Holding the Fort

Activists Rusty and Hilda Bernstein were arrested with many other South Africans following the 1960 State of Emergency and held for three months without trial. Toni, their eldest, at sixteen was left to look after her three younger siblings and was their only child allowed to visit them in jail. Hilda kept a diary of her time in detention, filled with letters to the children, drawings for the younger siblings, poems, plays and menus she made to keep her fellow detainees entertained. Years later, Toni pieces together her mother’s diary, snippets from her father’s writing and her own recollection, trying to make sense of this tumultuous time.