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Hester Cornelius (Translated from the Afrikaans)
I was born and brought up in the Lichtenburg District, Transvaal. Both my father and my grandfather fought in the Boer War and were taken prisoners. My mother, as a little girl, escaped the horrors of the concentration camps. When grandfather returned after the war, he found his farmstead completely destroyed and his family living with relatives.
When my father married, he became a building worker and mother looked after the small piece of land he had bought.
During the 1914 rebellion, my father and grandfather joined General de la Rey, the leader of the rebel commando in the district. It was a very sad morning for us children when they left. We did not even have a chance to say goodbye to them. For months, we did not hear from my father and my longing for him was often unbearable. I remember how I used to tiptoe to my mother's bedroom to look through the wardrobe for a jacket which my father had worn. I would hold the jacket in my arms and kiss it and the familiar smell would soothe my terrible longing for him. To feel near him, I used to put his jacket on, with the excuse that it was cold. My mother must have known my secret, for she never made me take it off.
One cold, dark night, while we were at my grandmother's farm, a neighbour knocked on the door and told us that the dead bodies of my father and grandfather had been found on the battlefield. I will never forget that night of tears. I lay in bed, sobbing until early morning. The next day, we returned to our farm and, for hours, I watched the road leading to the town, imagining that my father would soon come cycling back from his work.
Some time later, we received letters from my father and grandfather, saying they had been caught and put into jail. At last we heard from my grandfather that my uncle and he were coming back, but no reference was made to my father. I had a feeling that my father would also come, but wanted to give us a surprise. And though I was glad to see my grandfather and uncle, my eyes wandered constantly over the crowd at the station, searching for my father; but he was not there. On the way back, everyone else was happy, but for me there was only sadness. I tried to hide the tears streaming down my face and climbed off the ox-wagon walking alongside it so as to sob undisturbed.
My father came home a few weeks later, without telling us beforehand. By then, I had learned to read my first English book . Very proudly, I fetched it and started reading aloud to him. He listened, pleased at first, and then, suddenly his face changed and he said sternly: "Do not read that rubbish to me. I was put in jail and, while I was away, they drummed English into her". I felt very downhearted. I loved my new book and was very proud that I could read it so fluently. I had waited so long to my father that I was no longer the baby he had left behind. It was then I began to understand the tragedy of the Afrikaner people. Nevertheless my love for the English language increased and I soon felt it belonged to me as a second language. But I again read an English book in the presence of my father.
In 1930, at the age of twenty-two, I came to Johannesburg look for work. I worked for one year as a table hand in a clothing factory and was then dismissed. In 1931, I tried to find another job, without success-there were hundreds of girls looking for jobs. I returned to the farm and became an ardent Nationalist, believing that the South African Party was to blame for our poverty and unemployment. Later, I returned to Johannesburg and found work. My sister Johanna and I shared a back room in Vrededorp with the two Vogel sisters. Although I was a fast worker, I was paid only 17s. 6d. a week and there was a lot of slack time in the industry.
The four of us had to share one bed, and that meant that two had to sleep on the floor. We baked our own bread. For breakfast, we had mealie meal and coffee with condensed milk. Now and then we treated ourselves to a sixpenny-worth of meat. We could not afford tram fares and always walked to work, a distance of about three miles.
Between the four of us, we had two Sunday dresses, one pair of stockings and two hats, so that only two at a time could go out at weekends. As long as we were healthy, we did not worry, but Johanna was the first one to faint at work. The doctor said that she was perfectly healthy, but undernourished. Some months later Anna Vogel's health gave out and the two of us who were still fairly strong had to eat less to help our patients.
Later, we decided to give up the room. The two Vogel sisters and Johanna went to board with a railway worker's family, where they had to polish the floor of the house and the stoep (veranda) for their food early each morning before going to work. I went to board with a Mr. and Mrs. Hayton, who were very good people and helped me in every way.
I began to fight for my rights and the rights of my fellow-workers almost immediately I started work in a factory. The girls in the factory would come to me with all their complaints and I would take them up with the employer. As I was a good worker, I was confident he would not sack me. Then I heard about the Garment Workers' Union and, one lunchtime, we went to the union office. Mr. Sachs, the secretary of the union, took down all our complaints, and I felt straightaway that we could rely upon the union to help. The more I saw of the union activities, the more I realised how necessary it was for the workers to become organised.
At first I could not understand why Mr. Sachs, who was a Jew, fought so hard for the Afrikaner daughters. I spoke to many Nationalists about this very good Jew, who was doing so much to help us. They attacked him bitterly and this made me lose faith in the Nationalist Party. In 1934, I was elected as a member of the executive committee of the union and learnt much more about trade unionism and about Mr. Sachs. I saw how angry he used to be when employers treated workers badly, and how hard he worked to improve our conditions. I also learnt that Mr. Sachs fought not only for garment workers, but also for all the workers. It took a Jew to make me understand that poverty could be wiped out in sunny South Africa and that, if the workers were organised and united, they could gain higher wages and a better life.
In 1932, my sister Johanna was arrested in Germiston whilst taking an active part in the general strike in the clothing industry. My parents came for a few days and I took them to my uncle's family, who were disgusted with Johanna. One of them asked my father what he thought of his daughter going to jail. My father smiled and said she was a chip off the old block.
The first strike in which I took a leading part was in 1936, in Cape Town. The garment workers of Cape Town were even worse exploited than we in the Transvaal. Our union had sent delegates to Cape Town to organise the workers and I was one of them. The workers came out on strike in several factories and I was arrested together with about twenty others. The workers lost the strike and, even today, they are paid much lower wages than the workers in the Transvaal. Over the years, I took part in numerous strikes of garment workers on the Rand and in Port Elizabeth. In 1942, I helped the Johannesburg sweet workers in their strike for higher wages, and was again arrested, together with Anna Scheepers and Dulcie Hartwell.
Over twenty years have passed since I started work in the clothing industry and, during that period, there has been a complete change in our wages, conditions of work and way of life. It was the union with its courageous, able leaders, which set us free from the hell of starvation wages and slum squalor, and no one else. The Nationalists, the so-called friends of the Afrikaner workers, have never helped us. On the contrary, they have always tried to break our union.