The Bram Fischer Waltz

Harry Kalmer

Description

Although widely known as the Afrikaner communist who saved Nelson Mandela from the gallows, very little is known about Bram Fischer the man. Fischer was a respected Senior Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar who chose to side with the oppressed and went underground to join the armed struggle. He was arrested on 5 November 1965 after almost ten months on the run. ‘I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act.’ These words spoken by Bram Fischer in his statement from the dock during his treason trial were followed by a life sentence. Scion of a proudly Afrikaner family that included a prime minister and a judge president of the Orange Free State, he would seem to be an unlikely hero of the liberation movement. Uncompromising in his political beliefs and driven by an unshakeable integrity and a commitment to the dream of a non-racial democracy, Fischer was also humorous, fun-loving and a family man, devoted to his wife and children. The many facets of this remarkable man are reflected in The Bram Fischer Waltz, Harry Kalmer’s lyrical tribute. A brief and intense work, with the protagonist as narrator, this one person play takes the audience through a roller coaster of emotions as it tells Fischer’s story. The play won The Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award when it premiered in English at 2013 the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and was awarded the Adelaide Tambo Award for Human Rights in the Arts in 2014. The text is supplemented by a foreword by George Bizos and an introduction by the playwright, reflecting on the path that led him to write the play, and an afterword by Yvonne Malan, entitled ‘The Power of Moral Courage’.

