In July, four ANC operatives including author Jeremy Cronin were arrested doing similar work in Cape Town and were given prison sentences. Jenkin went to London at the request of the ANC in May 1976, while Lee continued to plant leaflet bombs around Johannesburg. Lee worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, while Jenkin ran the "cell" on his own in Cape Town. He successfully distributed leaflets this way on Cape Town's Grand Parade. After achieving this mission, managing to distribute hundreds of leaflets by means of several leaflet bombs, the text of which is reproduced in Jenkin's memoir.Īfter the success of their first mission, Jenkin worked on refining the mechanism by adding a triggering system to the leaflet bomb, so that they did not have to be close to it when it went off. In March 1976 Lee went to Johannesburg to look for work, and the ANC coincidentally sent them both on their first mission, to disperse leaflets urging support for the ANC and unity in the liberation struggle via a leaflet bomb (using a new design developed by Jenkin) in Johannesburg, close to the anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March. Jenkin worked as a researcher for the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape, which was a university for people classified by the apartheid government as Coloured. Upon return to Cape Town in July 1975, Lee and Jenkin bought a typewriter, duplicator and stationery to print and post pamphlets and leased first a garage and then a tiny apartment.
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After receiving acceptance by the ANC, Jenkin and Lee received training from the ANC in various tactics, with a particular focus on how to spread their propaganda material in the form of leaflets, and how to set up communication and financial structures. While awaiting clearance for membership, Jenkin worked as a social worker at a reform school in Swindon. In February 1974, Jenkin and Lee left the country in order to join the ANC in London, with the intention of helping to bring about change in South Africa. During this time they learnt of the activities of the African National Congress (ANC), which was a banned organisation in South Africa. Through reading, including material banned by the government, they came to see the "naked reality" of apartheid and the undemocratic nature of the government and felt a burning desire to effect positive change, which, Jenkin concluded, was only possible using unconstitutional means under the current regime. They both found their sociology course disappointing, as the material reinforced the status quo of the apartheid system. They became friends and both sought out literature banned by the apartheid government, reading, photocopying and swapping it with other students. Jenkin met Stephen Lee in a sociology class at UCT. He later wrote that he had "grown up a 'normal' complacent white South African" who "unthinkingly accepted the system and for twenty-one years never questioned it".Īt the end of 1970, Jenkin enrolled at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science degree at the end of 1973. This led to learning more about the injustice in his own country.
Under poor working conditions and little pay, Jenkins found the system unjust and developed an interest in sociology.
In 1970, he left for the UK where he worked in a fibreglass factory. He is evidently based on the Egyptian-born French national, Alex Moumbaris, with whom the men actually broke out, although it isn’t clear why his character has been fictionalised and the others not.Timothy Peter Jenkin was born in 1948, in Cape Town and educated at Rondebosch Boys' Prep and Boys' High School, matriculating at the age of 17.Īfter leaving school, he avoided conscription into the South African Defence Force (SADF), and worked at a variety of jobs for two years, with no particular interest in anything except motorcycle racing. Inside, Jenkin and Lee meet another political prisoner and future escaper: Frenchman Leonard Fontaine (a slightly hammy turn from Mark Leonard Winter). Their prison is tough, but as they are white, it is not as tough it might have been. With long hair and straggly beard, Daniel Radcliffe plays Jenkin and Daniel Webber plays his fellow ANC activist Stephen Lee, imprisoned in 1978 for their “leaflet bombs” – firecracker-type devices left in the street which send blizzards of leaflets flying. The film has something pleasingly traditional about it, with tense nailbiting moments, slab-faced guards, and touches of The Great Escape and Papillon.
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T he rather amazing true story of the white ANC activist Tim Jenkin and his audacious escape from Pretoria Prison in apartheid-era South Africa is told in this capable and well-carpentered movie from British film-maker Francis Annan, adapted from Jenkin’s own book.
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