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Ashley Kriel: South Africa's anti-apartheid 'Che Guevara'
00:10:10
In the 1980s, townships in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town became an unexpected hotbed of activity against South Africa's apartheid government. One charismatic young activist emerged as a leader of the struggle against white minority rule, becoming...
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- [00:04]
A
Hello, you're listening to the BBC World Service. Now witness history with me, Samaira Bakh. Today I'm taking you back to 1980s Cape Town to tell you the story of Ashley Creel. He was a young anti apartheid activist who became known among fellow campaigners as the Che Guevara of the Cape Flats townships after the Cuban revolutionary whose image became a global symbol of resistance. This program includes language used under apartheid.
- [00:36]
B
He was the heartbeat of the revolution. He was our Ashley, our leader, our commander, our brother, our comrade in arms.
- [00:44]
A
That's Adil Ghori. November. He was a fellow activist from the Cape Flats township of Bontheville who worked closely with Ashley creel in the 1980s. This was a time when South Africa's apartheid government, which enforced white minority rule, found itself facing mass uprisings.
- [01:02]
B
Ashley was a very vocal guy, very friendly. He had a very soft heart. But he was very dedicated to whatever he believed in, what he stood for.
- [01:13]
A
Ashley was born at a time when people classified by the apartheid state as colored were being forcibly removed from the center of Cape Town to make way for white residents. They were sent to live in townships on the Cape Flats, an area many South Africans called apartheid's dumping ground.
- [01:31]
B
People didn't have money, lot of people unemployed. We had a problem of alcohol in our society. Gang fights, people being robbed, being killed. We were excluded from the rest of the world. Ashley come from a very poor family. Ashley took the responsibility Age of 13, 14 already to go and work at night in the factories and in the morning would go to school that lead the revolution also.
- [01:58]
A
What was he motivated by as they
- [02:00]
B
come from a broken family. His father was killed by gangsters. So where this guy came to understand this great love for people at a very young age? It's still a question I have to answer. Though he was young, he had a love for life that I can't explain. He was concerned about those who are poor, those who are downtrodden, like students
- [02:22]
A
across South Africa who are mobilizing against white minority rule. Ashley was still at school when he became politically active. Known for his fiery speeches, his intellect and his warm nature, the teenager soon emerged as an influential and much loved leader organizing student activities in Bonteville following a call by the then banned African National Congress Party. The ancient for South Africa to be made ungovernable.
- [02:54]
B
Whenever Asley addressed a crowd, you could hear a spell falling on the ground. People listened to him, people admired him. This guy knew exactly what he was saying. He was just a people's person.
- [03:06]
A
The Cape Flats had become an unexpected hotbed of resistance. Under apartheid, people classified as colored were given marginally more rights than black people. But young activists like Ashley rejected those divisions.
- [03:20]
B
Ashley told us that these are all our comrades. They're not black the way we're taught. These are our brothers. He broke the color barrier for most of us.
- [03:29]
A
Ashley and his comrades were inspired by Steve Biko, the activist who founded the influential anti apartheid black consciousness movement in the late 1960s. Biko was killed in police custody in 1977, but his ideas galvanized young activists across South Africa when he was so young.
- [03:48]
B
But we remember the battles which took place. The smell of tear gas and the sounds of bullets and the fires which were burning. Steve B. Coe, he was one of our great inspirers. He wasn't afraid to be killed. Riots and their aftermath have shocked South Africans, black and white, into hard recognition of their country's complex race relations.
- [04:09]
A
The violent crackdown of the mid-80s meant that the activists from Bontheville had to get creative when it came to raising political awareness in. In their community.
- [04:18]
B
When we would be with Ashley, we would maybe we'd travel from one place to another by train or by bus. Then Ashley would either decide to sit on one side of the train and we sit on the other side. And in these discussions, Ashley would always be the one for apartheid. And we would try to convince him, no, apartheid is wrong. And then as far as when people in the train started to become attentive to the discussions and they would stand up, they would beat Ashley up. We would tell them, no, no, no, we're all company. This is our brother. It was our way of, Ashley's way of politic people so they can understand and go home and talk to their children, to their friends. Listen. We were on the train, we heard this and this, because people were afraid of information. They were denied information.
