RONNIE KASRILS | ANC EX-GUERRILLA, SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT MINISTER AND AUTHOR

No one said changing society is easy

» BY PEADAR WHELAN

» BY PEADAR WHELAN

IN HIS REVIEW in last month’s ‘An Phoblacht’ of Ronnie Kasrils’s recently released tribute to his late wife, Eleanor, ‘The Unlikely Secret Agent’, Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney wrote: “Eleanor forsook a life of privilege for a life of struggle.”
The same can also be said about Ronnie Kasrils. A white South African and TV and film director for the multinational Lever Brothers in their advertising division, he could have taken the easy option and had it easy. But he became a political activist fighting on the side of the oppressed against an apartheid regime that knew no bounds of inhumanity or cruelty.
Radicalised by the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, he joined the African National Congress before becoming a member of the South African Communist Party. He was attracted to the SACP by its analysis of the South African working class and its strong trades union organisation.
It was this experience that provided the material for his autobiography, ‘Armed and Dangerous’, and his wife Eleanor’s experiences for ‘The Unlikely Secret Agent’, which has been praised by John Le Carré.
In recent weeks, Ronnie travelled to Ireland, ostensibly on holiday but also to launch the book and, of course, in keeping with his and the ANC’s support for the Irish struggle, to meet and talk with Sinn Féin activists. Some holiday, you might say.
I managed to catch up with Ronnie in Belfast as he whizzed from meetings to book launches and ‘an audience’ for the ANC veteran with the newly-installed Sinn Féin Mayor of Belfast, 25-year-old Niall Ó Donnghaile.
“We are proud republicans,” he cheerfully declared alongside Ó Donnghaile as they were pictured below the framed Proclamation hanging in the Mayor’s Parlour at City Hall.
Like all good interviews this one started with a question from the interviewee.
“Why did Sinn Féin pick someone so young as Mayor?”
I responded using the old Irish saying: “Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí - praise the youth and it will flourish. The party encourages young people to step into leadership positions and this sends out a positive message to young people.”
It was clearly an answer that impressed the South African as he went on to speak of the courage of the young people who fought against apartheid over the years “many of whom died while others went to prison”.
When asked about the transition period of the South African struggle and how the ANC and its revolutionary army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), negotiated its way through those initial stages and contacts with the apartheid regime, Ronnie Kasrils was forthright in describing the difficulties.
“We had to persuade the backwoodsmen - those who did not want to see change. We had to do everything to encourage them but it was worthwhile being patient and it’s an amazing thing to find, as we found with our former enemies, to see a transformation and see they are prepared to roll up their sleeves and join us in building a better South Africa.
“That was worth it.”
It was clear from listening to the former guerrilla that during the period of negotiations through the late 1980s into the 1990s that the ANC’s confidence in itself as a revolutionary organisation continually wrong-footed the apartheid regime with its ability to make game-changing decisions.
He described how they set out to convince the White minority that the ANC saw them as part of the South African nation and wanted to work with them in building for the future.
“They found this hard to take on board,” Ronnie recalled, adding in a clear parallel with unionists here: “They believed we would treat them in the way they had treated us.”
The controversy surrounding the appointment of Mary McArdle as a special adviser to Sinn Féin Minister Caral Ní Chuilin was raging during the former South African Government Intelligence Minister’s visit.
The question of former prisoners was a stumbling block, noted Kasrils, but he added: “When Nelson Mandela became President he brought people into government who had been imprisoned for armed actions against the regime.
“They were not elected - they were advisers and they played an absolutely crucial role in building the new South Africa.”
Similar controversy surrounded the appointment of Robert McBride, who was imprisoned for killing three people in a Durban restaurant bombing yet went on to serve as a senior police chief.
The issue of women in struggle was very much a focus for Kasrils and his audience.
Responding to questions about his wife, Ronnie said:
“Eleanor was inspirational and I wrote the book so that people would learn from her and be prepared to stand up and find reserves of courage for the just cause of freedom and justice.”
He quoted from Fidel Castro who said:
“The heroic soldier is not born that way.”
Ronnie Kasrils agreed:
“It’s the cause they serve that makes them like that and that’s how we won. It gave us strength as our cause was a just one. It imbued even the meekest among us with incredible power.”
And hunger strikers show that.
“When I visited the H-Blocks when I was here a number of years ago and stood in the cell where Bobby Sands died I was inspired by his courage and remembered those words by Castro.
“I thought of Eleanor who had been on hunger strike when she was imprisoned and understood the empathy between them.
“Often in history we often see men with power but often it is women who demonstrate it.”
As for the future in South Africa, the former Government minister said the progress that South Africa has made since its first democratic elections has to be consolidated.
“We have built 14 million houses, connected millions of people to the water system and power grid - these are examples of what we have achieved. Of course, there is more to be done but that is the revolutionary task ahead of us.
“And, of course, no one said it would be easy.”