were all over the country. We’ll pretend to be lawyer[s] sometimes, put
on a tie, take a bag, stay in hotels, change names, facilitate certain
things, when people were coming into the country we had to look after
[them by] giving them some money.’
From his own telling, it would appear that Magashule was a point
man for operatives sneaking back into the country from one or other of
the ANC’s foreign bases: ‘We would welcome them and accommodate
them, brief them about particular areas where they were supposed to
go and operate from. That’s the type of work we were doing.’
Elsewhere in the interview, Magashule elaborated on this
responsibility. ‘And what happened, as I said, a lot of comrades were
infiltrated into our townships, they would engage us and we wouldn’t
know that this man comes from exile, is in the underground. As people
were engaging in that struggle people would identify that this one can
go for a crash course, come back, and be trained quickly and sent back
into the country to fight. Others were trained inside the country.’
When asked how and by whom he had been recruited into MK,
Magashule replied: ‘There’s an old man from Bophelong [near
Vanderbijlpark], we always referred to him as “old man”, I [have] just
forgotten his surname ... ntate Soku or something like that in
Bophelong. He was the main person who was actually recruiting
people in the underground.’
A former MK member from the area around Parys disputed
Magashule’s version. This source was able to provide detailed
information on the ‘old man’ and his underground cell. ‘That man
[Magashule] referred to was Ernest Sotso. It is true that he recruited
people into MK, but Ace was not one of them.’
My source said that he worked with Sotso during that time, and that
nora
(Nora)
#1