said.

Meanwhile, it was getting dark. A black African who was cycling through the wood on his bicycle came upon the large group of policemen, took fright and tried to take a wide berth around us. ‘Come here!’ someone yelled. Cap in hand, he approached: ‘yes boss, no boss.’

The same day, they also wanted to see the second place I’d given up. Would I be able to find it in the dark? I said I would. It was in a totally different location, to the east of Johannesburg and Pretoria, not very far from Bapsfontein. When we got there, they refused to believe that anyone who was not from the district could have known about such a place. Excitedly, they began to dig. Indeed, they found some newspapers, the remains of some plastic bags and two small Russian limpet mines that must have been left there. Now they wouldn’t be able to go back on the agreement to let Brigitte go to Harare, I thought. Erasmus said that she’d probably leave the country the following day. I went back to my cell a reasonably satisfied man.

On Thursday, 27 June, ‘my’ captain stormed into an interrogation, yelling that I’d lied to them. They’d carried out tests on the first location I’d first shown them and the results proved that the soil hadn’t been disturbed in a long time. I’d been playing games with them. Well, I would now discover what the security police were capable of. It was total war between us. Brigitte would stay where she was. He’d order a thorough investigation into my circumstances in Harare.

I was unsettled and got very angry. I stood up and yelled that it was he, who was always talking about ‘soldiers’ codes’, who had been lying and also abusing children. ‘Don’t point your finger at me,’ he yelled, and stamped cursing from the room. After that his assistant and another policeman took over.

They told me, in detail, what the captain was capable of. They’d seen him in action. He’d destroy everyone in my life to get to me: son, girlfriend, friends, dogs – and so on. They described in graphic detail how he could reduce someone to a ‘vegetable’. You could drive a person crazy by hitting them repeatedly on the head with a telephone receiver, and without leaving traces ...

I decided to give them something if doing so would get Brigitte out. It was a half-load that I’d brought in a short while before – about eight large limpet mines and sixteen small ones with detonators. The cache was located about 100 metres from a police station in Muldersdrift, west of Johannesburg. Again we went there in a cavalcade of cars. Erasmus was with us and he told me that Brigitte would, indeed, be allowed to leave that very afternoon.

Later it emerged that Brigitte had never even been detained.

Between 27 June and 7 July I was either held in solitary confinement or interrogated or taken somewhere. We went, for example, by helicopter to Durban – Colonel Du Toit and his wife, Major Cronwright and I. It was a nice change after a few days alone in the cell. I showed them a place on the beach, but there was nothing there, of course. Then we went back, and were treated to a beautiful view of Natal.

During this period I was also frequently asked about the ANC. I was shown books of photos and told to indicate anyone I recognised. Naturally, I didn’t recognise anyone, aside from people who were well-known – Tambo, and so on. I also indicated people when I was 100% certain that it would not cause any harm. People like Indres Naidoo in Maputo, who was part of the ANC’s official representation there and certainly known to the South Africans. I said that I knew him socially, that our children were at the same school, which would have been the case anyway for most foreigners and aid workers.

I was interrogated in great detail about the methods I used to bring my loads into the country, but I maintained that the car would always be packed by other people who I never saw, who had a key to the car. Maybe I shouldn’t have given them the locations of the empty hiding places, but I still believe that it would not have damaged the ANC, while it might give me the chance to escape. You think about that all the time, of course.

At the beginning of July they showed me a couple of sketches of hiding places. I wasn’t allowed to look at them for long, but it was long enough to see that the sketches were my own. Clearly they now had an additional source of information. For example, they told me that a hiding place in Pretoria could not have been where I had claimed but that it had to be the one in Mamelodi. I’d invented the place I told them about, and I’d never told them about Mamelodi, so I assumed that they’d found it. I was making plans to escape, and decided to give them the place in Mamelodi during my next interrogation. That was on Sunday, 7 July, fourteen days after my arrest. We went there straight away. When we got there, I was disturbed to see the canvas sack full of limpet mines, AK 47s and ammunition.

I felt terrible, a traitor. When we left, the cops with me asked why I’d given them that particular hiding place. I could only say that I’d thought it would be empty. I told them more than was necessary and I still feel very guilty about it. The bastards gloated. ‘If we were to let you go now, your own people would kill you. That’s what the ANC does,’ they said. I could only reply: ‘Do it then. I’ll take the risk.’ But they didn’t take up that particular challenge.

When they started asking me about the reconnaissance trips that I had done, I thought: what if I tell them that I’d reconnoitred in Pretoria, and then lead them to the Dutch embassy? If I did that in the early afternoon, I’d have time in the morning to work out how to get out of my handcuffs. I went to sleep that Sunday night full of excitement. On the Monday I told them about the reconnaissance trips in Pretoria, and on the Tuesday I was taken there. I took them to the Voortrekker Monument, a site that gives you a good a vantage over the military complex of Voortrekkerhoogte.

Even with my ankles in chains, I was able to walk up the stairs faster than the three cops who were with me. I’d kept myself in shape by running in the courtyard twice a day for thirty minutes, and it was clear that the chains wouldn’t hinder my ability to walk if I held them up in a certain way. After that I took them on a trip through a military base where I’d once walked around. I was ecstatic to see how puzzled they were at the fact that I succeeded in doing this .

We ate lunch sitting in the car – cokes and snack bars. At that point I told them that I’d also done reconnaissance in the city centre, in the area near the main police station, for example. I’d also checked out the Nedbank building close by.

I prepared myself: H-hour was close now.

We went to the Nedbank building: a captain from the ‘normal’ police, two security branch men and myself. I said that I wanted to show them something on the second floor. I knew that the Dutch embassy was on the first floor. They took photos of me in front of the building. Luckily, the Dutch flag wasn’t flying. The coat-of-arms was displayed, however, and I was afraid that they would see it.

When we entered the building, I checked the list of occupants; among them, of course, was the Dutch embassy. The lift wasn’t standing open and ready, so I suggested that we use the stairs; I wanted to get them out of the foyer, where they might notice that the Dutch embassy was in the building. They agreed, not having noticed anything. I was feeling very tense but I managed to talk calmly as we took the stairs up to the first floor. Once we were there, I saw the words DUTCH EMBASSY in large letters, but the door was further away from the stairs than I’d anticipated.

In the middle of the corridor, at the point where the stairs ran up to the second floor, I went into a sprint, grasping the middle of the chain that linked my ankles so I wouldn’t trip over it. I heard shouts behind me, but there was no shot. Luckily the door wasn’t locked. I stormed in, yelling: ‘I am a political prisoner, a Dutch citizen; my name is Klaas de Jonge.’

I did not get much further into the office before the senior security man tackled me and threw me down. Lying on the floor in front of the counter, I could see two frightened secretaries. The detective wasn’t far behind. He stood nervously waving his pistol and screaming: ‘Ik [sic] moer jou!’ (roughly: ‘I’ll get you!’)

They seized me by the shoulders and by the chain linking my ankles, and dragged me out of the waiting room. But I felt I’d accomplished my mission. The embassy knew of my existence now. Also, I’d got one over the police. While they were cursing and pushing me along the corridor, the ambassador’s counsellor, a Mr Bentinck appeared, protesting and demanding that the detective identify himself.

I told him who I was, but it appeared that he already knew about my arrest. He requested that they return me to the office, but they weren’t going to do that. I was taken back to the security branch office in Pretoria. I’d been extremely lucky that Mr Bentinck had been around. Later it emerged that the secretaries, who’d been behind thick bullet-proof glass, heard nothing of what I had screamed at them.

Back in Johannesburg, I was immediately put back in my cell. I wanted to see one of the senior officers, to submit a complaint. At about ten that evening, a major came into the cell. His job had to do with prisoners more generally, he wasn’t a security branch man. He got angry and screamed that it had gone on long enough. He could break my jaw in two places if he wanted. The guards would simply testify that I had fallen off my chair. But he didn’t actually get physical. He calmed down, and even laughed when he understood that I wanted to protest my removal from the embassy.

From that moment he was the soul of friendliness.

During the days that followed I was taken all around the country. I was now much more heavily guarded. Aside from the ankle chains I was now also handcuffed. There were now five guards, instead of three. In the car I’d be chained to the seat, and the handcuffs and ankle chains would be linked.

The first meeting with the consul came unexpectedly, but it was important, because that was when I learned for the first time that Hélène was doing well, that Brigitte had never been detained, that Enno was in the Netherlands and that The Hague had protested against my detention. I also learned that the chances of my being transferred to the embassy were limited.

I heard nothing further for a while. Then, after a couple of very long interrogations, I was suddenly called upstairs. I was told to dress neatly and allowed to shave (mostly I went without shaving). It was only when a form was put in front of me in which I acknowledged receiving my bag, money etc, that I understood that something was going on. It was half-past-two. Ten minutes later I was in a car to Pretoria, where I was delivered to a rear entrance at the embassy promptly at four.

I’d spent twenty-six nights in the cell. I hadn’t been tortured, sure, but solitary confinement isn’t much fun either. Sometimes I’d be hauled from my cell and subjected to very long interrogations – as long twelve hours at a stretch. Sometimes I’d be left alone, seeing no one except the guard who brought my food.

The food was okay. In the morning you got four brown-bread sandwiches, two with jam and two with egg and bacon, and a bowl of some kind of stiff porridge. At lunchtime it was a bowl of rice or macaroni, meat or fish, vegetables plus bread. It was much the same in the evening. You got a container of coffee or tea with each meal.

Twice a day, I was allowed to take a warm shower and then walk around for a while in an inner courtyard. I used those two thirty-minute periods to do some running. The courtyard was about 50 square metres, and every day I ran between four and eight kilometres. When I was in my cell I also did various physical exercises. My bed was a felt blanket, which served as a mattress. I had five heavy horse blankets: one to sleep on, one as a pillow (with Enno’s leather jacket wrapped around it), and the three others to keep me warm.

The only reading matter allowed was the Bible. During that time I never saw a book or a newspaper, and never heard any radio. I read the New Testament for the first time, and also most of the Old Testament. The situation in South Africa strongly resembled a number of Old Testament stories.

While I was in prison, I was given a physical examination every fourteen days by a doctor, who would ask me if I’d been tortured. A magistrate came round every fourteen days as well, wanting to know if you had any complaints, accompanied by an inspector whose job it was to check on your mental state. Solitary confinement (‘sitting on ice’) can make you very disoriented. It’s a form of torture in itself, certainly if it continues for a long time.

During an actual investigation, however, all of that plays less of a role. The worst is that the light in my cell was kept on day and night, and I was under the constant camera surveillance. There were people in the other cells, but I never saw any of them and I never heard them either. The entire interior of the cell was covered in thick plastic sheeting that allowed some light to enter, but hardly any sound. You are extremely isolated. It was also chilly in the cell.

As a section 29 prisoner, I never saw anyone except my interrogators and my guards. When I was hauled from my cell for another interrogation or to take my thirty-minute period of courtyard exercise, the doors of the other cells were always closed as we passed in the corridor. I once tried to look through one of the peepholes as we were passing, but I was quickly pulled away. From my window I could sometimes see black prisoners taking the air on a level slightly above my cell. One evening I heard them singing, and it was very impressive. Listening to the voices gave me goose bumps, in fact. Once I heard someone crying and screaming and the sound of blows. But nothing else.

To deal with the boredom, I tried to sleep longer hours. It was difficult at first, but I got used to going to bed at about ten in the evening. When I woke in the morning, I’d lie in for a while. Then I’d slowly eat my breakfast, get dressed and make my bed. I’d do some exercise in the morning, and then wait to see if I’d be taken out to the courtyard. I’d sit leaning against the concrete bed platform, or lie on the blankets thinking, or read the Bible. Sometimes I paced around the cell. But the bed platform limited the space, as did the large double door and the toilet. Food arrived via a hatch in the inner door. Nothing was said and I could see nothing through the hatch. I’d hear the metal outer door being briefly opened and closed.

In solitary confinement you’re completely incommunicado: no visits, no legal consultation. Only the security police know where you are. For the rest of the world, you’ve disappeared. Poor Hélène, who would get into a panic when she was locked up as a child. In Maputo, later, she would get terribly upset if I shut her out or walked away after we’d had a quarrel.

Life in the embassy

On the afternoon of Friday 19 July, at precisely four o’ clock, the security police delivered me to the embassy. There, the atmosphere was somewhat excited. The staff had been expecting me for some days, but were only informed that I was coming an hour beforehand.

They’d prepared a room for me. The room contained a black leather reclining chair from the ambassador’s office and a standing lamp by my bed. On their own initiative, staff members had also brought in a range of items: a radio, a toiletry bag and soap, toothpaste, aftershave and so on. Two of them did a cheerful little dance when I arrived. Ambassador Carsten wasn’t there; he was at home with flu. The first secretary and press attaché, Van der Velden, wasn’t in the office either. Bentinck showed me to my room and outlined a number of conditions for my stay. I wasn’t to have any contact with the press and my presence must not interfere with the work of the embassy. Then I was left alone, and I had some time to myself to recover from all the emotion.

One of the secretaries later told me that she’d been surprised that I hadn’t been more upbeat when I arrived, that I’d seemed cautious and fearful. I’d been told only an hour beforehand that I’d be handed over to the embassy. It took a while for it dawn on me that I was (temporarily) free.

Here I was then, in my new room. With curtains at the window, which looked out over a sort of roof garden where I could all sorts of police people walking around. I let the door to the corridor stand open – a real luxury after being locked up all that time. During the first few days people would peer in a little curiously as they passed, but they didn’t dare to come in. It was agreed that someone from the embassy would always be present, day and night. The evening guard would be relieved by a member of staff who would sleep over. Women staff members were only allowed to be there during the day, and at first they weren’t allowed to see me alone.

That Friday passed very quickly. I saw for the first time that the papers were full of the story. I read each paper with more amazement. There was a telegram from friends in Harare and a telex from the Komittee Zuidelijk Afrika [the Committee for Southern Africa, the main anti-apartheid organisation in the Netherlands].

At about seven my advocate, Kathleen Satchwell came by. She made a pleasant impression. She had a suitcase from Harare with her, with some clothes in it, my little radio and letters from Enno, Brigitte, Beverley and other friends. Satchwell wrote down a list of things that I needed and told me a few things about my case. Then she went, leaving me with the first embassy staff member to sacrifice their personal time. One of the youngest of the administrative staff members would babysit me. He wanted to know all sorts of things.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep that first night, thinking about family and friends and the future.

What was really nice was that everyone was really pleased to have me there, and also that South Africa had been forced to back down. However, at the first opportunity each of them also told me that they rejected violence. They often said that they’d somehow expected the ‘terrorist’ to be different, the ambassador among them. He told me, and later the press, that he was somewhat surprised that I was ‘no brute, but a very good-natured man’.

The people here work hard and I didn’t want to get under their feet. In the mornings I get my coffee and bread ready before eight o’ clock. Sometimes I also have yoghurt or a fruit juice. Then I do eleven minutes of gymnastics — to stay in shape I do a handy Canadian Air Force physical exercise programme twice a day.

Then I wash myself, using hot water from a kettle, in the lavatory. During the morning I generally do some reading or writing. Every now and then someone stops by to say hello. At around twelve, M comes by to ask if I need any shopping done. At lunchtime I make my own lunch and then spend the afternoon reading or writing. People often drop books off for me.

During the first few days my meals came from a nearby takeaway, but Satchwell brought a grill and a sort of cooker, and I can now cook for myself in my room. In the evenings I often sit talking with my ‘babysitter’ or we’ll play checkers or scrabble. They tell me about their lives in service of the Queen and I tell them about my life as a sociologist – and, of course, also about the arrest and much else connected with it.

For most of them, my flight from the police was something totally new — except for old Schulten, a veteran who’s worked as a consulate official for thirty years and lived in Turkey and a host of South American countries, including Bolivia and Chile. He’s a laconic fellow, and made light of the pressures that my arrival at the embassy have brought.

As I might have expected, most of the male members of staff are conservative, from the ambassador (probably) down to the youngest consulate official. The younger people insist that they feel more liberal than conservative, but then it emerges that they’re more VVD [the Dutch liberal party] than D66 [a Dutch ‘social-liberal’ Dutch political party].

The highest diplomatic official is of course the ambassador, Mr Carsten, a slim, distinguished, tired man, who – people say — has tackled the De Jonge case with the utmost competence. Then there’s Mr Bentinck, the ambassador’s counsel, who was my saviour. He is serious, intelligent and (formally) friendly and formulates his thoughts carefully. Then there’s Van der Velden, a political scientist who I remember from my time in Leiden, where we sometimes ran into each other in the lift of the university building where I worked for the ASC as a colleague of Professor Daalder’s.

A nice man, with the same decent way of speaking as the others. He manages the embassy’s contacts with the press, and spends most of his day giving interviews. A difficult job, because Foreign Affairs in The Hague has told him to say nothing.

There are two second secretaries. One of them, J, a sympathetic young diplomat, is well-dressed and athletic-looking. He’s a bit of an outsider as a diplomat: firstly, he studied law, not psychology; and secondly, he is a Buddhist . He is the only bachelor among the men, has had enough of this country with its apartheid, and is pleased that he’ll shortly be posted to Canada. The other second secretary, is G. I’ve probably spent more time talking with him. He insists that the solution to ‘my case’ will be a legal one.

The administrative staff are another category: among them, L, W and E. W, young, curly-headed, cheerful, was in the embassy on the first night. He has a young wife and two small children. VVD, like all the others. Very interested in my life, which is going in such a different direction to his own. He’s always ready to help or to offer advice. He also takes my washing home, which is returned to me a few days later, neatly ironed.

L is somewhat older and has more experience. He doesn’t like the beer here, and would rather be in Cape Town, where the diplomats spend half the year while parliament is sitting. He did two years of law, but dropped out and got a job at Foreign Affairs. Tremendously energetic, sporty, somewhat plump.

E, the head of the archive, is another story. She works very hard and seems to be quite isolated. She’s polite to me, but very formal. She’s one of the few who never comes round for a chat.

Aside from these career civil servants, there are a number of other secretaries and local workers – women of Dutch background and black Africans who clean, make coffee and serve in various messenger functions; one is the ambassador’s chauffeur.

K is the ambassador’s personal assistant. She is interested and kind. A few days ago I closed the curtains. The policemen outside always want to know if I’m still in the embassy, and one of them even climbed a ladder to look inside. I showed myself and said: ‘No, I haven’t fled yet.’ At which K said: ‘Don’t get excited, Klaas’ and then to the policeman: ‘You’d better watch out, you know, you could easily fall off that ladder.’ And she meant it, too.

S is V’s secretary. She’s in a room opposite mine, and she’s a nice girl. She brings me newspapers and clippings and is my most important contact with the outside world. I think it was bit scary for her at first, having a terrorist so nearby, but she has got used to my presence.

Bentinck’s secretary is also a nice woman. She’s irritated by the police who are keeping the building surrounded. But the nicest woman here is K. She is young, pretty, cheerful, attractively dressed and unlike the others she isn’t afraid to sit down and have a chat. She has a Dutch boyfriend who couldn’t stand the beer here and disappeared long before his contract expired. She also has a low opinion of the country, so far as apartheid is concerned anyway. K spoils me with books, whisky and chats.

The three Africans have probably decided that it’s in their own best interests to distance themselves from me. They greet me in a friendly way and sometimes give me an encouraging grin, but otherwise avoid any contact.

And then there are the police. I’m really pleased to be keeping around thirty cops permanently busy. They work in eight-shifts, with ten of them stationed at various points around the building, eight hours per day. Sometimes they make a racket at the strangest times of the night, setting off sirens and calling ‘Klaas, Klaas!’ At first I only slept around three or four hours a night, but I have ear-plugs now and it’s only my ‘babysitters’ who are disturbed by them. Now I have a sort of ‘deal’ with the cops. I let myself be seen a couple of times a day, to show that I haven’t fled the building, and they keep the peace at night. I read a lot of newspapers.

Unfortunately, I receive very little post. Are the South Africans withholding my post, or is no one writing to me? I can hardly imagine the latter. Sometimes I receive cards from total strangers or from people who I haven’t heard from in ages. On the wrapper of the NRC I once even found a message: ‘greetings to Klaas de Jonge’. Seeing it did me a lot of good.

Today the police are restless. A crate was brought into the building, and they are probably worried that I will try to use it to escape. They call every hour or so to check that I’m still here. The skinny blond one is their spokesman, mostly. We talk quite often. He asked me not to flee while he’s on duty, because he wouldn’t like to have to shoot me.

The security police are terrified that I’ll succeed in escaping. A few days after I arrived, the windows of the bathroom were sealed with wire gauze. A few days later, bars were added, and then a sort of alarm system — though it doesn’t work very well, and goes off at the craziest times. Rolls of barbed wire have been laid out on the terrace and along the top of the wall on Church Street.

Out of the blue, a telephone call from Mom and dad. My brother Jan has offered to pay their airfares, so that they can come and visit me. I think it would be better for them to wait a while.

Beverley also called. I miss her more than I’d expected. The problem is that all this brings us closer together than we were. We had a (temporary) relationship, but it was fossilised by my detention. Despite her, I had already decided to accept the job at the University of Bophuthatswana that I was offered.

Two Dutch journalists came to talk to Van der Velden — Peter de Bie from VARA and R. de Wit from the GPD. My door stayed closed.

Weird that the Netherlands is so concerned about my case. Everyone, from the minister down, is doing everything they can. But would they contribute to a structural change in South Africa? No way. No boycott.

I spoke again with RG (Graaf) – the commander of the police unit who ‘guard’ me. He is from a task force of the urban anti-guerrilla unit. He says they’ll ‘get me’. If I try to leave, I’ll be shot dead. I don’t think he’s bluffing. Sometimes he tries to engage on a ‘political’ level with me, and tells me horror stories about SWAPO and the ANC. There’s absolutely no point in trying to have conversations with them at that level, but he goes on and on. He tells me about children being raped, or arses stuffed full of barbed wire by ‘my people in the Angolan camps’.

Kathleen came by. Little is known about the ministry’s standpoint. I will likely be assigned a lawyer in the Netherlands to represent my interests there. Is a Dutch trial a possibility, rather than one in South Africa? A decision can surely not be postponed for very much longer. The embassy will be moving to another building soon. I could of course stay here, but it appears that Nedbank isn’t very keen on extending the contract. They have the building until 1 October, so there’s still some time.

I’ve been in the embassy for three weeks now. Cops ask me if it isn’t very boring, but I’d rather spend fifteen years here than in a South African cell.

Kathleen brought letters, family photos and books. Enno organised some photos for me, and I’ve stuck them up on two sheets of cardboard.

Isolation makes you egoistic. It’s getting better, but in prison I was really concerned only about myself. Kathleen tells me that she plans to visit Barbara Hogan, who got ten years, but I forget to send my greetings or to send a message of support. Is everyone like this, or is it only me? Even now, I’m still terribly involved in myself – my arrest, my ‘confession’, my escape, the possibility that I might have to return to a South African prison. That would only mean a continuation of my isolation, of course.

I’m going to read Etty Hillesum’s diary about her last years, including her experiences in the concentration camp at Westerbork. I don’t understand her at all. She worked for the Jewish Council, and volunteered to go to Westerbork. She didn’t resist, she didn’t fight. She had an inexplicable, irritating faith in her religious beliefs. But maybe I have to get past that and try to understand her deeper emotional life.

Monday, 18 December 1985. An unexpected visit from Kathleen. A tremendous person. She is full of hope, but doesn’t think that my situation will change in the short term.

Though they don’t say it in so many words, I think that most of the diplomats here are of the opinion that the anti-apartheid movement’s methods in dealing with the South African situation are troublesome and damaging. Bentinck said: ‘You think we’re all student society types, and we are, but we’re also achieving a few things in this country.’

That’s right. They do small projects working with black communities, they provide help to a range of trade unions. For example, J and an American colleague went to fetch the black trade union leader Phiroshaw Camay from the airport because they were worried that the South African police would pick him up under the powers of the state of emergency; a diplomatic presence, they felt, could be important in such a case.

Because of me, almost everyone here has considerably more work to do. Van der Velden, for example, was kept busy giving press conferences while he was running a temperature of 39 degrees.

If it is decided to hand me over to the South Africans, efforts will be made to bring Mom and dad, and Enno and Arjen, and possibly Beverley over here before then.

Thinking of being handed over, I was amazed to hear that I am not a Dutch citizen anymore because I took civil service jobs in foreign countries (first with the ministry of information in Mozambique and then with the department of education in Zimbabwe), without having applied for permission. In fact I did apply for permission, if at the last minute. I remember now that Hélène had to fill in an application before her departure, something I’d forgotten about. That obligation will no longer apply from 1 January 1985, so far as that’s concerned I don’t expect any major problems.

Wednesday 21/8. The embassy will relocate on Friday. A part of it will remain here, with me. Some papers are saying that Friday will be my D-Day and speculating about what’s going to happen. De Telegraaf says that an escape is being considered. The South African papers say that the police will take me away. Well, we’ll see.

All of a sudden, I get a whole lot of post – from family (mom and dad, among others) and friends: Ernst, Peter G, J (an angry letter). The post is probably being opened and copied, but you’d never see it from the envelopes. By the way, I wonder who leaked the story about me no longer being a Dutch citizen. Probably someone in The Hague. Or is everything I say being recorded by the SAP, and then passed on to DeTelegraaf?

Beeld carried a piece of kitsch about my life in the embassy: ‘when he’s not crying, he’s ogling the girls’. There was a better piece in the Pretoria News.

Outside, on a wall of the courtyard they’ve put up the word KLAAS in wooden letters. For the rest I ‘ve had little trouble from the police guard out there. They must be getting really sick of having to stand around day after day, just to prevent me from escaping.

Recently the Pretoria News said that I have indeed been appointed to a post at the university of Bophuthatswana — senior lecturer in development studies. Would have been a good base, interesting work and plenty of opportunities to do other things. Plus, a large enough salary to fund Enno and Arjen’s education. The Dutch anti-apartheid crowd will probably have screamed blue murder. Working in a Bantustan!

RG, the English-speaking cop, calls me: ‘Time is running out,’ he says. But he’s been saying that for months. I get a friendly wave from someone in the building across the road: young, white, probably one of the lawyers who work there. Black cleaners in the same building sometimes greet me with the clenched-fist salute, or a friendly wave. Not long ago one of the messengers called me downstairs. He spoke for everyone: would I keep my chats with the security cops (the ‘boereworse’ or ‘farmer’s sausages’) as short as possible? They didn’t like the cops staring into the building. He also promised to pray for me.

Everyone is packing for the relocation of the embassy. A board with the words EMBASSY OF THE NETHERLANDS has been put on the door to this part of the building, with, below it, a second board with the words ‘Economic and Political Department’. This is intended to make it clear to the SAP that this part of the second floor is still Dutch territory. To protect the place, two members of the Dutch military police will be on duty, day and night.

Yesterday Bentinck submitted an appeal from the Dutch embassy to the South African government that it should not go ahead with the planned execution of Malasella Benjamin Moloise (an ANC member who liquidated a security cop). Appeals of this kind are carefully weighed, it appears. The hanging was supposed to happen today, but it has been ‘postponed’ at the last minute.

What if they break in here and take me away? There are too many people who have heard nothing from me. I have been too little in touch with Enno and Arjen, Mom and Dad, Jan, Kim Hwa, Rieks and other members of the family who are following my story (such as aunt Jopie), as well as lovers like Beverley. I write to them here, on these pages. There are some people who I would not write to anyway, for security reasons. But you can get a few things out there, using informal channels. Still, from tomorrow I must make an effort to write more personal letters.

Bentinck stops by. He seems a little nervous. He will shortly have a meeting with Pik Botha, who wants to see him about the coming visit of three EEC ministers, and possibly also about my case.

Monday 26/8/85. The embassy moved out of this building on Friday 23/8 . A crowd of press people gathered outside. Military Policeman Two has sort of repaired the TV, and in the evening I watched the news. The relocation turned into quite a situation. Apparently the cops really thought that I’d be smuggled out in a box, or a cupboard or maybe a safe. But the Dutch embassy doesn’t want to be seen to represent a ‘banana republic’ – the worst thing a diplomat can imagine – and so they assured the South African authorities that they wouldn’t use any illegal means to get me out of the building.

I remained inside, accompanied by at least one military policeman at all times. A lot of strangers were walking around the building. For the rest, everything went smoothly. That night the military police locked me into my room; all the doors in the embassy had been left open and you never knew if I might try to get hold of some secret documents.

