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Young activists: a thin chapter in the history curriculum
By Catherine Sofianos on 8 March 2021
“But Ma’am, we’ve done it so many times before,” – so goes the annual refrain from the chorus of learners – when first confronted with the prospect of learning about apartheid as they reach the second half of Grade 9 in many history classrooms countrywide. It happened, yes, of course it did, but now it’s in the past. We’re united now, with our multilingual anthem and colourful national flag. We need to learn about apartheid, a teacher may plead with a class, because we don’t want to make the same mistakes again. Because it teaches us about human rights abuses, and about how we shouldn’t judge each other according to the colour of our skin. And with that, almost half a century (to say nothing of the ones which came before) is trivialised in a moment of didactic opportunism and professional vulnerability.
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My friend Andrew Williamson, who has died aged 78, took part as a lawyer in several key anti-apartheid trials in South Africa and later established himself as an employment law specialist in the UK.
In South Africa, Andrew represented the author and activist Breyten Breytenbach in his 1975 trial under the draconian Terrorism Act. Breytenbach was sentenced to nine years in prison – but escaped the death penalty - for seeking to launch a white wing of the outlawed African National Congress.
Andrew was also instructing solicitor to the barrister Sir Sydney Kentridge in several other apartheid-related cases, and the two of them maintained a close friendship after they both moved to the UK in the late 1970s.
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