Читать книгу The Backroom Boy - Mandla Mathebula - Страница 8

The road to the establishment of a military wing of the ANC was as bumpy as the road to China for military training. For years, since the first news came out that the ANC would form an armed wing, Andrew Mlangeni had been a diehard supporter of the idea, but throughout those years it had never crossed his mind that he could be part of it, as he believed it was for a select few, much higher in the ANC hierarchy and at a level of leadership he didn’t think he had reached. Nor did he think the armed wing would become a reality soon, and the approval by the ANC (which he received through unofficial sources) took him by surprise as he had known that the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) (of which he was not part) was strongly opposed to violence as part of the struggle.

A hint that the ANC was implementing plans to establish an armed wing entered Andrew’s consciousness the moment he heard that the ANC NEC had given Nelson Mandela the go-ahead at one of its June 1961 meetings. He was not comfortable, however, with news that, in granting Mandela permission to establish the armed wing, the NEC had suggested (or, rather, implied) that it was a ‘Mandela thing’ and should not be seen to be part of ANC establishment plans. ‘I fully supported the idea, even though I still did not think I would personally be part of it,’ he confessed.

A glimpse that Mandela may have earmarked him as one of the first recruits of the army came one day after the meeting of the SACP’s area committee at Mofolo in Soweto. Mandela invited Andrew to accompany him, a rare request that caught him off-guard. Mandela took him to a deserted spot and suggested they do push-ups together for a while. After the push-ups, Mandela told Andrew that he had wanted to see if he was fit, and was satisfied that he was. ‘You have just become my first recruit outside the High Command,’ he said to a bemused Andrew – who later admitted that he hadn’t really understood what Mandela had meant. Mandela then took Andrew back home to Dube before disappearing into the darkness as usual. Andrew would learn several weeks later that the push-up session had marked his recruitment into Umkhonto we Sizwe (later shortened to ‘MK’) and that he was the first recruit after the establishment of the MK High Command. The next indication came through constant rumours from people close to him, telling him they had heard he had been included in the ANC’s armed wing. But these remained rumours until he would be told officially what inclusion actually meant. He remained at sea on the formation of the ANC’s armed wing, apart from the rumours. ‘I didn’t know how far along that process was and when I would be actively involved. I had no clue what being recruited into this army entailed or how it was going to be structured.’

Later, Joe Slovo came to Andrew after one of the district committee meetings of the SACP and confided in him what would be the official announcement of his admission to the armed wing. ‘He told me I was going to be part of the new armed wing of the ANC, but didn’t offer any details. He went as far as telling me that I would be sent overseas but he didn’t say where or when or for how long.’ The only time Andrew caught a glimpse of progress in the establishment of the ANC’s armed wing was when Dan Tloome, then a member of the SACP Central Committee, gave what Andrew would later regard as official confirmation that the armed wing of the ANC was in place. Dan called it ‘Lerumo la Sechaba’. The only other details he provided were the names of people who were involved at a higher level – the same names that Andrew already suspected were involved: Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein, Michael Harmel and Jack Hodgson.

Mandela disappeared from Andrew’s sight for a few months after the push-up session, but Slovo, Rusty and Hodgson remained in sight. ‘Mandela’s disappearance didn’t surprise me. It was nothing new and I was used to it.’ Later, on 26 June 1961, when Mandela issued a statement from hiding that he was aware the police were looking for him but he was not going to surrender to a government he did not recognise, Andrew was convinced that Mandela was into something new and big. He regarded Mandela’s action as a deliberate provocation to the government and a direct challenge to show that the struggle was shifting to a new front. ‘I was curious to understand how the government was going to react,’ he said.

The moment of truth finally came at the beginning of August 1961, after weeks of speculation and uncertainty. Rusty Bernstein came to Andrew after a meeting of the Johannesburg region of the SACP and gave him a verbal invitation to a meeting in the basement of a shop in Commissioner Street in the Johannesburg city centre. ‘He warned me not to tell anyone about the meeting – only those invited were to know about it,’ he remembers. The shop belonged to an unnamed Indian businessman. Because of the instruction not to tell anyone about the meeting, Andrew was also reluctant to enquire about its purpose and the details of the others expected.

When Andrew got to the venue, he saw the Indian businessman who owned the premises for the first and last time. At the meeting he found Hodgson, Abel Mthembu, Joe Gqabi and Rusty Bernstein. He knew Hodgson and Mthembu to be getting on well together as former soldiers in the Second World War – they were experienced military men. ‘That alone gave me an indication of the purpose of the meeting. It was about military action. But I still wondered about the role I would play in the armed action and how that role would position me not only in the ANC but in the struggle in general.’ Hodgson led the discussions. ‘I soon learned that he was already a leading expert in explosives within the MK establishment.’ The purpose of the meeting, Hodgson told them, was to make final arrangements for the first group of people to be sent for training as members of the ANC armed wing. The military wing of the ANC was finally taking off and this group was to be the first to be trained and deployed on the ground to start its activities. Six of them were selected for training – Andrew, Gqabi and Mthembu from those at that meeting. Others were Mhlaba (who was to come from the Eastern Cape), Mkwayi and Naidoo, whom the ANC had already deployed abroad on different missions but were to join the military training in China. ‘We were told that a very comprehensive military training programme had been arranged with China and all six of us were to be trained there in the next few weeks, for at least a year.’

