Ties that bind- Part II
DOUGLAS TSIAKO
It was in this powerful moment of solidarity in the liberation movement that I received a letter from the mother of Robert McBride, a brave MK cadre who was arrested after a daring operation, asking us to join the campaign for her son’s reprieve from death row and release from prison. (With letter bombs and other concealed explosives killing people at the time, and the handwriting on the envelope of the registered letter looking like a white woman’s, I had taken no chances and had the police to open it for me).
It was also during this time that two officers of military intelligence at the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), Moth and Vic, asked me to inform Patrick van Rensburg and Michael Dingake that agents of the apartheid regime may be after them (again). Both men took it in stride.
An important man that I expected to be present in this audience today may remember that it was during this time that a conference was held in Arusha, Tanzania where - among other things - an organisation called Federation of Southern African Journalists (FSAJ) was formed and he put his immense diplomatic skills to great use to overcome resistance from the Tanzanian delegation presumably over Botswana’s record at the Liberation Committee of the OAU - to me being on the founding committee of FSAJ.
Comrade Thabo Mbeki - now former president of South Africa and midwife, alongside President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the difficult birth of the new South Africa - became the chairperson of that committee, Charles Chikerema of the Herald in Zimbabwe, secretary-general and me deputy secretary-general of FSAJ. Raborifi of the ANC was also on the committee.
To illustrate the value of solidarity and therefore, like Nelson Mandela, never forget our obligations to others, the liberation movements of southern Africa present at that conference - namely the
Speaking as a representative of ASABO (Association of South Africans in Botswana) at the funeral of ANC stalwart Michael Dingake recently, veteran journalist took a wide-sweeping view of Botswana as the most frontline of the Frontline States during South Africa’s tortured struggle for freedom and democracy and cast a harsh light on what he calls “eclipses of history over interstices of time” where he found a few shadows and much that is little known about what they hold
ANC, the PAC, SWAPO, FRELIMO and ZANU PF (Yes, some of the organisations were evidently finding it difficult to completely exfoliate the hard flakes of the struggle) - were joined by fraternal organisations from abroad, including and especially the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Yasser Arafat that was with us throughout the difficult terrain in many other aspects of the struggle.
The objectives of FSAJ were clear – to put the liberation struggle and its leaders on the offensive in dissemination of information and propaganda and the enemies of the people, the apartheid regime and its Western allies, on the defensive. We had no illusions about the task before us in the ubiquitous presence of pro-apartheid publications and Western media hollering from the mountaintops, notably the BBC, the VOA and Reuters, for whom those in quest of freedom and racial harmony were simply terrorists. Even so, we were undaunted because, like the man whom we are gathered to salute and bid farewell to, Rre Dingake here, we were driven by the force of our convictions.
The great man that I had said I had expected would be here with us – an eminent personage in the ANC in exile – may also remember how he, a few years after Arusha and in spite of his eminence, had me lead a delegation of FSAJ on a courtesy call on President Joachim Chissano in Maputo. (I do not mind telling this gracious audience that one of my most cherished memories from that day is being served tea – personally - by none other than Graca Machel before we left for State House!)
President Chissano appealed to us to raise the clarion call by rallying everyone in newsrooms across the sub-continent and beyond to the cause of the liberation movement, which call fell squarely within the remit of FSAJ. Years before, the country that forms the south eastern coast of Africa had been on the verge of economic success and was edging towards Botswana’s achievement as southern Africa’s best in primary health care, a prospect that apartheid South Africa found intolerable under a Marxist government in its neighbourhood.
Ahmed Ben Bella
But if anyone was ever in doubt of Botswana’s contribution to the liberation struggle and is consequently doubtful of this nation’s credentials and role in it, it can only be because of the ignorance of such people regarding this matter and the sheer geography of this republic that dictated location of routes of infiltration of MK cadres through it. Beginning in the 1960s when Nelson Mandela passed through Lobatse en route to Algeria for a critical meeting with Ahmed Ben Bella after which uMkhonto we Sizwe was formed, the historic PW Botha meeting with Kenneth Kaunda in a specially-built mobile home just across the border from Tlokweng in April 1982, the arrest and imprisonment of the hero that we are here gathered to salute and bid farewell to, as well as the exploratory conference of the youth wings of the ANC and the PAC with Jeugkrag of Mathinus “Kort Broek” van Schalkwyk in Gaborone in the late 1980s, Botswana was the most frontline of the Frontline States.
But as we all know, these were but mere indexes of much more serious work - a considerable amount of it planned and executed from the high-density neighborhood of Bontleng in Gaborone - that was always in progress to advance attainment of freedom for all.
We at ASABO are aware of these things and are custodians of a great deal of information and knowledge about them throughout what many may see as eclipses of history across the interstices of time during which the world’s largest liberation movement prosecuted a just struggle against one of the world’s most profane and violent heretical doctrines that had elements of Nazism, a distorted understanding of Calvinism, fraudulent influences of Sigmund Freud’s theory of race, itself proven a falsehood and a heresy, and Zionism.
