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Hanif Manjoo - I was there….when Nkosi Albert Luthuli died!

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"405191","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]](Umlilo  8 December 2010 - Address at launch of ‘Bound by Faith’ by Reverend Dr. Scott Couper)

We salute you…. Nkosi!

Firstly, I am honoured to address you and feel totally humbled when, in hindsight, I realize that not only am I an intricate, integral interwoven particle of an extremely important era of our oral history, but that I had been at private meetings with a great son of our land and father of a nation in Nkosi Albert Luthuli, drove him to his home in Groutville, was the  person to take the telephone call about his accident, identify him when he was brought into Stanger Hospital, inform and mobilize the (black) health staff, and then, relay it personally to the world.

Nkosi Luthuli…. We all salute you! Amandla!

Background

In 1967, I was an Out-Patients Department (OPD) Clerk at the Stanger hospital at a princely salary of R42.00 per month, and in my second year of employment there.

My colleagues were Baba Dimba, Burke Mzoneli and Chetty.

There was a hHospital Secretary in Dave Duror (assisted by a young Hector Corrigall), the Superintendent was a female Dr Gregerson, Head Matron a Mrs Farrer (her daughter also a nurse, Sister Farrer), Mr Duror Snr was the Transport Manager, then there was a Senior Clerk in Goolam Bux.

Ambulance drivers were Morgan, Peter and Myeni.

Amongst the nursing staff were sisters and matrons (I cannot recall exactly which) in Gumbi, Faith Mzoneli, Guma, Ngema, Zuma, etc.

In the Out-Patients Department, there were usually two of us on duty and we were on shifts, alternating (I think monthly, from 6 am to 2 pm and 2 pm to 8p m).

Our work entailed, inter alia:

1. Admitting patients in Outpatients Dept by entering admission forms on which numerous questions were asked, such as-

  • Full name and surname (‘isiBongo or s’duko sakhe’?)
  • Address. If on mission lands or rural then the name of the Chief (Nkosi) and his headman (induna), the district where they lived / paid taxes (ikantool or kaffa upi)?
  • The river flowing through the area (mfula)
  • If on the sugar cane plantations, then their work details but also including their homeland details (there were many Xhosa/Pondo/Pedi migrant labourers on the plantations)

2. We had to ascertain who would pay the hospital bill. Information had to be supplied by the patient on being admitted or his companion/ employer/ etc. Admission fee was about 60c. If they were not working; this was waived at our discretion.

We would ascertain the seriousness/ gravity / urgency of anyone and inform the floor nurse, who would then inform the doctor and, if necessary, see to him/ her immediately or not.

If we received a call for an ambulance, we would require someone to guarantee the payment of R6.00 to the driver, unless it was the employer or a Government department.

3. Worker injuries were recorded separately as IOD (injured on duty), and the senior clerk would process the documents for payment to the WCA.

4. If the patient was admitted at night after we knocked off (maternity or accident/ assault / injury), the next morning we had to go to the relevant wards and fill in the admission forms by questioning the patient.

There was a lighter side to this! When we entered the maternity wards, we would often hear the labour screams of women. Sometimes, when young, unwed teenagers came in, we would over-hear the nurses remonstrating with them in isiZulu (You enjoyed the men- now? You scream for ‘we mama’ when we tell you to push!) The IsiZulu version does not sound so harsh or insensitive!

5. In addition to the above, we also manned the switchboard, which was manually operated- you rang (cranked) and connected one to the other via a whole lot of cables and plugs! Here, all calls in and out were recorded. When we made private calls (or assisted nursing staff), we would enter the call as under the Secretary’s office or the OutPatients’ Doctor!

21 July 1967

A month ahead, I was going to get married to the girl of my dreams (my late wife Rabiya nee Kajee) on 22 August 1967. Everyone at the hospital was excited (the staff liked me, I suppose, because of my friendly, jovial and helpful ways!). My wedding was at the Stanger Town Hall where blacks were not allowed, and Indians only by permit. At my wedding, over a dozen of the black staff (clerks and nurses) attended; the first time ever!

My colleague was on lunch and I received this call ‘This is the Groutville Station Master. Can you send an ambulance for a native who’s been knocked down by a train?’

I immediately contacted the Transport Manager and relayed the request.

About an hour later, the ambulance (with Morgan the driver), brought the ‘patient’ in on a trolley.

Our office (counter) being at the entrance, I noted the victim moving his hands, sort of agitated, in the air. As he passed me, I recognized that this looked very much like Nkosi! He was taken to Emergency Ward.

Immediately, I phoned the Ward Sisters (Surgical, Medical, Paediatrics and Maternity) to come to the Outpatients and positively identify the patient (as clerks, we could not go into the consulting rooms).

Once confirmed, one of the first persons I phoned was Goolam Hajee Suleman, a very close companion of Nkosi and his family. Then, I phoned Shammi Harichander whom I knew, a reporter for the Sunday Tribune (I think).

Goolam was at the hospital in no time, together with other ANC comrades.

The hospital burst into action.

Normally, when there are less than about 5 patients and not for urgent / emergency treatment, the Outpatients’ Doctor would take an extended lunch break. He was an elderly man, this Dr Stein with extremely thick lensed glasses. The Superintendent would only come to the OPD for inspections or if there was a deluge of patients.

However, this time, not only the Superintendent (Dr Gregerson) was out, but Dr G Misra (on call and the District Surgeon) was on hand.

Normally, when a white patient came in, s/he would be treated at a different section/entrance to the hospital, and sent to Addington Hospital in Durban. Not with Nkosi!

However, the team battled with him for over 2 hours before Dr Misra came out to inform everyone that ‘The Chief was no more!’

How did i identify Nkosi?

During my high school days, I was a close friend of both Mogambaran Padayachee (who, unfortunately, passed on early in life) and Yumus Mahomed (both were neighbours), son of EV Mahomed.

‘EV’ Mahomed (also banned with Nkosi later on) was a committed Communist and very close to senior ANC officials. Nkosi used to come often to his place in Stanger (KwaDuguza) opposite the cemetery. My parents lived just a little further down the road.

As such, I was frequently at EV Mahomed’s place and ‘bumped’ into Nkosi quite often. At the time, there was no thought of history or the future.

I engaged in discussions a few times with both the individuals and was given a copy of ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ by Prof CEM Joad, which I read avidly…unfortunately, the book was left behind in a taxi on my way from Eshowe to Stanger.

I told him that I had come 2nd in my school’s BW Charles Annual Speech contest. My topic on the impromptu speech was ‘If I were Mayor’. He laughed when I recounted what I had said. I suppose it was on this that Nkosi based his essay on ‘If I were Prime Minister’?

At the time of the Rivonia arrests, we discussed various issues regarding student activities. Earlier (circa 1957), I had joined the ANC Youth Brigade that was launched by late Fatima Meer and Cde Sam Kikine, being introduced by Mr Yakub Khan, my then Biology teacher at Orient High (Durban).

My class mates (at Stanger), Yunus, Mogambaran and I decided to do something.

Opposite our school (Stanger High) was the municipal swimming pool… for whites only. There was a high wall so that we could not see in.

However, some of these bloody white kids would stand on the wall, lower their pants, and show us their backsides. Others would scream ‘Coolie! Coolie!’ at us.

So, when Madiba was arrested (Goolam Hajee Suleman drove him one night while he was ‘on the run’ to the border just before his arrest), the 3 of us went at night and sprayed on the walls of the swimming pools (there were no security guards those days!) ‘Hang Vorster! Free Mandela!’ & ‘Down with Vorster! Viva ANC!’, etc.

We also went into Stanger and on the main street, where there was a wall of the local Madressa, we sprayed similar graffiti!

Nobody knew who was behind this and EV Mahomed told me that the security police were hunting high and low for the culprits! That was our fortitude and sense of unity and commitment… none of us ever opened our mouths to anyone. (For anyone who is doubtful Yunus Mahomed, son of EV, is still alive in KwaDuguza, carrying on with his father’s book-keeping business; he can be contacted for confirmation).

As youngsters, having grown up in rural areas like Colenso and Wasbank, we kids knew how to drive from an early age. My dad used to let me drive his VW.

There were at least two instances when I had to take Nkosi to his residence in Groutville. I would take the back road and drop him off alongside the road, opposite his house. He always impressed on me…. ‘Take up education’!

The reason Mr EV Mahomed asked me to take him was that, as a minor, if I did get caught with Nkosi, the police will rather give me a slap or two and send me home; none of my family had a record of political involvement…. I was the black sheep!

Once, I was given a copy of Mayibuye. When my father saw it, he instructed me to read it and destroy it- he did not discourage me.

On another occasion, I was given a Brownie (.22) by one of my comrades to keep for him. My dad came across it and insisted that he get rid of it- he did not object to my being in possession of the firearm. I suppose (being a Khoisan descendant via Adam Kok), he quietly endorsed what I indulged in!

At the time, we had heard of the Gun Squad that went around picking up people on suspicion of them having firearms (for the armed struggle!). We heard terrible tales of torture and solitary confinement in the Tugela Ferry area where they were taken for weeks on end. The sad part was, if someone did not like you, she/he informed the Squad that you had a firearm… that was it! And, there were a lot of ‘impimpis’ around- you could not trust anyone!

However, there was a shocking experience which made me drop out of politics just before I completed high schooling; I was sodomised by a comrade!

This accounted for my absence from the struggle (or contact with Nkosi again) until the day he was brought into the hospital, where I readily recognized him.

Was he murdered?

Nkosi had diabetes and suffered from high blood pressure. There were times when he would feel dizzy.

I knew the Groutville railway bridge (now demolished) and crossed it a couple of times. This was the link to Groutville (beside the road) over the Mvoti River. It was at this bridge that another activist Ismail Omar and his colleague Mr E Mahomedy, drowned when they jumped into the river to rescue a youngster who had slipped into the waters.

The metal bridge had a narrow path to walk along. Once one reached the end of it, there was this steep drop to the ground (no steps), due to soil and pedestrian walking traffic erosion.

In my view, there is a distinct possibility that Nkosi suffered one of those bouts of dizziness (if you not used to it, even a normal person can become disorientated and lose sense of balance when a train goes past at speed).

