Ike+Horvitch,+Keeper+of+Freedom,+Camden+New+Journal

Camden New Journal.
=Keeper of freedom’s flame in the battle against apartheid=


 * Communist became successful architect and promoter of WWI war poet**

HE arrived at Heathrow carrying a small suitcase and clutching a pineapple. Ike Horvitch, who died aged 85 in Hampstead’s Marie Curie Hospice last week, had fled from South Africa soon after Special Branch officers arrived at his home at 3am to arrest him.

He was one of 156 men and women, among them Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders, facing a charge of high treason for fighting apartheid, and on bail when the world exploded in anger over the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. Their crime had been to sign a freedom charter.

The first 30 to face trial over a period of more than four years were acquitted. But not before the deaths of 69 protesters shot down by the police at Sharpeville had cemented the fragmented opposition groups. The nationalist government ordered their re-arrest. Ike, in pyjamas, hid in the maid’s bedroom of his temporary home on the edge of Johannesburg, as his wife, Mitzi, told the officers he was not there, inviting them in to search if they so wished.

Her convincing performance – she was a professional colatura-soprano accustomed to appearing on stage — probably saved his life. Once the officers had gone, Ike, with just £10 in his pocket, fled in his tiny, three-wheel car to Botswana, 60 miles away.

After flying via Kinshasa, Lagos and Accra, he arrived in London, having been granted asylum.

It was the end of one of Ike’s three remarkable lives that began as a Communist fighting for equality in his native country, a remarkably modest man who talked rarely in detail about his exploits and sacrifices. The second was as an architect, part of the talented triumvirate of fellow South African architects – the others were Ted Levy and Issy Benjamin – based in Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead, who left their housing mark on the slopes of Hampstead and Highgate. The third was as the proud promoter of the work of his uncle, Isaac Rosenberg, the World War I poet and artist, after whom he was named, and whose literary executor he became.

Rosenberg had lived, coincidentally, in Hampstead during his years at the Slade art school, and Hollycroft Avenue, Hampstead, became the home for Ike and his family in 1964. Born in Cape Town, where his parents had emigrated to after meeting and marrying in London, he trained as an architect at the University of Cape Town.

His work as an active member of the multi-racial Communist Party, speaking at public meetings and rallies, put his career in jeopardy. In fact, he lost his first post as an architect because his name was spotted on a Communist poster.

After qualifying in 1944 as an architect, he built the small house where he and Mitzi, whose parents had fled the Nazis in Berlin to arrive in Cape Town in 1936, brought up their three children.

Politically, he mixed with black activists Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, with whom he did not always agree on tactics, as well as white activists Helen Suzman, Hilda Bernstein and Betty Sacks.

His first brush with the law came in 1946, when he and eight political colleagues were charged with sedition because of their political support for African goldminers striking in protest against their working conditions.

They were taken 1,000 miles away to Johannesburg, initially without bail, and it took two years before the charge was dismissed, and they were released.

Life without a political party, following the Suppression of Communism Act in 1949, enabled Ike to concentrate on architecture again and build a new family home before, at 4am on December 5, 1956, police produced a warrant for his arrest for high treason. He found himself barefoot, wearing shorts, three in a cell with a blanket and bucket and the light on all night.

Ike also faced a second charge, the only person to do so, because of his directorship of The Guardian, a left-wing newspaper. The prosecutor said the trial would last six weeks. It lasted more than four years, Ike and others fortunately gaining bail. At one time he drew portraits of his co-defendants, which were published in The Guardian. The final indictment against the 91 committed for trial in Pretoria, Ike among them, was split up into groups of 30. Following Sharpeville, the government declared a state of emergency when a one-day ANC strike paralysed the country. Then the first 30 accused were found not guilty and Ike, with others, realised it was time to escape to Botswana.

In London, he quickly won the post of architect in charge of building the new Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. Then he joined Ted Levy and Issy Benjamin, who created the brilliant but controversial development of the grounds of Witanhurst, in Highgate, as well as Summit Lodge, opposite Whitestone Pond, and the elegant office block at 100 Avenue Road, Swiss Cottage.

Ike talked little about his political adventures, deciding that he had done his share at a high cost and that was enough. He forsook his Jewish religion and disowned Communism once Stalin’s great crimes became known, and called himself a socialist.

It was securing the enduring fame of Isaac Rosenberg, killed in France on April 1, 1918 – his body never recovered – that captured his enthusiasm. He helped with the writing of biographies, the production of Rosenberg’s collected works and gave important family memorabilia to the Imperial War Museum.

Yet Ike, too, was the keeper of the flame of freedom and justice. He needs to be remembered for that alone. A memorial service is to be held later this month.


 * From: http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/010606/cn010606_05.htm **