The Foreword to the first edition of Rusty's book was written by the eminent author Anthony Sampson and ended:

‘It is the honesty and credibility of his narrative, without any posturing or self-advertisement, which makes it both a gripping story and a crucial historical document. He poignantly takes his title from Milan Kundera: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of a memory against forgetting”. But his own memory is unusually reliable and important, in its insistence on truthfulness and uncomfortable facts. His story is not just the record of a heroic movement, told from the inside, important though that is: it is an account of a warm individual and his family, caught up in a challenge they could not ignore, who still retained an individual scepticism and humour as they looked back on the events which turned their lives upside down.’

I cannot match this masterful writing but am able to add to it as one of the lawyers who defended Rusty Bernstein, on trial for his life, accused of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial alongside Nelson Mandela, and eight other leaders of the liberation movement, as well as James Kantor, a non-political but brave and principled lawyer, framed by the police and discharged at the end of the state case because there was no credible evidence against him.

Rusty's role in the liberation movement was mainly as its scribe – the articulator who put in writing the ideas and opinions of the other leaders and the movement – and also as a brilliant educator in political theory. It was Rusty who was tasked by the Working Committee of the South African Congress Alliance (comprising the African National Congress and its allies the Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress and the white Congress of Democrats) to draft its vision of a new South Africa. The committee published a nationwide ‘Call’, crafted by Rusty, which crystalised its essence as ‘Let Us Speak of Freedom’, asking people everywhere to collaborate in setting the terms of the Freedom Charter. This provided the agenda for thousands of meetings up and down the country.