”I’d better stand next to the window or the door,” said a perspiring Ronnie Kasrils – arguably the security police’s most wanted man of the moment- as he audaciously emerged from ”underground” to address journalists in Johannesburg yesterday.
With the police apparently hot on his trail, the senior African National Congress executive member, former intelligence chief, and Communist Party member – a close associate of detained ANC leader Mac Maharaj decided (”adventurously”, by his own admission), to break cover and publicly denounce the government’s ”’Red Plot” revelations of this week. It was surely the most extraordinary scene ever witnessed at Mike’s Kitchen in suburban Parktown.
Kasrils surprised journalists by honouring a longstanding undertaking to address the Foreign Correspondents Association: he arrived at the restaurant just before 1pm despite intense speculation that he was the ”next man” in the security police crackdown. Kasrils, visibly tense but smiling and joking, asked for a double whisky as he entered an anteroom of the restaurant (”don ‘t drown it in water”), and apologised for not being able to sit and have a ”leisurely lunch. I’d hoped I could stay long enough to have a vegetarian cutlet … but now I think I’d better serum in a few minutes.”
Kasrils said: ”Mac and I knew that they were coming to arrest us. We were both involved from Lusaka in building the underground … Mac Maharaj is a canny devil, and that’s why they’ve gone for him as they have.” Kasrils said police had wanted to take him at the same time as Maharaj, but that he’d been ”a little lucky, just as I was when I escaped arrest in 1963.” Standing and answering questions from journalists seated at a table set forb lunch, Kasrils gulped his whisky and kept an eye on the door.
At one point, when another journalist entered the room, the ANC leader said: ”Why’s everybody looking at the door? Is it Swanepoel? (a security policeman).” Asked whether he would flee the country in order to avoid what seemed like certain arrest, Kasrils said he had been in exile for long enough. ”This time I don’t want to leave. I’m enjoying it here … If they arrest me, that’s okay- we have nothing on our consciences to be ashamed of.”
He said: ”I will be doing my best to keep avoiding them, to keep putting the message across. That’s why I decided to come today. I was asked before the balloon went up, and when it came to today I thought long and hard about whether I should risk it- because it is a risk. I came because I wanted to get across to you our position, and the position from the underground.” As the intensive question and answer session drew to a close, Kasrils again apologised for having to leave in hurry and said he looked forward to seeing the journalists ”next time. I don’t think this nonsense will last long,” he added: ”They’ll be eating out of Nelson’s (Mandela’s) hand in a few weeks.”
Then, as he made for the door, he remarked whimsically: ”Actually, I’d like a beef and Yorshire pud. Maybe you could send it to John Vorster Square.” On his way to a waiting car, he was again besieged by reporters in the grounds of the restaurant. As the throng gathered a middle -aged lady and a child eating lunch under an umbrella came to see what the fuss was about. ”Who’re they talking to?” asked the child. The woman consulted one of the journalists and then returned to the child, aghast. ”It’s a communist,” she said. With that Kasrils was gone.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