Andrew was a functionary of the SACP and an active leader in the Transvaal provincial structure of the ANC as well as a respected and recognised member at national level. Mthembu was the deputy president of the ANC in the Transvaal, and a fellow resident at Dube in Soweto. ‘Together we had founded the Dube branch of the ANC and later the Soweto regional structure,’ recalled Andrew. Gqabi was from Aliwal North in the Cape Province and one of the active ANC members during the 1950s. As a photographer and reporter for the Johannesburg-based militant newspaper, the New Age, he had been exposing many hidden crimes of apartheid. ‘He was one of those detained during the 1960 state of emergency and one of the bravest journalists of the time.’ Mhlaba and Mkwayi both hailed from the Eastern Cape and were renowned trade unionists. ‘We were told that Mkwayi had been advised by the ANC to skip the country, and that Naidoo was studying in London.’

Hodgson had told them that Joe Matthews had arranged a small plane to come from Lobatse to fetch them at an airstrip in Serowe, a small town in southern Botswana. Andrew had first met Joe Matthews when they both attended St Peter’s school. ‘He had become a senior ANC and SACP member and was practising as a lawyer in Lesotho.’ From Serowe they were to be taken to Mbeya in Tanzania, where contact had been made with Frene Ginwala, who was to handle them from there. ‘Frene, a South African, was said to be running a business and a newspaper in Tanzania after leaving her family in London where her parents were also running a business,’ explained Andrew. The group was not told about the route from Tanzania, and none of them asked about it.

The trip to China was not an easy one. The first challenge was to get travel documents for those who were based in South Africa (Mkwayi and Naidoo were in a better situation as they were out of the country already). ‘Coming out of South Africa was one of the most difficult steps. We all knew that getting travel documents from the South African authorities was practically impossible. Even trying to get them was a risk no one was prepared to take.’ But Andrew devised a plan. He offered to use his link with his mother-in-law, who was already staying in Francistown, where she had established herself as a respected faith healer and prophet. He and his wife June had made several visits to Botswana since his mother-in-law had moved to Francistown with their first-born daughter Maureen, and in the process he had familiarised himself a bit with the country and the culture of the people there. He went to the Botswana consular office in Johannesburg to seek documentation that would help him and his comrades to skip the country. The office was manned by African citizens of Botswana who spoke Tswana, similar to his own Sotho. He asked one of the officials to arrange documents showing that he and his three comrades were taxpayers in Botswana. ‘That would be enough to confirm us as citizens of Botswana and allow us free movement in the country and passage to other countries from there,’ he recalled. When his request was accepted, he agreed to pay three pounds for each document and arranged to come back at a later date, after having raised the required amount.

‘I reported back to Bernstein and Hodgson, who approved the plan and gave me twelve pounds for all four documents.’ But that was not all. For the four comrades to be real citizens of Botswana they had to do more than get the documents stating they were taxpayers. They also had to get names that could be associated with Botswana people – Mlangeni, Mhlaba, Mthembu and Gqabi were names that would raise suspicions. A group of four people, all claiming to be Botswana citizens and none with a Tswana name, would be strange. Worse, only one of them could speak a language close to Setswana. So each was given a new name. ‘I became Percy Mokoena,’ recalled Andrew.

Throughout the preparations for the journey Hodgson and Bernstein were the main men, their commanders. Slovo and Mandela were nowhere near at that time. Andrew’s observation was that the top command structure of the ANC armed wing was already in place and it involved at least Mandela, Slovo, Hodgson and Bernstein, as far as he could ascertain. There could be others, he thought, but these four were definitely there and in charge.

The final plan of travel was that they were to be split into two groups. Moses Kotane was also on his way out of the country, attending the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 17 to 31 October in Moscow. Kotane, whom Andrew and others of his generation called ‘Malume’, was going to be one of the over 80 representatives of foreign communist parties. ‘He had a direct invitation from Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,’ boasted Andrew. It was decided that he should accompany Mthembu, Gqabi and Kotane to Botswana and then come back to Johannesburg to wait for Mhlaba, who was coming from the Eastern Cape.

At the beginning of October the command came for Andrew to drive Kotane, Gqabi and Mthembu to Botswana via the Martin’s Drift border gate near Groblersbrug in the north-western Transvaal. The arrangement was that they should not tell anyone in their families, not even their wives, as part of managing the information as tightly as possible to avoid arrest. But that was not going to be. Gqabi and Mthembu told their wives the truth, and so did Andrew. June was even kind enough to prepare a large piece of cold meat and a bag of oranges as their provisions for the trip. Gqabi came from Mofolo in Soweto and joined Andrew and Mthembu at Dube. They picked up Kotane and drove out of the country at night, arriving at Serowe in the early hours of the morning, around five-thirty. The advantage was that the border officials spent all hours at the border gate and it was only a matter of waking them up to process them in. They, too, seemed cooperative. As Andrew had often crossed that border to visit his family, his face was a familiar one.

The trip was tiring. Having only eaten cold meat and oranges on the way, they needed some coffee to warm up and perhaps cheer their spirits a bit. But the shops were still closed and they had to wait for another two hours to get a cup of coffee. They had been told that the plane was to arrive at around two in the afternoon and that it was the only plane due in the area that day. The airstrip was small and quiet – they learned that the Botswana government used it to distribute mail in the district.

After the coffee they parked the car in the bush near the airstrip and settled down to take a nap under some trees. In the afternoon Kotane called them to wake up. He said he had heard a lion roaring earlier, while they had been asleep. When he had got them thoroughly terrified, Kotane shouted, ‘It was Mlangeni snoring like a roaring lion!’

At around three o’clock, the small plane came in. Andrew helped his comrades to pack their goods in the plane, then once they had left he drove back home alone and told Bernstein and Hodgson that the mission had been accomplished.