That would have made him slip, or lose his balance, and fall onto the path of the train. From what I observed, Nkosi was neither disfigured nor bleeding profusely from multiple, external injuries. He was still semi-conscious, moving his hands about and turning his head. The inference is: the train must have ‘nicked’ him and threw him back onto the side of the tracks. It’s these internal injuries that would have resulted in his death.

What does surprise me about these conspiracy theories, is the following:

1. Until now, nobody knows that the station master at Groutville made the call for an ambulance;

2. I believe a documentary was made by Anglo American Company on his life and death.

Here again, none of the station master, ambulance driver, train driver, the doctors, nursing staff or I have ever been contacted.  I am certain that, collectively, we could have given the whole tragic incident a perspective of what exactly happened if there was proper investigative journalism / reporting.

For me, there was no ANC plot to assassinate Nkosi whatsoever… what I heard and saw does not support such a presumption.

Amandlka! Nkosi… rest in peace! Viva, the struggle continues!

Note:

We, as ordinary beings, always wonder how some people end up at the right place, right time and why not us?

I am over-awed that I was just one such person but have not lost my sense of reality and touch with common humanity.

In retrospect, I also (objectively) consider it some uncanny coincidence/fate, whatever-

1. I knew the man personally... and went through this 'breakaway';

2. After about 6 years, I am told directly of him meeting with an accident, identifying him and also being there when he passes away!

Just another friend or colleague is one thing; this was Chief Luthuli, Nobel Peace Prize recipient!

As the Rev Couper remarked after reading it, 'Wow!'

If he knew before, he would have included this in his book!

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[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"405192","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]

Elroy van Schalkwyk - Erfenis

Erfenis

Swartpot,tjabba brood,vuurherd, rooigrond,asbrood, moerkoffie,
dryfsand, jellieblik, gwarragoed, uintjies, vetkoek,  melk  kluitjies, kerrie afval, potbrood,
gemmerbier, tammeletjie, velskoen, veerhoed, voorskoet, kappie, suurring, tjouniebee,
dassiepis, hier jy. ! ltse..itse..itsee

As daar te vertel le is, laat my die storie shee.!

Dis 'n aardigheid as oums begin, van toeka kan gun mens my sê
Die einste ek was self daar, ek ken van hout maak, roosterbrood en pens skrap              
Lappieskombers en suur melk, taai oog maak van bossies vuur en heeldag lank na tjanna ruik

Ek ken van vroeg opstaan en laaste rus, heuning maak en skoene stop
Brak water en eelt voete,Niks was vir my verberg
Die bittersoet van die verlede proe soos vars bakbrood in my mond
Nimmer ooit sal ek die herinneringe van die skadu vergeet

En soos daglig kom navore al die skel en raad en plan, om jou lewe te bewaar en soos papa
goed die beste te doen, respek die ander bojouself, uit te reik en by te staan
So vaagweg word onthou die bitterheid en die rou
Oor 'n kant van my gestroop, weg geneem en nie weer gedraai

Bly my herkoms en my stam die wortels aan my gegee
Niks kon dit skut of rand beweeg, vir geniemend het getry om my te ontneem Van die binnemens van my bestaan

So oorheers die mooi die saak dat ek deur als myself behou My erfenis in my voorskoot vir ewig en altyd daar sal bewaar

Nouja, dus hoe die saak voortaan sal lyk
Gun mens sal wonder of weer try vra

 

 Wie jy ga is of van war ga kom Ek grim net knap en kap dan af,

 

My erfenis, my stam, my krag....
Stap trug in my spoor, dis waar jy sal hoor.!

- This poem was read during a Tell Your Story event in Okiep at the Namaqua FET College

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Gert Jakobs from Upington

I was born in Upington on 18 July 1972. My dad worked as a mechanic, but died in a burn accident when I was eight months old. My mom raised a large family. She was only 35 years old then. Jobs or opportunities didn't exist in those days. She had to work as a maid.

It was so sad, because she raised some of those white kids. But it meant nothing to them as she had to call them kleinbaas and kleinnooi.

We were not allowed to go where the whites went as the apartheid laws kept us apart.

We were excluded from the best in life and were demeaned by name, like Boesman, Hotnot, etc.

After 1990 life surely has improved.  There are still little hiccups, but I believe we are people now. There now are human rights and other rights in place to protect us. Now we also can go and be whoever we want to be because we are free.

My mom died 9 years ago. God bless her soul. Thank you God she saw the Land of freedom.

Vryheid

Miesies is dood
Lank lewe die wit vrou
Baas le begrawe
Lank lewe die wit man

Mandela het die gat toegespit
En ons die wereld gegee
Waarop ons nou sit
Vry en regverdig
Waar ons kan saam lag en speel
Saam toekomsdrome deel

Die baas is gruis
Die arbeiders is gemeng
Ons bou die land
Hand aan hand
Is ons trots op Afrika strand

Zuma bou voort
Op n sterk fondasie
Verskillende kleure
Een nasie

Nkosi sikelela trou met die stem
Die liefde het die haat gelem

Miesies is dood
Lank lewe die wit vrou
Baas le begrawe
Lank lewe die wit man.
(Opgedra aan 20 years of Freedom)

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Nandi Mbele (27), airline pilot

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404667","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was born in1987 in Springs but at two years old my family moved to Spruitview which is to the south of Johannesburg.

My parents worked hard. My dad was a businessman who had a general store in the township and my mom lectured business management at the former Vista University that now forms part of the University of Johannesburg. I started school at St Andrews and Bishop Bavin, went to Hillview High School and matriculated from Veritas College. My brother went into hotel management and is now an entrepreneur.

I work as a first officer (FO) at SA Express (SAX). I fly the Dash-8 Q400. As an FO you are second in command and assist the captain. You prepare all the paperwork, do the fuel and weight calculations, provide the weather reports, and the status of the aircraft, whether the flight has been delayed or not.

I have never flown with a female captain. I work in a male-dominated environment. At SAX there are about 250 pilots, of those about 20 are women and only about four or five are captains. I have been a FO for three years.

Previously I was an aircraft technician in the South African Air Force (SAAF). I wanted to be the first black female fighter pilot in South Africa. I applied to the SAAF and was selected but not to take part in the pilots’ course because I am too short. Military aircraft have certain requirements.

Because I had achieved a B for Maths Higher Grade and a C for Science in Matric I was offered the choice to follow an engineering or technical path. I opted to be a technician because with engineering I could have gone to ‘varsity to do that but it wasn’t what I wanted. I decided that I wanted to fly and if I was going to do that I had to learn everything I could about aircraft and how to fix them and also use the opportunity to meet as many people in the aviation field as possible.

I started in 2006 and qualified in 2009 at Ysterplaat (Air Force Base) on a “Dak” – the C47-TP. From there I moved to 44 Squadron in Pretoria to work on the Casas (light transport aircraft).

I took three months’ unpaid leave to do a PPL (private pilot’s licence). I applied to the SAAF for pilot selection five times in the three years of my apprenticeship. I never fell out; I just kept being told I was too short, so I did my PPL privately. The PPL cost about R80 000 … probably closer to R100 000. After getting the licence I didn’t have a plan. I had R12 00 left which was just enough for me to get a night rating. I wanted to continue flying.

I did my ground school as an aircraft instrument mechanic at 68 Air School and in my second year and a half I got my practical training. I was deployed to 2 Air Services Unit at Ysterplaat and qualified there.

I used to go online every day to look for aviation jobs. I applied after seeing an online ad placed by SA Express. The ad was for the cadet programme. I was a cadet from November 2010 and finished in October 2011. I then started my training on the Dash-8 Q400. It was a big jump from the last aircraft I had flown at the school. It was five times heavier and it handles very differently to a single-engine aircraft. I had to understand that I was no longer a single-engine Cessna pilot.

I had to learn about the aircraft’s systems. I had doubts. You think: how am I going to do this? But I knew I didn’t want to go back. I believe things happen for a reason and that the Lord will not put you in a place that you cannot handle. The simulator training took place in Vienna. It was overwhelming at times but really satisfying. After every session you have a debriefing with the instructor and sometimes the outcome was positive and sometimes not so much. With the good comes bad but I learnt from the feedback.

It is a challenge to be a woman in the aviation industry. All women feel the same: you have to prove yourself over and above compared to the men. A guy would be given the benefit of the doubt. But it makes you a better pilot as you have to work harder for recognition.

I have been an FO since 2012 and am really enjoying it. I don’t feel like I’m working … except when there’s weather. For now I work irregular hours and work on holidays but I prefer that to a nine-to-five job. What is difficult is missing out on family days and working on Christmas Day. It can also be difficult to be in a relationship. You need to be with someone who understands the life of a pilot. I am currently in a relationship and he seems to understand.

Flying is fun. But it comes with hard work. Carrying other people’s family members … you’re responsible for them.

Like any South African pilot I want to go into South African Airways (SAA). Every pilot wants that. That comes with perks and disadvantages for a woman. Initially you have two years of compulsory long-haul flying.

I want to move to SAA – they have bigger aircraft, and will give me exposure to different, busier air spaces ... I have flown to the Congo and … wow … it’s like two worlds. I am more afraid of the ATCs (air traffic controllers) than the other aircraft there.

Now I am trying to get my ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot Licence); I have about 130 hours to go. That licence will make it possible for me to be a pilot-in-command in any commercial aviation environment.

Initially I wanted to do law. As you grow up you don’t get exposed to things. Black parents want their kids to go to university. After researching careers in law while in primary school I said to myself: “this is not what I would like to do”. I didn’t want to go to university and have a nine-to-five job.

Before 9/11, whenever I flew I would ask to see the cockpit. I wanted to be the first black female pilot in South Africa but someone else beat me to it because she’s older than me and I was still at school. Today we’re friends.

During Grade 9 I went to the air show at Waterkloof (Air Force Base). I asked myself what would stop me from becoming that person, the pilot.

I tried to speak to as many people as possible. I didn’t want to “work” for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to hate going to work in the morning. As an aircraft technician I didn’t enjoy going to work. As a pilot I don’t feel like that. Even on my standby days I want to fly rather than sit at home. Flying doesn’t feel like work.