According to the South African press, I was trained as a terrorist in Cuba, and I have ties with the PLO, which is why Israel is after me. I also have some sort of connection with the KGB through Joe Slovo. The press doesn’t always get it right, but still ...

While I was writing, I saw RG climbing up onto the roof to try and see what we are doing in here. I’m typing, others are testing the telephones, and Johannes is organising items of office furniture that will go to Cape Town this week.

I spent Saturday 24/8 organising my room. When I first got here it was very unwelcoming, but the relocation has given me chance to arrange it more to my own tastes. I rustled up a desk from somewhere, with drawers that can be locked. Now I have a work corner, a sleeping corner, a kitchen corner and enough space to do my exercises. In one of the corridors I found a picture by Karel Appel and K, the ambassador’s PA brought me nice Marc Chagall poster. I’ve hung up the cardboard sheets with the pictures of family and friends, and there is a picture of Menno ter Braak on one of the bookshelves.

The film projector has stayed here, but the films have all gone to the new embassy building. They must all be taken there, and can be brought back here at a later stage. The same complicated system will apply as regards the more up-to-date typewriter that I have been promised. The logic of the approach isn’t clear to me, but that’s how bureaucracies work. Everyone thinks that the new set-up is much better. Kathleen, who dropped briefly by, said that I’d be able to stick it out here for twenty years.

One of the papers today had an article saying that the two Dutch MPS are here to prevent me from committing suicide. I’d have to be crazy.

Military Policeman One hopes that it will be over soon. He’s supposed to be here for four weeks, but he thinks he’ll be home in a week or so. I’m sorry for him, but I don’t think that the situation is going to so quickly ‘solved’. I sit playing endless games of checkers with Military Policeman Two. Military Policeman One is more of a doer. He likes to run around organising things, but there isn’t that much need for it here.

RG recently called up to me: ‘Maybe you won’t have to stay there for very long. Within a few years you’ll have AIDS.’ A friend of his who was detained for doing exactly what I did – but probably from the right-wing side of the South African political spectrum – was raped by five men. He really liked it. What a friend.

For my MPs this must of be a weird situation. Their orders are that they can’t stop me if I get it into my head to walk through that front door. They don’t often hang out with someone who’s accused of terrorism. As regards politics, they are both pro-VVD and surprisingly loyal to authority. They report the things I say, but they tell me that they are doing so. MP One usually works in the harbours of Amsterdam and MP Two on the train from Arnhem to Germany. One of them must be here every night, also on the weekends. This takes some pressure off the embassy staff. They have free time during the day, when they walk a bit around Pretoria or stay home in the flat they have been assigned. Neither has a weapon, so far as I can see. So whatever happened, they would only be able to act as witnesses.

Today the movers came to fetch some of the furniture that will go to Cape Town. Again, the cops outside were restless. They climbed a shed in front of my window to watch me from there. I soon had enough of the cop mugs out there, and closed the curtain. I wonder if they’ll take revenge again tonight and keep me from my sleep by singing, shouting and throwing stones. I also wonder how Brigitte is. She’s only a month or so away from the birth of her child.

Sunday 1/9/85.

September will be an important month for me. Tomorrow, Van den Broek will meet Botha, to discuss my transfer ...

Among other things, today I worked on a statement for the local press, as well as the Dutch government, in which I made the following points:

a. To the Dutch government :

• my gratitude for being allowed to live here;

• my thanks for putting pressure on South Africa to return me to the embassy;

• my admission that I have indeed broken the law here. However, neither I, Hélène nor anyone else in the ANC is a terrorist. The real terrorists are members of the South African government;

• that Van den Broek should never have come here, because it could be seen to be a legitimation of the South African government;

• that the Dutch embassy is in need of renovation.

To my fellow prisoners and the UDF – their struggle has become international.

c. Farewell to Enno, Arjen, family, Beverley: ‘goodbye’, because I don’t think the regime will drag it out.

I’m curious whether I’ll get a chance to present the statement before I am handed over. Maybe Kathleen Satchwell could read it ...

I wonder if I’ll simply refuse to cooperate with my trial. I don’t recognise their judges or their laws. But what would Kathleen’s role be then? She serves in the first place to legitimate South African justice, so it would look as if everything wasn’t OK. I’ll have to talk about this with her.

MP One has admitted that he’s instituted an investigation into my case. He’s also spoken to the minister. But he says nothing to the South African security police. He thinks that I fall under ordinary ‘criminal’ law and that the Netherlands will hand me over on those grounds, even if the real motive is political.

When you see the violence in the ‘townships’, where whites are being attacked (last night in East London), cops are being killed or chased away, traitors liquidated and black ‘councillors’ and mayors attacked and their houses set on fire, it’s clear that all this is political action. The main actors are gangs of illiterate young men — the ‘lumpenproletariat’, as this group is called. The older communities have been completely undermined, above all by the Group Areas Act, with the result that the older generation’s influence has gone into a sharp decline. For many young people, joining a gang is a way to survive: they can make friends and generate an income.

But workers also live in the ‘townships’ and they are often victims of the gangs.

The owners of the ‘shebeens’ (beer halls) belong to the small number of urban black ‘petite bourgeoisie’; they cooperate with the state apparatus. Attacking these establishments has a clear political aspect – aside from the fact that doing so yields large quantities of booze. The same as regards the black-owned shops, because their owners are often ‘community councillors’.

Indians (and their shops) are often victim of this, among other places in Durban, because of the ‘privileges’ enjoyed by this group. They fulfill a sort of scapegoat function.

During the last year, education has come to a halt. Students and pupils are boycotting classes and heading for the streets.

It’s difficult for the police informers to penetrate the ‘gangs’. When the army and the police go in, the gangs simply split up and regroup somewhere else. Meanwhile, the leadership of all sorts of organisations (UDF, trade unions) has gone underground or has been detained. That means that few forms of alternative resistance remain, aside from the gangs. It’s that or the consumer boycott, which is less risky and also an effective way to apply pressure to part of the white ruling class. I think that the potential for revolutionary élan in the South African context is exceptionally high in these groups. The only question is how the UDF, the ANC or any other organised opposition movement can exert more influence over this ‘lumpenproletariat’ without diminishing its force.

Desmond Tutu once said about the ANC’s guerrillas: ‘those they call terrorists are our brothers and sisters ... our sons and daughters’. That also applies to this generation of young, plundering unemployed men, even if their political ideology isn’t as clear as that of the ANC’s soldiers.

On Monday 2 September I saw Van den Broek. Bentinck took minutes. Van de Geer (the head of the South Africa section at Foreign Affairs), Jocobovits (director-general of political affairs at foreign affairs), Satchwell and myself. We talked at first in Dutch, but Kathy couldn’t follow. Van den Broek asked if I’d be able to stick out here, and requested that I say nothing to the press. He also told me that he did not intend to hand me over. In the morning two neatly dressed MPs appeared. They only told me that Van den Broek was coming to see me half an hour before he arrived. They’re so paternalistic here.

Friday 6/9/85. Foreign Affairs suddenly wanted to know how I was treated while I was detained.

Monday 9/9/85. Watched a boring boxing match (Coetzee won). At some time during the night one of the cops here gave a sort of anti-Klaas speech. MP One and I were woken by the laughter and lay listening. Then I put my earplugs back in and went to sleep.

Today, Thursday 12/9, the dentist came by. A man a little older than me, with his wife. I lay on my back on the bed and his wife tried to shine a lamp into my mouth. They didn’t have the right equipment with them and the filling is still sticking out too much. I will have to file it away myself using a nail file ...

Friday 13/9.

I have been in the embassy for exactly eight weeks and it doesn’t look like anything’s going to change. I sometimes get irritated by the embassy and its staff. Thinking back on my first period, I realise that Carsten, among others, still thinks in colonial terms. You can’t really give them equal rights, can you? ‘Let’s be frank, Mr De Jonge, the truth is that they’re only just out of the trees.’ He said something like that a month and a half ago.

The younger generation among the embassy staff don’t really think much differently either. Bentinck said: ‘I find the Third World so sad, there are so few prospects, and we can’t hand out development aid indefinitely’. That’s my social level now. MP Two wanted to know what those ‘diplomats in their jackets’ would actually learn. But one thing is sure, they don’t intend to hand me over to South Africa. Certainly not now that a number of senior lecturers in international law have come to the conclusion that the Netherlands has every right to refuse to hand me over. But what to do now? No one knows. Sit it out here for years, or go back to a South African cell?

Talked to Kathleen. I tested the idea of refusing to defend myself. I would be convicted and sentenced anyway, and it seemed to me that it would be best simply to make a statement. Firstly, at the opening of the trial, to say that I refused any form of cooperation with the court, and a second time at the end of the trial, to say why I’d done what I’d done. I have the first statement ready. I’ll discuss it with her.

Today, Friday 13/9, despite the day and the date, no bad news. Satchwell called. Bouchez is concerned that a decision may soon be made to hand me over, and has sought urgent interim relief from the court to prevent that from happening. Foreign Affairs says that there’s no question of handing me over and that there’ll be no trial. Bentinck is dealing with my washing now. W wasn’t always so keen on doing it, and certainly not when some of his colleagues said that they would never do De Jonge’s washing.

Saturday 14/9. Slept in. There’s never anyone here on weekends anyway, aside from one of the MPs. Have I mentioned that there’s always a spotlight shining into my window at night? Last night, when we were watching the TV, we heard whistling outside – a couple of the cops trying to get some attention. MP One looked out, and then I did. The called: ‘arsehole!’ and did the thumbs down gesture. I did the clenched fist salute back and then a fuck-you gesture, and they got cross and started yelling. A short while later, from the other side of the street: ‘Hey, are you sitting staring at your prick, or what? Some of the young guys are getting excited ...’

On Sunday the 15th Kathleen came unexpectedly by, just passing with her dog, which she calls ‘Thing Thing’ because it’s such an odd little creature. Small, ugly, spoiled and pleasantly crazy. She may go to the Netherlands soon to talk to parliamentarians and some other people.

I showed her my statement about why I wouldn’t cooperate with the court by defending myself. She laughed. We weren’t there yet ...

Thursday 17/9. Post. Another article in The Citizen: ‘De Jonge: SA-Holland talks in stalemate’, with the suggestion that the end of the month, when the rental contract for the offices runs out, will be by D-Day. Neither Bentinck nor Kathleen thinks that the South Africans will come and take me away, but I’m not so sure. They often don’t pay much attention to the wider world. Today the brought a number of rolls of barbed wire. At least I can keep the windows open when it gets warm, because the cops outside don’t move around as much as they used to.

MP One asked them what that was about. The soldiers told him that they were afraid that some sort of attempt would be made to free me. But in fact there’s no question of that. What concerns me more is the possibility of some kind of vigilante action on the part of a couple of individual nutcases who might want to take the law into their own hands. The SAP wouldn’t do much to prevent it. Their commentary would be: ‘The ANC liquidated Klaas.’

Wednesday 18/9. I should try to work more regularly. Sometimes I don’t feel like writing, even letters to friends and family. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been following events in South Africa through two of the most interesting papers: the Weekly Mail (white) and City Press (black).

Today I received the Vrij Nederland that was published on 14/9. Among other things, it carried a piece by Peter de Bie, who came to interview me for VARA. I thought it was a nice piece, with its dreary picture of the Dutch people here: ‘I’d personally like to kill Klaas de Jonge’, said a woman with a pistol in her bag…

Thursday 19/9. South Africa has breached the Nkomati Accord. The people at the embassy are excited, and somewhat surprised. Bentinck doesn’t think the invasion of Angola is so serious, it wasn’t part of the ‘accord’ that South Africa signed. If you say that South Africa is occupying Namibia illegally, he gets cross. ‘Who says so?’ Me: ‘The United Nations, the Security Council, and even the international court.’ He doesn’t care to read Vrij Nederland: it’s dominated by communists and third world issues…

To that he adds that he is actually against the jurists’ argument that the Netherlands cannot hand me over because the UN and the international court have said that the apartheid system is illegal. South Africa is being ‘over-correct’ by failing to annex Namibia entirely, when that country’s economy is linked to South Africa ... Naturally, he rejects violence – that of SWAPO as much as that of South Africa. I say that there are different sorts of violence, but he doesn’t accept this.

‘Then you would have to reject the resistance against the Germans,’ I said.

‘That’s something completely different ...’

And so we muddle on. I could explain the history of the ANC to him a hundred times and we would still never get anywhere. And to think that the embassy people – as they say themselves, anyway – have been radicalised by their experience here and feel politically ‘far to the left’ of the people with Dutch ancestry in this country.

When I was getting ready for bed, I went to close the window and saw men from the special task force: ‘When are you leaving?’ they said. ‘We are tired of all this. You are a terrorist ...’ Some political discussion followed. It was possible to get all the information required from around 30% of prisoners under interrogation, but with the other 70%, well, you know how that goes: hitting, a sack over the head, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a black or a white, we’re not racists.

The men are twenty-seven and twenty-eight years old. They already have ‘kills’ to their names. One dead communist had a Bible with him. Communists even used the Bible to support their ideology, one of them said in a surprised tone. One of the cops offers to play chess with me, but I decline. ‘You’d be able to pull me out of the window,’ I say. It’s around three in the morning and I’m tired. In the morning I wake early, because of the siren, and the arrival of the cleaning staff and some of the messengers.

Friday 20/9. Time flies. A nice gesture from Bentinck. He came by with an enlarged copy of an article in the NRC of 13/9, so that I now have good photographs of Paul and Gerti, who have both put so much into my and Helen’s case. I wrote Bentinck a letter asking permission to speak to a range of people on the staff about the profession of diplomacy, but it was rejected. I can speak with them and observe them, but not with official permission. Now and then Bentinck says something, but the lesser gods are frightened, and talk only when ordered to. All the same, I’m getting to know a fair bit about how things work.

Saturday 21/9. Hell, woken early by the security police – at 6.30. One of the sergeants wanted to see the Dutch MPs. He kept on calling and throwing stones onto the roof until I appeared at the window. After that I couldn’t get back to sleep. Later I heard that he wanted to invite his Dutch colleague to go parachute jumping. MP One likes that sort of thing, but I don’t see MP Two doing it.

Sunday 22/9. Slept late. A cold day. Schulten came by with his dog, a spaniel that wanted to go as soon as they arrived, and made it very clear with loud whines of complaint.

Beverley called. Incredible to hear her voice.

I long to see her again. I don’t get any physical contact here. But, well.

Monday 23/9. An officer from the ‘special task force’, a real gung-ho type, stood at the side window, checking out the situation in the courtyard. Five rolls of barbed wire are standing ready. That wouldn’t be a major obstacle. The men guarding them, with enormous pistols in their belts, would be another matter.

I saw that joker in one of the legal offices in the building across the street. He put his hands to this throat, stuck his tongue out and made a ‘you’re going to hang’ gesture. I gave him the fuck-you finger, followed by the ANC salute, which made him explode in anger. I’d rather see those cheerful cleaning ladies who wave so good-naturedly every morning.

Thursday 24/9. MP One has gone. MP Three replaces him. Saw him the same day, too, pale and tired from the long journey. Looks okay.

Paid the dentist: R77.50. I’m getting through my money. I spend about eleven rand a day — food, drinks, calls, postage stamps, newspapers. Will have to talk about that with Kathleen. A drunken Afrikaner screams at me from the opposite side of the street: ‘Dude, when are you going to come out? It isn’t badly intended; he’s asking if he can bring me a drink.

Wednesday 25/9. I’m getting piles of books, among them Oek de Jong’s Cirkel in het gras and a little book by Durlacher that I’m really glad to have. I realised today that birds don’t have any trouble with the barbed wire – they just fly through it. I wrote to Beverley and tried to explain in my limited English that our feelings for each other are coloured by the circumstances – without taking anything from the feelings themselves. Well, I don’t know, I hope she understands. I found something of what I felt reflected in Oek’s male protagonist: ‘Filled with love and enjoying it intensely – just because you know that this is an empty love.’ Sounds rough, but it gets close.

Only, when I was in prison, that love wasn’t so empty…

Wednesday,25/9, was one of my really cheerful days. It was because of the beautiful weather. All the windows open, sun — which I haven’t felt on my skin for months now. Bentinck says that the Dutch government doesn’t want to hand me over, but the South Africans have the right not to allow me free passage. Negotiations have stopped.

MP Three’s first day. Probably the most progressive of the people I’ve met here so far. But still, a stickler for the rules. This morning he made Johannes Mathiba, the cleaner present his ID document, even though I told them that he worked here.

Just as I wanted to go to bed, one of the sergeants suddenly had the need to talk. They like to talk and I learn a lot. He told me about when he still worked at the car theft unit, which operated mostly in Soweto. ‘Yes, of course, we used torture, all police forces do.’ Me: ‘Well then, maybe you should talk to your Dutch colleague here. ‘

‘But how do get a guy to tell you how many cars he stole when he doesn’t want to talk?’ he said. ‘You have to use torture. I once had a car thief who stole cars and sold them on to the ANC, but he didn’t want to talk.’

I said: ‘What did you do, then, put a plastic bag over his head?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s bad for the lungs. No, you need something that doesn’t leave traces. You make him lie naked on the tiled floor in a pool of water and connect the electricity ... No problem after that. He had stolen sixty-four cars…’

I should really record the things they say. We know about this kind of thing, of course, but you should hear them talk about it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He’s heard from colleagues that Hélène is a strong personality and very intelligent, which probably means that they failed to get anything out of her that she didn’t want to tell them. I must say, we are lucky that those other methods aren’t being used on us.

Saturday 28/9. Hélène has been held at John Vorster Square for exactly three months. I should really work harder at writing letters, but somehow I feel that it isn’t necessary. Or am I taking it slowly as a way of avoiding any issues that might arise? Just like when I was young, skipping in the street, and there would be a particular paving stone that I had to land on, or something terrible would happen.

It is still Saturday, later I’ll watch some more TV. MP Two has relieved MP Three. We talk for a while and play checkers: I won two and lost two. MP Two’s wife called and said that the Dutch papers were also full of the possible events next Monday or Tuesday – the possible police raid. We’ll see. I’m still sleeping well…

Sunday 29/9. Night was peaceful. Sat writing the whole day, in an effort to have everything ready Monday night at twelve midnight, when the rental contract, and thus probably also the diplomatic immunity, of this building. That might not mean that they’ll come for me straight away.

Kathy came by with table cloths and candles, real plates and bowls, cutlery and glasses, a chicken roulade, potatoes in their jackets, a tasty salad with avocados and a cold cucumber soup to start the meal. White and red wine, and ice cream and coffee to follow.

Monday 30/10. Craig Williamson, the fat major from the security police, stood outside in the street, evaluating the scene. He waved. That seemed only to promise bad things, as does any interest from the top guys.

Virtually all of the newspapers, and now also the radio and TV, are reporting that the rental contract runs out at midnight. There’s a lot of speculation about what could happen.

I sat writing cards the whole day. There’s no time for letters now.

The police want to know if I’ll defend myself if they come for me. ‘With what?’ I say, ‘I don’t have any weapons.’

But they don’t believe me. If only I had a weapon. Then it wouldn’t be so easy for them to come in. Well, that’s a fantasy. The end result wouldn’t be great either.

Tuesday 1/10. It’s now a quarter past twelve at night, and a quarter of an hour since the contract ended. The press is waiting outside in case anything happens, but for the moment it’s really quiet out there. Although we (MP Two and I) did hear the gate being opened. But the door is chained on the inside. I type, and sometimes glance at the TV (a pop programme) and wait ...

Today the cops were more nervous than I was. They were clearly preparing themselves psychologically, checking and firing their empty weapons (I heard them pulling the trigger and pulling the mechanism that loads the chamber). I said: ‘I don’t have weapons, and anyway there are lot of you and only one of me.’ But that didn’t seem to reassure them. It pleases me that they’re tense and scared – even of me. It’s twelve thirty, I’m going to bed.

7h05. I hear on the radio (SABC) that I’ve been taken away in a car by people in civilian clothes. ‘The fugitive Klaas de Jonge has been removed from the building ...’

7h25. They calling from outside. I say: ‘Go away, I don’t live here anymore’. Brigadier Stadler is standing outside. Why? ‘How’s it going?’ he asks. Kathleen phones. She’s angry. She thought the Dutch had made a deal of some kind, and that they’d arranged for me to be taken away without warning her. She’s relieved to hear that I’m still here.

The eight o’clock news is also about my ‘removal’. It’s becoming clear why the SABC broadcast the story that I had been taken away this morning. It was a joke on the part of my guards, who took a man out of the building, hidden in a dark blanket, shortly after midnight. The press thought that it was me. The TV news at eight o’ clock also reported that the diplomatic immunity of the embassy’s former building had been revoked. If the Netherlands accepts that, I will at least get an opportunity to make a political statement before the press.

Thursday 3/10. I think that it must be weeks since I last wrote anything, but only two days have passed since D-Day.

How many D-Days do I already have behind me? The first was when the embassy relocated, on 23 August. The second was Van den Broek’s visit. The third was when the rental contract came to an end and the diplomatic immunity of the building fell away. I’d reconciled myself to the possibility that I could be taken away by the SAP, but it appears that some there’s been a ‘last-ditch effort to salvage SA-Dutch relations’. It’s pretty certain now that the Netherlands will break diplomatic relations with South Africa if the police do take me away. I’d actually be very pleased if that happened. How long has the Dutch anti-apartheid movement called for exactly this?

The Dutch government would probably find some way to prevent a breakdown in diplomatic relations without losing face. I don’t trust them one bit.

I’d really like it if Bev visited and I’ve told her so. But she has to discuss it with Kathy.

Thursday 3/10. This morning at seven o’ clock on the radio news a report that both governments are still negotiating about my case.

Bev called, very nice. She’s written to me a lot, but I don’t receive much of it ...

I find it difficult to have lost the initiative. For the moment, everything is being decided at a very high level. I can plan my own escape, but I can’t do anything about the intergovernmental negotiations. That’s not really in my character, but I appear to be capable of resisting stress, anyway.

It’s a good thing that a solution will be found soon. As time goes by, the insecurity of this situation becomes the most difficult thing to bear.

I’m not so concerned about the possibility of a trial in a South African court. I hope that I’m capable of turning it into a ‘political’ trial.

I’ve never been bored, while in the embassy. I do eleven minutes of gym twice a day to stay in shape, cook my own food (although I am entirely dependent on the people around me to buy it), read newspapers and books, listen to the radio (almost always only in the mornings). I write a lot. Time just flies by.

Meanwhile I observe the oddness of the diplomatic world.

I talk with members of the embassy staff and with the MPs and I also play checkers with them. I certainly don’t see the embassy staff or the MPs as my guards, and I haven’t made any friends among them. What I particularly notice about diplomats is how much the live by ‘rules’ and can very seldom take any sort of initiative. They have to contact The Hague about every little thing. Then there’s their hierarchical way of thinking: seniors and older people know better. They still believe that Botha really wants structural change and that he wants to do away with apartheid. As regards violence, it seems that they don’t reject the state’s violence as strongly as they do that of the freedom movements. In my view they overestimate their own influence.

The Dutch military police are another story. Their role here is more like that of paid companions than like that of military police. One of them tried to get information from me about my strange political contacts with small revolutionary groups back in the Netherlands. Just like the embassy staff, they’re against apartheid, but they also understand that ‘whites here face a situation’.

They act as doormen and telephonists, and in daily life they’re friendly and sociable. All the same, life here is often very much like it was when I was detained: I sleep, live and work in the same space, I’m only allowed to see my lawyer, information about my case isn’t always shared, and I’m dependent on others for my food, clothes washing, buying newspapers and literature. There’s always someone nearby, though not in the same room. The worst thing is that I can never leave the building, and I don’t have access to a shower. Still, I much prefer it here, compared to a cell in John Vorster Square.

I’m convinced that I’d be able to handle a prison sentence. I’m good at keeping myself busy, and I can stick it out even in quite primitive circumstances. Two diplomats will be visiting. One is ‘flying goalie’ ambassador (a Dutch ambassador with special portfolio) Wijnaendts and other is the head of the South Africa unit, Van de Geer, who was also part of the EEC mission. It’s not all about me anymore, but rather about the diplomatic relations between the two countries – which means, in my view, that I could well be sacrificed. My fourth D-Day, then, with the same uncertainty as the previous ones. But I’m beginning to get used to the uncertainty.

It seems that the family won’t be coming. Bev isn’t allowed to visit either. They don’t want to do anything silly in this difficult time. Later maybe. But maybe there is no later ...

Friday 4/10. I forgot to watch the news this evening to see if my fate has been decided. The die were cast on Sunday – not that I had any influence on the matter. Jan offered some useful tips about letter-writing: sift the themes that I address to friends from the more personal issues. It’s great that we get on so well and understand each other so well. I couldn’t wish a better brother. Both my children value me, support me and follow the case. What more could I wish for?

I’m going to bed. It’s five past midnight and so it’s 5/4/85. I’m starting my 12th week in the embassy. Will I complete it here?

Saturday 5/10. Listened to the news for a bit, but it seems nothing is known about Pik Botha, Foreign Affairs or the Dutch mission that is still trying to negotiate.

Looking out to the street in front of the building, I can sometimes see parents walking with their children; they stop a moment and point. There are always a couple of cops, who move quickly behind pillars when I look out at them, but they are fat and stick out. They are younger and from another police unit than the cops behind the building, who are only ‘special task force’.

While I’m typing, three black Africans call from the other side of the street, gesturing with clenched fists and laughing. ‘You are OK?’ they call. ‘Do you have something to drink?’ These small gestures are important to me.

Great music on the radio. I get goose bumps, turn the music up loud and dance for a bit. (The Afrikaners can’t stand ‘black’ music). I can only do this kind of thing on Saturday and Sunday, and sometimes in the evening.

At 11h00 I see a stream of people approaching the front of the building. I’ve taken part in demonstrations, of course, but I’ve never been the cause of one. There are a lot of press people walking around, so we’ll see all this later on the TV and in the newspapers. A cop approaches the back of the building and calls: ‘They want you, they want you to come out. Will you?’

The cops have just given me a press release by a group of ‘concerned South Africans’ who have criticised the Dutch embassy for allowing me sanctuary here.

Schulten just came in. He says that about thirty people with placards are demonstrating outside in front of the entrance to the building. A chorus of voices is calling to me from the street. MP Three wants me to stay away from the window. ‘We want Klaas,’ I hear. ‘We want justice.’

Wijnaendts visited with Bentinck and Van de Geer. He’s a nice man, proud of what he’s achieved despite much difficulty. Neither country will do or say anything that could endanger a possible solution to my case. So a postponement, anyway. Jan has tried again to get a visa, but wasn’t granted one. I can’t use the embassy post. I have to exercise great care with everything I say. No contact with the press.

Wijnaendts said that if they did come to take me away, they would have to break in – cut chains, and so on. Van de Geer thinks that if they do come in, they’ll do so hard and fast. But we don’t have to worry about that for the next few days, anyway.

19h10. I just watched the TV news, saw Pik Botha and Wijnaendts with their press release and also pictures of the demonstrations that was held outside. People had placards with slogans on them such as: ‘Fascist Holland, give De Jonge up’ and ‘De Jonge could have killed you!’

On the late news, Pik Botha and Wijnaendts again, but they left out the demonstration. Pik says that a number of proposals were put forward, and both governments will have to consider them. For the moment, though, the building’s diplomatic immunity has been restored while negotiations continue.

Sunday 6/10. Slept late, until 8.30. Coffee, yoghurt. Began the day slowly. No more news about the Klaas de Jonge case on the radio.

Mom and Dad called from Austria, they haven’t sold their house yet, so they’ll have to spend this winter in Aschau. They have an enormous phone bill because of all this calling to South Africa and the Netherlands.

Monday 7/10. Last night the cops outside were really noisy again: a racket at four o’ clock, a siren wailing at five, and I was woken by call at six. Kathy came by. She also has no idea what’s going to happen.

Tuesday 8/10. D-Day number four. Had a good late sleep until eight, after waking briefly at five. It was the first time it had happened this week.

To my surprise, brother Jan (as C calls him) wrote to me about hopelessness. Did I really write a letter that gave the impression that I was losing courage? I can’t believe it. I am of course sometimes under heavy pressure, but that doesn’t mean that I’m losing my courage (I am a fighter, I think). Nor does it mean that I suffer from huge feelings of guilt as regards Hélène. She’s not in prison because of me, and her fate will not be affected if I escape or remain holed up here.

