The Life of An Anti-Apartheid Activist

Children of Apartheid
Esrom Mokgakala: The Life of an anti-apartheid Activist
October, 1997
Toronto, Canada

Esrom Mokgakala is a Canadian Citizen of South African descent who worked closely with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Among other activities, he spent three years on Robben Island, worked for the Pan-Africanists Congress (PAC) [one of the leading anti-apartheid organisations in the early years of the struggle], and, after leaving the country soon after the Soweto Uprisings, spent a number of years conducting military training overseas with the PAC.

In 1984, with the help of Canadian officials at the United Nations, he emigrated to Canada as a political refugee. He currently lives in Toronto and works for an organisation called Culture Link which helps new immigrants adjust to a new life. Both in South Africa, and in Canada, Esrom has always worked closely with the community in which he lives.

Esrom is excited about the new South Africa, which he sees to be, in the words of Robert Sobhukwe the ex-leader of the PAC, "pregnant with possibilities." However, he is not naively optimistic and feels that there are still many hurdles to overcome. As he says: "This is not the end of our struggle, this is the beginning of our struggle to create the new South Africa." This is his story.

Note: Throughout this interview (*) indicates a link to relevant links at the bottom of the page.

His Story - Early Years, the Armed Struggle, Robben Island, Return to "Freedom"
I got involved very early, politically in South Africa. I was born in 1940, and around 1948 the Nationalist party of South Africa became the government, and by that time I was old enough to hear people talk. And there was a lot of talk about 'colour bar' in South Africa. Although our parents would not discuss much about politics, the word 'colour bar' was always on their minds, it became a part of the idiom of the people. For instance if you were jealous they would say "You have colour bar," or if you are unfair they would say you have colour bar, or if you don't like them, they would say "So and so has got colour bar." So I got curious to find out what this colour bar was from very young age.

When I was about 11 there was the Defiance Campaign in South Africa in 1952 - it affected my life very much. There was an older guy, living across from where I was living, who was an active member of the ANC (*) and he was the first young person I saw who was interested in politics, and I saw a lot of young people surrounding him. So I got curious, and by the time of my first day in high school I had already been exposed to the ANC.

By the time I wrote my high school junior certificate there was quite a crisis, a leadership crisis, in the ANC in the Transvaal Province. I met a gang of disgruntled ANC members who broke away from the ANC to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Then I joined the PAC, which for me was more militant - I mean they didn't have a history of failures and things like that, And when I compared the ANC with them, I found the PAC more youthful and more intellectually enriching, and so I hooked up with them.

I was one of the youngest people to join the PAC at that time [he was 18 at the time], and very quickly I found myself being groomed as the next layer of leadership. I became chairman of several branches of the PAC. For instance, I participated in organising the Witwatersrand region, helping to set up branches throughout that area. And I actually took part in preparations for the Sharpeville (*) Campaign which was opposed to the Defiance Campaign of 1952, [which] we called a positive action campaign.

This was an extension of the defiance campaign. The purpose was to demand a repeal of the pass laws, and to surrender our passes to the system and to tell them we don't want to use them anymore. The most that we achieved was to get a suspension of the pass laws for some time.

Sharpeville (*) did two things for me: Sharpeville convinced me that we needed an armed struggle in South Africa to get our freedom; and, peaceful demonstrations wouldn't work with the kind of government that we had. We needed a military response because [the government] were always coming with the military.

The Armed Struggle

I need to explain to you what we mean by the armed struggle. There is a statement by Mao that "war is the highest form of politics." We decided on the armed struggle because we figured we had political work to do; which was not violent work. Every time we did this political work we got violence from the army and the police. To protect our work we had to protect ourselves. So our being armed was not with the intention of doing violence but with the intention of protecting our work and ourselves. And, that is why the philosophy of a people's war demands that there must be a very strong political leadership of the army so that the army carries out political intentions, not military intentions.

Going to Robben Island

In 1963 I found myself on Robben Island. [Note: Nelson Mandela (*) was sent to Robben Island in 1964.] I went to the island because of the ineptitude of the leadership of the PAC. In 1963 we were planning an armed uprising - very amateurishly - with no good leadership. There was such a demand for an armed struggle in South Africa that we intended to cause an armed rebellion by African people in South Africa. But our plans were thwarted. The police came to know about our plans before we even fully discussed them. Very soon we were all rounded up - it ended up with about 2000 PAC members on the Island in 1963.

We had a big leak inside of our own leadership apparently, because they [the police] knew everything. They knew our codes, and our pseudonyms. They were even addressing us in our code language so it was obvious that they knew who we were and what we intended on doing. So they rounded us up.