Fatigue is a challenge. After working four days in a row, having unusual sleeping patterns and always concentrating does make you tired. Also, things change, like the weather can change and if there’s been an accident at your destination airfield … conditions change. Each flight is different and every landing is different because things change. On the same day I can fly the same route more than once but every flight is different. I enjoy challenging flights. Afterwards you give a sigh of relief especially at night if it’s been a nerve-wracking flight. We are always taught to fly into the blue.

The FO takes part in decision-making in the cockpit but the commander is like the manager of the aircraft and you’re always learning so I will tend to lean towards the captain’s decision.

As a woman pilot you have to be thick-skinned. Very thick-skinned. You must have ambition to succeed and always know what your goal is. As a pilot you work with other people, you work under pressure so you don’t want someone who gets flustered, who cannot keep their cool or handle stress. You must constantly have the ability to keep an open mind. You must be flexible and able to adapt to the changes.

My advice to young people is to know what you want to do, have a plan, have a back-up plan and don’t just go for cash. To get there you have to go through a lot of stuff. If your primary goal is money you’ll end up hating flying.

Research what you want to do, know what day-to-day dealings are involved, have a clear understanding and know “I’ll start on this journey and finish”. Never give up and settle for less. Even if you get rejected there’s always a way to get to where you want to be. I applied to SAA, the SAPS, SAAF, Eskom and was rejected I don’t know how many times. I just kept trying.

There are a lot more opportunities now than before 1994, so don’t be afraid to meet people and talk to people.

My dad passed away when I was 12. My mom was initially sceptical about me becoming a pilot and thought I would go to university but I was resolute about flying. My mom was eventually my main support structure. Today she is over the moon.

Right now I have 1 350 hours and am open to where life is going to take me.

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Tracy Cheetham, 39, Square Kilometre Array (SKA) South Africa General Manager: Infrastructure and Site Operations

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404668","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was born in Kimberley where I had a lovely life in a small town environment. I didn’t stay there for long. When I was in Standard 1, probably about eight years old, we moved to Port Elizabeth where I spent most of my childhood.  

My dad worked in the media and this was probably the reason why we were more exposed to the real challenges pre-1994. He had first worked in the Diamond Fields Advertiser in Kimberley and then the Eastern Province Herald. So throughout that’s been his career, media … journalist. Those days … my dad would say if the security police came to the house just let them in. You would also see marches and protests in Port Elizabeth. That was in the late 80s. I didn’t take part. I was too young.

After school, I went to university in PE - to Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University NMMU) where I studied architecture – a B-Tech.  Initially I was going to study music. On my mom’s side they’re all musicians so it was kind of accepted that I would study music. I used to have these piano lessons after school and through my music teacher met a friend of his who was a draughtsman. I was fascinated by what he was doing on his drawing board and paid more attention to this than the music. That was where the interest started. So, I woke up one day and decided - no music for me, I’m going to study architecture.

After university, I had the choice of going to work for an architect’s office or going into the development field. I chose development as I needed to interact with people and make a contribution to the growth of South Africa. It’s not about the career for me … it’s what you can contribute. I wanted to help others and have an impact. The interaction, seeing people grow and develop … that is the reward. When you see people living in poor conditions, then see the development and somebody move into a new house for the first time with access to water, power, services - that is the reward.

I started working at a non-governmental organisation in PE in 1997 called the Urban Services Group where the focus was on facilitating community development, housing and land restitution. I was involved in quite a large housing project in Missionvale, which is a fairly poor community. We facilitated access to housing subsidies, construction of medium-density housing, and then shifting the community from shacks into formal housing. That was a big project that I was involved in at that point. I was aged 23.

In 1999 I was employed by the Port Elizabeth Lower-income Housing Project (Pelip). This project was to train the local community to build their own houses so we facilitated the social side which was the application for subsidies and also training of local communities. I was involved with Bloemendal Block 23 where I helped the community to build 100 RDP houses.

In 2000 I went to Stockholm. I was given one year’s sabbatical and spent the year in Stockholm studying. It was an international programme so we had people from Africa, Eastern Europe ... from across the world. There were 50 of us. At the end of the year I came back to South Africa and completed the thesis for my master’s while working with Pelip.  The organisation now no longer exists. It closed down after the Swedish withdrew their funding.

I left PE for Pretoria right after I completed the thesis in 2001. I began work with the national Department of Public Works in the Construction Industry Policy Unit where we developed policies for the construction industry in South Africa. This is where I met my mentor, Lindelwa Mabuntana; she was my direct boss but the kind of guidance and mentorship that she gave me set the scene for my personal and career development. She was very instrumental in that.

At Public Works there were a lot of other innovative programmes that we started up with the youth to build capacity in the built environment. One of them was the military skills development programme. We linked young graduates in engineering and sent them to the navy for a year to give them a bit of discipline … This worked out very well and after we would offer them bursaries to go and work in the public and private sectors.

A second programme which is kind of my baby was what we called the 2014 Youth Foundation. We selected scholars from across South Africa, from different schools, and we brought them to holiday camps. We had about 108 of these scholars from across the country and they still have a Facebook page today (2014 Youth Foundation).

We would train them up in engineering, looking at design particularly. This was before the Soccer World Cup so the type of projects was the design of a soccer stadium and the SKA. We were teaching them engineering design and exposing them to the construction industry to make it an attractive industry to get involved and study in.

Some of them might not have gone into the built environment, some did political science, accounting ... but it really gave them a foundation. One of the participants in that Youth Foundation is now in Parliament. She was one of the representatives of Agang.

I left Public Works in 2007. I had met the project manager of the SKA, Dr Bernie Fanaroff, and associate director of science and engineering, Justin Jonas, through one of the Youth Foundation projects where we asked the kids to look at the design on the SKA. They judged that project.

In July 2007 I started with the SKA as infrastructure manager. It’s been seven years and I am now the general manager of infrastructure and site operations.

I am responsible for the management of the design and construction of the infrastructure for MeerKAT and also site operations and maintenance of the infrastructure.

Within SKA South Africa we have set up what we call the Infra-SA Consortium which was awarded the package to do the design of the infrastructure and power for SKA1, in other words 190 dishes to be added to MeerKAT which is a 64-dish array. We are going to expand MeerKAT to 254 dishes at a capped cost of Euro 650 million. We started the design in 2013 and will finish the preliminary design by the end of 2014. The detailed design will be done from 2015 to the end of 2016.

The past 20 years

In the past 20 years I have been very involved in skills and youth development programmes. I think a lot has been achieved in terms of access to basic needs but there is a lot of work still to do. There are still quite a few challenges but a lot has been achieved. For me the future lies in the youth, equipping them with the skills to assist with continued development.

The youth need discipline, commitment and education – that is the key to the future. With discipline I mean committing to your studies and to South Africa. Discipline through high school. There is enormous scope for the future and if we look at all the infrastructure projects currently there is huge scope in the construction industry and science and technology.

There is a lot of work still to be done and we need the skills to implement these projects: the construction of the SKA, the Eskom projects, energy, big solar projects, the revitalisation of the Transnet rail system, roads, schools and hospitals have to be built and maintained, we need water and sanitation …

My commitment, career-wise, is to realise the SKA …I’m in for the long-haul. What’s nice for me is that my position is very design-construction orientated but we also liaise with the local community (of Carnarvon). There are corporate social investment (CSI) projects  - you want to see that contribution and development in the local community as well.

I work in a male-dominated field; certainly the construction industry is still very male-dominated. In meetings with contractors and engineers I am normally the only female and in SKA International I am the only female consortium leader at the moment. I have never had any challenges or issues related to me being a woman. I believe I have earned my colleagues’ respect so I have never been challenged.

I would like to see more women enter the field. Women bring to the field of construction a sense of reason; there is a desire to understand the wider context of a project. The other strong point is on communication: Women are often good listeners; they possibly really listen and try to understand the core root or challenges of something. Women bring to the field a softer touch, a new perspective …

20 years of democracy

After 20 years South Africa is definitely, without a doubt, a better place. What we have achieved in these last 20 years is remarkable, but the challenge is out there, there is a lot more to do.

It starts with education, right from primary school to high school. I think that the challenge currently lies in the education system. Maths, Science is a big issue. Even in the rural areas … you don’t have Maths and Science teachers and they don’t offer Maths and Science subjects at school. This needs to be addressed so that you create a pipeline of skills so that others can participate in this kind of industry. Education is the foundation of everything. If you get that right the rest will follow.

You often hear the youth on Facebook saying “We’ve studied but now we can’t get an opportunity because we need experience.”  Somehow we need to create that platform to be able to give young graduates experience in the marketplace. It’s happening on a small scale and I think there has to be a concerted effort to expand that in future.

My advice to the youth is to get a skill and then sell yourself. Your results, your commitment, passion and enthusiasm rubs off on people. This is a challenge for people in rural areas. People working on big projects in rural areas have a responsibility to play a role in uplifting communities and education.  These big projects give communities access to knowledge and information.

Universities also have a role to play in the rural areas. One of the things that could happen is that those students studying engineering, for example, could go into rural areas and tutor others, could take on a mentorship role to motivate and inspire their peers. Connectivity, access to the Internet, and the impact this has on not only the youth but adults too– it is amazing to see the difference in a local community.

There are so many interesting things happening in South Africa at the moment.  There is a lot that needs to be done though.  There are big projects, there’s a commitment as citizens to the country and many opportunities for the youth. For young people to leave the country would be very sad; they should rather channel their energy locally into making it a better place here.

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Mike Fraser: How our family was torn apart

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404671","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]My earliest childhood memories were stirred when I paid a visit to the remarkable exhibition, Reversing the Legacy of the Natives Land Act of 1913, at the CTICC.

It was an opportunity to “walk through history” and understand the story of the 1913 Natives Land Act, its role in shaping South Africa’s history of humiliation, dispossession and segregation, and the measures being taken to reverse its unjust legacy in the present.

It took me right back to the days of my childhood in East London. Our family lived on a huge plot with three houses at 687 Vena Street, East Bank Location. My grandma lived in one house, and my parents lived in the adjoining house with their three sons and two daughters. The third house at the back was rented out.

My grandma, Ivy Fraser, a Xhosa woman, was previously married to William Fraser, of Scottish descent. They had since separated, with grandpa moving to Estcourt in Natal, where he started a new life. The reasons for the separation were never shared with us. I later learnt that grandpa William couldn’t quite handle my grandma Ivy’s independence.

