By Bob Newland
H.E. ‘comrade’ Kingsley Mamabolo is the recently appointed South African Ambassador to the UK. He is not a career diplomat but rather a struggle veteran – a former fighter with the African National Congress’s ANC) military wing Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK). This policy of appointing veterans of the struggle against apartheid rather than professional diplomats is one that brings much credit to South Africa. Kingsley’s memoirs show how true that is.
As well as telling the story of his engagement in struggle and diplomacy a powerful part of this memoirs provides an insight into the experience of young black boys and girls growing up in Apartheid South Africa. The pressures of survival, all be it in a relatively privileged black family, the trials and tribulations of adolescence and finally the choices when becoming an adult are beautifully told.
Kingsley’s choice was struggle, and after escaping from Apartheid South Africa into an MK camp in Angola, via Swaziland, Kingsley found himself, along with many of his comrades, receiving military training in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The arduous regime under GDR instructors is brilliantly described. Kingsley reflects on the challenge of reconciling his Christian upbringing with learning to kill. This was not the only challenge that he and the thousands of new recruits fleeing to MK camps following the 1976 Soweto student uprising faced. Many had been influenced by Pan-Africanism. Their experience of whites was as oppressors, leading at times to racist attitudes. Now they had to understand the non-racial policy of the ANC as reflected in the Freedom Charter.
Those ideas were brought to them in the GDR during visits from such giants of the freedom struggle as Aziz Pahad and Ronnie Kasrils. He describes Ronnie’s vibrancy and inspiration in a way that those of us who had the privilege of being London Recruits recognise so well. Kingsley shares with us the joy and strength that he and his fellow recruits gained from being identified as ‘comrades’. He also reflects of the opportunity they had to read books about revolutionary struggles throughout the world. He, as did I and many of my Young Communist League comrades in the 1960s and 70s, got great inspiration from the words of Nicolai Ostrovsky in his novel ‘How the Steel was Tempered’:
“Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets from wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and a petty past; So, live that, dying he might say: all my life, all my strength was given to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the liberation of mankind.”
I’m sure the many members and supporters of Liberation will understand that sentiment, which is so well reflected in the themes of solidarity and internationalism in the struggles against, imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism.
As his story unfolds, the author shares with us his frustration on returning to Angola at being appointed Camp Commandant rather than being sent into South Africa to fight. He was not alone in this. The strength of Kingsley’s narrative is reflected in his willingness to address controversial issues. First among these was the tensions and disruptions in the camps in Angola arising largely from the frustration among new recruits at the time taken to return to South Africa and engage in armed struggle against the ‘enemy’.
In 1978 Kingsley received his first ‘diplomatic’ assignment deputising as ANC Deputy Chief Representative in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This was the beginning of an extraordinary list of such achievements. including Chief Representative in Mozambique.
Following the defeat of Apartheid in 1994 Kingsley fulfilled a number of diplomatic posts under successive governments. He supported peace missions to end wars in African States, posts at the United Nations. Kingsley represented South Africa at the Organisation of African Unity and was an active participant in the process to form the African Union to supersede it. Along the way he returned as Ambassador to Zimbabwe. He shares with us the contradiction of discovering an Embassy of South Africa with its own reverse apartheid – largely black diplomats and white Zimbabwean secretaries and other staff. He made it one of his first tasks to address this. Alongside many other insights, Kingsley tell the tragic story of the Democratic Republic of Congo, from independence, through the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, to the decades long conflict driven by it enormous mineral wealth.
Finally he was appointed High Commissioner to the UK. It is in that role that I got to know him. His
Excellency ‘comrade’ Mamabolo brings to that post the warmth, enthusiasm and commitment reflected through his autobiography. His interventions on behalf of his country South Africa and in campaigns to overcome the legacy of Apartheid there and throughout Southern Africa bring with them the power and understanding of his many experiences as a struggle veteran.
Kingsley is a beautiful person, welcoming and generous. We are fortunate through the pages of this book to be able to share with him the hopes, joys, and disappointments of a lifetime of struggle. I cannot recommend it too highly.
Let Not the Sun Set on You: From anti-Apartheid Activist to Seasoned Diplomat. Kingsley Mamabolo. Nomad Publishing £25
Bob Newland is a former ‘London Recruit’ and is a member of the Advisory Council of ACTSA and the Advisory Board of the Anti-Apartheid Centre of Memory and Learning in the former ANC London offices in Penton Street. Bob is also a Liberation member.
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