17 January 2017
Back to the history lesson... these are pictures from today’s visit to Liliesleaf Farm, the original underground headquarters for Umkhonto we Sizwe, aka “Spear of the Nation,” also known as the MK.
Now it’s a museum dedicated to the Umkhonto we Sizwe story, including the contextual backdrop of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 which pushed protesting organizations to embrace violent campaigns against the state.
The farm was surreptitiously purchased by the South African Communist Party in 1961 and served as a central meeting place for underground activities, as well as a safe house for leading liberation figures. The outward cover was a small working farm managed by the Goldreich family in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia. The Goldreiches managed this façade until June 1963, when the farm was raided during a MK meeting. Most major players in the liberation movement were arrested in the raid or shortly thereafter, most imprisoned for life in the Rivonia Trial (’63-’64). The raid was a major blow against the liberation movement, which didn’t quite recover until the 1976 Soweto student uprisings.
Mandela lived at the farm in 1961, pretending to be a houseboy and caretaker named “David Motsamayi.”
The question of who tipped the police off as to the nature of the farm remains a mystery.
As a museum, the farm is exhaustive, with tons of detail about liberation activity from 1948 to the present day. There’s a lot of original source material and audio and video recordings, not just big blown up posters (as at some other museums in the area). Many of the buildings on the farm were destroyed after the ‘63 raid, but the original foundations and structures have been rebuilt as they were at the time.
Picture 1) The main home
Picture 2) An original print of the Freedom Charter of 1955, signed by a handful of those who drafted it as part of the South African Congress Alliance.
Picture 3) The main dining room and site of many MK meetings.
Picture 4) The tiny room which Mandela lived in while resident - pretty sparse.
Picture 5) The smaller farm houses in the “back yard” which served as bedrooms, printing press, etc.
Picture 6) Sculpture (2011) of books floating without shelves - a “symbolic repository of personal narratives that together make the story of Umkhonto we Sizwe,” This sculpture leads to a building featuring narratives from modern MK supporters around the world who gave physical aid as late as the early 1990s as smugglers or via espionage. Even while the ANC and apartheid government were negotiating a new constitution from 1990-1994, the MK was prepared to continue its campaign of violence and sabotage, in the event that the government did not negotiate in good faith.
Obviously, now I know more than I ever did about South African political history -- tomorrow it will be time to go look at fields and animals again!