A month before South Africa’s elections, one of the country’s leading political figures exposed a number of his former comrades for corruption with evidence to the Zondo Commission on State Capture. It was box office material, yet just another eventful period in the turbulent life of Robert McBride – guerrilla fighter, policeman and death row prisoner. 



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Robert McBride has one of those faces full of character that looks like it has endured life as much as lived it. A glance through his tough years of struggle yields a list of reasons why: five years on death row to screams and tears of the condemned; scores of beatings over decades; shooting his way out of hospital; years of the shadowy and violent life of an underground guerrilla fighter.



McBride
was born in Wentworth, just outside Durban, in 1963, and grew up amid racist
insults and violence. It swiftly politicised him and he was taken into the
military wing of the African National Congress where he carried out sabotage
with explosives.



Even
by the standards of the desperate days of the gun in South Africa, McBride’s
political activity is remarkable. In 1986, McBride fought his way out of an
intensive care ward in a bizarre rescue of his childhood friend and fellow
fighter Gordon Webster. It happened at Edendale Hospital in Durban where
Webster lay, with tubes in his body, under police guard.



McBride
posed as a doctor, with an AK47 hidden in his white coat; his father, Derrick,
was dressed as a priest with a Makarov pistol under his cassock. The Truth and
Reconciliation Commission heard, in 1999, that hospital staff cheered them on
and held back an armed policeman as the McBrides shot their way out, pushing
the wounded Webster to freedom on a trolley.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 



Thirty-three-years on, McBride went into battle again for his beliefs, this time with words and documents, against a more insidious and formidable foe than armed police – corruption. He gave evidence before the Zondo Commission, in Johannesburg, springing from his days as head of IPID, the independent police investigators. 



He spent more than four days on the stand – longer than most cricket matches last these days. He told of missing police evidence, claims of sinister moves to remove corruption busters and the misappropriation of money, under a cloak of secrecy, by the crime intelligence agencies.     



“People
don’t like me because of my anti-corruption stance, their dislike of me I wear
as a badge of honour. Those who dislike me for other reasons, it is a free
country and you are entitled to your likes and dislikes. I have no problem with
you. But wherever I am, I will do my work and will always be against
corruption. I understand how corruption affects the ordinary man and means
there is so much less to go around,” he says.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;




To
give a little more context, McBride’s erstwhile job went with unpopularity. The
head of IPID is a post that politicians, plus probably more than a few
disgruntled policemen, wanted him out of. They ended his contract and he
assures me he is going to court to get his job back. His stance may give clues
as to why some wanted to see the back of him.



“I
have spoken loudly every time I have seen something wrong and raised unpopular
issues. Some of the issues we picked up early on was police involvement in
cash-in-transit robberies… The looting of police funds, the corruption, the
wastage and the leverage, we then began to understand it; the leverage that
some policeman have over politicians… Any criminal syndicate that is operating
requires police to help them otherwise they will be found out in the normal
course of events,” says McBride, the month before the hearing. 



“Rogue
activity by certain elements in the prosecuting authority, the willingness to
prosecute people for non-criminal acts and unwillingness to prosecute when
there is a pile of evidence…We will also speak about the abuse of state funds,
the abuse of power by the police by negating investigations. Most of our
evidence is backed up by court papers, evidence and affidavits,” he says.



Many
activists who saw the nasty, ugly, side of the struggle often are the first to
come down, hard, when they feel freedoms they fought for are being abused. You
could argue McBride, an intelligent thinker, is very much one of them.



You
could also argue that McBride has been cut adrift by many former comrades and
demonized as the Magoo’s Bar bomber – the 1986 car bomb on the Durban
beachfront that killed three and wounded scores. Others, on both sides of the
South African struggle, who issued orders, or did worse, are undisturbed and
anonymous by their swimming pools. Any regrets? I ask. 



“It’s
like asking me ‘do I regret living in a free and democratic country’, the
answer can’t be yes… We would have preferred that things went differently. If
you are in an armed struggle, you are the cause of hurt to other people and as
a political activist, as a revolutionary you can defend that and justify it. 



