Burying the Typewriter: under the Eye of the Secret Police

Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A memoir of a family living under the eye of the Romanian secret police in the time of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Carmen Bugan's father was a political activist, protesting against the dictatorial communist regime in Romania, and was imprisoned as a result of his protests. During his imprisonment his family was under constant surveillance by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, and Carmen Bugan describes the life of their family in those circumstances. When her father was eventually released from prison he wanted to leave Romania and the family emigrated to the USA shortly before the fall of Ceausescu.

The story is well told - Carmen Bugan is a poet, and many of her descriptions are poetic -- and I found it well worth reading.

It may be just me, but one of the things that I found most interesting was comparing her experience with the Romanian Securitate and my own experience (and that of other people I have known) with the South African Security Police in the time of apartheid.

The main difference seemed to be that the Romanian secret police were far less secret than the South African ones. In Romania much of the surveillance was open. The family were told that they were being watched, they saw the microphones being installed in their house, and were told to leave their curtains open so that the police could see what was going on inside. The children were followed to school, and the friends and relatives who visited them often wrote notes to warnher and her parents them to be careful what they said, because they had been asked to report conversations to the police. In South Africa, even reports to the Minister of Justice did not name informers but referred to them as as "'n delikate bron" (a sensitive source). 

But in most other respects they seemed to be very similar, and rather familiar. Reading the book I was reminded of the feeling that one could not really trust anyone, because you never knew who might be a police spy. She writes of

Sofica, our neighbour, who is in her late thirties and single, is called to the Securitate to give information about us. Does she have a choice? We can't tell the difference between her being 'interrogated' about us and her being asked to 'inform' on us... When she returns home it is her and her parents job to prepare meals for the Securitate comrades who turned the front room of their house into a surveillance residence from which they could watch us day and night.

I was rather disappointed that the story did not tell more of their emigration and life in exile, and how they adapted to life in a new country. It did, however, tell of her later return to Romania and reading the files kept on her family by the Securitate. That paralleled my own experience of going to the archives in Pretoria and reading the reports the South African Security Police made on me and my activities. As Carmen Bugon writes

...it's knowledge that comes as a sort of exile from Eden. Am I worthy of gaining this knowledge? Am I entitled to have this knowledge because I am a part of it? Will my life make sense without this knowledge now that I know it exists?

I found it interesting to see what they knew, and also what they did not know; what they saw fit to record, and what they did not see fit to record. They said I had been to places I had never been to, and did not say anything at all about places I had been to. Their "total onslaught" mentality made them see conspiracies where there were none, and often to misinterpret what they did see because of the distorting lens through which they looked at the world. In that respect there was little difference between the Romanian secret police and the South African secret police, or the secret police of any other place or time. As W.H. Auden writes:

Obsession with security
in sovereigns prevails
'His Highness' and 'The People' both
choose islands for their jails.

And that goes for other security measures too.

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A Real-Life Spy Story

The ANC Spy Bible: Surviving across enemy lines by Moe Shaik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A real-life spy story that is as gripping and exciting as any novel.

But I very nearly didn't read this book. I picked it off the library shelf and when I saw the name of the author, and immediately a phrase sprang to mind: "a generally corrupt relationship". 

Those were the words of a High Court judge speaking about Schabir Shaik, brother of the author, and his relationship with a prominent politician, Jacob Zuma. I very nearly put the book back on the shelf. I didn't want to read about sleaze, and nothing more could be more sleazy than the dealings of corrupt politicians and businessmen. 

And then I thought, aren't you being prejudiced? Take it out and read it, and if it's too sleazy, you can change it for another book in a fortnight's time -- you're not buying the book. So I took it out, and I'm glad I did. It is well worth reading and raises a lot of interesting and important questions.

Moe Shaik was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) underground in South Africa in the 1980s when the movement was banned and being a member was illegal. He was arrested and detained for questioning about the whereabouts of an ANC courier, and after being tortured by the Special Branch was eventually released, but not before making contact with someone in the Special Branch (SB) who was sympathetic, and after his release began feeding him with information from within the SB.

This resulted in Moe Shaik starting a special intelligence unit within the ANC. Just as the Special Branch tried to collect information on the ANC, so the ANC began collecting information on the SB -- what they knew and what they didn't know, and some of their sources of informatio0n within the ANC. It was dangerous work, and there was always the risk of being caught.

When the ANC was unbanned in 1990, and political prisoners were released, people like Moe Shaik had to continue underground for a while. The National Party politicians might be willing to negotiate with the ANC, but there were many in the security services who continued to fight the war, perhaps in the hope that they could change the minds of their political bosses.

As the new democratic South Africa was born, Moe Shaik and his colleagues were faced with a different question: what was the role of an intelligence and security service in a democratic society?

This is one man's view of events, one man's memoir, but it is just such personal views that make history come alive and be more than a boring chronicle that reads like minutes of a meeting. It gives valuable insights into the history of the period, and if you like spy fiction, you'll probably also enjoy it.

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