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This is an
extraordinary book. Whoever heard of an autobiographical work two
people have written jointly? After all, an autobiography is the life
story one has written about oneself. What is more, how many
autobiographical accounts of the guerrilla war Umkhonto we Sizwe or MK
— the armed wing of the African National Congress — waged against
the apartheid have we read? None according to the book.
This book is an eye-opener to the armed struggle the Umkhonto we Sizwe
waged; Thula Bopela and Daluxolo Luthuli were participants in this
struggle having joined Umkhonto we Sizwe when they were young. Once
trained, they fought against the white minority regime in
Rhodesia
(now
Zimbabwe
) with the hope that a liberated
Rhodesia
would a stepping stone to the liberation of
South Africa
. The hardships they endured, their separation in the course of the
struggle, the individual paths they charted thereafter and the reunion
under nerve-wracking circumstances keep the reader in suspense.
But what about the
joint authorship? Not too long into the book, we learn that Bopela is
the narrator, reporting events he is not witness to in Luthuli’s
life such as what happens to Luthuli once they are separated in
Rhodesia in the third-person pronoun, while narrating events to which
Luthuli is absent such as his life in Kenya in the first-person
pronoun. In the first-person pronoun plural, he narrates what happens
to the two of them while training in camps in
Ukraine
(in the then the
USSR
) and
Tanzania
, while fighting in
Rhodesia
, while travelling into
Mozambique
, or while working in
South Africa
towards the end of the book. In the end, therefore, events around him
form the bulk of the book.
By the end of the
book,
South Africa
is democratic. But what contradictions in the liberation movement does
the book unearth, and what political and military leadership in the
continent does the book both censure and suggest? And what memorable
portraits does the book paint of some leaders the reader is familiar
with: Chris Hani - “a soldier’s soldier…a man loved and
respected by the common soldiers as well as by other MK commanders”
(p. 189), Samora Machel - “crying because the leadership is debating
whether he should go to
the front or not”
while “he wants to be there with his troops” (p. 51), Jacob Zuma -
“the faraway look on his face…gave no clue to what was going on in
his mind” (p. 262), and Nelson Mandela - “this great man, tall and
upright, accepting the apologies of a man who had once been his
soldier—but who had defected to the enemy” (p. 265).
I recommend this
engaging, informative, fast-paced and sensitive work which — while
showing where race and class intersect or how much is kept from
mothers as their sons engage oppressive regimes in armed combat —
embodies human love for freedom, for which people like Bopela and
Luthuli were prepared to pay the ultimate price while fighting for its
realization: death.
Muchugu Kiiru -
University
of
Nairobi - The African Publishing Record
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This is the first Galago title showing events of the Chimurenga and
South Africa
’s freedom struggle from the side of the insurgents. Both authors were
early Umkhonto we Sizwe recruits, receiving military training in the
former Soviet Union and in
Tanzania
. Both volunteered to join what became known as the Luthuli Detachment
who infiltrated Matabeleland from
Zambia
in August 1967 in support of Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA and both were
eventually captured by the Rhodesians. Bopela was tried in
Salisbury
for murder and sent to death row. Luthuli was handed to the South
African security police and spent 10 years on
Robben
Island
— but along with other foot soldiers was kept well away from Nelson
Mandela and the ANC aristocracy.
Bopela emerges as the main author and seems to have a keen ear as he
recalls conversations many decades old but solitary confinement and the
shadow of the noose may well have concentrated the mind. As it was
Bopela faced death from November 1967 to August 1969 when his sentence
was commuted. He remained in gaol until
Zimbabwe
’s independence in 1980. Luthuli served his entire 10 years sentence
before being released in 1980.
A number of points stand out in the narrative — firstly the difference
in policing in
Rhodesia
and
South Africa
in the juxtaposition of the careful investigation conducted by BSAP
Detective Inspectors Dancer and Peters versus the crude torture used by Rooi
Rus Swanepoel and his goons.
Much is also made of the cowardice of ZIPRA in general and its leaders
in particular — in the field and in gaol. The second observation is
that tribal animosity described by Bopela and the ‘we don’t speak to
them’ attitude adopgted by ZIPRA towards their ZANLA co-combatants —
along with the lunatic notion that they would automatically win the
Chimurenga probably made Mugabe’s genocide in Matabeleland inevitable;
although not the subject of this book, the difference between ZIPRA and
ZANLA was that the first played at liberation and the second ruthlessly
pursued that goal. ‘The difference between us and them’
He says about his MK co-accused and ZIPRA ‘ was that they had
surrendered without firing a shot. They were serving ten years terms and
were telling us we wouldn’t be hanged because the world would protest
vigorously! If they were so sure of that, why hadn’t they opened fire
on the Rhodesian Security Forces? We were listening to a pep talk given
by cowards’. They speak equally scathingly of several MK and ANC
leaders, principally Joe Modise, whom, it seems, had a penchant for
leading from behind. A final observation is that the ANC’s approach to
division — to pretend it doesn’t exist — comes a long way.
The story after 1980 is that of Bopela and Luthuli’s daily struggle to
survive, in Bopela’s case , his need to find a job and secure and
education in
Zimbabwe
and the
Netherlands
without the assistance of the ANC who by then saw him as a troublemaker.
Luthuli was ordered to mole into Inkatha, which he did, eventually
becoming the head of the IFP’s Caprivi-trained hit squad. Bopela
returned to
South Africa
in 1990 and in 1992 secured a job with Escom, with the help of Don
Mkhwanazi, now known as a friend of Jacob Zuma. Luthuli soon sought out
Bopela to open a channel to Zuma to end the carnage between the and IFP
which Luthuli discovered was being carefully controlled by Military
Intelligence to ensure that the violence continued but in a way that
ensured one side would not defeat the other. The link was established
and the rest if history. The food for thought out of this episode is
that Zuma today wears the halo for having made the peace. But is it his
to claim?
African Armed Forces Journal
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The ANC is said to be deeply divided over the future of former deputy
president Jacob Zuma within the ruling party. Ironically, dealing with
divisions and the conflict it creates is purported to have been Zuma’s
strongest point, both during exile and in post-apartheid
South Africa
. This is according to the new book titled Umkhonto
we Sizwe: Fighting for a Divided People which is co-authored by two
ex-MK soldiers, Thula Bopela and Daluxolo Luthuli. The book highlights
the prominent role Zuma played in quelling political fires.
It traces their adventures as young men going into exile in the early
1960s to join the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. What follows are tales about heroic battle they
fought as members of the famous Luthuli Detachment, betrayals, trials,
death rows and eventual triumphant return to South Africa. But their
story is very much about present-day
South Africa
.
‘We feel bad that as soldiers the people we fought for are still poor,
jobless and living in shacks’, says Bopela. ‘Our struggles werenot
about those in power, but the poor. But all we see today is corruption,
nepotism, non delivery and patronage.’
It is also an insightful account of post-independence
Africa
— the power-mongering, ethnic in-fighting, coups and other woes.
Sunday Sun,
Johannesburg
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