purpose of MK. He slept – just enough of a rest to be able to carry on. The next day he phoned Joe Slovo, using his MK name, Percy Mokoena, which was also known to Slovo.
‘My name is Percy, I’m in Botswana and have been arrested for a minor misdemeanour. I have to appear in court tomorrow and I need a defence lawyer,’ he said to a possibly surprised Slovo. But Andrew was not arrested and he only did this to trick any would-be eavesdroppers. It seems Slovo, too, understood that Andrew only needed transport to cross the border back into South Africa, because that night Joe Modise arrived at Mpho Motsamai’s house to fetch him. He was driving what Andrew would later describe as a ‘hot, hot’ Peugeot 404 because, as he eventually discovered, the car had been under police surveillance for some time and it was a matter of time before the police decided to pounce on Joe Modise.
Modise made it clear that he was not going to spend a night there as the National High Command of MK needed Andrew at its base at Liliesleaf farm. Mondays were meeting days, and the matter of the trainees from China was high on the agenda. If they missed that meeting, then the topic would be deferred to the next meeting in seven days’ time. Modise told him that there was a full and urgent programme waiting for him and other trainees and it could not be postponed. They drove through the night and arrived at Liliesleaf farm the next morning. Andrew was tired and decided to sleep. Modise did not sleep. Instead, he dropped Andrew and disappeared.
From the moment he picked him up in Botswana, Andrew realised that Joe Modise’s commitment was unquestionable. He was a man geared towards sticking to the programme of MK, and as brave as ever. He was also seeing a new Joe Modise, who was no longer a loose cannon acting outside the organisation. Here was a man who, although still determined in his beliefs, was subject to the statutes of the movement and commands from above, respecting the leadership and carrying out its instructions to the letter. The leadership had also invested a lot of trust in him. ‘He was mature in the political sense, although he retained his streetwise Sophiatown habits and, perhaps, his inborn vigour in carrying out tasks he believed were for a good cause,’ observed Andrew.
Later in the afternoon, Modise came back with Gqabi and Mthembu. Andrew didn’t know where they had been. Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu were already there when Andrew woke up. Joe Slovo, Bram Fischer, Rusty Bernstein, Jack Hodgson and Arthur Goldreich, the other members of the National High Command, were not there, but Andrew wasn’t worried. There were four main items on the agenda for the day: the welcoming of the trainees from China and their integration into the National High Command; Operation Mayibuye and the immediate implementation of some aspects of it; security issues; and the report from the Chinese on the trainees who had just returned, including Andrew. Sisulu warned right from the beginning that the meeting should not take long, as Andrew needed to be released early to be reunited with his family. But he also pointed out that the family was well, and reported that Gqabi and Mthembu had been to Andrew’s house to tell June that he was well although still undergoing treatment in Tanzania.
The report from China highlighted various aspects of the training and gave brief profiles of the six trainees, which would have to be taken into consideration by the senior members of the National High Command. ‘None of us knew how the report reached South Africa. But it was accurate on what we already knew,’ recalled Andrew in his old age. The report pointed out that according to the assessment done by the Chinese, Naidoo was probably the most gifted of the trainees. The report stated that he had the most initiative but also had a weakness – laziness. Gqabi was also smart, according to the report, but his weakness was that he was too ambitious and wanted leadership positions regardless of his ability. Mhlaba was identified as easygoing and a man who would do anything he was instructed to do, no matter how difficult, with a smile. Mthembu, stated the report, was predisposed to breaking down easily under pressure from the enemy. Andrew was identified as lacking initiative, but as someone who was loyal and committed to the programme of his movement.
Govan Mbeki informed the comrades that they were all going to be members of the National High Command and the implications thereof, and their respective roles. They were to assume their functions immediately. The struggle was up and running and there were things to be done.
In the same meeting it was decided that Joe Modise was no longer safe as he was under police surveillance. He was therefore advised to leave the country and go into exile for military training. Andrew was to take over Modise’s duties, including the recruitment of people for military training and transport. He was given a programme that he was to start implementing immediately, which included travelling across the country to explain to regional commands the programme of MK and to mobilise for more recruits in support of the provisions of Operation Mayibuye. After the meeting, Sisulu gave Andrew one pound and instructed Modise to deliver him, Gqabi and Mthembu to their homes. Andrew was the last to be dropped off.
As Andrew climbed out of Modise’s car and approached the front door he struggled to believe he was looking at his own house. All the windows at the front were shattered. There were signs that there had been some fighting. The door was closed, and he knocked. As it opened, Boetie Mlangeni, a son of his cousin who was living in Meadowlands, ushered him in. Inside the house, June was lying in bed. He checked the windows at the back. They were also broken. ‘Eventually, I realised that my entire house was without a single window that was not tampered with.’ It transpired that at the weekend that had just passed the family had hosted a party and many family members had been invited. The party was going well until a man known to Andrew as Maceke gate-crashed it and started to behave in a disorderly manner. He harassed June, and angry family members gave him such a sound beating that he was hospitalised. But June went on to report him to the police, who arrested him but released him on bail. He had apparently told his family a different story – that favoured him, because his family members then came and retaliated by smashing all the windows of the Mlangeni home. Mthembu and Gqabi knew about the incident when they visited earlier but they had decided not to tell Andrew when they met at Liliesleaf farm.
Andrew was very angry with what he was seeing and hearing and went immediately to Maceke’s house. He confronted him but Maceke’s speech was so disjointed that Andrew left, feeling this was fruitless and a waste of time. A week later, the court found Meceke guilty of assault and malicious damage to property; he was fined and the matter was deemed to have been settled. Andrew would have pursued him to fix all the broken windows, but felt it would waste his time and energy and derail the new programme that MK had just given him. In fact, he did not rule out the possibility that Maceke’s handlers may have sent him to provoke his family and therefore try to detract from his and June’s involvement in the struggle. ‘Maceke was reputed to be a police spy,’ said Andrew.
June had also been harassed by the police, who frequented her house day and night to conduct searches and to ask her questions about Andrew. Within weeks of Andrew’s departure for China, police had frequented his house or driven by, blatantly surveying it. June realised that she could be detained at any time, so she decided to take her two sons and daughter to Francistown to join their sister and grandmother (Andrew only found out about this when he returned from China). And June was not the only one in the family to be harassed by the police. The house of Andrew’s eldest brother Nyoko had been searched in 1962, sometimes with sniffer dogs. ‘It was scary every time it happened,’ recalled Josephine, Nyoko’s daughter. Nyoko’s wife, Jane Mdumbe, had been visited several times by white policemen demanding to see Andrew and Nyoko, and when they were told that both of them were not at home they would search the whole house, turning everything upside-down before leaving empty-handed.
3
1944, Conscientisation
Andrew Mlangeni’s military training in China and the eventual contact with Mao was the culmination of a political journey that had started about two decades earlier. The genesis of his political career was his graduation from Standard 6 at Pimville government school at the end of 1943, marking the beginning of his political activism and subsequent ascendency into higher ranks and eventual militarisation.