My parents and grandparents had previously been relocated from West Bank Location. I must have been about six years old (in 1961) when our family was uprooted from Vena Street. But this wasn’t merely a forced removal. It also turned out to be a painful separation of a family.

East Bank Location was a “multiracial” residential area.

My grandma was moved to Mdantsane, a newly established township for natives, between East London and King Williamstown. My parents and their children were moved to Parkridge, a coloured township.
We subsequently moved back to another section of East Bank Location that was still unaffected by the forced removals. Only to once again be uprooted and moved to a coloured township called Durban Flats. At that young age I couldn’t quite figure out why and what this moving was all about. Many of the people living with us in East Bank were also uprooted, separated and relocated.

My father, Wally Fraser, was a bus driver. To make it possible for us to keep contact with grandma, he appealed to his bosses at the bus company to be allocated a route to Mdantsane, so he could keep contact with his mother.

His request was initially denied because the laws of the time didn’t allow a coloured bus driver to operate on a route for natives. In later years this was reversed. Grandma retired from her work at Greatermans (now Checkers) after 35 years service, shortly after the forced removal. She then bought a green Morris Minor for the family, to enable us to visit her more frequently at her new home at 3208 NU2 in Mdantsane. (I still wonder what the NU stands for. Maybe Native Unit?)

At the time the entrance to Mdantsane had a security guard in a small hut with a boom gate. On our first visit to grandma we were stopped at this gate. We were politely told that we had to apply for a permit to visit our grandma. The permit must have been granted because we then became frequent visitors to Mdantsane.

The one thing that has always remained with me on those visits is that grandma would always say to us, “Oh, so you have come to visit the k***** girl”. We couldn’t quite understand what she meant. My dad was always quick to interrupt this conversation.

This absurd situation carried on for many years, to the point that it became normal routine.

We lived in a coloured township, with coloured neighbours who were also forcibly removed from other areas. At times we would bump into friends and family that we grew up with who had since been relocated to Mdantsane, and the resentment was so palpable that we avoided them. And so the separation between us grew wider. We didn’t understand the situation, and we clearly didn’t know how to handle it. With the increasing separation came disconnection, from family and friends.

Only years later, when I became aware of the oppressive apartheid laws of the Population Registration Act of 1950, the Group Areas Act, No 41 of 1950 and the Reservation of  Separate Amenities Act of 1953, did I begin to understand how our family, and many other families all over South Africa, were forcibly removed and separated. Under these laws our grandma had been classified as a “Native”, while her own son and his family, we, were classified “Other Coloured”. Thus the Group Areas Act was invoked to move us apart and sort us according to the labels that apartheid had designed for us. A normal, happy, loving and caring family who didn’t ever see any difference in our make- up, torn apart and estranged by the stroke of some absurd legislation. We managed to maintain a very healthy relationship with grandma, in spite of the forced separation.

I will always remember how well my grandma received us. She always gave us warm hugs and kisses, lots of food. She had a Xhosa pet name for each of her grandchildren. She never called us by our English names. She was a very independent woman who lived all by herself, by choice.

We spent most of our school holidays visiting her in Mdantsane, so in a way her home became for us a holiday away from home. She took a keen interest in our education and always encouraged us to bring our school reports to her for scrutiny after every exam. Good exam marks were always well rewarded by her.

She was very active in the Methodist Church Women’s Manyano Movement, with their distinctive red and white uniform. Whenever we stayed over in Mdantsane she would teach us hymns from the Alexander hymn book while she played the organ. I also learnt that grandpa William was a choir master and a tenor at the Methodist Church in West Bank.

Grandma was also a keen gardener. She had her own vegetable garden. We would spend many hours together working in her garden.

However, her greatest claim to fame was as a dressmaker. We would almost always find her with her sewing machine, making clothes for neighbours, especially children. For many years my dad would take his four sons and two daughters to grandma once a year so that she could make new clothes for her grandchildren.

Grandma would measure, fit and make our clothes, six sets, all in one day, while we played around, waiting for her to finish. She even made our sisters’ underwear. My dad would then proudly go around asking people to guess who made our clothes.

We were obviously not always very impressed with the clothing, the style and the quality of the material. The material always felt so thick and heavy, durable stuff to last you for some years. But grandma always had the greatest satisfaction checking us out in our new clothing.

In later years grandma became so sick that she couldn’t care for herself any more. Dad offered to fetch her to stay with us in Durban Flats, so that she could be better cared for.

Grandma was a stubbornly independent woman and she furiously refused. Ironically, in a strange twist of fate, she saw this request to move from her home against her will as another forced removal. And once again, her choice in this matter was ignored, even if for a better reason. She spent the remaining four years of her life reunited with her family. She passed away in 1983 at the ripe age of 83.
Nothing will ever match the warmth of the love and the care that we always experienced in her presence. The separation that our family suffered at the hands of these oppressive apartheid laws was somehow relieved when my sister from East London informed me that an aunt, whom I had last seen in September 1966 at our mother’s funeral, was living in Kayamandi, Stellenbosch.

We made contact with my aunt’s daughter and we were reunited after 45 years in December 2011. We had all along been staying a mere 15 minutes’ drive away from each other for 20 years, without knowing about it.

The 1913 Natives Land Act exhibition once again reminded me what we have gone through as a family. Even more, it made me realise what many other South African families have endured.

I can only imagine what my grandma went through. I can only admire her quiet strength, the pain that she must have carried with her. Somehow, I also feel that I failed her. In my remorse I pledge that I will never be party to legislation and an attitude or action that leads to misery for my fellow human beings. To do what I can to uplift the marginalised and the downtrodden, in the sure knowledge that in doing so, I uplift myself, my country and my hopes for the future.

This story was first published in the Cape Argus of 7 July 2013 . Mike Fraser lives in Pniel near Stellenbosch.

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Neeshan Bolton, Executive director: Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, recalls his role in the ANC underground movement

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404675","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was born in January 1962 in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg. I spent 40 years of my life there. I went to school and did my political work there. I worked as a teacher and had my social and religious life there. Everything was confined to the area until in 1996 when I relocated for various reasons to Mondeor.

I wasn’t politically conscious until a very late age, about Matric. I was oblivious to apartheid and what was going on. I was a product of the Group Areas Act and Christian National Education and grew up in an era when politics was not discussed in the home, in school or in society in general.

So, I had a happy childhood and did normal things like play soccer, go to movies. It was a very safe environment. From the age of about five or six I was able to take long walks to the soccer fields or school all on my own. The Group Areas Act created a very safe environment for me but I suppose those who were more politically conscious were aware of the intentions behind putting people into groups.

I had a fairly normal childhood. I had four sisters and being the only brother had its privileges. My father worked as a waiter all his life at various hotels … the Kingfisher, Germiston Lake and eventually Southern Sun Airport Hotel and my mother kept the home going.

Lenasia

We grew up on his salary and primarily tips received. In about 1956/7 my parents were forced to relocate from Sophiatown to Lenasia. They lived in a temporary shelter at the military base in Lenasia for between six and eight months in barracks-type accommodation and then eventually moved into RDP-type housing provided to them.

About six or eight years later we moved to a different part of Lenasia where our family home is now. All throughout my father kept on working. My dad was away from home for the better part of the day, travelling to and from work primarily by train along with many other Indian workers. He’d start at nine and come home at two or three in the morning.

There was a large contingent of Indian waiters who travelled in groups to their places of work and he was their soccer player. He played as goalkeeper for various teams until [I was] 10 or 11 when we moved to Lenasia extension 1, a more middle class home compared to where we had originally stayed.

To supplement his income he and my mother ran a shebeen and sold all kinds of food for people to eat. When I look back, I suppose that area was like the Wild West with informal gambling dens – the precursors to the casinos. Here was my father who came from work at two or three in the morning, spent the time gambling, came home, showered and went back to work - but still made sure that every year we would go on some holiday or other.

He introduced me to the world of work from when I was in Standard 6. I would go with him every December to waiter until Matric.  This is where i learnt about that aspect of his life.

In many senses I would describe myself as having been a conservative racist. I had very prejudicial views of particularly African people. Not that we interacted; they were just workers in our area.

It took two teachers, English teachers, in Standard 9 and 10, to challenge my conservative reactionary views about African people. As a waiter I served whites and saw them as superior and African people as inferior. These teachers got me to rethink my identity in the most profound manner so when I finished school in 1979 I was ready to shed much of what my "Indianness" was about and  move to a South African identity.

I finished matric in 1979. That year I led a student boycott just prior to the end of year exams over a very frivolous thing: We felt unready to write trial exams and wanted them scrapped. There I saw the necessity to have the kinds of skills it takes to organise a campaign and sustain interest.

University

I had to get ministerial permission to go to university at Wits but I did not get it so I had to go to the University of Durban-Westville. I enrolled for an electrical engineering degree and stayed for about one-and-a-half months before moving to Wits to study education. Education was the only thing open to me but I jumped at the opportunity because I was homesick and found it hard to adjust to being away, living in a hostel and also to the technical nature of the area of study I’d chosen.

I started at Wits in 1980, really the formative year of my own political involvement. There were huge school boycotts and protests in Indian and Coloured schools around a host of education issues. For the first time there were signs of resistance among Indians and Coloureds. At university a number of campaigns were initiated at that time such as the Release Mandela Campaign and the Wilson-Rowntree sweets boycott in support of the workers’ strike; the union wasn’t recognised so there was a call to boycott the products.

There was an extraordinary political atmosphere at university. The number of black students had increased significantly.  Almost daily there were protests and meetings and I started becoming more politically conscious. Meetings with like-minded people were the best ways to gain an understanding and express support for various causes.

In Lenasia a number of very local community campaigns were taking place. There were attempts to get people to elect representatives to the South African Indian Council – a government-created institution. People were being asked to vote for it but in the community there was widespread mobilisation against this institution, calling on people not to vote for it. I found myself in the forefront of door-to-door activist work against the election of the council. That was in about 1981/82.

Activist

From 1982/83 onwards I was a full-time activist at the same time as being a student. By 1982 there was a significant grouping of young people who felt they needed an organisation of their own to start continuing work in the local areas so we formed the Lenasia Youth League. I served in the executive structure as a founding member and that was really the start of my organised political work. Through this organisation we became activists for the civic movement.

