Timothy Peter Jenkin does not wish to be defined by his past, or so his friend, “Vicki”, says. He describes his youth as that of a regular white boy in South Africa, growing up in the height of the apartheid regime. He says he questioned nothing and thought only of motorbikes. Five decades and a prison escape later, Jenkin’s modest retelling of his life is testament to the power of a quiet revolutionary.
Nicola Amon
Timothy Peter Jenkin lives at number 49 Liesbeek Road, Rosebank, on the first floor of an apartment building. Natural light fills the lounge which overlooks the vegetable garden he thinks is “far too overgrown at this time of year”.
He sits on the couch near the window. On the coffee table in front of him lies a binder, thick with copies of newspaper articles with his name in the headlines, and a plastic tupperware with a red lid. The tupperware contains what has, over the years, become the subject of a book, a documentary, and a film, and talks that Jenkin has given overseas.
“Tim is a very gentle, kind soul. He has a heart of gold, but strong as well,” says Victoria Wilson, Timothy Peter Jenkin’s friend of 15 years. “I don’t think he wants to be defined by [his story], and I respect that. He wants people to like him for him and later he will tell them the story.” she says. PHOTO: Nicola Amon
Victoria Wilson, Jenkin’s friend of 15 years, said that it took a while before he told her. First, she had to keep up with Jenkin on hikes – where she had met him – to get a chance to speak to him. He is notoriously known in the hiking group as the “super fit chap” who leads hikes and doesn’t wait for people to catch up.
“Eventually he told me this amazing story in the most self-deprecating way you would ever imagine, because that’s what he’s like, just humble, humble, humble,” she says. “You look at him and you can’t believe this story. He is quite hermetic. They say beware of the quiet ones, you know,” says Wilson.
SA white boy from Rondebosch
At the age of 75, Jenkin’s home is situated only a few blocks away from his childhood home in Sandown Road, Rondebosch. He cycled down this street every day, first on a bicycle and then on a motorcycle, arriving at Rondebosch Boys a few minutes later.
“I grew up in a white suburb, went to a white suburban school and never saw a black person except the maid and the dustman and the milkman. I didn’t even know that there were townships out there, because what reason did I ever have to go out there and look?” he says.
Jenkin took up motorcycle racing, which his father had introduced him to as a child. “I thought if I was going to get serious about it, I had to go where the real stuff was. And for English-speaking South Africans at the time, the United Kingdom was the centre of the universe,” he says.
“At that stage South Africa didn’t have television – that only came in 1976. It was in the UK that I started seeing films about South Africa – about apartheid and townships and the repression and violence which we didn’t know about.”
He did not arrive back to South Africa screaming revolution, Jenkin says, but knew he wanted to “find out more”.
“Just normal students”
Jenkin recalls meeting Stephen Lee at the University of Cape Town while studying Sociology. “We sat in the back swapping banned books,” he says. Five decades later, Lee and Jenkin are still friends.
“I liked Tim’s cynical attitude, his reluctance to accept anything at face value, questioning everything, which Jenkin does. The bond was instant,” says Lee.
Jenkin and Lee would regularly go for rides on Jenkin’s motorbike and find places to dive. At an isolated rocky outcrop called Oude Skip, they built a shack out of driftwood. “We would stay there overnight for three, four days at a time,” says Lee. “We’d catch fish and haul them out and they would still be sort of flicking even after they had been gutted. We would eat them as fresh as that. That was just wonderful,” says Lee.
Oude Skip became Jenkin and Lee’s favourite place to be on weekends after they constructed a shack for themselves out of driftwood, according to Jenkin. The shack was destroyed by the security police before Jenkin and Lee’s arrest. PHOTO: Timothy Peter Jenkin/SUPPLIED
The privacy of the shack at Oude Skip allowed Lee and Jenkin to socialise with their coloured friends, and do university work in a place of quiet.
“It was simple stuff and we loved it. There’s a stereotype about how revolutionaries are humourless and just think solely about the cause and the sacrifices that have to be made. We weren’t like that,” Lee says. “We were just normal students.”
