Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Former Robben Island prisoner Andrew Masondo, a retired soldier, mathematician and traditional healer, was given a military send-off in Soweto at a colourful funeral ceremony yesterday, attended by ANC top brass.

President Thabo Mbeki, his wife Zanele, Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC deputy president, Amos Masondo, the mayor of Johannesburg, and Essop Pahad, the minister in the presidency, were among the mourners at the service held at the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg (formerly Vista).

Speakers paid tribute to Masondo’s role in transforming the army, where he held the rank of lieutenant-general in the post-apartheid South African National Defence Force. His funeral service was a celebration of a life in the struggle that began in 1959 when Masondo joined the ANC and was put in charge of the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Eastern Cape high command, responsible for decoding coded messages.

Appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he said: “I’d sabotaged pylons, electric pylons because, according to the regulations of MK, I couldn’t shoot people, so I had to deal with the pylons. You know, when we started, we were not supposed to kill people.”

Masondo, who grew up in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, had a tough childhood and told the commission why he joined the struggle.

“I grew up in the location. I remember sometimes the police would come there. A vivid picture I still have is one of an old lady who was hit with a … and she had a baby on her back, she fell. I have seen people arrested for a pass … not serious offences, just a pass.

“Secondly, I am a teacher at heart and I think a good one, too, as I was taught by one of the best applied mathematicians in this country. I go to Fort Hare and I teach and when I want to take people to learn from the same man, suddenly blacks can’t go and do senior degrees at Wits.

“I think that life needed to be changed. This country was losing some of its best people.”

South Africa lost one of its best when Masondo died last Sunday after a long illness. Comrades and traditional leaders who worked with him sang and celebrated his life yesterday.

Siphiwe Nyanda, the former SANDF chief and now a member of the ANC national executive committee, said earlier this week that Robben Island interns remembered Masondo as a stubborn man who had endured spells of solitary confinement because of his unbending spirit of defiance and resistance.

“The entire body of the ANC and its leadership will remember Masondo as a man who was prepared to serve the movement in any position. A man for all seasons, he straddled different generations of the liberation movement.”

After the ceremony at Vista, the coffin, draped in the South African flag with Masondo’s cap and medals on it, was carried outside the hall and placed on a gun carriage that led the convoy to Avalon cemetery.

The military and navy band performed at the cemetery while guests in two large tents watched as the last rites were performed and Masondo was laid in his final resting place.