But of course if you continue doing something long enough, you will make mistakes. "We would go to crowded bus stations and markets and leave them. “We started just before the Soweto uprising in 1976 and carried on for three years. They would contain simple messages, urging people to support the liberation movement. “There was enough explosive inside to lift about 500 pamphlets into the air. “The leaflet bombs were effective in spreading the anti-apartheid message,” Stephen says. Years later, while based in Camden, North London, he would set up a rudimentary computer that enabled coded messages to be sent from the ANC to their agents and even to Mandela in prison. Tim, the technical expert of the pair, had devised a way of scattering banned leaflets by using explosive linked to a timer and detonator inside a carrier bag. Stephen and Tim, 64, whose story is told tonight in Breakout on the National Geographic Channel, were supporters of Nelson Mandela’s ANC who had been put under surveillance by South Africa’s secret police for their clandestine activity. At night there were dogs in the yard.”īut, he says, they were determined to break free.
“The worst time was being put in solitary confinement.”ĭescribing the prison, he says: “There were numerous gates, many metal grill doors. “We were contemplating escape even before our conviction. “It was gut-wrenching the length of time we were given,” he says. He tells how Tim had been given a 12-year sentence and he had got eight years inside. “This was going to let us out of the cells into the corridor.” “It was hugely emotional,” Stephen recalls.
So when his key worked, it was momentous.
Escape from pretoria key full#
Now if only they’d included a line or two to explain why the climactic event seems to occur in the middle of the day, with street life in full bloom, while Pretoria Central Prison behaves like it’s 3 a.m.Speaking from his home in North London, dad-of-two Stephen, now 62, says they had been determined to escape from the moment they arrived at notorious Pretoria Prison. Adams invent clever ways to resolve them. Still, for a viewer who accepts that getting caught remains a possibility, Annan does find the usual ways to generate suspense - and once or twice, he and co-screenwriter L.H. That guard isn’t used for comic effect, really, so it’s hard to say why the pic makes him so unthreatening. Then there’s that Keystone Kop who seems to be the only lawman in the jail after lockup: He wheezes and waddles on his rounds, in no hurry to investigate noises he surely hears if he sees a clue that something’s amiss on the cell block, you can be fairly sure he’ll ignore it so he can get back to his chair and his opera records. If you can’t get to the button, you could probably just pry the chain off its gear. Security cameras would have made it impossible, for instance the highest-tech thing in the jail seems to be the big button that controls a barred door via a motor and bicycle chain. Viewers who find this quaintly low-tech will have many opportunities in the film’s second half to observe how this breakout could never have happened today. (The film mostly eliminates what must have been an agonizingly long trial-and-error phase.) Tim, who has a job in the wood shop, takes every opportunity to scrutinize the shape of guards’ cell keys, then carves little replicas to try on his own cell. (In real life, it seems Goldberg was willing to join the attempt, only backing out after practicalities interfered.) From day one, Tim is fixated on plans to escape, but Goldberg argues vehemently against it: They’re prisoners of conscience, he argues, who must play that role stoically and anyway, getting out is impossible. This is Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), who’s serving an impossibly long term for armed support of Nelson Mandela. On the inside, the film quickly settles into a familiar mode: An older prisoner takes the men under his wing, warning them of which inmates to avoid and explaining how eager guards are to shoot if they’re given a reason.
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