Sent in honour of Chris Hani Month, 2015 _____
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communist-university/sXJLcihxsOI> Interview with Comrade Chris Hani Part 1 of 3 SACP Offices, Rissik Street, Johannesburg, 23 and 31 March 1993 (Chris Hani was shot and killed ten days later) Interviewer: Luli Callinicos Transcribed by: Sheila Weinberg "CH" is Martin Thembisile "Chris" Hani. "L" is Dr Luli Callinicos, the interviewer. This is a division, in three nearly equal parts, of the full interview, for posting to the Communist University and related groups during Chris Hani Month, 2015, so that as many of us as possible can read it at the same time. To read the full interview on the Internet, or to download it in PDF booklet-printable format, please go to the following web page: https://sites.google.com/site/cu2012courses/chris-hani CH So let me start from the beginning. I was born in the Transkei on 28 June 1942 in a small town called Cofimvaba which is about 60kms from Queenstown. I was not born in that small town. I was born in a remote village, St Marks. My mother had never been to school and my father must have gone to school for about five to six years. Basically primary education. My father was a migrant worker. He worked in the mines earlier on and later on he worked as a construction worker in Cape Town. Later becoming a hawker and selling soft goods. We as young people saw very little of him and our group really was supervised and monitored by my mother. We went to the village school, walking about 8 to 10 kms a day going to that school. We were three boys. We were six in the family but three survived. Because in the rural areas, those days, there were literally no health facilities. A family was lucky to have the whole offspring surviving. If fifty percent survived, that was an achievement, so out of six, three of us survived and we are still surviving. Then from there I went to a Catholic mission to finish my standard 6. It was at this stage that I seriously considered being a Catholic priest, but my father would not have anything of that. L Were your parents Christians? CH Well, no. My father was baptised, my mother was baptised, but they were not practising Christians. I never saw them going to church. My grandmother never went to church. So it was not a Christian family. I grew up in an area where very few people were Christians. In the village, probably three or four people bothered to go to church. It was really a traditional African area where people practised their own religious worship. The influence of Christianity was very minimal. So, although I went to a Christian church, I must say I was under the spell and influence of the priests, the monks and the nuns. And one must say that there is something basically one admired in them. A sense of hard work, selflessness. These people would go on horseback to the most rural parts of the village, taking the gospel to the people, encouraging kids to go to school. Praying for the sick and offering all sorts of advice. In other words they were not only priests, but they were nurses, they were teachers, they were social workers. I must submit that had a very, very, strong impression on me and in the formation of my character. I thought I wanted to be a priest, but my father didn't want it so I had no say in this thing. I branched, and I went to high school. In 1958 I completed my matric and I went over to Fort Hare the following year to become a university student. I began to be consciously involved in the struggle in 1957. We had all been politicised by the introduction of Bantu education. It was very unpopular. Many teachers spoke out against it, and this impacted on some of us. One found his way to the African National Congress Youth League. One began to read an assortment of journals and newspapers, New Age whose editor then was I think Lionel Forman. That was before Brian Bunting. I also began to read the organ of the Unity Movement called Torch, published in the Western Cape. At the same time one read journals like Fighting Talk edited by Ruth First, Liberation and all that. So it was at this stage as a young matric student that I began to get politicised and I was reading quite considerable political literature. L Did you join the YL while you were still at school? CH Yes, at the age of 15 I joined the YL at Lovedale. L When you were reading Torch were you now being introduced to Marxist concepts? CH Yes, I began to be introduced to Marxist concepts through reading both New Age and Torch. There was a page in New Age which dealt with the struggle of the working class throughout the world. What was happening in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, China. The life that people were building there. And that had an appeal in my own impassionate young mind. Given my background, I was attracted by ideas and the philosophy which had a bias towards the working class; which had as its stated objective the upliftment of the people on the ground. For about six or nine months I was actually in the Unity Movement. I was a member of SOYA, the Society of Young Africa. My earlier political influence was the Unity Movement. It was strong amongst intellectuals in the whole of the Eastern Cape, most of the intellectuals, teachers and all that belonged to the Unity Movement. Some of them had taught us. But later on I began to examine the Unity Movement, and I didn't see them being involved in the mass struggles of our people. The struggle was waged in the mind, in the head. It was a theoretical struggle. The activism of the ANC began to make me shift my political allegiance from the UM to the ANC. Furthermore, I met comrades who were already in the YL like Comrade Sipho Makana, Anderson Ganyile who was banished from Pondoland during the Pondo struggle. I began to be exposed to the writings of Govan Mbeki who was writing a lot, he was a prolific writer on the problems of the rural areas and the struggles in the Eastern Cape. And so I began to join the ANC and belong to an ANC underground cell because it was illegal to become a member of a political organisation within the college, the Lovedale institution. L I was going to ask what the nuns and brothers thought of it. CH This one was not... I had moved away from a Catholic school, this was a Presbyterian school, but with very strict headmasters and all that sort of thing. Political activity was absolutely prohibited. In a way we were introduced to the underground struggle before the ANC was banned. So in a way you can say that we as students were better placed when the ANC was banned in 1960 because our activities were illegal at the College, at Lovedale. And then, at this stage one began to read widely about the leaders of the ANC because the first requirement was to understand the history of the ANC going back to 1912, why was it formed, who were its earlier leaders, going through all the different periods. The period of the YL itself, the history of the YL. The contribution to the ANC by the YL in terms of the militancy, the programme of action, and who were behind this POA, people like Tambo, Mandela, Mji, Anton Lembede, Sisulu etc. And now, as youngsters, these were our idols. These were our heroes. These young people who actually transformed the ANC and made it to become an organisation which was militant, which was actually engaging the white government. Therefore this was the period of our general understanding of the contribution and the role of people like Tambo. We admired them because we saw in them a different type of intelligentsia. An intelligentsia which is selfless, which is not just concerned about making money, creating a comfortable situation for themselves, but an intelligentsia which had lots of time for the struggle of the oppressed people of SA. How they used their legal knowledge to alleviate the judicial persecution of the blacks through the pass laws, through Bantu Authorities, or the Group Areas. And as we therefore studied, we felt that our priority as a future probably intellectuals, should be to participate in this struggle. And I must say my life was shaped by the outlook of people like comrade Tambo, Mandela, Duma Nokwe and others... One must point out that there had never been any physical meeting between me and Comrade OR. That had to wait until the ANC got banned in 1960, leading the situation where Umkonto weSiswe was formed in 1961. It was my joining Umkonto WeSiswe which lead to a development where I left the country. This is early 1963. L How did you join MK? And had you joined the Party by then? CH In 1961, at Fort Hare, at the University College of Fort Hare, I was doing my third year, studying for a BA degree and majoring in Latin and English. I am approached, I am already a member of the YL, by some comrades who apparently had been moulded or welded into a Communist Party unit by Comrade Mbeki. So in 1961 I joined the Party, and I began seriously studying Marxism, the basic works of Marxist authors like Emile Burns' What is Marxism, the Communist Manifesto, the World Marxist Review and a number of other publications. I began to read the history of our Party by people like Edward Roux for instance, Time Longer than Rope, giving the earlier history of the CP. And other journals by people like Bill Andrews and trade union periodicals written with contributions from people like Ray Alexander, Gomas, Jimmy La Guma. Now I am sure the next question is, why did I join the CP? Why was I not just satisfied with the ANC? I belonged to a world, in terms of my background, which suffered I think the worst extremes of apartheid. A poor rural area where the majority of working people spent their times in the compounds, in the hostels, away from their families. A rural area where there were no clinics and probably the nearest hospital was 50kms. Generally a life of poverty with the basic things unavailable. Where our mothers and our sisters would walk 3kms and even 6kms, whenever there was a drought, to fetch water. Where the only fuel available was going 5, 6kms away to cut wood and bring it back. This was the sort of life. Now I had seen the lot of black workers, extreme forms of exploitation. Slave wages, no trade union rights, and for me the appeal of socialism was extremely great. Where it was said that workers create wealth but in the final analysis they get nothing. They get peanuts in order to survive and continue working for the capitalists. So it was that simple approach, that simple understanding, which was a product of my own observation in addition to theory. I didn't get involved with the workers' struggle out of theory alone. It was a combination of theory and my own class background. I never faltered in my belief in socialism despite all the problems currently. For me that belief is strong because that is still the life of the majority of the people with whom I share a common background. L What made you different in that you got as far as university? CH Yes, that is an important question. In my family the first person to become a teacher, in other words two years after the junior certificate, it was called the Native Primary Higher, NPH, was my aunt. She is still alive. She stays somewhere in Zondi in Soweto. My father's sister. She was a source of tremendous influence to all of us. This girl coming from that sort