A Foot Solider of the Revolution: My conversations with a bomb-maker in the Great Struggle against apartheid

(Photos of giant elephants, breathtaking waterfalls, and pristine vistas are popular, of course, and tales of chaos and woe from the road are always fun, but I am reminded that the most interesting stories are those about the people I meet along the way.  So, this next post is the first of what I am sure will be several to come about the characters with whom I cross paths.  But not too worry; for those preferring the former, there’s plenty more in the works that is bound to purely entertain.)


No icon of the 20th Century is so universally recognized and revered more than Nelson Mandela, and rightfully so.  After decades of indefatigable advocacy for the end of apartheid, including 27 years in prison, President Mandela changed the fate of a nation and inspired countless others to fight for freedom and equality around the world.   In honor of his leadership, July 18, 2012 marked “Mandela Day”, which was observed in South Africa and internationally.


At 94, “The Old Man”, as he is affectionately known in South Africa, is the soul of the country.  A living legend and god-like figure that will forever be the face of the nation’s long, and eventually successful, struggle against institutional racism and legalized inequality.  During his long years behind bars, thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives protesting in the streets of townships like Sharpeville, Soweto, and Langa.  Without frequent popular uprisings and work-stoppages of miners, laborers, taxi drivers, farmers, mothers and young people, apartheid would never have reached the eyes and ears of the international community, which put intense economic pressure on the white South African regime with sanctions, and applied political pressure through isolation.  U2’s Bono singing “I ain’t gonna play Sun City” didn’t hurt either.


Mandela was the flag-bearer of the revolution to end apartheid, and the citizen masses were the brute force behind his power.  It is his and the story of his throngs of loyal protesters that we most frequently associate with the end of the racist regime.  However, there were others who played equally important, but much less visible or heralded roles whose stories of heroism may never been known.   I was fortunate enough to spend time with one of the foot soldiers of the revolution and hear some of his story.


The Great Struggle relied upon cadres of revolutionary soldiers who took up arms to carry-out surgical strikes on the white regime’s infrastructure of oppression in order to amplify the broader economic and political pressures.  They worked in the shadows, far from view and often without their family and friends’ awareness of their activities.  Taking up the cause was not an easy choice for these soldiers, especially for those who, although they were non-white, were able to get an education and even a decent job and achieve an adequate, although much lower, standard of living.  They had so much more to lose than those who had nothing.


The soldier I met, we’ll call him Dante, is particularly unique because he is not black, but of Indian decent.  Durban, South Africa, where he was born, is home to the largest concentration of people of Indian decent outside of India.  Many of whom can trace their families back to when indentured servitude took the place of slavery, and thousands of Indians were brought to South Africa to work on sugar plantations.  They were not shackled and forced at gun point, but were coerced with promises of riches and land beyond their wildest dreams only to fall victim to a more subtle kind of “master.”


Dante is third generation South African, and he proudly refers to himself as “African” as opposed to “Indian” or anything else.  And despite his education and access to opportunities most other non-whites lacked, from a young and tender age he committed himself to the Great Struggle.  True to Dante’s personality, he chose the most dangerous way to employ his formidable skills and talents in chemical engineering as a bomb maker for the revolution.

Part II – Dante the Soldier…coming tomorrow