Original version

BBC World Service South Asia

Migrated podcast image for: Outlook

Outlook

Factual: Life Stories

True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Outlook: The prison escape and the wooden keys

Magazines & Reviews

p085d0s3.jpg

05/10/2023 GMT

The prison escape and the wooden keys

BBC World Service - Outlook, The prison escape and the wooden keys

Anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin's remarkable escape from a South African prison

In 1978, anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin hatched an audacious prison escape plan. From his cell, he would make his own wooden keys and open the prison doors to freedom.

Tim Jenkin grew up in apartheid-era South Africa. At his school, he was taught that non-white neighbours ‘weren’t like real people.’ But when Tim moved to London the year after finishing school, he had a total shift in perspective. He encountered anti-apartheid films which cast his country in a completely different light and came to the realisation that ‘I had been lied to my entire life.’

Tim returned to South Africa for university and met an underground network of students who, like him, were eager for change. After graduation, Tim and his classmate Stephen Lee joined the African National Congress (ANC), an anti-apartheid group then considered a terrorist organisation by the South African government. 

By the mid-1970s, Tim and Stephen were travelling across South Africa, secretly distributing ANC literature. But in March 1978, the South African police caught up with them and Tim was sentenced under the Terrorism Act to 12 years in a Pretoria prison.

Tim began to plan his escape as soon as he entered the prison. Examining the lock on his cell-door, he decided to make a key to open it. Using smuggled tools from the prison wood-shop, Tim constructed a key that would fit the door’s dimensions; it opened first time. But there were many more doors, and many more keys, between Tim and freedom. 

Tim wrote a book about his experience, which was made into a film, both called Escape from Pretoria. 

(This interview was first broadcast in March 2020)

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Tim Jenkin. Raw Television)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Outlook

The prison escape and the wooden keys

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service South Asia

About BBC World Service