February 1963, while Andrew was still undergoing treatment, he learned that the rest of his team members had proceeded to Lobatse by plane without him. He was later told that the ANC had established a better network in Botswana than when he and his team had left for China. In a just over a year the ANC had greatly improved its struggle infrastructure in that country. Mpho Motsamai had become the ANC’s representative, based at Palapye, and he had received the four members in his house and had spent Christmas and New Year with them and slaughtered a goat. Andrew had known Mpho Motsamai since the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He described him as probably one of the worst enemies of the state in the East Rand, later to be called Ekurhuleni. He recalled that this had landed Mpho Motsamai in and out of police stations and prisons while the campaign lasted, before the ANC called it off in 1953. But, like many other comrades, Mpho Motsamai was unstoppable until he was eventually deported to Botswana with his wife, Onalepelo, the woman he had married in detention. Andrew and his fellow Johannesburg comrades would jokingly refer to Onalepelo, whose name means ‘you have a heart’ or ‘you are patient’, as her husband’s real pillar of strength.
Back in Tanzania, Tambo arranged for Andrew to give a talk to a few comrades, with details of his communications training, the use of transmitters, decoding and encoding. This became the first official training he conducted for his comrades. One day, there was an unexpected knock at the door of the house where Andrew was staying, the house of Senior Ngalo, the brother of Benjamin Ngalo, another of his comrades, who had fled into exile. When he opened the door, Benjamin Ramotse was standing there. Andrew was almost speechless with surprise. Ramotse told him that he had been told not to make contact because it was too dangerous. In fact, he had been told that it was dangerous for those coming into exile to be familiar with the places of residence of those already there. They had been warned that if those who were returning home were caught and tortured they were bound to expose some names and places. New recruits were not supposed to be seen by those they found in exile or to see anyone else in training apart from those with whom they were grouped.
Benjamin Ramotse would have none of that. He had found a way to meet Andrew, and gave him the gory details of 16 December 1961. He was the comrade who succeeded Andrew as the secretary of the Dube branch when Andrew became the secretary of the Soweto region. He asked for clothes because he had left home without anything. Andrew gave him one of the two shirts that he had brought with him from China.
Andrew told Ramotse why he had not travelled with his fellow combatants: the nerve problem. Ramotse thought it was probably nothing more serious than a toothache because he had once suffered the same pain. He suggested that Andrew should see a dentist. Andrew confided this to Makiwane, who took him to the dentist. The dentist discovered a cavity, filled it – and like magic the pain went away instantly although the swelling took a few days to subside. That, though, paved the way for Andrew to go home. He asked Makiwane to take him to meet Tambo and tell him the good news. Tambo was pleased, and the next day Andrew was on the train to Botswana via Mbeya and Lusaka. He was accompanied by Sam Masemola, the mission head in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia). A man of his own age, Masemola, based in Alexandra Township, had joined the ANC around the same time as Andrew in the 1940s. He was another experienced member whom Andrew respected.
They got to Lusaka late the following day, but Sam Masemola immediately took Andrew to meet the leader of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), Kenneth Kaunda, a man with a reputation as ‘a moderate and reasonable man, opposed to violence, especially if it could be avoided’. ‘He had been at the helm of this new party for two years which he had spent in and out of prison for his relentless campaigns against the colonial government,’ recalled Andrew. ‘He was more or less my age and oozed honesty and frankness throughout our discussion,’ he added. Kaunda told Andrew of the misgivings of his colleagues about the ANC struggle in South Africa. ‘He told me he was for the ANC but his future ministers leaned towards the PAC because of the broad strategic vision he referred to as Africa for Africans … He also emphasised that my task, or that of the ANC, was to convince his colleagues in the UNIP about the relevance of our ideology to the Africans.’ Kaunda had previously told Mandela and Tambo the same thing. Andrew took Kaunda’s advice seriously and decided to spend an extra day in Lusaka. Sam Masemola took him to UNIP offices to make a courtesy call on Kaunda’s colleagues but unfortunately they were all out doing community work.
On the following day he continued his journey alone – by train to Botswana, where he was received by Mpho Motsamai. His host related how the other four comrades had spent time with him and how eager they were to take further instructions from MK’s National High Command. Andrew was tired but at the same time eager to return to the country to fulfil the purpose of MK. He slept – just enough of a rest to be able to carry on. The next day he phoned Joe Slovo, using his MK name, Percy Mokoena, which was also known to Slovo.
‘My name is Percy, I’m in Botswana and have been arrested for a minor misdemeanour. I have to appear in court tomorrow and I need a defence lawyer,’ he said to a possibly surprised Slovo. But Andrew was not arrested and he only did this to trick any would-be eavesdroppers. It seems Slovo, too, understood that Andrew only needed transport to cross the border back into South Africa, because that night Joe Modise arrived at Mpho Motsamai’s house to fetch him. He was driving what Andrew would later describe as a ‘hot, hot’ Peugeot 404 because, as he eventually discovered, the car had been under police surveillance for some time and it was a matter of time before the police decided to pounce on Joe Modise.
Modise made it clear that he was not going to spend a night there as the National High Command of MK needed Andrew at its base at Liliesleaf farm. Mondays were meeting days, and the matter of the trainees from China was high on the agenda. If they missed that meeting, then the topic would be deferred to the next meeting in seven days’ time. Modise told him that there was a full and urgent programme waiting for him and other trainees and it could not be postponed. They drove through the night and arrived at Liliesleaf farm the next morning. Andrew was tired and decided to sleep. Modise did not sleep. Instead, he dropped Andrew and disappeared.
From the moment he picked him up in Botswana, Andrew realised that Joe Modise’s commitment was unquestionable. He was a man geared towards sticking to the programme of MK, and as brave as ever. He was also seeing a new Joe Modise, who was no longer a loose cannon acting outside the organisation. Here was a man who, although still determined in his beliefs, was subject to the statutes of the movement and commands from above, respecting the leadership and carrying out its instructions to the letter. The leadership had also invested a lot of trust in him. ‘He was mature in the political sense, although he retained his streetwise Sophiatown habits and, perhaps, his inborn vigour in carrying out tasks he believed were for a good cause,’ observed Andrew.
Later in the afternoon, Modise came back with Gqabi and Mthembu. Andrew didn’t know where they had been. Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu were already there when Andrew woke up. Joe Slovo, Bram Fischer, Rusty Bernstein, Jack Hodgson and Arthur Goldreich, the other members of the National High Command, were not there, but Andrew wasn’t worried. There were four main items on the agenda for the day: the welcoming of the trainees from China and their integration into the National High Command; Operation Mayibuye and the immediate implementation of some aspects of it; security issues; and the report from the Chinese on the trainees who had just returned, including Andrew. Sisulu warned right from the beginning that the meeting should not take long, as Andrew needed to be released early to be reunited with his family. But he also pointed out that the family was well, and reported that Gqabi and Mthembu had been to Andrew’s house to tell June that he was well although still undergoing treatment in Tanzania.
The report from China highlighted various aspects of the training and gave brief profiles of the six trainees, which would have to be taken into consideration by the senior members of the National High Command. ‘None of us knew how the report reached South Africa. But it was accurate on what we already knew,’ recalled Andrew in his old age. The report pointed out that according to the assessment done by the Chinese, Naidoo was probably the most gifted of the trainees. The report stated that he had the most initiative but also had a weakness – laziness. Gqabi was also smart, according to the report, but his weakness was that he was too ambitious and wanted leadership positions regardless of his ability. Mhlaba was identified as easygoing and a man who would do anything he was instructed to do, no matter