Maybe the concern about hopelessness had to do with my remark that I was considering refusing to defend myself if there were a court case. But this would not be due to defeatism, but a political act – which I would first discuss thoroughly with Kathy. She thinks there may be something to the idea, but says that we should put aside for the moment as it is not yet an issue.

Wednesday 9/10. Kathy came by. She talked with Stadler. He had got the fright of his life when he was in his car on Tuesday and heard on the radio that I’d been arrested. Stadler appears ‘to like me’, that’s why he wants me back [in prison]...

Stadler says that it must be costing them a lot, having seven men continually on guard outside the building. The cops outside say it’s far more, and that most of them can’t be seen. They’re probably saying that to try to intimidate me... There have been far more of them on some days (those D-Days), but not now. Still, this week I will have been here for 12 weeks which is to say, 12x7x24x7 = 14 112 man-hours (that’s the minimum). So all this must be costing them a lot. Say f50 per hour. That’s f705.600. Not bad.

Sunday 13/10. Rapport had a sensational sub-heading: ‘Netherlands wanted to break ties over Klaas’. Also something about my life here, that I’m writing a memoir (‘it will be a bestseller in South Africa and the Netherlands ... when a black majority government takes over ...’)’. I have had hardly any visitors’, and I have apparently missed something tremendous, because: Attractive Dutch woman who came to South Africa to visit De Jonge is refused permission to see him’. Rapport expects a resolution within two or three weeks.

By contrast, The Sunday Star had: ‘Deadlock on De Jonge affair drags on’ and concluded with: ‘So, unless some accident befalls, there is little prospect of an end to Mr. de Jonge’s freedom in captivity’. That seems closer to the truth to me.

Monday 14/10. The chief secretary (Vermeeren) came by. ‘Have you had post, perhaps?’ I asked. ‘I’m not a postman!’ he answered.

I have a temperature, I’m puffy and I have a bad lip, but I’m not ill.

Tuesday 15/10. Bizeh wrote a letter to Bentinck asking him to review his decision not to allow her to talk to me on the telephone. Bentinck probably first thought: ‘Oh well, a girlfriend in Brazil, that’s so far away, it can’t do any harm’. But he’s worried that half the world is mobilising (ten-minute radio programme in Canada, and Amnesty). Now Bentinck thinks it should never have been allowed. What if it gets out that she’s talking to me, and also taking action on my behalf? The South Africans would have every right to be angry, he feels. Don’t say anything to the outside world and stay calm, that’s his motto ...

Wednesday 16/10. Surprise, surprise: Bentinck arrived at half past seven. Mostly he comes into the office between half past eight and nine. He brought clothes, which have not only been washed by his servant, but repaired!

Schulten came to have a chat: The most difficult thing here for you must be your dependence ...’. He hits the nail on the head.

Moloise’s hanging is to go ahead despite the protests. He is the ANC member and poet who is accused of murdering a security cop, Selepe. He denies it, and so does the ANC. The idea that he will be executed makes me very angry. But so does a shooting incident involving the SAP, in which they diverted a group of stone throwers into an ambush and then began shooting them down. They were in a railways truck and they waited until the people began to throw stones. The first time it didn’t work, but the second time it did. Cops suddenly appeared from boxes that were standing on the back of the truck and began firing into the crowd ... Some children were also killed. What a country!

Friday 18/10. This morning at seven o’ clock Moloise was hanged with a number of others. So far this year, some eighty-eight people have been murdered in this way. He wrote the following poem shortly before he was killed:

‘All the armies that ever marched

All the parliaments that ever sat have not

Affected the life of man on earth as that one

Solitary life

I am proud to be what I am ...

The storm of oppression will be

followed by the rain of my blood.

I am proud to give my life, my one solitary life.’

Some people are convinced that he was innocent. But who is, in this country?

I’ve been so angry over the last few days at everything that’s happening here. No wonder I was furious with MP Four, who refused to allow me to talk to John, who called from Harare.

John was ‘not on the list’. ‘You shouldn’t get so angry,’ he said sternly. ‘If you do, I won’t put anyone through.’ Power maniac. ‘What’s he like?’ ‘Oh, just an ordinary guy,’ I’ll say next time.

Sunday 20/10. Kathy came by unexpectedly. Very nice to see her. I hadn’t seen her in ten days. I had so many things I wanted to talk about.

Helen is doing okay, but Kathy isn’t yet allowed to visit her.

Monday 21/10. In Atteridgeville a thirteen-year-old boy was kicked to pieces by a policeman, and died shortly afterwards. All the witnesses said he had nothing to do with a demonstration that was going on. His friends heard him saying: ‘Please sir, don’t kill me. I’m going to church to pray.’ Buried yesterday.

There’s a Dutchman living here who I don’t trust in the least. A former pilot called Bijvoet, he is a member of the International Police Association and he tries to make friends with every MP who comes here. MP One hung out a lot with him and it wouldn’t surprise me if a few things about life in the embassy have found their way to the press via this man. MP Three and MP Four don’t trust him at all either, and avoid him whenever they can.

Tuesday 22/10. The Citizen writes about De Jonge: ‘...talks between the two sides will go on for somewhat longer than anticipated’. That ‘somewhat longer’ is correct, in my view. I think the so-called ‘talks’ are only a giant carpet to sweep things under...

Wednesday 23/10. One of the Special Task Force-boys who likes to chat now and then says that the guards have become a bit ‘slack’. This week the spotlight they like to shine into my window wasn’t working. When it’s raining, there’s usually almost no one out there. There should be possibilities to escape, I think...

Thursday 24/10. RG, the balding Boer, and the most boring (responsible for killing ANC members in Silverton) is called Roef Graaf. Other guards are called Botha (a giant), Archie and Johan.

Johan will soon be married. He’s been with the police for five years, the last year with this elite unit, the STF, and he’s proud of it. He likes to go shooting and owns his own weapons. Has shot a number of blacks, and make no mistake – ‘you too if you try it’... In Zimbabwe he sat next to a black person now and then. Nothing against it, really. The blacks here are wilder, and need to be tamed. Of course they’re people – but a part of them is still baboon. If right-wingers shot at me, he wouldn’t intervene, or only if any bullets headed in his direction...

When Johan is on duty, he always wakes me early (6.30, also on Sundays, like today). Johan likes to talk about the stopping power of different kinds of ammunition. He once shot a black man four times in the chest and he still walked another fifty metres, at which point he ‘put him down for good’... He’s always ‘dry firing’, out of boredom and to stay in form. Sometimes he aims at me.

Letter from Jan Breman, telex from Karel Roskam. Good to hear from these old friends. I was involved with Bram Peper, Siem de Jong and Wim Wolters in a sociology debating club called Symphonia. We were all attending Wertheim’s lectures and, through Wim, writing for the De Groene Amsterdammer.

Sunday 27/10. Today I have spent one hundred days in the embassy.

Monday 28/10. The newspapers report that a group of ‘happy immigrants’ – people from Germany, the Netherlands, and France, as well as other countries, who have immigrated to South Africa – demonstrated on Saturday 26/10 against the negative attitude that Western countries have adopted on South Africa. A number of immigrants from the Eastern bloc were also present. They had placards with slogans like ‘Hands off South Africa’. I saw another one with the words: ‘Netherlands Embassy shelters terrorists’.

Tuesday 29/10. The Pretoria News observed that the hundred-day emergency has cost the lives of some 334 people, which is to say, there have been in that time 3.34 deaths per day as against 1.54 per day in the period preceding it. ‘Stability’, they call it. A third of the victims were killed by other blacks, mostly because they were thought to be traitors. That means that the other two thirds were murdered by the police...

Wednesday 30/10. Dutch newspapers. Brugsma in HP: ‘Murder and manslaughter are the privilege of government leaders, and terrorists are poachers on that terrain.’ A nice one for Botha versus the ANC.

Kathy came by again. She thinks I’ll be here for a while, and that it would be advisable to make some additional purchases and arrange some other matters. More cutlery, a better radio, maybe some exercise equipment.

Thursday 31/10. Today was cold, storms and a lot of rain.

Today’s Pretoria News has a piece by Tom Lodge, who has written a book about black politics in South Africa since 1945. According to Lodge, a recent survey shows that some 43% of the whites interviewed were for ‘negotiations’ with the ANC, so an increasing percentage of the white population is prepared to see the ANC as legitimate. He concludes that the ANC ‘has largely won the battle of ideas’. I agree.

Friday 1/11/85: Fifteen weeks in the embassy.

The newspapers all cover Botha’s press conference with the foreign press. He blathered on about ‘press freedom and also press responsibility’ and fulminated against media ‘distortions, simplifications and ongoing repetitions of plain falsehood... ‘ and their use of the word ‘apartheid’ as a synonym for ‘the worst form of racial oppression’...

Had a small disagreement this morning with MP Three, who thinks I shouldn’t insist on being ‘macho’ by antagonising the cops outside. I couldn’t make him understand that it’s in his own best interests if I try not to comply with their suggestions and that, anyway, it’s none of his business. I’ve said that it’s up to him if he wants to talk to me, but I won’t show myself to the cops outside before it’s completely dark at night. Bentinck says it’s been decided that Kathy’s friend and Bev can visit me, but for the moment we’ll have to wait, because something else is happening. What that might be, though, he won’t say.

Saturday 2/11. Last night at around two. Knock. Knock. Knock. At my window, shining a torch in. ‘Klaas, Klaas, are you still there?’ and ‘Is he gone?’ RG began to yell and set off car horns and throw stones at the windows. I heard it briefly, but then fell asleep. MP Four was woken, however, and it made him mad.

This morning: ‘I want to see Klaas’. I told MP Four to say: ‘He doesn’t want to see you’. But he didn’t. Instead, he told the cops that the agreement was now at an end so far as he was concerned. RG in particular liked to cause trouble, and as long as he continued to do so they wouldn’t get to see me.

At that point they began to yell at him to show me at the window. MP Four only got more angry. The cops yelled and swore but I stayed out of view, even though they climbed up to my window.Otherswere using binoculars from a building on the other side of the street to keep an eye on things. They were terrified that I might have disappeared. MP Three and MP Four don’t understand the panic – all the exits to the building are permanently guarded. The MPs want me to show myself to the ‘nice ones’ but I’m against this. I want to force the cops to allow me my night’s rest.

Sunday 3/11. I’ve won: the cops were quiet as mice last night. This morning, only at around eight, they called: ‘Klaas, are you there?’ I showed myself and told them that I was doing so because they’d let me sleep. The cop who’d called me said: It’s a deal, and I’ll keep to it.’ I said: ‘But the others also have to stick to the deal or you won’t see me anymore.’ He said he’d pass on the message. Not bad. I seem to have won this little war. So you see, we always retain some power.

South African TV, radio and papers are full of the news that U.S. long-range rockets have been located on Dutch soil. Protests in The Hague (with clips on TV), the four million signatures to the people’s petition (I was even able to send mine from the embassy), the school kids protesting, the American ambassador’s signature in The Hague...

Monday 4/11. The Sowetan writes that 250 children are still detained under the emergency and that among them are kids of twelve, thirteen and seventeen who have been tortured and assaulted, and that some suffered brain damage while they were detained. Also that some sixty-eight children have been killed during the fifteen weeks of the emergency. Today the papers are also devoting a lot of space to the limits on press freedom, though Botha doesn’t see them that way: ‘We protect a free press’, said P.W. the barkeep, and then he banned video and radio equipment from areas of unrest.

Tuesday 5/10/85. My parents write to me a lot, and I have to laugh about what they report about their life in that small Austrian village, with its characters. One of these is Frau Honigschnabel, who burst into tears when she heard that that I fled in handcuffs into the embassy, and ‘recovered herself only after she had blown her nose several times.’

People we know from my time in the village of Olst, where I lived during the war, appear to be getting involved in the De Jonge case. A former serving girl of my grandparents, Gerritje van het Veld, found my Aunt Jopie’s name in the Amsterdam telephone book and phoned to ask if ‘that Klaas de Jonge was Truus’ young lad’. When Aunt Jopie told her that I was indeed that young ‘Klaasje’ from those times, she had her proof that I was no terrorist and would be able to tell her neighbour so...

Today, 13/11, South Africa and the Netherlands will release a statement about a planned meeting between two groups of expert jurists – probably this month, November.

Wednesday 6/11/85. Bentinck and others agreed that I should be allowed to get a cat. But he couldn’t make a decision on something as important as that and would have to see what the ambassador thought. He would however support my request. But the ambassador didn’t think much of the idea. No cats in the offices.

Thursday 7/11. Teledata says that renewed talks are going on between The Hague and Pretoria about the De Jonge case about dealing withthe remaining obstacles.

Between September/October ‘84 and October ‘85, some 799 people were killed and some 12 688 banned under the emergency. Of course, the SACP, the ANC and the UDF are behind it all.

Friday 8/11/85. Today I have spent sixteen weeks in the embassy.

Damn, the repairs to my watch will cost more than R60. That will cut into my supply of money. I could have decided to wait, telling myself that I might be sitting in a cell soon where I wouldn’t be allowed to keep my watch anyway, but that’s so defeatist.

Sunday 10/11/85. A member of the special unit saw Hélène at John Vorster. She’s doing well, it seems. Through notes she’d had contact with some of the women who she was locked up with, and apparently they were very impressed with her.

The same STF member asked me if I didn’t want just to ‘pop outside’. They’d be having a braai here, not far from my window... ‘You had a lady visitor yesterday, not so?’ he said. ‘We saw, a woman with black hair was with you!’ I don’t know anything about it.

Monday 11/11/85. Du Toit brought me a can of Amstel beer. He bought it one night around two o’clock when he was on duty, and came to deliver it today, Monday. I generally don’t accept food or drink from them because they could tamper with it, which would mean that I could end up in the prison hospital. But the beercan looked safe enough, and there was a note on it from a Dutchman who had visited the country to deliver a Landrover that had been donated to some or other black group. Letter: I wish you success, Klaas, keep strong, on behalf of the Leiden students’ action group, c/o Rapenburg 95, 2311 GZ Leiden’. Signed by one L.A. Smid. I cooled the beer in the fridge and sat drinking it with MP Four. Haven’t had any trouble...

Tuesday 12/11/85. My father is 75 today.

This weekend things went seriously wrong here in Pretoria. Some 120 people were arrested in Mamelodi and there was widespread unrest. The cause was a funeral for three schoolboys who were killed. Yesterday there fifty-seven arrests.

Talked with Kathy today about Hélène and about my case, among other things. She thinks that the time is right for some change in the situation, but apparently Botha doesn’t want to do anything.

Today, 13/11, South Africa and the Netherlands meet to discuss a statement on the planned conference of legal groups and experts, which will probably take place this month (November). Bentinck says there’s more movement. But they could simply raid the building, even now, if they get tired of the situation and if things don’t go as they’d like.

Van Bentinck heard later that rumours are flying around The Hague that I’m going to try to escape. I sometimes think about it. I feel that you should keep your options open, but how did the rumour get there?

On the TV and the radio, the news that the Dutch jurists have arrived to talk with the South Africans on Wednesday 20/11, sooner than expected.

Thursday 14/11/85. Johannes Mathiba, the large, very dark, fat messenger, comes to my room every morning to drink coffee with me.

He doesn’t drink alcohol, doesn’t smoke either, because he’s a member of the Church of Zion. His wife and four children live in Lebowa, near Pietersburg, and he’ll return home at Christmas to see them. He has a car here in town, and a lot of people will be driving with him when he goes; places in the car are already being booked. Among them is a cleaner from the building across the road. I keep the old newspapers, of which I have a plentiful supply, for him. He only stops by for coffee early in the morning. Sometimes he also brings the post.

He told MP Three that if he wants to know what apartheid really is, he should go into a magistrate’s court early one morning to see how people who have been caught without their passes are dealt with: five minutes a case, and fines of between fifteen and fifty rand.

He hates the police, who are never there when you need them. ‘Boereworse’, he calls them. He says that SAP is short for ‘searching after people’.

Friday 15/11. Kathy and lawyer Ernie Wentzel came at three. I liked him straight away: a small man, intelligent, sharp, laughing eyes, greying, curly hair, wearing a rumpled suit. Despite his illness he looked tanned, but J says that he was shocked to see him looking like that. Ernie, like Kathy, is sceptical about the possibility of a ‘trial in absentia’. In the present situation he thinks that it won’t be allowed. He’s keen to do his best for me, and without damaging Hélène’s case in any way.

He thinks that the best outcome would be an exchange with a South African. He’ll test the idea with Louis Nel, who he seems to know well.

Ernie showed me an enormous scar on his belly, and the drain that he has to carry. He was only operated on one month ago for cancer, and he’s already getting around. Kathy says that he is a real negotiator, one of the best senior advocates in the country. Politically he’s a real liberal, and is apparently hostile to communism. He has been detained twice himself, and in his youth was active with the National Union of SA Students. He was once detained with Joe Slovo, among other struggle leaders; they were held in the same cell, which they divided into two halves so as not to get in each other’s hair. Joe is somewhat older than Ernie, although the latter looks a lot older (he must be in his early fifties).

Thursday 21/11/85. The radio news says that discussions about my case are continuing, but for the rest – silence.

Nice letter from Gerti. She writes about the Klaas de Jong Committee and the support fund, which has now become an official ‘foundation’. The board includes Enno Hommes (official spokesperson), Gerrit Grootenhuis, Marc Wuyts, Karel Roskam, Gerti herself, a lawyer (Thea de Roos) and the philosopher Lolle Nauta. They met in the beginning of November and the priority is to make it possible to provide legal support to Hélène and me; any other assistance will only follow when the first has been achieved.

I asked Benting if I could be kept informed about the negotiations. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t know nothing about them. I have my instructions.’ Me: ‘Any information would be safer with me than it is with Foreign Affairs, and after all, it’s my head.’ I referred to the article in Algemeen Dagblad, which discussed some aspects of the negotiations. He wouldn’t be tempted. Is still pursuing enquiries with The Hague as to whether I can receive visits.

Some of the special unit guys were calling, but I wouldn’t show myself at the window. Then they phoned, politely: ‘Is Klaas there, could I just see him for a moment? Or is he angry with us? We called, but we didn’t see him.’ They never learn.

Friday 22/11/85. Eighteen weeks in the embassy. Hélène has spent twenty-one weeks in the cells.

A bit of a quarrel with J (I wasn’t feeling well, headache, and I felt like picking a quarrel) about the ‘poshness’ of the people at Foreign Affairs and their stupid work, which allows no room for initiative.

Today a new MP arrived, MP Five. About ten years younger than the others. Could almost be my son. A young sergeant-major. Enthusiastic. Also liberal in the VVD sense, but more critical than the others. On his own initiative, he prepared himself for his stint here by reading as much as he could about South Africa.

Saturday 23/11/85. Mrs Bonn and Mr Maas Geesteranus stopped briefly by to make acquaintance with the object of their negotiations. They both seemed very nice to me, by the way. Despite my protests, they wouldn’t tell me anything about the negotiations. They did indicate that it could be some time before a workable solution is found. They are trying to serve my interests as best they can, they say. They understand that being kept in the dark makes me somewhat suspicious. They will consider the request.

Maas Geesteranus was detained for two months towards the end of the Second World War, and we talked about that for a while. Mrs Bonn is young and very pleasant. The leaks of confidential information from Foreign Affairs were embarrassing, but little could be done about them. That was why they insisted on limiting information on the progress of the negotiations to a small group.

Monday 25/11/85. Just talked with Bentinck. Still nothing to report. Says that the legal team has worked exceptionally hard and achieved much. Keep calm, don’t get too excited... his usual irritating chatter.

Tuesday 26/11/85. From the other side of the street, an encouraging wave from a black African: he gestures that he hopes/prays (two hands together as if in prayer, or an Indian greeting) that things will be all right by making a plus sign with his arms, one forearm over the other. At least, that’s how I read the signals.

Wednesday 27/11. Sad article that David Rabkin (Sue’s ex-husband) died in Angola (Luanda) on 25/11. I met him in Maputo, where he worked as a journalist for The Guardian and the BBC. He spent seven years in prison for the ANC. Clever, calm, handsome man with two great children. Sue and he had separated, but they remained friends. Awful for the children. They hardly knew him because he was in prison those seven years. Then, just as they’re getting used to him, he dies.

Some say it was a car crash, but you can never be sure in southern Africa. According to The Star, he spent time in prison for making and distributing pamphlet bombs for the ANC during the 1970s. So many ‘comrades’ falling away.

Friday 29/11. I talked with the new ambassador’s counsel, Simonsz (1930), who arrived last Tuesday. He has an MA in sociology, but only worked in the area for a short while. He wanted to know whether I took account of the fact that something like this, or worse, could happen. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’ He just doesn’t understand how I could have done what I did.

Kathy also called. Told me briefly about her Saturday with the two visitors from The Hague. They understood my point – ‘I can’t trust you if you don’t tell me anything ‘. They also feel that I should be allowed to receive guests, but I haven’t heard anything about that.

Sunday 1/12/85. I’ve stuck a number of ‘Abolish Apartheid’ stickers up in the window in full view of the cops and the conservative lawyers who work in the building across the street. I wonder how long they’ll stay up. There’s a good chance that Bentinck or his successor will say something. Politics... Bah! Some of the police guards out there are taking it quite well, and laughing.

Kathy thinks that [resolving my situation] could take some time, and that I should keep myself busy. She suggests that I start some correspondence courses with UNISA in December. I’m considering doing English, African political history, criminology (prisons) and possibly also military tactics. If I start now, I might be allowed to continue later in prison.

Monday 2/12. Slept badly last night. Don’t know why. An angry cop took the anti-apartheid stickers off my window and threatened to keep me awake the whole night for putting them there. ‘You’ll never get out of here,’ he says. ‘We’d rather shoot you down than see you handed over by that leftie, Pik Botha! The kaffirs will never take power. If they do, we’ll fight a guerrilla war.’

Tuesday 3/12. In course of the morning Bentinck came by, very angry, followed by the new ambassador’s counsel. What was I doing, playing at politics? Bentinck received a telephone call about my misdeeds. ‘You caused problems with the police, and now they’ve called the embassy. You mustn’t do that again, and anyway it’s in your own interests not to. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but... ‘

They say it doesn’t matter to them personally, but I have to keep my hands off the embassy’s walls and windows. It’s a different matter in my own room.

Wednesday 4/12. Kathy came by. She’s pleased with Simonsz, says that he’s really concerned [about my situation]. He wants me to be able to receive visits (Beverley at Christmas, for example). He’s concerned about my health, my diet and the fact that I can never take a shower. They [the embassy] have emphatically requested me not to put up any propaganda again.

Thursday 5/12. Saint Nicholas’ day. Simonsz called wanting to know some details about my ‘girlfriend’. He’s doing all he can to get permission that she can visit me here soon.

Friday 6/12. I have spent twenty weeks in the embassy.

Tuesday 10/12/85. Nice letter from Bev. Great that she’ll probably be allowed to visit. I’m a little afraid of seeing her again. We don’t know each other well yet, and we haven’t seen each other for six months.

Saturday 14/12. Kathy had a talk with the ambassador. She thought him charming and they talked about all sorts of things for about three hours. Then she came over here to tell me that Bev will be allowed to visit, but that the whole thing will have to be kept as discreet as possible. If it goes well, they think other visits will be possible. Ambassador Carsten stopped briefly by to advise me to ensure that Bev’s visit comes off with as few problems as possible. Keep the curtains drawn, no press, say nothing to the SAP.

Tuesday 17/12. A special day. My first visit from someone from outside – and it was Bev. No one knew anything about her visit except for the ambassador, his personal assistant K, the person who sent the telex and the people here: Simonsz, J, A, the secretary, MP Five and the new one, MP Six, who only arrived today and had to go on duty straight away. I don’t really think that something like this can be kept secret. And indeed, at the stroke of nine that ex-Dutchman Bijvoet came by. Simonsz thought it was Bev and opened the door himself. I suspect him of working for the SAP and of having contacts with De Telegraaf, so he wasn’t the most appropriate person to have around. Luckily MP Five took him away to his office and kept him talking. I saw him for a moment from behind: dark hair, athletic build.

And then Bev arrived, small, thinner, nicely tanned. Very nervous, and it wasn’t hard to imagine why. She was risking a great deal. The South Africans could detain her, to try and find out what she knows about me. She mumbles that she’s not up for this sort of thing and she doesn’t understand why I’m attracted to her. There must be women who are better at this sort of thing – more courageous than she. Maybe, but who chooses someone on that basis? And anyway, I appreciate the fact that she came to see me despite everything.

We close the door. She tells me that she walked in the wrong direction and entered the Nedbank building via the Church Street entrance, which was crawling with military personnel (the air force headquarters are situated on that side of the building). She finally found her way to this side of the building, and it was fortunate that she arrived a little late, or she might have run into Bijvoet.

We looked at each other a little uneasily, then kissed cautiously. Then we moved closer to each and sat with our arms around each other. Schulten stopped by and we sat a little further apart from each other. I introduced Bev and then took her around, introducing her to everyone. Then we were left alone again. Door locked, lights out, venetian blind rolled down in the hope that all this would make it difficult to see anything from outside, and so preserve some of our privacy. I turned the radio on in case we were being bugged, and we whispered the first messages to each other. There was a lot to say. Gradually we relaxed. Just being able to touch Bev, after these six months, is fantastic.

It is wonderful. We’re chatting and laughing again. Time flies by and before we know it, it’s 16:30 and time for her to leave – she can only come here during office hours. She can stay [in South Africa] until after Christmas, but the embassy says that she can no longer visit after 24 December, although the weekends will be okay, during office hours.

Wednesday 18/12. Bev didn’t come today. She’s staying in Johannesburg and had some things to do, and wasn’t able to organise transport. Tomorrow she’ll come by train.

The SAP have set up a new spotlight just in front of my window. It’s 2 000 watts, and blinding. Which clearly has to do with some sort of reinforcement going on here. They’re now patrolling with UZI-like machine pistols, instead of the 9mm pistols they used to carry.

Late last night there was some drunken noise outside. ‘Klaas! Klaas!’ A girl sat on her boyfriend’s shoulders and they waved and called in a friendly way. I slept well, despite the spotlight, because the curtains were well drawn.

Thursday 19/12/85. I left Zimbabwe six months ago. Five months in the embassy.

Bev was here again, again nervous at first, but everything went well. The day passed quickly, just as that first Tuesday did. Talking, holding each other, making love.

Kathy visited in the afternoon. Asked, concerned, if everything was okay between me and Bev. Yes. So she can go on holiday with an easy conscience. She’d come to say that they police have concluded their investigation into Hélène’s case.

Friday 20/12/85. Hélène has spent the last twenty-five weeks in solitary confinement. Hopefully there will be a change in her situation, although it doesn’t look as if she’s got a rose-tinted future in this country.

Bev again today, less nervous. Time flies. If only we were alone on a beach, she sighs. But then she’d be afraid of the fishermen, the beachcombers and the wardens. Here, it’s the SAP outside who could call up to me at any moment, or the embassy staff who could knock and want to see me. Then there are the people in the offices on the other side of the street, maybe they can see something through the blinds...

Du Toit told me on Saturday that he’d just been in action against the ANC and I’d read about in the papers. The only item was a report about an attack in Lesotho, nine people killed.

Saturday 21/12/85. Bev is coming again, on the train. She hates South Africa, finds it exceptionally unpleasant. It’s great to see me, but she’ll be glad when she can leave this country. I do my best to seem unconcerned, but I react to this in the same way as Bev does when we’re making love – with a watchful eye on the window.

Sunday 22/12/85. A rather eerie day for Bev to be visiting. Although it’s not a normal workday, she was allowed to visit me between 9.30 and 16.30. She was rather tense and left again at about one with Schulten, who stopped by. It seemed better to me. She would have had to walk the empty streets of Pretoria on a Sunday. She was a little ashamed to leave early, but I really thought it was better.

I feel very happy and relaxed. All because of Bev’s visit. This is the only social contact I’ve had with anyone of my own free choice. I like it when Kathy comes round, but that’s never of my own choice. If I’d known her before, I’d certainly have liked her as a lawyer or a friend. Bev asked me how I felt about being defended by a woman. I hadn’t thought about it.

Monday 23/12/85. There was a report on the radio that there’s been a bomb explosion in a shopping centre in Amanzimtoti, a beach resort south of Durban, which I’ve visited. At least five dead and some dozens wounded, all civilians of course, because it was a shopping centre.

