I googled Harold Wolpe before starting to write my story. Wikipedia describes him as a “South African lawyer, sociologist, political economist and anti-apartheid activist. He was arrested and put in prison in 1963, but escaped and spent almost 30 years in exile in the United Kingdom.” He and AnnMarie, his wife, came home in 1991, after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990.  

These facts are public knowledge. Rivonia’s Children by Glenn Frankel and AnnMarie’s The Long Way Home relate the depths of an extraordinary story of that time. My story, however, is personal. I write it as a friend of Harold and AnnMarie, both no longer with us, and dedicate it to their daughters, Peta and Tessa, and son Nicholas.  

Connections

AnnMarie shared Harold’s political views, but most of all she was a family person with two young daughters when I met them. I, my husband Denis Kuny and our baby son Neil had spent the year 1959 in London, attempting a getaway from apartheid South Africa. However, Denis couldn’t use his law degree to get a job in London and struggled to support us. 

We came back home so that he could go to the Johannesburg Bar and qualify for the English Bar at the same time. 

However, our plans to return to London evaporated after the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960 — a peaceful protest against the pass law led to 69 deaths and resulted in the banning of the ANC (the Communist party was already banned in 1950) and the PAC, which ultimately led to the liberation movement taking up arms. 

It was at the Bar that Denis met Joe Slovo, a communist and freedom fighter, who was also practising as an advocate in between his underground work. Denis let Joe know that we were staunch sympathisers with the anti-apartheid struggle and that he wanted to defend activists detained on political charges. Our two families were soon on vising terms. Our group of friends also included  Arthur Goldreich, Molly and Bram Fischer and, later, the Wolpes, among many others. 

In 1957 I taught at the Central Indian High School in Fordsburg, which had been founded under the leadership of the South African Indian Congress. Molly had been the headmistress there shortly before I taught there.  

Read Part 1: here

Read Part 2: here

Read Part 3: here

Read Part 4: here

Read Part 5: here

Read Part 6: here

Read Part 7: here

Liliesleaf Farm  

In August of 1961, the South African Communist Party, through a front company, Navian (Pty) Ltd, purchased the 28-acre Liliesleaf Farm, in the peri-urban area of Rivonia on the edge of Johannesburg, as its secret headquarters and meeting place for its high command. Navian’s sole director was Vivian Ezra and the deal was partly funded by the father of Ruth First, a journalist, academic and struggle activist who was married to Slovo.  

Arthur Goldreich, an artist and designer who created the sets for the famous 1959 musical King Kong, moved to Liliesleaf Farm with his wife, Hazel Berman, pretending to be the new owners of this large country estate. I had been friends with Arthur since university days, and we were invited to the housewarming party. 

Liliesleaf evolved into the headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the liberation movement and Congress Alliance. Walter Sisulu, Mandela and Slovo became the first members of Umkhonto’s National High Command.   

By the time of the Rivonia raid, we had let our friends know that we were not going to do anything that would land us in prison. We had three young children by then, and they needed us. Nonetheless, when friends were in trouble we didn’t think twice about helping them.  

The day that changed history 

For her part AnnMarie, while sharing her husband’s political views, was anxious when the ANC decided to adopt the armed struggle as a strategy. Harold was often at Liliesleaf and she agonised about the danger that her beloved husband’s activism placed him and his family in. She wished they could emigrate, but as far as Harold was concerned that was out of the question — and she wasn’t going anywhere without him. 

A photo taken in November 1995 on Harold and AnnMarie’s 40th wedding anniversary. Just two months later he sadly passed away from a heart attack. (Photo: Sue Kramer)

She wasn’t in Johannesburg when the Rivonia Raid put paid to the optimistic view that our freedom was within sight. The day of 11 July 1963 was one that changed our history. 

AnnMarie was taking a break with her daughters at a cousin’s farm in Rustenburg after a harrowing few weeks. Her father had died suddenly of an aneurysm and her youngest, baby Nicholas, had almost died from a bout of pneumonia and complications which followed. He was now recovering well in hospital and she hoped to fetch him soon. Little did she know how traumatic her homecoming would be.  

Listening to a radio news bulletin in Rustenburg she was horrified to learn that the security police had raided Liliesleaf the previous evening. The next day a newspaper headline shouted that “six whites and a number of Bantus had been arrested”. While she wasn’t involved herself, she knew enough about Harold and his connection to Liliesleaf to be worried. Had he been there he surely would have been one of the whites arrested. 

She was reassured when Harold called from a pay phone a little later to tell her that his luck was in. He had not been at the farm at the time of the raid and was planning an escape. He got as far as the Bechuanaland (now Botswana) border where he was apprehended, arrested, brought back to Johannesburg via Pretoria and locked up in the holding cells at Marshall Square Police Station in downtown Johannesburg as a 90-day detainee. Goldreich and two other comrades, Mosie Moolla and Abdulhay Jassat, had also been arrested.

A downtown drive with a friend

All of this happened 60 years ago and the details of their escape are well known. 

