Peter Ralph Randall
While a student at NTC, Randall took an interest in radical politics and approached Peter Hunter, a lecturer with similar views, with the hope of becoming constructively involved.
Other important influences on his thinking at this time were leading Liberal Party figures such as Peter Brown, author Alan Paton and senator Edgar Brookes.
Randall worked closely with Beyers Naudé who was heading the Christian Institute, and with other leading anti-apartheid clerics like Denis Hurley and Desmond Tutu.
The aim was for the BCP to develop community education programmes, and for the WCP, where a key figure was Horst Kleinschmidt, to make South African whites aware of social injustice and the need for change.
[2] Although some details had to be glossed over in this book due to state restrictions on the media, it paid considerable attention to Black Consciousness as well as to the sins of the apartheid government.
[3] Its first literary title was Sing for our Execution (1973) by Wopko Jensma,[1] and Randall proceeded to develop an impressive list of emerging writers.
His approach was that: "Artists are able to interpret our situation and speak to people of all groups in a universal medium and in a way that academics, journalists and clergy cannot because they are so firmly labelled in their ethnic or denominational boxes.
Randall also experienced harassment such as having his mail and telephone calls intercepted, attempts to plant spies, intimidation of bookshops not to stock Ravan titles, having his visitors trailed, cars being outside his house with listening devices in them, and so on.
In 1974 Randall stood as a Social Democratic candidate in the Von Brandis constituency in central Johannesburg, in the national general election.
Horst Kleinschmidt was his electoral agent, and to general surprise they managed to gain a thousand votes and save their deposit in a safe United Party seat.
Randall once endured a four-hour security police raid of Ravan (along with the other organisations in Diakonia House, such as the Christian Institute and SACC), during which every document and letter—and his personal diary—was scrutinised.
[5] Other white South Africans banned on the same day as Randall were Beyers Naudé, Cedric Mayson, Brian Brown, Donald Woods and Theo Kotze, all of whom were associated with the Christian Institute.
The head of BOSS suggested that it was best to let Randall attend the Fair, stating that "hy sal in elk geval gemonitor word" (in any case he will be monitored).
The monitoring, it seems, was carried out by an attractive young woman from the South African Embassy in Bonn, who befriended Randall at the Book Fair and subsequently followed him to England, then to Jersey (where he visited his brother-in-law, Ron Hickman OBE, the designer of the Lotus Elan sports car and inventor of the Black and Decker Workmate), and finally back to South Africa, where she left government service and became a drama teacher.
The South African Council of Churches pays tribute to him on their website with these words: "The final list of twenty five publications in the four-year history (of Spro-cas) is testament to the courage and determination of Peter Randall and all who worked with him on the SPROCAS project.
In an interview with Padraig O'Malley on 27 September 1997 he stated that exposure to people like Beyers Naudé, the thinking of Steve Biko, and works like A Taste of Power (by Randall, largely a summary of Spro-Cas publications) lead him and others to acknowledge the righteousness of aspirations that were unnatisfied and actively suppressed.
[7] In 1977, prior to his banning, Randall was employed as a part-time temporary organiser of teaching practice by the Education Department at the liberal University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
His banning order meant that he could no longer officially work at Ravan Press, and Wits approached the Minister for permission to employ him full-time.
In the 1980s and 1990s Randall and his wife Isobel attended several conferences of the IBBY (International Book Board for Young People) in Groningen, Seville and Berlin, where they delivered joint papers.