Sujets

• Théâtre
• Film
• African people
• Theatre
• Película fotográfica
• African

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776146444
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Bram Fischer Waltz
Harry Kalmer
The Bram Fischer Waltz
Harry Kalmer
Published in South Africa in 2016 by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
ISBN: 978-1-86814-974-2 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-77614-004-6 (PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-77614-644-4 (EPUB)
Also available in Afrikaans
Copyright © Harry Kalmer 2016
Foreword © George Bizos 2016
Afterword © Yvonne Malan 2016
Cover image © CuePix/Alexa Sedgwick. David Butler as Bram Fischer in the production that premiered at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, 2013.
Photograph of Bram Fischer © AAI Fotostock/Imago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the Publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Copy editing by Pat Tucker
Layout by Quba Design and Motion
Translation by Harry Kalmer
Proofreading by Elsabé Birkenmayer
This edition printed and bound by Creda
CONTENTS
Foreword: Who was Bram Fischer?
by George Bizos
Looking for Bram Fischer
by Harry Kalmer
Timeline/Key moments
Play script
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7
Scene 8
Scene 9
Afterword: Bram Fischer – The Power of Moral Courage
by Yvonne Malan
Advocate Abram Fischer, KC (1908–1975).
FOREWORD
WHO WAS BRAM FISCHER?
George Bizos SC
The Bram Fischer Waltz , a one-man play written by Harry Kalmer, is worthy of being read and staged more often.
It dramatises Bram’s experience in a tiny prison cell. He relates his childhood on an Orange Free State farm, playing with the children of the black workers; the freedom and love bestowed in him by his father, mother and grandparents, who played an important role in the battle against the British occupation of the Boer republics; and his father’s role as counsel to those who opposed the surrender and the involvement of the Union in the First World War.
He remembers his student days in South Africa and at Oxford University, his visit to the Soviet Union and the influence that Marxism had on him in relation to the treatment of black people in South Africa.
He pays homage to Molly, talks about his time at the Johannesburg Bar, the Communist Party, the happy family of Ruth, Ilse and Paul in the Beaumont Street house, which was open to many of us, irrespective of the colour of our skins.
He speaks to himself about what he remembers, particularly about the happiness he had with Molly and his dreams of the times when they danced, but also blames himself for the unfortunate event that led to her death. He mourns the unfortunate, lonely death of their son Paul.
In reading the play or seeing it we should bear in mind what is generally known about Bram Fischer.
At the first Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture organised by the Legal Resources Centre, President Nelson Mandela said:
With that background he could not but have become an Afrikaner nationalist, as we became African nationalists thirty years later as a result of our oppression by whites. Both of us changed. Both of us rejected the notion that our political rights were to be determined by the colour of our skins. We embraced each other as comrades, as brothers, to fight for freedom for all in South Africa, to put an end to racism and exploitation.
Bram was a senior counsel in the Rivonia Trial. He was arrested and charged, with others, with being a member of the Communist Party. Given permission to travel to the United Kingdom to argue a case, he came back but decided that he should go underground. He was arrested, charged with sabotage, a capital offence then, and was convicted. Sydney Kentridge and I advised that he should follow Nelson Mandela’s example and make a statement from the dock. This is what he said:
I am on trial, My Lord, for my political beliefs and for the conduct which those beliefs drive me to. My Lord, when a man is on trial for his political beliefs and actions, two courses are open to him. He can either confess to his transgressions and plead for mercy, or he can justify his beliefs and explain why he has acted as he did. Were I to ask for forgiveness today, I would betray my cause. That course, My Lord is not open to me. I believe that what I did was right ...
My Lord, there is another reason, and a more compelling reason for my plea ... I accept, My Lord, the general rule that for the protection of a society laws should be obeyed. But when the laws themselves become immoral and require the citizen to take part in an organised system of oppression ... then I believe that a higher duty arises.
My conscience, My Lord, does not permit me to afford these laws such recognition as even a plea of guilty would involve. Hence, though I shall be convicted by this Court, I cannot plead guilty. I believe that the future may well say that I acted correctly.
In 1994 we asked for his reinstatement on the roll of advocates, even though he had died by then.
We approached Judge President Ngoepe of the Transvaal Provincial Division to appoint a full bench of three judges to hear an application on behalf of Bram’s daughters, Ruth and Ilse. He readily responded that he would preside at such an application and that he would appoint two other judges to constitute a court, the composition of which would have pleased Bram. Ngoepe, an African, asked a white Afrikaner woman, Judge Snyders, who wrote the judgement for the court, and an Indian male, Judge Ponnan.
In her judgement Judge Snyders said:
The application of Bram Fischer’s removal was heard by a full bench of this division. It was, in our view, therefore appropriate that the application for this reinstatement also [be heard] before a full bench; but even more appropriately, before a court as representative of the diversity of our society as possible. This is the kind of society that Fischer fought for. The future time to which reference is made in the judgement for his striking off has now arrived. The Society of Advocates recognises that Mr Fischer was a fit and proper person to continue to practise as an advocate. Mr Epstein, supported by Mr van der Linde on behalf of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa, submitted that a grave injustice was done to Abram Fischer. It fell to this court to rectify that injustice.
In the result and for the reasons stated, it took little urging from Mr Bizos, on behalf of the applicants, to persuade us to grant the order we made on 16 October 2003 for the reinstatement of Abram Fischer’s name on the roll of advocates.
Some of his contemporaries may have considered him a failure. Even most of them now accept that he was not . He was one of the main pillars whose strength prevented a bloody revolution. He was a senior partner of Nelson Mandela in their efforts to avoid a bloody civil war. This is how he is and will continue to be remembered.
Only four of us went to his funeral in Bloemfontein – Chief Justice Rumpf saw us at the airport and asked what we were doing there when the Court was in recess. We said we had come to the Fischer funeral. Although an ardent supporter of the apartheid government, he said, ‘Bram Fischer will be remembered long after many of us are forgotten.’ The Chief Justice has been proved right.
LOOKING FOR BRAM FISCHER
Harry Kalmer
In 1985 Barney Simon, co-founder of the Market Theatre, saw a runthrough of my first play, Bloed in die Strate [ Blood in the Streets ] (176 Interviews for Television) .
Afterwards he commented that a script should serve as a springboard for a production, allowing the actors to leap. He felt that my staging of the play (a restaging of Jacqui Singer’s 1984 production) did not do that.
It was a few days before opening night, and I suspect the entire production never got off the ground enough for the actors to reach the springboard.
To me, as a young playwright, working at the Market Theatre felt like being in the heart of South African theatre. In the Upstairs Theatre my white Anglo colleagues were doing Berkoff in British accents. Downstairs, our racially mixed play, combining two languages – 40% English, 60% Afrikaans – shared The Laager Theatre with the Zulu cast of Mbongemi Ngema’s Asinamali .
It made me realise that South Africans, when we get to know each other, actually get along. One Friday we held the door so that the Berkoff cast could watch. On another night the entire Zulu-speaking cast of Asinamali , still dressed in their khaki prison uniforms, made up 90% of our audience.
Thirty years later I returned with The Bram Fischer Waltz to the venue where my friends had performed Berkoff. Barney Simon had died and the Upstairs Theatre had been renamed after him. Like the actors in Asinamali , David Butler, playing Bram Fischer, was dressed in prison khaki. At the back of my mind was Barney’s advice: ‘A script should only be a springboard for actors and directors.’
This is probably one of the reasons why this script contains so few stage directions – I would like each production to use it as its own springboard.
As a director I always try to stay out of the actors’ way. Now that I am publishing my plays for the first time I realise this approach probably informs my theatre writing as well.
I was nine years old when Bram Fischer was arrested for the last time. I remember the photographs of Bram and his disguises in the newspapers. Shortly afterwards I read a book, Rivonia: Masker Af! [ Rivonia Unmasked ] by Lauritz Strydom (with forewords by Bram Fischer’s nemeses, Percy Yutar, the prosecutor during the Rivonia Trial, and the then Minister of Justice, John Vorster) and realised that Bram Fischer was a dangerous man.
But growing up in the sixties also exposed me to hippies, to Paris 1968, to Woodstock and to the long-haired protestors disrupting the 1970 Sp