Arrest, Detention, Interrogation

I was in detention for 180 days before I was put on trial. We were expecting the worst. But I was lucky to be with friends and comrades who protected me since I was one of the younger guys in that crowd. They protected us younger guys from serious abuse and also gave us a lot of advice on how to handle ourselves in detention. And I think I looked young and naive even to the interrogators because I didn't really go through very stringent interrogation. [In the interrogations] there was tough talk and I did get a few slaps, a few kicks, a fist here and there, and threats and all that, but, I mean, nothing like people like Steve Biko went through.

I was charged under the suppression of communism act of 1944 (*). There were two charges coming out of that act: the first was I that I was a member of an illegal organisation; and the second was that I was furthering the aims of an illegal organisation.

I didn't matter if I denied anything or not, and my trial was very strange. I was charged under the suppression of communism act, but the only incriminating evidence they had against me was that they found a book on the civil war in the United States, and a copy of the US declaration of rights, which they called propaganda. In the summary that the magistrate gave at the end, he said this documentation proved that I was a communist. The trial was a mockery.

I got three years on each of the counts, and I was fortunate that the magistrate who was presiding over the case decided that I should serve the sentences concurrently. So I ended up doing three years. So from 1963 to 1966 I was in Robben Island.

On Robben Island

The Island was hell, the reception was just hell. We were traveling from just north of Johannesburg to Cape Town and they had chained us together. By the time I had arrived on the Island my feet were so swollen the guards were calling me "Wit foot" meaning white feet, because I had bandages on both of my feet. I still have scars on my feet from those chains.

There was a group of about 100 of us who had arrived on the Island from Johannesburg. The reception was very violent. We were all beaten up and pushed over. There were lots of atrocities on the island at that time. There were people who had been buried alive, people who had been pissed on, people who had broken arms, and some people were just taken from the Island to Pretoria to be held. The officials on the Island were telling the police in front of us "you must shoot to kill, when the prisoners go out of order." So it was tough - lots of violence.

When we arrived there, the prison was still being built - it was very new. We had to work in the quarry and the sand would make my wounds much worse. We were actually sentenced to hard labour, which meant we would face all the abuse. We were also given the worst diet. Because the diet itself was classified by race and gender. The classification was A Diet for white women, B Diet for white men, C Diet for coloured women, D Diet for coloured men, E Diet for black women, and F Diet for black men. So obviously I was the F Diet guy, so we were eating the throw-aways.

But, it was also educational, I mean for the first time we had all the leading political leaders in the country in one place. We used to have meetings, and educational classes. Actually I read my first literature on communism there. A friend brought me a copy of the 'Communist Manifesto', so this was the first time I realised what these guys [communists] were talking about.

We were in a section solely for political prisoners, and we just had to have meetings. Some of the people were even charged later for the meetings we used to have. They used to throw about eighty of us together in a cell, and sometimes they would throw in an informer to report on our activities, but sometimes we'd ignore them. But the guards couldn't prevent the meetings because we had to have some sort of social life.

Return to Freedom

After I left I was expecting to be banned to a remote area, I was not even expecting to return to Soweto. However, I returned to Soweto, but I found out that under the pass laws I had lost my right to live in Soweto. I couldn't legally look for a job, or even rent an apartment. Later on I married, and by marriage your qualifications improve. Somehow I survived, I don't know how, but I survived for ten years in South Africa after I came off the Island.

From time to time I would be working and then they [the police] would come and harass me out of my job. They would tell my boss that I was a communist and the white South Africans don't like black communists; I mean, that was enough for them to fire you.

There were attempts to get me to be an informer, but I turned them down. They would say "you watch around, look at what your comrades are doing, tell us and we will give you money," or "trap your comrades into having a meeting and we will trap them, and come and pick them all up." I refused to do this, which meant that I would face more harassment.

I would be raided at any time, they would turn my whole apartment upside down, search through all my books, throw my clothes around, and of course, tell me all the abuse they can tell me. This could happen to me any time. My kids grew up knowing that this is what they could expect from these guys any day, any time.

In those ten years after Robben Island I was working underground. I had no alternative anymore [than to be a freedom fighter]; the system had already branded me. So I continued doing education, trying to build up the resistance underground. I continued working with the PAC. But, it is difficult to talk about underground work [because of security].

His Story - Leaving South Africa and Military Training
I left South Africa three months before the Soweto Uprising (*), because we knew the uprising was coming, and we also knew they were going to re-arrest all of us who had ever been arrested for a political offense. I was actually instructed by the PAC leadership to get out, and go to the PAC external headquarters in Tanzania and brief them on the situation at home.

So I ended up in Dar Es Salaam [Tanzania], where I joined the PAC army, and went for military training. I went all over the world, I ended up being a sort of political Commissar. By then it was the aftermath of the Soweto uprising, there were a lot of young guys from Soweto who wanted to join the army. I happened to be the most senior person in the PAC who was from Soweto at that time. So obviously I had to take leadership over them. So I got a leadership position in the army, sort of a political orientation of the army, political education of the army and so forth. My job was mostly the political education part.

