OPINION: No better way for a man to die

This passage by Thomas Macaulay sums up the meaning of Lunga Lefume’s life:

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:

To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers ,

And the temples of his gods

Until the moment of death Lunga lived for a higher ideal, at a time when it is so much easier to be crass.

I knew Lunga as an older brother when I was a little boy, and then as an in-law when his sister, Queeneth, married my brother, Mthobi Tyamzashe.

But it was really as a comrade in the black consciousness movement that I really knew “Border”, as we fondly called him. This relationship started in the early 1980’s. I was a student at Wits University, where I had become involved in Azapo and in the formation of the Azanian Student Movement. It was a time when the political tide was shifting – from black consciousness to non-racialism. We were part of a small minority who saw ourselves as defenders of Steve Biko’s legacy, even if it meant risking our lives for it.

There was never any question about the real leader of our group. It was Lunga, of course.

He’d been closely involved in the student movement in the 1970’s, had been in and out of jail for it, and had worked closely with ubhut’Bantu – as he always referred to Biko.

From early on, “Border” noticed I did not particularly like getting arrested. In fact, it was always my view that there was no point to denying our activities when they were perfectly legal, such as printing posters for example. The police were so used to denials that self-confession took them aback. It deprived them of an argument to beat us up. They would have to charge us, or let us go.

But Lunga seemed to cherish fights with the cops, which always drove me nuts because I knew it could invite longer detention or further beatings. But Lunga ensured they did not touch me. I remember him lunging at a police officer who slapped me for lighting a cigarette while we were being booked into the King William’s Town police station. Lunga pushed the guy against the wall, demanding to know why he had slapped me.

He had no time for them, calling them by their first names. To Lunga, the notoriously abusive Fouche was just “Flippie”.

There was also the day of comrade Nazibho Hlanganisa’s funeral at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, where I also spoke. As we walked out of the church with fists in the air, we found the security police recording the whole funeral, all the way to the graveyard.

After we left the graveyard, Lunga came and told me I needed to go back to Jo’burg that night, because the cops would surely be there the next morning. And indeed, just as he had predicted, all my comrades were arrested the following day.

I still don’t know why Lunga took it upon himself to protect me that way. I never asked, and now that he is gone, I wish I had.

There was also the time when the security branch arrested all of us – me, Fikile Balfour, Sekelezi Duna, Ndoda Keyisi and Ace Lumnkwana. I think that was the day Ace did not want to open the door to his one-room pitch, and the police got him out by tossing teargas inside. He ran out in his underwear.

But try as they did, the police could not find Lunga that time around. He had become our own Black Pimpernel – the phrase used when the police could not find Nelson Mandela in the 1960’s. As Flippie Fouche was driving me back home, he saw Lunga driving in the opposite direction in a red VW Beetle. “There is that bastard, Lunga,” Fouche said as he prepared to turn his car around.

I protested strongly, saying that by law the police were required to take me back home – since they had released me, and I was therefore a free man, he could not go chasing other people with me in his car.

I still don’t know on what law I based my argument. But the cop assumed that since I was a law student I must know what I was talking about.

And so, a fuming Fouche took me home and Lunga was able to escape. It was the least I could do for a man who’d spent so much time looking out for me.

Now we – his family, friends and community – are poorer for his loss. The last time I saw him was when I was home in July.

He looked so beautiful that I commented, commending him for it. There was nothing to suggest I was speaking to him for the last time.

But here I am saying “Border, I can’t believe you have gone bra. What can I say except thank you for your courage, and care.”

Indeed, how can a man die better than in the full knowledge that he served his people.

Xolela Mangcu is professor in sociology at the University of Cape Town