‘We were working on the ground all over the Free State, including in
the north. We were putting up posters and painted walls to encourage
people to oppose the Koornhof Bills. Magashule was nowhere to be
seen during this,’ Bloem insisted.
The University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape forms the backdrop to
perhaps the most egregious and best circulated of Magashule’s struggle
fibs.
In 1980 , after matriculating from Residensia Secondary School in
Sebokeng in Gauteng, Magashule began his tertiary education at Fort
Hare. It is unclear what degree he pursued, but sources familiar with
his background said he obtained a Bachelor of Arts.
It was while enrolled at Fort Hare that Magashule apparently became
embroiled in one of that era’s most famous campus revolts. ‘In 1983
[sic] when I was a student at Fort Hare we were arrested, there were
twenty-two of us, Bheki Mlangeni, Fezile Dabi and others,’ Magashule
related in his ANC Oral History Project interview. ‘I was arrested
during that time and the charge was treason, high treason, in an
attempt to assassinate the State President of Ciskei, [Lennox] Sebe, at
Fort Hare during the graduation ceremony, where we did not want
Sebe to come into the campus.’ This claim has made it onto the ANC’s
official website (‘Whilst a student, he was arrested and charged with
high treason in 1982 ’^9 ) and a variety of other public platforms.
Along with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes,
treason is viewed as one of the most serious criminal offences.^10 In
South Africa in the 1980 s, a guilty verdict on a charge of high treason
could have resulted in the death penalty. Furthermore, being charged
with treason for his political convictions would have secured