of area, studying to become a teacher. I remember as a small boy I used to have a fascination of books, I would read those books although I understood very little. She encouraged me and taught me a few nursery rhymes and began to open up a new world even before I got to school. A world of knowing how to write the alphabet, how to count, in other words not only literacy but numeracy. Because of that background, when I went to school I was in a better position than most boys in the village, and I remember the principal of the school got encouraged, how I would read a story and actually memorise that story and without looking at the book I would actually recite it word by word. And then I became a very good pupil. For instance instead of doing the usual, I wrote standard 5 and standard 6 at the same time, because I passed the Std 5 examination within the same year as Std 6 and then I was promoted to high school. Then there was a scholarship in the Transkei called the Bhunga, you know the old Bhunga, sort of an advisory board? Well I got that Bhunga scholarship to take me to high school and then I got even a bursary and a scholarship to go to university because I was performing rather above average. I got a bursary from the Bhunga and then, later on, my father was also helping to pay what the scholarship couldn't cover. He was in Cape Town by then. He was hawking now, and he helped to pay the rest of the fees. When I went over to Fort Hare, in addition to the Bhunga scholarship, I won a government loan to go to university. I think basically that is what helped me to go to university. It was extremely hard. One would have only one pair of shoes, one jacket, and it was not easy because other students from families which were probably were more comfortable than mine, the kids would be better clothed that myself. But I had accepted the fact that this was not important for me. What was important was to get my education. It was through this spirit of self sacrifice and accepting that the priority was to get my education. There was a number of us coming from rural areas who got their pocket money because parents sold hides and wool whenever it was the sheep-shearing season. We had some sheep and some cattle and goats at home. So my mother also, my father bought a sewing machine for my mother, so now and again through that I could get a bit of pocket money whilst I was at Lovedale and Fort Hare. L This point about the long-term goal, it's interesting that you made short term sacrifices for the long term goal. CH That's right. For me that was important, and I was actually influenced by the sort of puritan life in the villages. During holidays I used to go and be with my mother, help my mother in the fields, growing maize and harvesting. Because if you harvested probably 20 bags of maize, the rest would be sold to the white shopkeeper. Because that was the only market available in the rural areas. It was the white shopkeeper who would buy at prices determined by him. [laugh]. In other words I contributed even to the slender financial resources of the family by working very hard during holidays in the fields and also looking after the stock. L In terms of the chronology, you joined the YL, you were in Fort Hare, you also joined the UM at Lovedale. So by the time you got to Fort Hare...? CH I joined the UM at Lovedale, and then at Fort Hare I was already a fully-fledged member of the YL. Then I joined the Party at Fort Hare. L But in a sense the UM was preparing you for the Party? CH Yes. The Party in those early years actually was very much involved in preparing us theoretically for the understanding of Marxism. What is Marxism, what is the SACP, why it important to become both a member of the ANC and the Party. Why is there no contradiction between the two? The need to yoke together the national and the class struggle. Which is the priority? The priority being national liberation, the liberation of mostly the blacks, leading to a democratic situation. And why it was important that the struggle should continue beyond the state of national democratic for socialism. We were being equipped theoretically to understand these issues, and why it was important to work in the ANC and other mass organisations, and in the trade unions. So in a way the Party shaped our non-sectarian approach to the struggle in SA. The Party shaped our non-sectarian approach to the struggle in SA. These were the issues that we were discussing. It equipped us both theoretically and ideologically, but mainly the Party convinced us that the main area of struggle was in the ANC. It was important to have an ANC which accepted the Freedom Charter, which committed itself to the implementation of the Freedom Charter. And we felt that the Freedom Charter was a revolutionary document in terms of the struggle for national liberation and democracy. And basically that is what we spent a lot of time discussing and debating all these issues in the Party cells. L And then, MK? CH Well, as I indicated, 1960 becomes a very difficult year for the ANC. It is banned, it has to go underground and 61 people like Mandela had to go underground after making a call for a stay-at-home at the All-In Conference in 'Maritzburg. In a way this became a period of serious questioning and introspection and soul-searching on the part of the ANC, [and] the Communist Party. With the growing repression, with the growing violation of basic human rights, with the imprisonment without trial, detention without trial, the question was being asked, were we going to continue in the old way with non-violence, with non-violent protest? And this debate was never conclusive. There