A week or so later Mhlaba arrived in Johannesburg and Andrew went to see him at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, north of the city. He found him with Mandela and he later learned that the farm had been purchased as the headquarters of MK and that Mandela had been hiding there. He also learned that there were already moves to establish MK structures in the Cape, with Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki and Francis Baard, part of the team leading the exercise. Andrew took Mhlaba for cholera immunisation in town and awaited further instructions from Bernstein and Hodgson. A few days before their departure, Bernstein and Hodgson instructed John Nkadimeng to drive Andrew and Mhlaba to Botswana. Nkadimeng had been on the executive committee of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), and on the ANC National Executive Committee, and was a 1956 treason triallist. A close friend of another prominent trade unionist and fellow SACP member from his home district of Sekhukhune, Flag Boshielo, Nkadimeng lived in Alexandra township.

The trio were instructed to leave the country on 31 October 1961 through the Zeerust route to Lobatse. Here, the same plane that had transported Mthembu, Kotane and Gqabi was to fetch them. ‘Nkadimeng did not seem to have been properly briefed about the whole mission but nevertheless he had been coached with the necessary security information for the trip,’ was Andrew’s observation. They left in the morning and arrived in the early evening of the same day. Nkadimeng dropped them off at a hotel in Lobatse. The pair then went into the hotel and relaxed for a while at the bar with soft drinks, as alcohol might have made them careless and jeopardised their security and safety. They didn’t check into the hotel, as their plan was, rather, to look for overnight accommodation somewhere in the town. Although they had money, they didn’t want to spend it.

At about half past seven, they decided to take their bags and go out to look for somewhere to sleep. Just outside the hotel, a tall, lean white man approached them. He introduced himself as McCabe and told them he was a member of the Special Branch of the Bechuanaland police. He instructed them to follow him. The three of them walked to his office, a block away from the hotel, where an interrogation began. McCabe asked where they were going and Andrew answered that they were going to Francistown.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked Andrew.

‘Percy Mokoena.’

‘What are you going to do in Francistown?’

‘I’m visiting my mother-in-law. She lives there,’ he answered patiently, adding that his mother-in-law sold cattle and that he often took customers to her.

Then McCabe turned his attention to Mhlaba.

‘And what’s your name?’

Mhlaba gave his Tswana name. When asked what he was going to do in Francistown he answered that he was going to buy cattle from ‘Percy’s mother-in-law’.

‘Where do you stay in Botswana?’ asked McCabe. Mhlaba had no idea. He didn’t know anything about Botswana.

‘I stay in Port Elizabeth, in South Africa,’ he answered cautiously.

‘Then how will you get your cattle there?’ asked McCabe.

‘I’m going to buy cattle, but most will be kept here for some time,’ replied Mhlaba.

‘Who is your traditional chief in Botswana?’ asked McCabe. Again, Mhlaba couldn’t answer.

‘Are you going to Rhodesia?’ McCabe asked. Andrew answered that they were going to Francistown. McCabe then said he wanted to search their luggage. That was a serious problem because their suitcases could implicate them. Nevertheless they could not refuse to be searched.

In Andrew’s suitcase, McCabe found two letters from the wives of Gqabi and Mthembu. He opened the envelopes at once and read them.

‘Are you going to Ghana?’ he asked them.

‘No, we are going to Francistown, sir,’ answered Andrew.

‘Then where are you taking these letters?’ he asked.

They were silent. Then, ‘I don’t believe you guys,’ he said.

The time was around ten o’clock and the two comrades were tired and hungry. The interrogation continued. Eventually, Mhlaba asked to go to the toilet and McCabe directed him around the corner, remaining in his office with Andrew. They looked at each other but said nothing. Time was ticking on and Mhlaba came back to find them still staring at each other in silence.

He took his seat, looked down and said, ‘Yes, sir, we are going to Ghana.’ Andrew was stunned. He wondered whether Mhlaba had lost his mind. He gave McCabe another quick look.

McCabe looked them both over. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth all this time? I would have released you a long time ago. My concern is about the security of Bechuanaland and not all the other countries. If you are only on the way to another country I have no problem.’

Andrew lifted his head, hardly daring to believe his ears. While they were still wondering whether they were really free McCabe said they had wasted his time but the discussion was over and they could go. Andrew said, ‘It’s late now. We’re tired, hungry and have nowhere to sleep. You will have to help us with food and accommodation.’

McCabe called his wife and came back to tell them he could help with accommodation but not food, as she had only prepared enough for the family. He took them to his house, a very short distance away, and they met a pretty wife of Asian descent. He showed them where to sleep and asked what time they were going to board their plane. They told him it was around seven in the morning. He asked them to be up and out by five so that no one would see them leaving his house.

Before they went to bed they had a friendly discussion with him and discovered that he was not a bad man at all. By five o’clock they were out of the house and on the way to the small Lobatse airport where they waited for over two hours for their plane to arrive. When it came and they boarded they realised that there was no food. They were now to spend the whole day without food – and it was a nine-hour non-stop flight from Lobatse to Mbeya.

Their brief was that once they were in Tanzania Frene Ginwala would come and fetch them and take care of their further destination. Andrew was wondering where the ANC representative in Tanzania, Tennyson Makiwane, was, or what his role was going to be in their trip. Makiwane had been a colleague of Gqabi’s in the New Age newspaper, and another fearless journalist whom he knew slightly. He had since left the country and was working for the ANC’s external mission in East Africa.

It was about four o’clock when they got into Mbeya. The sun was still up. At the hotel Andrew used a public phone to call Frene. He told her that ‘Percy’ and ‘John’ had arrived and asked her to come for them. She, too, had been briefed. She told him she was very far from where they were, in Dar es Salaam, where they were supposed to join her the next day. It had been raining heavily, and the roads were terrible. Therefore it was difficult to travel by road all the way to Dar es Salaam, where they were to catch a bus. The alternative was a train from Iringa, not too far from Mbeya. Frene said they were free to choose.

The following morning Andrew and Mhlaba caught a bus to Iringa. There were two routes from Mbeya to Iringa, they were told, but the other one was said to be impassable. The roads were very bad, untarred and destroyed by rain. They were poorly maintained as well. ‘The bus was not in good condition. It travelled very slowly, and huffed and puffed almost the whole morning to reach Iringa,’ recalled Andrew. The trip was at a snail’s pace. The train left Iringa railway station in the evening and travelled all night to Dar es Salaam. Frene was waiting for them. She took them to the hotel and advised them to rest, saying that she would come and take them to the authorities the next day to arrange their further travel. Their next destination, she said, was Khartoum in Sudan, through an Ethiopian airline.

Frene came to their hotel the next morning and, after giving them a short lecture on the do’s and don’ts, took them to the Dar es Salaam immigration office. Among her instructions was that they must tell the truth to the authorities: that they were from South Africa and that they were political activists and had no travel documents. Mhlaba was the first to go into the office with Frene while Andrew waited outside. After some time, he came out with his documents. Then it was Andrew’s turn and Frene was there to assist him as well. The officer asked Andrew where he was from.

‘Botswana,’ he answered.

Frene froze immediately and the official looked surprised. Frene intervened and told the official that Andrew had made a mistake because although the duo had travelled via Botswana they were both from South Africa. ‘He came with Ray. They’re both political refugees,’ she said.

The official told him to use South Africa as his country and not Botswana which they had only passed through on their way to Tanzania. Nevertheless, he processed the documents. As they left the office and joined Mhlaba outside, Andrew experienced Frene’s ire. She asked, angrily, ‘How can you make such a terrible mistake when I advised you properly?’ Andrew had nothing to say. He apologised and said he may have missed that point. ‘Her beauty never faded in the midst of anger,’ he later remarked. And Frene would later describe Andrew as ‘intelligent despite his rudimentary mistakes’.

Andrew Mlangeni had a remarkable ability to place the liberation struggle ahead of his own ego, instinctively ever-ready to improve himself and learn from others. His respect for strategic knowledge trumped gender, age, distinctions or prejudices. Frene, considerably younger than him in years and in membership of the movement – and a woman at that – was a journalist and adviser to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, soon to be the president of an independent Tanzania. Her experience, skill and a self-assurance beyond her years had been noted by Walter Sisulu, who recruited her to assist the liberation movement in directing the South African struggle warriors to negotiate their way around Africa and beyond. ‘She was pretty, and younger than both of us. But she had a commanding attitude, spiced with genuine authority. We just followed her instructions,’ Andrew remembered. Her role was specifically to receive them and hand them over to those who would despatch them to the country where they would receive military training. As Frene later put it, her role was ‘only to receive trainees and exiles from South Africa’. The ANC separated the roles of receiving members from those of despatching them. ‘Those of us who received trainees and exiles didn’t know anything about what those who despatched them to training centres were doing. It was all about security protocol,’ she recalled.

Frene briefed them about their route to Ghana. They were to travel the next morning and sleep over at Khartoum, getting a flight to Ghana via Nigeria the following day. She was not going to fly with them to Ghana, but Makiwane would be there waiting for them. ‘We understood Makiwane to be the man responsible for despatching us to China, and the role he later played confirmed that.’ On 5 November, Frene took them to the airport, where they took a flight to Khartoum. At Khartoum airport they were given forms to complete. In the space for nationality, Andrew wrote ‘African’ and this sparked a debate. The immigration official explained that ‘African’ meant nothing as every citizen of Africa, including himself, was an African. Again, Mhlaba had been smarter than Andrew, and correctly written ‘South African’. The embarrassment was between him and the official this time around, but Andrew wondered if some of his slip-ups would jeopardise their trip further on. He was determined to improve his alertness.

The city was very hot, even though the sun had already set. Because they had plenty of time, they decided to take a walk through the streets of Khartoum. The city itself seemed friendly and safe. On one street they came across a group of six boys of African ethnicity like themselves, different from the Arabs of the city. The boys asked where they were from. Mhlaba and Andrew said they were from Dar es Salaam and asked the boys where they were from. The boys said that they were from Darfur in the south and were studying at the local university. They asked Mhlaba and Andrew to come and address them at a meeting later that evening on serious matters affecting Darfur people. Nervous about their status in the country, Mhlaba and Andrew said they were unable to do it. Later, when they were to learn about the issues between South and North Sudan, they remembered this incident and realised that the problems had long been there.

They landed in Nigeria the next afternoon. Some of the passengers disembarked at Lagos airport while those who were heading for Accra in Ghana, as they were, remained on board. It was extremely hot but that was not an issue any more – a soldier had to endure all sorts of weather and living conditions. After all, they had left bad living conditions back home and did not rule out even harsher conditions in the future. By the time they arrived in Accra it was early evening. Makiwane was already waiting. After helping them through the airport procedures and immigration authorities, he warned them that there were Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) people around the corner and advised using a different route to avoid contact with them. Rivalry had increased since they had both gone into exile. Constant fighting for space had caused tension and mistrust between the two liberation movements. ‘They already know there are South Africans coming,’ Makiwane said.

They later learned that the PAC people in question were Peter Raboroko and Peter Molotsi whom they knew very well, having been close comrades before they left the ANC. Andrew thought it would have been nice to see them, but kept it to himself and opted to sheepishly follow Makiwane as he took them to a hotel in Accra where they were to stay until they were ready to proceed to their next destination.

