The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

continued political role”. It was “necessary for someone among the whites to
demonstrate a spirit of real revolt”. 211
After Gerard Ludi, the security policeman who had infiltrated the movement and Piet
Beyleveld, the central committee member who had co‐operated with the police,
presented incriminating evidence when the trial resumed, Fischer chose to abscond and
to go underground. He wanted “to demonstrate that no‐one would meekly submit to
our barbaric laws”. It was necessary to stem the tide of “seepage” overseas. And it was
“not only blacks in South Africa” who should “make sacrifices or risk everything for the
cause of freedom”. Fischer chose to live in disguise, under a false name, “among the
unseen and invisible world, in the way that blacks were normally unseen and invisible
to whites”. His choice of a “displaced identity” was a “radical statement of the
possibility and necessity of a new and undivided world”. Fischer found it troubling that
“the essential character” of his actions required “translation”, even to close colleagues,
such as lawyer, George Bizos, who had enquired whether his nine months underground
“had been worth sacrificing his family, his profession, and everything else”. It should
have been “no more unnatural for a white man to make sacrifices for a new and free
world in South Africa than it was for a black”. 212
Apart from its frankness in presenting analyses of contradictory aspects of Fischer’s life,
and its bold attempt to address the politics of the personal, Clingman’s study also
attempted to assess aspects of Fischer’s life history in terms of style and image, and
identity and symbolism. It is these observations that took the study quite tantalisingly
into the domain of the analytical. 213 Clingman did oral history research on Fischer the
lawyer, and his “half‐apologetic”, even “self‐deprecating” legal style, one that seemed
strategic and skilful in its capacity to elicit “honest replies”. In the 1950s, the Treason
Trial had become “the medium into which his personal and political identity” had
211 Stephen Clingman, Bram Fischer, pp 339, 345, 358.
212 Stephen Clingman, Bram Fischer, pp 358, 376, 380, 401‐2.
213 Indeed, Clingman has shown that it is possible for enormous empathy with one’s subject – in the
text he refers to Fischer as ‘Bram’ – to be accompanied by critical analysis.
182