South Africa: Reflections of a Wayward Boy - Into Exile, and the Streets of London

analysis

When, following further arrests in South Africa in 1965, I decided to go into exile, I had no intention of going any further than Zambia or Tanzania. Naïvely, I saw myself joining the ANC army in exile and returning within five years as apartheid crumbled. Instead, I was ordered out of Zambia 'for his own personal safety', granted political asylum in England and ended the year as a student activist in London.

On Saturday morning, 28 August 1965 I was already packed and ready to leave Zambia in a hurry, my bush hat handy at the top of my rucksack. Although then-president Kenneth Kaunda had said my personal safety was at risk and had applied to countries further from South Africa to give me asylum, there had been no response. That meant the immigration authorities would cart me off, as an illegal immigrant, to a detention centre on Sunday morning.

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