Tim Jenkin

In May 2017, it was announced that production would start on a film of Jenkin's book, produced by David Barron and starring Daniel Radcliffe as Jenkin and Ian Hart as Goldberg. Filming of Escape from Pretoria began in Adelaide, South Australia, in March and April 2019, with Daniel Webber joining the cast as Lee. Jenkin spent some time in Adelaide, advising Radcliffe on accent and other aspects of the film, as well as playing as an extra, playing a prisoner next to Radcliffe in the visiting room. The film was released on 6 March 2020, first in the UK and USA and then in the rest of the world. He also participated in a local parkrun, a hobby which he said stemmed back from his days of running to keep fit in prison.

Around the turn of the millennium Jenkin co-founded the Community Exchange System, an internet-based moneyless exchange for local communities, comparable to LETS, writing the entirety of its software. A decade later Jenkin also created Clearing Central, a 2nd tier exchange for moneyless exchange between groups. In 2015 he went on a national tour in Australia organised by Karel Boele speaking about his escape and community currencies.

In 2014 a documentary film called The Vula Connection, about Jenkin and his part in the creation of an ingenious secret communication system that enabled Vula operatives to penetrate South Africa's borders in secret, ultimately smuggling messages to the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, was made by Marion Edmunds.

Jenkin returned to South Africa in 1991 to manage the ANC's communications network. He worked for the ANC Elections Briefing Unit from 1994 (the year of the first fully democratic elections in South Africa), before being appointed head of their Electronic Information Unit in Cape Town later that year. In 1997, he became a director of Unwembi Communications (Pty) Ltd.

In 1987 his book, Escape from Pretoria, was published in London. A new edition was published in Johannesburg and London as Inside Out : Escape from Pretoria Prison in 2003. In 1995, Jenkin wrote a 6-part article series called Talking to Vula: The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula. In 2013, the story of the prison escape was dramatised in the 7th episode of the 2nd season of Breakout, a television series made by National Geographic TV channel dramatising real-life prison escapes. The video features excerpts from interviews with Jenkin, Lee, Moumbaris and Goldberg filmed in 2012, in between re-enacted scenes of the prison escape.

Jenkin and Lee appeared at a press conference in Lusaka with Oliver Tambo on 2 January 1980 to tell their stories, before moving to London, where Jenkin worked as a research officer for the International Defence and Aid Fund. He and Lee went on a speaking tour in Sweden in the early 1980s.

In December 1979, Jenkin, Lee and fellow inmate Alex Moumbaris broke out of Pretoria Central Prison using handmade keys to ten of the doors leading out of the prison, after several hair-raising moments when encountering unforeseen obstacles. Goldberg distracted the warden while the three made their escape. The street was deserted, but they still had to find their way out of South Africa, into Mozambique and to freedom. This had involved a great deal of planning but there were still many challenges in the execution, travelling via Angola, Zambia and Tanzania finally to London.

At 3am the morning of 2 March 1978, Jenkin and Lee were both arrested, after being seen moving their printing equipment into their own dwelling. They were never told how the security police got onto them, and Jenkin concluded that it must have been the result of meticulous police work and long surveillance.

Along with Lee, Jenkin was charged with "producing and distributing 18 different pamphlets on behalf of banned organisations" including the South African Communist Party, the ANC and its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, from 1975 to 1978, and urging people to join the liberation movement. The trial in the Cape Town Supreme Court went from 6 to 15 June 1978. Upon legal advice, both pleaded guilty to all charges. They were both found guilty on one charge, with Jenkin receiving a 12-year sentence and Lee eight.

After the success of their first mission, Jenkin worked on refining the mechanism by adding a triggering system to the leaflet bomb, so that they did not have to be close to it when it went off. He successfully distributed leaflets this way on Cape Town's Grand Parade. Lee worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, while Jenkin ran the "cell" on his own in Cape Town. Jenkin went to London at the request of the ANC in May 1976, while Lee continued to plant leaflet bombs around Johannesburg. In July, four ANC operatives including author Jeremy Cronin were arrested doing similar work in Cape Town and were given prison sentences.

Upon return to Cape Town in July 1975, Lee and Jenkin bought a typewriter, duplicator and stationery to print and post pamphlets and leased first a garage and then a tiny apartment. Jenkin worked as a researcher for the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape, a university for South Africans of mixed racial ancestry, or Coloureds. In March 1976 Lee went to Johannesburg to look for work, and the ANC coincidentally sent them both on their first mission, to disperse leaflets urging support for the ANC via a leaflet bomb (using a new design developed by Jenkin) in Johannesburg, close to the anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March. They achieved this mission, managing to distribute hundreds of leaflets by means of several leaflet bombs, the text of which is reproduced in Jenkin's memoir.

In February 1974, Jenkin and Lee left the country in order to join the ANC in London, with the intention of helping to bring about change in South Africa. Here, Jenkin met his future wife Robin. While awaiting clearance for membership, Jenkin worked as a social worker at a reform school in Swindon. After acceptance by the ANC, he and Lee received training from the ANC in various tactics, in particular how to spread their propaganda leaflets, and how to set up communication and financial structures.

After leaving school, he avoided conscription into the South African Defence Force, and worked at a variety of jobs for two years, with no particular interest in anything except motorcycle racing. He left for the UK in 1970, where, working in a fibreglass factory under poor working conditions and little pay, found the system unjust and developed an interest in sociology. This led him to learning more about the injustice in his own country. He later wrote that he had "grown up a 'normal' complacent white South African" who "unthinkingly accepted the system and for twenty-one years never questioned it".

At the end of 1970 Jenkin enrolled at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science degree at the end of 1973.

Timothy Peter Jenkin (born 1948) is a South African writer, former anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. He is best known for his 1979 escape from Pretoria Local Prison (part of the Pretoria Central Prison complex), along with Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris.