I want to write about lives that never happened.
I want to write about moments in a life, small decisions, which would have, could have, should have opened up an entirely different set of possibilities… but didn’t.
I want to write about one family of white South African anti-apartheid activists, and the lives that they could have lived.
The Schoons – Marius, Jeanette and their two children, Katryn and Fritz – were forced into exile after facing years of intense repression by the apartheid state. Starting in 1977, the Schoons spent six years as members of the African National Congress’ underground structures in Botswana, before being forced to leave in June 1983. The family made their way to Angola, with Marius and Jeanette working as English teachers at a socialist teachers’ college in the southern city of Lubango. Just a few months later, on 28 June 1984, a package arrived that tore their lives to pieces. Jeanette and Katryn Schoon died that day, killed by a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid state’s security services. Marius Schoon was left a widower and a single father to Fritz Schoon who survived the bombing. Marius carried the grief of losing his wife and daughter. The incident deepened his eternal hatred of the apartheid regime.
It is a story that is all too familiar to those who spent their lives fighting against apartheid or studying those who did. There is no way to write a history of the anti-apartheid struggle without tragedy, without articulating the ways in which the apartheid regime was ‘the bringer of death’ for so very many people, for far too long. Jeanette and Katryn Schoon deserve to be remembered for the tragedy of their loss.
To take stock of the tragedy of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon, we need to be able to conceptualise the lives that each of these women could have lived.
This includes not only imagining the contribution that they could have made to the freedom struggle, but also many more layers of living – intellectual work, artistic work, non-violent protests and boycotts, and even simply surviving and living until death from old age or illness.
Jeannette had obtained an Irish passport and had travelled to the embassy in Harare, hoping to obtain one for Marius, as well. The Schoons had airline tickets booked for Dublin, scheduled to depart just a couple of weeks after the bomb arrived at their apartment. So, what if they had boarded those flights, and successfully set themselves up in Ireland? Would we be learning about and honouring the lives of members of the anti-apartheid struggle, exiled in Dublin?
The ANC maintained a headquarters in London and hundreds of South African anti-apartheid activists established lives in the UK during this period. One might expect that a great deal is known about these exile experiences. However, this is not the case. The proliferation of books such as London Recruits do not focus on or amplify the stories of life in London for those fighting apartheid.
A central character in London Recruits is Ronnie Kasrils, who was a high-profile leader within the ANC, both during the struggle and in the Ministry of Intelligence in post-apartheid South Africa. Kasrils has written and spoken extensively about the network of (mostly white) activists, from various nationalities, that coalesced under his leadership in London. His books, speeches and public events memorialise a series of secretive missions, from London back into South Africa, aimed at spreading support of the ANC. Fair enough. However, neither Kasrils nor the Brits that he worked with feel motivated to describe their day-to-day lives in the UK as a notable experience, worthy of documentation.
For many veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle, an exile existence in London would be described as hellish, the lowest of the available options, and often accompanied by a sense of betrayal of their commitment to South Africa, and the African continent more broadly. But these stories are rarely told.
Is it that we, as the audience, somehow prefer the tragic life story to the banal alternative? If so, then we must ask ourselves: what is being gained by maintaining this preference for tragic and heroic tales? And what are we losing, in the process?
One of the simplest and most profound things that is lost within the dominant narrative framework of the struggle is an appreciation for the subtler, less dramatic and less violent modes of resistance.
The Schoons’ participation in the cultural wing of the ANC, through the Medu Arts Ensemble, was a critical and valuable form of political resistance. There is a recently discovered video interview with Marius Schoon at a cultural festival in the Netherlands, in the late 1980s, where he talks about the necessary radical transformation of South African culture.
Perhaps, finally, on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon, we can begin to imagine, to recover, and even to celebrate the lives that they could have lived, if the apartheid state had not so viciously brought death to their doorstep, far too soon.
This blog is based on a book by the author: Apartheid Spies and the Revolutionary Underground
Photo credit: Frank Miller