[They sent him abroad for military training, to a number of countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and China]. I trained mostly in China, to some extent I was regarded as the Sinologist of the PAC because I was training in China in guerrilla warfare. I went to China several times with different groups.

We were trained by the Chinese. It was interesting. For instance, the only training I have in guerrilla warfare is by the Chinese Army, and it is in what they call a "people's war". I found that very interesting because this is what we were trying to do in South Africa: organizing a national uprising. We had lots and lots of training in the philosophy of a people's war; The strategy and tactics of a people's war; the organizational structures of a people's war; the building of operational base areas, the relations with the civilian population, and things like that. It was fascinating: learning how to build a resistance army, that is what we were trying to do.

The End of Military Training

Most of us who went to join the army abroad gave ourselves a maximum of six months to be abroad. But, almost none of us achieved that. My military training started in 1976 and lasted to about 1979.

The main reason it stopped was that I tried to implement my philosophy, and I met resistance from inside the PAC leadership. Then it flared up into an uncontrollable dispute. My philosophy was that of a people's war, and not many people wanted that kind of thing for fear that it might get out of control. It's true, nobody can control that, because it is too liberating. And, before you take the gun, your politics must be clear, and then you focus on certain objectives. That demands a lot of discipline, and it demands a particular kind of structure. Not everybody was willing to subject themselves to that kind of discipline, and the structure was also threatening the power basis of some people - it was restructuring the organisation.... also, it was time for me to reunite with my family.

I couldn't go back to South Africa, I was on the wanted list at that time. Because they [the South Africa government] knew that I was in Dar Es Salaam, and they had already arrested some of the people I had trained. [Note: It was illegal for black South Africans to leave the country at the time.]

[As a result of this internal dispute] I had to get out of Tanzania. So I had to go to the United Nations (*) to ask for protection. I needed protection even from my own comrades at the time. I appealed to UN to take me out of Tanzania as quickly as possible. Then they took me out. They made all the international arrangements. I went to the UN Human Rights Commission in Dar Es Salaam, and then they made arrangement for me. Ultimately I was interviewed by the Canadian immigration official from Nairobi.

His Story - Coming to Canada
[Before coming to Canada Esrom spent three years in Germany where he received a diploma in business administration. He then returned to Tanzania, and the UN (*) arranged for him to come to Canada as a political refugee.]

I was completely confused when I first came to Canada. I remember taking a walk along Yonge Street, in Toronto. When I reached College Street I got scared, I went back, I thought I might get lost, then I went back down again. All of a sudden I found myself in the middle of perhaps the biggest police raid that ever took place in Toronto. It was a raid on the Church of Scientology, and the police removed a million documents out of that place. I was so fascinated I couldn't sleep that night. I dreamt of Steve Biko that night, being tortured to death.

My wife came over about six months after I had arrived, so I had to start the struggle of settling down. It was big struggle adjusting to my own family. I had been away from them for 6 or 7 years. My boys were already big, I was shocked to see them, they were already in their early teens. I had left them a month after the youngest started school. So you can imagine. It was a tough thing just to readjust to each other and the new environment, to look for work. But, it worked out. My wife was very strong, and she gave me lots of support.

Ultimately we settled, and after some time I got a job working in the 'helping industry'. I worked [work] for an organisation called CultureLink. We work with people who are in similar situations that I had been in, to help them find their feet and to adjust. That gives me a lot of satisfaction and a lot of pride. And, it has sustained me.

I work with refugee claimants who come to Canada, newcomers who come to live in Canada. My job is to recruit Canadians, work within the host community to find volunteers to help the newcomers adjust to the new thing. So this exposes me to Canadian culture and Canadians, and this exposes me to the various newcomers coming from all over the world to live in Toronto. They are people from all over the world, so it enriches my knowledge of the world and of myself.

I am fortunate. We usually say that the kind of thing we do is a thankless job, where we put in too many hours, and sometimes we get abuse, even from the people we are trying to help. But, I was recognized for my job in Canada, and, something I knew would never happen in Johannesburg, I was able to win a leadership award in 1994 by my colleagues. Meaning that they really liked what I was doing, and giving me courage to continue.

South Africa Today - Mandela, and the Future
I sometimes feel, and I must be very careful of offending South Africans by saying this, that South Africans tend to have a very exaggerated view of the wealth of their country and its potential. And that is why it is only somebody like Nelson Mandela (*) who can keep it together at the moment; and I am one of those who fear to see him go away. Not that I want him there forever. I definitely would not want him there all the time. But, I admire what he did, and I think it is very important and historical that we went through this period with him as help.