It is being described as the worst terrorist attack in Natal and the second-worst compared to the Pretoria car bomb of May 1983. I notice some effects in the attitudes to me that are being expressed outside. The guards’ verbal aggression, cutting gesture across the neck, bomb scares at the embassy. In this atmosphere, an attack on me isn’t unthinkable. Packages that arrive here are inspected (outside the door and with the SAP’s help). MP Five is now finding it all very much less pleasant and he thinks that he’ll sleep in the corridor. I will also have to stay away from the windows.

Tuesday 24/12/85. Bev’s last day. We had a great meal, chatted, laughed and made love, of course. Yet a melancholy tone underlay the encounter; we don’t know when we’ll see each other again. When she leaves here, she’ll go to Pat, who she has got to know and who she likes. In the evening she called briefly.

Wednesday 25/12/85. Christmas Day: Pretoria is dead, with only my guards everywhere, and they are more heavily armed than usual and aggressive. I put on my ‘Stop Apartheid’ T-shirt and played some FOSATU music. After a while one of them asked if I actually liked it. When I said I did, he replied that he wanted me to turn it off, which I didn’t do of course. So then he made a racket beneath my window, at which MP Six made a remark that caused him to stop. But he walked away threatening to keep awake tonight.

Today the street in front of my ambassador’s window was probably the liveliest place in Pretoria. My guards had brought friends and girlfriends with them. They set up barbecues, played music, danced, shouted invitations in my direction in a friendly way (a nice change from the men guarding the rear of the building) and generally had a good time. A number of passers-by were attracted by the goings-on, of course, and they stayed to wave at me and see what would happen. I went to bed at the usual time, but MP Six says that the party went on until three in the morning. He looked a bit tired this morning.

Thursday 26/12. Boxing Day. Slept late, no trouble from racketing policemen. Bev called from the airport, before heading home. I’m glad that it went so well and that the police didn’t make things difficult for her. She wondered whether I really enjoyed myself, or whether she could have done things differently. Typical Bev, and I swore to her that it had been terribly important to see her and that those were not mere words. She’d already passed through customs. Happily, everything went well. Still, I’ll be relieved to know that she’s arrived safely in Bulawayo. You never know with the SAP, they could have let her go through customs and then arrested her all the same, and so gain a few days without having to worry about pressing charges.

Saturday 28/12/85. Hélène has spent six months in solitary confinement. The Dutch newspapers write: ‘Passtoors’ fate depends on the De Jonge case’. But I doubt that. I must discuss it again with Kathy.

No news from Bev, I’m getting uneasy.

Sunday 29/12/85. With J’s permission, the MPs phoned Kuny and Bev’s mother. The Kuny’s had left their answering machine on. The telephone number of Bev’s mother could not be found. Now I’m really concerned, and I worry that I shouldn’t have let her come here in the first place.

Monday 30/12/85. Bev phoned just before eight, what a relief! The Kuny’s told her that calls had been made on my behalf. I was so happy that I could hardly say anything.

Tuesday 31/12/85. Simonsz invited me to his office for a coffee. He’s a nice man, and sympathetic, but he can’t do any more than anyone else could – The Hague decides.

New Year here arrived one hour before Europe, so I waited until past one before I went to bed, hoping to get some telephone calls (and indeed, Mom and Dad called just before one). There was an enormous racket on the street here, horns blowing and people yelling (and later a group who did the Klaas call, according to MP Six), but no fireworks at all, they’re banned here.

Wednesday 1 January 1986. SAP cop: ‘What’s going to happen?’ Me: ‘This year I’ll be free!’ What will this year bring? One thing is certain, I won’t be here for another year ...

Friday 3/1/86. Today I’ve spent twenty-four weeks in the embassy and Hélène has spent twenty-seven weeks in solitary confinement.

Monday 6/1/86. Kathy came by again, the first time since Christmas. Relaxed, brown and full of plans. She thinks that there’s a 99% chance that I’ll be detained again.

Tuesday 7/1/86. A lot of noise again last night. They didn’t see me in the morning, so suddenly there was a cop standing on the window-sill of the coffee room. He didn’t see me, thankfully. MP Six told him that the window-sill was part of the embassy, and that the man would hear more about this. The cop got angry and tried to get MP Six to fetch me, which he didn’t do of course.

Received a nice card from Professor Kruijer, whose courses on sociography I attended. It was the only subject that taught you how to do practical research and also to how to think logically. I learned a lot of useful things from him. I can thank Professor Van Kobben, an anthropologist, for my specialisation in black Africa, but I learned more from Professor Wertheim: critical engagement, and important connections. Fascinating man, Wertheim, erudite, brilliant, driven.

I’ve sent three cards to Hélène so far, including one with some poems, because I know that she likes literature. Wonder if she ever got them. There’s a hidden code in them that will indicate that they are from me.

Thursday 9/1/86. Kathy came by again. Among other things, we talked about Pretoria Central prison, where I’ll probably end up. That’s where all the white political prisoners are taken. I asked her for more information about my future fellow prisoners, so that I could write about them (once I’m there, I won’t be able to). Would be nice for friends and family.

Sunday 12/1/86. Wrote letters, played chess. Another quiet day. Trouble with a rumbling tummy, and lacking energy. Went to bed early. Woke at half past twelve, thought that it was half past midday of the following day, jumped out of bed and then got back in again a short while later.

Tuesday 14/1/86. MP Five’s last day. A pity. He’s the nicest of the MPs. Today the new MP arrived, the seventh already.

Wednesday 15/1/86. A quarrel with MP Six: the conversation turned to the political situation in SA. For the thousandth time, all those prejudices about black South Africa. I’ve already had his anti-Semitic jokes and his attitude to foreign guest workers in the Netherlands. And now this. It really rubbed me up the wrong way. He said he could take my criticism. But since then he’s walked around like someone whose prick has been trodden on.

Thursday 16/1/86. Schulten came by with some forms to fill in to apply for unemployment benefits. Would be great if I could get them. There’s a good chance, he thinks.

I also applied to The Hague for permission to vote while overseas and filled in the necessary forms. Johannes Mathiba (who I like to try my Zulu greetings on) is starting tell me more about himself. Johannes married in 1971. His elder daughter is at high school. He’s about forty-three. His family lives in Lebowa. He first came to Pretoria in 1964, where he got work as a garden boy with a white family. He also learned to drive. His first contact with the embassy came in 1969, when he fell in for someone who was working there. ‘I haven’t had much education, and I don’t want a lot of money. All I want is equality... I am a Christian, but if I’m walking with my wife somewhere and you with your girlfriend, it’ll be me who’s stopped and questioned by the police...’

Friday 17/1/86. It seems to have been arranged. I may receive visitors (three acquaintances of Kathy’s). This is due mainly to Kathy, who put pressure on Simonsz now and then to do something about it. I give the three names to MP Six, but he declined to put them in my ‘dossier’ (two pages of the telephone numbers of people who are allowed to call me), because ‘he hasn’t heard it from Mr Simonsz.’

Saturday 18/1/86. MP Seven spends the whole day in his office, and I in my room. Aside from when we play chess, it’s a relief not to have him around. In the evenings we sometimes watch TV together like an angrily alienated married couple.

Du Toit, one of the cops, came to say goodbye. He was ‘going travelling’. Later I heard from one of his colleagues that he was involved in some or other action...

Today couldn’t get better: the hunter cop wanted to talk. He says he has to be careful; he’s not actually allowed to talk to me. He wants to leave the SAP, but they don’t want to let him go and they’re being difficult.

He likes hunting animals – and people. Likes an honest firefight ‘and may the best man win’. I sit and listen. What could I ever say to things like this? Had his training in South-West Africa, learned to fight in the veld, the bush. He once knew a young farmer, an Afrikaner in Natal, in his twenties, who went against two well-armed ANC fighters in the bush and took both of them down.

He says that there are at least a hundred fighting members of the ANC in Lesotho, which they had learned from counting the people who turned up at the funerals of the people who had been killed in the raid.

‘You guys did that, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘How do you know?’ ‘Oh, I have my sources!’ Did someone inform on us?’ I say: ‘No. Why do you think that?’ ‘Yes’, he says, ‘that’s probably it. You never know what the other guys in the unit are doing.’

Sunday 19/1/86. A special day today: six months in the embassy. Surprise: Kathy came by in the evening with her friend, Jacky, about forty-five, a lecturer in sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and has written a good book about black maidservants who work for white madams.

We chat about this and that. I enjoyed it – someone new and interesting to meet.

The visit has got me going. People, social contacts are so important. Hélène is a writer, but I am more of a talker who, in the circumstances, is forced to write. Hélène sees only members of the SAP and all her letters are censored.

Monday 20/1/86. Received an important and not very pleasant letter from Bri. She writes that things are suddenly going badly with Hélène. The tension is getting to her. She’s tired of waiting for something to happen. The Belgians have told Botha that she must either be charged or released.

Wednesday 22/1/86. Kathy called to say that Hélène has been in a Johannesburg clinic for more than a week. She’s angry that the Belgian consul didn’t see fit to inform her. Helen has been admitted to the hospital suffering from depression. Objectively considered, she’ll be better off in a hospital than in the cell, but something could have been done about her situation sooner.

Still no charges... Kathy immediately passed the news on to the press and the other media in SA, as well as to the Dutch media. She also gave the consul a piece of her mind and has taken a number of other initiatives, which I will learn about in due course.

Thursday 23/1/86. I see how living in this society is changing me. The hate that’s in me, the desire to destroy this system, to blow it up. A real pity that I’ve spent the last six months in here, doing nothing.

Will this change me forever? I think it probably will. I won’t ever get free of the rage. They’ve changed me, made me more militant, harder and more sensitive at the same time. I don’t just take it as it comes anymore. I don’t have anything to lose, and I can only win. I can handle being in prison. I can handle being here.

Monday 27/1/86. Simonsz came to say that The Hague says that I can receive visits three times a week. I won’t be allowed to give letters to my visitors. SA will be informed of this, but the Netherlands won’t ask for permission, they’ll simply inform them of the measure. Second point: would I have any objection to a medical examination? Of course not. They’re probably worried that I’m getting depressed, like Hélène.

Thursday 6/2. Kathy came by. With her she had, among other things, the letters from Hélène. Tomorrow she goes to the Netherlands and she will probably be there for two weeks.

She gave me a number of letters that Hélène wrote to her family. Impressive reading, and for me, given that I experienced some of it myself, all very recognisable. She tries to explain that she is a political prisoner and that no one but she herself is responsible for the fact that she’s been arrested. That she absolutely does not feel guilty. Yet she does seem to want support from her family. She describes her arrest, her solitary confinement, her cell, the intimidation. About me she writes: ‘Don’t worry too much about Klaas: he’s okay in the embassy and he’s done a hell of a lot of damage really.’ I was rather moved by that.

Friday 7/2. A young Afrikaner doctor comes by to do a medical exam on me. Polite but distant, we speak Dutch/Afrikaans. He has a Dutch name, Gerrit van der Veen. My blood pressure was a little too high.

Saturday 8/2. MP Six called home. According to his wife, there are rumours going around that I’ll be released soon. That will be coming from De Telegraaf rumour-mill, we know nothing about it here.

Saturday 15/2. Quiet day. Couldn’t sleep late, because they were standing outside yelling at half past six. I didn’t show myself at the window of course, but I was already awake.

Schulten came by. I’m not the first student of Wertheim’s who’s got into trouble. He had to accommodate someone in Turkey for months once, who had been working for the Kurds... ‘Yes’, he says, ‘it’s just like carpentry. You can teach someone how to do it, but someone who picks up a hammer for the first time is going to hit a finger or two....’

Friday 21/2. I deduce from the Weekly MaiI that Hélène has been back in prison since 7 February. Poor Hélène. Simonsz received a telex from Foreign Affairs with the following information:

1. Pik has promised to respect the diplomatic immunity of this embassy and not to raid the building,

2. SA and the Netherlands will not break diplomatic ties over this affair and

3. De Jonge will not be a witness in the Passtoors case. So it looks as if a raid is unlikely now.

Kathy called and gave a me short report about her trip to the Netherlands. She is back today and will visit Hélène as soon as she can.

Sunday 23/2. Kathy came by and gave me a more detailed report of her trip and her first visit with Hélène. She talked with her for an hour and half, but everything was recorded and there were cops present. There was also a lot of noise outside in the street, and because Hélène sometimes mumbles, she found her sometimes difficult to understand. But they also laughed together.

There is no question of a ‘secret deal’ between the Netherlands and South Africa. Pressure to hand me over will grow when they have charges ready, but for the moment everything is okay. There may be a chance after Hélène’s trial to negotiate and come to some sort of settlement. She has heard that SA may be prepared to return me to the Netherlands if I’m put on trial there. But the legislation that would make this possible hasn’t yet been passed and it could take another two years before it is.

Awful to hear that Ernie Wentzel is dying, his cancer is proceeding rapidly now and he hasn’t long to live.

Wednesday 26/2. Kathy called, the charges have been formulated and Hélène – and possibly I – am to appear on Friday the 28th. When she passed my greetings to Hélène, the latter almost exploded, she was so angry. She thinks that I told them too much. I don’t think so. But well, I thought the same of Hélène when the police told me things that suggested that she’d broken (as they claimed). Still, a horrible business. I told them some things I shouldn’t have (Mamelodi for example), but I ‘cooperated’ to lull them into a false sense of security, and to make an escape possible.

Friday 28/2.

Kathy came, somewhat late. Because Ernie is dying, Kuny will act as my legal counsel. Kathy said that Hélène was in a much better mood, since she no longer has to face all those interrogations. They harassed her right into hospital. She deserves congratulations for having done so well ...

The charge-sheet arrived. The MPs were somewhat concerned after they’d read it. They were, after all, stuck here in this building with a real terrorist and no weapons. They talked with J behind closed doors about the protocol to follow from now on. They wanted to know whether they should have weapons, and whether they should frisk visitors. They didn’t discuss any of this with me. They don’t know if I have a weapon.

‘We MPs are suspicious by nature,’ they said. I tried to reassure them that I don’t have a weapon; and even if I did, I wouldn’t use it against them. That the SAP wouldn’t raid the place and if they did, the MPs wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway. That my visitors are respectable civilians, that the ANC will look for ways to get me out of here, that the main worry is that a right-winger might try something, either a sniper or a letter bomb. In which case having a weapon would be of no use to them anyway. They didn’t talk about it after that, but they are now a little more tense.

The charges are, in a way, better than I had hoped. Hélène is charged with setting up a communication network for the ANC and with involving me and Brigitte in it, among others. She helped her lover by aiding his escape from the country. We are members of the ANC and established a number of weapons caches. There has been speculation in the press that we might have had something to do with the Pretoria bomb, but it’s not mentioned anywhere in the charges. I’m charged with hiding weapons with ‘silencers’ that could have been used for assassinations. There are no silencers noted in the list of weapons, however. That’s when you realise what rubbish they print in newspapers.

The massive list of weapons they’ve compiled will need some discussion. The SAP found four weapons caches before we were arrested. One was empty, another nearly empty. That doesn’t leave much, even after the ones they got from us.

Friday 14/3.

Hélène appeared briefly in court. She won’t be released on bail until the trial begins on 14/4 in the Rand Supreme Court. Her mother was present, as well as a representative of the Belgian consulate and a number of acquaintances. I learned about all this later, in detail, on TV. MP Nine, who is new, came by briefly.

Letter from Gerti accompanied by a new De Groene Amsterdammer with a good piece by Rudi Boon in it about Hélène: ‘ANC leader Ismael Ebrahim and Helen Passtoors’ “high treason”’. Ebrahim is interviewed about his time on Robben Island. He says that the charge that she helped him to flee South Africa should be compared with the escape routes via Switzerland and Portugal organised by resistance people during the Second World War.

There was a call for financial support from the De Jonge/Passtoors Support Fund in the same edition of De Groene. It was placed free of charge because I used to work there. Nice.

Saturday 15/3/86. Today was MP Nine’s first day. He’s young for his rank.

Monday 17/3/86. There have been street fights between ‘security forces’ and people attending a funeral in Atteridgeville, a township van Pretoria. The cops tear-gassed a house with four children inside, aged between four and seven, though the parents begged them not to. The police just yelled: ‘Shut up! What do you know?’ and proceeded to do it. The people who were trapped in the house tried to escape but were caught by the police and beaten up. Some fifteen people have been killed on the mines over the weekend...

Tuesday 18/3/86. Limpet mines have again been exploded in white areas of Springs and Germiston.

Karel Roskam called. Nice, he plans to call on a weekly basis.

Wednesday 19/3/86. The ambassador, Carsten stopped by briefly to have a chat. Actually he wanted to reassure himself that I’m still psychologically together. They doubted this when I got so angry in January. He says that I won’t be allowed to receive Hélène’s mother here, but I will be allowed to see her children if they come out for the trial.

Carsten sees me as a sort of ‘mercenary’ who did what I did not for money but for ideological reasons.

Friday 21/3/86. Today the memorial to the victims of Sharpeville (1960) and those of the Langa shootings (1985). I see more cops in uniform on the street today than usual. Alice came by. Always good to see her. She brought some books and magazines. Next week she’ll bring Kim and a meal.

Sunday 23/3/86. Today I have been held in SA for nine months. I was arrested on a Sunday. Amazing, really, that so many friends continue to find it in themselves to write to me or call. Would they continue to do so if I have to stay here for years? Certainly not.

Mom and Dad called, they were apparently concerned about me, and relieved to hear that everything is okay on this side.

Monday 24/3/86. J went into a gun shop in Joburg to buy a mechanism that shoots clay doves. He was rather shocked to see how many people were there, buying guns. Presently there’s a real run on firearms.

You often see adverts for guns in the newspapers and recently there have been articles such as ‘Choosing the right handgun’ with useful notes and observations on what to watch out for. E.g., the calibre, the size of your hands, how easily the weapon can be spotted, its weight and type: revolver or pistol, ‘double action’ or ‘single’, security. And also what you want to use it for: ‘for home defence’ or ‘inside the car’.

We can therefore assume that most white families will have firearms – which according to their own standards makes every South African family a ‘military base’ and a legitimate target for ANC attacks. There are no more civilians...

Tuesday 25/3/86. Karel called in the afternoon and we talked about this and that. I described to him how the South African press writes about white terrorists. He said that he’d read some things about me and had found them very impressive.

Bev last called on the 13th. I haven’t heard from her in more than a week, and it’s making me worry a bit. Not that I’m afraid that something’s happened, but she has become part of my new pattern here and I enjoy chatting with her every so often. I could understand if contact between us falls away somewhat. We didn’t know each other very well and we’ve been separated for nine months now. I miss her, think a lot about her, and hope that she’ll call soon. Can’t stand my own dependence.

Wednesday 26/3/86. Kathy calls, very angry at the fact that parts of my journal have been published in newspapers and broadcast on the radio in the Netherlands. ‘It’s the worst moment for something like this to happen,’ she says. ‘The Netherlands will be angry that you’re playing at politics and so will the South Africans – and then maybe they’ll raid the building.’ I was about vague about it all, because I knew nothing about it. I thought she was over-reacting.

Thursday 27/3/86. Simonsz came round in the afternoon and said immediately that he wanted to talk about the journal articles. The Hague has been in a bit of a panic, and they want him to compile a report. I say that I heard about it all from Kathy and that she’s very upset.

J said later: ‘They went ballistic in The Hague ...’ They might see it as my having broken our ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, but so far I’m concerned that was connected to the period of negotiations and intended to ensure that they weren’t endangered. But the negotiations have come to a halt.

Friday 28/3/86. I’m not counting the weeks any more, only the months. Will I get to the point of counting the years?

Good Friday today.

Kim and Alice came to visit in the afternoon, surprised that the cops outside weren’t at all interested in the things they were bringing with them: a video recorder, food, books. They still think the situation is bit strange. This isn’t a prison, but there’s a gate and it’s guarded.

Saturday 29/3/86. Schulten came by with a letter informing me that I am to receive R300 a month from the beginning of the year. Normal doctor’s bills will be paid for, but not study costs.

Tuesday 1/4/86. Today I received De Groene Amsterdammer of 26 March with ‘The Journal of Klaas de Jonge’: five pages with articles about my arrest, escape and my first months here in the embassy.

Simonsz came round to talk about it. He didn’t have much negative to say, not even about my remarks about the embassy staff, but he hoped that there wouldn’t be more negative things about the embassy or Foreign Affairs in the next issue. Simonsz told me that, because of the new publicity, Wijnaendts told the South African ambassador in the Netherlands that a political solution must be found quickly.

Thursday 3/4/86. Today I feel restless. I don’t feel like reading or writing. I want to do something physical: swimming, carpentry, whatever. I can’t walk around here much, there just isn’t the space for it, and I always end up in some corner. I feel strange, as if I’m a little high.

Sunday 6/4/86. Schulten stopped by for coffee. He enjoyed De Groene and he isn’t too upset about it, but understands that they might be having some difficulty about it in The Hague.

Monday 7/4/86. According to Simonsz, The Hague/Foreign Affairs want to know how South African journalist Pat Sidley got to interview me. I told him that last September, when an arrest was threatened, I offered to answer her questions but said that she wasn’t to use my answers in an article until my situation changed: either I’d be in prison or back in the Netherlands. She’d apparently decided to publish an article (via ANP), now that all sorts of things seem to be leaking from the Netherlands. He also wanted to know how my journal got out.

For the moment he has to sanction me: I won’t be allowed to receive telephone calls from Karel Roskam and John van ‘t Hoff. He asked me if I’d sign a statement that I wouldn’t do anything like this again. But I refused, partly because I don’t agree with Foreign Affairs’ view, and partly because I’m allergic to restrictions on my freedom of expression.

Wednesday 9/4/86. Ernie Wentzel died yesterday, at home, of cancer. The idea was that he would be Hélène’s and my defence counsel. A great man, from what I hear. I liked him, but I only met him once.

Friday 11/4/86. Jacky, and later Kathy, come by. Kathy is ready for Hélène’s trial, which starts on Monday, somewhat later than planned.

Saturday 12/4/86. The newspapers report that Breyten Breytenbach arrived in SA yesterday in connection with the Rapport Prize for Literature, which he is to receive in Pretoria – of all places – for his book of poetry, Yk. He says tremendous things, but they have caused considerable offence with some of the public who celebrate him: about the special contribution of Afrikaners world history ... Apartheid as ‘the ideal state’. And that the political elite presently in power will have to answer to the court of history for its crimes against humanity.

It’s all very clear, the way he says it. And in his beautiful Afrikaans it’s really beautiful. But in my view he shouldn’t have come here, for reasons which can be found in his own work, and which he summed up when he refused the Hertzog Prize – namely, that the academy that awarded the prize is and remains ‘the bastion of the Afrikaner establishment’. Well, the same surely applies to this award by the biggest and most conservative Afrikaner newspaper, Rapport...

Sunday 13/4/86. W stopped by: ‘We are of the view that you haven’t kept your side of the bargain, and that you’ve embarrassed us all.’ He didn’t make heavy weather of it, but he was probably even less pleased than Scholten.

MP Eight tells me that he has been instructed to tell me that I’m not allowed any contact with Johannes Mathiba, the black messenger who comes by every morning to clean the toilet, sweep the floors and remove the trash. He also brings four morning papers, from which I select one to read. Odd. Probably another panic-driven measure of The Hague’s...

Monday 14/4/86. The first day of Hélène’s trial. Johannes has been told that he is to stay away from me, and he is angry – with me, it seems. Why? I don’t know. They will of course have explained the matter to him in a certain way. Can’t stand this. It was great talking with him every morning, and even exchanging a Zulu phrase or two. He doesn’t want to clean my room anymore, won’t take my washing and I will no longer get any newspapers. I ask my MPs to explain to him that they have probably introduced the ban on contact between us because they are afraid that I’ll use him to smuggle information to the outside. But if The Hague is angry at me because I’m critical of the South African government, that’s still no reason for him to be angry with me.

MP Eight calls the embassy about it, and now it appears that the ban has been lifted.

Hélène’s trial is extensively covered on the evening news. The charges are relatively minor, but you wouldn’t know it – they write as much about me as about her. I’ve already been through a media trial, and now Hélène’s trial is to be the occasion for another one. A good reason not to cooperate with a third trial...

Tuesday 15/4/86. Simonsz comes by and gives me an account of the atmosphere at the trial. Hélène looks well.

Wednesday 16/4/86. Johannes is still angry this morning: ‘You are against us now,’ he tells me. He didn’t have the newspapers with him, but eventually agreed to take my washing after I outlined my view of what happened.

Saturday 19/4/86. Kathy came briefly by; she’ll be bringing the post (she’s now the only person with permission to do so). She told me about the trial. Hélène is doing okay. It can be very boring – witness after witness – so she often sits and reads the paper. For her, there’s no justification for the system that’s all around her, anyway.

Tuesday 22/4/86. On the radio today I hear that one of the witnesses at Hélène’s trial will be giving evidence ‘in camera’, when observers and the media are cleared from the court. Whoever it is, he or she will a star witness for the argument that Hélène is guilty of high treason. Curious who it might be...

Wednesday 23/4/86. I’ve been stuck in South Africa for exactly ten months today.

I also received my post today, with among other things a VARA tape of three clips about my journal. Very strange to listen to it, I relived it all and it affected me...

Thursday 24/4/86. Case: Mr. Z (the same as X) says that he met Hélène and me in Harare. Funny. I never met Hélène there, and I can prove it. I was living in another country when she was in Zimbabwe.

Saturday 26/4/86. Mom is eighty today. What a great person. When you see those clever eyes, you know she’s just as present as ever. You also see it in her letters. I’ll call her tonight.

Today I feel down, no special reason. I sat down (music on) and the tears suddenly rolled down my cheeks. I was caught completely by surprise. I felt the emotion and at the same time observed it from outside of myself. These symptoms are apparently normal and are part of the process, when the pressure suddenly falls away. But has the pressure really fallen away? Of course not. You have to learn to relax, among other things by doing exercises, not drinking too much coffee when you have trouble sleeping (I drink coffee all the time). I never lie awake, but I also don’t sleep for very long, though usually without waking.

Monday 28/4/86. Roskam is allowed to call again, Schulten came to tell me. Great. I have no idea what Foreign Affairs is thinking: one moment they are rescinding instructions, next they’re letting things happen as planned.

Wednesday 30/4/86. Queen Beatrix’s birthday. Heard some great stories about it from Pat, who went to the celebrations in Johannesburg. About two hundred guests – one of them black. They sang the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus, and then they sang the South African anthem, ‘Die Stem’.

My razor wire outside is starting to look beautiful. It’s getting covered in pretty climbing plants...

Friday 2/5/86. Jacky came by. She told me about a meeting for which they went to the trouble of hiring a security company – to prevent problems with right-wingers. She’s getting horrible telephone calls – someone who laughs at her and then hangs up. She sleeps with a revolver and a rifle close to hand. What a country!

Tuesday 6/5/86.

The newspapers here are now covering the Chernobyl disaster extensively – one week after it happened.

Talked with Karel about events in South Africa this week. We talked about Alexandra, near Johannesburg, where forty-nine people were killed a few weeks ago. Now it appears that, among others, right-wing groups (‘vigilantes’) are operating there, and hitting left-wing elements hard with the unofficial help of the police. Whites wearing balaclavas and black face paint were seen.

Karel and I talked about the high cost of living here in SA, where you have to work for far longer for the same basket of basic living necessities than you do in other places – USA, Europe – and then we’re only talking about the white group. We also talked about 1 May and the fact that about 1.5 million black workers stayed away from work. There were rallies and meetings all over the country. We also talked about a ‘hit list’ of sixty-six people who a certain right-wing organisation says should be killed.

Hélène’s case has been adjourned until 12/5 because the Attorney-General has mumps.

Friday 9/5/86. Henk from Zimbabwe stopped unexpectedly by. Really great to chat with someone who knows Zimbabwe. He had been to Durban by train and was returning to Harare by bus.

J gave me my ballot paper and will also take it away today, to ensure that it gets to Holland in time.

Saturday 10/5/86. MP Nine’s last weekend. How quickly time goes by! I sit here and time runs past me as if I’m no longer a part of things: people die (Omaatje, Kruijer), children are born (among them, Shonna), all kinds of things are happening, even in Europe, but I ‘sit’.

Tuesday 13/5/86. Talked with Karel.

We discussed the attacks on Shell garages in the Netherlands. In my view, this sort of action isn’t useful in the Netherlands, there are other ways. It probably sets the public against anti-apartheid activists (AABN, KZA, BOA, KAIROS). Here, it’s a different matter. I don’t believe in terrorism of the ‘Rote Armee Fraktion’ kind in Europe. It’s based on a faulty analysis of the European context and of the class consciousness of the workers in Europe. Moreover, there are other ways to mobilise the masses.

