concerning Magashule’s role in the struggle. Hugh Macmillan’s The
Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1963 – 1994 does not
mention Magashule once. If Magashule did indeed meet with the
ANC’s top brass at the organisation’s Zambian base, it had to have
been a highly secretive affair, for Macmillan’s thorough study of that
epoch does not reference any such meeting.
Thula Simpson’s Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle is
equally silent on Magashule’s alleged involvement in underground
activities. Simpson’s book has been praised for being ‘brilliant at laying
out events and actions carried out by both prominent and less known
members of MK’.^3 Magashule, who claims to have held such an
important position within MK that he reported directly to someone of
Hani’s stature, must feel aggrieved at being overlooked by Simpson.
To be fair to Magashule, there does appear to be some truth in his
narrative. Between 1985 and the end of the decade, the UDF’s ability
to operate as a unified resistance movement was severely hampered by
successive states of emergency, the detainment of its leaders and,
eventually, the apartheid government’s decision to ban the
organisation.^4 It was during this troubled phase of the UDF’s existence
that Magashule did in fact attain a degree of prominence within the
movement. It was also during this time that he played a role in
something at least resembling an MK cell. Sources who were at his
side or who had contact with him in this period were able to verify this.
In 1986 , in the depth of winter, President P.W. Botha’s government
declared yet another state of emergency. In the evening after the
announcement, Magashule and a group of about twenty comrades from
Parys arrived at Matthew Chaskalson’s home in Johannesburg.
Matthew’s father, Arthur, had been part of the legal team that had
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