It was the eve of the queen of England’s visit to Ghana, Friday 17 November 1961, and the hype of her visit was everywhere. The streets she was going to use were already decorated, as were the public places she was going to visit. Apart from these obviously attractive additions, Andrew found Accra generally a noisy city, a feeling echoed by other members at the time. ‘There were so many taxis on the roads, each constantly hooting for passengers.’ Only their hotel rooms were safe from this deafening noise. Makiwane had told them that they were to stay in Accra for four days before proceeding to China via two other stops. Andrew and Mhlaba found Makiwane, like Frene, to be very efficient at coordinating their travel. During their few days’ stay in Accra, he took Andrew to the Ghanaian authorities and got him the travel documents for China. He then took Mhlaba to the Guinean embassy, for his travel documents (Andrew was to travel as a Ghanaian and Mhlaba as a Guinean). On the first day of their stay in Accra, Makiwane finalised their travel documents and on the next day he took the two to the Chinese embassy to visit the authorities there, including China’s ambassador to Ghana, Huang Hua, a man in his late 40s. Then they were free to walk the streets of Accra.

On the morning of the fourth day they boarded a plane to Prague, arriving at around four in the afternoon. The weather was cloudy and it was already dark. The next day they boarded another plane to Moscow, and after a few hours connected from there to Irkutsk. The plane had left in the evening and arrived in the early hours of the following day. They were supposed to fly immediately to Beijing in China but bad weather prevented them from taking off. For three days they could not fly, and had to stay in a hotel. Andrew enjoyed the breakfast at the hotel. ‘Every day I ate twelve boiled eggs with bread and coffee. Ray ate only six.’ But each morning they lamented that they had not travelled such a long journey only to be stuck there enjoying breakfast. During their stay in Russia, the authorities had tried to suggest a safer route via Mongolia, but the Chinese authorities had advised against it, suggesting instead that they stay there until the weather allowed them to fly directly to China. ‘Mongolia was a socialist state close to Russia. We did not understand why the Chinese were not comfortable with our travel through it but we never bothered to ask.’

Only on the fourth day was the weather good enough for them to fly out of Russia, and they boarded for Beijing. When they arrived, the Chinese authorities, interpreters, and their comrades Mthembu, Gqabi, Mkwayi and Naidoo were waiting at the airport. They exchanged greetings, hugs and laughter. So began their year-long experience in China and their rigorous preparations to liberate their people back home.

The South African trainees’ last days in China were spent rather differently. The tight military programme had come to an end and for the whole of October and three weeks of November 1962 they toured Shanghai, the Chinese city Andrew Mlangeni regarded as the ‘Johannesburg of China’ because of its sophistication. Andrew found everything in Shanghai elegant. The city was huge and full of people – going up and down and minding their own business, day and night. Andrew was impressed that so many people there spoke English. The trainees had also been taken to the British colony of Hong Kong, and Andrew would later remark that there was more English spoken in Shanghai and Hong Kong than in any other part of China that he had visited.

He was also impressed with the natural landscapes of China, and by the immense pride the Chinese people held in their cultural and heritage sites. For nearly two months the new trainees explored what Andrew would later describe as the wonders of the Chinese people. He saw a nation united in love for its country and with a shared hatred of its adversaries. He observed the power of the spirit of patriotism and positive nationalism. At that time he did not care whether loyalty to the country’s flag was voluntary or enforced – he cared only about the bond that created a nation jealously guarding its resources and sovereignty. China reinforced in him his own bond with his country and his people.

By late-November, when arrangements for their trip back home were finalised, and he had gathered insights about the Chinese, he had to accept that it was time to return. The feeling among all six of them was a mixed bag of emotions. They had grown close to their trainers and other people they had met, the warmth and hospitality. Andrew was particularly impressed by the hardworking people of China. ‘Each Chinese citizen realised that the country could be made better through hard work,’ he later remarked. But they also longed to be home, to see their families, and to put into practice what they had learned.

Naidoo left two days before Andrew and the other four comrades, and headed for London to continue his studies. The rest of the trainees flew to Moscow. They were met by a Russian comrade whom Andrew would later describe as friendly and energetic and who was not shy to display his passion for the Communist Party and his country – a Russian version of the patriotism he had seen among the Chinese and that he hoped one day to see in South Africans. Such character, he thought, would never betray the struggle of the people, or let down the freedom achieved. During the time he had spent in China, Andrew had come to believe that in any event the struggle did not end with the attainment of political freedom but continued afterwards, to defend freedom and its gains. What they had learned should be required learning for all South Africans. ‘It’s a pity we can’t bring everyone here,’ he said.

The Russian comrade was excited to have met them and confirmed that the Russians were already committed to training members of the ANC in conversional education and military instruction. None of the South Africans found out the exact position and rank of this man in government or in the Communist Party, but he seemed very informed about developments around the world and within his party. He told them that the Communist Party was having a conference and to show that he had some degree of authority in the Party he invited them to attend it. They could not, they said, as they would have missed their flight and would have to pay for a new one. But he promised that the Party would take care of all their expenses, flights included, if they were to disrupt their travel plans – another sign of his significant authority and influence. To persuade them to attend, he mentioned that the conference was very important and intimated that the chairpman of the SACP, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, was in attendance. They decided to give him an answer the following day after they had discussed it among themselves. They were thrilled to hear that Dr Dadoo was there. In fact, their promise to consider staying on was mainly driven by that information.

They were to be accommodated at the house of another comrade of the Communist Party. He was himself busy at the conference, but there was enough time to discuss the issue among themselves in his house. Andrew and Mhlaba argued that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that they had to take it. Gqabi, Mkwayi and Mthembu argued that they could not divert from the programme in case they were wanted at home urgently to undertake the very important task of training people internally in the bush. Democratic centralism won the day. Andrew and Mhlaba had to go with the majority. They decided to turn down the offer. They learned later that Dr Dadoo was not there – it was all a ploy to persuade them to stay.