The youth organisation grew significantly so we experimented with street committees and street representatives, setting up committees in different parts of Lenasia and recruiting members on a street-by-street basis. By 1983/84 in about four or five extensions of Lenasia there were representatives on every street.

The revived Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) used this infrastructure extensively in the campaigns against the Tricameral Parliament. The TIC was founded in 1904 by Ghandi and became dormant in the 70s due to state repression but when government introduced its plans for a Tricameral Parliament the TIC was revived in 1983 and opposed this.  The TIC was an affiliate of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and we were literally the activists for the UDF and TIC in that area. The Youth League, through a range of things such as tuition and bursary schemes and a netball scheme, recruited members. Except for netball there was no organised sport for young women and netball was growing in popularity so we tapped into that interest. It gave us a huge and rich recruitment base. I ended up being an administrator of the netball association that took part in tournaments nationally.

We ran huge cultural and sports festivals for the youth. We were a formidable youth organisation with a presence in the streets, schools and at Wits in particular. Participation of the Youth League strengthened the anti-Tricameral campaign work in Lenasia and in all Indian areas across what was then known as the Transvaal.

Over weekends a group of us would travel to what was the Eastern Transvaal and blitz the communities of Barberton, Nelspruit, White River and Lydenburg and any part where there were Indian people to canvas against the elections. We went into homes and spoke to people. It took up whole weekends. We would leave Johannesburg early on a Saturday, about three or four o’ clock, rush to the Lisbon Falls, spend the morning there and then continue with our political work. To this day that is one of my favourite areas in the country and I still visit when I can. The Lisbon and Berlin Falls are just wonderful.

In 1984 the Tri-cameral election came and went and the turnout was very poor. I did the bare minimum at university because I was very involved politically but I passed. In 1983 I had to do one course to complete my degree. I did that through Unisa and worked as a locum at a school. That period enabled me to organise teachers and learners in the run-up to the campaign. I completed my Bachelor of Education degree in 1984 and in 1985 started working at Topaz Secondary School in Lenasia. I could only teach at an Indian school. During my three years there I actively helped establish the Progressive Teachers’ League, one of the many teachers’ organisations established in that period. Later, in 1989, it became part of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU).

While I was a teacher I was also very active in establishing the Student Representative Councils (SRCs) at all of the schools in the Indian area. We were establishing student organisations.

In 1985 probably one of the most remarkable community campaigns that took place in that part of the world was the boycott of the local bus service. The bus company had increased its fares sufficiently high enough to cause a lot of anger among commuters. For two months, working with the civic association, we got people to boycott the bus service. Lenasia is about 30km from Johannesburg so we had to find alternative transport for the commuters such as taxis, cars, and lift-clubs. It was so effective that the company eventually had to scrap the increase.

I became increasingly involved in civic work. We had the Federation of Residents’ Associations. By this time I was being subjected to monthly raids at home and at school. The police would ransack my classroom while I was teaching. They were in search of illegal material. It disrupted my teaching and instead of scaring people it brought people closer, mobilised people and gave me street credibility.

State of Emergency

The first State of Emergency was declared in 1985 and that was also the United Nations International Year of the Youth. Just before the Emergency there were huge youth celebrations. The declaration of the State of Emergency meant that a whole range of activities were no longer possible but we continued with all sorts of work. Public rallies were not possible and permission was needed for meetings  that was invariably not given. The first State of Emergency applied only to certain magisterial districts for example Johannesburg, which covered the whole of Lenasia and other areas.

The State of Emergency became much more extensive in 1986 with activities no longer possible and various organisations banned from holding gatherings. Open political work became very difficult.

In 1985 Matthew Goniwe was killed in Cradock. His funeral drew thousands of people from across the country, including a bus load of people from Lenasia. I wasn’t part of it. When they came back and entered Lenasia all of them were detained; many spent six to eight months in detention. I was still one of the few people able to operate outside while still employed by the House of Delegates as a teacher but by about September I had found out that the police were looking for me after a group of young people I had given leaflets to for an education meeting were detained for a day.

Within a week of the next school term starting the security branch came to the school and wanted to detain me then and there. They agreed to wait until I had finished teaching for the day and picked me up at home. The told me to pack a few things and took me to Protea police station where I was held in solitary for two nights before being taken to Diepkloof Prison, now known as Sun City, for about two weeks. For some reason I was released well before everyone else.

I think the interrogation at Protea was mild, no beatings, it was more psychological but they had a good idea of what my activities had been and when I confirmed what they knew they sent me to Diepkloof/Sun City.

It was an incredible two weeks. There were many former Robben Islanders now teaching new generations how to cope with prison and amongst them was someone I am very close to now, Laloo Chiba, who had been on Robben Island for 18 years. He was arrested with all the other people on the bus.

What he and others were able to do was to structure prison life for detainees in terms of discussions, discipline, cleanliness, exercise, that I think made it easier for many to cope with indefinite detention. That is a memory I will treasure.

I have no clue why I was released but during those two weeks in prison I learnt I had coping mechanisms for that kind of experience. I never knew how I would cope if I was arrested because all previous occasions were just raids. Solitary was frightening, because you had no idea what you would be up against, there was nothing in the cell except a dirty blanket, no reading material, so you think about all sorts of things to keep mentally occupied and there’s the fear of being beaten up, but that did not materialise.

It was a huge relief to be with the other prisoners.  The minute I got in I was grilled for information. They debriefed me to gather information on what was going on in the country. And then I had to fit in with the routines they had established.

At the time the country was on the brink of being ungovernable. Oliver Tambo had called for South Africa to be made ungovernable so in a sense people wanted to figure out the scale of resistance outside so that’s how the debriefings helped. This was in 1986. I can’t recall much about what was in the newspapers. Censorship had been intensified but new publications were coming out including The Indicator newspaper which was a major source of alternative news in our area.

After I was released from jail I decided I needed to find other ways to make a contribution. The legal space was closing and open political work was difficult. In November 1986 Mandla Nkomfe said the ANC wanted to see me in Botswana. I knew him from my youth work at Wits.

I left on a Friday. I had never been out of the country. I didn’t have a driver’s license but drove to the Ramatlabane border post as it was the most lax about checking documents. There was nobody at the meeting place. At eight o’clock that night I decided to return to the border post but when I got there it was closed. I went to Lobatse and slept in my car at the side of the road until I found myself surrounded by members of the Botswana Defence Force who told me it was dangerous and that I should sleep at a motel. So that’s what I did and then I went home.

Underground structure

In a week’s time I was contacted again by Mandla. This time different arrangements were made. I met Hassan Ibrahim, an underground ANC contact in exile in Botswana. I agreed to establish an ANC underground structure to do political and military work.

Immediately upon coming back I started recruiting people for these structures and in a short space of time we set up the political structure of the underground.  I recruited two people to form a nucleus with me and identified people we would recruit into the military component. I recruited Prakash Napier and he recruited two more people to form the initial MK unit. By 1987 we were sending people to Botswana and from there to Angola for training.

The ANC wanted to set up an ANC structure in Indian areas. After the ANC conference in 1985 major decisions were taken to give new impetus to the struggle and they realised they had no Indian representation in MK within the country. Also, for operational reasons it was easier for a group of Indian chaps rather than a mixed group to be seen driving around. At this time MK units had very short life-spans. Many people coming into the country were arrested almost immediately and there was a high degree of infiltration into the ANC so this was a new model of working. We were among the few setting up this new model where you had a political unit giving content and direction to a military unit.

We set up a print room, had communications mechanisms for communicating with the ANC in exile, for example, fax and we also had a laborious coding system and decoding was a nightmare so we used the phone, fax and dead letterboxes across Johannesburg to communicate.

The first sabotage activities took place in 1987. Coincidentally Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha was in the area at the time and made a huge song about it that he thought it was an attempt on his life.

All of us in the Ahmed Timol MK unit had kept our profiles in our various organisations so we couldn’t just disappear. It would raise suspicion. We created dual personas to keep our covers intact. It became incredibly stressful to do this. A lot of work had to be done late at night. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep at all. We would have our meetings at ten or eleven at night. When I think about it now there was a high degree of adventurism and we lived off the adrenalin all of this brought about.

At the beginning of 1988 I went back to school at the start of the new term. On the first day I got there I received a letter from the department notifying me of the immediate termination of my services. There was no formal meeting, just the letter.

I was very fortunate that a civic association was looking for someone to head their paralegal centre. Within days I got the job which gave me greater scope to play a dual role. I took down information about civic issues and it was an incredibly rich source of information but brought with it a higher degree of security surveillance so the risk was also higher.

I regularly went to Botswana to brief the ANC on developments in South Africa and for some degree of training in weapons and using limpet mines, A group comprising Hassan, Thabang Makwetla (Deputy Minister of Justice and Correctional Services in South Africa and former Deputy Minister of Defence) and others in Botswana who had been trained were setting up bases in the frontline states.

Until the end of 1989 I probably left the country at least six times and sometimes brought back limpet mines, grenades, some guns and ammunition which I handed to the guys in the military unit whose job  was to store and use it.

In terms of the operational structure, I was the link between the overall military unit, the political structure and the military structure. I used to plan acts of sabotage and debrief people afterwards and then file reports with the people in Botswana.

We committed between 40 and 45 acts of sabotage from 1987 to the end of 1989. Two of our members were killed and nobody else. Getting to the point where you take the life of a member of the South African Defence Force was a huge issue we grappled with. It was a subject of huge debate and discussion but I never agreed to anyone being killed. I guess the psychological will was not there. I still grapple with why I couldn’t agree to killing.

We knew the movements of the soldiers at Lenz military base at Lenasia. Every Sunday they went to a local bakery to buy a whole lot of supplies and we could easily have placed a limpet mine on one of their vehicles to take into the military base, but we didn’t. I’m glad we didn’t kill anyone.

In December 1989 Prakesh’s unit had gone to place a bomb at the Hillbrow police station but on the day itself the reconnaissance we had done proved futile. There was a higher police presence than usual. They had to change their target. The railway workers were on strike so they placed the bomb at a pillar at Park Station. It detonated prematurely and Yusuf Akhalwaya and Prakash were killed. The other person with them, Jameel Chand (he was the lookout), survived.

