All I can say is that I am proud of my father for all the good work he has done for the country. I am happy that he is alive. Should he have been hanged, I would not be here myself.”
That said, 13-year-old Mkhululi Mncube turns back to fiddling on his laptop in pursuit of whatever it is that keeps teens so engrossed.
His father is Mthetheleli Mncube, an Umkhonto we Sizwe operative who escaped death in combat with apartheid security forces, and later on Death Row
But that he lives to tell the tale is a source of great joy not only to his adoring son, but to the progressive forces in the country.
“Mkhululi” means “liberator”, but such is the nature of things between doting fathers and their sons that the boy’s birth could easily have been his father’s liberating moment, his defining hour - not the other way round.
But with the humility of a Nelson Mandela, who visited the condemned on Death Row during the negotiations for a free South Africa, Mncube says it was not his AK-47 and grenades that freed us.
“Every black man and woman, irrespective of the work they did, freed this country from oppression. All of us did, each in their small way.”
Mncube’s home in Clayville, outside Midrand, is clean and well kept - from the manicured garden to the shiny floors.
The soldier’s precise touch is evident everywhere.
Mncube talks about his early life: he was born in Alexandra in 1960 and moved to Soweto, where he was involved in the 1976 student uprisings. Landmarks include the shooting of the June 16 crowds, the hanging of Solomon Mahlangu, and the Silverton siege.
“All the guys who died at Silverton were from my neck of the woods in Diepkloof.”
Mncube left the country in 1980 - through Swaziland, then to Angola, on to Germany for military training, and back to Angola.
Handpicked by Chris Hani “to go to the front”, the marksman, who had also shown a deft hand with explosives, was moved to Zimbabwe for “a couple of missions inside South Africa”.
Of Zimbabwe and its leader, Robert Mugabe, Mncube speaks fondly and with utmost respect. At the point that they were about to be executed, Mugabe had white prisoners in detention and apartheid South Africa was begging for a prisoner swop.
He speaks with undisguised reverence for Mugabe.
His last operation inside the country was in 1986. He was the only survivor among the team of five he was leading when they were involved in a skirmish.
He seems to shut out the drone of a helicopter as he describes the gun battle. When the gunfire stopped, three of his comrades lay dead.
“I told this one comrade I was left with that we had to split.”
Ncube would learn later of the demise of this comrade too.
For the next two days he was hunted like prey by the apartheid commandos. When he was finally accosted, naked and bleeding, he was handcuffed and put into an open vehicle, atop the corpses of his comrades.
“The heat was terrible and you can imagine the stench of the decomposing bodies.”
His escape is the stuff of a Hollywood epic. The religious would put it down to the hand of God.
The escort vehicle travelling behind Mncube and his captors suddenly overtook them and drove off.
After he had freed himself Chuck Norris-style and taken off his blindfold, he undid a small canvas bundle hidden under the dead bodies of his comrades and could not believe his luck when he found it contained an AK-47.
He disposed of his two captors and stole into the night. “The blindfold had disoriented me. I did not know which way to run to safety.”
But his luck would run out.
“I was rearrested 10 days later.”
It had been 10 days without food, surviving on the barest necessities that nature could provide.
Handed over by the army, being in the hands of the Special Branch was hell on earth. “I passed out three times from the beatings.”
Today, hearing the whirring of a helicopter causes him anguish.
He can talk of life on Death Row at Pretoria Central, but it is with haunting flashbacks.
Robert McBride was in one of the single cells, also awaiting a date with the hangman.
“Seven people were hanged a time,” Mncube says.
A good few times the counting stopped just before the hangman reached his cell door, and this gave the warders cause to mock Mncube.
“It is not your time yet,” they would assure him, rolling around in mirth.
He describes how meticulous the preparations were for a hanging, from the weighing of the doomed men to the last meal.
In Hollywood films the condemned get to choose their last meal before going to the gallows.
“In our case it was always the standard full chicken, no favours extended.”
It was always left untouched.
He remembers that some would go out singing hymns, others would chant freedom songs, while there were those who’d be dragged kicking and screaming, professing their innocence to their last.
“Salani kahle, bafowethu - Stay well, brethren.” This was the standard salute of the departing prisoners.
It still rings in Mncube’s head.
“There was this book,” he says, and for a moment he chuckles. “It told the prisoner exactly what was going to happen to their bodies after they were hanged. Many people did not read that book. I did.”
The book told them their bodies belonged to the state, which had the right to dispense their parts - kidneys, heart and other organs - at its sole discretion.
Some parts were donated to medical schools while the rest were lapped up by the specialists who circled Death Row like birds of prey on hanging day.
Mncube laughs at his joke, wondering how many racists walked around, kept alive by the organs of the “terrorists” they so hated.
When Mandela came to visit, it was to tell them of developments at the talks about talks, the mooted moratorium on hangings and the prisoner exchange with Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, the men on death row had to get accustomed to 23 hours and 30 minutes in lock-up.
The half an hour spent outside the single cells was used for exercise - during which they mixed with hardened criminals - a visit from outside or a church service.
In those last days of their lives, many on death row were won over to the Lord, Mncube says.
But the torment of having to prepare his sparse belongings - letters and the Bible - each time the sound of boots came down the corridor haunts him to this day. “And to be told each day that your day has not come”
The sound of the warders’ laughter reverberated along the corridor, Mncube says.
On September 22, 1992, he walked out of the prison, now called the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre, a free man.
A true cadre of the movement, Mncube says the ANC “is still the same ANC that had the aspirations of the people at heart”.
All that needs to die to bring the organisation back to life is the factionalism, he says.
He works for the National Intelligence Agency.
Sunday Independent