Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa [Hardcover]

Glenn Frankel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1999

The little-known story of three white, middle-class families and their remarkable struggle against apartheid in the mid-1960s.

Rivonia's Children is the harrowing and inspiring account of a handful of white Jewish activists who risked their lives to combat apartheid when South Africa plunged into an era of darkness in the 1960s from which it has only recently emerged.

This is the story of Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, longtime Communists so committed to the cause that even the threat of life imprisonment did not stop them; of Ruth First, a fiery activist held for months without charge; and of AnnMarie Wolpe, an innocent bystander sucked into the maelstrom, who had to decide whether or not to risk her own freedom and the life of her sick infant by helping her activist husband escape from prison.

It was at their underground headquarters in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb, that their fantasy of revolution was shattered after a police raid in 1963. Nelson Mandela, Rusty Bernstein, and eight of their comrades were tried for treason; the Rivonia raid not only destroyed an old order of benign radicalism but also thrust radicals into a new, dangerous world of action. The regime turned a corner as well, plunging headlong into an era of grotesque oppression and brutality.

A searing tale of soaring hopes and ideals betrayed, Rivonia's Children is an account of the impact of political activism on the lives of three families.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A former South Africa bureau chief of the Washington Post, Frankel writes with depth and style about a group of mostly Jewish, mostly Communist, activists who, in the early 1960s, allied themselves with black activists seeking an end to apartheid. Rivonia was the farm outside Johannesburg where these radicals and their comrades were captured in a 1963 raid. The most compelling figures are Rusty and Hilda Bernstein; Rusty penned the African National Congress's inspirational Freedom Charter. Others in the book include Ruth First, journalist and wife of ANC and Communist Party leader Joe Slovo (the film A World Apart was based on her life), and Bram Fischer, a lawyer and Afrikaner rebel whose life inspired Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter. Frankel's kaleidoscopic style sometimes slows things down, and he could have done more to explore the group's reflections on the new South Africa they helped build. But Frankel constructs a dramatic narrative, combining interviews with his subjects (also some police and a Jewish prosecutor) with existing memoirs, histories and other accounts. The story is propelled by his own cogent assessments, by his deep respect for these activists and by his ruminations on the extraordinarily charged moral choices these people made and what their decisions cost them (in any number of ways, including family relationships, imprisonment and exile). Hilda Bernstein's observation rings powerfully: "The meaning of life is not a fact to be discovered, but a choice you make about the way you live."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is a well-researched and nicely written account of the small circle of left-wing radicals who immersed themselves in the South African anti-apartheid movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Frankel, a former South Africa bureau chief for the Washington Post, was also the winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. He writes with insight and assurance about the events that propelled talented individuals such as Ruth First, Joseph Slovo, Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, Harold and AnnMarie Wolpe, and Nelson Mandela to organize an underground campaign of sabotage against the apartheid regime. In 1963, the South African police raided their secret Communist Party headquarters in the town of Rivonia, which marked a key turning point in the development of anti-apartheid politics. Of this generation of activists, Frankel says "They had taken a risk that others...would not take, had eschewed comfort and thrown away security when others chose to go along and reap the benefits of silence and moral compliance." This is a useful addition to the literature on postwar South Africa and is recommended for larger public and academic libraries.AKent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 381 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374250995
• ISBN-13: 978-0374250997
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars White Risk Takers Who Fought With Mandela and Suffered, October 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa (Hardcover)

Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post report Frankel has another prize winner in this book that sheds light on Mandela's little known supporters. The book welcomes the reader to Rivonia, a northern suburb of Johannesburg. Haven't heard of it? After reading this thrilling book you won't forget it. The Rivonia trial in South Africa in 1963 sentenced Nelson Mandela and Govan Mbeki (President Thabo Mbeki's father) and other anti-apartheid leaders to jail for life and shattered the underground resistance movement. In newspaper dispatches of the time we learned about Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, the ANC, and the nation's apartheid leaders, but little was known about Mandela's white lieutenants. Frankel fills in the gaps with this intimate book. In Rivonia's Children, we learn about the white, radical men and women who chose to fight in the harrowing trenches with the ANC, plan the Soweto uprising, make tactical mistakes, and suffer. We learn about how the Eastern European background of many of these white associates made their parents fear the Afrikaner National Party and render their left of center community speechless to the institution of the apartheid laws. These white associates, many of them Communist and openly hostile to the Jewish religion of their parents, fought the regime. Among the people we meet are Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Sachs, Harry and Alan Paton, AnnMarie Wolpe, Arenstein, Hilda Bernstein, Rusty Bernstein, Barney Simon, Lazar Sidelsky (who gave Mandela his first law firm job), James Kantor, Feistenstein, Arthur Goldreich, Kodesh, Harold Goldreich, Helen Suzman, and Mollie Fischer (hmmm... there seems to be a pattern here, hehe)

4.0 out of 5 stars a well written and compellingly-told narrative, August 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Rivonia's Children (Paperback)

If you've read Mandela's 'Long Walk to Freedom,' and want to learn more about some of the people you met in that book, such as Helen Suzman, Ruth First, or Bram Fishcer, this book will take you day by day through their lives in the anti-apartheid struggle. Frankel weaves together the intricate threads of their stories to create a solid tapestry of experience.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Real life - but a gripping story, December 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa (Hardcover)

For a human face on Apartheid. Read it if you want to explore idealism. Reading this book makes one think of the wellsprings of commitment to a cause. It is sufficiently engrossing that it is possible to imagine why one would join in to try and change an unjust society.