If We Must Die is a major myth buster
Amassively detailed autobiography that provides one of the finest insights to date of life in the ANC’s exiled uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) army in the crucial years following the 1976 student uprisings in South Africa.
The origin of the title of the book is touching, revolutionary, progressive and befitting.
It emanates from a poem by Claude McKay in 1922 in Harlem, New York, making an appeal to African-Americans to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in fighting for their rights. ........
Stanley Manong, If We Must Die: An autobiography of a former commander of uMkhonto we Sizwe
Stanley Manong’s self-published book takes its title from a 1922 poem by the Jamaican poet, Claude McKay. It is the most remarkable of a number of recently published MK memoirs, including James Ngculu’s The Honour to Serve, Fanele Mbali’s In Transit, and Welile Bottoman’s The Making of an MK Cadre. The book begins with an account of Manong’s upbringing and political formation in the Karoo town of Victoria West, where he was born in 1955, and where many of his relatives were charged and acquitted in a trumped-up Poqo trial in 1968........
Stanley Manong’s book gives a deep insight into the complexities of South African life in exile during Apartheid.
A talented student from Victoria West, the author left his home country in 1976 to join the ANC. He soon played a role in organising underground activities of its military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). To me, an European supporter of the liberation struggle, the book’s analysis of ideological controversies and differences between MK and ZAPU (Zimbabwean African Peoples Union) in Zimbabwe on the nature of legitimate political and military targets, is of extreme interest...
As a non-political pacifist I found “If We Must Die” by Stanley
Manong extremely interesting.
It draws back the curtain on a time in the history of our country about which many South Africans know very little – even to this day – 20 years into democracy...