Rivonia's Children

This is the story of three families: Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, longtime communists so deeply committed to the cause that even the threat of life imprisonment did not stop them; Ruth First, a fiery activist arrested and held for months without charge, and her equally committed husband Joe Slovo, eventually part of the ANC team responsible for negotiating the end of white rule; and of AnnMarie Wolpe, an uneasy bystander, forced to decide whether to risk her own freedom and the life of her sick infant by helping her activist husband escape from prison, or to flee the country without him.Frankel follows these families from the beginnings of their political activism, to their deepening vulnerability in the movement, and eventual arrests; we see them into prison, or exile, and back again. He recounts for us their day-to-day rituals, the ramifications for their families, the kind of contingencies they had to plan for. Frankel brings us into their underground headquarters in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb, where their dream of revolution was shattered after a police raid in 1963. Nelson Mandela, Rusty Bernstein, and eight of their comrades were tried for sabotage and attempting to violently overthrow the government. Frankel includes both the small slights and monumental injustices-from Ruth First's descent into depression and despair as she is detained month after month without charge, to the image of Hilda Bernstein and Albertina Sisulu-friends for twenty years, their husbands on trial together for their lives-prevented from sitting next to one another in court another because of state mandated segregation. Frankel's recounting of the courtroom moments is vivid and exacting, allowing us tofeel their frustration and disbelief at a trial worthy of Kafka. We are reminded of histo