Honour to learn from comrade’s example
Former SANDF MajorGeneral Petane has died
IFIRST met Comrade Mxolisi Petane as a fellow soldier of uMkhonto we Sizwe soon after my arrest for terrorism in August 1987, while in Section 29 captivity behind enemy lines in Pollsmoor Maximum Prison.
This at a trying time when isolated from other comrades in a section for sentenced non-political prisoners, I needed the inspirational strength of his example of combat resolve to face the enemy interrogation without losing control.
Our engagement not only reinforced that resolve, but taught me some useful techniques to divert focus from what was done to body and mind during interrogation.
We met again in D-Section on Robben Island in 1988 where Petane was the political commissar responsible for political education in the communal cell we shared with about 34 other comrades. Apart from this, I was also part of a closed group where he specialised in teaching us the military history of wars of resistance in South Africa.
One particular skirmish, the battle of Zwartkopjes of 1845 in the Transoranje region, did not initially fit the bill given my previous school history references that it primarily involved a confrontation between the British Army and Boer inhabitants in which the former were the victors.
That was until he taught us the decisive role the Griqua had played in that victory long before the British Army arrived and that this was part of a series of victories of the Griqua against the Boers who had attempted to colonise Griqua land between the Orange and Riet rivers.
It is that same political commissar who in 1995, now as colonel in the new SA National Defence Force stationed at its Western Province Command at the ironically named Castle of Good Hope, offered strategic guidance on dealing with integration into state security structures.
I had at the time recently been integrated from the ANC’s Department of Intelligence and Securityand later National Intelligence Agency, into the new Crime Intelligence component of the SAPS in the Western Cape. Strategic advice on integration, he and I also provided to a delegation of IRA commanders at Cowley House in Woodstock who faced similar challenges after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 in Belfast that sealed the negotiated settlement in Northern Ireland.
But it was at his son’s umgidi in Gugulethu a few years ago that I also met a different Comrade Petane, the father. True to his commissaresque attention to historic detail, he introduced me to his son in full political profile, as part of his son’s now extended history and community.
Whether advising on counter-interrogation techniques, teaching the history of wars of resistance, or including me in your team advising IRA commanders on integration, or as father introducing his son, you never treated me with nationalist prejudice as a “coloured” comrade of different political pedigree.
True to your mission as commissar, your regard for cadres of equal revolutionary standing despite the divisive history of sectarian politics of identity in the Western Cape, always exemplified the principled letter and spirit of our movement’s tradition of non-racialism. This consistently upheld, manifest in both principle and deed, until your passing.
It was an honour to have learnt from your example.
Hamba kahle Commissar General Mxolisi Petane.
TRUE TO HIS COMMISSARESQUE ATTENTION TO HISTORIC DETAIL, HE INTRODUCED ME TO HIS SON IN FULL POLITICAL PROFILE