1. Timothy Peter Jenkin was born on 1948 and is a South African writer, anti-apartheid activist and former political prisoner.
15 Facts About Tim Jenkin
1. 2.
Tim Jenkin is best known for his 1979 escape from Pretoria Local Prison, along with Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris.
3.
Tim Jenkin 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.
4.
Tim Jenkin met Stephen Lee in a sociology class at UCT.
5.
Tim 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.
6.
Tim Jenkin successfully distributed leaflets this way on Cape Town's Grand Parade.
7.
Tim Jenkin went to London at the request of the ANC in May 1976, while Lee continued to plant leaflet bombs around Johannesburg.
8.
Undeterred, Tim Jenkin continued the work in Cape Town, finding a new premises and regularly changing their printing equipment, and both carried out further leaflet bombings in Johannesburg.
9.
When living in Islington, still with the ANC, Tim Jenkin devised a system for encrypted communication so that the ANC could communicate with their agents.
10.
Tim Jenkin returned to South Africa in 1991 to manage the ANC's communications network.
11.
Tim Jenkin worked for the ANC Elections Briefing Unit from 1994, before being appointed head of their Electronic Information Unit in Cape Town later that year.
12.
Around the turn of the millennium, Tim Jenkin co-founded the Community Exchange System, an internet-based moneyless exchange for local communities, comparable to LETS, writing the entirety of its software.
13.
In 1995, Tim Jenkin wrote a 6-part article series called Talking to Vula: The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula.
14.
In May 2017, it was announced that production would start on a film of Tim Jenkin's book, produced by David Barron and starring Daniel Radcliffe as Tim Jenkin and Ian Hart as Goldberg.
15.
Tim Jenkin participated in a local parkrun, a hobby which he said stemmed back from his days of running to keep fit in prison.