“I had to hide them in my house for 14 days without my husband knowing”

When Ray went into exile we corresponded regularly. She arranged for me to come to Botswana twice to collect material for the union and bring it back. Once on the train I met the wife of Sobukwe, the leader of the PAC. She was also on her way to Botswana to the priest and we started to talk. There was no platform to alight from the train – you had to jump down. No one came to fetch me and she told me to go with her to see if she could find someone before she went to her destination. She stopped in front of a hotel and talked to a lady with a bakkie and came to get me. I mentioned a name and she took me to the man who knew that I was coming.

All the comrades who left the country were there, and they organised many different meetings. It was extremely hot so Ray and I would go into the mountains. We didn't work in the day but started to work at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning. She would write stuff, which I would bring back for the union.

We almost died one day, because they only had gas stoves to prepare food and later we smelled that something was not right. They had forgotten to turn off the gas. They prepared strange food and did not cook the meat thoroughly. I decided that I would prepare the food because I felt like tender meat. I cooked it nice and tender with vegetables and they sat down to eat. They asked who prepared the food and ‘Why did you not cook earlier?' I replied, ‘I do not know your style of cooking, I can only cook my style'. Then they ate.

When two MK soldiers, Vivienne Mathee and Jaama Matakata, came back they knew that if they experienced problems or something was wrong, they could come to me to discuss it. I always worked in co-operation with them and was actually the connection between them and anything that was going to happen. When they came back they didn't have place to go to, so I had to hide them in my house for 14 days without my husband knowing. I hid them in this room, and when he went to work, I took them back into another room. When he came back, I moved them to another place.

He never knew that there were people in the house that shouldn't be there. I couldn't discuss or explain anything to him because it would have caused problems for me. One of the workers at the grape factory, who passed my house every night, came to me the next morning and said ‘Liz, I saw two Europeans sitting in the tree watching your house'. I said it must be enemies. If it was friends then they'd come to the house. So I had to call on other comrades from Guguletu and our European comrades to assist and move them.