In this riveting memoir Marion Sparg traces not only her experience in MK – often as the only woman in training camps in Angola – and her friendship with Chris Hani, Joe Slovo and Thabo Mbeki, but also her secret return to South Africa, the three police-station bombs, her sudden arrest and her years of imprisonment. Guilty and Proud is the gripping tale of a woman who defied stereotypes and, at great personal cost, stood up for her beliefs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marion Sparg was one of the few white women to join uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. A Sunday Times journalist, she was prompted into action after 32 ANC members and 19 civilians were killed by the South African Defence Force in an attack on Maseru, Lesotho. She would spend the years between 1981 and 1986 in exile where she received training in guerrilla warfare and worked in ANC communication and on the Voice of Women journal. She later joined Special Operations, infiltrating the country secretly. In 1986, she was given a 25-year prison sentence for High Treason, of which she served five years. She was freed in 1991. Sparg worked as publicity secretary in the ANC Border Region and then coordinator of Cyril Ramaphosa’s office at ANC HQ from 1991-1994. After the first democratic elections in 1994, she served in various capacities in the new government. In 2000, she became CEO of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), a position that she retained until her resignation in 2007, following a public spat between then Deputy President Jacob Zuma and the NPA. Since leaving the NPA, Sparg has been working in the private sector as a communications strategist. She lives in Johannesburg with her two daughters, Michelle and Joy.

'Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier's Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom' is published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers