Frederick John Harris

Frederick John Harris was born in 4th of July in 1937. He was a teacher, a member of the executive committee of the Liberal Party In 1962 in the Transvaal, as well as a chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee. He was also one of the members of the nearly all-white African Resistance Movement (ARM) and the first and only white man to be hanged for a politically inspired offence in the years after the 1960 Sharpeville emergency. He was banned in February 1964, a few months before police moved to smash the underground ARM. While maintaining his Liberal Party connection, he had joined ARM, but he was not arrested in the police swoops.Harris was an outstanding student and completed a first degree at the University of the Witwatersrand before enrolling at Oxford in 1960.He also became involved in the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) started by Dennis Brutus.

On July 24, 1964, he planted a bomb in the Johannesburg railway station in the hope this demonstration of defiance might spark opposition to the government. A telephone warning was too late to prevent the explosion, which killed one old woman and injured a dozen others, and produced a horrified reaction amongst the white population.Harris was caught and on April 1st of 1965 went to the gallows, reportedly singing.He left Britain a year later for a combination of financial and persona reasons,South Africa was on the boil and he wanted to be part of the anti-apartheid struggle.He was forced to resign from the Liberal Party and from SANROC when he was issued a banning order in Februay 1964.