I am one of those South Africans who think that Mandela is one of the best things to happen to South Africa. But, you see, I don't want to over estimate his capabilities. I'm happy that Mandela, and I give him credit for this, has managed to keep the government going. The whole world is watching and he has given the country a very good image, he has given very good leadership; and that I appreciate.

But, as somebody who has been involved in the struggle, of course my sights were higher, and I was expecting a little bit more. I was expecting that we would defeat the white army for instance, and that we would have the substance of power, really.

There is going to be change; there is change taking place in South Africa. Actually, I find that many people expected that the elections themselves meant the end of the old era and that things all of a sudden will start. They didn't take into account that people need to adjust to the new environment, and that there are inequalities, damages of apartheid. The biggest complaint that I have against Nelson Mandela is that he is not really addressing the damages done, to the black people, by apartheid.

However, his role is not to solve the problems of apartheid, it is to palliate, to make the transition smooth. For that I think he is doing very very well. The transition might not end up being smooth, but he will have created conditions where it will turn smoother. For that I think he's got his place in history.

People are more excited about the coming election than the last. The last was a fantasy, it was something that the people had never had before. This is the beginning, the first time of really looking at issues. The future is brighter. For example I have a parliament that I can appeal to, I've got a judicial system that is ready made for me to use. But we must remember this is not the end of our struggle, this is the beginning of our struggle to create the new South Africa.

Esrom's Children, and Going Home

[Recently his children, who were six and nine and living in Soweto during the Soweto uprisings, went back to live in South Africa; when they left they were aged 27 and 30. When they arrived in Canada the youngest was thirteen and older was fifteen.]

I think they are more radical than I am. I'm older than Steve Biko (*), and Steve Biko is their hero. But they have a lot of respect for my contribution, especially on a personal level. I think history has a lot of those instances where the younger generation thinks the older generation did not do enough. They grew up in a generation of young South Africans who feel that their parents did not fight the system hard enough.

I grew up like that too. My parents would only talk about colour bar, but they would never do anything about it, except make jokes about it. But, now I realise what they were doing was the only thing they could do. The value of what they were doing was that they were educating me and reminding me that there is a serious problem that you will have to address at one time as you grow older. And, as I grew older I had to do it.

To some extent Nelson Mandela vindicated me. His release brought a new dynamic. It was as if my generation was the generation that brought freedom. Although it looks more like accident than by design, especially from my own vantage point. I happen to be lucky that I was always there. We talk about the Defiance Campaign, I was 11, but I was conscious about it. You talk about the Sharpeville campaign, I was not in Sharpeville but I was there when they were burying the dead, I was at the funeral. Of course I went to Robben Island too, which proves that I was not just on the sidelines. To some extent I did my little bit.

The Future

For me having been here [in Canada] has been positive; not for me alone, even for my kids who have gone back to South Africa. Canada is our new home and we've always contributed to the communities in which we've been involved.

In Canada my kids went to school during a time when it was difficult to go to school in South Africa. They were fortunate to get a good education that they would not have acquired in South Africa because of the Bantu Education (*). This is something we are eternally thankful for. Especially me as a parent, I'm very thankful that my kids got the opportunity to go to school. They learned a lot of things: they are filmmakers, computer technicians, photographers and even writers - they wrote their own scripts for the films they did.

However, I am going back. I've been away from South Africa for 21 years. I've been talking to some people there, and I know that the South Africa I am going to find will be very very strange. But my kids are there, my family is there. I can go to South Africa and live in a cocoon and still be at home. My personal wish is to go to South Africa and to sit down and write. I could work on a project like yours from time to time, but I don't want to go and have a 9-5.

I have reason to be very optimistic about South Africa. It can not be as bad as it was when I was 20 years old. There are things I can do today: I can run for parliament, I can assist somebody to go to parliament. I can do so many things; I can run a small community project, I can teach. I can teach people how to do the Internet. I don't have the expertise right now, but I can learn them quickly. There's so much I can do. It will be very exciting for me.

Last Words
I want to say to you that the new South Africa is a very big promise, and a very big challenge for all South Africans. I think that the big problem still remains as to the rightful place of the black population itself; the kind of justice they deserve. This will always be of concern to me. Whilst, like every black person, I will listen to those who caution me to be more patient... I would like to feel that we are doing away with injustices and that we are building a decent society. That, I think, we are capable of doing.

Relevant Links

African National Congress (ANC)
Bantu Education Act
Life Under Apartheid
The Freedom Charter
The 1949 Programme of Action
Nelson Mandela
The Sharpeville Massacre
The South African Elections
The Soweto Uprisings
Steven Biko
Suppression of Communism Act
The United Nations and South Africa (coming soon)
Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) - Armed wing of the ANC