RONNIE KASRILS
REFLECTS IN NEW MEMOIR ‘CATCHING TADPOLES’
CATCHING Tadpoles is the very moving South African story of how an ordinary Jewish boy from Yeoville in Johannesburg grew up to do extraordinary things – emerging from a typical white, elitist high school with apolitical parents to emerge as one of the leading revolutionaries of the South African struggle against apartheid.
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 Kasrils’s beautifully written narrative of his formative years, which portrays in vivid detail the origins of his early politicisation.
Throughout his childhood the typical refrain from school friends was “Live and let live, don’t worry about the Schwartzes”, but his critical mind rose above that narrow thinking from an early age.
His mother talked about his natural empathy and encouraged Kasrils to be a humanist, while his father had socialist tendencies and taught him to respect difference.
Kasrils would accompany his father on his rounds as a travelling salesman, where he became familiar with other races and was one of the few white children of his era who travelled into Alexandra township.
The book depicts how from a young age Kasrils began to empathise with the disempowered and victims of repression. An early turning point was at the age of five when Kasrils witnessed a young boy in a playground full of white children, who was deeply disturbed by the fact that a black father and his son were peering through the fence, but unable to enjoy the amenities.
The young boy insisted on going back to his hotel rather than experience privilege and happiness while others were excluded. This early memory shaped Kasrils’s early perceptions of injustices in the society around him.
A potent influence in the formation of his political thinking as a child came from the Sachs sisters, daughters of Jewish immigrants from Russia who were devout Communists. Bella, his first crush, taught him that wealth should be shared and that if there was equality, there would be no wars.
Discussions with the Sachs sisters on the dangers of the rise of the National Party in South Africa was a defining moment in his politicisation.
Kasrils grew fiercely independent in his adolescent years and grew to despise the apartheid system around him.
At the age of 12, when Kasrils’s parents were away, he had to write a letter of authorisation for the cleaner in their residential building to be out on the street at night.
The very notion that a boy could write a letter of authorisation for a black man his father’s age to be allowed to walk on the street was beyond ludicrous.
By the age of 16, Kasrils was not afraid of anyone, openly challenging the system at King Edward School. The vicious flogging meted out as punishment by the principal, John B Nitch was not only unnecessary, but unjust, and instilled in Kasrils a hatred of those with authoritarian and abusive tendencies. In the face of the sadistic punishment, he stood up for himself and defied the system.
But perhaps the most influential turning point in his life were the lessons of his history teacher, Teddy Gordon, who taught the French Revolution and the evils of feudalism and absolute monarchy, where those who lived in obscene luxury were juxtaposed against the destitute peasantry.
As Kasrils learnt about the French masses who had no rights and were treated like animals prior to the French Revolution, he drew parallels with the injustices experienced by the masses in apartheid South Africa.
A stint as an article clerk in a law firm exposed Kasrils to the gross injustices of the pass laws, and the abuses experienced by the potato farm labourers who were kept in makeshift prisons, regularly beaten and buried in the potato fields.
He bore witness to the 1957 bus boycott which saw residents of Alexandra township walking miles into town, and he eventually interacted with ANC revolutionaries like Robert Resha and the first black attorney Duma Nokwe.
It was Resha who sought Kasrils’s assistance in distributing stickers supporting the economic boycott, and he dutifully agreed to this first political act.
Kasrils’s interaction with the great Marxist theoretician Roley Arenstein in Durban, who was married to his second cousin, probably made the deepest impression on his ideological thinking. He came to understand that to change unjust societies depends on the uprising of the masses and the unity of social forces in the struggle for freedom.
As Arenstein used to tell him, “Philosophers had attempted to interpret the world, but the point is to change it.”
While school had taught Kasrils that anything was possible if you really tried, he came to realise that real change was impossible if it was sought in isolation of everyone else.
A revolutionary had been born in the belly of white apartheid South Africa, who would rise up in defiance of one of the world’s 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.