Voices from the underground

Voices from the Underground takes the reader inside the ANC's military underground in the mid- to late 1980s, during the height of the apartheid regime's violent crackdown on political activism. In this book, eighteen members of Umkhonto we Sizwe's Ashley Kriel Detachment, which operated primarily in the Western Cape, tell their stories for the first time. From smuggling arms across the Botswana border to setting off a limpet mine inside the Castle of Good Hope, participants in the armed struggle speak about the operations they carried out, the tactics they employed, the victories they achieved and the hardships they endured, including the deaths of comrades at the hands of the police and the immense burden of living a double life. This collection of memoirs sets out the various journeys undertaken by each member of the detachment on the road to becoming a soldier of the revolution, and reveals the reasons why these ordinary people took the extraordinary step of dedicating their lives to fighting for freedom no matter the cost.