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Lying to tell the truth
White Lies: Canon Collins and the Secret War against Apartheid
Denis Herbstein
2004
James Currey, Oxford
376 pages
Reviewed by Lisa MacLeod
The struggle against apartheid was not won with great strides but rather with small victories by so many people that combined they overwhelmed the might of South Africa's apartheid state. One of these contributions to the downfall of apartheid was the financial aid given to victims of apartheid inside the country, largely through the International Defence and Aid Fund based in Britain. This campaign, led by Canon John Collins of St Paul's Cathedral in London was never compromised by South Africa's secret police or security services. White Lies opens a once secret history and tells of small acts of bravery by a multitude of people across continents
Denis Herbstein has created something in White Lies that is no less than epic – he tracks in minute detail the history of South Africa’s apartheid years, and weaves into the tapestry a warm and intimate biography of John Collins, the canon of St Paul’s, and his role in the struggle against apartheid.
The son of a middle-class builder from Kent, Collins seemed forever to row against the tide, seeking ways to change the world and banish injustice, while still maintaining to some extent the cloak of respectability required of him by the church, his congregants and the British government. In the 1930s, Collins visited the home of a very poor family in Wales and commented on how the squalor caused a "great sense of indignation" to arise within him, and how he realised "what a humbug the Establishment is, and how feeble and how at fault is the Church in its social and political witness".
A friendship with a French Roman Catholic priest, Albert Loisy, who was excommunicated for his "modernising ideas", caused Collins to "question further his conservative approach to politics and social organisations". Thus the scene was set for Collins to rise to the challenge of effecting and precipitating change: a role he maintained throughout his career as canon of St Pauls’ and for most of his life.
Not suspecting for one minute what upheaval lay before her, Collins’s eternally supportive wife, Diana, was warned by her stepmother, wary of her marriage to a priest: "You’ll have such a dull life." Collins’s commitment to making the church more responsive to social issues was cemented by his launch of the pressure group, Christian Action, an involvement which caused some consternation and opposition to Collins’s successful appointment to one of the four canonries at St Paul’s.
“Because of the absolute necessity for secrecy, the Canon established lengthy and clandestine ways of getting money into South Africa without his funding agencies”
Collins himself admits that the South African situation did not take up a large amount of his attention until the late 1940s, entrenched as he was in a society accustomed to turning a blind eye to racial injustice at the time. Because South Africa’s prime minister Jan Smuts had been a member of Churchill’s Imperial War Cabinet, and South Africa had aligned itself with Britain during the war "it seemed positively ungrateful to find fault" and South Africa’s treatment of its large black population "did not seem much different to Britain’s behaviour in its own African colonies".
An encounter with Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country [click here to read an extract] and a meeting with the radical Anglican monk Michael Scott was a turning point for Collins on the South African situation. The "distinguished backers" of Christian Action felt it would be unseemly to interfere in the internal matters of another Commonwealth country, albeit a country hellbent on segregating and oppressing the majority of its citizens, and this wariness, said Diana Collins, was the one factor that convinced her husband to take up the cudgels against apartheid.
The African National Congress provided the opening Collins had been waiting for: a co-ordinated Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws began in 1952, and thousands of people were arrested for their involvement. Father Trevor Huddlestone, an Anglican mission priest from Sophiatown, wrote to Collins regarding the possibility of him raising funds through Christian Action to support families left destitute by the arrests and long imprisonments of many primary breadwinners.
Herbstein explains that the defiance campaign was significant in that it represented the "culmination of 40 years of earnest, non-violent political endeavour" and that for the first time in its history the ANC leadership was "espousing the deliberate breaking of the law". This reflected "the growing influence of a new, younger, more radical element in the ANC" and most conspicuous in this group were Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, all products of the ANC Youth league and all of whom would become some of the most influential politicians not only in South African history, but in the world.