Wednesday 14/5/86. Yesterday Simonsz told me that len van de Heuvel would visit me today. A lovely woman, energetic. PvdA, member of the European parliament. Somewhat of a specialist in human rights, with particular knowledge of South America. Not an Africa specialist, then. But there she was in the room with me. She had no idea that South Africa would be so awful, and intends to tell everyone she can that the South African system is ‘criminal’.

Thursday 15/5/86. Today Hélène was convicted: she is found guilty of high treason with respect to the period from February to June 1985, when she was living here; she was not found guilty of terrorism with respect to the period from 1981 until February 1985. The sentence will be handed down at a later time. All the charges that would get below fifteen years have been removed from the charge sheet, so the sentence can be regarded as a victory for the defence.

The SAP called, wanted to see me this afternoon. I refused, which MP Ten didn’t like; he’s worried that they’ll make trouble. I’ll talk to Simonsz about it and ask him to tell them that it’s up to me whether I want to see them, and not up to the MPs or the SAP.

Friday 16/5/86. The newspapers today are full of Hélène’s case, and later the TV as well. She made a good, courageous statement. Kim came by. We talked about Hélène’s case, the ‘people’s courts’ and my ‘adventurism’, of which some people seem to disapprove. Simonsz says that there were a lot of black people in the public gallery and that children will be coming by on Sunday. Great!

Jacky, who also stopped by, was very impressed with Hélène, but she’s worried that she’s going to get a heavy sentence.

Sunday 18/5/86. Tremendous to see the boys again. Bri is angry with me, it seems, and didn’t want to come. A pity. Yves hasn’t changed the least. Fab has grown enormously, and his voice is deepening. A very handsome, political young man. Phil was open and cheerful. They talked about the trial and the way they’ve been received by everyone here. They’re even going to pay a visit on Winnie Mandela.

They’ve been able to see a lot of Hélène. Pat took them to Alexandra. In short, they have experienced a lot, but haven’t done much of the school work they brought with them.

They were here from eleven until half past eight, and I found saying goodbye difficult. It was a little sad around here after they’d gone. When will I see them again?

Monday 19/5/86. Sentence: ten years. Long, but better than it could have been. Good result for Kathy and Kuny. Everyone is happy (which is crazy, really, given such a sentence). She phoned straight away and said that they may appeal.

In the afternoon the judge decided that Hélène would be allowed to appeal. If they do, which has its risks, the process will take another six to seven months. I’d expected her to stay in the Joburg prison for a while, but it seems they transferred her the same day to Pretoria Central.

Thursday 22/5/86. On the radio, the surprising election result in the Netherlands: the CDA [Christian Democrats] are the big winners, the PvdA [Labour Party] is no longer the largest party, the VVD [Liberals] have lost significantly but a coalition of CDA and VVD can reckon on eighty-one seats. The government won’t change its position on my case. Probably a PvdA-CDA coalition would have been better for me, but that was never going to happen.

Thursday 29/5/86. All the newspapers are reporting the story of a (black) vigilante who was captured by members of the UDF and confessed that he had been paid by the authorities to take part in attacks on activists during which four people were killed. The police deny it of course.

Friday 30/5/86. Have decided to adopt a work schedule and to stick to it, just as with my physical exercises, which I do virtually every day. I get up at about eight, listen to the radio, read newspapers, do the washing-up, eat breakfast, do my exercises, wash. All this usually takes until about ten. My plan is to work from half past ten until half past twelve, then have lunch, chat a bit, play a game or two with the MP on duty and then work from two until five. If I stick to it, I’ll get somewhere. I’ll do my reading outside of those hours. Between seven and nine thirty in the evening I’m dependent on what there is on TV. I often go to bed late.

Sunday 1/6/86. Yesterday (31 May) was the 25th anniversary of the Republic of South Africa and it is therefore an important white holiday. Right-wingers gathered at the Voortrekker monument (an example of fascist-realist architecture), and the AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche stole the show.

Monday 2/6/86. J back from Zimbabwe, very enthusiastic. He thinks that whites really want to stay. There are certainly enough social problems: aside from the troubles in Matabeleland, there are the low wages of farm workers. Mugabe manoeuvres carefully, but he is always dependent on the situation South Africa.

J says that the hole in the window by the telephone was made by a .22-calibre bullet. This was later confirmed by a new MP.

Thursday 5/6/86. I thought it was another article about me when I saw the headline: ‘n Klaas of dood’ (‘a Klaas or dead’). But it turned out to be about ‘blacks’ who would rather ‘be a Klaas’, that is someone’s servant, than die in the homelands. According to my [Afrikaans] dictionary: ‘Klaas: ‘n poor fellow, a wretch; to be a lackey or servant’.

Wednesday 11/6/86. Still a lot of discussion about the security laws that will not be passed before the 16th (the commemoration of Soweto). Rumours about other measures. It surprises me that a pro-sanctions law will be passed in the US. It would never have made it in Holland!

The rand is wobbling and a number of landmines have exploded or been discovered in the Transvaal.

Brother Jan called. I tell him that I sometimes feel powerless and that I’m sometimes tempted to run out of here (weapons and all)...

Thursday 12/6/86. The cops who were manning the entrance appear to have gone. We understand why a short while later. Tonight at midnight, a general state of emergency was announced, as many people had feared. Now they need police all over the place and that’s why they’ve taken some of the men from here. The measures they are taking are clear.

On the first day, about 1 000 people were detained (UDF, ECC, trade union people, church people). Even before the general state of emergency was announced on the radio, you could see that something was going on from what was happening in the streets: a lot of armed cops and soldiers. We thought that there’d be a demonstration, but it was apparently a normal emergency situation...

Friday 13/6/86. Goddammit, I’m so angry. What is happening is terrible... The Weekly Mail published a courageous edition, which was immediately seized (though luckily Johannes had a copy). It was seized because of the lead article: ‘Rule of the big stick’, with a photo of cops walking around with sjamboks.

Simonsz also thinks that the situation here is terrible. He says that it was Van den Broek who proposed that the EEC embassies should stay closed on the 16th, and not the Germans, as claimed by The Citizen. He thinks that Van den Broek has done well as an EEC leader.

Saturday 14/6/86. All the papers are worried, and publishing disclaimers like: ‘This newspaper has been produced under emergency restrictions amounting to censorship.’ We’ll be seeing empty pages or blacked-out lines soon.

We have been informed, via Kathy, Foreign Affairs/The Hague and Simonsz, of the fact that Klaus van Lieres intends to compile a new set of charges against me that will include the following items, among others:

1. That I established a weapons cache.

2. Transported weapons into the country.

3. Knew of a number of other weapons caches.

4. Worked as a courier for Hélène.

5. Was/am a member/sympathiser with the ANC.

6. They will try to get [the charge sheet] to me.

Sunday 15/6/86.

The Sunday papers reported on the latest car bomb, which exploded in Durban yesterday (14/6) killing two white women and wounding fifteen other people... My view is that these sorts of attack are counter-productive, although they are of course an expression of the frustrations of the black population and probably the work of a few young, militant elements. Violence is always terrible when it is directed at ordinary people. Aside from the fact that it is terrible, I think that it is now counter-productive because guerrilla action must distinguish itself from the repressive action of the state, that is, it must have political significance.

I support the use of violence in the struggle against this regime, but I’m opposed to this kind of action, even if it succeeds in winning some public sympathy. But if a wave of ‘terrorist’ attacks causes the white population here to start thinking, and say: ‘We don’t actually want a majority government, but we also don’t want to run the risk of getting mutilated or killed at a supermarket or a bus stop, so for God’s sake let’s negotiate!’ – what if the attacks achieve such a result?

If that were to happen, you could say that it would be a justification of the idea that the ‘end justifies the means’. But I’m against this: train people better, bring more weapons and explosives into the country, plan better and attack military and strategic targets (including military personnel, with or without weapons, it doesn’t matter). Use a car bomb, but against a military base, or attack a convoy (which hasn’t been done here, though it’s not that difficult). All the indications are that the argument that ‘the end justifies the means’ doesn’t work – see Northern Ireland, see the Middle East. In short, my view is that attacks on civilians as counter-productive. The revolutionary climate is there, now we need more military leadership at the lower levels. There’s too little of that.

Tuesday 17/6/86. The Sowetan published a clever article: ‘All quiet on June 16. And if anything did happen, we are not allowed to tell you.’ But then, a little further in: ‘The 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings was a day of dignity, marked by a massive stay away in the Transvaal, West Cape and East Cape’ (rather like on May 1).

Thursday 19/6/86. Simonsz brought a large bag with a lot of old newspapers in it from 1930-55. They were his mother’s. She passed away a short while ago and she’d kept the newspapers all that time.

I have the impression that the Dutch papers could not have given more attention to the military situation at the end of the Second World War than the South African papers now pay to the state of emergency. That in itself says something.

Friday 20/6/86. Happy that Alice came by. She’s been very down because of the emergency, which she finds appalling. In such situation you really have to be able to rely on each other. You have no idea what’s going on, there’s no news (the emergency is working well in that respect). Everyone you meet knows ten people who have been detained... Others have gone underground – although you can’t ever be sure of that. You can’t talk about anything important on the phone, of course, so you go out to see your friends. The End Conscription Campaign is unable to act, and the same is true of other organizations: all of them are crippled because the cadres are either in detention or under cover. Control over the press is huge, and the newspapers aren’t allowed to leave white spaces in their copy either.

Saturday 21/6/86. The security legislation has been adopted by the president’s council. Long live this democracy… The white opposition, the coloureds and the Indians also oppose these laws, but they have been side-lined.

Monday 23/6/86. Today is one year since I was arrested. I have therefore been ‘stuck’ in South Africa for a year. Even if I end up in prison, though, this year won’t have been entirely wasted. I’ve had time to think about things, I’ve made new contacts and I’ve gained a more detailed impression of South Africa...

Anyway, I think that as a Dutch citizen I have the right to apply for diplomatic asylum. I think that the state is obliged to grant it because my offences are political in the sense that I carried them out against a country that rapes human rights. That means that I can’t accept arguments such as: ‘You should keep your head down, because we’re doing so much for you!’ Which doesn’t mean that I’m ungrateful that they’ve recognised their obligation, even against a great deal of pressure from South Africa.

I got to see a Dutch paper (NRC 4/6) in which Boesak describes South Africa as a fascist police state and wonders why ‘they are still so hypocritical in the Netherlands’.

Friday 27/6/86. Jacky comes by. About the state of emergency: isolation, being thrown back on each other, fear. Also some irritation about certain people who are enjoying the situation, using disguises and acting as if they’re taking huge risks. A different hair style, beards, dark glasses. A lot of social gatherings and parties. Your awareness of the passage of time changes: the period before the state of emergency now seems months and months ago. It surprises her that I never complain, but why should I? No one can do anything about it, least of all me.

Friday 4/7/86. Kim and Alice came to see the ‘Witness to Apartheid’ video that I was able to get hold of. Impressive film. Awful clips of the police in action in the townships, interviews with torture victims.

Even MP Eleven, a former member of the special operations unit of the Military Police and himself an expert in violence, was shocked. He called his colleague to come round and see it for himself. He was appalled by the random shooting, which in his view simply wasn’t necessary.

At the moment I react badly to films like this. I get very emotional, sad and extremely angry, all at the same time...

Kim thinks it’s scary how quickly the state of emergency has become ‘normal’. The worst is that it’s working. Cutting off the flow of news works. It’s difficult to stay interested.

Tuesday 8/7/86.

Karel called, back from his Africa trip. Didn’t see Bev in Harare, but we talked about John for a while. In Lusaka he talked with Joe and Ronnie, among other people, and they send hearty greetings. He was impressed by everything that’s happening in Zimbabwe. And by the feisty, combative attitude even ordinary people in Zambia take as regards South Africa. The ANC is full of hope, they take the attitude that psychologically something is changing in South Africa. I agree: the population is becoming more political conscious and the attacks are (sadly) an expression of that. But in general their view of the situation is positive.

Kathy comes by, unexpectedly. Among other things, she has transcripts of Hélène’s testimony and the long-awaited sentence by Judge Spoelstra. Now they’re going to consider taking the sentence to appeal...

Kathy can’t pass on letters or take letters to be posted, because it could be seen as an offence under the state of emergency.

She says that a lot of people have been detained: between four and five thousand. In many cases no one knows where they are, and it’s a lie that the SAP is informing the families of their whereabouts.

Wednesday 9/7/86.

I look out of the window and see people out in the street, going to work with thick jackets on, gloves, jerseys and woollen scarves.

Today I treated everyone to carrot cake, because it’s the first anniversary of the day I fled into the embassy.

Thinking about the carrot cake, MP Eleven tells a joke that a little boy told him: A rabbit goes into the baker’s and asks casually: ‘Baker, you wouldn’t have any carrot cake, would you?’ ‘No,’ the baker says, surprised. A week later the same rabbit, the same question. Again the baker has to admit that he doesn’t have any carrot cake. But he gets to thinking: ‘There’s clearly a demand for carrot cake, so I should go ahead and bake some!’ The following week, the same rabbit: ‘Good day, baker, do you have any carrot cake?’ Very pleased, the baker says: ‘Yes, of course,’ and goes to get some. Rabbit with an expression of distaste: ‘No thanks... I don’t like carrot cake.’

Jokes like this really make me laugh. It seems that here I’m enjoying the small things more than I ever have. I get more furious than I ever did. In short, I’m alive and well...

Friday 11/7/86.

At eleven the SAP hunting enthusiast called. He’d come by to see if I wanted to chat.

During the course of the conversation ‘Hunter’ told me that the SAP were planning to come into the building to get me – in due course. What could South Africa care if the Netherlands gets upset, it won’t matter anyway. Probably before the beginning of the year... ‘But not for the moment, ‘ he says, ‘because everyone’s too busy with other things (the state of emergency), but you’ll be next.’ That’s what he and his friends think.

We talk about his recent activities.

He has worked in the Cape. He had no idea things were so bad there. The ANC is well organised in a black township near Cape Town: they are giving crash courses and doing exercises that included the use of explosives and firearms – in the township itself. The normal police don’t dare go there anymore.

Among the people who were shot dead in the Cape recently was an ANC member who managed to shoot off two full AK-47 magazines; he was on his third when he was killed. So ‘Hunter’ thinks you have to be really good... The man had bad luck, his fire was well aimed, but he just wasn’t able to shoot anyone... And that was someone who’d only had a crash course. From my file of clippings I see that this was a firefight with ‘seven ANC terrorists’ that took place in Gugulethu in the Cape. From what he tells me, it’s apparent that ‘Hunter’ has been in action in Gugelethu.

‘Hunter’ thinks that we’ll have a black majority government in South Africa within five to ten years. He plans to wait and see before he reaches for his weapons... Why? Among other things because of what he’s heard about Zimbabwe, about the ANC. In the Cape he read the Freedom Charter for the first time in his life: It’s okay, really,’ he says, ‘it’s not even so violent!’ But he’s gloomy, and expects a lot of violence in the coming years. He’s strangely ambiguous about it all. On the one hand he enjoys skirmishes and firefights; on the other hand, he’d like to see an end to the ubiquitous violence, which scares him. Even though he expects a lot of trouble in the near future, he doesn’t think the army will try to take over.

He complains about the fact that so little information is available about what’s going on. Me: ‘Yes, so far as that’s concerned you guys differ considerably from the guerrilla fighters – they get a lot of information all the time!’ He thinks that the leadership is afraid that people like him would take matters into their own hands if they knew more about what’s going on. For example, if they knew more about Tutu’s role they might liquidate him, and the government doesn’t want that to happen.

Yet in his view there are only two ways to deal with a man like him: put him away for life or shoot him dead. But the government doesn’t want people to act on their own initiative. ‘Although that’s also happening,’ he says. ‘Look at Crossroads and everything else that we’ve talked about… Yes, it’s going to happen more and more in the future.’ Unfortunately, I think he’s right.

Saturday 12/7/86. J came by. MP Eleven also talked with him about his view of the situation here. The lack of facilities irritates him (no shower, transport problems). He doesn’t think it ideal that the MPs sleep on one side of a thin wall with the SAP on the other side. You often hear the guys messing with their weapons, and when that’s going on there’s a chance that a shot will go off by accident, and that you’ll find yourself in the path of the bullet.

Sunday 13/7/86. Schulten stopped by briefly as usual. I tell him that I want to submit an application for a new passport to him, since he is the consul whose duties include dealing with this kind of thing. He’s so shocked he nearly falls off his chair. ‘No, I don’t want anything to do with you! Everything to do with you has to go via The Hague!’

Monday 14/7/86.

Simonsz came by. He hadn’t heard anything about the renovations. Brought a parcel of publications with him that len van de Heuvel sent. Should have got it sooner. Her enclosed letter is dated 17/6. Simonsz said: ‘We have been told that last year’s strict conditions with regard to post will also apply this year.’ That means I won’t be able to use the diplomatic courier. He advised me to put my request to use the diplomatic post in writing and submit it to the ambassador, who will come around sometime this week, before his departure for Holland. I’ve already done so.

Included in the parcel was a letter from Sietse Bosgra, asking me to collect clippings for Facts & Reports from a number of South African newspapers, among them The Sowetan, the Cape Times, City Press, The Citizen and the Sunday Times, which I am to send to the Netherlands every week. Subscriptions and postage stamps will be paid. It’s a useful project and I really want to do it.

MP Eleven: ‘From what I’ve seen and heard, the police here are completely different to us.’ He’s never had to use his night stick, let alone his fire arm, and he’s glad about that. A big difference with the guys outside, who are always boasting about the ‘kaffirs’ they have killed...

‘Our training is entirely based on the idea that you should only have to use your weapon in an emergency. We take a defensive approach, with the emphasis on self-defence, then the night stick, then the weapon. But we are so well trained that if we must use these measures, we’ll be very efficient!’

Tuesday 15/7/86. Today’s Business Day writes that fifty-one percent of white households have one or more weapons. Among the Afrikaners the percentage is higher, sixty percent, than it is among the English-speakers, thirty-nine percent. Simonsz is anxious that I don’t make a scene on Saturday. I invite him to stop by, but he says that he probably won’t – for ‘diplomatic reasons’.

Wednesday 16/7/86.

Carsten came by my room at about half past three to chat. He’s received my letter applying to use the diplomatic post, but he rejects the idea completely, even if he were able to read the post I send.

He doesn’t want to see Pat Sidley around here – the journalist who caused him so many problems because of that article about me. He was required to explain several times what happened to the South Africa section at Foreign Affairs, and he appears to nurture a desire for revenge. I explain to him that she thought that it would okay to publish the article after parts of my journal appeared in the De Groene Amsterdammer, but he isn’t interested. He distrusts journalists anyway, and he also gave negative feedback on my calls with my friend Karel Roskam. But The Hague thought it was okay. I say that I think that he could do more, that I have the impression that I have to fight for everything: my visits, and so on.

Actually, I’m not too bothered, but all this is so terribly ‘Dutch’. Carsten doesn’t think that the SAP will ever raid the building. Not only because the Netherlands would never accept it, but because the other EEC countries wouldn’t either. But if that’s the case – I think now – why do I have to be so careful, then?

He thought I was at least being honest by refusing to sign a document committing myself not to allow similar articles to appear again.

About the political situation in South Africa: he’s gloomy about the way things are going, but he also thinks that we are tackling the South Africans in the wrong way. He’s still an opponent of sanctions. He always comes back to the boycott and how much suffering it is causing, to which I reply that it is probably the last remaining non-violent method of opposing apartheid, and that people are suffering anyway. I tell him a few things about the situation in the countryside, where things are really terrible: the high mortality rate of infants and young children, and where there is even serious starvation.

‘But is it worse than is many other African countries?’ he asks. We talk a little about Mozambique (which has been caused so much suffering by the same South Africans) and Zimbabwe. I said that South Africa was a fascist country – the security laws, the state of emergency, the military and police actions internally and externally, the racist legislation that’s still in force.

He’s a died-in-the-wool supporter of the VVD [the Dutch liberal party] and he’s against racial discrimination and oppression, but he thinks that things arenn’t so bad here and that they will sort themselves out peacefully if we don’t anger the Boers by calling for sanctions and supporting violence.

Friday 18/7/86. Jacky came by. Firebombs have been thrown at the houses of End Conscription Campaign friends of hers – luckily, one of them didn’t explode. The second one did, though, but it was quickly extinguished. Probably the work of the police, who have the addresses of such people.

Saturday 19/7/86.

A year in the Dutch embassy. All the papers have articles about it. It was extensively covered yesterday on the TV news and on the radio, and this morning I saw more people than usual looking up at the building from the street outside.

For example, a woman with a little girl, probably her daughter, stood by the traffic light. She looked in my direction and made the cutting-the-throat gesture. I smiled back. They crossed over, and from the middle of the street the little girl waved at me. I waved back. The mother tried to push her daughter’s arm down, and looked at me and then around, somewhat frightened.

Schulten came briefly to chat and later Simonsz.

Just after seven the guests all came in together, with bags loaded with drinks and eats. Kathy and Jacky, Kim and Alice and the little dog, Thing Thing – it’s starting to feel at home here. All their luggage was thoroughly checked by the cops before they were allowed in.

It was a fantastic evening. I laughed a lot, especially with Kathy and Jacky, who sang a weird little English song. We also danced, among other things to music that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else but here – Free Nelson Mandela — in a room whose walls are covered in banned posters and where there are loads of banned literature ... They brought champagne. We invited the new military policeman, MP Twelve, to join us. He thought it was really strange to socialise with a terrorist. When a bunch of friends like this sees each other, they exchange the latest stories and news about recent arrests, raids on houses and so on, all of which are still continuing (presently some 5 000 have been detained or are ‘missing’).

The first rumours were that it wasn’t so bad, but now stories are coming out that people have been held with ordinary criminals, who are extremely hostile to the ‘lefties’...

I enjoyed the presence of so many nice people and sometimes I just sat looking and listening.

Before they came I was as excited as I was before I was before my first date, a sort of nervous tension full of expectation. It was the first time in twelve months that anything like this had happened.

I went to bed feeling incredibly satisfied.

Tuesday 22/7/86.

MP Eleven has quarrelled with the SAP guard who has been staring at me, sometimes for hours on end, from a toilet in the building across the street that looks directly onto my room. MP Twelve stared back for some time until I advised him not to do so, because they’d end up staring at each other for hours... The cops had made MP Eleven wait for a long time at the gate; the entrance is closed by a gate that is guarded by the cops. Initially, the MPs would lock it with a padlock, but in September the cops replaced it with a padlock of their own. When the man told MP Eleven that he d first have to write it up, the MP took the keys from the table. That was cause for a quarrel. There’s probably not a South African, black or white, who’d ever think of doing something like that. The cop was quick to take the key back from MP Eleven, after which he opened the gate himself. MP Eleven was angry and phoned Simonsz straight away, who soon appeared. Simonsz told the cop that he wasn’t to behave in such a way, and that if someone wanted to come in, he was to open the gate immediately...

Simonsz was still angry about it when he came up to us. He’ll take the matter up with one the guards’ superior officers, Stedler [sic] or Van der Merwe... I don’t think it matters very much, but I like the gesture a lot. Both MP Eleven and I told him that we appreciated what he’d done.

Simonsz also had some post for me, which was all great. Especially nice, though, was a visit from Brigitte with her baby Shonna. She’ll soon be returning the Netherlands. She was able to visit Hélène for half an hour shortly before she came to see me. She was separated from her mother by a pane of thick glass, and they talked through a sort of megaphone in the presence of someone who noted everything they said. Hélène was very cheerful. As the lowest category of prisoner, she is allowed only one half-hour visit per month and she can send one letter and receive one letter of 500 words – also per month.

At first Shonna regarded me a little suspiciously. But she soon accepted me and sat happily on my lap. I’m a grandfather then. How crazy is that.

Thursday 24/7/86. MP Eleven calls me: something to see on the street. A welcome diversion in the daily routine. In Andries Street a fire hydrant is spouting water metres high and the workers are running around ineffectually trying to close it off. We look on, amused. Yet more workers arrive. The try to find a tap in the street surface so they can shut off the fountain. A fire department car arrives and a white supervisor, a real Boer – short trousers, knee-length socks with a comb stuck in one of them – yells instructions from a distance.

Saturday 26/7/86. At about one o’ clock I look out of the window on the front side of the building and see the black personnel of the OK Bazaars getting changed to go home. They see me in the window, call ‘Amandla’ and raise their clenched fists in salute. It’s heartening. Even MP Eleven is a little moved. It’s the first time that he’s experienced this kind of solidarity.

Thursday 31/7/86.

I thought that something new, something strange was going to happen. Suddenly two MPs appear, not to chat, but to wait for something. When I asked why they hadn’t gone out to do some shopping, they said: ‘Not yet, we’ll just wait here, maybe later...’

I understood what was going on when Simonsz appeared with two security people from The Hague. These people go around the world checking the Dutch embassies on a regular basis. But their visit to this building, the former Dutch embassy, had a purpose: they clearly wanted to check if I had fire arms or the like. It’s been clear to me for a while that not only the SAP, but also some of the MPs are convinced that I have a weapon. The whole building was thoroughly checked, and I hope that they now believe the opposite. As we thought, the phones are being bugged, but we can’t do anything about it. They didn’t find any other bugs.

The above is my own interpretation, because no one has officially told me that they were searching for weapons. I was asked to leave my room for a while and when I returned I could see that not a single drawer or storage place had been left unexamined. Everyone was relieved, probably because they hadn’t found anything, and because I didn’t take it badly. I made immediate use of the suddenly relaxed atmosphere to ask for a horizontal exercise bar. That wouldn’t be a problem.

Sunday 3/8/86. Schulten comes by. He’s heard that Foreign Affairs reacted negatively to my request for a passport, and he’s glad that he didn’t decide to give me one on his own initiative.

Tuesday 5/8/86. MP Eleven tells me that he saw a film at Fort Skanskop near the Voortrekker monument about the SADF’s activities in Namibia. People were lying around with their skulls shot to pieces, and yet children were allowed to wander by. He couldn’t understand it.

Thursday 7/8/86. Alice came by. She says that it’s hard to get things gone because of the emergency. Only the lawyers are still functioning, they have lots to do, but the others... Some, like the journalists, have to work under the nightmare conditions of the emergency, and they’re showing all sorts of psychosomatic symptoms.

Friday 8/8/86. The Weekly Mail published a heavily censored piece about a small black community in the Cape where an evening curfew has been introduced; spotlights have been set up, activists have been detained, the SADF is patrolling. Despite everything, the residents are continuing with the consumer boycott and they are also refusing to pay rent. It appears that there’s a lot of this going on all around the country– it’s just that we don’t hear about it. On the education front, the trouble continues. The NECC (National Education Crisis Committee) has been accused of aligning itself with the ANC. Just imagine – most of the NECC’s members are respectable liberal black teachers!

Saturday 9/8/86. Today they started breaking down the interior of the former Nedbank offices. This will probably happen every weekend now, because it’s only then that the other offices aren’t affected by the noise. Except when we drink coffee or eat our meals, MP Twelve and I don’t spend much time together. We never play games, we only watch TV together sometimes. On Sundays he calls his family, which always seems to cheer him up.

Wednesday 13/8/86. This evening I listened to P.W. ‘Bumble’ Botha’s speech. A long, boring speech, just like one that Oliver. P. Bumble [a bear character in a popular Dutch cartoon] would give to members of the ‘Little Club’. Yet again, he skirted the idea of ‘apartheid’ and instead expressed his support for independent homelands, ‘own’ areas for the different racial groups and autonomous ‘black cities’. Again he told the West that the whites would not yield to external pressure, but would decide their own future.

Friday 15/8/86. The furniture for the MPs has been delivered; two easy chairs, an electric cooker, a bed and a mattress. You’ll hardly believe it, but we were told that the cooking equipment would only be for the use of the MPs... To their credit, my MPs got angry about this, and said that it was their business who used the equipment (they’ve been using my things for over a year).

Tuesday 19/8/86. Arjen will be sixteen today. I’m always surprised to realise that I have two boys who are growing up fast: they are sixteen and nineteen. I called him, today he’d just received my letter. He was waiting for some friends to turn up, so we didn’t chat very long. Which suited me, as I don’t have the money to call. He said he’d write soon...

Wednesday 20/8/86. MP Thirteen’s first day. My first impression: a large, friendly man. He knows three other MPs who have done tours here, so the situation wasn’t entirely strange to him. It will probably be little trouble for him to settle in quickly.

Thursday 21/8/86. Today I heard that Judith will be allowed to visit. I read in the paper that 1.5 million people are suffering starvation and in danger of dying. Mainly in KwaZulu, Kangwane and Lebowa. In a hospital in Lebowa (where Johannes Mathiba’s family lives) around sixty people die every month from starvation and the diseases associated with it. Sixty, in South Africa – Christian, civilised, industrialised South Africa ... and that’s only one of many hospitals where it’s probably happening.

Friday 22/8/86. Kathy came by with Judith Hawarden. In her early forties, divorced, three children, active in the Black Sash, particularly with the movement’s Education Committee. I thought her very nice.

Still, it’s a tricky situation. Kathy ‘hijacked’ the visit in more or less the same way as with her father, who recently had a heart attack. People now have to talk to him regularly, to teach him to speak again.

Tuesday 26/8/86. The SAP voyeur who wants to see me dead stood observing us for a long time from a darkened toilet in the building across the road. He leaned against the far wall, so that it was difficult to see him. When I’d had enough, I nodded at him and asked if he was playing at being 007. At that point he switched on the light, approached the window, stood there with his arms crossed, and continued to stare at me.

Wednesday 27/8/86. Eleven people have been killed and 64 wounded in Soweto, despite ongoing reports that the government has things under control, that peace is returning with each day. The killings had to do with threats to evict people from houses for which they are refusing to pay rent.

Friday 29/8/86. Simonsz came to tell me that The Hague responded negatively to my indication that I will be working on Facts & Reports, as well as to my requests to be able to use the diplomatic post and for a new passport (I shouldn’t need a travel document). Pat Sidley isn’t allowed to visit me, despite having committed herself in writing not to publish anything about me.

Saturday 30/8/86. Today I decided that I won’t see the ambassador again. The career diplomat can only say ‘NO, it’s not allowed’.

Monday 1/9/86. Another bomb attack, near Durban: eighteen wounded in a Pick ‘n Pay shopping centre. Could be in reprisal for what’s been happening in Soweto recently.

Tuesday 2/9/86.

I can approve of certain kinds of terror attack in the context of a freedom struggle such as the one that’s going on here. For example, extorting money for the movement; the killing of dangerous opponents (traitors) – sometimes for the purpose of drawing attention from other matters. But an attack like the one in Durban offers no tactical advantage at all. These kinds of attacks are a huge help to the government because they create an atmosphere of terror in which the ANC can be portrayed as an ‘international terrorist’ movement.

The South Africans really hate it that the ‘ANC is more respectable overseas than the PLO’. Nel (of the Information department) often calls for the terrorists to ‘be destroyed’. According to him, Gaddafi is ‘exporting his madness’, and Libya is training an ‘assassination squad’ to take out Buthelezi, among others. Business Day, 16/4/86, said that some 926 people were killed by terrorism in 1985, a number that isn’t very different from the number of people who have been killed here as a result of police action: between January and 10 December 1985 some 818 people died in township conflicts... However, international terrorism is seen as a great danger, while what’s going on here is dismissed as unimportant.

Wednesday 3/9/86. Carsten came by with a message. He’d been instructed to ask me to hand over a number of items that were found in my possession. When I asked him why, he said that possessing such items was contrary to international diplomatic rules. When I asked him to show me the rules, he said that they had never been written down, and were a part of what could be described as common law. I asked him to demonstrate that having the items referred to in my possession was really against these rules. He wasn’t pleased at my response, but he’d pass it on to The Hague. We were after all reasonable and civilised people, he said... He said again that a passport was a travel document, and that Foreign Affairs did not intend to issue me with one, although it might be possible to obtain proof of my Dutch citizenship.

Tuesday 9/9/86. Today six men were hanged, which brings the total for this year to eighty-two (sixty-three blacks, sixteen coloureds and two whites).

Thursday 25/9/86. I was surprised to see Kathy; she told me that she’d just come from a meeting with Carsten and Simonsz. The ambassador told her that I had certain items in my possession (rope, gloves, a small saw) that I might be able to use to escape. This was new to her, and she was a little upset; she really believes that an escape could be dangerous. Of course, this is something that I understand very well myself. She brought a message from Carsten: I would be required to hand these things over, or they would be forcibly taken from me. Naturally I got angry. Kathy and I talked about this for some time. I made a counter-proposal: I’d hand over the items if they’d allow me to make some changes to my situation here...

Friday 26/9/86. As regards Foreign Affairs and the embassy: naturally I’m grateful for everything that they’ve done for me, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to refrain from criticism when I don’t agree with them. Didn’t Wertheim once write: ‘he who acts like a sheep will be eaten by the wolf ‘? I’m damned if I’ll be a sheep for Foreign Affairs.

Saturday 27/9/86. Today I wrote a very angry letter to Van den Broek. In the letter I suggested that the embassy appears to regard me more as an undesirable prisoner, rather than as an unexpected ‘guest’. I gave a number of examples: no cat; no shower; restrictions on visitors; limits on my telephone calls; a ban on publishing anything about South Africa or the situation here in the embassy. These are all typical of the situation that prisoners are in.

The fact that they have now threatened to take away my rope and related items strengthens my view that they are treating me as a prisoner.

In my letter, I rejected the two basic reasons that I’m always given to justify the above measures: that is, the argument that the South African authorities would be strongly disapprove if they agreed to my requests, and that my presence here must not be allowed to affect the status of this Nedbank office as an embassy. In my view, the South African authorities are very disgruntled about my residence here anyway, and it would make little difference if Carsten/Foreign Affairs were to accord me a few more comforts and freedoms.

So far as the Nedbank building is concerned, I think that it wouldn’t affect its status as an embassy to allow me to have a cat, and to install a shower (which I would pay for), to conduct more private telephone conversations, to see more people and to publish in my area of expertise, as a private person. Other matters might affect that status more directly, for instance the absence of normal diplomatic staff.

In my letter I wrote that I thought that the real reasons for the limitations were that the Dutch want to adopt an oppositional attitude to the apartheid regime while at the same time adopting a posture of punishment to me.

Jan called, I brought him up to date with all the problems here.

It is Saturday 4/10/86. I lie reading in bed. There’s my reading lamp, and my bed is more comfortable than any chair. The courtyard is very small, and there are several floors above me, so I get very little sunlight. I always have to have my bedside lamp on. It’s especially dark in the afternoons.

Now that summer is arriving, I sometimes sit in the MPs’ room by the open window, to get some sun. It’s so pleasant. Gives me a feeling of being at the beach, of being free, of baking in the sun.

Tuesday 7/10/86.

Carsten and Simonsz came to the old embassy, and Carsten told me that Foreign Affairs won’t accept my proposals for a few changes in my situation, as proposed in my letter to Van den Broek. I was to hand him the items without making any further difficulties. I listened to Carsten, went into my room and locked the door.

‘I hadn’t expected this of you, Mr De Jonge, to barricade the door,’ I heard Carsten saying on the other side of the door. ‘Let’s talk about this. Would you please come to my room, where we can discuss this? You would be allowed to contact your lawyer. I give you my word. I wouldn’t take advantage if you did.’

Although I almost always disagree with Carsten and find his knowledge of the South African situation downright embarrassing, I’ve always trusted his sense of honour at least. So I exited the room and phoned Kathy. She told me that she thought that it would better if I didn’t lock myself in my room. Then I went to the ambassador. Simonsz made notes of what was said in the meeting. I told Carsten that I wouldn’t lock my door, but also that I wouldn’t voluntarily hand over the items. Carsten said that I wasn’t a ‘prisoner’ and that I could leave the building at any time. I replied that this was true in a legal sense, but that what it came down to was that he was offering me the chance to hang myself, since this is a punishment that you can get for ‘terrorism’; while at the same time he was denying me the right to use my rope to escape.

Carsten said that he couldn’t allow me to keep such items; if I were to escape, the embassy would be accused of complicity. ‘If only we didn’t know,’ he said. ‘But we do, and so we have to act.’ I replied that this was a strange argument. They’d sent two people to carry out a thorough search of my room, and then, when they had found a few things, they said regretfully: ‘How irritating, if only we hadn’t known!’

Carsten tried again to get me to cooperate by saying that he would raise no further objections to a cat and a shower – if our landlord, Nedbank agreed. Laughable, really, because Nedbank will always say no. Why should they do anything for me? The rent hasn’t been paid, there’s no rental contract, my presence is preventing them from carrying out renovations in this embassy section, and they just want to get rid of us. I decided not to get caught up in all that and repeated that I’d resist any attempt to confiscate my possessions.

We went to my room. An SAP man was standing on the other side of the road, looking into our building, clearly very interested in what was going on. There we stood, me with my back against the cupboard containing the disputed items. Carsten was across from me, rather indecisive, and Simonsz was there with his notebook. Slightly to the right, the two MPS, two large men who’d be doing the ‘dirty work’. They weren’t happy. The two MPs are nice young men who get on well with me, and it was obvious that they weren’t pleased at being told to confiscate my things, if necessary with force.

Irritated, Carsten asked for the key to the cupboard. I refused to give it to him, to which he replied that I wasn’t to be so childish. ‘Will I have to give an order to frisk you, or will we have to search the whole room?’ he said.

I said that he could do that, but there was little chance that he’d find anything. He asked if I also had the second key. When I said no, he told the others that there might be a second key at the new embassy, and that they’d have to go there. But this group of four burglars didn’t have any equipment with them to open the cupboard (drill, crowbar) and so they wandered away after a while. What a fiasco.

Still, I’m sure that something will happen pretty soon. They’ll probably have to inform Foreign Affairs in The Hague, possibly also as regards the level of force they can use, and so it will take a few days.

Thursday 9/10/86. In the afternoon Simonsz came by to say farewell. Tomorrow he goes to the Kruger Park.

‘When I’m back, we’ll come by with an axe to break your cupboard open,’ he laughed.

When I was sitting with the MPs in their room this afternoon, MP Thirteen received several calls, which he took behind a closed door. Is something going on?

Friday 10/10/86.

Kruger Day – that’s what today is – began quietly. It was a national holiday and things were very quiet, both in front of and behind the building, so I was able to sleep late. MP Fourteen was in his room, reading. I’d tidied up my room, done my exercises, washed and dressed myself and I was just starting on my yoghurt when there was a call. Then Carsten and Simonsz came in. Simonsz told me yesterday that he was going to the Kruger Park for the long weekend to see some animals, so I thought: D-Day. I was surprised not to see the second MP. They’d wouldn’t be able to do anything without him, surely...

I closed the door of my room and waited... Knocking. Carsten says: ‘Mr De Jonge, would you please come with us a moment? I’d like to discuss the matter that we talked about last time.’ I hesitated for a moment, because I trusted him, despite everything, then decided to go with him to his office.

Carsten: ‘Mr De Jonge, I must ask you one last time, will you cooperate, and give up your resistance? Because you won’t achieve anything by it. I know your views, but we will confiscate those things of yours. So let’s just stop telling wild tales. I understand that freedom fighters need publicity...’

I got angry: ‘You don’t understand anything. It’s not about publicity. I’m resisting your attempts to make it impossible for me to escape. For me, it’s about the difference between twenty years in prison or being free. And you try to dismiss that by describing it as ‘wild tales’. This is the only form of protest remaining to me.’

He: ‘Do you really think that you could succeed?’ Me: ‘Yes, I give myself a seventy to eighty percent chance, but if you take these items from me, an escape will be almost impossible. If I try it after that, I’ll face much greater risks. I’m protesting against this intervention in my life, even though I know I’ll lose.’ I continued: ‘In my opinion you go too far. You talk about being forced into complicity if you allow me to escape. Well, better to be complicit with me than with the South African police. Because that’s what you’ll be if you carry out your plans.’

Then I was distracted, hearing that they were doing something with my room. I wasn’t considering opening my cupboard for them. I wanted to leave, but Carsten said sternly: ‘Mr De Jonge, I am instructing you to remain in this room!’

I opened the door, and there stood MP Fourteen. Carsten seemed to be preparing himself to order the MP to hold me back. MP Fourteen said: ‘Mr Carsten, it’s done, it was a piece of cake!’

I went into my room. The cupboard stood there, its lock busted. The itemss had been removed from it. Later I learned what happened. The ambassador and Simonsz came into the building and took me to their office. While Carsten kept me busy, the other military policeman, MP Thirteen and chancellor Vermeeren (boss-key-carrier, he had a drill and a crowbar with him) came into the embassy and went as quietly as possible into my room, where they took the cupboard away to another space to break it open.

This turned out to be very easy – a screwdriver and a crowbar were sufficient. When I walked past Carsten into the room, the cupboard was already back in my room. They had confiscated a long rope (my request for a shorter piece to use as a skipping rope was denied), work gloves (I told Carsten that I needed them for my exercises, using them when I do pull-ups from the top of the door frame, but he refused to return them), a money belt, compass, a little saw and a lanyard for a pair of glasses. But Carsten said that the items would be properly stored until I was free... He also promised me a copy of the list of things that had been confiscated.

I was furious. He’d bullshitted me. I told him what I thought of him. Carsten didn’t like it, but he looked more relaxed than before. He’d got one over me. When I saw his grin, I got more angry. I stepped up close, shaking with anger... Carsten said very little in reply, he let it all pass over him. However, he did say that he hasn’t felt it necessary to take my interests into account in any way since last Tuesday. Everyone left and I was left with my MPs. Peace returned, but I’d built up a lot of anger and it was some time before it abated.

Saturday 11/10/86. I’ve informed everyone, through brother Jan, of the things I think they should know about what’s happened here. I felt aggressive and played a whole lot of protest songs loudly from the window. This irritated the SAP cops, who started throwing stones at the windows.

Monday 13/10/86. Brother Jan will have a talk with him Van den Broek on Friday, when the latter is back from his vacation. Until then, my friends don’t want any information to get out about what has happened here. I hope they haven’t gone along with Van den Broek’s attempts to prevent anything from coming out. For myself, I think, it would be best if it did come out.

Tuesday 14/10/86. Van der Velden came by and, through MP Fourteen, gave me a copy of the list of items that were confiscated. They used a somewhat different description, calling it a ‘Formal Notice of Confiscation’. It was a sheet of paper that recorded that on 10 October 1986 at plus-minus 10h10 certain items were removed from my possession: one rope of so many metres, one saw, one compass, two leather work gloves, a black leather money belt and a medical tube containing one whole and two half cigarettes. These items would be stored at the Dutch embassy on 825 Arcadia Street in Pretoria. The glasses lanyard was also confiscated on that day (10/10), but it was returned to me today...

Thursday 16/10/86. According to MP Fourteen, the guard post outside has been reinforced with a car full of people, which stands waiting on the corner. Would this have anything to do with the leaking of my ‘escape plans’?

Friday 17/10/86. Kathy came by. I told her the latest news about the ‘case’, about my conflict with Foreign Affairs. Legal steps won’t really be possible. In the legal sense, I’m not a prisoner. She’s also somewhat hesitant about the issue of publicity, though she understands why I want it... Roskam had already told her, and she’d posted my letter with commentary to the Netherlands.

Sunday 19/10/86. Brother Jan called to say that he talked with Van den Broek and Wijnaendts. They’ll see if things can be changed. They’ve recently received another request for my extradition, but otherwise everything seemed to be okay.

Monday 20/10/86. An aircraft with Samora Machel onboard has crashed. Crashed on South African soil (what was it doing there?), though it was en route from Lusaka to Maputo. Samora is dead, along with a number of other senior Mozambiquan officials, among them Aquino de Bragança, from Ruth First’s institute. He recently survived a South African attack, and now they’ve got him anyway.

If it turns out that the South Africans aren’t behind it (which almost no one will believe), then God was on the side of the Boers – something they’ve long believed... Very sad. In him we’ve lost one of the great African leaders. Though he wasn’t of the calibre of a man like Amilcar Cabral. In recent times he’d also become more charismatic than I liked, but despite that he was a good, important and inspiring leader.

Friday 31/10/86. To my surprise, this evening a heated harangue from the right-wing lawyers who work in the building across the street. One of them sees me and starts cursing me. ‘Terrorist’, ‘moffie’ (the South African word for ‘homo’), ‘I’m going to shoot you like a mad dog...’ He pulled out his weapon – something every right-wing Afrikaner is expected to carry. It was clear that he was drunk, so I made sure to stay out of the line of fire. A little later, there was a call: the same man and some of his friends yelling at the MP on duty, accusing him of protecting a criminal.

Monday 3/11/86. Discussed some points with Simonsz: a. new visitors and b. the letter scale. Currently the MPs post my letters, but they sometimes have to wait in queues at the post office and they want a letter scale. Simonsz asked Vermeeren for one, but he refused, of course. We’ve now bought one for ourselves. MP Fourteen offered to pay for it, which is nice. One of the MPs said: ‘Vermeeren only has to hear your name to feel nauseous.’ Well, it’s mutual.

Monday 10/11/86. SAP called up from the entrance downstairs. They haven’t seen me for a while and now they demanded to see me; the MP on duty was to fetch me. Of course, he didn’t.

Last night was also extremely noisy: rowdy clapping, yelling, calling us on the phone. Slept with earplugs in. In the middle of the night, MP Fourteen moved to another room in the front of the building. Now I understand who was behind it: RG. I didn’t see him. As long as he’s around, he’s going to want to fight a personal war.

Tuesday 11/11/86. A lot of noise again last night. RG really put everything into it: yelling, striking things with an iron rod, throwing stones at the windows and bricks onto the corrugated iron roof of the shed in front of my window. It was like New Year’s Eve. The noise even got through my earplugs.

Wednesday 12/11/86. Dad turns seventy-six today. He, Mom and Rieks called from Amsterdam. The whole family will be gathering tonight, including Puck, Arjen and Enno. They received my birthday letter.

Saturday 15/11/86. The Citizen reports that there have been more sabotage attempts, bomb attacks on Shell in the Netherlands. This time at the headquarters in The Hague. The bomb was defused. Police found a pamphlet on the site, which protested against Shell’s activities in South Africa. It was signed by a group calling itself ‘The revenge of Passtoors and De Jonge’... Come on.

Monday 17/11/86. Cop Johan stood outside this morning at half past five, yelling. Couldn’t get to sleep again. The weather was lovely and I sat for a while on a window seat in the front of the building, looking out at the life below me – all those people in so-called ‘freedom’. I can listen to music here that is banned out there. I read things that the people down there would be locked up for years for if they were caught with them. I can put up posters that would get them prison time. Who is free, then? Them or me?

The bags of the people at the OK Bazaars across the street are being checked before they’re allowed in. Another measure to combat terrorism. They weren’t doing it a year ago.

Tuesday 25/11/86. The SAP man from unit 19 has been ordered not to talk to me by his commandant (the ‘Turk’). A pity. The young man (nineteen) seems typical of many of his generation: afraid of the future, afraid of blacks, badly informed, under the spell of the ideas of Terre’Blanche, the AWB leader who says that he’ll fight to the death for the rights, religion and racial purity of the Afrikaner VOLK. At least, he says that he’ll fight to the death, but it would almost certainly be these young men who would actually do the fighting.

I was sitting with the MPs in their room when we suddenly heard the sound of excited barking. It had to be Thing Thing. We went to the door, and indeed, there was a little dog wagging its tail. Kathy was cheerful and relaxed. Great that she’s around again.

Thursday 27/11/86. Lovely weather again today. In the afternoon I sat for a while in the bay window in the front of the building, looking at all the activity out there in the street. Lightly clad people, a hell of a lot of uniforms. Blacks avoid eye contact with whites and vice versa. Black South Africans give white pedestrians more space on the street though. Some reactions to my presence from down there: normal ones from black passers-by, and somewhat more aggressive ones from the whites. No cursing today. Gestures from some of the guards, inviting me to come down and join them on the benches on the corner of Andries and Church streets.

Sunday 30/11/86. This week’s WM had a report about children in prison and the ‘Free the Children’ campaign. In the last five months, some 8 800 children have been detained, which is to say, around 250 per week. A total of 22 000 people have been detained during the last emergency, and of them some forty percent are below the age of eighteen. Being detained means intimidation, torture, bad food. What a country. I knew about this sort of thing, and yet when I find out that it’s going on now, I’m still shocked.

Thursday 4/12/86. A lot of noise last night, and I slept little. This morning I heard that they’dplaced a plank between the roof of the shed and my bay window. I suddenly drew my curtains, opened the window and tried to push the heavy plank away. I was successful, but the young SAP man who was straddling it didn’t fall into the barbed wire below because one of his colleagues was able to stabilise the plank. He got a huge scare, that young man who was playing at see-saw above the razor wire. Threats: ‘We’ll get you. Soon...’

Saturday 6/12/86. MP Sixteen gets irritated by the behaviour of SAP men outside. They yell at him, telling him that he’s a communist, and aim their pistols at him. They’re so childish: walking on the ridge below my window, throwing sticks, stones and sand and trying to keep us awake at night. They pull the ‘Free the Children’ stickers off my window when I’m sleeping, but I’ve got a lot of those, and I replace them straight away. If they continue this way, there’s no doubt that one of them will soon end up in the razor wire.

MP Sixteen has had enough of all this. MP Fifteen tells Simonsz that he wants a weapon if they’re going to continue to aim at him. Simonsz was horrified, and even more so when they told him that I’ll surely tackle one of the cops one day. He’ll get straight onto it on Monday.

Before I went to sleep, a sleeping pill and the earplugs in.

Monday 8/12/86. Noise the whole night, slept badly. I feel restless and irritable.

Simonsz has contacted Stadler’s assistant, major Beckers. According to Simonsz, they’re going to do something about it. They offered their apologies for the bother.

Friday 12/12/86. Karel called. He’s heard that a lot of activists have been picked up recently, among them editor-in-chief of the New Nation and an NECC man, Sizulu. Other names weren’t known yet, and even if they were, they couldn’t be published. MP Fifteen noticed that there have been more raids. He called me to show me the armoured personnel carriers, accompanied by police, that passed by here at about half past nine in the morning – one after the other. Probably on their way to Mamelodi, or coming from Atteridgeville...

Saturday 13/12/86. I walked around restlessly today, in expectation of a telephone call from Hans van Leeuwen. I’d told MP Sixteen that he could call, and he had been informed by Simonsz that he’d be able to visit me. When I heard the telephone ring, I said: ‘If it’s Hans, tell him that he’s welcome.’ But MP Sixteen had already put the phone down.

Hans didn’t phone again, but at four o’ clock he was at the door. We embraced each other and I stammered something like: ‘God, how nice, I was afraid that I wouldn’t see you today...’ He stayed until nine in the evening.

Sunday 14/12/86. Hans came by again at half past one. He’s worried about my security (bullet-proof glass should be fitted), about the fact that I am not allowed a pet. He suggested giving me an aquarium with tropical fish. Fish? That’s not what I want. You can’t have a fish on your lap. But he assures me that it’s a great pastime. Well, maybe...

Monday 15/12/86. Hans came by with an aquarium, sand, some little fish and everything else that goes with. We set it up on the table next to my bed, and indeed, those fishes darting among each other are a pretty sight.

Simonsz comes by and says (seeing the aquarium) that it’s really nice that I have the fish. But then he went straight to the MP on duty to ask how it was possible that an aquarium had been brought into the building. Had he seen it? ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘But no one ever said that it wasn’t allowed...’ Yes, indeed. Imagine. The Hague should have been asked for permission, but the aquarium is already installed...

Wednesday 31/12/86. Today I will have filled in an entire calendar, here in the embassy. It’s gone so terribly quickly.

The MPs are stocking up for New Year’s Eve, which the three of us will celebrate here.

A lot of people out on the street, a lot of calls. One even threw a soft-boiled egg at me when I was sitting in the bay window. At twelve there was a call. ‘Porto’ came to wish me a happy new year, with a colleague. He doesn’t do politics, and thinks of himself as technocrat of violence. Proud of his unit, but is not especially hostile to me or other members of the ANC. Does his job, that’s all.

Thursday 1/1/87. Quiet day. Needed the whole day to recover from yesterday. I feel great, though a little sluggish.

Friday 2/1/87. Simonsz came to wish me a happy new year. Had post with him, among others from Rieks, who writes that she ran into Willem Oltmans on the tram – he had a Walkman with headphones on. ‘l’m Klaas de Jonge’s sister,’ she said. ‘I last saw you at Sonja’s. Have you met Klaas?’ To which he replied: ‘Oh, he’ll be free soon. I say to prime minister Botha: “you should follow the example of the Russians, put the fellow on a plane, having all those guards only costs you money.” No, he’ll be free soon.’

Wednesday 7/1/87. The papers are full of articles about the ANC, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary tomorrow. (By the way, the SADF is also celebrating its 75th anniversary!)

Today I made a poster to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the ANC. I made sure that the MPs couldn’t see what I was doing. Tomorrow morning, early, I’ll put it up in my window in the back part of the building. I think it’s quite a good poster. Simple and clear.

Thursday 8/1/87.

As soon as I woke up this morning, I put up the poster, with, alongside it (and also in the window in the front part of the building) an advert that appeared in the press: ‘Let the ANC speak for itself’. After twenty-seven years it was time to: ‘UNBAN THE ANC’.

I said nothing about what I was doing, and put up the posters in places that wouldn’t be quickly noticed from inside, so as not to alarm the MPs. MP Seventeen noticed that we were getting a lot of attention from outside, but he had no idea why. Someone in the building across the road had apparently notified the Pretoria News, which came to take some photographs. There was a photo on the front page of the evening edition, with VIVA ANC 75 clearly visible.

It didn’t last long, of course. I soon received a phone call from Simonsz. The ambassador had called him after receiving a complaint that I played revolutionary music and put up posters with slogans on them such as ‘Unban the ANC’ and ‘Viva ANC’. Was this true? Me: ‘The poster, yes, but not the revolutionary music.’ He said that he would come by, but asked me to remove the posters, which I did. The MPs had been ordered to do it anyway.

Simonsz came by later and I tell him the same things again. I explain that the music is Johannes’s. He had given me a cassette with some great numbers on it (ordinary music, heard everywhere) and we danced a little to them. This was probably what gave the SAP, or whoever else was outside, the idea that we were dancing to revolutionary music. Simonsz said immediately: ‘Johannes isn’t acting as a courier for you, is he? That’s totally forbidden!’ If the ambassador got to hear of it, Simonsz said, Johannes would lose his job straight away.

Again I assure him that Johannes has nothing to do with all this. But I still have a very unpleasant feeling about this business. Foreign Affairs has a tendency to find its scapegoats at the lowest levels, and I didn’t like the idea that they might channel their anger on Johannes.

Friday 9/1/87. Johannes arrives with the morning papers. He tells MP Seventeen, and me, that Simonsz called him to his office. He was angry with him, he said, because he’d apparently helped me with the posters and given me some music. Johannes told him pretty much what I did, that he knew absolutely nothing about it, and that the music was normal radio music. I thought it was awful for him, because his job was at risk. An important lesson for me.

This morning, unexpectedly, a TV crew was on the other side of the street, filming from the lawyer’s office and from ‘World Vision’ (some sort of American institution). They got some sequences and asked me some short questions (so short that you’d hardly call it an interview).

To my surprise, Shazus called the same evening to say their clips were on the Dutch TV news. MP Seventeen was able to see some of the action outside from the toilets, but was wise enough not to interfere, which would have been difficult, since my door was locked. Imagine if he’d dragged me away from the window in full view of the cameras... Simonsz stoppedby at the end of the day to talk about it. Asked if I’d given an interview, which I denied. Only some film clips and a remark or two.

Monday 19/1/87. Eighteen months in embassy. For the occasion, I treated my MPs to apple tart. How much longer?

Saturday 14/2/87. The doorbell: and then suddenly, Hélène’s mother was standing there. I only expected her tomorrow, but she was in the neighbourhood, very tired. She’d bought some great things for me, which she wanted to offload straight away. Wine, meat, a tin of ham.

She’d seen Hélène twice already, once for half an hour and separated by a pane of glass, and once for a somewhat longer time in a room where they were under the supervision of a prison official. Hélène looked somewhat older, she said. Nevertheless, she was doing well. She was concerned about her boyfriend, who the South Africans recently kidnapped in Swaziland. Hélène wants to study, but at present things are too difficult for her to concentrate.

