Reflections of a Wayward Boy: Wanderings in the diaspora as exiled, stateless, brand-new parents

After arriving, hot and sweaty down a dusty road through the bush, the well-built Zambian border post appeared like an oasis, but of bricks and mortar. And the reception by crisply uniformed officials was the epitome of polite officialdom. “Good morning,” said the senior officer as he ushered us through the door, “welcome to Zambia”.

But then bureaucracy — and a measure to forestall corruption — interfered. Without the K5 given to us by my friend at the Zambian consulate in Lubumbashi, we could proceed no further. “I am sorry sir, but we do not do currency exchange,” the official behind the counter responded when I offered our 50 franc Belgian note in exchange for the lesser amount of K5.

As we sat dejectedly on a bench, the senior officer told us not to worry. Sooner or later someone would arrive, travelling from Zambia back to Lubumbashi, who would be sure to exchange our note for the required K5. But soon became later and the post was preparing to shut up for the day when a sole traveller arrived from Zambia and was only too happy to exchange our Belgian currency for the K5: we were officially free to travel into Zambia.

But it was already close to nightfall and I was looking around for the most comfortable place to bed down for the night when the senior officer informed us that no overnight stays were permitted. However, he and his staff had contacted a Czech geologist working in the bush nearby and he would take us to the nearest border town, Chililabombwe, from where we hitched a single, 140km ride that night to Ndola.

The next morning I turned up at the offices of the Times of Zambia where the newspapers were again short-staffed. I was hired as features editor. That meant we would be able to fulfil our promise, especially to Barbara’s parents, whom I had never met, that we would get together as soon as we reached southern Africa. Both sets of parents agreed to drive up to spend Christmas and New Year of 1968 with us.

By then we had settled in, made contact with other South African exiles and begun to discover that things on the exile front were far from rosy. Not that we had much detail at the time: that came in dribs and drabs, sometimes many years later. What we heard was that there was disquiet, bordering on mutiny, in the ANC’s military camps south of Lusaka; that much of this stemmed from the disastrous 1967 Wankie and Sipolilo excursions into then Rhodesia. A memorandum was also circulating signed by seven “MK fighters” condemning the “rot” in the ANC and accusing leadership elements of nepotism and corruption.

At the same time, President Kamuzu Hastings Banda of Malawi had established diplomatic relations with apartheid South Africa and we heard that talks were ongoing between South Africa and a number of other African states. This information was at least partially confirmed in April 1969 when 14 African countries came out in support of the Lusaka Manifesto, which proposed a political — “talks” — solution to the problems facing southern Africa.

This news emerged just weeks before the ANC leadership convened a major conference in Morogoro called to review the “policy, strategy, leadership structure and style of work of the movement”. Officially, we exiles in Ndola were kept in the dark about much that was going on, but one of the major decisions at Morogoro was that people like Barbara and me or those classified by apartheid as “Indian” or “coloured” could be ordinary members of the exiled organisation. Since I had, since my recruitment, considered this question to be irrelevant — and had acted accordingly — it didn’t change anything.

But we were all definitely in for a long haul. And that might mean long-term jobs. Frene Ginwala, for example, later to become the first Speaker of the post-apartheid Parliament, came to Ndola to review, with me, the Times operation before she took over as editor of Tanzania’s government newspaper. Other ANC members also occasionally stopped over and we managed, generally, to keep fairly well informed while avoiding the colonial social bubble that coalesced around a series of expatriate-dominated clubs.

Ndola circa 1968. (Photo: Supplied)