VUKILE THEO PHANYAPHANYA
Dear former president Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Mhlanganyelwa Zuma
It is with a heavy heart that I write to you at a crucial time when the political spectrum of our country seems to be taking shape in a promising direction, particularly with the formation of the EFF in the last decade or so, and the sudden rise of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), for which credit must be given to you as the former leader of the ANC.
Your irredentist and nostalgic urge to revive the old and politically annihilated military wing of the former liberation movement is plausible to those of us who are revolutionaries. However, it is also worth political scrutiny of a socialist military intelligentsia so we do not run the peril of the betrayal and further delay of the liberation of our people resulting from old underworld activities.
At least now we know that while the rest of us were involved in underground guerilla activities, some of your comrades were in the business of the underworld.
Three elements make me happy to have to write this rather lamentatious letter to you as former commander of the guerilla forces of MK together with the late comrade Chris Thembisile Hani, and as a former intelligence operative of the people’s forces from the late ’70s and the late ’80s.
These elements are that first, I had the opportunity to live during the interesting times of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Second, I had the opportunity to have a word with the late comrade Hani, while I was an SRC president during my varsity years. Third, I also had the privilege to peruse Mario Khumalo’s novella, The Untold Story of the Lives of South Africans in Exile.
Most black families that have compromised, knowingly or otherwise, their children to risk skipping the country during those most dangerous years of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), the Broederbond and the Special Branch have to date not found answers as to what happened to their children, nor have they received any word of acknowledgment or some form of compensation from the liberation movement that you led, the ANC.
I am sure you know I am referring to families such as the Mbuyisa Makhubu family, Mandisi Manakaza, and many of those who lost their lives in that infamous Matola Raid which, came as a result of CCB askaris and the gendarmerie activities within the so-called liberation movement.
The untold story of Bongani Ntshangase, a former Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College teacher who was mysteriously shot and killed in KZN, and many other comrades who were held unlawfully in an ANC prison in Tanzania, is one of the many atrocities committed by the mini-tribalist apartheid regime of the ANC in exile.
It might be excusable that many purges in the ANC camps in exile were political, but to have engaged in an onslaught against own comrades simply because they were Zulu or Xhosa, is a serious historical indictment that will never be wished away by people like you choosing to be mum about it.
Our people need to be assured that these tribal attacks on comrades in a movement that claims to be politically conscious will not be transferred to either the EFF or the MKP, which, by the way, you have declared the messiah that purports to rescue the tribalist ANC.
While the nation had hoped that the TRC would seal those wounds and help families on the road to closure by unveiling the truth of what happened to those comrades, that exercise also proved to be just another scam.
No truth had come out of it, even after a shocking revelation was made in Searchlight South Africa No 8, issued in August 1991 under the title: “A Purge of Zulu-speakers in ANC camps in Tanzania”. A sizable number of our people have welcomed the resuscitation of the otherwise dead MK with all the high hopes and belief that it is finally the right road to our liberation.
However, our people also need to ascertain that there shall be no more betrayals by those whom we put all our trust in. It is just for this reason that I write this letter to you, former president.
The phrase “never again” resonates in our minds, but shall we not further experience a period of tribal discrimination that riddled the ANC camps in exile since mid-1906, as reliably reported by MK soldiers Thula Bopela and Daluxolo Luthuli in their autobiographical study, Umkhonto Wesizwe Fighting for A divided People (Galago Alberton, 2005)?
Shall we not have history repeating itself in the re-establishment of the old Ruth First prison of the ANC at plot 18 in Dakawa in Tanzania, which detained our comrades with the help of the notorious Field Force Unit in exile without trial-like symptoms that have already shown in your imprisonment in 2021?
In his book, Mario Khumalo writes: “It is a privilege and a right to know that the number of South Africans that went to exile was not more than 70 000, a figure which was less than 1% of the population of South Africa during the times of the armed struggle.”
First, this number is crucial to mention so that we get an idea of the magnitude and size of the cadres that you had to lead, as the guerilla forces on which the whole country had put its entire hope as liberators. This number is inclusive of those comrades who had left the country after the formation of SASO in the early ’70s and after the Soweto uprising.
Mr President, it is quite traumatic to have seen comrades you know personally leave the country hoping you will see them again one day on their return in a liberated South Africa, only to be told years later that no one can account for their whereabouts.
While we might have had some flimsy explanations from the liberation movement, even suggesting that some might have been devoured by wild animals in the bush, it is saddening to note no one ever cared to give a full brief of what happened, and Khumalo’s book gives light to this underworld.
It is not my intention to open healing wounds in the hearts of our people nor is it my purpose to wake sleeping dogs, for this, would not be in a revolutionary spirit; only for us to be sure that the current MKP will never again fall into the same traps of either humiliating or being humiliated by those that have this experience like you, former president.
In March 1980, PAC members protested in Tanzania about the living conditions and soon after, 17 PAC members were gunned down for protesting in a foreign country.
I am certain you would be the one, at least in the absence of Hani, to help the families of these comrades have closure by revealing what happened, and who was responsible for such a command to be carried through.
Some of us are seated with scars of grief and guilt, for we cannot face the families of those comrades that we had recruited and never came back.
To date, we are conscious of the fact that we had the obligation to carry the mandate of Comrade Biko who had the political passion for the unity of the PAC and the ANC in exile. Little did we know that that passion would cost these comrades their lives at the hands not only of the enemy, but also of the very comrades they purported to unite for the sake of the liberation of our people.
Those who litigate against the revival of the old guerillas today should at least be ashamed of having, not only disbanded the guerillas, but having disowned them by denying them the fundamental right to their life sustenance, the military pension.
At least we must know that breathing life into the annihilated MK will not cost more comrades and black families more lives.
Vukile Theo Phanyaphanya is a retired teacher and an active author.
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