Saturday 21/2/87. Granny Passtoors was here from about half past ten until half past one. She says that Hélène’s health has taken a bad knock from all of this. We laughed about the fact that Hélène is making batik cushions with her fellow prisoners. She talks a lot with the others and does some exercise, but it seems that she’s often glad when it’s four in the afternoon and she is locked up in her own cell again. She sees her imam for an hour every Monday. Granny Passtoors has met him, and she’s that he’s a good-natured man.

Monday 23/2/87. Granny Passtoors came by, for the last time. She was in a cheerful mood. She didn’t stay long, because she was going to see Hélène.

Tuesday 24/2/87. Talked with some of the cops, former railway policemen. Open racism: ‘Blacks are just different. They piss in the street, they take longer to complete school, they don’t want to work, they lie around in the parks, they have a lot of children, and when they get a house, they make a fire right there in the middle of the floor... They kill each other in barbaric ways… And you want to get these people into power? Man, I’d really like to kill you (getting out his pistol), but I’m not allowed to...’

I prolong the discussion to provoke them into saying more. The result is always the same: I irritate the hell out of them and they walk away cursing and heartily wishing that they could shoot me. I, on the other hand, walk away from the encounter content: they’ve exposed themselves again. As usual, part of it will have been taped.

Karel called today. Asked me if wanted to work on a book about the history of Dutch relations with South Africa, from Jan van Riebeeck until the present. A tremendous idea. Letter to follow. Problem: how would I get research materials?

Wednesday 25/2/87. Post: among others, from the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement about that booklet they want, ‘The History of the Dutch Vision of South Africa’. They’ll deliver the research materials. It will be a booklet of some 20 pages, in an edition of no less than 25 000. A little scary, but also a challenge. Rudy and Karel will help.

Friday 27/2/87. Simonsz comes by to read me a telex from Foreign Affairs; because I ‘sought publicity’, they are now forbidding me to have telephone calls with the following three people: Bizeh in Brazil, Beverley and John van ‘t Hoff in Zimbabwe. I can still receive telephone calls from Karel and my family. In addition, they are trying to satisfy the demands of Weisglas, a member of the VVD [the Dutch liberal party], that I be muzzled. This democrat also lobbied Van Den Broek to hand me over to the South Africans, because I’m costing money and evading South African justice...

Tuesday 3/3/87. Karel called. Brother Jan said on TV that he supports me, but that he doesn’t agree with the things I told the press about my treatment here and about Carsten. Yes, I know what he thinks. I’m more confrontational than he is. If I’d depended on his attempts to negotiate with Van den Broek, nothing would have happened. But even if we were in one hundred percent agreement, it would still be good tactics, I think, not to express the same views all the time.

Thursday 5/3/87. Today, in Pretoria prison, seven men were hanged, all non-whites.

Kathy called. I told her about the restrictions on my telephone calls, and about some of my other frustrations. She’ll write to Van den Broek. Isn’t a hundred percenthappy with what I did. Simonsz had already called her about it.

Monday 23/3/87. Simonsz called. He informed me that Beverley will visit on Wednesday the 25th, and that The Hague has given its approval. He’d just called Bev to tell her, but had forgotten to ask me if I wanted to see her. What a question. Of course! I’d thought that she wouldn’t be coming... I’m a little scared of her visit, I must say. We didn’t know each so well and we haven’t seen each for more than fifteen months. We write (though not much), and sometimes call, but still...

Tuesday 24/3/87.

MP Ten (2) says that he was ‘detained’ by the cops when he was taking photos of the Nedbank building. He was taken to the lieutenant on duty, who let him go when he realised that he was one of the Dutch MPs here. When he informed Simonsz about it, the latter said: ‘Keep calm…’. The new cops appear to be causing problems. The made MP Eighteen wait for some time before they opened the gate.

Johannes also had problems with the cops outside today. They didn’t want to let him in before he had stated his name and his reason for visiting the embassy. When he objected, they said that if he annoyed them, they would make even more trouble. In the end he gave in, though angry and protesting.

Although I believe that absolutely no negotiations are being conducted about my case, Karel says that the South African ambassador told Veronica that ‘a solution to the problem was expected in the near future’ and ‘possibly’ before the elections on 6 May. I don’t believe a word of it. Karel says he doesn’t know anything, but the comment appears to be based on that vague statement of Pik Botha’s. That man lies so often that you simply can’t take him seriously.

Karel was surprised that I’d sent something to Veronica Radio, but in fact I didn’t. Veronica is the Telegraaf of the radio stations, and I wouldn’t want anything to do with them... According to Karel, I talk about why I’m seeking contact with the press, about my life in the embassy and about the RARA [a Dutch anarchist organization] campaign... This recent publicity will cost me dearly.

Wednesday 25/3/87.

Slept badly. Not only because of Bev. The SAP made a lot of noise outside last night: banging against the dividing wall, cursing (‘cheese head’). It went on until half past two in the morning.

Later in the morning, Simonsz came to say that he hoped that the cops wouldn’t make things difficult for Beverley. I got ready for the visit – shaved, washed with the lovely soap that Shazus brought me, aftershave, dressed carefully. In short, I couldn’t do more for myself.

And then it’s time. The doorbell, and there’s Beverley. I’ve forgotten how small and delicate she is. We embrace each other. Her hair is different, no curls, it hangs straight around her face. Neat blue dress, no doubt so as not to attract attention. Which was indeed the reason for the choice of dress, it turned out. I introduce her to the MPs and then we go to my room. Door locked.

Much to talk about. We look at each other. Mostly we just hold each other. We’re both much more relaxed than the last time... Time flies. Her sister will fetch her at five. It is five and she’s gone. She leaves me with a lot to think about and a tingling feeling all over my body, as if I can still feel her body against mine. I’ve become more sensitive to being touched, it appears...

Thursday 26/3/87. The publicity around my case continues. The Sowetan has an article about my ‘plans for escape’. The Citizen, Business Day and again The Star and the Pretoria News write about it. Not the best time for Beverley to be visiting...

Friday 27/3/87.

And Beverley is here again. Busy, ten thousand apologies that she didn’t visit yesterday. She is still dismayed by the train conductor who stopped her from getting into a carriage, saying: ‘Not that one, that’s for kaffirs...’

Her sister Moira had taken suddenly ill. Well, there were still some days of her visit ahead, I thought. That was a mistake. Before Bev even got here, Simonsz called to ask if she would phone him directly she arrive. She did so, and he informed her that there was a chance that she wouldn’t be allowed to visit me after today. The ambassador was furious over all the publicity about me and asked Simonsz to ask The Hague if Beverley should still be allowed to visit.

We would have the answer before five. And indeed, just before five we hear that permission for further visits has been withdrawn. Beverley is sad and angry, and even more sorry about the lost day yesterday... The Hague is also punishing her, she thinks. She’s flown from Harare especially to see me, and now this... She’s a little irritated that I take it lightly, but the fact is that I’m used to this sort of thing from Foreign Affairs. Of course, I’m just as furious as she is. She has to leave at five.

And yet the time we have together in my room is wonderful. We lie on my bed, clinging to each other like a couple of monkeys, talking a lot and of course making love.

Now she has to leave and we have to say farewell to each other much too soon; maybe for ever... I hang out of the window to watch her walking up the street until she can’t see me anymore.

Sunday 29/3/87. Beverley called today. She’d spoken to Simonsz and indicated to him her displeasure about the measure taken by Foreign Affairs. I say that I enjoyed our ‘togetherness’ and that I’m only realising now that it’s gone... I say goodbye with a tremendous sense of loss.

Monday 30/3/87.

I’m woken by the radio. A dominie in Pietermaritzburg compares the state of emergency to a ‘direct intervention by God’. God only performs miracles when it’s really necessary...

And then, some excitement. Roland is in the corridor, the two MPs are pacing around. I’m to call Simonsz, MP Eighteen tells me... I sit in my room and then MP Eighteen stops by to tell me in a triumphant tone: ‘Klaas, Philippe is here, and Simonsz says he’s allowed to visit!’

Jesus, how nice. I go to the door and yes, indeed, Philippe – large, grinning, somewhat punk in style – steps into the room. With his heavy voice: ‘Hey, Klaas, I’m just dropping by, I’ve just been to see Hélène...’ He’ll be here for fourteen days and he’ll be allowed to see Hélène eight times for half an hour during that time. No contact visits though. They were separated from each other by a thick pane of glass and he had to yell into the speaker to make himself understood. He’s angry that they’ve locked his mother up, and the situation has clearly affected him. She was cheerful, but she looked old. He’ll have to process it all.

Philippe looks good, strong and healthy, though a little pale because he’s coming from the Dutch winter. What a great guy! We talk, talk and laugh. I love this boy. We played table tennis for a while, at which he is a good deal better than either MP Eighteen or me.

He’d expected the imam who he’s staying with to fetch him at around six, but he only came at about ten. The imam had tried to come into the Nedbank office, but was sent away by the SAP, who told him that he had no business here... He called later and asked Philippe to come out to meet him at the front of the building. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Philippe. A wave and he was gone.

Tuesday 31/3/87. Philippe comes round, early. He has some post with him: among other things, two long letters from Enno and a cassette from Ridder with the Veronica broadcast of ambassador Quint and myself. Ridder says it’s the kind of journalism that sets up two opponents against each other, without either knowing that their statements will be broadcast in the same programme. Quint was very clear that negotiations were in progress.

Thursday 2/4/87.

Kathy came by to talk about her visit to the Netherlands. She still thinks that there are no negotiations about my case. If I were to go to trial, she thinks I’d get at least ten years (the same as Hélène), but that it could be as much as twenty-five (as with Muriel Sparg). It’s certainly no incentive to leave this place.

Johannes was angry this morning, in my view, quite rightly. ‘In the Netherlands they’re against apartheid, but they act just like Afrikaners when they’re here...’ he sputtered. He’d been put in his place because someone thought he’d heard him addressing a young employee by their first name. He hadn’t even done so, but ‘even if he had, what was so bad about that?’ he wondered...

I said that Foreign Affairs were terribly formal, that it might have been the same even if he’d been white. But it’s irritating, mostly because everyone calls him by his first name, while most of them don’t even know what his last name is. Johannes is in his early forties, and the young employee in their early twenties, and no one thinks it’s strange if the employee addresses him as ‘Johannes’... Here, a young woman or man can address someone who’s old enough to be their granddad as ‘boy’.

Friday 3/4/87. Philippe arrived, very cheerful. He’d been to see Hélène and she was also very cheerful. We played some table tennis and the young man won every game, both against me and against MP Eighteen. He doesn’t even have to make much effort.

Saturday 4/4/87. Enno will be twenty tomorrow. He’s such an exciting young man in the way he thinks and does things, though our characters are completely different. He expresses himself by writing poems, and he can draw well. He is emotional and can display either dependence and aggression at levels of intensity that are strange to me. He has a yearning for mysticism, which can sometimes clash considerably with my more rationalist view of life. But he has a level of political insight that far exceeds what I was capable of when I was his age.

Sunday 5/4/87. Thought a lot about Enno and Arjen.

Monday 6/4/87. Today is a holiday in in South Africa: ‘Founders’ Day’. It was originally called Van Riebeeck Day (he arrived at the Cape on 6 April 1652), but they changed the name to make it a holiday for everyone.

Only The Citizen was published today. Among other things, it had an article about Boesak, who says the Vatican is ‘quiet’ about apartheid. The official Roman Catholic church has a long history of being on the wrong side. Boesak says that the pope is deeply concerned about the human rights of people in the East bloc, but not about the same issue in this part of the world. For instance, the pope had discussions with P.W. Botha in 1984, while a meeting that Boesak had with the pope in 1986 had not been very encouraging. The attitude of many Roman Catholic priests in South Africa is much better than that of the pope.

Tuesday 7/4/87.

The SAP has installed a second spotlight at the back of the building. Now there’s one on the roof just across from my window, and another in the garden terrace.

Today The Star published an article about Botshabelo, which the Weekly Mail covered on Friday. I thought that little could surprise me anymore, but this article succeeded in doing so.

Botshabelo is the Orange Free State, about fifty kms from Bloemfontein; aside from Soweto, it’s one of the largest townships in South Africa. It’s a relocation camp, that is, a creation of the apartheid system. Some fifty foreign companies are present in the area, including companies from Taiwan and Israel, but a number of South African companies are also there. Workers get paid between R43 and R120 per month. Most don’t get paid more than R60 per month, or R2 per day. Meanwhile, in a café not 100 metres from this industrial area, you can pay more than R2 for a hamburger...

The state pays ninety-five percent of each wage, in an effort to stimulate industrial decentralisation. This means that an employer who employs a worker for forty-five hours a week pays only 75 cents (0,75 rand) per week! This, even though the minimum wage for industrial workers in South Africa is about R300 per month. Work-weeks of fifty hours are common. Conditions there are terrible: boring assembly line work, punishment for people who spend too long in the toilet, no pension, no sick leave, no maternity leave.

One of the managers said that one woman faints every seven to ten days from hunger while working at the assembly line. They try to hide it, because they’re afraid of being fired. Because of this, productivity declines markedly after lunch. Shift work isn’t possible, because the workers simply fall asleep after eight in the evening. Some of the companies provide birth control clinics for their workers, where they can get the injection or the pill, gratis... The employers are very hostile to the unions. There’s one obscure little union, ‘Team Mates’, which is now to be the official union in the homeland of Qwaqwa, where Botshabelo is located.

Friday 10/4/87. Philippe brought some Indian krupuk for me (poppadums). The imam he’s staying with sometimes has to attend executions at Pretoria Central. This year he’s attended forty already. How awful that must be. They have perfected executions. They can hang ten people at once. Some 251 prisoners are on execution row in Pretoria Central... What a country! Today, six went.

Saturday 11/4/87.

Philippe came by to say his farewells. It was really great to have him around. He gave me Hélène’s greetings again. A colonel at the prison had promised that they would be allowed to have contact visits when he next visits. It was too late this time around, but maybe others who are coming to see her will benefit: Fabrice and Yves... When will I see him again? He won’t be back for another two years. He’ll be nineteen then. Farewells depress me, but it’s a sort of delayed fuse. Nothing too upsetting about the farewell itself, but after that...

Surprise. Schulten suddenly appeared. He and his wife had been in Namibia. He asked if I’d seen the article in the paper about the two foreigners who travelled from Holland to South Africa to murder someone... We looked at each other. Could it have anything to do with us, here? Now and then I’ve received threats from the Netherlands, but I’ve never taken them seriously. Later I found the article. The foreigners (one from Holland, the other from Ireland) were arrested yesterday on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons and false passports. On TV, I hear that P.W. Botha told the BBC in an interview that there will never be a majority government here. Didn’t Ian Smith say the same thing?

Tuesday 14/4/87. Simonsz comes by with some supervisors from Nedbank. The renovations are to begin on Tuesday 21/4. The Hague requests me to keep to my room as much as possible (for my own security) and not to seek contact with the workers...

In Cape Town, at a church service in St George’s Cathedral attended by Tutu, Boesak and foreign diplomats, among others, the new American ambassador Perkins was very critical of the new security measures: ‘Freedom of speech is in jeopardy’, he said. Fantastic. I wonder why the Netherlands hasn’t taken a similar stand. As always, we’re waiting to see what the others do.

Monday 20/4/87. Brother Jan’s birthday. Hitler’s birthday was celebrated (his 98th) here in Pretoria. The commemoration was organised by some Afrikaners and Germans. The location was protected by armed guards, whose task was to ensure that no members of the press made it inside... I always remember that Jan has the same birthday as Hitler, because I recall being very surprised to see the Germans flying flags in celebration of my older brother’s birthday. We lived then in Deventer, near the station.

Sunday 26/4/87. All the Sunday papers have huge headlines about the attack on Livingstone, in Zambia, in which four Zambians were killed. England and the USA have both condemned the raid. Here in South Africa, everyone supports it, including PFP. The PFP is afraid of being branded pro-ANC.

Since I’ve been here, South Africa has carried out attacks in every one of its neighbouring countries! More raids will surely follow. The Netherlands is not among the countries that have protested. Our approach will have to be aligned with that of the European Community. What a shitty little people we are! Oh well. This will yield some votes for the NP. They’re expected toput blacks in their place.

Wednesday 29/4/87.

When I look out of the window this morning, I see the man I call Stephanus du Toit. He was here during the first months of my stay here in the embassy. When he got bored, he had himself transferred to Koevoet in Namibia. ‘So’ I ask, ‘are you coming back here to work, have you left Koevoet?’

‘No’, he says, ‘I was just walking by. But how do you know about Koevoet? Did you read about it in the papers?’ ‘Yes,’ I say (though it isn’t true; I heard it from ‘Hunter’), hoping that he’ll tell me more. But he doesn’t.

Like Hoffy Jagerman, Du Toit is one of those nice guys who talks about torture as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The problem is that they don’t only talk about it; they also think it quite normal to do. Hoffy told me recently: ‘Well, if they don’t talk, the only thing left is to twist their arm a bit.’ He laughed, a little shyly.

Maybe there’s a photo of ‘my’ Du Toit in the article by Gene Travers in the Namibian. Travers went to the Koevoet base, went on patrol with the men and saw three dead guerrillas. His pieces always whitewash Koevoet. The Koevoet men in the photo are difficult to distinguish. One white with a beard looks a bit like Du Toit. He’s down on one knee next to his prey, a dead guerrilla, in the same posture that hunters in the Netherlands adopt with their pheasants... Hoffy supports this elite unit in every way. As he says, proudly: ‘Ja, they have the highest kill rate...’

Wednesday 6/5/87. The NP will win. The question is how the parties to the left and right will do. It’s clear that since the middle of last year P.W. Botha has abandoned any effort to present himself as a reformer, partly because of right-wing pressure, but also, of course, because he doesn’t want to undermine the apartheid system any further than he already has. Internally, he wants to show the whites that they will retain their political and economic power under the NP.

Last night I didn’t go to bed; the sad spectacle on the TV kept me up. The definitive result wasn’t known this morning, but the outline was very clear: South Africa has moved to the right. It must now be obvious to anyone to the left of the NP that nothing more can be achieved by parliamentary methods.

Thursday 7/5/87. The morning papers covered the first results, which I already know. As against the crowing of The Citizen, there’s the standpoint of the liberal press: the elections are a triumph for P.W. Botha and a tragedy for South Africa...

The political commentators are saying much the same thing as the people who were on TV last night. Some think that Botha now has a mandate to proceed with his reforms...

Large numbers of black South Africans voted with their feet yesterday and stayed away from their work and from school to protest against these white elections (on this second ‘stay away’, around 630 000 workers failed to go into work and around 500 000 pupils did not appear at school).

Tuesday 12/5/87.

ere have been some thirty-five suicides in Pretoria since the beginning of the year.

Karel called. Says, among other things, that the actor Jeroen Krabbé (who has also done a very good stage adaptation of Anne Frank, among other things) is to play the role of a young Joe Slovo in a film about Ruth First. Karel plans to talk to him, because he knew Joe Slovo when he was in South Africa in the late 1950s. I ask him for the telephone number of the white pastor (Smith) in Mamelodi. MP Nineteen is looking for his former household help, and thinks she came from Mamelodi, where her husband is a spiritual leader of some kind. I suspect that pastor Smith might know her.

Smith is a former member of the Broederbond. He has not only turned his back on that secret association, he also gave up his job as a professor of theology at the university of Stellenbosch. This ‘apostate’ has lived with his family in Mamelodi since September 1986; they are the only whites in the township. His relocation from white Pretoria to black Mamelodi was ‘like relocating to another country’. The Smith family is now fully integrated into this black community, but even their most intimate friends won’t visit them there. According to him, white South Africans are completely unaware of what happens to black people in this country. For him, it was a long process. He remembers sitting at a table in the 1950s with some blacks for the first time, and that the idea of eating together blocked him psychologically to the extent that he couldn’t swallow a single morsel.

He lives close to Doctor Ribeiro, who was murdered there not so long ago. He doesn’t under-estimate the dangers he faces, not even the possibility of finding himself the object of black rage that might see him as the ‘closest available’ target. Despite all this, he thanks God that the black population aren’t as angry as they might be, and that they didn’t launch a revolution long ago.

Tuesday 19/5/87. Hélène has been in prison for one year. What can you say on such an occasion? ‘It’s going well, only nine…’ Or does one offer congratulations? I’ll have to ask Kathy what the convention is. Anyway, I wish her all the best.

Watched the opening of parliament on TV. As usual, P.W. was a self-absorbed arsehole, warning everyone that he’ll deal harshly with subversion. The media abuse ‘press freedom’, the universities ‘academic freedom’...

Wednesday 20/5/87. Slept badly last night, the cops outside made an awful amount of noise.

Today is MP Twenty’s first day. He comes from tulip country, which I know quite well. Long ago, when I was still at high school, I worked a couple of summers for some tulip farmers.

Yesterday a bomb exploded at the Carlton Centre. Three policemen were killed, two seriously injured. There were two explosions; the first, a small one, caused the police to swarm into the area, to get the frightened civilians away from the scene; the second, shortly afterwards, killed the policemen.

Thursday 21/5/87.

Still in bed, I lay listening to the radio. Someone – an eye witness – was asked the following question: ‘Were there many civilians on the street when the second explosion occurred?’ The answer: ‘No, that’s what’s so strange, there were hardly any, only some policemen...’ In my view, evidence that the ‘perpetrators’ did their work carefully.

An article in Business Day this morning makes it clear that people from the different population groups react very differently to such events. ‘Black workers were seen leaning out of the windows of an adjacent building, shouting and apparently chanting...’ But only the New Nation carried any discussion of the fact that the attacks occurred at a time when the government has declared that it has succeeded in preventing a new wave of bomb attacks planned by the ANC.

Johannes came to do his big clean-up. I’m sitting drinking coffee with the MPs when he comes to ask if someone will help him to fill in a Foreign Affairs survey about working conditions. I explain what’s expected and provide some background information to some of the more difficult questions. The MPs stay with us. They make no attempt to influence him in any way. Though they emphasise that he has no need to worry, and can say exactly what he thinks because the survey is anonymous.

A short while later, Simonsz appears and asks us what we’re doing, and gets very angry at my reply. I say that nothing on the form indicates that the survey is confidential. I go with Simonsz to his office; he says he wants to discuss some aspects of the security situation, given the recent bomb attacks. MP Twenty continues to help Johannes to fill in his form. Then Johannes leaves with his form, now filled in, because it has to be handed in today.

As regards security: it could be that some right-wing idiots hit on the idea of doing something about me. Simonsz agrees that it might be advisable to install bullet-proof glass – at least, in my room. Then he leaves again. A short while later Van der Velden appears (sneaky, he never phones beforehand, and always sneaks in, which my MPs hate) to say that he’d heard that the MPs had done nothing about me helping Johannes with his survey. A telex about the matter had been sent to ambassador Carsten in Cape Town. More would be heard about the matter ...

The MPs are totally pissed off. I’m curious what result this will have: will Johannes get into trouble, or will the guys? What ridiculous people these embassy staff are.

Friday 22/5/87.

The ANC has yet to claim responsibility for the attack. An ANC spokesman in Lusaka says that they haven’t yet received information from their Umkhonto we Sizwe commanders in the field. Roland comes by and we talk about it for a while. He condemns attacks like this. He thinks that they play straight into the hands of the right wing. It’s not only him. I hear this sort of thing from most of the people I meet here.

It makes me think about what Boesak said: ‘Non-violence is costing us so many human lives’ and ‘...when I look at the history of South Africa [and] the deeds of white South Africans, then I think: there are not enough white people in this country whose deaths could make up for everything that has happened to us.’

To quote Tutu: ‘...no one with a TV set needs to be convinced anymore of the cruelty of the South African police and security troops.’ The whole world has seen that policemen hid themselves in boxes on the back of an open-bed truck and then tempted children in a tense unrest area to throw stones; and when some kids did that, the police appeared and began to shoot like cowboys at anything that moved, killing children in the process. The SAP and the SADF are fighting a war against the black population and against the white opposition. Many wouldn’t recognise what’s going on as a war, and the whites think that it’s still possible to hold talks. Boesak again: ‘No one can stay on the sidelines. This is difficult for people in the Netherlands, who live in peace and comfort, to understand.’

Boesak says that it’s understandable that people who’ve never experienced such a war think like this, but he thinks that they should know better here in South Africa...

Saturday 23/5/87.

Yesterday I watched some of Miss South Africa on TV. I thought the coloured girl was the prettiest and the nicest of the candidates. She came second. As they so said so well in Afrikaans, another ‘child-girl with infinitely long legs and a stick-thin body won the competition’. In other respects, it was an awful show.

This morning on the news a report that the Johannesburg bomb was set off by remote control radio (‘death radio’, they’re calling it here). The police assume that ‘the terrorist was in the near vicinity of the car bomb (thirty kilograms of ‘explosives’)’. Which I knew already.

The quantity of explosives shows that they intended to limit the effects of the bomb. This afternoon I talked with an SAP sergeant. Among the subjects we discussed was the bomb attack. I said that it was a ‘good deed’, that the SAP people were a legitimate target and that the attack had been carried out with care... I added that it was of course always terrible when young people were killed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s a guerrilla war.’

Sunday 24/5/87. Slept until half past nine. Drank coffee with MP Nineteen and MP Twenty, with apple tart.

The Sunday papers covered the recent bomb attack in Johannesburg: ‘Rapport has also established that the little radio apparatus that was used to activate the device is as sophisticated as [a device] formerly smuggled into the country by the Dutchman Klaas de Jonge.’

Monday 25/5/87. At a meeting in Pretoria about ‘Family in Crisis’, a professor explained that pop music ‘can destroy children’s common sense and turn them into revolutionaries ...’

Even the South African papers regularly cover Klaus Barbie story, but they don’t register any sort of ‘shock of recognition’ when torture and related matters are discussed. A factory director from Port Elizabeth has made it known that Barbie planned to relocate 150 000 racially pure Afrikaners to Bolivia, where they would be given land and houses and so contribute the ‘final solution’ of the Indian question in that country. The industrialist, Alberts, discussed the project with Barbie/Altmann.

Wednesday 27/5/87. Simonsz comes by with chancellor Vermeeren and a Dutch plumber to look at the possibility of installing a shower in the washing-up area. Foreign Affairs has indeed been busy...

Monday 8/6/87. In The Star, a small article to the effect that filming of the Slovo family story is to begin shortly. This is the film that Karel mentioned, in which Jeroen Krabbé is slated to play the role of the younger Joe Slovo. The scriptwriter is Shawn Slovo, who I used to run into now and then in Maputo, and who I liked a lot. The parts that play in South Africa will be filmed in Bulawayo, a Zimbabwean city that closely resembles Johannesburg in the 1960s. The story is mainly about the relationship between the oldest daughter, Molly (then 13, Shawn) and her mother (Ruth First), about the way the family falls apart when her father (Joe Slovo) is forced to flee the country, and about Molly’s attempts to understand her parents’ choices. I know that this was a huge problem for Shawn. Enno (and possibly Arjen?) have comparable difficulties with my choices.

Friday 12/6/87. When the emergency lapsed yesterday, the minister of ‘law and order’ was obliged to release all the people who had been detained under the terms of the emergency. Technically speaking, that means that about 3 000 detainees were free for a short while – before they were detained again. For example, nine children in from Soweto were released from detention on Wednesday evening, but when they turned up at the police station later to sign their release papers, they were re-arrested. They’d been free for two hours...

Saturday 13/6/87. Quiet day with MP Twenty-Two. We played klabberjass and checkers. Initially, he was somewhat shocked at the way some of his colleagues treat me (language, etc.) but I reassured him by saying that, although I’m about fifteen years older than most of them, their behaviour towards me means that they regard me as an ordinary fellow resident. Indeed, they don’t treat me any differently to their colleagues, but it can sometimes be quite rough.

Sunday 14/6/87.

A piece in the Sunday Times about ‘stress’ in South Africa. South Africa is at the top of the list so far as heart attacks are concerned; the statistics on child abuse, murder and suicide are unbelievably high and the number of divorces that take place in South Africa is the third highest in the world. More and more people are emigrating, some channel their frustrations by wild driving, others seek solace in alcohol (thirty-two white male alcoholics per 1 000).

One of the oldest and most established security firms is Fidelity Guards. They do money transports, but they also provide protection against ‘terrorists’. They have a well-trained elite unit, the Key Point Guards, whose purpose is to protect certain strategic ‘key points’ in South Africa. They also offer to protect any other potential ‘terrorist’ targets. One of the SAP men outside (the AWB member who yelled a lot) resigned to join such a company.

