Patrick Bond with some necessary criticism of Mandela's Legacy - progress in South Africa is dependent upon facing up to these problems of inequlaity and bringing Socialism back on the Agenda.
Kasrils slams ANC during handover
Struggle veteran and former minister for intelligence services Ronnie Kasrils
Johannesburg - “Shoot me down in flames if you don’t like what I say, but I have to speak out.”
These were the words of former minister of intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, as he handed over his memoirs and unique historical material to the Wits University’s historical archives at the institution on Thursday.
A revised edition of Kasrils’s book Armed and Dangerous was on sale at the function.
Kasrils said the book, which has been translated into Spanish, Russian, and German, was dedicated to the born-frees “so that they know why we took up arms and why we made so many sacrifices”.
He added that he was also thinking of people such as Julius Malema, who at some point, vowed that he would kill for (President Jacob) Zuma.
“There shouldn’t be violence like that in a democracy. The Marikana massacre should not have happened in democratic South Africa,” said Kasrils.
He said the dreadful corruption prevalent in the country was a betrayal of the revolution, adding that the ANC needed to be questioned and to have a strong opposition.
In his contribution to the discussion, Devan Pillay, from the Wits sociology department, said he felt that if former president Thabo Mbeki had stayed in power, the country would still find itself in the mess it is in now, even though he was cleverer than President Jacob Zuma.
Michelle Williams, also from the sociology department, echoed this, lamenting the fact that liberation movement files were sanitised before being made available to the public.
Wealth of Struggle history in material donated to university:
* Kasrils’s introduction to Marxism, and Umkhonto we Sizwe notebooks from the Soviet Union;
* Lecture notes given in Angolan camps in 1977 and 1978, including recordings of some of the lectures and class discussions;
* Recordings of camp concerts and celebrations with live commentary and interviews;
* The 1986 MPLA/Fapla-MK intelligence agreement signed by the presidents of the two organisations, Oliver Tambo and José Eduardo dos Santos, as well as Kasrils - as MK’s military intelligence chief - and his Angolan counterpart;
* Letters to his late wife Eleanor from the Angolan camp;
* Kasrils’s apartheid surveillance file No 1032 relating to his political activities from 1961 to 1990; and
* Financial documents for operations, underground cadres and self-defence units during Operation Vula.
charlotte.
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