Shirley Gunn - Voices from the Underground: Eighteen Life Stories from Umkhonto We Sizwes Ashley Kriel Detachment

Published by Penguin Books
an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441

PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

First published 2019

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Publication Penguin Random House 2019

Text individual contributors 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

PUBLISHER: Marlene Fryer

MANAGING EDITOR: Robert Plummer

EDITOR: Alice Inggs

PROOFREADER: Lauren Smith

COVER DESIGNER: Ryan Africa

ISBN 978 1 77609 385 4 (print)

ISBN 978 1 77609 386 1 (ePub)

This book is dedicated to Ashley Kriel, Coline Williams, Robbie Waterwitch, Anton Fransch and Chris Hani, who gave their lives for our freedom

The author has put many months of work into researching and writing this book. This ebook is NOT free, and should be bought from an ebook retailer. If you are circulating it for free, you are breaking the law and can be prosecuted under the Copyright Act 98 of 1979.

Contents

I AM DELIGHTED TO write this foreword, given the fact that I was associated with this unit for many years as its front commander based in Botswana and came to appreciate the dedication, discipline and commitment of its members.

The testimony in this book is from a number of great patriots who joined the African National Congress (ANC) and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and operated in the crucible of our struggle. All of them tell of great sacrifice and dedication; women and men, young and old, united in a single mission to attain freedom. Its members primarily come from the Western Cape, but over time comrades from Johannesburg and Durban joined them.

This unit takes its name from one of the young sons of the Western Cape and a darling of Bonteheuwel, Ashley Kriel. Ashley left the country having been active in the mass democratic movements activities in the Western Cape and what was ambitiously called the BMW (Bonteheuwel Military Wing), a group of young activists influenced by Guevarean sacrifice and dedication. Ashley later joined the ranks of MK, trained in Angola and was deployed by Military HQ (MHQ) as part of a unit to Cape Town. Tragically, once back in South Africa, he was killed by one of the agents of death of the apartheid regime in circumstances that remain unclear. He never compromised any of his comrades and died valiantly in the true spirit of the great king Hintsa. Perhaps, as he wrestled with security policeman Jeffrey Benzien, who later applied for amnesty at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Ashley thought of the last words of Che Guevara to Sergeant Jaime Tern: I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

By the time Ashley died, a number of comrades trained outside the country were already forming a nucleus of MK operatives in Cape Town. This unit was under the command of Aneez Salie and Shirley Gunn. In recognition of Ashleys heroism, we named it after him, with the support of MHQ.

Thanks to the iron discipline in this unit, it managed to operate for some time under the nose of the beast, evading arrest and detection. They carried orders from their commanders without any hesitation, and they fully understood the Oath of MK to maintain and protect secrets and property of the ANC and its military wing. Of great significance is that few of the members of this unit received formal military training in MK camps in Angola. Most were trained inside South Africa, and some in the frontline states, specifically Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, as well as further afield in Cuba. The spirit of commitment in this unit is exhibited by one of its members, Kim Dearham, who says:

There were thousands of people who were part of the wheels of resistance that finally broke the apartheid regime. If I am deemed a small bolt in this machinery, I am humbled. Through the AKD I met human beings who made invaluable contributions towards my view of the world. My children were affected by Mikes and my absence, but they have not grown into resentful adults. They respect the choices of the youth of the 1970s and the 1980s. Perhaps we were idealistic, but this is what pushed us to grow.

There were many casualties in the struggle for freedom, and this book is dedicated to preserving the memory of Ashley Kriel, Anton Fransch, Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch, young freedom fighters who made the ultimate sacrifice and must be celebrated. Also never to be forgotten are those who were an integral part of this great unit and have since passed away Johnny Issel, Richard Ishmail, Paul Endley, Andrew Adams and Patrick Presence. As Charles Martin says in his story, Till the Sun Sets:

Scared as we may have been at times, we were prepared to lay down our lives for freedom, right until the end.

This book will reveal how a group of people, joined by the umbilical cord of commitment to the values of the ANC, fought for a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa. It tells the story of their survival under intense conditions of repression in the Western Cape, and the bravery of Ashley Kriel and Anton Fransch who valiantly fought the security forces until their last breath. It also tells the story of the fateful mission undertaken by Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch, the wrenching pain their fellow unit members felt on hearing the news of their deaths and the efforts made to inform their parents and loved ones and salvage materials to protect the organisation from discovery by the apartheid security forces.

Anyone wanting to understand supreme commitment and discipline need look no further than the pages of this book. For me, the power of these stories is their uniqueness. Readers will make up their own minds about which stories resonate with them most, but I am certain that they will appreciate each one and what it took for them to be published.

JAMES NGCULU

MARCH 2019

I N OCTOBER 1987, South Africas minister for law and order, Adriaan Vlok, boasted that the apartheid security forces had broken the back of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, in the Western Cape. This claim followed the arrests of MK units commanded by Tony Yengeni and Ashley Forbes, and the killing of Ashley Kriel, who had recently returned from training in Angola. But Vloks declaration of victory was premature. MKs Ashley Kriel Detachment (AKD), named after their slain comrade, conducted over thirty operations across the Cape between late 1987 and the day MKs founding commander-in-chief, Nelson Mandela, was released from prison on 11 February 1990.

Voices from the Underground tells the story of the AKD through the narratives of eighteen of its members, chronicling their political awakening and activism, their paths to taking up arms against apartheid at the height of its oppression in the late 1980s, their training outside South Africa and within the country, and the operations they executed.