In addition, there’s also a ‘First Force’ on motorcycles to which suburban residents in the northern suburbs of Joburg can subscribe; they guarantee a response within five minutes of receiving an alarm. The motorcycle riders are of course very well trained and heavily armed... That’s how militarised South Africa’s society is.

Monday 15/6/87.

The SAP has come up with something new: they’ve erected a new fence only a few metres from our fence. ‘To hold me back?’ I asked, laughing, but they didn’t say much in reply.

Simonsz continues to believe that there will be negotiations. God alone knows where he gets that idea. He came by, quite late, with the post: a tape from Enno, Arjen and Martijn and also a letter from Dad. Very nice to have them. I’m enjoying the tape the children made, but it also makes me a little sad because it emphasises the distance between us... Above all geographic, but in Arjen’s case it goes much further. He says: ‘I don’t know you very well.’ And he’s right.

Some people might say that I’ve not been a good father. If I’d stayed in Amsterdam, though, I feel certain that I wouldn’t have been a good father either. I’d have worked some of my frustrations out on them. I know that I’m not good at letting people know that I love them, that the way I express myself can be vague. My girlfriends have had difficulties with this, but the children too, probably. Still, looking at it from my perspective, I don’t feel that I ever abandoned Enno and Arjen. But of course it’s not about what I think, but about what they think...

Tuesday 16/6/87.

Soweto Day. The Soweto Uprisings began eleven years ago. Many school pupils and students left the country to join the ANC after they experienced police repression. All the anti-apartheid movements have called for a peaceful commemoration. Organisations like the UDF and Cosatu are holding mass rallies. The Black Sash members plan to walk around with black mourning ribbons on their arms. Church services everywhere have been planned to commemorate June 1976, when an estimated 1 000 people were killed. The Sowetan published the famous photo of Hector Peterson being carried away by a larger young man while a group of shocked or crying schoolgirls accompany them.

Everything went exactly as planned and there were no confrontations, though the South African police made their presence very clear. Here, I see few blacks out in the street. Quite late, our chief boss boy arrived, saying that only one worker came in today.

Today there are also no newspaper sellers on the streets. Some papers are available by the early afternoon, but a white girl was selling them. That’s something pretty unique here. I never saw anything like it before. In short, the majority of the black population has stayed home today. Fantastic!

Simonsz stopped briefly by with the post: letters from Dad and from Jaap Jansen and De Groene. He told me that I will be allowed to receive a visit from a former Dutch citizen, Professor Balthazar Verhagen. He appears to have lots of ideas about (former) Dutch citizens here. Great.

Jaap, who visited my parents, writes very interestingly about them, and he notes things in them that I recognise very well. ‘I’d retained a vague memory of your mother from former times. I wondered whether I’d recognise her. The strange thing was that I recognised your father straight away, though I’d wondered what he looked like. What I recognised immediately were the portraits of the children – especially the portrait of your sister. I had a very pleasant time with your parents. It was good to see that they were deeply concerned about your situation, but they were certainly not sentimental or overburdened. They are both very independent in their views.’

I have cost the Dutch state about f500 000 in 1985 and 1986 – most of it spent on accommodation and travel costs for the MPs. These costs will apparently be paid out of development aid budgets...

Wednesday 17/6/87.

I learn from the papers that yesterday was peaceful, apart from a few incidents (the police dispersed a crowd of church-goers in Soweto). An estimated seventy percent of South Africa’s black, Indian and coloured population stayed home. There was an almost total spontaneous ‘stay away’ in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, the percentage was also high in the PretoriaJoburg-Vaal area. Outstanding!

At about half past eleven the dentist came, the same one as before. The unpleasant odour could be due to plaque, he thinks. He chipped it all away while I lay with my head supported on the muscled stomach of MP Twenty. After two years, it seems that I have a number of (small) cavities, and these will need to be treated. He will look around to see if he can get hold of a hand drill... He’d just returned from the Netherlands, where the weather was so bad that he and his wife got sick almost straight away. He asked me passingly how things were going here, but he didn’t want to stay longer than necessary because he couldn’t take the smell of paint. We’ve been in it for days, but today it was really bad. By the end of the afternoon I had a thumping headache.

Whenever Simonsz is here, the MPs harass him with complaints about their conditions. It irritates them that we have to wait for a week for a clean tea towel after the wash has been sent away. There are still too few blankets, which means that the ones we have can never be sent to the dry cleaner’s. All the different MPs who have worked here have been sleeping under the same blankets for two years. They can’t wash or shave. There’s no warm water, no shower and the taps on the washbasins are too low. The building can’t be cleaned properly, because Johannes and (for the moment) Hopson aren’t allowed to stay long. The fire-prevention measure are inadequate. My MPs are tired of all this, and who wouldn’t be? Simonsz will take it up. I wonder what’s going to happen.

Friday 19/6/87.

Exactly two years ago I left Harare, and I haven’t been able to return there since then.

How terrible it would be to grow up in South Africa, and then to study or to work here – even more if you’re progressive and choose to stay. But leaving can also result in a great deal of trouble and suffering. I met a lot of exiled South Africans in Europe and southern Africa. Exile is a form of oppression, because you’re cut off from your ‘natural ‘environment, your own country. Poets have tried to express this condition, among them Vernie February. He lives in the Netherlands, but is always active on behalf of ‘his Africa’. He stays involved, even as an exile, and it causes him great deal of sorrow. ‘Children have been shot,’ he hears, ‘in the sunny, sunny South’. For him, South Africa is and remains an omnipresent fact, even though he lives in Amsterdam. That kind of self-separation, that imposed marginality constitutes violence.

For me, ‘marginality’ is a choice. I don’t have the same feeling for the Netherlands as South Africans do for their country. I miss Amsterdam no more than I do Paris. But I know that I was never forced to flee the Netherlands in the same way as many of my South African friends have been forced to leave South Africa.

An ex-diplomat, Weisglas – that rather unliberal member of the VVD – has tried to get me out of this part of ‘the Netherlands’ in Pretoria. According to this ersatz liberal, I would receive a fair trial in South Africa. Oh well – he’ll have been put up to it by some of his former colleagues in the diplomatic service. But when it first began, I understood something of what that ‘getting thrown out’ feeling can mean – the uncertainty, the anger, the impotence...

The last few days have been very cold, with temperatures below or at freezing point. There’s even been a little snow here and there. Luckily, we now have sufficient heating and blankets. Simonsz told the MPs that a shower with a boiler will be installed, as well as an extra fire extinguisher, and that we are to receive more blankets.

Saturday 20/6/87. Jacky came by. Great to talk about a possible dissertation. She thinks that ‘Discourse on political violence in South Africa’ would be a terrific subject. She thinks that I’d need a research assistant to do library work for me, make photocopies, and etc.

Sunday 21/6/87. Quiet day, and cold. Nothing special in the press, aside from the ‘mixed marriage’ of a nephew of Piet Koornhof (South Africa’s ambassador in Washington). The nephew has married an Indian South African, it seems. Officially, they won’t be able to live together in a white area without special permission. Koornhof offered to help to get the bride declared ‘white’, but the young couple refused the offer. A problem, then, for Piet Koornhof.

Not so long ago, he told the American press that ‘apartheid was dead’, but now ‘apartheid’ has invaded his own family! The children of the couple will be registered as ‘coloured’, they won’t be able to attend white public schools, and won’t be able to go swimming together in Johannesburg’s council swimming pools or at certain beaches in Durban. All the fundamental laws of apartheid are still in place: the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, the Separate Amenities Act...

Monday 22/6/87. Quiet day with MP Eleven and MP Twenty-Two.

The Star has a small report that the ANC is to be allowed to open an office in Amsterdam. Fantastic!

Wednesday 24/6/87. One of the loudest of the SAP crew outside called – the one who’s always yelling ‘Japie’. Wants to show me something: a handmade flag with hammer and sickle and the acronym of some or other youth movement. ‘I had to shoot two of your “brothers” during a demonstration to get this, with my own pistol,’ he says contentedly as he taps on his holster... Me: ‘Shooting at unarmed people, you can be proud of that...’ and I slam the door shut.

Goddammit, I hate those guys!

One of the MPs: ‘Klaas, do you believe that? Did he really do it, do you think? Maybe he’s just bluffing...’ It must be difficult for a Dutch policeman to understand that things like this are totally normal here, and – if it’s true – that a cop can actually walk around boasting of things like this.

Sunday 28/6/87.

MP Twenty came to relieve MP Twenty-Two. He was a bit later than usual because it’s Sunday. He’d talked with the ambassador and Simonsz about something that has been kept secret until now: that the South Africans plan to place bars in front of the embassy windows. I don’t get why I wasn’t allowed to know sooner. It seems that the MPs didn’t agree that I shouldn’t be told, but they’d been instructed to keep their mouths shut. MP Twenty was allowed to tell me only after both he and MP Twenty-Two had talked to Simonsz about it...

They were supposed to come and fit the bars today, but the ambassador and Foreign Affairs have protested and it’s been postponed. I wonder if Foreign Affairs will be able to prevent it. I’m really pleased that they’ve raised an objection. It would of course be absurd to allow your own embassy to be turned into a prison... In my opinion, they’ve been pushed around. They allowed the SAP to take the lock off the gate and replace it with one of their own; they allowed them to place rolls of barbed wire on ledges of the building that are actually part of the embassy; they allowed them to take photos of what’s going on in here. And that’s just to mention a few things.

Monday 29/6/87. Restful day.

Kathy called. She’s been informed of the plan to install bars on the windows. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 says that diplomatic buildings have diplomatic immunity, and the immunity in question is not of a kind that can be unilaterally cancelled by the host state.

Wednesday 1/7/87. Today Hopson came by, so we weren’t able to sleep late.

Simonsz brought, among other things, a tape of an interview with Mom and Dad. It was broadcast by VARA’s Rode Draad [‘The Common Thread’] to mark the fact that I’ve been stuck in South Africa for two years. It is so good to hear their voices. I notice for the first time that Mom has an Overijsel accent, something that I never notice when I’m talking to her. Both come across very powerfully in the interview with Karel. Neither Mom nor Dad knew that I was involved in the resistance movement. Now they understand the situation better, and also why I did it. They support me. Mom says that she’s proud of me, above all because she’s such a scaredy-cat herself.

They’ve only heard good things about the military police who are guarding me. They hear that I’m well, and that I’m trying to make the best of the situation – given the limitations that I face here. Dad said that the MPs were full of praise for me; now they understand apartheid better than they did. My parents are disappointed not to have been granted visas to visit me, but feel that things could be worse, because we talk regularly on the phone. Mom even wondered if it wasn’t better this way; perhaps my life would be unduly disturbed by a short – perhaps too short – visit. The fact that they know that I’m doing okay here makes the situation more acceptable for everyone. Though, naturally, both hope that I’ll be free soon. It was very moving to hear them talking about me.

Thursday 2/7/87. It may be hard to believe, but recently a political movement has emerged here that’s even further to the right than the AWB – the BBB, the ‘Boere Bevrydings Beweging’ [Farmers’ Freedom Movement]; it uses Nazi symbols, and wants to ‘repatriate’ all non-whites. Their leader is a biochemist, Professor Johan Schabort. The BBB sees itself as a white freedom movement.

Saturday 4/7/87.

Ruud de Wit sent a letter in which he asked if I’d pose for some press photographers in the window at the front of the building. It seemed like a good idea to me, and I decided to display an ANC poster. I enjoy propagandising for the ANC here, right in the middle of this Afrikaner city, close to the Kruger monument. I put a poster up on the side of my book shelf. I said nothing to either of the MPS, because they might have felt themselves duty-bound to inform Simonsz. I sat working at my desk.

When I got up, I noticed a number of people with cameras on the other side of the street. So, it was time. I rolled the blind up even further, hung out of the window and waved now and then to passers-by who waved at me. Ruud was down there with some colleagues, in front of the Cuthberts shop windows. MP Twenty realised that something was going on, but had no idea that the ANC poster was there. Quite soon a large crowd gathered to stare, enough to cause some hindrance on the pavements. The photographers clicked away, and some video clips were also recorded, I think.

After about fifteen minutes I closed the window on the insistence of MP Twenty and rolled the blind down. MP Twenty-Two came in to relieve his colleague. He was angry: ‘He’s hung up an ANC poster.’ Now both of them were angry. Indeed, MP Twenty was furious: ‘We have relationship of trust and now you go and do this!’

I hadn’t expected them to react in this way and I found it tiresome. Firstly, it’s not their job to police me in matters such as this; secondly, I accepted full responsibility, so I didn’t see how they could be held responsible; and thirdly, I thought they should understand that a stunt like this would be in my own best interests. There was a lot of irritation on both sides. In some ways, MP Twenty-Two acted as mediator. MP Twenty informed me that I’d come to understand how he felt over the next couple of days.

Sunday 5/7/87. Suddenly the doorbell went. It turned out to be Yves, who’ll be here until the 19th to visit Hélène. Nice to see the lad again. He hasn’t changed at all.

MP Twenty relieved MP Twenty-Two at the end of the afternoon. Was a little cool to me. On Sundays he usually brings the Sunday papers, but he had nothing with him today...

Monday 6/7/87. Shazus called. Kim Hwa has had a stroke and though she’s okay, the situation is still critical. She’s suffered such a lot. The strange thing is that everyone who isn’t in prison just goes on with their life, but that means illness, accidents, sometimes death... Here, I don’t seem to wearing away at all – or so it seems sometimes.

MP Twenty-Two came in with the Sunday papers, some of which had a photo of me with the ANC poster. A short while later, Simonsz wanted to talk to me: ‘Do you have to do this? Propagandise for the ANC?’ Foreign Affairs has reacted quickly, because the same photo has appeared in the Dutch papers. Me: ‘This is my room, and the poster is on an inner wall of the room!’ Simonsz said he didn’t approve, but he also understood... I insisted that it had been my responsibility and that I’d be upset if the MPs got into trouble.

Tuesday 7/7/87. The situation with MP Twenty appears to have normalised. We talked about the incident on Saturday and drew a line.

Wednesday 8/7/87 Simonsz came in the afternoon, followed a short while later by Balt Verhagen, a Dutchman who’s lived here since 1939. His wife is a librarian at the University of the Witwatersrand. He’d received my letter requesting materials for the booklet. A nice man, fifty-three, who still speaks outstanding Dutch despite the years in South Africa. He and his parents managed to emigrate at the last moment (December 1939), just before the Second World War began. They were very bemused to find themselves in the Afrikaner world, where people often greeted each other with the Nazi salute. A professor of applied physics at Wits, Balt is still a Dutch citizen. He says that the Pretoria Dutch are particularly conservative.

Thursday 9/7/87.

When I turned on the radio this morning, I heard something about ‘Klaas de Jonge, who was the object of a diplomatic incident between the countries two years ago...’ Indeed. I hadn’t thought about it, but today is two-year anniversary of the day when I fled into the embassy. The day I always remember is 19th July, the day when I was handed back to the embassy. That’s the day I celebrate.

All the papers had long articles about me. Even the Sowetan: ‘De Jonge a symbol for Dutch activists’. Which is great to hear, of course, but I was somewhat surprised. When I see these stories about this De Jonge they talk about, this symbol for the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, the man who’s probably responsible for all sorts of terrible deeds, I sometimes feel that all of this somehow has nothing to do with me. But maybe that’s right, because ‘symbol’ means: ‘a projection of the expectations and representations of ANOTHER’. I think it sounds best in Afrikaans (see Beeld): ‘The Jonge case is significant for South Africa’s political opponents’. Namely: ‘he has important symbolic value as an active opponent of apartheid.’

Simonsz – apparently no longer irritated with me – came by with some delicious wine (from his wife) because this is the second anniversary of my residence in the embassy. He passed on greetings from Hiensch, the head of the South Africa section at Foreign Affairs. Had the storm passed? It seemed a good moment to ask permission to invite some friends round.

Friday 10/7/87. Claire came to say that the student (Ivor Sarakinsky) will come around this afternoon. An MA student in political science. He was here at exactly at three o’ clock. His main interest is political philosophy. He plans to write a thesis about certain aspects of the Freedom Charter.

Kathy arrived with Dali, who looks buoyant. Kathy was quite pleased that the Netherlands took such a hard line on the question of the bars. Everyone was gone by about six.

Monday 13/7/87. MP Twenty-Two is back from his group excursion to the Kruger Park. He enjoyed himself. When everyone had to introduce themselves, he told them his name and said that he was one of my guards in Pretoria. He was surprised at the hatred that this engendered. A doctor, a South African who lives in the US, said: ‘Someone should poison him.’ The doctor fell into discussion with a reserve officer in the South African police, and they reviewed a number of alternatives in all seriousness (in my food, in the water). The doctor, a gynaecologist, suggested that they send a woman with AIDS to see me... He was convinced that I must be a dangerous psychopath.

Simonsz cameby. He has no objections to a party on Saturday, as long as we don’t provoke anyone.

Saturday 18/7/87. I’ve been busy the whole day, cooking and doing other things in preparation for the party tonight. At around seven in the evening, the first people arrived: Alice and Kim. A short while later Judith, Kathy and Jacky arrived with a ‘Gymtrim’, the most complete exercise machine there is. It has a little bench, rather like a competition rowing boat, and you can do all sorts of exercises on it. Fantastic, what a present! What good friends! Shortly after that, Dali and Claire arrived with bottles of wine sent by Pat, Karel and Beverley, as well as a Dollar Band tape and a tremendous red COSATU National Congress 1987 T-shirt.

There was also champagne, which we drank while singing ‘Happy birthday’ on the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s birthday; he turned sixty-nine today. We ate, drank, chatted, danced, sang, played table tennis and generally had a great time. MP Twenty-Two felt that it had been a ‘great’ party and that I have very special friends. Which is true, I do...

Sunday 19/7/87.

Two years in the embassy. How many years are still to go? I’m not really afraid of [having to stay here longer]. I’ve built a life of my own here. It’s rather limited, but interesting enough, and I think I’d be able to stick it out. I have great friends and enough work to keep myself busy, and this situation still has a political function.

What other possibilities are there? I don’t know. Escape is always an alternative, but I could lose a lot by trying it. An agreement between South Africa and the Netherlands? It’s not going to happen, for the moment anyway. I don’t think the South Africans will want to remove me forcibly from the embassy. The possibility of a right-wing attacks has always been there. Foreign Affairs has apparently refused to allow any sort of improvement in my situation, afraid of everything as they are. The shower hasn’t been installed, and it doesn’t look likely that it ever will be.

Wednesday 22/7/87. Although it’s bitterly cold, with temperatures at night below zero, forty families in Soweto have been evicted from their homes.

Sunday 26/7/87. It must have been around 10h45. I was washing myself in the bathroom when MP Twenty One came storming in: ‘Klaas, Klaas, they shot at me!’ Indeed, there was a hole in the window and a sizeable impact crater in the wall. MP Twenty One thinks that the bullet passed close by his head. We notified the SAP and also the embassy. Schulten came as quickly as he could, followed a short while later by Van der Velden. We think that the shooter thought that MP Twenty One was me.

Tuesday 28/7/87. The SAP says that it probably wasn’t a firearm, but a heavy air rifle or maybe even a catapult.

I was doing my exercises when Simonsz came in. He looked a little perplexed and asked if I’d had anything to do with it... ‘It’ was an enormous fire engine crane that was standing close to the front of the building and lifting people upward. Simonsz had come in early, because a [South African police] general was supposed to be coming around to study the situation. He’d expected that he’d enter by the door, but there he was, standing in the box of the crane. Simonsz said through the window: ‘Oh, are you the general?’

The pavements on the other side of the street were crowded with people. MP Twenty-One took photos of the people in the crane box, which they didn’t like. What adventures there are to experience! They did some measuring and were then lowered to the ground. Later they came into the building, but I have no idea what happened because I was in my room. The general said that the shot was probably been a stone, which hadn’t even penetrated the room (the impact carter in the wall had supposedly been caused a by a nail) or just possibly a small bullet... The MP rejects the first explanation completely. He sees it as an attempt to dismiss the incident.

Saturday 1/8/87. An SAP man (the same on as yesterday) stood at the window of their hut, a little dog in his arms. ‘Do you want it?’ he asks. Me: ‘I’d like to, but I couldn’t keep a dog in here. A cat, yes...’ His wife (blonde, thin and pale) stood next to him, staring at me. A short while later he said: ‘Klaas, my wife thinks you’re bad ...’ For them I’m a terrorist, it’s one of those white fears.

Monday 3/8/87. In the evening we hear the news that the minister of justice, Kobie Coetzee, says that the Dutch government is holding me without trial, which is nonsense, of course. Coetzee adds: ‘We are even prepared to hold further discussions about the case of Klaas de Jonge – when he has been tried and found guilty.’

Tuesday 4/8/87.

All the newspapers are repeating Kobie’s statement: ‘SA will talk about Klaas – after a trial.’

The trial of Hélène’s friend Ebrahim has begun in Piet Retief. He refuses to recognise South Africa’s right to try him because he was kidnapped from Swaziland. They’re not paying any attention to the argument, it’s been tried before.

Van den Broek is quite troubled by my case, I understand from a tape that was sent to me today of the programme, Baseline. Fons Geerlings (AABN, Dutch anti-apartheid movement), Rudi Boon (De Groene Amsterdammer) and Masiphula Mbongwa (ANC representative in Amsterdam) talked about the fact that I’ve now spent two years in the embassy. Fons thinks that my case has been one of the most curious oddities in Van den Broek’s career as minister; he defends my residence in the embassy on formal grounds, but at the same time he has a personal dislike of people like me, who carry out certain activities for the ANC.

Sunday 9/8/87. Hélène is forty-five today. Her third birthday in prison. Her birthday coincides with a South African holiday, Women’s Day. It’s now thirty-one years since 20 000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the pass law. From that time comes the saying: ‘You have tampered with the women, you have struck a rock.’

Afterword

by Karel Roskam

Klaas de Jonge was confined to a couple of rooms in the centre of Pretoria, the heart of apartheid, between July 1985 and 7 September 1987. Yet, while his freedom was limited, he wasn’t a prisoner.

There was no question of freedom of movement. His freedom to seek contact with the world outside was also limited. He was not allowed to use the phone. He was not allowed to ith enthusiasm.

He had been writing his journal for a year when a possibility arose that it might be published as a book. Klaas de Jonge seized on the opportunity without hesitation, but he didn’t change the way he worked. He continued to note down his thoughts as they came. He wrote intimately, in a way that suggested that the notes were intended for his sons or his parents. Sometimes he was very open about his relationships with women, sometimes he’d analyse Sartre, Multatuli, Kundera, Hermans and Wertheim, among others.

All of which is interesting in itself. Readers of his unabridged journal notes get a good picture of Klaas de Jonge, the unbourgeois socialist, the anti-military demographics specialist with a special love for Africa. For a former colleague such as myself, who hardly knew Klaas outside of work and a shared love of Africa, reading his journal has meant getting to know him, in a sort of accelerated retrospective way, as well as I would an intimate friend.

But his journal could not be published unabridged, because it is simply too extensive. Moreover, by no means all of his frank reflections are of interest to the wider public, which never heard of Klaas de Jonge before 1985, and which now mainly wants to know how he came to be in this very unusual situation and how he dealt with it.

Aside from these considerations, a large number of his frank remarks could not be published because they involve the private lives of third parties. Notes of this kind have, in consultation with Klaas, been scrapped.

This selection of the journal entries has been shaped by the question: what makes Klaas de Jonge an interesting figure in this situation in Pretoria? Our feeling was that it is not so much his stories about marriages, relationships and friendships in Europe and Africa, however stimulating they are. We have therefore scrapped most of the literary and scientific digressions because they have too few points of relevance to his actual situation, or because such excursions took up too much space; this consideration played, indeed, an important role in our selection.

What remained of the notes after this elimination process was still too extensive, and we had to shorten it further. This was done, sometimes too drastically and sometimes with pain, because the parts that we scrapped included many sharp observations of the South African situation and southern African development.

The same applied to the passages treating of aspects of South African public life, often supported by statistical information, that are of interest to those who want a better understanding of the infected paradise that is South Africa. Those who wish to find this information can find it elsewhere.

Finally, practically everything to do with the personal lives of the Dutch military police, and with those of his visitors, his children, his friends and girlfriends has also been left out. I must admit that there was a great deal of material in these journal entries that would contribute to a better understanding of the problems Klaas faced, but lack of space combined with the need to respect the private lives of the people involved mean that they must be excluded from this edition. Most of the names, such as those of the MPs, have been changed or replaced with conventional initials where this was felt to be advisable in the interests of the people involved, and where Klaas and the publisher felt doing so would protect the privacy of individuals.

One disadvantage of this method is, of course, that it can seem that Klaas, as he appears in this abridged version of his journal entries, is mainly concerned about his own case, and with his own feelings and his direct environment. Readers will have no acquaintance with a range of remarks that reveal his deep interest in a large number of other matters. In this sense, abridging a text such as this can feel like working with a blunt axe...

I have been entrusted with the task of producing this edition, a task I regard as an honour — all the more because, all along, Klaas has wanted assurances that he could completely trust the way the assignment was carried out. He had very little control, though we held frequent discussions with him on the phone. The general outlines of the selection soon resulted in agreement, but for Klaas the rest was an exercise in trust; the thoughts in his journal were being edited by someone far away and shaped into the book now before the reader.

It is his journal entirely, his story, his intellectual world. That is why I hope that he does not regret the deep level of trust that he must necessarily have had in our work in compiling this edition.

Klaas de Jonge escaped from his South African prison guards and in that sense he was a free man in Pretoria. Yet he was stuck, because his freedom of movement was limited by the same South African police. No one could be happy with such a situation: not the Dutch embassy, nor the South African government; nor – most of all – Klaas de Jonge himself. The only useful function his forced residence in the embassy can have would be if we are affected by it to the extent that we are continually reminded that the consequences of apartheid were far worse for many South Africans than they were for Klaas de Jonge in his (temporary) place of sanctuary.

The South African regime sometimes liked to joke about the case, and sniggered publicly when disagreements between Klaas and the Dutch government got out into the open. Yet it would not be correct, in my view, to conclude that it didn’t matter to Pretoria whether Klaas was there or not. For Afrikaners it must have been very disturbing to see a Dutch social scientist right there, in the heart of the Transvaal, in the historic capital of the illustrious former Boer republic, openly admitting his support of the ANC, the ‘terrorist’ organisation.

To let a ‘terrorist’ go unpunished would have been impossible for the South African regime, which always had to prove its disgraceful racist credentials to ensure the support of its rank and file. The Dutch government could not hand Klaas de Jonge over to the South African regime, because it had no faith in the South African apartheid-based judicial process. Secret negotiations were held between the governments, with lawyers in South Africa and the Netherlands representing Klaas de Jonge’s interests. There was a support fund and a support committee. But it seemed that a solution would be difficult, since the interests of the governments appeared to be fundamentally opposed and incommensurable.

Then, out of the blue, a solution emerged, involving a three-way exchange. On 7 September 1987, Klaas de Jonge, Albertini, a Frenchman, and some Angolan soldiers were exchanged in Maputo (Mozambique) for a South African army captain, Wynand du Toit, who was a prisoner in Angola. That brought an end to an exciting period in Klaas de Jonge’s life.

We would speak every week on the phone, when we would discuss his situation and developments in South Africa. I do not share the South African government’s opinion that Klaas de Jonge is a ‘terrorist’, but that does not mean that I admire him uncritically as a symbol of the struggle against apartheid, or as a hero of a just war (a description that he also dislikes).

Klaas has his weaknesses and quirks; he is human, like anyone else. But perhaps just because of that or despite it, I admire his courage in doing what he did, because I myself would never have dared to.

I admire the way he adjusted to his difficult circumstances. I had not been inactive myself. I shared his disgust at racism, his revulsion against apartheid, his anger at the arrogance of the regime, his love of Africa. In these respects we belong to the same family. We also share the firm conviction that apartheid will be defeated within the near future.

After my intensive involvement with his journal notes I feel a bondedness with him that is deeper (and hopefully one that will show itself to be more sustained) than the mere professional friendship of two colleagues with similar interests.

More than this I cannot write. Like Klaas, I find it difficult to express emotions in words. But now that he is free, we will at least be able to meet and talk about it all. And also about that day when apartheid shall be no more than a nightmare in the past. And of history – to which Klaas’s two-year adventure in imprisonment and the limited space of an embassy building will be little more than a bizarre footnote. For him the adventure is over. The last stages of the struggle against apartheid have yet to be fought.

Karel Roskam