The South African Youth Congress president and former Robben Island convict, believed during 1987 to have been the security police’s “most wanted” activist, has once more defied the state’s attempts to lock him out of the anti-apartheid struggle. Despite his description on police posters as “Uiters Gevaarlik” (extremely dangerous), Mokaba walked out of the Pietersburg Regional Court on Tuesday a free man. The state unexpectedly dropped its charges of terrorism against the irrepressible activist who, in 1985, was released from Robben Island on appeal after serving a year of his sentence for “membership of the African National Congress’ military wing”.
Mokaba’s life has been one of absolute, overriding commitment to the political tasks he has set himself. This has made his lifestyle unusual, to say the least. Flushed with his sudden freedom this week after another year in the cells, he told the Weekly Mail he had not slept at his home in Mankweng since 1980. Considering the fact that there have been 17 attempts on his life, this is not entirely surprising. He has been in only one of two places for the last eight years, he says – “in prison, or underground”. While on the “outside”, Mokaba says he improvised accommodation, boarding with friends and living “anywhere else but home”. Interrogating officers warned him to “either leave the country or stay and suffer”, he says.
For many South Africans across the political spectrum, Mokaba became an especially potent symbol of the internal anti-apartheid struggle. In his ”underground” role as Sayco president – he masterminded the successful secret launch of the massive but now-restricted organisation in 1987 – he took on almost legendary status. He was the most important youth leader in the country, and admiring activists referred to him as the leader of the “Class of ’87”, comparing him and his colleagues to the ANC “Class of ’44” youth leaders. He was seen as a “black pimpernel”, dodging the clutches of the state in much the same way as Nelson Mandela had done some 30 years before. And at right-wing meetings in the Northern Transvaal, his was also a name to be conjured with.
Mokaba recalls that Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging demagogue Eugene Terreblanche once threatened to “chase me up to Cairo”. Terreblanche, he said, expressed outrage that “PW Botha could imprison an old man like Nelson Mandela, but let young ANC people move around.” Mokaba’s experiences – chiefly the flurry of charges thrown at him which have not stuck – show no sign of persuading him to withdraw from politics, or leave the country. “Police failed to criminalise my activities through the courts,” he told the Weekly Mail after his acquittal. ”They have fabricated lies, but still they have not succeeded.” He escaped Robben Island in 1985 on a technicality – the appeal court found that the magistrate who presided over his trial had acted improperly. He was tried again on similar charges in the same year, but re¬ceived a suspended sentence. He found himself in prison again in 1988, detained under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act.
During this time, he hand-wrote a 26-page docu¬ment recalling his experiences and setting out his vision of the activities of the security forces and the fortunes of resistance. He released the docu¬ment to the Weekly Mail this week. In it, he wrote of his feelings after receiving the suspended sentence in 1985: “As I walked out of court free, there was nothing to conceal (the police’s) bitter anger … I knew that far from being free I had actually moved onto a new terrain of struggle. “I had entered another sector of concentrated enemy fire and defence and vigilance became my priority, my watchwords.” The manuscript details assassination attempts against Mokaba. After his “there were mysterious cars and pedestrians who were clearly watching my home”.
In the third week after his release he received a message to telephone a “Jackie” in Johannesburg. “This person had asked that I phone at eight o’clock, and I had to go to the post office about two kilometres from my home. “On this particular night, the street 1 the whole way up to the post office was dark. The telephone booths were unlit. I was still wondering (why this was so) when suddenly there was a flash from a stationary car’s head¬ lamps.” Mokaba ran on to the nearby cam¬ pus of University of the North, and escaped the men – dressed in Zion Christian Church uniforms – who gave chase. There were numerous other at¬ tempts by unknown assailants to abduct or assassinate him. “There was a sudden heightening of t activity by police and unmarked cars, around my home,” he recalls.
On returning home one day he found a dog had been stabbed to death: “I saw that as an omen, a prelude to invasion. I spent less and less time at home and never once slept there. I could smell death in the air.” One would-be assassin confessed to Mokaba. Oupa Monana told him he had been made to join the security forces after being detained. ”He told me his main objective was to assassi¬nate me,” says Mokaba, “but he failed several times and eventually said he had “to spill the beans.”
Mokaba says three attempts were made in Alexandra township within the space of three months: “Once they were armed with a rifle and hand grenades, but I confounded them.” Another was carried out by three people who beat him and left him for dead -but he survived. “During subsequent interrogation,” says Mokaba, “I was asked by security police how I had managed to survive the attack in Alexandra. I came to the conclusion that police had or¬chestrated it.” There were further attempts. Mokaba recalls a failed effort in Wolmarans Street in Johannesburg, for example. ”Then they tried in De Villiers Street, next to the Victoria Hotel. They also waited to ambush me in O’Reilly Road, where this Oupa had set up an appointment with me. I frustrated them.”
Monana claimed he had been promised R60 000, a house and a regular salary if he succeeded in killing Mokaba. Despite the almost unbelievable sequence of events, however, Mokaba has not been intimidated. He has had to resort to an air of fatalism: “I know I may not grow old. I know that they will never rest until they have achieved their objective, that of eliminating me. “But I also know that not even death can persuade me to give up my love for my people, for democracy, equality and peace in a non-racial and democratic South Africa “I know that my death shall not be in vain. I believe that on the soil that is drenched with blood shall inevitably rise the tree of our noble endeavours.”
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.