were divisions within the ANC about the next move. And that is why the formation of Umkhonto we Siswe was not endorsed by the ANC leadership. What was said was that the ANC leadership understood the need for the formation of MK, so joining MK became voluntary. The Party itself had debated and I think the Party as a whole, endorsed MK, but in the ANC the leadership was split. It was not a hostile split. a period of serious questioning and introspection and soul searching on the part of the ANC, the Communist Party. With the growing repression, with the growing violation of basic human rights, with the imprisonment without trial, detention without trial, the question was being asked, were we going to continue in the old way with non-violence, with non-violent protest? And this debate was never conclusive. There were divisions within the ANC about the next move. And that is why the formation of Umkhonto we Siswe was not endorsed by the ANC leadership. What was said was that the ANC leadership understood the need for the formation of MK, so joining MK became voluntary. The Party itself had debated and I think the Party as a whole, endorsed MK, but in the ANC the leadership was split. It was not a hostile split. Those who did not agree felt that there was still room for a non-peaceful [sic] strategy. But they said of course they understood the arguments for some form of armed struggle. L Those who didn't join the armed struggle, how did they visualise the struggle continuing? A struggle through the labour movement? CH Yes, they thought of a struggle through the labour movement, they thought of a struggle through even less revolutionary organisations, some of them continuing to exist within the system. How to get into the advisory boards and other things, and use them as platforms. There was no well-defined strategy, but they were saying that we could exploit a number of avenues. Although they were not explicit in terms of which avenues, apart from the trade unions, but even the trade union movement, the labour movement was also under tremendous attack. The leaders had been banned in the same way as the ANC leaders were banned. People like Mark Shope, Moses Mabhida, Leon Levy, and all that, they were receiving the same attention from the police as the ANC leaders. People like Vuyisile Mini. So you couldn't argue convincingly that there was space in the labour movement because the labour movement was also under attack and there were attempts to undermine it and to subvert it by forming a rival union. I remember FOFATUSA characters from abroad, from ICFTU came actually to drive a wedge and split the trade union movement. It was just the uncertainty about moving from non-violence to armed struggle without the existence of objective and subjective factors. Our people knew nothing about military struggle. The last wars that we fought were fought towards the end of the 19th century. People had been deskilled in terms of understanding war. They were not even allowed to keep spears in their own houses. So I think the task of moving to an armed struggle was found daunting by many leaders of the ANC. There was not even a single country which was an independent country, next door to SA. There was no rear base. People felt that, some people were saying, was this not an exercise in adventurism or something of the sort. How realisable was the strategy of armed struggle? I think these were debates that were taking place. But those who opted for armed struggle moved swiftly. They used the expertise of comrades who had been involved in the last war, in the Second World War, people like Jack Hodgson, like Strachan, like Ben Turok and others. Like Denis Goldberg, engineers like Denis Goldberg, to teach the rudimentary skills of the manufacture of bombs, the manufacturing of timing devices, the mixing of chemicals and all that sort of thing. What was important for many of us was the armed propaganda. For the other side to understand that we are sick and tired and if they don't want to sit down and negotiate, we are going to fight. L At that early stage armed struggle had a tremendous symbolic effect. CH Yes. It had an armed propaganda effect in the sense that we wanted to encourage our people to fight back and not to be demoralised. You must remember that this was a time when there was a massive swoop on activities. People arrested, and detained throughout the country, especially the Eastern Cape. Thousands are detained, tortured, in the Transkei. Others ultimately were executed. People like Mini in 1963 and Bongco and there was a feeling that we cannot just turn the other cheek. L Were you a part of the M Plan? Would you say the tradition of the M plan was distinct from a Leninist cell? CH There are similarities. It is the tradition as far as I am concerned, of the experience of the Bolsheviks in Russia where there was a lot of repression and Tsarist autocracy. Where the communists and socialists and other radical elements couldn't organise openly. The activities of the South African Special Branch were hardly different from the activities of PRANA, the Russian security police. And now the Eastern Cape being the most repressed area, had to start implementing the M Plan. Meetings of the ANC were banned there as far back as the 50s. Open meetings were not allowed. Meetings of more than 10 people were not allowed. That is why in the Eastern Cape, especially around Port Elizabeth, there was the experimentation of underground units. The building of units, zonal leadership, unit leadership, and all that sort of thing, in order to minimise the crippling effects of arrest, to prevent the chain reaction whenever an arrest