Nelson Mandela’s first step outside South Africa during his long walk to freedom landed him outside a shabby incomplete house in the Lobatse township of Peleng. Recalls the owner of the house, the late Fish Keitseng: One day I was in my room, plastering the walls in the afternoon, and I had not been contacted by the ANC about any people coming. Then I saw Mandela stopping by my house in a car, driving with an Indian chap.” The Indian chap was Amien Cajee, a political activist and close friend of Ahmed Kathrada who had driven Mandela across the border to Lobatse.
This was January 1962, a few days after the African National Congress military wing, uMkonto we Sizwe (MK) publicly announced its existence with 57 bombings on Dingane’s Day(16 December) 1961, followed by further attacks on New Year’s Eve. Fish Keitseng in Lobatse became the first port of call as Mandela prepared to travel throughout Africa to promote the armed struggle of the African National Congress. As Keitseng and his wife Sina were in the process of building their house, Mandela slept in the same room as the couple with his comrade Amien Cajee. Not only was this ramshackle house an important transit route for ANC activists, materials and weaponry into South Africa from the rest of Africa, it was also one of the most strategic points on the transit route through to the Witwatersrand and beyond. The success of the struggle for freedom was dependent on maintaining contacts and safe houses along this route to ensure the secure passage of activists through to Johannesburg, Pretoria and environs. The route from Comrade Keitseng’s house in Peleng was through Zeerust/Mafikeng and Rustenburg, according to a report compiled by the South African North West province. Between the times the last MK bomb went off on New Years’ Eve of 1961 to the time he was finally arrested in Natal in July 1962, Madiba slept more nights in the shabby room he shared with Fish Keitseng and his wife than at any one place in South Africa.
According to Keitseng, the room “didn’t even have a real door, just a piece of wood hanging from the wall.” While some media at the time had dubbed Mandela the “Black Pimpernel” for his daring underground activities in organizing the MK, while living in Lobatse he assumed the pseudonym “David Motsamayi”.“Mandela slept there with me, and at five o’clock in the morning, he woke up. He said he wanted to go do some training. He didn’t even want to wait for tea, and he only drank some in the evening. We went on top of a big hill, Peleng Hill, crossed it, and then went by the Kanye road until we went on top of another hill near Bathoen’s siding. You know, Mandela used to eat just once a day. Also, if we stopped somewhere to rest, he used to read books. He said he was teaching himself how to be a freedom fighter. The man was always that way. I you want to cut the tree; you must first sharpen the axe. Recalls Comrade Keitseng:
“Mandela was just staying in Lobatse with me. We spent many days together, going out training in the bush. Some of the time Max Mlonyeni would join us. One day I received a phone call from Tanzania, telling me that they wanted Mandela there.” Keitseng thereafter accompanied Mandela to Tanzania via Kasane where they were assisted by Ducan Mlazie senior. Mandela was to attend the February 1962 Pan African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Traveling there in secret, Mandela met with Emperor Haile Selassie I, and gave his speech after Selaisse’s at the conference. After the conference, he travelled to Cairo, Egypt, admiring the political reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and then went to Tunis, Tunisia, where President Habib Bourguiba gave him ┬ú5000 for weaponry. He proceeded to Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, receiving funds from Liberian President William Tubman and Guinean President Ahmed S├®kou Tour├®.
Leaving Africa for London, England, he met anti-apartheid activists, reporters and prominent leftist politicians. Returning to Ethiopia, he began a six-month course in guerrilla warfare, but completed only two months before being recalled to South Africa. On his way back Mandela’s final stay in Botswana was much shorter. After landing with Fish Keitseng at Kanye from East Africa, on the evening of 23rd of July 1962, within two hours he had crossed through the Pioneer Border Gate. By then he knew that the enemy was hot on his trail, and indeed he was finally captured in Natal only two weeks later.
Born and raised in Kanye, Fish had been a member of the ANC since 1948. His political mentor was the Transvaal ANC/Communist leader J.B. Marks, who initially recruited him into the African Mineworkers Union. In 1952 Fish helped organize the Defiance Campaign, which resulted in his first of several imprisonments. In 1956 he was known as “Robin Hood of Newclare” after releasing a group of pass law offenders, resulting in two days of street battles between township residents and the police. The violence subsided when he accepted Mandela’s advice and turned himself in. While serving a sentence for the above, Keitseng was further charged with 155 other leading figures, including Mandela, in the Treason Trial. Being self-educated Fish had never considered himself to be a “leader”. Mandela told him: “You think these people are watching you? They aren’t. They are watching your actions.”
In 1959 he was deported back to Botswana. Thereafter he was informed by Joe Modise that the ANC wanted him to co-ordinate the refugee “pipeline” through Botswana, an operation which ultimately involved the movement of thousands of people, including Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, over many years. In October 1962 Keitseng was travelling through Southern Rhodesia with a group of 26 ANC youth activists (including Thabo Mbeki), heading towards Tanganyika. The group was arrested and were detained and tortured for six weeks. They were then transported out of the country, to be handed over to the South African authorities. However, Keitseng managed to smuggle out information about the movement to fellow activists. They, in turn, managed to persuade the British District Commissioner of Palapye to block the train and release the captives. In the same month the ANC held a clandestine congress in Keitseng’s Lobatse safe-house. This meeting formally endorsed the new line of armed struggle against the Apartheid regime. During his long walk to freedom, Mandela crossed the paths of various other Batswana in the country and elsewhere. Mike Dingake, who spent time being incarcerated with Mandela on Ruben Island, recalls how Madiba’s spirit remained indomitable.
Another figure who was in contact with Madiba when he was behind bars was Frieda Matthews, by then the Gaborone based widow of Madiba’s own ANC mentor, Z.K. Matthews.
The later South African born Mongwato also served as a mentor to Seretse Khama and advisor to his uncle Tshekedi, as well as drafter of the Freedom charter and Botswana’s first ambassador to the UN and USA.
Mandela was for many years limited to writing but one letter every six months to a relative. Being an aunt by marriage, Frieda, whom Mandela addressed as “Rragadi Orategang”, thus became a conduit of censored but still valued contact to the outside world.