I had taken on a new job at the Education Support Project which arranged Saturday classes for matrics. I was project managing in Katlehong and was the de facto driver for Ahmed Kathrada who was released in 1989. I accompanied him to Cape Town in December that year and while I was there Yusuf and Prakash were killed. They died on 11 September and I heard about it at about five in the morning on 12 September.

We had to get Jameel out of South Africa so I travelled to Johannesburg and got him to Botswana by car. He was picked up on the other side and went to Angola and then the Soviet Union. He came back in about 1990/91 after the ANC had been unbanned and people in exile could return.

Unbanning of the ANC

After the ANC had been unbanned I was asked to help establish a branch of the ANC in Lenasia. I became a full-time organiser of the branch. Our big focus was on preparing for the 1994 elections. I took part in the precursor to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), Codesa I, in Kempton Park as a representative of the Transvaal Indian Congress.

Come 1994 we had a hugely successful campaign with about 3 000 members. I was elected to represent the ANC in the interim local government structure in the City of Johannesburg and at the same time called on to manage the ANC local government election campaign. I became a member of the Johannesburg City Council but in 1998 was called back to work full-time for the ANC. Teaching had fallen by the wayside completely.

Ahmed Kathrada Foundation

In 2009 I joined the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation as its Executive Director where the focus is on deepening non-racialism, as a core value of our struggle, in contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. This means ensuring people understand the historical roots of non-racialism and using that value to deal with issues of racism that are still rife and need to be eliminated. We do this by working with youth leaders, through youth leadership programmes, outreach work and we do a fair amount of research into issues of race, identity and racism in contemporary South Africa.

The Foundation also hosts all sorts of platforms for discussions and debates on non-racialism. We are in the process of setting up a centre for this Foundation that will house a museum and a training facility that will enable us to continue teaching the values of Mandela and Kathrada and that generation.

The contemporary challenges are many. I think the ongoing inequality and poverty in society is possibly the biggest and youth unemployment is foremost in that. The inability to make a dent in the rate of unemployment to create jobs on a scale that addresses the problem and to create entrepreneurs is sadly contributing to the kind of social upheaval you see daily across the landscape of South Africa.

We also face challenges regarding around a number of government issues, poor administration of public services, and misuse of resources. Corruption while it is more reported seems uncontrollable in the private and public sector and this drains our economy of essential resources that are needed to address the key social problems.

We have moved a long way but have the ongoing issue of never having dealt with issues of racism to enable people to understand what apartheid was like. We are one nation with one anthem but are still very divided. South Africans remain oblivious to others who don’t share their race or class. That’s the biggest challenge.

Unless we understand the past and identify contemporary challenges we’ll remain united in a very shallow manner.

The youth face very serious challenges. It serves no purpose to compare the generation of 1976 with that of today because they live in a global economy and are subject to enormous strains and pressure.

Today’s young people are growing up with issues we didn’t have such as HIV and AIDS, they’re living in a new democracy that is still finding its way and creating spaces for young people is hugely complicated.

There are more opportunities for the youth but the issues place severe limitations on them. The pressure on them to succeed has created a culture where they succumb and find other outlets. Some think that only the academic world can set them apart.

Young people don’t see trades such as artisans, plumbers and welders as important so we have a huge skills gap. We need to rethink what we want from young people and need to create spaces for them to carve out new paths and identify how best to contribute to this country,

Today’s generation grapples with affirmative action and employment equity and there are those that feel that if you are not black you have no future in this country. There are no easy answers but I draw courage from their resilience. They are creating new enterprises and are free to speak their mind. They have broken away from their parents’ political bonds so their vote cannot be taken for granted; it has to be earned.

I am optimistic because we have a vibrant civil society. It’s a noisy country and at some point all that is wrong will be dealt with. We can’t keep progress and inevitable change away.

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Homo Benedictor Saxadict Tshatshi

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404665","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]My name is Homo Benedictor Saxadict Tshatshi from the village called Rwantsana Location in Healdtown the Region of Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape Province. It is my great honour and pleasure to be given this life changing moment to “Tell my story” as we celebrate the 20 years of democracy. I am deeply humbled by seeing my dream of telling my story for the first time in my life which I believe will lead to permanent healing and of forgetting about the past. I thank the GCIS & Wits University for this great contribution of a life changing experience to tell my story.

I believe that I am my grandfather's dream. He was released from prison in 1979. Our African history or beliefs tell us that when a woman is pregnant you can tell whether she is carring a boy / girl child. My grandfather said to my mother “this is my grandson who will carry through when I am gone”. When my mother returned from hospital with me when I was still a day old, he held me and said “ I told you that this is my grandson and he looks exactly like me, even the big forehead with corners”.

During the struggle in the old days my grandfather would find time in the early hours of the morning to take me to the kraal to help him whilst I was still a year old.  Just before he died villagers were concerned about the confusing gender of this little tomboy. I grew up like that – a tomboy. At the age of twelve I was sent to Port Elizabeth (PE) to be with my mother as the schools were far. I got to PE where I experienced sexual harassment from home/family members but when I was 15 years I decided to date a best male friend from next door with the hope that I would find rest and peace.

One night I was left with my siblings as I’m the first born. My old boyfriend came as usual and asked my brother to call me and gave him money to pursuade me to come out. My brother after some time said “go and see your new boyfriend”. When I went there smiling as I was looking forward to seeing the new boyfriend I found my old boyfriend with friends carrying knives. They forced me into a bush and  raped me. Since I never told my brother about this it hurts me every time as we don’t have a brother and sister relationship although most of the times I try. On my birthday last year when I was visiting home in the EC using a public transport I got raped by two taxi drivers. They left me on top of my mother's grave and took my underwear etc thinking that I was dead.

I am enjoying the 20 years of democracy despite all the experiences I had in life because I am what my grandfather wanted me to be. I am homosexual and I know nothing else except this life and don’t wish to be or have anything else except what our freedom fighters fought for, which is human rights. The leadership of the organisation that fought successfully for all human rights have never shown any hatred to homosexuals but always put us in their programmes and invite us to submit the homosexual support for their programmes. Today I am free like a bird in the soil of the land of South Africa. Who would have thought that today: I am given a right to marry; I can sing and people dance to my music despite my sexuality; and, I can dress with no fear of being discriminated. As much as we expect more but we believe that as South Africa is in its young adult stage of its democracy, there is a lot to be improved.  Such programmes like Tell your Story is one of the programmes that gives one hope for a great future ahead of us. My hope in life is to have homosexuals living in comfort of what and how they want to be called instead of Mr/Ms, Man/Woman etc. I have hope and faith that that time has arrived.

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Story of a disabled citizen

My name is Gleynroux Gumede, a resident of 768 C Fundudzi Str Zone 5 Meadowlands.

I wish to share a painful moment of my past during apartheid. I' m now disabled as the result of the apartheid security forces, and am without relief. During the establishment of the TRC I felt a little bit of relief, although it has faded away.

I would like to thank Khulumani Support Group, for their unceasing support from 2002 until 2014. They are trying so hard to soften the government, to readdress that we get enough reparation from the President Fund.  If the government can follow the TRC's recommendations. I would like to urge the minister to help and lift me up. I 'm a visionary, innovator and entrepreneur, who has registered my business under a cc. My dream is to venture into tourism and create more jobs, especially in the rural areas country wide.

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Rev Gift Moerane, Gauteng Council of Churches, looks back

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404666","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was born in the Vaal Triangle in a small township called Meyerton. I was born into a family of six in the 1950s during the time of the forced removals. In 1966 we were removed forcefully to what was known as Sebokeng township, about 14km from the town of Vereeniging. My mother and father were forced to leave the beautiful property they had built on their own. They tasted the forced removals of the 50s and 60s because they were told the township was too close to a white area, Meyerton town, because they could take a bicycle or walk there.

I ended up in Sharpeville, growing up with my uncle after my father passed away. He looked after me and that is where I became a strong man, who knew what life was.  I experienced the challenges of Sharpeville. That’s where my real life started.

I finished high school in Groblersdal in what was then Lebowa. Because of the school upheavals of the 70s my father had decided to send me to boarding school but we were not so lucky because in 1977 even schools in rural homeland areas were affected. I wrote Matric in 1979.

I went to do teacher training at the College of Education in Groblersdal. I was away from the Transvaal, deep in the homelands, so we were trapped there. In the homelands the apartheid system was very brutal. The person in charge of Lebowa, CN Pathudi, was a very shrewd politician who knew how to manoeuvre things. With his soft attitude he would visit schools and talk to students so we were not so violent. In the homelands you knew you would be beaten up and with your parents so far away there was nobody to say “what happened to my son?” The homeland lifestyle entailed strong control. I finally came back home and in Sharpeville I was introduced to real political life.

When I left Groblersdal I was doing my JC in the Mmutse magisterial area and had to get a pass book. The pass book was issued at the age of 16 or 17.  I was excited because it meant I could get piece jobs during school holidays. I didn’t understand what it meant. When I came home during holidays I realised I was no longer a resident of the Vaal.

The municipal police – who we referred to as the blackjacks – visited my home and said that my passbook said I did not belong in the area and there I did not belong in my mother’s house. That day I was taken to Houtkop outside Sebokeng, where the Administration Board was. My book was stamped DLB. It meant I had to leave within 72 hours. I was ordered to leave my family. That hurt me a lot. My family was trying to help me but I had to leave 1613 Moeshoeshe Street, in Sebokeng. That was my home. But I was not allowed to stay in that house so I ended up gallivanting around. I didn’t know where to go. There was a time when I had to sleep in Sebokeng hostel because I did not know where to go.

In 1979, 1980 I started to live with my uncle in Molefe Avenue in Sharpeville in defiance. The pass book remained a problem. I acted as if I didn’t have a pass book. My mother and my uncle tried so hard to get me a new book. I reported my book as lost and got a new one but immediately after that PW Botha introduced the green ID. It was during that time when PW was creating buffer zones in the early 80s to appease us, the days of the first Rubicon speech.

During those days I was exposed to politics especially Black Consciousness. I attended Azapo meetings, applied for membership of Azapo, but I joined the United Democratic Front (UDF). I wanted something to give me hope about the future. I didn’t like what I was going through. Under the leadership of the UDF I started to understand what had happened and I realised we had to bring about change collectively. The notion of a non-racial South Africa began to make sense to me. We wanted to see real change not piecemeal freedoms. We wanted to see real change in our lives.

