SACP welcomes
posthumous reinstatement of Bram Fischer

The South African Communist Party (SACP) warmly welcomed a 
decision by Justice Bernard Ngoepe of the High Court of South 
Africa to posthumously reinstate Advocate Abram Fischer on the 
roll of advocates.

The SACP said: "His reinstatement is befitting the person of his 
humility, quality and contribution. It is a recognition of the 
role he played as a Communist in the struggle against apartheid.

"This reinstatement could not have come at a better time for the 
SACP, in the year we have declared as the Year of Communist 
Matryrs, Heroes and Heroines. It is a year we are remembering and 
honouring all departed communists for the enormous role and 
contribution to the liberation struggle and their dedication to 
the ideals and objective of socialism."

The SACP, in a statement following the decision on October 16, 
that Bram Fischer was not only a Communist but he was made of a 
special mould. Born in into a powerful Afrikaner family in the 
Free State in 1908 he had all the benefits of apartheid to savour 
but he followed his consciousness into the Communist Party of 
South Africa.

His family has lived in South Africa since the 18th century, a 
family honoured and revered in Afrikaner society, with a 
tradition of legal and public service. "He sacrificed wealth, 
fame, comfort, high position, a privileged life in an already 
privileged white society", the SACP said.

"The many hundreds of black and white South Africans who worked 
with him as members of the Communist Party or of the broad mass 
political organisations found that he had the modesty and 
humility of the truly great. This busy and famous barrister was 
always accessible. No one who had a political or personal problem 
hesitated to consult him.

"The personal lives of Bram and Molly Fischer showed that they 
did not merely pay lip service to their cardinal political belief 
of racial equality. They adopted an African girl and brought her 
up in their home as their own child; an act of complete rejection 
of the mores of apartheid South Africa", the statement said.

The statement continued with a quote from Bram Fischer:

"My home is in South Africa. I will not leave my country because 
my political beliefs conflict with those of the Government... If 
in my fight I can encourage even some people to understand and to 
abandon policies they now so blindly follow, I shall not regret 
any punishment I may incur... Unless this whole intolerable 
system is changed radically and rapidly, disaster must follow and 
appalling bloodshed and civil war become inevitable.

"As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be 
fought with increasing hatred. I can no longer serve justice in 
the way I have attempted to do during the past 30 years — I can 
do it only in the way I have now chosen."

Extract from Bram Fischer's statement from the dock, April 
1965:

"Whatever labels may be attached to the fifteen charges brought 
against me, they all arise from my having been a member of the 
Communist Party and from my activities as a member. I engaged 
upon those activities because I believed that, in the dangerous 
circumstances which have been created in South Africa, it was my 
duty to do so...

"I believe that what I did was right.... I hold and have for many 
years held the view that politics can only be properly understood 
and that our immediate political problems can only be 
satisfactorily solved without violence and civil war by the 
application of that scientific system of political knowledge 
known as Marxism....

"When I consider what it was that moved me to join the Communist 
Party, I have to cast my mind back for more than a quarter of a 
century to try and ascertain what precisely my motives at that 
time were...

"In my mind there remain two clear reasons... The one is the 
glaring injustice which exists and has existed for a long time in 
South African society, the other, a gradual realisation as I 
became more and more deeply involved with the Congress Movement 
of those years, that is, the movement for freedom and equal human 
rights for all, that it was always members of the Communist Party 
who seemed prepared, regardless of cost, to sacrifice most; to 
give of the best, to face the greatest dangers, in the struggle 
against poverty and discrimination.

"The glaring injustice is there for all who are not blinded by 
prejudice to see."