In the Star article that is posted I leave the court after sentencing in 1975 with my fist in the air. But that, according to Robben Island veteran from PE, the late Henry Fazzie is not how ‘we’ do it. In the mid 1980s I was at a UDF National Working Committee meeting in Koinonia in Bezuidenhout valley when Fazzie instructed us about how ‘they’ raise their hands and how ‘we’ do it. What Fazzie explained is that in the 1950s the initial ANC salute was with the fist in the air. It was then, on the 1980s and now, just above or at the level of the shoulders as a clenched fist, without the thumbs up. ‘They’ meaning the PAC ( Fazzie making it look a little ridiculous) hold their hands open and up high above their heads. Another way that is wrong is how ‘they’ meaning the Black Consciousness Movement do it, with their fists held high (as I do in the photograph).
So for those who want to know the orthodoxy, this is it as far as I know. How I do it in the photograph was not how a good comrade should be doing it, so mend your ways if you are not doing it correctly!
In studying the origins of the clenched fist I found that it was associated with Communists from decades back as well as sometimes with fascists. Netaji (Dear leader) Subhas Chandra Bose, who took up arms against the British, after breaking with the Indian Congress is also pictured in some photographs with a clenched fist.