Despite defections and disapproval from some quarters of Christian Action, and a severe reprimanding from and altercation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Collins managed to raise cash for the cause and became ever more determined to help those in need. His commitment was called to the test when in 1956, 156 South Africans were arrested and charged with high treason. Collins was responsible for raising about two-thirds of the funds for the defence of these individuals. During the Treason Trial, Collins moved into high gear, tapping the public conscience through large newspaper advertisements and recruiting stage and screen stars to spark interest – his talent for harnessing publicity was commented on over the years by both admirers and critics.
In the years that followed, Collins tirelessly fought for funding, a need that was always present as the struggle stepped up pace, and the South African government moved the goal posts by continuously changing the law, rushing bills through parliament and equipping the police force with wide ranging powers to ensure that any sign of opposition or "communist" activity was swiftly crushed and punished.
The horror of Sharpeville and the international outrage that followed caused a rush of public sympathy and hence support for Collins’s efforts. All the while, pleas for help came from all quarters, including other southern African countries, and as Herbstein puts it: "In a world short of water, he was seen as the man who controlled the village pump".
Herbstein traces Colllins’s complicated funding structures during the apartheid years: because of the absolute necessity for secrecy, the Canon established lengthy and clandestine ways of getting money into South Africa without his funding agencies, primarily the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), being discovered by the South African authorities. He and his colleagues established vague connections between law firms, none of whom was aware of the other’s existence or source of funding, and fronted bank accounts and large donor funds with prominent (although often not enormously wealthy) individuals who were unlikely to cause suspicion.
The most ingenious and heartwarming of these schemes though, was the letter writing programmes set up by Collins and colleagues. Volunteers in Britain and elsewhere wrote regular chatty letters to families in need in South Africa, most of whom had lost providers in the struggle, and were in desperate need of financial aid. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of pounds was distributed in this way. The volunteers would be given a lump sum that they would divide into postal orders and send to the families in South Africa. Herbstein devotes a chapter of his book to this simple and yet enormously effective means of dispersing money. He traces the correspondence between Eileen Wainwright, a British housewife and Stephanus Mpanza, a minister in the Bantu Hervormde Kerk (Bantu Reformed Church) who was tasked with bringing up his great grandson Philippus, in the absence of his exiled father. It is a beautifully simple chapter, and perhaps the most moving in the book, as it drills into the relationships forged during South Africa’s darkest years and gives a very human face to the tragedy that affected so many lives.
Herbstein’s book is an extraordinary achievement. It has the weightiness of an academic text book, and has been so exhaustively researched over many years that it leaves no room for doubt as to the accuracy of the events described. However, it also enjoyable and easy to read, as Herbstein lifts the factual content with interesting anecdotes, well-placed quotes and excerpts, and a good dose of humour.
Above all, in the seldom upheld tradition of truly balanced journalism, Herbstein tackles an awkward historical subject with pragmatism and a distance that would make White Lies accessible to readers of any political persuasion, and maintain their interest from beginning to end.
White Lies is not so much an autobiography of John Collins as it is a illustration of his role in a much greater effort, which reached across the world and into many hearts and pockets. Herbstein has written an appropriate and well-deserved tribute to a man who made a real difference to many lives, but he devotes as much attention and as many pages, if not more, to the other nations, committees, fundraisers, IDAF employees (particularly the indefatigable Phyllis Altman), teams of lawyers, freedom fighters, letter-writers, activists, and members of the public who risked their careers, freedom, personal safety and in some cases their lives, fighting for the rights of black South Africans.
The true story of South Africa’s history is one that was kept well hidden from many of its citizens, and from the rest of the world, for many years: until very recently the only history taught in South African schools was from the perspective of the Afrikaners: the Great Trek, the Anglo-Boer war, the Battle of Blood River and the patriotism one was meant to associate with these events.
Herbstein delves into a virtually unknown part of history: the source of the money that helped defend thousands of political prisoners who would have otherwise been sentenced without representation in South African courts, and the funding that helped feed, clothe and educate the families they left behind. This book provides many of the missing pieces of the puzzle, and creates an awareness and understanding of the events that shaped a nation, and the heroes who helped precipitate those events.
Lisa Macleod is a South African journalist working in London
