I SIT DOWN with Ronnie Kasrils in a central London hotel, turn on the recorder and say something about being here with the legendary ANC activist and freedom fighter.
I am quickly interrupted by Kasrils to say “— and communist.”
It is an important intervention because Kasrils’s communist beliefs were and still are fundamental to his work and activism.
Kasrils was in the country for a special showing of The London Recruits.
“The preview of the film is for the recruits and their families before it goes out to the festivals over the summer.
“Of course just because we call them London Recruits doesn’t actually mean they were all Londoners, although a majority were. They included people from Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well as people working here from elsewhere such as North America and across Europe,” he says.
The film has been put together by Gordon Main from a film company called Barefoot Rascals.
The company’s name is taken from a 13th-century Welsh revolt against the Normans where the authorities determined to put the “barefoot rascals” to the sword.
Kasrils was sent by the ANC to the Soviet Union for training for his mission to develop a particular type of support in Britain for the freedom struggle in apartheid South Africa.
“After my training I came to the UK and enrolled as a student at the London School of Economics. I wasn’t really a student, I was there to recruit for the movement.”
He tells me: “I started making friends with students at the LSE and trying to identify people who we could send on missions into South Africa.
“The Anti-Apartheid Movement was a big help but the Communist Party of Great Britain, as it was at the time, was also critical in finding recruits.”
Kasrils went with another legendary communist and anti-apartheid freedom fighter, Joe Slovo, to meet then CPGB general secretary, John Gollan, to discuss support.
Kasrils recalls that Gollan “was very wary of bugging devices in the King Street offices so we went for a walk in the street to discuss how the party could support our struggle.
“The party recommended mainly Young Communist League comrades who they felt were reliable enough to do the job that was needed. They were working-class people of around 20 years old. Outstanding comrades.
“But we also had other comrades from across the country including seamen’s union comrades from the north-west of England.”
Kasrils tells me that one of the things he is most proud of is that he was able to unite ultra-left groups with the struggle against apartheid.
“There was hardly a communist at the LSE. They were all in organisations like the International Marxist Group. We had our political differences but on South Africa they were pretty good.”
His job was to identify “solid and reliable white people” who could go into South Africa “as if they were on holiday or looking for business to act as our couriers and to meet with our people who were still underground.”
Kasrils adds: “The job of the recruits was to take messages, money or false documents and so on into the country.
“We had to choose white people for obvious reasons at this stage but in later years black comrades, particularly from places like Swaziland and Mozambique, also played a critical role in these missions.
“We hit on the idea of getting them to smuggle things into the country in secret compartments of suitcases that we manufactured in a very naive period where people were not fully searched on aeroplanes as they are now.
“They could carry in Marxist literature and ANC materials very easily.”
Kasrils tells me how during the 1960s the South African Communist Party was operating underground, having been crushed by the police state.
“Thousands of activists had been arrested and thousands were incarcerated on Robben Island. People were being tortured to death and many executed. It was a very tough time.
“The remnants of our people in South Africa could hardly move. So we felt we needed to distribute clandestine material to show people that the struggle was still alive.”
Kasrils went through an extensive process of vetting potential recruits through many meetings to see that they were serious people who could also keep a secret.
“I even had to get drunk with them to see what they were like once they had a few drinks.
“We had to be sure that after a few drinks they were not liable to shoot their mouths off,” he adds.
Once the recruits went into South Africa they had specific instructions and codewords to follow to either identify themselves or be sure who they were talking to.
If they had any doubts that the mission had been compromised or that they were being followed by the security forces then they had to abort.
As time went on the recruits graduated from being couriers to carrying out missions themselves.
On one occasion recruits of three teams of two were required to go into South Africa and set off propaganda leaflet bombs to scatter material at the same time in different highly populated locations.
This meant the recruits needed to know how to properly set the devices and leave themselves enough time to escape before the security forces arrived.
“When I was first involved in setting these devices off we didn’t have timing devices so we had to just let the leaflets go and get away as fast as we could before the police arrived,” he says.
All of this “spycraft” took training — carried out by Kasrils in borrowed apartments throughout London.
I’m curious who trained Kasrils in these techniques?
“Well, we got some training in the Soviet Union and the GDR [German Democratic Republic], Cuba and China but that was mostly military.
“We devised many of these things ourselves having been underground for a number of years already.
“The books of John Le Carre also provided a lot of great tips on surveillance and counter-surveillance.”
Kasrils says the movement also had people in Britain who helped to develop really ingenious equipment for the missions against the apartheid regime that, for example, allowed the movement to be able to broadcast speeches alongside leaflet bombs in built up areas.
I ask Kasrils why it is still important for people to know about the work of the recruits.
“It’s a celebration of the legacy of the recruits but also to show the continued importance of international solidarity, especially in a world where we see police states clamping down more and more.”
Kasrils adds: “It was really shocking to me to see on coronation day people being manhandled and arrested for protesting and raising the question of a republic in London.
“These films and books such as the one I wrote recently, called the International Brigade Against Apartheid, should inspire people to demonstrate solidarity to people such as the Palestinians and those fighting against racism in places like the United States.”
The 1993 memoir by Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous: My Undercover Struggle Against Apartheid, should be required reading for revolutionaries everywhere. The book and now the film about the London Recruits are in the same category.
Kasrils is still armed and dangerous. Armed with a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience that, for good reason, should be considered highly dangerous to anyone content to oppress and exploit other human beings.
