In Transit - Autobiography of a South African Freedom Fighter by Fanele Mbali

ISBN: 9780987041128

SAHO, 2012

Paperback, 237 Pages

After two years as a student at the University of Fort Hare, where he had qualified as a teacher, Fanele Mbali (born in 1937) responded to the call to take up arms to overthrow the oppressive apartheid regime, along with hundreds of other young men and women. He was of the generation that had witnessed the laying of the legislative foundations of the police state that South Africa became after 1964. Like other young people he had grown up in a segregated national environment, a system that was elevated to government policy and legislation in the years following the start of his schooling. After joining the ANC in exile, he was stationed in southern, central and east Africa and was part of the first group of students sent abroad to study, in his case in the Soviet Union and Australia. As a member of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), he remained in exile until 1991. Fanele Mbali recreates the evocative atmosphere that followed the 1961 launch of MK and the high tide of expectations that accompanied it and provides an intimate glimpse into the MK culture and the experience of combating the apartheid state machinery in exile.