After spending two days in the cold Moscow winter they proceeded to Cairo on the morning of the third day. They spent the whole day in Cairo at the airport and flew the following day to Tanzania where Oliver Tambo was waiting for a briefing from them. At the airport in Dar es Salaam they were met by James Hadebe, popularly known as Jimmy or Jobe. He was the ANC’s head of the East Africa mission, based in Tanzania, having replaced Makiwane, who had been posted to Ghana as the head of the West Africa mission. Hadebe took them to Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Dar es Salaam, where Tambo had an office.

Andrew knew Hadebe very well, having worked with him when Hadebe was the Transvaal provincial secretary of the ANC during the 1950s, and as one of the accused in the treason trial. He respected and admired him a great deal. Like Andrew, Hadebe hailed from the Orange Free State. As a direct descendant of the nineteenth-century Hlubi king, Langalibalele, Hadebe was, by heredity, a born leader in the African sense. He had been detained for five months following the state of emergency in 1960, after which he left South Africa and went into exile where he had become one of the significant men in the ANC’s foreign mission.

At the headquarters of the ANC they found some of the trainees who had just arrived from Ethiopia. Tambo had organised a warm reception. The five comrades were received like real heroes of the struggle. There was food fit for heroes, and comfortable beds were made up for them. By Andrew’s account, they slept so peacefully that they forgot they were in a foreign country. It was only the following morning that they regretted the comfort they had been offered by the leadership, when they were shocked to find out that Tambo was lying on the floor. He had made way for them to be accommodated in the beds and he was willing to compromise his status and position to honour them. Tambo was the most senior leader of their movement, but there he was on the floor while they enjoyed the comfort of beds. For Andrew, Tambo was not just his political leader but his former teacher as well. Andrew would later describe this as ‘a true attestation to all of us that Tambo was truly a revolutionary’. In fact, for the rest of his life, Andrew would declare that he had never seen a true revolutionary such as Tambo whom he would describe as ‘down-to-earth and true to the course of the struggle’. Seeing Tambo lying on the floor while he and his comrades were made comfortable in beds did not please Andrew and nor did it please his comrades. It was summer in Tanzania, and excessively hot. Sleeping naked was something the people had become used to and so had Tambo. Andrew saw him lying there on the floor naked, with a huge scar on his chest that he had never seen before and that he thought he should not have seen at all. ‘None should have seen it.’ But out of curiosity he enquired about it and Tambo explained that he got the scar during the boys’ stick fights, in his youth in the Eastern Cape.

Andrew and his comrades took a unanimous decision that they were not going to allow their leader to sleep on the floor. They decided that Mhlaba and Gqabi would share a bed and give the other to Tambo. Tambo did not seem to be perturbed, but he welcomed their gesture.

They were the first group in MK to be properly given military training and Tambo wanted them to brief him on all aspects of the training, the logistics and also the terrain to which they had been exposed. After all, Tambo was the ANC head of external mission and back home he was the deputy president of the ANC and his seniority in the party entitled him to a full briefing. For the next few days, they briefed Tambo fully about their Chinese experience. They also gave him Mao’s advice that the conditions in Algeria were similar to those of South Africans and that it would be prudent and economic to send some of the MK trainees there. They also advised Tambo to send to Algeria a group of comrades who had just completed what they called ‘sub-standard’ training in Ethiopia. The group had been trained only in gun operation and crawling by the Ethiopians. ‘Unlike the Chinese instructors, the Ethiopian trainers had no real understanding of the “enemy” with which the trainees would be confronted,’ stated Andrew. The five thought it wise that Tambo should send them for further training in Algeria before sending them back home to fight.

During the briefings, Andrew and his comrades learned that Tambo was bothered because despite his seniority in the organisation he had not been consulted before they left for China to undergo training. ‘Such was the poor communication within the senior ranks that sometimes prevailed in the organisation at the time,’ remarked Andrew later. Makiwane, who, as head of the ANC mission in Tanzania, had been involved with the travelling arrangements, was perceived as someone who kept things to himself. He had apparently not informed Tambo. Andrew and his comrades were not impressed with Makiwane’s behaviour. ‘Tambo had been undermined and this did not go down well with us who had learned about discipline from the Chinese,’ he lamented.

The Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, He Ying, also wanted them to have supper with him and his entire senior staff in order to get a briefing about their trip – this trip to China by an African liberation movement was one of the first, so everyone had an interest in their experiences. The Chinese also wanted to meet Tambo in his capacity as the head of the ANC’s external mission, probably to get his feeling about Chinese assistance.

Three days before their journey home, Andrew suffered a very painful nerve from his left cheek down to the neck. His face was swollen and he was taken to a hospital in Dar es Salaam for medical attention, but the doctors there were unable to offer specialised neurological treatment. Tambo was very concerned about Andrew’s state and suggested that he should be sent for a thorough check-up. He was particularly worried because Andrew was now one of the movement’s best assets and the ANC could not afford to lose a comrade so well trained in guerrilla warfare. Besides, Tambo emphasised to Andrew, even if he had not been intensively trained he would not have wanted to lose him because ‘the ANC can’t afford to lose a single comrade when their life could be saved’. Tambo suggested that Prague would take better care of him because it was east of the Iron Curtain and espionage between the South African apartheid regime and the Czechs was almost nonexistent, unlike in the West – for example in a place like London, which apartheid security forces could easily penetrate. But he decided to keep him in Tanzania for a while before sending him to Prague – which also paid off later.

