Thread by @khayadlanga

This is Bram Fischer. Some may only know him as a road they drive on but this is a hero of the liberation struggle. He was the brilliant lead defense in the Rivonia Trial. He came from Afrikaans privilege. His grandfather was prime minister of the Orange River Colony.

His father was Judge President of the Orange Free State.

Bram even played against the All Blacks as a scrum half in 1928. He was set to become the elite of the elite because he would have risen to the Supreme Court.

He found apartheid morally indefensible. As Mandela put it, “He showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was a class by itself. I fought only against injustice, not against my own people.”

Soon after the Rivonia trialists were on Robben Island, Bram went to visit Mandela to find out if he was serious about not appealing. Bram strongly believed they should. Mandela said they won’t appeal.

Mandela asked him about his wife, Molly, “No sooner had I pronounced Molly name than Bram stood up, excused himself and abruptly walked out the room. A few minutes later returned... and resumed the conversation without answering my question.”

What Mandela didn’t know, and what Bram didn’t reveal to him was that his wife had actually died in a car accident the previous week. He had visited the prisoners in a secret state of grief.

Mandela said, “He had come to advise us and to express concern for our predicament, he did not want to become the focus of our concern.” It the last time Mandela would see him. Bram and Molly had joined the Communist Party because it accepted blacks and whites as equals.

When the Communist party was banned, they were barred from attending political meetings and were subjected to numerous raids.

He had an opportunity to stay in England as an exile, instead, he came back to South Africa to work underground under disguise, “My decision was made only because I believe that it is the duty of every opponent of this government...

“...to remain in this country and to oppose its monstrous policy of apartheid...
”What is needed for White South Africans to shake themselves out of their complacency, a complacency intensified by the present economic boom built upon racial discrimination.”

In 1965, he was disbarred despite being the longest-serving member of the Johannesburg Bar Council. Later that year, he was arrested and to life imprisonment the following year.

In court he said, ”I accept, my Lord, the general rule that for the protection of a society, laws should be obeyed. But when the laws themselves are immoral and require the citizen to take part in an organised system of oppression... then I believe that a higher city arises...”

“I believe that the future may say that I acted correctly.”

He suffered from brain cancer while serving his life sentence. He was denied treatment after sustaining injuries after a fall. He was slipping in and out of consciousness and was unable to speak. His fellow prisoners nurses him for four months before he was moved to a hospital.

He was later to moved to his brother’s house when he became severely ill. A few months later, he died.

To show the extent to which the apartheid government felt betrayed by its own, the prison officials demanded his ashes from his family after the funeral.

In 2003, the South African high court posthumously Bram Fischer to the roll of advocates.