Book Review by Sheila Suttner
There and Back — Robben Island 1964-1979
by Eddie Daniels

Bellville, Cape, University of the Western Cape,
Mayibuye Books, UWC, 1998, 251pp, RSA R55, (pb), ISBN 1-86808-3802

This simple autobiography by a modest man brings great insight into the 
complexity of South Africa's freedom struggle and the diversity of its 
players. In the sweep to victory, culminating in the 1994 democratic 
elections, African leadership took centre stage while other players were 
overlooked. Eddie Daniels as a member of the mixed race (`coloured') group 
and the Liberal Party of South Africa, reveals the under-reported role of 
both.

Born in 1928 in District VI on the slopes of Table Mountain, overlooking 
Table Bay, (an area regarded by the white regime as too desirable to be 
occupied by its mixed-in-every-way residents) Daniels saw how white and 
black, Muslim, Christian, Jew, lived and traded, side by side in noisy 
harmony.

Two negatives in an otherwise happy childhood were the skollies (the 
criminal gangs that preyed on defenseless members of the community) and 
apartheid, the law of the land, enforced by brutal police.

Eddie left school early to contribute to the family finances.

With little education and race-linked job prospects poor, he managed to 
find work that, albeit at a menial level, was both exciting and interesting 
— first on trawlers, (catching fish that anti-apartheid activists refused 
to buy!), then on whaling ships, plying their deadly trade in Antarctica; 
later on the diamond fields of South West Africa (now Namibia).

Racial insults and exclusions denied access to the mountains, beaches, 
restaurants, theatres and other wonders of the Cape to people of Daniels' 
racial origins and so he joined the Liberal Party of South Africa (LP), 
whose slogan was an inclusive "One Person One Vote in a Non-racial South 
Africa".

Led by Alan Paton, author of Cry the Beloved Country, the LP filled 
a gap in the '60s when more militant political parties were banned, their 
leaders imprisoned or in exile.

Its policy was non-violent, but, like the ANC and other parties, some 
members felt that gentle persuasion was ineffective against the regime's 
intransigence.

They formed the Armed Resistance Movement (ARM), of which Eddie was a 
member, and proceeded to blow up electricity pylons and other non-human 
targets, as a statement of defiance.

Inevitably the security police gave chase and, fortuitously, captured a 
member holding the entire membership list.

Members fled in all directions and, when captured (and coerced), some gave 
away fellow members.

Eddie, faced with a possible death penalty, refused to buy his own freedom 
at the cost of others. The modest account of his own actions and lack of 
bitterness at the actions of others is moving.

His only bitterness is at the "impartiality" of the judge who called Eddie 
a skolly, a typical white South African perception of all `coloured' 
people as the criminal dregs of society.

To Eddie, a victim himself of the scourge of the skolly, the judge's 
remarks were almost as punitive as the 15-year sentence he pronounced.

On Robben Island Eddie was in the `elite' section with leaders of the 
various groups comprising the prison population.

As sole LP member (a leader without followers), he was dismissed by some as 
irrelevant. But the ANC and SWAPO leadership treated him and his party with 
respect, consulting and seeking his opinion on issues of concern.

The exemplary role played by Mandela and the leadership in handling 
problems of the whole prison population resulted in improvements in living, 
working, visiting and study conditions.

Eddie achieved two university degrees during his 15 years on the Island 
and, despite the harsh conditions, designed by a system determined to break 
their spirits, like so many other veterans of the Island, he emerged 
enriched by the experience and his close relationship with men such as 
Mandela, Sisulu, Kathrada, Toivo ja Toivo, which have endured.

Released in 1979, Daniels was immediately banned. Despite this limitation 
on his social and occupational life, he managed to find meaningful work, 
get married, and obtain a Higher Diploma in Education. He was a teacher in 
the era of the schools uprising of the '70s and '80s.

Daniels concludes his book with the comment, "We have won the war. We have 
still to win the peace".

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