DIPAK PATEL: Our 'historic mission' is under threat
'Some have usurped power‚ have begun to threaten our constitutional paradigm and are‚ it seems‚ intent on furthering their own enrichment'
I was at the Kathrada memorial in Durban on Sunday. In my old neighbourhood. The neighbourhood where‚ under the guidance of the likes of Pravin Gordhan‚ Billy Nair‚ Curnick Ndlovu and Siphiwe Nyanda and Mac Maharaj (when they infiltrated the country for Operation Vula in 1987) I learned my politics‚ tempered my angry disposition‚ and grew up to be a trained and capable underground military operative. It is the city in which I was detained three times‚ interrogated and tortured‚ and the city in which the Vula Trial was conducted. Charged with terrorism in the old South Africa — the last such trial before apartheid took its last gasp. Round about July 10‚ 1990‚ my two closest comrades‚ Mbuso Tshabalala and Charles Ndaba (we served on Vula's MCW Committee together) were executed in cold blood — a few kilometers from the venue where the Kathrada memorial took place. After being tortured to the edge of their lives in Section 29 detention‚ they were taken to the mouth of the Tugela‚ made ...
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