The little green door in London
“Our plan was to go overseas, not specifically to make contact with the ANC – we just wanted to find out more,” Jenkin says. They arrived at a little green door in a street of the typical London facade, Jenkin says. “There was no ANC neon light, or sign or sticker, just a very nondescript street,” says Jenkin. “Some guy came down and we said ‘we’re looking for the ANC’. We were so naive.”
Timothy Peter Jenkin was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his propaganda work for the ANC, Stephen Lee to eight. Jenkin says that the harsh sentencing of political prisoners was meant to be a deterrent, but only made them more determined. PHOTO: Nicola Amon
“They told us it was dangerous work,” says Jenkin. “What was meant to be a deterrent only made us more determined.” Lee and Jenkin were taught how to make leaflet bombs for their propaganda work, but Jenkin deemed their method unsafe.“ So I redesigned it to be more small and compact with a triggering device, so it would give you time to get away before it set off,” he says.
On 2 March 1978, at 2am, there was a loud banging on the front door of Jenkin and Lee’s apartment in Cape Town. “Our front door was glass and I could see a whole bunch of people with torches. The whole place was surrounded by police cars and flashing lights,” says Jenkin.
“Just a bit of maths”
While awaiting trial, at the Milnerton police station, Jenkin was held in solitary confinement. “It was pretty terrible. There was nothing there, no reading, no one to talk to. All you could do was have a shower and watch ants,” Jenkin says.
Lee and Jenkin were eventually transferred to Pollsmoor prison, where Lee says his parents managed to smuggle in a copy of the book Papillon.
“It was a manual of escape – he gives all the tips,” Jenkin says. The beginning of Jenkin and Lee’s escape took the form of a Cuban Romeo Y Julieta cigar case, and a roll of cash. “It was up there for three months – a bit messy when you really have to go,” Jenkin says.
“Once I made one key, the rest were easier,” said Timothy Peter Jenkin. He says that once he, Lee and Moumbaris were able to acquire dimensions for each key, usually acquired with pieces of paper pressed inside the lock, as well as studying scrape marks. It was a matter of “simple geometry” to design each key. PHOTO: Nicola Amon
“I have always been in complete admiration of Jenkin’s ability to work with his hands,” Lee says. “He’s got that kind of brain. So we left a lot of the technical stuff to him.”
Jenkin was sentenced to 12 years in prison and transferred to Pretoria Central Prison, where he, Lee and Alex Moumbaris, a fellow political prisoner, began planning their escape. 10 doors stood between them and the outside world. Using what Jenkin described as “a bit of maths” and “simple geometry”, he crafted several wooden keys in the prison workshop, right under the nose of the prison wardens. “Once I made one key, the rest were easier,” Jenkin says.
By the time Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris made their final run, they had “already escaped several times”, Jenkin says. They had learnt the prison wardens’ habits and rehearsed getting through each of the 10 doors multiple times. “Each time [we got] a little further.”
“When Stephen and I set off the bombs, there would be headlines in the papers and people would talk about it – “these terrorists” – it was always exaggerated,” says Timothy Peter Jenkin. Stephen Lee and Jenkin distributed pamphlets across Cape Town, including a stint at Greenmarket Square. “One of the difficulties of working underground is that you had to live a normal life. People would talk about [the bombs] and you couldn’t say ‘oh, that was me’.” PHOTO: Nicola Amon
Once an activist, always an activist
Jenkin never took up motorcycle racing in the end, but still drives his motorcycle most days, his car collecting dust in the garage. “He looks terribly uncomfortable in the car. He is so type A. So swift and sharp that him riding a motorbike just stands to reason,” says Wilson. “We used to meet at the gym and you’re meant to pay for parking there. And, of course, Tim waits for someone to go in so he can slip in behind him so he doesn’t have to pay.”
“That is so classic Tim. ‘Why should I pay, I don’t support this government!’”