was effected. So the Eastern Cape was in a better position to build underground structures when the ANC was banned in 1960, because for more than ten years the ANC there had been subjected to cruel repression on the part of the security police. L How did you join MK? CH I joined MK in Cape Town. After finishing my degree at Fort Hare I went over to Cape Town where my father was working. I got articles. I wanted to become a lawyer. So it is in the course of my serving articles that the comrades in the Western Cape, the underground leadership of the Western Cape, the Committee of Seven, appoints me to that committee. I became a member of the Committee of Seven, in overall charge of the underground of the ANC in the Western Cape. It is in the course of my activities within that Committee of Seven that I am recruited to become part of the MK set up. I am recruited into a unit and I begin to operate in small way, throwing Molotov cocktails, cutting telephone cables and all that. This is in 1962. Sometime in 1962 I get arrested, and I am charged with distributing illegal leaflets. I am sentenced to 18 months hard labour. But I was out on bail. Then instructions come from MK High Command, nationally, for me to leave the country to go for military training. So it is in May 1963 that I leave the country for military training abroad. L What was your father's attitude to your political activities? CH Well, both of us were involved. My father is also involved in the ANC underground. He is a member of the civic association called the Langa Residents' Association. He is the chairperson there. He is very active. He is an influential community leader. So my activities met with a lot of understanding and support from him. In other words, I had no domestic problems in terms of my political activities. My uncle in Stellenbosch was a member of the CPSA before it was banned, and also later becomes an important community leader. So there was this tradition, this background, of support from, and activity from many of my family members. L When you left, you skipped the country? CH I skipped the country illegally via Bechuanaland, Northern Rhodesia and eventually Tanzania. L Was there a reception in... ? CH Reception in Johannesburg first of all, underground reception, where we were assembled. We were more than 20 coming from the different parts of SA, from East London, from Durban, from Johannesburg, from Cape Town. And we were all meant for Botswana. In Botswana there was also some underground reception. Some arrangements were made to truck us to Kazungula on the Zambezi River, and then we got into Livingstone in Zambia. And then even in Zambia there was some ANC underground presence there. Ultimately we struggled to Tanzania where there was an ANC office. And it is where that for the first time I meet Comrade Oliver Tambo. In Dar. That was in '63. I mean physically meeting Comrade Tambo, Comrade Duma Nokwe, and the other comrades. L They had set up the office and... ? CH They had set up the office and reception houses. We were received and kept at a house called Luthuli House in one of the suburbs of Dar es Salaam. L Which had been donated by? CH Yes, by the Tanzanian government, by Nyerere. Then we were received by him [Tambo], we were addressed by him, we were inspired by him. Sort of quite convincing style of OR. Very humble. He comes to see us whenever he had time and to discuss with us, and to listen to us. To listen to our own experiences. What we thought were insignificant experiences, we never thought they were important. But Tambo would come and ask us, listen, to those experiences. We are encouraged to visit the office now and again, to read books and all that sort of thing. It is also there that I later met Ronnie Kasrils and a few other comrades. Then preparation was made to send us abroad for military training. And then I was sent to the Soviet Union together with 30 comrades, in that same year. Actually, we didn't spend more than three months in Dar es Salaam. And we went for military training. Then it is at this course that my beliefs in socialism are actually strengthened. You must consider that I came from a very racial society. And therefore the first time most of us as blacks are received as human beings, as equal human beings, we are received by people from the Central Committee who are based in a secret house and at this time we have these white ladies actually cooking for us and looking after this place. So for us this is a new world. A new world of equality, of people where our colour seems to be of no consequence. Where our humanity is being recognised. And for us we thought that this could only be possible under socialism. We had not been exposed, we had not been to Britain. We had no comparative experience. So for us this strengthened our feelings, our strong feelings in socialism. We are introduced to lots of subjects, not only military subjects. In terms of the theory of guerilla warfare, the politics of socialism, the great October Revolution. We visit museums, even our cultural education now begins to start. Going to concerts, to the Bolshoi theatre and other theatres. For the first time actually watched ballet dancing. I mean a new world for us. We never saw it in our country. We begin to appreciate classical music, another new world for us. We move around in Moscow in buses. Of course these were guided tours, and we don't see starving people, we don't see beggars. We go to factories and watch the Russian workers. Now of course I know that we were not exposed to everything that was happening, but that partial opening of the window into this new society served to strengthen our