Ronnie Kasrils has led a titanic political life. Growing up in a Jewish family in Johannesburg in the middle of the twentieth century, he was radicalized by apartheid and joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1961.

From there he would become active in the broader national liberation movement around the African National Congress (ANC), eventually becoming a key figure in its military wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). By 1983, as the anti-apartheid struggle reached its peak, he was MK’s chief of intelligence and a member of its High Command.

Jacobin contributor Marcus Barnett met Ronnie Kasrils in London where he was promoting the forthcoming movie London Recruits, which tells the story of the volunteers he organized to travel to South Africa and conduct operations for the ANC in the 1960s and ‘70s.