- [04:59]
A
And whose idea was that?
- [05:01]
B
Ashley, of course. He was a naughty one. He came up with all the funny ideas.
- [05:05]
A
It was street theatre as resistance, and it worked. But while the threat of arrest, detention or death didn't deter young people from joining the anti apartheid struggle, many in the community didn't support their activities, particularly as the threat of reprisal was ever present. Both Ashley and Adil eventually joined the ANC's armed wing Mkonta Wesiswe, which carried out acts of sabotage against the apartheid state.
- [05:32]
B
People hated us because they didn't want to change, either because of fear or ignorance or something. But not all of them were supporting us.
- [05:40]
A
Ashley's influence meant that he was being Monitored by the security branch of the apartheid state's police force. Still only 19, he went into exile in late 1985.
- [05:51]
B
I went to Asli's in laws now in the backyard as they were sitting there was a fire burning came. And he greeted me and he asked me and we started to talk about things, about the people I must recruit. So we sat there, we talked, and then he started to play guitar. We sang some freedom songs and Bob Marley. Oh, pirates use the rhubti. That one. He loved that one. He knew his time came, but he told me he's coming back for me.
- [06:19]
A
In July 1987, 18 months after that last meeting, Ashley Creel was shot and killed when security police officers tracked him down to a safe house in the Cape Flat suburb of Athlone, where he had been staying, having returned from exile. He was 20 years old. His funeral was the scene of yet more violence as the crowds who had turned out to pay their respects were attacked by the security police who attempted to remove the ANC flag that had been draped over the coffin. By then, Adil was in exile in Lesotho.
- [06:55]
B
It was in August and as we were walking to town, all the ANC guys and we got a newspaper sort of speaks them and I saw some policemen trying to pull the flag. Then I read as the Creel MK guerrilla was killed. I felt very broken. I cried. I wanted to go back, but I knew that I couldn't go back because I was going to be killed myself.
- [07:18]
A
The security police officer who killed Ashley, Jeffrey Benzine, was granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He testified that it had been an accident, an account rejected by Ashley's family and others. Benzine died in 2024, and the circumstances surrounding Ashley's death have still not been established.
- [07:39]
B
A private inquiry into the death of anti apartheid activist Ashley Krill is to be set up by his family.
- [07:45]
A
As South Africa emerged from white minority rule in the 1990s, many of the people who lost their lives in the struggle against apartheid became symbols of the country's painful past, including Ashley, who Nelson Mandela paid tribute to after he was released from prison in 1990.
- [08:04]
B
I salute. Combatants often come to our Seiz. Like Ashley Green, who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom of all South Africans. I want people to know as the beautiful person that he was and the commitments that he personally made, he gave his life everything he had. He gave his life twice. Once when he left the country and secondly when he took his life brutally. I want people to realize that freedom isn't free and Asli always said, victory or death, we shall be free.
- [08:50]
A
Adil Ghori November still lives on the Cape Flats. He was speaking to me. Samair Bakh for this edition of Witness History. If you've enjoyed listening, why not leave us a review? Please share it with anyone you think would like to hear it. It really helps us let people know about the amazing stories people tell us on Witness History. Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
- [09:14]
B
From the brilliant and bizarre. It was really surreal. It was a surreal kind of atmosphere there. You couldn't really see anybody. To the shocking and unexpected. I'm just wondering, what are we going to do now? This was really my worst fear. He found 100 horse meat that was labeled as beef. Witness the stories that have shaped our world, told by the people who were there.
- [09:36]
A
When he went to the factory, the poodle went in front of him. So the workers only.
- [09:40]
B
Oh, the bosses here. Many people had many things to lose by our victory. The future was not so bright. Witness History. We had a designer, he bought in a fully storyboarded idea about how the Queen would arrive by jumping out of a helicopter and we all said, that's brilliant, but it's never going to happen. Witness history@BBC worldservice.com witness history or wherever you get your podcasts.