In 1955 Amy Thornton was assisting a study class out at Blouvlei, Elsie's River.

Thornton: I went out there over a few years, every Monday night. Blouvlei was a squatter camp, one long sand dune, up and down. Wolfie Kodesh was the driver. We would drive along a tarred road with sand on each side. It would be absolutely pitch dark, featureless. But somehow Wolfie knew the area. Each time we would rendezvous at a different place. God knows how Wolfie recognised one spot from another. We’d stop, somebody would emerge from the night, and we’d go into the sand-dunes. Each Monday night we’d meet in a different pondokkie.

We’d sit around on handmade benches, with a candle in the middle. Dogs barking outside. It was mainly the men who participated; the wives would be nursing babies on the outskirts of the ring of light.

I remember reading Gorky's Mother for the first time in those years. I took it out to Blouvlei, and the comrades there couldn't believe that a book from such a faraway place could describe their own lives so accurately. The little huts, the furtive political discussions in the night, it was all there.

The core member of the study group was John Mtini. He was head of the local ANC branch, he was possibly a founder member of the ANC, and he was certainly one of the first Africans to join the CPSA [Communist Party of South Africa]. He had been a contemporary of S.P. Bunting and of Johnny La Guma. Elijah Loza, who died in security police custody in 1977, was also a core member of the study group. So too was Bernard Huna.

In the study group we discussed the Congress of the People campaign. We read The Call. That was especially useful, it helped to structure people's demands. I remember the main complaint was passes, passes, always passes. Houses, jobs, those issues also always came up.

Over the Congress of the People campaign the different Congresses – African, Indian, coloured and the white COD [Congress of Democrats], really pulled together for the first time. In Cape Town we had a Joint Congress Committee [JCC].