It was a period during which the movement within South Africa had been hit by severe state repression. To raise the profile of the resistance, white activists were recruited in England to fly to South Africa with leaflets and other materials concealed under the false bottoms of their suitcases. Their typical mission was to distribute them in busy urban locations using a small gunpowder device which blew the leaflets up in the air for the winds to scatter to passers by, with a timer to ensure they could get away. The devices were tested on Hampstead Heath and in Richmond park by Ronnie Kasrils and others. Kasrils, who set up the London end of the underground network, was a leading member of uMkhonto weSizwe, the ANC's armed wing, and the South African Communist Party.
The leaflets encouraged people to organise resistance. A 1969 version declared: 'You too are freedom fighters. Everywhere we must prepare for struggle. Form underground units of the African National Congress in the reserves, in the countryside, in the towns, in the factories, in the townships, among the students and the youth. We need underground resistance organisation. We need new fighters for freedom, new ways of struggle so that we may strike when we are ready. Down with the apartheid terror! Forward to freedom!'. The leaflet also included instructions for how to make a petrol bomb.
Alongside the 'leaflet bombs' they would set up broadcasts of cassette recordings of anti-apartheid speeches. As explained by Ronnie Kasrils:
'The other important item in our propaganda arsenal was the street broadcast apparatus. The idea came to us when we read a news report following the Colonels' coup in Greece in 1967. Activists had booked into an Athens hotel on the central city square. They brought into their room a tape recorder and amplifier which they set up by a balcony window. They played a tape of a rousing speech attacking the dictatorship responsible for criminally seizing power. The first minutes of the tape were blank, allowing for a safe retreat from the hotel. A booby-trap guarded the recording to deter hotel staff from attempting to disarm the device. The action was a great success'
The first such action in South Africa took place in 1968 in Johannesberg city centre using a rented vehicle. 'The tape player within the car was wired to an amplifier on the roof with a dummy booby-trap to scare off anyone attempting to dismantle it. The speech that was played was by Robert Resha, ANC leader and powerful orator, attacking the apartheid government and system and assuring the people that the ANC was alive and would never give up the struggle'.
Activists were tasked with acquiring the materials when they arrived and assembling speaker boxes to amplify the cassette recorder. Ken Keable remembers:
'We would order some pieces of wood, cut to our design, and construct, with them, a box to hold an amplifier which was to be fixed in the carrier of the bike along with a cassette player (the first I had ever seen). The sound equipment was covered, but anyone removing the cover would find a bundle of candles underneath, made to look like dynamite, with a hand-written warning sign. This was to give the impression of a booby-trap, thus keeping any inquisitive police away long enough for the message to be heard. The bike was to be padlocked to a post or tree opposite the shebeen and the cassette player started.
Ronnie had played the tape to us in the flat in London. It started with fifteen minutes of silence (this was our get-away time followed by the striking words "This is the African National Congress. This is the African National Congress. This is the voice of freedom'. Some militant songs were next, performed by the London-based ANC choir known as Mayibuye. I think the first song was the ANC anthem, Nkozi Sikelel' iAfrika, and was followed by a speech. Another song, in an African language, said something like "Vorster - the black man is coming to get you!"
Ron Bell was recruited for a mission to Cape Town in 1970:
'Several nights followed in Ronnie's company in a dingy office in Soho, where we were trained to carry out the tasks of producing and setting up leaflet bombs, mixing stuff, connecting detonators and timers. Then came the task of amplifying a simple cassette player to boost the output by many watts with the aid of a preamp and 12 inch speakers.
We were given our cases, one each, with false bottoms filled with leaflets, timers, powder, igniters, pre-amps and audio cassettes, plus some money to purchase plane tickets and cover our hotel costs and items we would need in Cape Town SA. These included a soldering iron and solder, speakers, cassette players'.
Some non-CP socialists were also recruited, chiefly from among radical students at the London School of Economics where Kasrils was studying during the tumultuous period of student protests and occupations there in 1967/69. I was intrigued to see that Ted Parker was among those involved, as I met him briefly a few years ago and had no idea about his interesting history. Briefly he joined the Royal Air Force as an electronics apprentice in 1960, but was later discharged and jailed for four months for trying to start an armed forces branch of CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). As a mature student at LSE he joined the Socialist Society there as well as the International Socialists (later SWP), and became one of Kasrils' London Recruits for a 1967 mission to South Africa. In 1977 he played a major role in organising the anti-fascist mobilisation against the racist National Front march from New Cross (I met him when he spoke at a 2007 commemoration of the 'Battle of Lewisham' which I helped organise). Later he had a long career in education culminating in becoming the Principal of Barking College.
