more freedom away from the ANC’s top leadership.
But Magashule’s memory of this period seems to be mostly negative.
‘I remember when I arrived in Tanzania ... I was with some comrades
[and] we were eating sweet potato with tea. It was horrible. There
wasn’t nice food there, life was not nice, completely not nice. For
young women, it was not nice, it was difficult.’^18
He also had to deal with the death of a cousin. ‘I left with one of my
cousins, unfortunately he passed away whilst in Tanzania.’ One of
Magashule’s former struggle associates said the cousin, who drank
heavily, had suffered from stomach ulcers.
There was also the constant threat of disease. ‘If you go to Tanzania
there was an area called M’hlaba,’ recalled Magashule for the ANC
Oral History Project, ‘a lot of our comrades were affected by malaria.
So they were insane. If you walk around there you’d see them walking
naked. I mean, it was a painful moment to see some of these comrades
now naked. A lot of comrades died in exile.’
Then Adelaide fell pregnant with Magashule’s child. One of his
struggle compatriots recalled that Magashule became particularly
frustrated during this time. ‘He wanted to come home really badly,’
said this source.
His impatience would land him in trouble. ‘Ace went to the United
Nations’ [UN] offices in Tanzania to ask if there was any way they
could help him go back to South Africa,’ my source told me.
Magashule had apparently gone over the heads of the ANC’s
leadership. But he would get caught. ‘There was an intelligence line
between the UN offices and the ANC,’ my source explained, ‘so the
leadership heard about his attempt to leave Tanzania without their
permission. This got him in trouble again.’
nora
(Nora)
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