This account draws on more than 100 interviews, blending oral history with press clippings and Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) records, to capture the voices of cadres who risked — and often lost — their lives.
Many spoke with pride, some with nostalgia, others with pain at their neglect in today’s democracy. Their stories show that while the armed struggle was not the ANC’s only weapon, it was essential, and it demanded extraordinary courage across racial and national divides.
Above all, this book seeks to remind younger generations that South Africa’s democracy did not fall from the skies, but was wrested through blood, sacrifice and relentless struggle — a legacy that must be protected and advanced. This is Patrick Chamusso’s story.
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‘Wrong place, wrong time, wrong person’
“Wrong place, wrong time, wrong person. That’s my life,” chuckles Patrick Chamusso, as he regales me with the story of how he drifted into the ANC. “I was never in politics. I was a painter. I loved football, but I kept getting arrested for the ANC. Then I said, okay, now I’m going to join them!”
And he turned up at the ANC’s door and said that the security police had used electrodes on his penis and that all he wanted to do was to “kick them in the balls” in return.
So how did he get here?
Born in 1950, Chamusso didn’t go to school and started working at 13 as a painter and later a miner.
When he was about 14, he went through a “whites only” café entrance.
“This man jumped over the counter and he beat me. ‘K—, can’t you see this is not the entrance for you?’ I said, ‘No, I can’t read.’ He called the police.
“About ten o’clock I was put in the Springs cells. Two o’clock, I was sentenced to two months and a R10 fine. Five o’clock, I was already sold to a farmer who buys prisoners.”
About six weeks later, the farmer’s wife took him to his mother.
“My mother started crying. She said I didn’t know you were in prison…
“People in the black areas, they didn’t have a studio at that time where they could take pictures. So, I used to stand at Florida Station with some pictures and say, ‘Hey, I’m a photographer.’ Most of the people come from rural areas. They want to send pictures home. A picture was about 50 to 60 cents.”
In 1973 he went to buy a new Peugeot.
“When I said, ‘I need that car,’ it was in the showroom, the people looked at me and said, ‘Hauw! You want that car?’ I said ‘Yes, I need that.’ They said, ‘No, no.’ They showed me a second-hand Valiant and Impala. I said, ‘No, I’m not interested in those cars.’ They said, ‘No, that’s a new car, you can’t afford it.’ I said ‘Who told you that?’ They said, ‘Do you have money?’ I said ‘Yes.’ ‘Where’s your money?’ I said ‘It’s in the bank.’ ‘Which bank?’ ‘Nedbank.’ ‘Bring the money here, we’ll see …’”
But when he went back with the money, the police were brought in and arrested him.
“They beat me and threw me in a cell. They came back with the superintendent. But Van Niekerk said, ‘No, no, I know this guy… he painted my house.’”
He said, “Are you sure that this is your money?” I said, “Yes.”
“Where’s your bank book?’”
The bank confirmed to Van Niekerk that Chamuso had saved R8,000.
He got his Peugeot.
In 1976, he was driving back with his partner, Agnes Lungwe, from her brother’s wedding in Zeerust when he was stopped at a roadblock. The police found a camera and film in his boot. He’d been taking photos at the wedding. But the police suspected “that I’m transporting people to the border, Nietverdiend, to go to Botswana.
“They took me to the police station. ‘Nou jy sal die waarheid praat [Now you will talk the truth].’ Which waar praat I must talk? Because I don’t have any information I must give them. They are interested in the ANC. And myself I’m not. They said, ‘This is the ANC.’ I said ‘Which ANC you are talking about?’ They said, ‘That is where ANC people were crossing the border.’ I was beaten, beaten! My jaw was broken. I lost my tooth.”
Finally, the police decided to deport him to Mozambique. As the train passed Springs, he jumped out.
“I was beaten when I went to buy a car, and now I was beaten coming from the wedding, and I lost my girlfriend because now she thinks I’m
a terrorist, and I’m losing everything, now I begin to think maybe I better join the ANC.”
But he got a job at Sasol as a lorry driver.
Arrested again — for nothing
On the night of 31 May to 1 June 1980, MK’s Special Operations unit attacked Sasol.
Chamusso was a foreman of the drivers. The management and police thought that he had something to do with the attack because they suspected that the saboteurs were brought in through a truck. The police said: “You must be a big fish, man, you must know about this bombing [laughter].
“So, everyone was saying hey, hoo, even those detained with me. Imagine that trouble on your shoulder, but you don’t know anything about who did it …
“When I’m getting beaten, I said that if I get out of here, I’ll show them! They say I’m ANC, but I’m not. I said to myself they made another mistake, now I’m going to join the ANC! Even though I don’t know where they are, I’ll find them.”
