Escape as political statement
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Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison
Tim Jenkin
2003
Jacana, Johannesburg
333 pages
Review by Richard Hoogstad
Even in prison the apartheid regime segregated its political prisoners – black inmates were sent to Robben Island and white to Pretoria Central prison. But when a group of white political prisoners escaped from Pretoria, the news led to celebrations on Robben Island. Escaping was not just a quest for freedom, it was a political statement and when Tim Jenkin and fellow inmates escaped in 1979, they were possibly doing more for the struggle than by the actions which led to their incarceration.
Inside Out is story of this daring escape from the heart of apartheid’s machinery and wow, what a story. I read it in two sittings, so enthralled was I by this true tale of a daring escape by three white political prisoners from Pretoria Prison in 1979, at the height of racial oppression in South Africa – an escape that was the result of two long years of careful planning and meticulous preparation.
Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two young university graduates, did not realise the price they might have to pay when they began producing and distributing pamphlets for the African National Congress (ANC) by way of leaflet bombs, which were "hardly bombs in the real sense of the word but simple, timed explosive devices for throwing bundles of leaflets high into the air in order to spread them over a large area where a target crowd of people were gathered".
The pair had met while at university, forging a friendship in their sociology class when they both became disillusioned with the course content, which contrasted sharply with the Marxist philosophies they were reading about in the banned books and articles they found. After graduating they journeyed together to the UK, where they presented themselves at the ANC’s office.
"The two men, their lawyers and families were no match for the military, police, courts, media, church and state. They were trapped"
After a period of training, they returned to South Africa and for a while produced and distributed many anti-apartheid pamphlets before being caught red-handed while preparing to move their production centre to more spacious premises. If the plot had seemed a little romantic until now, it was at this point that things became very real.
The two men were suddenly faced with the might of the National Party government, which took their "subversive" actions very seriously. I put subversive in quote marks to highlight the relative views on the situation – one person’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter and all that. Their actions may have been intended to contribute towards the liberation of a country, but the two men, their lawyers and families were no match for the military, police, courts, media, church and state. They were trapped.
Caught.
Sentenced.
Tim Jenkin was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and Stephen Lee to eight. Those were very real years … very long real years – to be spent within the very real confines of prison cells. Whatever words might have been used to describe the men – idealistic, during their long intellectual discussions at university; naïve, when entering the ANC office in London; hopeful, when returning to South Africa and setting up an underground cell; brave, when detonating their leaflet bombs; stupid, when caught red-handed; foolish, for not taking their trials perhaps as seriously as they could have – these words could not be used as adjectives for the years they were to spend behind bars.
The men wanted out. They wanted to be free. And from the moment they were imprisoned they planned their escape. Eventually housed in the political wing of Pretoria Prison – in the section reserved for white prisoners, as the author emphasises repeatedly (almost apologetically) lest anyone think he is claiming to have been dealt as tough a deal as black political prisoners – the two men came to trust their fellow inmates and involved them in finding an escape route.
There was a belief among some of the comrades that being a political prisoner was not a complete waste of time. Political imprisonment served a purpose: it inspired others and kept alive the notion that there were fighters against apartheid who had sacrificed their personal freedom for the greater freedom of the oppressed.
I never subscribed to this theory. I was not proud of being in prison. In fact I was downright ashamed that I had failed the Movement and allowed the enemy to score one over us. While there were people like Nelson Mandela who had been turned into martyrs and symbols of freedom and whose imprisonment had ultimately served a political purpose, your average activist could not champion the cause better by being inside rather than out.
We had a duty to escape….
This true story reads like a novel, the author admits so himself, and as I do not wish to detract from your reading pleasure I will not provide any details about the escape … just that there was one. Three men got out. And they did so without breaking anything or hurting anyone physically and without the co-operation of any prison staff members. They were also not discovered missing until hours after they were gone.
It was an amazing escape. And the story of it is told here brilliantly by one of the escapees, Tim Jenkin, who first wrote it and had it published in 1987. This re-released version takes the original story a little further and tells of what the three political prisoners got up to after their escape and even of what they are up to today.
It can be argued that these three men did more for the struggle against apartheid by escaping from prison than they did by the actions that led to their imprisonment. Not for nothing is a significantly greater portion of the book taken up with the plans for escaping. The ANC took the escape and subsequent press conferences very seriously, while all major newspaper headlines around the world documented the event and prisoners on Robben Island celebrated when initial rumours were confirmed.
The escape was [apart from securing personal freedom] also an act of defiance towards the apartheid regime and their so-called legal system: a pair of raised fingers to their laws and their judge. We never accepted their judgments and sentences – nor their prisons – and escaping was the best way of telling them so.
As the story is true and not a constructed novel, it does not end neatly and happily. In reading the new additions to the book, it is clear that – many years into the new South Africa – the writer has many mixed feelings about the events that took place all those years ago. While he and two others escaped, scoring a political coup for the ANC, the prisoners that remained were subjected to harsher living conditions, a prison official who had been due for retirement endured a five-month long trial to prove himself innocent of aiding the political prisoners, and several "comrades" (including the author’s brother) were detained, tortured and imprisoned.
There is no overriding message of victory in this true story; no triumph to dwarf all sadness and regret. But there were no winners under apartheid – only losers … and moments of human greatness. What the author does leave the reader with, however, once all the pages have been turned and all is said and done … is that anything is possible, that any monster can be beaten, with planning and perseverance. Even solid brick walls, metal locks and a system determined to suppress individual freedom.
Richard Hoogstad is a South African journalist working in London.
