Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa

Rivonia's Children is the harrowing and inspiring account of a handful of white Jewish activists who risked their lives to combat apartheid when South Africa plunged into an era of darkness in the 1960s from which it has only recently emerged. This is the story of Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, longtime Communists so committed to the cause that even the threat of-life imprisionment did not stop them; of Ruth First, a fiery activist held for months without charge; and of AnnMarie Wolpe, an innocent bystander sucked into the maelstrom, who had to decide whether or not to risk her own freedom and the life of her sick infant by helping her activist husband escape from prison. It was at their underground headquarters in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb, that their fantasy of revolution was shattered after a police raid in 1963. Nelson Mandela, Rusty Bernstein, and eight of their comrades were tried for treason; the Rivonia raid not only destroyed an old order of benign radicalism, but also thrust radicals into a new, dangerous world of action. The regime turned a corner as well, plunging headlong into an era of grotesque oppression and brutality. A searing tale of soaring hopes and ideals betrayed, Rivonia's Children is an account of the impact of political activism on the lives of three families.

Glenn Frankel has been a staff writer and editor for The Washington Post for twenty years. He is the paper's former bureau chief in South Africa, London, and Jerusalem, where he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the Middle East. Frankel is currently the editor of The Washington Post Magazine and lives with his family in Arlington, Virginia.