I have always been puzzled that Hollywood never made a blockbuster movie called something like The Great Escape out of their story. It certainly was exactly that, and I’ve never heard about another one to beat it. Perhaps it has stayed with me with so much poignancy and even disbelief because we were around at the time, and my husband and I had had a walk-on part.

When AnnMarie got a note smuggled out from Harold’s prison cell, concealed in his dirty laundry, that said they were planning an escape, she realised that it was time for her to draw on a deep reserve of inner strength. I only heard the details much later. At the time AnnMarie told me, early one evening, that she had to go for a drive into the city’s downtown area and asked me to come along to keep her company.  

A drawing of the prison and how they got out and escaped. (Photo: Supplied)

I didn’t ask where we were going or why, but was happy to offer her my support. We chatted about this and that as she drove around Marshall Square twice. I was interested in her reasons for the excursion, of course, but knew not to ask any questions. A few days later I was able to speculate on what the drive could have been about.

The face at the window

It was early morning, around 2am, when Denis shook me awake. 

“Someone is knocking at the window,” he said in a sleepy but somewhat alarmed voice. I listened. Yes, I heard it too. I was closest to the window, so I jumped out of bed and pulled open the curtain to see the wide-eyed, stricken face of our friend Barney Simon muttering words that at first I didn’t get. I opened the window and pushed my face up against the cold metal burglar bars.   

“What is it, Barn?” I asked with some alarm at the sight of his contorted face. 

“Open up for God’s sake,” he said in a loud whisper. “I’ve got to talk to you.” 

The August winter cold hit us as we got out of our warm beds and rushed to open the front door. I suggested we go to the kitchen so that I could make us something hot to drink, while he told us what the hell was going on.  

He began immediately as we moved off. “You can’t believe what’s happened. I went to a party and when it was time to go home I needed to pee but the lavatory was occupied and no one was coming out of it soon enough, so I left. When I passed the park on Harrow Road the call became urgent, so I stopped around the corner in a dark street at a hedge and relieved myself. I’m getting back into my car and about to drive off when I see these two okes running towards the car and shouting my name, “Barney, Barney!” I swear that’s what they were calling out. I got one hell of a fright. 

The Star Newspaper August 12 shows a photo of Marshall Square prison and where they escaped from. The article starts with the sentence South Africa’s biggest manhunt. (Image: Supplied)

The police were hoping for information and even offered reward money for news on their whereabouts. (Image: Supplied)

‘It was Harold and Arthur’

“Then I looked again and saw that it was Harold and Arthur. They opened the back door, jumped in and told me that they’ve just escaped from jail. There was supposed to be a car waiting for them, but things got complicated because they had been held up and were late. The car was there — locked — and so they had to bloody well walk. 

“They knew my flat because I sometimes lent it out for meetings and Harold must have been there. They told me to come and tell you guys what had happened. They said you would know what to do.”  

It seemed that Harold and Arthur were hoping to find their way to Barney’s flat, and by an astonishing coincidence ran into him on the way. 

Denis and I conferred with each other. We both thought that the two escapees must have wanted Denis to alert either Ivan Shermbrucker, a member of the Central Committee of the SACP, or Bram Fischer. Denis told Barney that he would follow him back to his flat to check on the two. 

I thought that they must be hungry, so I began to make sandwiches and pack other titbits into a basket.   

Two hours later Denis was back home with the news that he went to Ivan, who said he would “attend to matters” as soon as possible. We heard later that Ivan and Bram bundled the two men into a car, covered them up and took them to a place of safety the very next morning.  

Newspaper clipping confirming the garden cottage that Harold and Arthur hid in before being taken to Swaziland. On the right Rand Daily Mail 20 September 1963, Goldreich and Wolpe arrive in London. (Image: Supplied)

My story ends here, but Harold’s continued until he ended up in London, where he continued his work, until his and AnnMarie’s return to South Africa 27 years later to celebrate our freedom. DM

Hillary Hamburger was born in 1936, a few years before Hitler marched into Poland. This had an immense impact on her life. At an early age she began noticing what she then called “cruelty to black people”, and told her parents that she thought Hitler had come to South Africa. By the time she went to university she was assessing the situation in a different way. She married a lawyer, Denis Kuny, who shared her political sympathies – more developed by then. When the ANC was banned and decided to adopt the armed struggle, the couple made it clear that they were available to assist but did not want their actions to bring them to the attention of the security police, because they were the parents of three young children. Hillary’s work as a teacher at the Indian Congress school in Fordsburg and later as a secretary of the International Defence and Aid Fund ticked these boxes. The couple also provided support for friends and comrades who required their help.

This is the eighth in a series of articles commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of what is known as the Great Escape on 11 August 2023. It commemorates one of the most successful jailbreaks in South African history and the many struggle activists who fought for a democratic South Africa through a series of articles and reflections by relatives, friends and comrades of those involved. These articles are personal accounts of their or their family’s involvement, and the impact that involvement had on their lives. 

Read Part 1: here

Read Part 2: here

Read Part 3: here

Read Part 4: here

Read Part 5: here

Read Part 6: here

Read Part 7: here