In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie looks at the painful yet triumphant journeys of the struggle personalities captured at Liliesleaf. The article was originally published on the City of Johannesburg's website on 6 June 2008. Click here to view more of Davie's work.
On hearing that they had got life sentences, Denis Goldberg shouted: "Life! Life is wonderful!"
And life was wonderful on that day, 12 July 1964, because the Rivonia trialists had expected the death penalty, but Judge Quartus de Wet handed down four life sentences to each of the men instead.
"All rationality aside, and for all our preparedness to die for freedom in South Africa, we started smiling in disbelief, at first, and complete relief as it sunk in that the judge said he would not impose the maximum penalty, even though it would be an appropriate sentence," says Goldberg now, 44 years later. "By the time he had finished speaking we were openly laughing. In the end most of us got four life sentences, but in the end you can only serve one of them!"
Denis Goldberg
It meant that they would live, but spend up to 27 years of their lives in jail, not seeing their children grow up, not seeing their wives struggling to hold things together without their husbands, or dealing with harassment by the...