strong socialist convictions. I want to say, without reservations, that shaped my outlook, strengthened my politics. Looking at the sacrifices of the Russian people during the years of the civil war, 1917, 1918, made an indelible impression on me. How Lenin would sacrifice sleep, food, to lead his people, to fight the privileged classes who didn't want to see a Soviet power and the emancipation of the Russian working class. The famine, and how communists were always in the forefront of the struggles, the armed struggles, the mass struggles. The attempted assassination of Lenin, how he had been on his sick bed and he would worry about what was happening area by area. People in this country and even throughout the world tend to push aside that glorious chapter in the history of the Russian working class. Everything now is covered up by the excesses that followed. And yet for us as people in this country, let us look at those few years after the Russian revolution, 1917, when power actually was taken from the hands of the rich few into the hands of the working class. And let's forget about the aberrations that happened afterwards, and we must draw the important lessons of what appeared to be a popular democracy, the Soviets, the people coming into the streets. The people seizing the properties of the few and trying to run them because the bourgeoisie wanted to sabotage. And running away in order to cripple the revolution. So we were actually eating and lapping all this information. It is information that was hidden from us in this country. We had never read anything like that before in this country, so our appetites were really whetted, they were sharpened by this new experience. For me that was an unforgettable experience. L How long were you in Moscow? CH I was there for more than a year. I come back to Dar es Salaam after finishing my military training, and again I meet Oliver Tambo. We are received by him, and this is important to observe, for Tambo, our well-being was always important. Not wellbeing in terms of getting our food every day. But Tambo wanted us to feel an important part of the organisation. We were ordinary cadres, we were not names. We were not important names. But Tambo paid this attention to us regularly. Visiting us, asking us about our experiences in the Soviet Union, about our courses, and also briefing us on what was happening during our absence in the country, the Rivonia arrests, the conviction of our leaders, the need for... L Did he personally brief you? CH Yes, he personally spoke to us about these things. The need for us to go back to help rebuild the organisation; and he painted a sense of challenge, a sense of challenge on the part of the young enthusiastic people, that you are needed by South Africa, needed by the people of SA. And I think that really impacted on us positively. And made us actually feel that despite the hazards of going back to SA, there was no other way out. We have got to go back and be part of that struggle. Part of that challenge of rebuilding a shattered organisation, and beginning to lay the foundations for... L How did you go about preparing to go back? CH Well, we set up a camp in a place called Kongwa. Tambo had negotiated, in the south of Dar es Salaam, not far from Dodoma, with the liberation committee of the Organisation of African Unity, with the Tanzanian government, and we were given land to set up tents and also to build the infrastructure for a military camp of the ANC. For us it was also the beginning of important lessons in self help because, you remember that Nyerere attached a lot of importance to self help projects, to community development. We were given basic infrastructures, it was important for you to build for yourselves, to plant food, chickens, pigs and all that sort of thing. L Did your group set up... CH Yes I was the political commissar of that group. I was appointed political commissar. We started it. There was only one structure there, and then we began to build other structures. Build armouries, we set up, we pitched tents, we built a wall, we began to cultivate the hectares of land that were made available to us. We build recreational facilities, playing football, volley ball, table tennis and all that. That was started by us. We learnt a lot of skills. There were few comrades who had skills in building, but we knew now how to make cement, to drive wheelbarrows, and it was good for people like me, who had never had an experience of being workers, just got out of university. This was another educational centre for us. The need to integrate your intellectual knowledge with manual and physical labour. L That period in Moscow was good preparation. CH It was good preparation, theoretical and also physical preparation. L Were you quite fit by the end of the course? CH Of course. Because you see it was compulsory. Every morning we had to go out, we had to go on marches, tactical marches. We had to go out into the Russian villages, set up camps there in the forests and the marshes of around Moscow. And stay there and look at maps, orientate ourselves. We learnt topography, firearms, engineering skills, the manufacture of explosives and the use of standard explosives. So I was fit physically, I was in very good shape. For me those are important years because I was about 19, 20, 21, 22 and I was prepared both mentally and physically for the great tasks ahead. Then I come to Dar es Salaam and that process continues, of disciplining ourselves to endure hardships. L How long did this camp last? To be continued. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. 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