In a letter to a late MK comrade who fell in battle, Joel Netshitenzhe remembers Zambian beer, 'mugorila' and the difficulties of exile, and reflects on pure revolutionary thought and the riddles of post-1994 struggle.
Dear Bryce Motsamai,
Allow me to speak to you from the heart. So we meet again 20 years after our last interaction in Mutendere, Lusaka. Now in Mdantsane we can respectfully utter the parting words and act out the formalities worthy of comrades. In the comfort of freedom and of a middle class life - from the office towers of Tshwane - we can only thank you and dare to wonder whether we deserve all this in your absence.
Allow us to thank your mother and your family - and your sister Dr Zola in particular - for this commemoration service: she with whom we maintain some contact; but now as civil servants through e-mail and SMS (devices you would not be familiar with). But she who came all the way from Medical School in Durban to Matatiele to pack the provision that we savoured as we circled Lesotho to the most convenient border crossing.
We had come to Matatiele from Wentworth (University of Natal Medical School Residence): new recruits that your brother Lungile/Thabiso had found; young impatient minds who saw no other way in the aftermath of June 16, 1976 than to resolve matters once and for all through the barrel of the gun. There were two of us, myself and Chris Pepane. But we ended up being four, because you, Nkulu, insisted on joining us, and in turn you commandeered Reggie Mpongo to follow suit.
And so we crossed, and only later came to appreciate how lucky we were: to have stayed in Maseru with Chris Hani and Lambert Moloi. It was our first encounter with guerrillas and they regaled us with tales of their experiences in the Soviet Union, in Congwa (Umkhonto we Sizwe camp) in Tanzania, in the Wankie/Sipholilo campaign and elsewhere. They fed us the pride-infusing knowledge in Sechaba and the liberating methodology of the African Communist.
But why, Dear Bryce, do we only meet after 20 years! In a sense perhaps it is because we have failed you. In the comfort of freedom, we have started to define normalcy as individual survival - the shifting sands of illusion that make us forget who we are and where we come from.
Should we indeed allow the situation to continue that one who wielded the pen with such passion for the poor and such venom against the enemy receives nary a mention even in our own journals, ANC Today and Umrabulo! Our will to live and to reconcile should not supplant the will to fight and to die for a noble cause that you represented in actual practice.
And so, Dear Bryce, back to that day in Mutendere, at the underground house of MK. I can't quite remember how many Mosi's (Zambia beer) we downed. I can't quite remember whereto our minds wandered in the theory and practice of revolution.
What I do know is what was unsaid: the memories that came flooding back of our departure in 1976 from Maseru, to Manzini, to Nomahacha, to Maputo and to Luanda. About our silly escapades in Nomahacha when we were briefly detained by the Mozambican police while searching for Laurentina cerveja (Mozambican beer). About our voracious absorption of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin - then so much information and so little knowledge! What I do know is that when we met in Mutendere, at the back of our minds was the long journey travelled together: to Benguela camp where we started our military training, and where malaria wrought havoc; and how you laughed at me, when you claimed that, under the spell of a second bout of malaria I was punching the floor in my sleep, cursing mosquitoes in Venda; how you boasted, when I didn't perform well at our first experience with the "real thing" at the shooting range - after many months of firing blanks - and you got three out of the five targets.
It is a journey that included the lively discussions and enlightening lectures from Mark Shope and Jack Simons. It included many traditional Xhosa songs of the mountain you taught me - of course songs that I cannot repeat in this hallowed gathering.
That journey included Black September, the day our food in Katenge camp was poisoned. When you and a few others with firmer muscles complained of stomach pains we laughed at you; not knowing that our turn was to come later the same night - when the enemy in our midst sought to obliterate us. That journey included the lessons you taught us years later, as the mature and erudite Congo, fusing revolutionary theory and praxis into a potent brew for liberation in the pages of Dawn (the MK journal). It included your further training in politics and intelligence; survival of raids in Maseru; arrest in Swaziland; deportation to Tanzania; then Lusaka and back to Lesotho and into the country.
Today, Nkululo Njongwe, we meet again - now in Mdantsane where you fell in battle - and we can't salve our conscience of the guilt that you did not experience your rendezvous with freedom, your namesake. Today you torture us with your pure revolutionary thoughts, in this untidy process of change called Revolution. So we are only left to wonder what Congo would have thought, said and done under the current circumstances. Perhaps a Director-General, a General in our armed forces, a leader of our intelligence agencies or even an MP or MPL...
Forgive us our wandering minds: as we cast an eye over the ANC NEC or PECs (Provincial Executive Committees) or the benches of Parliament and pose the question - who among these would know Bryce! For we do get concerned that a particular experience and a particular tradition are disappearing like an endangered species.
Forgive us our wandering minds: when we ask, would Bryce have been part of these councils of the movement if what it took was self-seeking publicity and self-promotion or even bags of money to buy members as voting fodder! You torture us with your pure revolutionary thoughts: for there are so many unanswered questions, so many complex riddles.
How would you have responded to opportunities now open in business? Certainly you would not have argued that South Africa's forces of change could manage a capitalist system without building a black capitalist class. But in the same measure, you would have been concerned if "everyone" in the NEC, PECs and legislatures sought to be a business-person: a contractor or advisor reliant on his/her political position, or a shareholder adding no value to productive activity.
You would have protested if everyone sought to pursue a lifestyle they cannot afford and thus get tempted to make it by fair means or foul. You would have been worried about the social distance between "the leaders and the led". If all this were happening, you would have been worried that your organisation, the transformer, could easily get transformed by the very system it seeks to transform.
Of course, we are merely second-guessing your thoughts. But what we do know is that you would not have walked away: you were a fighter and revelled in the battle of ideas. You were a guerrilla par excellence. And when respectable family connections could have landed you in safer places, you chose to fight and to die so we, who remain, could live. So here we are today to celebrate your life.
We know that wherever you are in the nooks and crannies of the universe you are already settled: with OR Tambo, Joe Slovo, Lilian Ngoyi, Moses Mabhida, Walter Sisulu, Florence Mophosho, Alpheus Maliba, Yusuf Dadoo, Helen Joseph and other leaders. You are in the company of fellow combatants: Krish Rabillal, Solomon Mahlangu, Nomkhosi "Mary" Mini, Zweli Nyanda, Barney Molokoane and many more. We know too that you are with your brother, Lungile/Thabiso and Dad - a family so giving of itself so we could be free.
Inevitably, we shall join you in the not-too-distant future. Then we shall have ample time to reminisce about Mutendere and Katenge and Benguela and Nomahacha. Then we shall muse over Mosi and Laurentina and "Dos Maloko" (2M). We shall also be able to recall the warm embrace of the people of the Frontline States, not least the "exile maidens" of Lusaka and elsewhere who called us "mugorila" and yet treated us like kings.
And when we do come and update you, Dear Bryce, we shall not protest when you ask us the difficult question: 'Are we confident that, after 1994, the struggle continued'! Perhaps in some areas the jury is still out; but we do know that victory is certain!
Joel Netshitenzhe is an ANC National Executive Committee member. This is an edited version of an address at a commemoration service for Nkululo Xhego Njongwe, also known as Bryce Motsamai and Joe Congo, held in Mdantsane, East London on 13 November 2004. Njongwe died in battle with the South African Police in Mdantsane in July 1985.
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