At an East London cinema last summer, several dozen people in their late sixties and early seventies took to the stage. After being beckoned forwards by the compere, the veteran South African revolutionary Ronnie Kasrils, the shying group of mostly retirees received repeated standing ovations from loved ones, politicians, and diplomats filling out the private screening. Afterward, they chatted at the cinema bar and signed pamphlets and books, while their proud children and grandchildren took selfies with the actors who had portrayed their family members in the film they had just enjoyed.
The film in question was London Recruits, Gordon Main’s docudrama about the British people who played an active role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. From smuggling literature and weaponry to assembling, planting, and detonating “leaflet bombs,” these volunteers — who were mostly white, working-class young people — played a massive role in the development of the struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) for national liberation. Indeed, Nelson Mandela made a reference to their actions in a 1991 speech, where he paid tribute to those Western volunteers who “risked life and limb to contribute directly in our struggle” and, in doing so, “acted in the best traditions of democratic internationalism.”
Though the stories of these volunteers sound romantic in retrospect, the impetus for their recruitment was borne of desperation. By the late 1960s, the national liberation struggle was in a situation of profound difficulty; much of its core leadership was narrowly spared the death sentence in favor of life imprisonment during the Rivonia Trials, and the Gestapo-like South African police had seen to it that most of the movement’s fighters were killed, jailed, or exiled.
In this period, Ronnie Kasrils — a commander of uMkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, or, commonly, MK), the ANC’s armed wing, who fled South Africa…
Auteur: Marcus Barnett
