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Safe houses and their role in the South African liberation struggle

26 April 2021 | Story Prof Chitja Twala | Photo Sonia Small

Prof Chita Twala — Prof Chitja Twala is an Associate Professor of History and Vice-Dean in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State and writes in his personal capacity.

In South Africa, the month of April is referred to as Freedom Month with 27 April known as Freedom Day. In celebrating and commemorating this day in 2021, it is important to acknowledge the role of the contribution of safe houses to the liberation struggle. The safe houses were sometimes referred to as ‘hosting or transit’ houses. The relative dearth in academic research and the scrutiny of those houses cannot be left unattended. This academic investigation attempts to contribute to the South African historiography on cross-border politics and that of liberation struggle studies.

After the banning of liberation movements/organisations such as the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and others by the apartheid regime in the 1960s, these movements established networks of safe houses inside and outside the country. However, in response to this, the regime stepped up its repression by targeting such houses to destabilise the underground activities of the liberation movements.

The significance of the contribution of safe houses to the liberation struggle

Therefore, it is against this background that this article briefly considers highlighting the significance of the contribution of safe houses to the country’s struggle for liberation. In counter-acting the apartheid regime’s efforts, the liberation movements embarked on tightening security measures around safe houses for those using them. These measures amongst other things included, first, that the political cross-border activities were determined by a few individuals within certain ‘cells’. These ‘cell’ leaders were responsible for masterminding the exile routes of those escaping the country.

Second, for security reasons, the owners of these houses and host families were not identified. The houses would mainly be known only to the ‘cell’ leaders. The duration of staying in these safe houses was also determined by those in leadership. Third and lastly, in most cases the political activists who used these houses were not familiar with the territory; thus, tracking their location was not an easy task. Furthermore, the apartheid agents also battled to track their routes into exile because of the limited information of how and where they stayed in transit in the north of the continent. On many occasions, the safe houses were located in towns near the border of South Africa and the intended host country. Ronnie Kasrils remembers meeting Nelson Mandela for the first time in July 1962 in a small safe house in Durban. He recalls that the house belonged to a worker.

In Lesotho there was Maleseka Kena and her husband Jacob Kena who resided in the small village of Tsoelike in the Qacha’s Neck district. Jacob Kena was an influential member of the Communist Party of Lesotho. They used their house as a safe place for South African political activists coming into the area. Although Maleseka was not actively involved in politics, she was sympathetic to the ANC liberation cause. John Aerni-Flessner notes the following about her: ‘Maleseka Kena’s life story, child-rearing, border-crossing, refugee-smuggling, and political involvement as a woman in rural Lesotho turned out to be more compelling from the standpoint of understanding how apartheid and issues of local identity impacted lives in communities of the periphery of the apartheid state. She channelled her political work into groups on both sides of the South Africa/Lesotho border’.

Raids and attacks on safe houses

As mentioned previously, the apartheid regime launched raids and attacks on some of the safe houses. For example, on 30 January 1981 the South African Defence Force (SADF) raided safe houses in Matola, a suburb on the outskirts of Maputo (Mozambique). These safe houses served as transit points for uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK) cadres. During the raid 12 MK members and one Mozambican citizen were killed. Another MK member, Mduduzi Sibanyoni, later died of injuries sustained during the raid. On 9 December 1982 the SADF launched another attack in Maseru (Lesotho). The ‘Moscow House’ which was used as a transit camp in Lesotho became a target of the SADF. This raid was unofficially referred to as ‘Operation Blanket’. In this raid 12 Lesotho nationals and 30 South Africans were killed. Attacks on safe houses in neighbouring states showed the disregard by the apartheid regime for their sovereignty. This was to instil fear in the governments of neighbouring countries so they would desist from supporting the liberation movements. The raid in Lesotho was condemned by the Commonwealth as an infringement of the territorial integrity of the sovereign states. Not only were the safe houses or camps targets, but also offices belonging to the liberation movements. The raid in Gaborone (Botswana) on 14 June 1985 was on the office of MK. This raid was dubbed ‘Operation Plecksy’. During this raid 12 people were killed and only five were members of the ANC.

In Manzini (Swaziland), house number 43 Trelawney Park, a four-bedroomed house belonging to Buthongo and Rebecca Makgomo Masilela provided shelter for ANC members. Masilela’s house was commonly known as KwaMagogo. The house was frequented by the likes of Jacob Zuma during his underground operations in Swaziland. Others who used the house during their operations were Thabo Mbeki and Glory September. In the vicinity was the ‘White House’ which was established by John Nkadimeng on his arrival in the country in 1976. Another safe house in Swaziland was ‘Come Again’ in Fairview.

In Botswana, a kingpin in accommodating political activists crossing into the country from South Africa was Fish Keitsing. He was a Botswana-born ANC activist who was responsible for establishing The Road to Freedom. He came to South Africa at the age of 23 as a migrant worker and joined the ANC in 1949, later becoming the leader of the Newclare Congress Branch and was its volunteer-in-chief during the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He was charged along with others in the Treason Trial of 1959-1961 and was later deported to Botswana. Before he left South Africa, Walter Sisulu asked him to set up a safe house in Lobatse. Assisted in his task of controlling the Road to Freedom were other ANC activists, including Free State-born Dan Tloome, Michael Dingake, Mack Mosepeli and Mpho Motsamai.

Although this article samples just a few of these safe houses and the role the owners played in assisting South African political activists en route to exile, more is still to be academically recorded in this regard.

