A group of 156 black and white activists – including Chief Albert Lutuli, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu – were put in the dock after a countrywide crackdown following the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown at the end of 1955.
It was an extremely difficult period for the trialists and their families, yet many of the friendships between black and white activists that were struck there carried on throughout their lives.
On 26 August 1964, Bram Fischer, a senior lawyer who had led the defense of the Rivonia trialists, and fourteen other people were arrested and charged with having furthered the aims of the SACP or being office-bearers, officers, or members of the party.
The charge sheet alleged that they aimed at "establishing a despotic government based on the dictatorship of the proletariat" in South Africa.
Esther was private secretary to Chris Hani, the South African Communist Party leader, after his 1990 return from Lusaka from 30 years of military exile.
Barsel's fight for workers' rights was lifelong; as late as 2006, at the age of eighty-one, she was blogging information about the defunct Friends of the Soviet Union.
She dedicated her life to the struggle for justice in South Africa, and was a formidable and highly respected resource to the movement with which she was associated for so long.
In his invitation to members of the public to attend the service, the Secretary of the SACP's JHB Branch wrote, We urge comrades to come in numbers to pay tribute to the late veteran of the peoples' struggle.
[3] ANC spokesperson Jesse Duarte described Barsel as "a tireless political activist who remained engaged in the struggle until the end of her life".
"We pay homage to this gallant revolutionary who was unwavering in her commitment and dedication to the struggle for a democratic and just South Africa," Duarte said in a statement.
The Young Communist League (YCL) spokesperson Castro Ngobese commended Barsel for defying all odds and giving her life to the struggle for liberation.
"She sacrificed her own luxurious and better life given the privileges enjoyed by the tiny white minority in our country during the Apartheid years and committed herself in the struggle of the oppressed," said Ngobese.