While a student at NTC, Randall took an interest in radical politics and approached Peter Hunter, a lecturer with similar views, with the hope of becoming constructively involved. Hunter took him to a school in Sobantu Village in Pietermaritzburg, where teachers had to learn
Afrikaans because of the Bantu Education policy, and Randall went there several times to teach Afrikaans and to learn some Zulu. Other important influences on his thinking at this time were leading Liberal Party figures such as
Peter Brown, author
Alan Paton and senator
Edgar Brookes. From July 1965 to mid-1969 Randall was Assistant Director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, based in Johannesburg. The Institute published several titles by him, including a series of talks he gave on human rights and the need for social justice. From mid-1969 to 1972 he was Director of Spro-cas (Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society), which was sponsored by the
Christian Institute and
South African Council of Churches (SACC). Randall worked closely with
Beyers Naudé who was heading the Christian Institute, and with other leading anti-apartheid clerics like
Denis Hurley and
Desmond Tutu. Although Spro-cas was intended as a relatively short-term project, it put together a substantial body of publications. Under the directorship of Randall, it published some 25 titles with the view to contributing to the search for social justice in South Africa. One of those was
Cry Rage!, an innovative collection of anti-poems by
James Matthews and Gladys Thomas, which became one of the icons of the
Black Consciousness Movement. "Spro-cas 1", the study project, was followed by "Spro-cas 2", the action project, again with Randall as Director. After discussions, particularly with
Bennie Khoapa and
Steve Biko, it was decided to split the project into a Black Community Programme and a White Consciousness Programme. The aim was for the BCP to develop community education programmes, and for the WCP, where a key figure was Horst Kleinschmidt, to make South African whites aware of social injustice and the need for change. The project ran until the BCP was banned in 1977. The story is told in
A Taste of Power, the final Spro-cas report written by Randall. Although some details had to be glossed over in this book due to state restrictions on the media, it paid considerable attention to Black Consciousness as well as to the sins of the
apartheid government. The radical work of the Spro-cas projects drew varied responses and was discussed in public debate, as the following quotations indicate: • "The Spro-cas reports seem all that is left of sanity in a land gone mad". - Anthony Richmond,
The Cape Herald, Cape Town, 20 October 1973. • "[Spro-cas is] a demonical movement originating from American Marxism". - Rev C.J. Mans, quoted in
The Daily News Durban, 28 April 1973. • "Much more cleverly disguised and therefore much more sinister… the Spro-cas missionaries have been the chief purveyors of the myths of Black Theology and Black Consciousness". - editorial
The Education Journal, The Teachers' League, Cape Town, September 1973. • "One achievement which clearly illustrates Spro-cas’s very dynamic flexibility is the easy and amicable emergence of an active black separatist movement within Spro-cas itself… its impact on political thought in South Africa has been considerable". - Marie Dyer, review in
Reality, January 1974. (With reference to the Black Community Programs under the leadership of Steve Biko and Bennie Khoapa). • "A ruthlessly logical summing up of the six Spro-cas commissions… one’s constant instinct is to cry: 'For God’s sake, surely government thinkers must take note of this'.” - Tony Richmond, review of
A Taste of Power in
The Cape Herald, Cape Town, 20 October 1973. • “...noting the invaluable contribution the Spro-cas 1 publications have made to the awareness of South African society... strongly urges students to lend their full support to the Spro-cas 2 programs...” - Resolution 112, 48th Congress of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), 1972. • “ All South Africans who are committed to bringing about change in our society should read the Spro-cas reports". -
Black Sash Journal, August 1972. From 1973 to October 1977 Randall was Director of
Ravan Press, which was established in 1972 by Beyers Naudé, Danie van Zyl and Randall (the unusual spelling of "Ravan" is due to the word being made up of the initial letters of
Randall,
van Zyl, and
Naudé). Randall's role was diverse: editor, publisher, salesman, and financial manager. In a time when "non-whites" were severely repressed by the government,
Ravan Press became an important avenue through which dissident voices could be heard. Its first literary title was
Sing for our Execution (1973) by
Wopko Jensma, In 1974 the three founding directors of Ravan were prosecuted under the Internal Security Act for publishing the words of a "banned person" (Paul Pretorius of NUSAS), but the case was dismissed on a technicality because the security police confused Spro-cas and Ravan Press. Randall also experienced harassment such as having his mail and telephone calls intercepted, attempts to plant spies, intimidation of bookshops not to stock Ravan titles, having his visitors trailed, cars being outside his house with listening devices in them, and so on. An unsuccessful attempt was made to entice both Randall and Naudé into a relationship with a buxom Post Office employee. In 1974 Randall stood as a Social Democratic candidate in the Von Brandis constituency in central Johannesburg, in the national general election. Horst Kleinschmidt was his electoral agent, and to general surprise they managed to gain a thousand votes and save their deposit in a safe United Party seat. The offices of Ravan Press in
Braamfontein, Johannesburg were the target of bomb threats and acts of vandalism such as slogans being painted on the walls. Randall once endured a four-hour security police raid of Ravan (along with the other organisations in Diakonia House, such as the Christian Institute and SACC), during which every document and letter—and his personal diary—was scrutinised. On 19 October 1977 Randall was served with a banning order by the Minister of Justice,
Jimmy Kruger. At least forty black leaders were detained in the same month. The Christian Institute, The World, and eighteen other organisations—mainly black consciousness groups—were declared unlawful and were not allowed to continue their existence. Other white South Africans banned on the same day as Randall were Beyers Naudé, Cedric Mayson, Brian Brown, Donald Woods and Theo Kotze, all of whom were associated with the Christian Institute. The effect of Randall's work reached into the heart of the Apartheid government as attested to by Mr Kobie Coetsee, then the Minister of Justice, and who is generally seen as one of the prime movers in facilitating the dialogue between Mr
Nelson Mandela and the government. In an interview with
Padraig O'Malley on 27 September 1997 he stated that exposure to people like
Beyers Naudé, the thinking of
Steve Biko, and works like
A Taste of Power (by Randall, largely a summary of Spro-Cas publications) lead him and others to acknowledge the righteousness of aspirations that were unnatisfied and actively suppressed. ==Academic career==