I was working for the Meyerton town council in the 80s but it became difficult for me to work there. While I was working as a clerk there I wrote to the mayor about the lack of toilets and shelter during rain at the bus rank. To my surprise I received a reply from him. He wrote me a nice card and thanked me for raising these issues, saying “We were not aware that black people were exposed to these conditions”.  My supervisor, Mr Smith, rebuked me for writing to the mayor.

The staff were so excited we were going to have a nice bus rank. They built something better for us. That made me excited because I realised that change is possible provided you can agitate, lobby, but it created animosity between me and my supervisors. I was now named a politician. I did nothing wrong but that was the reaction so I had to control the manner in which I did things.

I started to write poems about things that excite me and one day my manager found something I had written about Sharpeville and said I seemed to be interested in political life.

In 1984 I decided to leave the municipality. I was recommended to assist the Council of Churches. On Saturdays I volunteered to assist families of detainees and political prisoners. I offered my time and free services until 1985 when I was recruited to work for the Council permanently. By then I had been without a job for six months already because of the kind of harassment I was exposed to.

Vaal Uprising

The Vaal Uprising occurred on 3 September 1984, 30 years ago. That was when I started to assist families of detainees. Myself and my comrades started to organise ourselves into a structure. We had an office called the Vaal Information Centre in Sharpeville in the Catholic Church where families would come to us to report their missing husbands and children. I was documenting the cases, getting lawyers for the families and I was coming to Khotso House to report, so that’s how the relationship started.

With that spirit of volunteerism I was recommended by the late Mrs Sophie Mazibuko to work full-time for the Council of Churches. The then general-secretary approved that request. The Reverend Mercy called me, I was interviewed and I was encouraged to leave everything.

I started doing home visits to track down detained people, people on trial, to find lawyers for them. That was where my life was nourished. I started interacting with people like the Bishop of Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu, Dr Beyers Naude and Reverend Chikane who all shaped my vision of life and how to do things, how to respond to the repression of the day. I read widely about developments and was interested to learn more.

The Council of Churches had the Covenant Programme that used to visit communities under threat of removal. I followed that because my family was a victim of that process. But then I was given the full-time job of working as a field worker for the Vaal Triangle and part of Johannesburg and the East Rand. I had to look after and counsel over 1 000 families, get their consent, compile a report and present it to the Council of Churches, making recommendations for assistance needed. I used to work as far as Parys and Koppies to collect information about people who had been killed or detained.

Save the Sharpeville Six

Later I was assigned to death row ministry to visit those sentenced to death for their political beliefs and it was the most traumatic thing. That was when the “Save the Sharpeville Six” campaign started. We started it in the Catholic Church in Sharpeville. We were worried so we started a campaign. I wrote to general-secretary Reverend Chikane asking the South African Council of Churches (SACC) for support and they endorsed the campaign. That’s how it caught fire internationally. Amnesty International visited Sharpeville, recorded the story, we produced video tapes. Then followed the Delmas Treason Trial related to the 1984 Vaal Uprising. People like Popo Molefe, Terror Lekota, Geoff Moselane were arrested. So we had to organise another campaign to save our leaders called “We stand together with our leaders”.

The system became brutal and I faced the constant threat of being taken by the security police after work so I had to be disguised when I left the building. I grew my beard, I looked like an Afro-American.  I had glasses and used to travel by taxi because they would blow up your car. You knew that they could stop a taxi during a roadblock so a disguise was an answer for me. Sometimes I looked like an old man.

Paul Verryn rejected a case I was reporting on so I had to travel to Koppies over 100km from Johannesburg to get more information. I had to catch a taxi to Free State to get to that family before sunset. I wrote a new case, caught a taxi back to Vereeniging and presented this the next day so that the family could get a grant. We were honest, well-groomed. I used to carry thousands of rands in grants, cash cheques, what we used to call grants. I delivered a grant to each family each month. I used to know everything.

We became a bit like a government and pastors in our own right, caring for people and knowing who needed assistance. There was an old lady I visited. I was delivering a cheque and realised she had a chicken run. I proposed we give her money to grow the project. She said she also had a sewing machine. So I presented a report and we gave her a bigger machine and enough money for her to start a self-help project. SACC started self-help projects all over. It was so enriching and we were really helpful. Every day I helped people under serious pressure but did so under the protection of the SACC. The State would think twice before touching you. It was very satisfying and I knew the church leaders would make a fuss if I disappeared. As workers we knew we were under threat but knew we would not just become a statistic.

Doing SACC work, being a community leader I was tasked with mobilising churches and using my influence. I visited churches and spoke about the importance of taking part in the struggle and about saving people facing a possible death penalty. I managed to get a few pastors to join - among them Father Patrick of Sharpeville Catholic Church, the Anglican Church whose Father, Geoff Moselane was already detained … I managed to mobilise various denominations in the Vaal and got the church members to go to the trial by bus every week. The SACC mobilised resources so we could get the buses to Delmas. The security forces couldn’t believe the way people were mobilised. They were parents and elderly people so they couldn’t just be arrested; a bus full of young people would not have been able to move about as freely. Those on trial really appreciated the support. Ishmael Ayob of Sharpeville even gave a Kombi to transport people to the trial.

The SACC became a home for pastoral work and I grew spiritually there.  I could fulfil my aspiration to help God’s people. One does not earn much working here. When I started I earned R450 a month and it would go up but for us it was enough because it was more about service. Today, if people complain you say it’s not about the money; this organisation is not about you but about God’s people.  On 6 September 2014 I had been with the SACC for 30 years.

After 1994

In his state of the nation address in 1994 Reverend Frank Chikane made a proclamation for a conference and spoke about mission accomplished and the mission ahead. Now that we had cast the vote, now what? The conference of the SACC articulated the challenges ahead such as building a new nation. I got so excited about being part of that so I spearheaded a project to produce this booklet called “The challenge of reconciliation”.

How do we start to build a new nation, a reconciled society? I mobilised influential church leaders such as Reverend Torr and Shelagh Mary. We came together and produced this small booklet to help us work for national reconciliation. It was an exciting time and a time of reflection to say we are building a new society, a new nation. That’s how we came to support the TRC but we realised everything was not well. We voted but the majority of people were still suffering. We came up with various conference resolutions and as a functionary one of my tasks was to develop projects. One of the resolutions was peace making through mediation.

I was involved in peace making in communities. Our communities were so divided. There was conflict in the communities of the East Rand, Alexandra and the Vaal Triangle. I was facilitating peace talks among the groups that were fighting … the IFP, the ANC, the hostels. I joined Archbishop Tutu and Reverend Chikane when they were visiting hostels and was involved in helping to build a new consciousness. We acknowledged that all had become new but that this was not true for all ordinary people. We had to work hard on the ground as field workers to make the vision a reality. We had to come with new ideas and philosophies.

The SACC trained people as peace-makers and reconcilers to help communities stop fighting, killing and living in suspicion of one another. In 1985 we had the peace process in KwaThema in Springs.

I was attending a meeting there, invited by Reverend Mazibuko. I raised a hand and made my input and after that it was recommended that the SACC lead the peace process in KwaThema. We started a peace and reconciliation process in KwaThema. It took us five solid years to bring peace in that community. Sometimes I would sleep there, trying until midnight to talk sense to young people who were literally killing each other. At the end of the process we found 92 people had died as a result of revenge killings.

There was interaction with Tokyo Sekwale, Jesse Duarte and Mary Metcalfe to try to resolve this. We were tired and depressed and didn’t know what to do. 

We had to bring the warring groups to Khotso House in 1995 and get them into the same room and to start talking peace. I had to organise buses to bring them there. Both groups were armed. How could we bring them into the chapel? We had to talk about disarmament for three or four hours but we finally got them into one room. The success started there.

We were able to take those people who had moved into the hostels back into KwaThema. They were scared but we called their families, they came and we all sat under a big tree and said we are going to make peace. We invited the entire community into the stadium where we had a peace prayer service. Everybody thanked us and we said no, thank your children for listening when we tried to talk sense to them. They signed a declaration of peace and out of that we identified peace pioneers. Two of them, Papi and Keketso, were assassinated. It shows the price that was paid for peace.

We were able to sign the declaration but days later Papi and Keketso were killed. They were the leaders of Cosas in that area. Another one in PASO, Michael, emerged as a leader in the peace pioneers. They would start their own peace talks. The funeral of Papi and Keketso brought everyone together. They did not die for nothing. Young people wanted to go to the graveyard to say they were sorry. They stood there, talking, and we stood back and watched. We were amazed. It was a miracle. The young boys started to clean the township, clean that graffiti. They started to discuss rebuilding.

We even built a monument. They said they wanted to build a monument so I mobilised resources and a church in Canada sent a grant for a monument to be erected. All former students of the school came. They spoke about violence breeding violence and spoke about stopping violence and about disarmament. They spoke about giving up their guns. So we had to speak to the police about this because they might implicate the ones in prison.

It was clear to everyone that if they had used their guns to commit crimes they had to deal with the consequences. They were sentenced and had to go to jail. And they did it.

I was asked to give evidence to the commission into state-sponsored violence. I gave evidence because of the role my colleagues and I played. Peace work has become a calling, even today, in democracy. I’m still being invited to talk in communities where there are problems. I have done work in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The SACC has empowered me with skills. In Gauteng they have even used this office for the peace and reconciliation process in Khutsong near Carletonville. There was total destruction of property and ungovernability there but we brought the communities together and Khutsong is now part of Gauteng.

20 years later

After 20 years there is still the need for work in reconciliation and nation-building. We’re retreating back into old practices of suspicion, tensions are mounting. We’re not doing enough work to reconcile and bring people together. There is still a need to work for national reconciliation.

With government communication we need to go into communities and say to people there is still a need to build a new nation and work for reconciliation. A 20 year review talks about a success story but challenges remain such as service delivery.

We need to mobilise churches to urge people not to march or destroy things when they are unhappy. We are assembling a team of church leaders to lead a new programme in lobbying and advocacy to teach people to use the platforms available for them to be heard. I have engaged with various speakers to sell the idea to go into communities to change hearts and minds. It is an effort to bridge the gap between people and politicians that will be launched very soon.  I went to Tukkies to help develop material for this programme. This is what keeps me going. This goes with sacrifice. You’ve got to do it for satisfaction.

