Today, November 15, is the birthday (b. 1938 in Yeoville, Johannesburg) of Ronald—“Ronnie”—Kasrils, a former member of both the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), and an early (some say ‘founding’) member of Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation), commonly known as MK, the ANC’s armed wing of the struggle for liberation from apartheid in South Africa, formed in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 (the SACP was also responsible for the founding of MK insofar as it supplied some of its earliest recruits, as well as contributing its members’ ‘technical skills’ and ‘revolutionary theory’). [The turn to armed struggle was simultaneously undertaken by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) with the formation of Poqo (meaning ‘pure’ or ‘alone’ in Xhosa).]
Kasrils served in post-apartheid South African governments as Deputy Minister of Defence, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, and Minister of Intelligence Services. As noted in his Wikipedia entry:
“Kasrils has been strongly critical of the ANC under Jacob Zuma. He is also a noted critic of what he has called the ‘descent into police state depravity.’ In April 2014 he launched the ‘Vote No’ campaign alongside fellow ANC member and former government minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. The campaign aims to encourage people to cast protest votes or spoilt ballots in the 2014 general election as a protest against Zuma and the perceived corruption of his government. In December 2014, Kasrils was elected to the national working committee of the newly-created United Front, a workers’ party led by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), and also spoke favourably of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a newly formed leftist opposition party. In April 2016, shortly after the EFF's major court victory over President Zuma, Kasrils joined several other prominent former ANC insiders in calling for Zuma to resign.”
Kasrils’ autobiography (Heinemann, 1993; later updated and re-published) is titled, “Armed and Dangerous”—My Underground Struggle Against Apartheid. Kasrils also wrote a book about his first wife, Ronnie Kasrils (d. 2009) (described by John le Carré as ‘a courageous and extraordinary woman who was highly principled, yet endowed by nature with all the clandestine skills’) titled The Unlikely Secret Agent (Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd and Monthly Review Press, 2010).
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Kasrils also co-edited with Barry Feinberg some of Bertrand Russell’s letters, Dear Bertrand Russell: Selection of His Correspondence with the General Public, 1950-68 (George Allen & Unwin, 1969), as well as two volumes of writings by Russell titled Bertrand Russell’s America: 1896 – 1945 (Viking Press, 1973) and Bertrand Russell’s America: His Transatlantic Travels and Writings, Volume Two, 1945-1970 (George Allen & Unwin, 1984/South End Press, 1983).
Ronnie Kasrils’ Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Kasrils
His biography at South African History Online: http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils
See too Janet Cherry’s Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto weSizwe) (Ohio University Press, 2011).
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