Of tortured, torturous times
Beyond Fear, the
this excerpt from autobiography of late anti-apartheid activist Ebrahim Ebrahim, he recounts
the danger his MK unit faced as the security police dragnet closed in on them in Durban in 1963. He describes his capture at the hands of the security
police and what happened next.
DURING the 1963 raids, Ronnie Kasrils and I escaped the first raft of arrests, which had included comrades Curnick Ndlovu and Billy Nair, but we quickly received an instruction that we should go into hiding.
On the night of the Rivonia arrests, I moved from my home to a safe house: that was fortunate as the police raided my uncle’s home. I was instructed to become part of a new Natal High Command together with Ronnie, and fellow saboteurs Bruno Mtolo and Steven Mtshali, but there was no preparation for us to operate from the underground.
The police were surveilling the homes of our family and friends. I had no transport or money to move around. Every day I had to find a new place to sleep and means to feed myself. This was confusing.
We had an organisation, a movement, behind us. Had we been abandoned? Ronnie then suggested we briefly move to Kloof, a predominantly white area about twenty minutes’ drive from Durban, where Eleanor’s mother had a two-room out-building surrounded by trees, which was not easily visible from the road.
There was a water tap outside but no toilet. We had to go to the nearby railway station to relieve ourselves, and even that was a source of concern for us. Bruno Mtolo soon joined us at Kloof.
The three of us were in hiding there for about two weeks. This was rather a long time considering how often we usually moved around. At that time, Bruno was a trusted member of our unit. We had no reason to doubt his loyalty, and so we held our cell meetings there with comrades David Ndawonde and Bafana Duma, whom I had worked with at New Age.
We mainly received reports of arrests and the state of readiness of other MK units. As for ourselves, we had to assess the safety of our equipment and the possibility of future sabotage actions.
Our head office in Johannesburg had divided the province of Natal into ten regions. We had to identify cadres in each region who could form a nucleus for MK activities, in line with Mandela’s M-Plan. Umkhonto was organised like a web linking cadres to contact persons on a vertical basis.
There was a regional high command in Durban and four subregional commands in the rest of the province. The latter were responsible for a number of cells under the control of an area organiser who reported to the regional command. The thing was that the ANC and MK in Natal were rather divided on the issue of armed struggle. Since the SACP funded the ANC to some extent, the relationship between the two had to be strong to be effective. I argued that we had to have a retreat strategy to preserve and consolidate our forces.
We couldn’t be effective in what at times felt like a vacuum. For Ronnie, Bruno and I, living in those out-buildings in Kloof could not be sustained, so we had to make a decision to move. Ronnie contacted an estate agent to find different accommodation.
This was a house up on a hill about three kilometres from central Kloof. We got some basic furniture to reduce the echo in the empty dwelling. It had many rooms and bathrooms with bathtubs. All my life I had bathed in a drum of water, so this was a new experience for me at the age of twenty five.
We also had to learn how to make our own dinners as we had little experience of cooking. Our rice, for instance, resembled mielie pap. But those weren’t major worries. Because of the nature of apartheid South Africa, blacks and whites living together in a house would
tend to arouse suspicion and give rise to gossip in the area.
That meant Ronnie had to pretend to be the owner of the house, Bruno the gardener, and I the painter. Eleanor was our contact person and she brought us food and other necessities.
Then came Saturday, 8 August 1963. Bruno left the house to link up with Comrade Steven at our old Kloof hideout. Steven wanted to join us in the house on the hill but did not know where to find us, so Bruno was going to direct him. We expected him back by lunch, but he did not arrive.
By late afternoon we were becoming anxious, and by early evening, when Bruno had not yet come back, we were seriously stressed. Bruno was not the most disciplined of cadres, and he had a tendency to disappear from time to time, mostly to visit girlfriends. But that evening Ronnie and I sat around in a sombre mood, speculating about what could have happened. Perhaps Bruno had not found Steven and then decided to visit a friend. Or, perhaps not. Of course, if he had been caught, he could well reveal our hiding place.
We were uneasy that night and the next day. We then agreed I should go back to the out-buildings in Kloof on foot, as we did not have transport. I surveyed the area from a distance, and saw signs of people having been there. When I got back to the house, I found an anxious Ronnie concealed among the foliage and shrubbery in the garden.
At about six o’clock, Eleanor rushed up the driveway in her car, and instructed us to leave the premises and wait down the hill in the bushes for someone to pick us up. It seemed the police had discovered the old Kloof hideout and were questioning her mother about it.
Bruno had meanwhile been arrested, and so too had the other members of our unit. We hurriedly grabbed some of our belongings and waited in the dark before being picked up by Pedro, a Portuguese comrade, who drove us to his house in Pietermaritzburg, where we discussed what to do next.
Ronnie suggested that I go to David Ndawonde, who was due to meet us in Kloof the next morning. It was decided that I would meet him at the Kloof railway station, and then take him back with me to Pietermaritzburg and join up with Ronnie there.
I was given R5 to take a train the next morning and pay for our tickets back. Pedro dropped me at the station. When I got to the platform, the train had just left. I knew that David would arrive in Kloof at one. It was then about ten in the morning. I had to get to him so he would not be arrested.
I saw a bus destined for Durban, bought a ticket, and boarded. Much to my frustration the bus made a brief stop in central Pietermaritzburg to pick up more passengers, but what was even more discouraging was that the bus stopped en route at the scenic Valley of a Thousand Hills for about an hour.
It finally entered Kloof at exactly 1pm. I got off at Kloof station and immediately spotted a notorious security policeman, Grobler, who was known to have tortured many detainees. I was hoping he hadn’t seen me, but it was soon clear that the place was crawling with the enemy.
I was wearing overalls for the purposes of blending in with the locals. I bent down to take a drink from a water fountain, thinking I would then make my exit, but Grobler was on to me instantly. He pointed a gun at me, later telling me he wished I had tried to run away as it would have been “his pleasure” to shoot me dead.
I was then put into the back seat of a waiting car with security policemen Prins and Steenkamp. As the car moved off, they began beating me. “Where is that Jew, Ronnie?” they shouted. I remembered what Comrade MD had repeatedly told us in our unit: you only need to give the police your name and address. Do not answer questions even if they seem harmless or innocent. So I remained determined not to answer, come what may.
Steenkamp was especially violent. The police then drove me to the Midmar Dam, shouting: “Coolie, where is Ronnie?”
They then pushed me under the water as if to drown me. I lost consciousness and then regained it: this went on and on for what felt like an eternity.
When they tired of their torture, they threw me back into the car and drove me to the house in Kloof which we had vacated the night before. It then became clear that Bruno had led them there. They had raided it mere hours after we had left. What affected me more was that David Ndawonde had also been arrested at Kloof station, where we were planning to meet that day.
In the security police’s enthusiasm to arrest him, they knocked him around hard enough for a packet of dynamite he was carrying to fall to the floor. Some cleaners discovered it later. It was very fortunate that the police never noticed it.
I was detained in a police station that night, bruised and in great pain. The police said they would “come back for me” later that night. Meanwhile, I was to “think hard about Ronnie”. They wanted information about MK. I looked at them in disgust.
The book, published by Jacana Media, will be launched on Saturday at South Africa in the Making, Shop 7, Moses Mabhida Stadium at 2pm. Gcina Mhlope, an anti-apartheid activist, storyteller and author will be part of a panel discussion with Shannon Ebrahim, the partner of Ebrahim, and Sunny Singh, a Robben Island prisoner and a member of uMkhonto weSizwe. To RSVP, email rsvp@jacana.co.za with the venue indicated in the subject line.