The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

imprisonment in Pretoria, which drew upon security police surveillance and the trial
evidence to demonise Fischer and glorify the ‘expertise’ of the security police. 220 Indeed,
narrations of Bram Fischer’s life were produced since the 1960s under different
circumstances and for different purposes: the auto/biography of principled rebellion, the
biography of repression, and the biography of resistance as national memory.
But the key issue that cried out for analytical treatment was the rich collection of family
correspondence and related material, which had been “entrusted” to Clingman by Ruth
and Ilse Fischer. This was the material that, alongside oral history interviews,
“[underlay] much of what [was] told” in Clingman’s account. It may be that any more
complex discussion of this collection was precluded by the decision to give only general
and indirect references, and to follow certain “economies” with sources. 221 However,
this matter extends beyond mere acknowledgement of the value of sources. Clingman
himself had noted that it was Ilse who had saved her parents’ old letters, which Fischer
had wanted destroyed. 222 She had also kept other mementoes and documents, including
rare legal texts, which Fischer had collected. Indeed, Ilse and Ruth Fischer had become
the keepers of Bram Fischer’s memory, without which Clingman’s biography would not
have seen the light of day. By 2002, these letters and documents were designated as the
“Fischer family archives”, and Ilse and Ruth Fischer had also mediated further
biographic work on Bram Fischer’s life. 223
220 Gerard Ludi and Blaar Grobbelaar, The Amazing Mr Fischer (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel,
1966); Chris Vermaak, Braam Fischer: The Man with Two Faces (Johannesburg: APB‐Publishers, 1966).
Ludi was the security policeman who infiltrated the underground Communist Party, and who gave
evidence against Fischer, while Vermaak was a crime reporter, who reported on the apparent triumph
of the police in breaking the “intrigue and deceipt (sic)” of Fischer and his “co‐conspirators”
(backcover). Two impressions of Vermaak’s book were produced in 1966 in the context of an
increasingly kragdadig apartheid order. Perhaps in order not to accord these publications any respect,
Clingman did not refer to these ‘repressive biographies’, except in his bibliography.
221 Stephen Clingman, Bram Fischer, p 461. In case any academic quibble may have arisen about his
‘economies’ of sources, Clingman promised to assist enquirers with “more detailed notations,
references and directions”.
222 Stephen Clingman, Bram Fischer, p 379.
223 Perennial political biographer, Martin Meredith, was granted access to the correspondence, and
produced a popular biography of Fischer’s life with Fischer’s daughter’s assistance. See Martin
Meredith, Fischer’s Choice: A Life of Bram Fischer (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball
Publishers, 2002). This book of 164 pages was described as “more accessible” than Clingman’s study,
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