In a Different Time

I recently finished reading In a Different Time, The Inside Story of the Delmas Four by Peter Harris.

It is the story of a unit of four MK soldiers who were working in South Africa during the 80's. Each of them left South Africa in the late 70's to sign up for ANC military training and ended up in Mozambique, Zambia, in Angola, Tanzania and even East Germany. On returning to South Africa, their jobs were to carry out general acts of terrorism, like bombing army casspirs, and asassinations.

They were ultimately caught and tried in the city of Delmas - becoming "The Delmas four" in the media. The author, Peter Harris, was their lawyer. Although they faced a probably death sentence, the four chose to neither plead guilty or to plead not guilty. They did not deny the facts, the people they killed, but they considered themselves soldiers fighting for the freedom of their people. So they refused to participate in the trial, on principal, as a political statement. Knowing that this would mean the death penatly for them.

The majority of the book is about their trial, punctuated with accounts of the events the four men had lived through. The accounts of the torture they and others endured after they were caught by the police were particularly harrowing. It's horrible stuff to read, but it's important to know the truth about our past.

I highly recommend this book. I learned a lot that I didn't know about what was going on in our country in the 80's. About the South African police, the secret service, political violence, about umKhonto we Sizwe, the ANC in exlie. I even leared a bit more about our potential president in waiting, JZ.

It made me understand why we had those odd "terrorist drills" at school back then.

What I think is particularly good about this book is that it is quite a personal story. It made me think about what it must have been like to have lived through all of this. As a lawyer or activist like Peter Harris. Or to be one of those four guys. Or the many other like them that left home, left South Africa, to be trained to fight. I have nothing in my life experience to know about this, what it was like, why they did it, what their experiences were. How they feel about it all now.

I do wonder how they feel about it all now. I think these four guys are still alive and well, working in various capacities around South Africa (sorry if I spoiled the story for you!) And I wonder how they feel about the state of our country at the moment, and where we are headed.

I wish that as a nation we did more to honour guys like this. Or maybe we have done so, maybe i just missed it...

So yes, it is a good book. I think I will re-read it.