But this is not due to any special genius that we are gifted with but is simply because if we were ourselves not present when the instances of malevolence that were concomitant to apartheid and the spirited resistance to them occurred - both spontaneous and organised - our predecessors were.
For instance, I was all of 13 years when my Father entrusted me with smuggling the portrait of Patrice Lumumba from our humble township home at 1053 Mokhesi Street in Dobsonville in Soweto, then in the West Rand, to my maternal grandmother’s homestead at Goo-Ra-Keebine (wa Moloinyana ex-Difetlhamollo) in Ramotswa, Botswana, after the popular picture of the first Prime Minister of the Congo Republic (DRC) was suddenly declared a prohibited publication by the apartheid regime.
It had commanded a pride of place on the dining room wall next to the wedding portrait of my parents in the standard oblong wooden frame that was in almost every home in Soweto and other townships of urban South Africa at the time.
My father’s explanation of why the apartheid regime and the CIA had featured the most in the cruel assassination of the Congolese leader and of the UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold in the 1960s, formed an early part of my political consciousness and nascent impetus to resist apartheid whose vicious nature was portrayed by the propensity for violence in the conduct of the SAP, South African Police to whom everyone in the townships aptly referred to as Satan After People.
As an organisation, ASABO came into existence in 1995 when we enjoyed the limelight of the presence of presidents Ketumile Masire and Nelson Mandela at our launch in Gaborone.
As the founding Chairman of ASABO, France Pale will agree with me that we are custodians of much also because some of us were also members of Medu Art Ensemble, the cultural wing of the ANC that turned Gaborone into a citadel of cultural resistance in its own right that also served as a decoy to throw the scent off MK cadres awaiting a signal to set off on their mission.
This is the Medu that counts among its achievements the campaign against attempts by PW Botha’s apartheid regime to scupper SADCC by means of what the apartheid regime proposed to call by the telling name of Constellation of Southern African States As a Bulwark Against Communism that fell flat before it could take off.
However, we discovered quite late that we were infiltrated after the mole was arrested in Zimbabwe. While we remain to be corrected here, we believe Billy van Zyl was exchanged for high-value prisoners on death row, among them Robert McBride, in the course of CODESA.
But he had caused irreparable damage to the struggle and the families of that dead-of-night raid on Gaborone on June 14, 1985 in which some in the Botswana command of Umkhonto we Sizwe perished in an overkill that only Hosts of Hell can visit upon people dedicated to the execution of a just cause.
Before then, one morning we had woken up to find an article in the Rand Daily Mail that had details of the registration number plates of the vehicles we used, including the finer detail that each vehicle had a set of two registration number plates (by arrangement with the Special Branch) that were regularly changed in order to confuse the enemy, as well as the location - by street and number - of the house in Bontleng that we operated from.
As is now well known, the toll of the dead in the June 14 Raid includes George “The Big George” Phahle and his wife Ous Lindie, who had done much to grow and raise the level of social work in Botswana when she worked for the Ministry of Local Government and Lands, and outstanding artist Thami Mnyele.
The remains of these have been exhumed and reburied in South Africa in befitting ceremonies at which ASABO was represented by Rhoda Sekgororoane. The hero whom we are here gathered to salute and bid farewell to, Rre Michael Kitso Dingake, who was an outstanding member of ASABO in his own right, had been present at the exhumations.
“Further Evidence - Hit Squads”
Other notable members of Medu were Wally Serote, who in 2003 motivated for the formation of a special committee for formally paying tribute to Botswana for having welcomed refugees and the country’s role in the liberation struggle.
But in my view, nobody was more dedicated to the work of Medu than my good friend, the late Bachana Mokwena, who was in the ‘advance guard’ that returned to South Africa early in the negotiations but sadly died in a car crash while driving back from the funeral of ANC lawyer, Bheki Mlangeni.
Mlangeni had died when he tried to listen to a cassette on a tape recorder labelled “Further Evidence Hit Squads” that he had received in the mail while subsequent investigations pointed to Bachana’s car having been tampered with by loosening the nuts on its wheels by agents of the apartheid regime even as CODESA was underway.
His dear spouse, Myriam, survived but was seriously maimed. The sensational songbird beloved of Batswana, Sonti Mndebele, whose parents were a South African father and a Motswana mother, was another member of Medu Art Ensemble. So were Ruth Moore and Sinah Molefi. It is difficult not to remember, albeit only in passing, that Medu had a music band in which Sonti sang soprano, Ous Lindie (Phahle) alto, Bachana Mokwena second tenor and me first tenor while Bra Jonas Gwangwa was on trombone and Kush on congas.
At one time, Radio Botswana extended to us the largess of use of its Green Studio for practice because we were due to record master tapes of a set of freedom songs there.