“But
as a human being, you know that when it concerns other people, it is not the
right thing to do to cause the hurt of other people. I have expressed myself as
a human being on this, not because I was trying to elicit any sympathy or
anything; I have never asked for redemption, I have never asked for
forgiveness. Those who know me know what I am about and those who understand
the circumstances in the early 1980s when we became active; those who are old
enough to remember that was what the circumstances were.” 



Those
circumstances recede further into the darkness of memory of democratic South
Africa every year, yet, in the minds of those who suffered, it stays pin sharp.
McBride spent five years on death row, in Pretoria, after being sentenced to
the gallows for the Durban bombings. 



He
reckons the prison hanged more than 300 prisoners in this time. Through the
cell door, he heard the condemned screaming and crying as warders dragged the
condemned along the passages to their fate. The hanging warders used to bring
back the bloody hoods from the gallows and force the next batch of condemned
men to wash them.



In
May 1990, the sun shone as hope visited death row in Pretoria. The prison
management summoned McBride and a group of fellow condemned activists, to the
main office at the maximum security prison. Each were given green prison
jackets – the garb of special occasions. Warders drove them, in a van, to a
distant part of the prison and all feared they were either going to be executed
or allowed to escape and shot in the back. 



“We
were told not to talk and then we were put in this big room with a steel of
security around the room and after about 45 minutes the former president
(Mandela) walked in and it was the most beautiful sight on earth; the greatest
feeling ever and when he walks in, he says: ‘Ah, Robert! How are you!’ As if he
knew me forever. It was the most important meeting I had in my life. It was
like a God-like environment. He gave us a rundown of negotiations and what can
be expected and that we must not worry, we must be patient and sit tight, he
knows all of our backgrounds and will do his utmost to get us released and we
will never be forgotten.”



It
took more than two more years, in the shadow of the noose… until a fateful
Friday. September 25, 1992. McBride will never forget the date.



“Round
about half past four in the afternoon, I got a call to come to the office, I
didn’t know what it was about, and when I came there, the head of the prison
said: ‘You have a phone call’. It was my first phone call in prison. On the
other end of the line was comrade Cyril Ramaphosa and he says: ‘Hi chief’. I keep
quiet and then he says: ‘Monday’. I say: ‘What’s happening Monday chief?’ He
keeps quiet, then he says: ‘You are going home!’ There was a bit of a smile you
could feel in his voice,” says McBride with a huge smile on his face.



Long
after Mandela had completed his long walk to freedom for his country, McBride
was to yet again hear the click of a prison key and feel the pain from a
warder’s boot. 



It
was the summer of 1998 and in Maputo, the sea was warm and the prawns were hot.
The police in Mozambique picked up McBride, then a high-ranking official in
foreign affairs, on alleged gun running charges that appeared to be trumped up
to us journalists. We scoured the streets of the capital, for weeks, in search
of witnesses. 



McBride
argued that he was on an undercover operation for the National Intelligence
Agency trying to uncover gun runners who were flooding neighbouring South
Africa with illegal weapons and fuelling crime; a counter that eventually set
him free. 



Despite
this, McBride spent six months in the capital’s notorious, grim, Machava
maximum security prison, where he told me violence was meted out.



I
covered that story for many months and came within a split ace of interviewing
McBride in his cell. We spent hours plying the Portuguese-speaking warders with
beer and the story, through an interpreter, that we were friends visiting from
South Africa and we just wanted to say hello. We told them our friend was a big
man in South Africa.



“He
is a small man now,” smiled back one of the warders icily. 



We
convinced the guards and as they moved towards the prison doors, keys in hand,
our cover was blown. One of the not too bright colleagues from our TV station
strolled into the prison waving his press card.



“Hello
Chris!” says he. The none-too-pleased prison guards threw us out. 



I
had to wait more than 20 years for my interview with McBride.



A
phrase I always remembered from those many hot, crazy, days in Maputo was a
quote we got from the late presidential spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa when
McBride went behind bars yet again.



“He
is a tough guy who can look after himself,” said Mamoepa.



The Zondo
Commission and scores of corrupt policemen last month found out how tough.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Tag: Zondo commission

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A Tale Of Two Presidents And One Phone Call To Freedom