While in Tanzania, Andrew and his comrades heard that important events had taken place during their absence and had, to a large extent, changed the South African political landscape for good. They had been deprived of this kind of information while undergoing training and were almost blank about developments back home. They learned that MK’s first official acts of sabotage had taken place on 16 December 1961 with its official launch. These acts of sabotage were widespread and well-coordinated across the entire country. In one, Benjamin Ramotse and Petrus Molefe, both comrades Andrew was close to, had tried to blow up an office at Dube railway station, in Andrew’s own township, but the bomb went off while they were giving explosives to each other, killing Petrus Molefe instantly. Benjamin Ramotse was injured but escaped and went into exile for training. His whereabouts were not revealed to them, although Andrew was eager to find out where he was and how he was doing. He had worked with this man for many years in the ANC’s Dube branch and had been interested to learn that he was also a member of MK.

In February 1963, while Andrew was still undergoing treatment, he learned that the rest of his team members had proceeded to Lobatse by plane without him. He was later told that the ANC had established a better network in Botswana than when he and his team had left for China. In a just over a year the ANC had greatly improved its struggle infrastructure in that country. Mpho Motsamai had become the ANC’s representative, based at Palapye, and he had received the four members in his house and had spent Christmas and New Year with them and slaughtered a goat. Andrew had known Mpho Motsamai since the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He described him as probably one of the worst enemies of the state in the East Rand, later to be called Ekurhuleni. He recalled that this had landed Mpho Motsamai in and out of police stations and prisons while the campaign lasted, before the ANC called it off in 1953. But, like many other comrades, Mpho Motsamai was unstoppable until he was eventually deported to Botswana with his wife, Onalepelo, the woman he had married in detention. Andrew and his fellow Johannesburg comrades would jokingly refer to Onalepelo, whose name means ‘you have a heart’ or ‘you are patient’, as her husband’s real pillar of strength.

Back in Tanzania, Tambo arranged for Andrew to give a talk to a few comrades, with details of his communications training, the use of transmitters, decoding and encoding. This became the first official training he conducted for his comrades. One day, there was an unexpected knock at the door of the house where Andrew was staying, the house of Senior Ngalo, the brother of Benjamin Ngalo, another of his comrades, who had fled into exile. When he opened the door, Benjamin Ramotse was standing there. Andrew was almost speechless with surprise. Ramotse told him that he had been told not to make contact because it was too dangerous. In fact, he had been told that it was dangerous for those coming into exile to be familiar with the places of residence of those already there. They had been warned that if those who were returning home were caught and tortured they were bound to expose some names and places. New recruits were not supposed to be seen by those they found in exile or to see anyone else in training apart from those with whom they were grouped.

Benjamin Ramotse would have none of that. He had found a way to meet Andrew, and gave him the gory details of 16 December 1961. He was the comrade who succeeded Andrew as the secretary of the Dube branch when Andrew became the secretary of the Soweto region. He asked for clothes because he had left home without anything. Andrew gave him one of the two shirts that he had brought with him from China.

Andrew told Ramotse why he had not travelled with his fellow combatants: the nerve problem. Ramotse thought it was probably nothing more serious than a toothache because he had once suffered the same pain. He suggested that Andrew should see a dentist. Andrew confided this to Makiwane, who took him to the dentist. The dentist discovered a cavity, filled it – and like magic the pain went away instantly although the swelling took a few days to subside. That, though, paved the way for Andrew to go home. He asked Makiwane to take him to meet Tambo and tell him the good news. Tambo was pleased, and the next day Andrew was on the train to Botswana via Mbeya and Lusaka. He was accompanied by Sam Masemola, the mission head in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia). A man of his own age, Masemola, based in Alexandra Township, had joined the ANC around the same time as Andrew in the 1940s. He was another experienced member whom Andrew respected.

They got to Lusaka late the following day, but Sam Masemola immediately took Andrew to meet the leader of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), Kenneth Kaunda, a man with a reputation as ‘a moderate and reasonable man, opposed to violence, especially if it could be avoided’. ‘He had been at the helm of this new party for two years which he had spent in and out of prison for his relentless campaigns against the colonial government,’ recalled Andrew. ‘He was more or less my age and oozed honesty and frankness throughout our discussion,’ he added. Kaunda told Andrew of the misgivings of his colleagues about the ANC struggle in South Africa. ‘He told me he was for the ANC but his future ministers leaned towards the PAC because of the broad strategic vision he referred to as Africa for Africans … He also emphasised that my task, or that of the ANC, was to convince his colleagues in the UNIP about the relevance of our ideology to the Africans.’ Kaunda had previously told Mandela and Tambo the same thing. Andrew took Kaunda’s advice seriously and decided to spend an extra day in Lusaka. Sam Masemola took him to UNIP offices to make a courtesy call on Kaunda’s colleagues but unfortunately they were all out doing community work.

On the following day he continued his journey alone – by train to Botswana, where he was received by Mpho Motsamai. His host related how the other four comrades had spent time with him and how eager they were to take further instructions from MK’s National High Command. Andrew was tired but at the same time eager to return to the country to fulfil the purpose of MK. He slept – just enough of a rest to be able to carry on. The next day he phoned Joe Slovo, using his MK name, Percy Mokoena, which was also known to Slovo.

‘My name is Percy, I’m in Botswana and have been arrested for a minor misdemeanour. I have to appear in court tomorrow and I need a defence lawyer,’ he said to a possibly surprised Slovo. But Andrew was not arrested and he only did this to trick any would-be eavesdroppers. It seems Slovo, too, understood that Andrew only needed transport to cross the border back into South Africa, because that night Joe Modise arrived at Mpho Motsamai’s house to fetch him. He was driving what Andrew would later describe as a ‘hot, hot’ Peugeot 404 because, as he eventually discovered, the car had been under police surveillance for some time and it was a matter of time before the police decided to pounce on Joe Modise.

