RONNIE KASRILS AT GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

Ronnie Kasrils addressed the 2010 Mandela-Tambo Lecture and launch of the book
“The Unlikely Secret Agent” written by himself about the courage and role played by his wife in the military campaign against the racist corrupting apartheid regime at University Chapel within the square.The book is about the underground activity
of his late wife, Eleanor, in the early 1960s in apartheid South Africa.

As John Le Carré states, “This is a wonderful book about a courageous and extraordinary woman who was
highly principled, yet endowed by nature with all the clandestine skills.”

Ronnie Kasrils was Deputy Minister of Defence in Nelson Mandela’s government, then
Minister for Water and Forestry Affairs and, until 2009, Minister of Intelligence for
South Africa. Prior to that, Ronnie was a leader in the armed wing of the African
National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe.


Kasrils was a major player in the military wing of the ANC , a necessity created when the bloody massacre of innocents protesting at Sharpeville in 1960 after that response to peaceful protest by the South African forces it became blindingly clear resistance to Apartheid would have to incorporate a campaign to attack the economic foundations of the violent Pretoria Government.

The South African Communist Party adopted an enlightened position which put its European counterparts to extreme shame when it put International revolution of the Workers Proletariat led by an Intellectual dictatorship of European educated emigres on hold , and make the dismantling the racist ideology of Apartheid the primary goal of its focus.The result of this all to rare genuinely progressive mature position was to enable the Communist Party become a genuine highly effective constituent of a all encompassing mass movement , not an opportunistic entity doing more harm than good to the very constituency they purported to be labouring for.

The theme of the lecture , and hence the tribute to his wife,was courage , individual and collective, a type of courage which helped achieve one of Humanitys greatest successes of the last century , as well as an inspiration for those striving for Justice in this.His wifes Family came from Kilmarnock.

You can hear the whole lecture , a glorious highly engaging tale of an unassuming woman heroine , in the video below:( it comes in 5 parts).