Join Penguin Random House at Love Books in Joburg for the launch of Voices from the Underground: Eighteen Life Stories from Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Ashley Kriel Detachment.

Charles Nqakula will be in conversation with editors Shirley Gunn and Shanil Haricharan.

About the book

In 1987, the apartheid minister of law and order boasted that the security forces had crushed Umkhonto we Sizwe in the Western Cape. He could not have been more wrong. The Ashley Kriel Detachment, named after one of their slain comrades, conducted over thirty operations between late 1987 and early 1990, playing a crucial role in the defeat of an unjust system.

In Voices from the Underground, 18 members of the AKD give accounts of their involvement in the armed struggle.

The book traces their varying journeys into MK, via student activism, trade unions, religious organisations and UDF politics. It details their training in Angola, Botswana, Tanzania, Cuba and South Africa, and their experiences of detention and interrogation. Members recall the stresses of couriering arms and explosives across police roadblocks, hiding in safe houses and evading capture. They talk about the operations they executed, the measures they took to avoid civilian casualties, and their responses to security breaches and the deaths of comrades in the line of duty.

Above all, this is a book about people, showing the effects of apartheid on their lives, their reasons for joining the armed struggle, the challenges of surviving in the underground while raising children, and their experiences of returning to civilian life or, in some cases, integrating into the SANDF.

Voices from the Underground gives a human face to ordinary people who took up arms to fight a violent state for the freedom of all South Africans.

Event details

Date: Tuesday, 1 October 2019
Time: 18:00 for 18:30
Venue: Love Books, Bamboo Centre, 53 Rustenburg Road, Melville, Joburg
RSVP: kate@lovebooks.co.za or 011 726 7408
Facebook event

Johannesburg, please join us at @LoveBooksJozi on 1 October for the launch of VOICES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: Eighteen life stories from Umkhonto we Sizwe's Ashley Kriel Detachment.

Charles Nqakula will be in conversation with editors Shirley Gunn and Shanil Haricharan. pic.twitter.com/E5g05QhLk0

— @PenguinBooksSA (@PenguinBooksSA) September 17, 2019

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Book events Book launches Charles Nqakula Johannesburg Love Books Penguin Random House SA Shanil Haricharan Shirley Gunn Voices from the Underground