For South Africa, the past is harder to escape than a prison

‘Escape from Pretoria’ is the story of Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white South Africans branded as terrorists and imprisoned in 1978 for anti-apartheid activities. While they were held, they crafted wooden keys for 10 steel doors and broke free. Now, 42 years later, Stephen Applebaum talks to them

Tim Jenkin (seated second from left) with Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the movie, and other cast members (Signature Entertainment)

When Tim Jenkin, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris escaped fom Pretoria Central Prison, using the same wooden front door through which they’d entered the facility at the start of their sentences, their breakout would have been flawless but for Moumbaris forcing it open with a chisel. They had left no evidence along their route from the political prisoners’ section, and were it not for the signs of brute force used on the last of the 10 doors that had stood between the jailed anti-apartheid activists and freedom, it would have appeared as if they’d simply vanished into thin air.

On the phone from his home in Cape Town, Jenkin says he had attempted to convince Moumbaris that they should return to their wing and try again another day. It wasn’t as if this was the first time they had slipped from their cells and crept through the prison using wooden keys they’d made. Moumbaris and Jenkin had even gone all the way to the final door before, but hadn’t ever tried to open it. When they did, they discovered that none of their homemade keys worked. What would another short delay have mattered while they perfected the key for the “ordinary house lock” that was frustratingly impeding their exit?