Ronnie Karils - Catching Tadpoles: Shaping of a Young Rebel

Occasionally hilarious, often terrifying, sometimes gossipy, always engaging, Catching Tadpoles is a brilliant account of a child growing up in a brutal, unfair system, and at the cusp of adulthood saying: no way, not me, damn their eyes. Richard Poplack, author of Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa

Ronnie Kasrils gives us the first 21 years of his life with all the elements that have made him beloved of freedom fighters and book readers alike: his dash, his cunning, his humour, his humanity and most of all his irrepressible joie de vivre. He comes of age, he comes to political consciousness and he brings his early worlds from Jewish Yeoville to Bohemian Joburg to life. Unputdownable.Mark Gevisser, author of Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir

Catching Tadpoles is beautiful because Kasrils is impossible; disarmed but more dangerous with pen than a rusting Makarov.Ashwin Desai, author of Reverse Sweep: South African Cricket since Apartheid

I love his story. It is like mine: trauma, tension, fear, fun and belief in something. His was right; mine was never left. I now call him a friend, a patriot en n bietjie mal.Evita Bezuidenhout, performer, author, satirist and social activist

The vivid details in these memories are captivating, and from them emerge a coherent narrative of an extraordinary life fully lived. Its a hugely enjoyable read and reveals a life which South Africans young and old and others have so much to learn from.Victoria Brittain, author and journalist

In this new work, we get closer to the boykie who grew up whitish to become the man we have come to respect for his steadfast political and existential courage, for his integrity, for his wit and humour, for his fierce commitment to apparently lost causes, for his ability to think and act and engage beyond the limitations of self and of tribe and political expediency and interest. All of the foregoing and then to be a true writer as well! From this apparent contradiction, he has forged a dialectic for decency.Breyten Breytenbach, poet, painter and author of several books including The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and Dog Heart: A Memoir

Radiant and rumbustious, Ronnie wears his youthful heart on his sleeve ... a powerful read. Albie Sachs, activist and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Kasrils conscience, his questioning mind and a sense of justice predestined his collision with racial domination and apartheid. A decade of teenaged youthful rebellion was crystallised into active participation in the national liberation struggle by the Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960. Once he had connected the dots, he committed himself, heart and soul, to the struggle to liberate South Africa from racial oppression. In these pages, Kasrils shares with us the social milieu, family and societal values that shaped the mature liberation fighter. Z. Pallo Jordan, Letters to My Comrades: Interventions and Excursions

As a young black female author, I am enthralled at how Ronnie managed to use his voice and other resources available to him in order to serve the world and rally for justice. I am immensely captured by the image of a young Ronnie Kasrils who feels so intensely and believes wholeheartedly. That is the kind of young South African that our ancestors wished to pave a way for. We are each called to view and partake actively in our societies with a potent combination of optimism and the relentless activism of a young heart that is on fire. Zanele Njapha, author of An Eye for Love

Kasrils is irreverent and irrepressible the original rebel without a pause. Zapiro, cartoonist and author of several books, including WTF: Capturing Zuma A Cartoonists Tale

In this delightful book, Ronnie Kasrils lifts the veil on the formative years of a revolutionary activist. It is a fascinating read and a rich account of a white boy coming of age in apartheid South Africa. It provides the clues of how this remarkable South African first began to explore the vision of a new and free South Africa. Luli Callinicos, historian and author of The World that made Mandela and Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains

Heres the boykie before he becomes a Bolshevik. This is Ronnie, not yet Kasrils the ANC guerrilla, anti-apartheid fighter, underground operative. A white Yeoville boyhood lovingly recalled. In its unpretentious way it challenges the fashionable identity politics of our times. Were more, it gently reminds us, than the early identities into which were nurtured. And yet somehow, always marked by them too. A childhood and adolescence recounted with Kasrilss eye for detail and an empathetic memory. Jeremy Cronin, author of More Than a Casual Contact

Many South Africans have wondered what influenced Ronnie Kasrils as a child to have empathy for the underdog and ultimately take on the apartheid state as one of the founding members of Umkhonto we Sizwe in Natal in 1961. The answers lie in Kasrilss beautifully written narrative of his formative years, which portrays in vivid detail the origins of his early politicisation. A revolutionary had been born in the belly of white apartheid South Africa, who would rise up in defiance of one of the worlds most unjust systems. Catching Tadpoles is an illuminating read which unpacks how it came to be that a few whites, often of Jewish extraction, developed the courage to reject everything they were taught. Shannon Ebrahim, Group Foreign Editor for Independent Media, South Africa

This fine book illustrates that Kasrilss rebel child is father to the revolutionary man. Mongane Wally Serote, author of YakhalInkomo.

Catching Tapoles is a delicious artistic achievement by Ronnie Kasrils on multiple levels: the aesthetic quality of the writing is enviably masterful; the meditation on the psychological quandary of reliable memory is philosophically rich; and the narrative of how a young white boy came to recognise the humanity of all of his fellow citizens regardless of racialised identities with the concomitant moral and political duties that that awakening brings will re-inscribe much needed hope into our discourse, making the case again for the possibility of cross-class solidarity in the continued struggle for an anti-racist South Africa. Eusebius McKaiser, talk radio host and author of A Bantu in My Bathroom! Debating Race, Sexuality and Other Uncomfortable South Africa

Catching Tadpoles

Catching Tadpoles

The Shaping of a Young Rebel

A Memoir

Ronnie Kasrils

First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2019

10 Orange Street

Sunnyside

Auckland Park 2092

South Africa

+2711 628 3200

www.jacana.co.za

Ronnie Kasrils, 2019

All rights reserved.

d-PDF 978-1-4314-2965-3

ePUB 978-1-4314-2966-0

mobi file 978-1-4314-2967-7

Cover design by publicide

All photographs are from the Kasrils family collection unless otherwise indicated.

Layout by Alexandra Turner

Editing by Alison Lowry