Who in this room can remember where you were on 6 April 1952? The only time when I saw lots of hands go up after I had asked this question, was when I spoke in Hermanus at a literary book fair where everyone was in their 80s or 90s.

Another question. Can anybody here say why 6 April 1952 was a special day in South Africa? The answer is that it had been 300 years since a certain Jan van Riebeeck had landed not far from here, and put up the Dutch East India Company flag. And that, we had learned in school, was when the history of South Africa started. And, can you imagine it now, the Afrikaner Nationalist government, who had campaigned on this word called “apartheid”, introducing the word into the English language having come to power in 1948, in 1952 were celebrating 300 years of white domination. The armoured cars were going down the street and the planes were flying overhead. And about 200 of us were in a hall not much bigger than this, not nearly as smart as this, the Salt River Town Hall, and we were singing, 190 black people and ten white people.

In those days the songs were very sad.

And they are calling for volunteers. Now why am I telling you this?

There are two ways you, as archivists and historians, can deal with events like the Defiance Campaign. You can set out all the laws, you can have copies of the statutes, and you can say that so many thousands of people were arrested, these were the aims and objects—important history. But I am transmitting history to you now in a different way. I’m trying to convey the setting, the sense of the white domination oppression, and the small group of people challenging it, to provoke the question in your minds: What is a young white guy doing, being involved in a movement like this? Where does he come from?