After his release he went to Maputo. The ANC asked him to meet somebody. His worst fears surfaced.
“This white man comes in. Big ears, big glasses, like a Boer, like from the special branch [laughter].”
But it was, in fact, Joe Slovo. He told Slovo that he wanted to take revenge for his detentions.
“But he said, ‘Patrick, we’re not fighting for revenge but to remove apartheid. Not to kill the whites.’ What you hit, I said, was the petrol depot. I want to hit the reactor and then Sasol is finished.”
Chamusso was sent for training to Angola.
Aboobaker Ismail (MK Rashid) discussed the details of the operation with Chamusso.
Chamusso came into the country in a Datsun Stanza as James Mabuza on a Swazi passport
He attacked Sasol Secunda on 21 October 1981. The limpet mine on the water pipeline led to an explosion. He was not able to bomb the fuel pipes that led to the reactor and went into the storage tank farms, so the reactor didn’t explode.
He also planted a limpet mine at the Transalloys power station in
Witbank. The explosion damaged a transformer and a lightning diverter, and two radiators lost oil.
Arrested — for doing something
He came across a roadblock. He swung his car around. It toppled over. He was shot in the leg. He disappeared into the bush. He walked for about a hundred kilometres.
“I just exploded every strength that I had.”
The police found his passport and Makarov in the car.
At about 8am on 27 October the police arrested Chamusso about ten kilometres from Middelburg, close to his partner’s hut.
He was sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment on 6 December 1982.
Influenced by fellow prisoner Achmad Cassiem, from the radical Islamic group Qibla, Chamusso converted to Islam.
“My real name is Abdul Rashid Chamusso.”
Meeting Slovo again
Chamusso was released in late 1991. He went to the ANC’s headquarters.
“When Slovo saw me, he immediately got up, I was so impressed. We were both in tears. But we had made it! It was like a son meeting a father. We were hugging and so happy and everyone there wondered who is this guy, why is Slovo getting up for him and hugging him? It was very emotional.”
Slovo introduced Chamusso to Mandela.
“I couldn’t believe that I had touched the hands that shook the world… At that moment, I forgot all about the 10 years in prison. All the pain and torture I’d suffered was healed by Madiba’s touch.”
But, “There’s one man who did the most for me, that’s Joe Slovo. He changed my whole life, the way I see things. He’s the best.”
On his release from Robben Island, Chamusso said: “That was the end of my politics. I wanted to go home.”
He launched the Two Sisters Orphanage in Mbombela in 1995 to help children who’d lost their parents through HIV and Aids.
Unusual history romanticised
Chamusso has been immortalised in a movie — Catch a Fire. He attended the premieres of the movie in several cities in the northern hemisphere.
The movie is “set to turn this unassuming, unknown man into an international inspiration”, said The Observer’s Andrew Meldrum. His “infectious, unaffected spark made him as sought-after on the red carpets as the stars”. Chamusso “embraces the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation that is the hallmark of the new South Africa … his extraordinary life story encompasses much of the country’s compelling history”.
With his broad smile, shiny eyes and way of stringing words together, Chamusso is an engaging, charming storyteller, and when challenged he’s very quick on his feet. It’s true that politics came to find him, but he took to it with a natural instinct and manages interviews with remarkable aplomb. And he showed this, too, during the global attention that was focused on him with the release of the movie, his lack of formal education being no hindrance.
Driven, energetic, lively and without the sense of entitlement that has befallen many ANC cadres since 1994, he stands out.
Joining the ANC helped to widen his horizons, but perhaps it mostly just brought out his innate potential.
“You want to say that I was a born fighter? Well, I was pushed into this.”
Well, yes, but still. He became a successful painter, a good photographer, bought a new Peugeot at the age of 23 and did much else. Against the odds in apartheid South Africa. And the way he found himself in the ANC and came to his political self is certainly unique.
In a strange coincidence, in 1998 Chamusso bumped into Visser, his security police torturer.
“I was going to Witbank. I saw a man had a puncture. And it was raining. Then I saw it was him. When they arrested me, I was thin, so he didn’t recognise me now.” Chamusso assisted him.
Later he phoned Visser.
“Do you know who I am?” He said, “No.”
“I helped you with your tyres, but you didn’t even ask me my name. But I know you. You are Colonel Visser from Middelburg police station. I’m Patrick Chamusso. He said, ‘Oh, that terrorist from Slovo.’”
He invited Chamusso to visit him. But when Chamusso got there “the house was empty. Even the neighbour didn’t know where he went.
“He’s guilty because of what? But me, I’ve forgiven him.” DM
Attacking the Heart of Apartheid by Yunus Carrim is published by Penguin Random House.