Modise made it clear that he was not going to spend a night there as the National High Command of MK needed Andrew at its base at Liliesleaf farm. Mondays were meeting days, and the matter of the trainees from China was high on the agenda. If they missed that meeting, then the topic would be deferred to the next meeting in seven days’ time. Modise told him that there was a full and urgent programme waiting for him and other trainees and it could not be postponed. They drove through the night and arrived at Liliesleaf farm the next morning. Andrew was tired and decided to sleep. Modise did not sleep. Instead, he dropped Andrew and disappeared.

From the moment he picked him up in Botswana, Andrew realised that Joe Modise’s commitment was unquestionable. He was a man geared towards sticking to the programme of MK, and as brave as ever. He was also seeing a new Joe Modise, who was no longer a loose cannon acting outside the organisation. Here was a man who, although still determined in his beliefs, was subject to the statutes of the movement and commands from above, respecting the leadership and carrying out its instructions to the letter. The leadership had also invested a lot of trust in him. ‘He was mature in the political sense, although he retained his streetwise Sophiatown habits and, perhaps, his inborn vigour in carrying out tasks he believed were for a good cause,’ observed Andrew.

Later in the afternoon, Modise came back with Gqabi and Mthembu. Andrew didn’t know where they had been. Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu were already there when Andrew woke up. Joe Slovo, Bram Fischer, Rusty Bernstein, Jack Hodgson and Arthur Goldreich, the other members of the National High Command, were not there, but Andrew wasn’t worried. There were four main items on the agenda for the day: the welcoming of the trainees from China and their integration into the National High Command; Operation Mayibuye and the immediate implementation of some aspects of it; security issues; and the report from the Chinese on the trainees who had just returned, including Andrew. Sisulu warned right from the beginning that the meeting should not take long, as Andrew needed to be released early to be reunited with his family. But he also pointed out that the family was well, and reported that Gqabi and Mthembu had been to Andrew’s house to tell June that he was well although still undergoing treatment in Tanzania.

The report from China highlighted various aspects of the training and gave brief profiles of the six trainees, which would have to be taken into consideration by the senior members of the National High Command. ‘None of us knew how the report reached South Africa. But it was accurate on what we already knew,’ recalled Andrew in his old age. The report pointed out that according to the assessment done by the Chinese, Naidoo was probably the most gifted of the trainees. The report stated that he had the most initiative but also had a weakness – laziness. Gqabi was also smart, according to the report, but his weakness was that he was too ambitious and wanted leadership positions regardless of his ability. Mhlaba was identified as easygoing and a man who would do anything he was instructed to do, no matter how difficult, with a smile. Mthembu, stated the report, was predisposed to breaking down easily under pressure from the enemy. Andrew was identified as lacking initiative, but as someone who was loyal and committed to the programme of his movement.

Govan Mbeki informed the comrades that they were all going to be members of the National High Command and the implications thereof, and their respective roles. They were to assume their functions immediately. The struggle was up and running and there were things to be done.

In the same meeting it was decided that Joe Modise was no longer safe as he was under police surveillance. He was therefore advised to leave the country and go into exile for military training. Andrew was to take over Modise’s duties, including the recruitment of people for military training and transport. He was given a programme that he was to start implementing immediately, which included travelling across the country to explain to regional commands the programme of MK and to mobilise for more recruits in support of the provisions of Operation Mayibuye. After the meeting, Sisulu gave Andrew one pound and instructed Modise to deliver him, Gqabi and Mthembu to their homes. Andrew was the last to be dropped off.

As Andrew climbed out of Modise’s car and approached the front door he struggled to believe he was looking at his own house. All the windows at the front were shattered. There were signs that there had been some fighting. The door was closed, and he knocked. As it opened, Boetie Mlangeni, a son of his cousin who was living in Meadowlands, ushered him in. Inside the house, June was lying in bed. He checked the windows at the back. They were also broken. ‘Eventually, I realised that my entire house was without a single window that was not tampered with.’ It transpired that at the weekend that had just passed the family had hosted a party and many family members had been invited. The party was going well until a man known to Andrew as Maceke gate-crashed it and started to behave in a disorderly manner. He harassed June, and angry family members gave him such a sound beating that he was hospitalised. But June went on to report him to the police, who arrested him but released him on bail. He had apparently told his family a different story – that favoured him, because his family members then came and retaliated by smashing all the windows of the Mlangeni home. Mthembu and Gqabi knew about the incident when they visited earlier but they had decided not to tell Andrew when they met at Liliesleaf farm.

Andrew was very angry with what he was seeing and hearing and went immediately to Maceke’s house. He confronted him but Maceke’s speech was so disjointed that Andrew left, feeling this was fruitless and a waste of time. A week later, the court found Meceke guilty of assault and malicious damage to property; he was fined and the matter was deemed to have been settled. Andrew would have pursued him to fix all the broken windows, but felt it would waste his time and energy and derail the new programme that MK had just given him. In fact, he did not rule out the possibility that Maceke’s handlers may have sent him to provoke his family and therefore try to detract from his and June’s involvement in the struggle. ‘Maceke was reputed to be a police spy,’ said Andrew.

June had also been harassed by the police, who frequented her house day and night to conduct searches and to ask her questions about Andrew. Within weeks of Andrew’s departure for China, police had frequented his house or driven by, blatantly surveying it. June realised that she could be detained at any time, so she decided to take her two sons and daughter to Francistown to join their sister and grandmother (Andrew only found out about this when he returned from China). And June was not the only one in the family to be harassed by the police. The house of Andrew’s eldest brother Nyoko had been searched in 1962, sometimes with sniffer dogs. ‘It was scary every time it happened,’ recalled Josephine, Nyoko’s daughter. Nyoko’s wife, Jane Mdumbe, had been visited several times by white policemen demanding to see Andrew and Nyoko, and when they were told that both of them were not at home they would search the whole house, turning everything upside-down before leaving empty-handed.