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Ronnie Kasrils, ex-Minister for Intelligence Services and long-standing ANC member, recently visited Rhodes University and discussed his latest book, “The Unlikely Secret Agent”. Written as a tribute to his late wife Eleanor, it is dedicated to her, her family and friends. Eleanor Kasrils (nee Logan) had a long history of political involvement, and the book focuses on the period 1960 to 1963 when the young couple first met, courted, and worked to subvert the apartheid regime.
Kasrils says that he wanted the people to know what motivated a relatively privileged white woman to join the struggle for liberation. In 1963 Eleanor was arrested by the police and withstood brutal interrogation, eventually outwitting her captors and making a sensational escape, together with Kasrils, to the United Kingdom. Kasrils had suggested, on his retirement from government in 2008, that they write the book together, but sadly Eleanor passed away unexpectedly in November 2009.
The book, he says, was “yearning to be written...It was an act of love and adoration for my late wife.” The actual writing took only six weeks, with Kasrils waking at 05h00 to write until noon, and then reworking the text in the afternoon.
He recalls labouring over the interrogation sessions, and lingering tenderly over the love scenes, lost in memories. The writing was indeed, he says, a therapy, a cathartic way of dealing with grief and death, but he asserts firmly that he did not write for himself. Rather, he wrote for Eleanor, and strove to tell the story from her point of view. She excelled, he explains, in clandestine work; she was an expert of disguise and a secret agent of multiple tasks. In her work at Griggs Bookshop in Durban, she would, until her arrest, pass information between the covers of the books she sold, right under the oblivious noses of the security forces.
When asked how important this story is to South Africa today, Kasrils is thoughtful. “I would like our people to understand what it was like to live in a police state, and to appreciate the sacrifice made by the countless ordinary people, men and women, who in small and big ways helped bring about the freedom and democracy we enjoy today.” As for its relevance to the current generation of students, Kasrils has this to say: “Eleanor’s is a heroic story about a woman whose skill and ability outshone the male revolutionaries around her ... I would love the book to open the eyes of men and inspire women to their true potential. I think this is something Rhodes students can relate to.”