A few days before January 23 1989, we, political detainees at Johannesburg prison, took a decision to embark on a hunger strike after our leadership, the executive committee, consulted with us. On January 23, 20 selected colleagues out of 170 fellow detainees began their fast. 

The criteria used to select the group of 20 included their leadership positions, variety of organisations and duration of detention; such that we would get maximal attention to our plight based on their prominence. The 20 were “shuffled” into a single communal cell and the group of 50 detainees who were to join the hunger strike when the group of 20 was on its eighth day, was moved to two other cells. The rest, 100 of us, expected to join on the 15th day, and were taken into three or four communal cells. This rearrangement was quietly done to avoid raising the eyebrows of the prison authorities...