* Chitja Twala is an Associate Professor of History and Vice-Dean in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State and writes in his personal capacity

News Archive

Media: Sunday Times

2006-05-20

Sunday Times, 4 June 2006

True leadership may mean admitting disunity

In this edited extract from the inaugural King Moshoeshoe Memorial Lecture at the University of the Free State, Professor Njabulo S Ndebele explores the leadership challenges facing South Africa

RECENT events have created a sense that we are undergoing a serious crisis of leadership in our new democracy. An increasing number of highly intelligent, sensitive and committed South Africans, across class, racial and cultural spectrums, confess to feeling uncertain and vulnerable as never before since 1994.

When indomitable optimists confess to having a sense of things unhinging, the misery of anxiety spreads. We have the sense that events are spiralling out of control and that no one among the leadership of the country seems to have a definitive handle on things.

There can be nothing more debilitating than a generalised and undefined sense of anxiety in the body politic. It breeds conspiracies and fear.

There is an impression that a very complex society has developed, in the last few years, a rather simple, centralised governance mechanism in the hope that delivery can be better and more quickly driven. The complexity of governance then gets located within a single structure of authority rather than in the devolved structures envisaged in the Constitution, which should interact with one another continuously, and in response to their specific settings, to achieve defined goals. Collapse in a single structure of authority, because there is no robust backup, can be catastrophic.

The autonomy of devolved structures presents itself as an impediment only when visionary cohesion collapses. Where such cohesion is strong, the impediment is only illusory, particularly when it encourages healthy competition, for example, among the provinces, or where a province develops a character that is not necessarily autonomous politically but rather distinctive and a special source of regional pride. Such competition brings vibrancy to the country. It does not necessarily challenge the centre.

Devolved autonomy is vital in the interests of sustainable governance. The failure of various structures to actualise their constitutionally defined roles should not be attributed to the failure of the prescribed governance mechanism. It is too early to say that what we have has not worked. The only viable corrective will be in our ability to be robust in identifying the problems and dealing with them concertedly.

We have never had social cohesion in South Africa — certainly not since the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. What we definitely have had over the decades is a mobilising vision. Could it be that the mobilising vision, mistaken for social cohesion, is cracking under the weight of the reality and extent of social reconstruction, and that the legitimate framework for debating these problems is collapsing? If that is so, are we witnessing a cumulative failure of leadership?

I am making a descriptive rather than an evaluative inquiry. I do not believe that there is any single entity to be blamed. It is simply that we may be a country in search of another line of approach. What will it be?

I would like to suggest two avenues of approach — an inclusive model and a counter-intuitive model of leadership.

In an inclusive approach, leadership is exercised not only by those who have been put in some position of power to steer an organisation or institution. Leadership is what all of us do when we express, sincerely, our deepest feelings and thoughts; when we do our work, whatever it is, with passion and integrity.

Counter-intuitive leadership lies in the ability of leaders to read a problematic situation, assess probable outcomes and then recognise that those outcomes will only compound the problem. Genuine leadership, in this sense, requires going against probability in seeking unexpected outcomes. That’s what happened when we avoided a civil war and ended up with an “unexpected” democracy.

Right now, we may very well hear desperate calls for unity, when the counter-intuitive imperative would be to acknowledge disunity. A declaration of unity where it manifestly does not appear to exist will fail to reassure.

Many within the “broad alliance” might have the view that the mobilising vision of old may have transformed into a strategy of executive steering with a disposition towards an expectation of compliance. No matter how compelling the reasons for that tendency, it may be seen as part of a cumulative process in which popular notions of democratic governance are apparently undermined and devalued; and where public uncertainty in the midst of seeming crisis induces fear which could freeze public thinking at a time when more voices ought to be heard.

Could it be that part of the problem is that we are unable to deal with the notion of opposition? We are horrified that any of us could be seen to have become “the opposition”. The word has been demonised. In reality, it is time we began to anticipate the arrival of a moment when there is no longer a single, overwhelmingly dominant political force as is currently the case. Such is the course of history. The measure of the maturity of the current political environment will be in how it can create conditions that anticipate that moment rather than seek to prevent it. We see here once more the essential creativity of the counter-intuitive imperative.

This is the formidable challenge of a popular post-apartheid political movement. Can it conceptually anticipate a future when it is no longer overwhelmingly in control, in the form in which it is currently, and resist, counter-intuitively, the temptation to prevent such an eventuality? Successfully resisting such an option would enable its current vision and its ultimate legacy to our country to manifest in different articulations, which then contend for social influence. In this way, the vision never really dies; it simply evolves into higher, more complex forms of itself. Consider the metaphor of flying ants replicating the ant community by establishing new ones.

We may certainly experience the meaning of comradeship differently, where we will now have “comrades on the other side”.

Any political movement that imagines itself as a perpetual entity should look at the compelling evidence of history. Few movements have survived those defining moments when they should have been more elastic, and that because they were not, did not live to see the next day.

I believe we may have reached a moment not fundamentally different from the sobering, yet uplifting and vision-making, nation-building realities that led to Kempton Park in the early ’90s. The difference between then and now is that the black majority is not facing white compatriots across the negotiating table. Rather, it is facing itself: perhaps really for the first time since 1994. Could we apply to ourselves the same degree of inventiveness and rigorous negotiation we displayed leading up to the adoption or our Constitution?

This is not a time for repeating old platitudes. It is the time, once more, for vision.

In the total scheme of things, the outcome could be as disastrous as it could be formative and uplifting, setting in place the conditions for a true renaissance that could be sustained for generations to come.

Ndebele is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town and author of the novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela

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