I am starting to scale down and recruit young people. I’ve become a part of the furniture now. I want to remain an asset and be of assistance to the Council. I want to give back to my community of Sharpeville. I am starting a resources centre to help the community.

I hope for a future where all of us can see a non-racial, non-gender, non-wealth community. I yearn for a future where people just see themselves as South Africans and not as white or Indian. I want to see poor whites integrated without fear. We need to move beyond the past, beyond colour, we need to move beyond feeling we’re owed something. We need a non-sexist, non-racial South Africa.

It hurts sometimes to see the youth not making an effort, not making the most of opportunities, as if they don’t appreciate them.

We must keep talking. Story telling will change perceptions. Think about those who suffered. We hurt when we see people burning, looting and killing because it takes us back. We need to help the youth to see the opportunities they have such as the chance to finish school and university. Young people can go miles without having to go to night school. They must take that opportunity. They can get free houses where our parents paid rent.

The youth must start businesses and be employers. I took my house plans to a young girl last week. She works for Murray and Roberts. I was so impressed with this young quantity surveyor. This is the new South Africa. She is from Pimville in Soweto. She freelances after hours. She is not afraid to go through the pain of studying. She is a source of inspiration.

We struggled but we did not lose hope. The youth must take the baton and run with it. Let your children lead a better life.

There are good stories of people who see the future and work towards it. I would like our youth to see how you can make a difference.

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Thabiso Ratsomo, former inmate of Robben Island Prison and former chief of staff of Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota

I was born in 1957 near Carletonville. My mum was a domestic worker and I never knew my father. I had one brother and four sisters. Two of my sisters are still alive.

In 1965 we moved from Carletonville to Meyerton Location. There was only a road separating the township and industrial area from Meyerton town. People walked and cycled to work. In school holidays we would go to the white area, fight with the white kids and then dash back home. We were just kids messing about but sometimes they would provoke us.

In 1967 the apartheid government moved us to Sebokeng Township, 14km away so workers then had to take buses to work. Sebokeng is located next to Evaton in the Vaal Triangle.

My new high school – Tshepo-Themba High School – was located in what used to be a primary school for white kids. The government had relocated the whites. I was a keen Maths and Science student but at the new school there were no facilities for science experiments so the school did not offer Science. I had the choice of doing Biology instead but I wasn’t keen on that. I had always been bright at school and would always be in the top three. I passed Standard 8 with distinction.

I didn’t finish school. I was the fifth of six children and my mother died in 1967 when I was about nine or ten years old. I lived with my older brother and life was not good. I lacked the things other kids had so I augmented what I had with money I earned working in white people’s gardens on Saturdays. I used to earn R1 a day but in those days one could buy a lot with R1. I didn’t really get to be a child.

As a gardener in the white suburbs I was treated as a gardener. I was not allowed in the house, I would be given my coffee in a tin that had a handle welded onto it. You would also have your coffee at the side of the house, or maybe even the garage if the side room was occupied by a domestic worker.

At the hospital I noticed that the white doctors didn’t want to touch black patients. That gave me the idea of becoming a doctor, so that I could treat people with dignity. My memories of apartheid include that of us sometimes visiting other schools; let’s say in the Free State. When we stopped at a shop it would be for whites only and we had to buy from a side window

I entered politics in 1967 while I was at Orlando High. Before that my friends and I used to read the newspaper, The World. We would read about soccer and other things. One of the things we used to read about was the Biafran civil war in Nigeria. The people wanted to secede. You would see in the papers pictures of emaciated children, small bodies with distended stomachs.  We read about the things happening in other African countries. We also read about a group of kids from Naledi High School in Soweto who went on a trip to Mozambique. I think their vehicle hit a landmine in Mozambique. Those things made us aware that there was something wrong. We got to know there were things happening in Africa but we did not have a deep understanding.

In March 1976 a team of us went to play in Mafikeng. In those days petrol was not sold over weekends. We ran out of petrol while in Mafikeng. Someone, a local guy, said they knew where to get petrol. It was Easter. Some of us got into the Kombi. There were two Kombis or so, I think. What we didn’t understand was that the guys were going to buy petrol in Botswana. So just before the Ramatlabama border we were stopped by the police. I think they thought we might want to cross. So they detained us while the guys went to get petrol. Later I understood that it was a time when South Africa had sent troops into Angola (in 1975) and the government was possibly aware people were going into exile. Maybe they thought we were going cross and go into exile. We were detained until they came back with the petrol.

June 1976

The police did not treat us very nicely. So, by 1976 June one had some awareness that things were not right in the country. June 1976 came. That’s how I became fully aware and really participated in political activities.  It was in the protest marches in Soweto. We got to learn from the leadership of the Soweto Students Representative Council (SRC) why it was wrong to teach us subjects in Afrikaans, why opportunities would be closed for us because Afrikaans was only spoken in South Africa.

People in the SRC belonged to the South African Students’ Movement (SASM). I joined SASM and with other people established a branch in the Vaal. I became the organising secretary. I got to understand how an organisation is run, what positions there are and so on. That was the first formal organisation I had joined where I held a position.

In 1978, I was arrested for making bombs and burning schools in the Vaal and was detained, tortured and put on trial. I had learned how to make petrol bombs and also about the armed struggle, about the ANC and PAC, from people in the know and underground operatives. We were faced with the police and the military so we had to find ways to respond.

In detention, we were tortured for information so that they would be able to charge us. They wanted a confession and would look for contradictions and inconsistencies in our stories to break us and others in detention. Sometimes they would burn us on our bodies or genitals (which did not happen to me), deny us sleep, or make us do exercises such as hold a telephone directory while doing frog jumps.  This was all to wear you down. Sometimes they would turn you to get you to become a State witness. This was in 1978. You coped because you knew others had been through far worse.  For example a friend was tied to a soccer pole and they made fire under his feet.  Some people would die in prison, some would disappear. They would say someone had fallen on a piece of soap.

My trial lasted about a week. I didn’t have a lawyer nor did I understand the law. I was sentenced to five years for sabotage and a year for having banned literature such as a book about Black Consciousness and maybe some posters.

I’ve moved on from that but I think many have not moved on … people who went to prison and were not counselled when they came back....many comrades now drink heavily, have committed suicide, die of drinking, and their relationships and marriages don’t last.

Robben Island

I arrived at Robben Island in 1978. It was the first time I saw the sea and the first time I rode on a boat.

I had been kept in a single cell at Leeuwkop Prison which was a transit prison and when there were enough people we were taken to Cape Town by truck. At Leeuwkop there were no toilets in the cells. You were given a bucket to use at night. I always remember those cells were very narrow and very high, about a metre wide, four metres long and five metres high. At the top there was a window and a catwalk where the guards would walk at night and look down into the window. It was as if the narrow, high cell was making your mind narrow and tall.

During the trip to Cape Town we were handcuffed to one another and had a bucket to pee in. We were given food while in the truck. We stopped at Colesberg Prison, then at Victor Verster in Paarl, and finally slept in Pollsmoor Prison in the Cape before being taken to Robben Island.

When we arrived at Robben Island we were taken to communal cells. Kgalema Motlanthe was there. There were four communal cells. On arrival you would find that people had organised themselves according to political groupings, for example the PAC, ANC and Black Consciousness. I had learnt about the ANC from Radio Freedom and aligned myself with the ANC. There were about three of us in a cell and one of my co-accused, Mputle Matsobane, also from the Vaal, lost his mind one night. He ran amok. We had to call the warders and he was taken to hospital. He died. His body was returned to the Vaal and his funeral politicised many people there.

I was at Robben Island for just under five years. It could get very cold there and when it did I became homesick. One day as we were working next to the quarry I saw that the water was extraordinarily calm that day. I remembered the verse in the Bible where they said Jesus walked across water and I felt like I could do that and cross to the mainland. I never forgot that. It was about July then and it was a very cold winter.

The good thing about the Island was that you learnt about a lot of things. I learnt about the history of the struggle, the history of the ANC, revolution in other countries, the Russian revolution, and the Cuban revolution.  I got to understand people like Kwame Nkrumah and what they stood for. We learnt about Marxism, Leninism, monopoly capital, oligopoly, political economy - these were exciting thing to learn about. There’s no education like the one we got at “Robben Island University”.

People who were involved in some of the political activities, like the Defiance Campaign of 1950, the drafting of the Freedom Charter, even the first MK recruits were there. We understood the determination of people. Some of these people were in their 40s and had never been married. Some had been away from home for about 20 years. MK started in 1961 so as early as 1963 or so people had been imprisoned.

I didn’t leave the country. On Robben Island I listened to stories told by the people who had been outside and it was clear it was easier to take people out than to infiltrate them so it was better to train and remain in the country. We needed people inside the country. I was advised not to leave unnecessarily but rather use my knowledge to educate people about the Freedom Charter, the struggle, MK, the ANC, things happening in other countries and to recruit people and win them over to the cause, justify it, explain why it was happening. I became a founding member of the Vaal Civic Association.

Retrial

I returned from the Island after there had been a review of my case in 1979. We were released because we were originally sentenced without representation.  We left by train. Some of our comrades had been involved in another school bombing and were serving two concurrent sentences. Of the six only three of us were released, two of which were from the Vaal and one from Soweto. We went and slept at home. In the morning the police came and rearrested us. There was a retrial. This was December ’79. This time the judges gave us a sentence that was to run concurrently. It was about three years because we had already served. So, technically, I went to Robben Island twice. I went on the same journey via Leeuwkop and back with another group, called a draft. There was always something about a particular draft. Some would arrive singing while others would be subdued. Our draft had a better political understanding because some of us could articulate where we wanted to be, some of us were very clear we were ANC.

I was on Robben Island when I first was given a “dompas” Because I was in prison there was a gap in the section where your employer would sign and write the date on which you were employed and sign you out when you left. Without a dompas you couldn’t find work.

During my time in prison there had been some bombings at Sasol 1 and 2 and an attack at Koeberg. When I came out people told me that employers didn’t want to take people who had gaps in their “dompas” and I couldn’t say I had come from Robben Island. I had to make up a story if I was to find employment. It was difficult to find employment in the Vaal because there was paranoia. Eventually I got a job as a welder’s assistant. At that time people called white people “baas”. After being on the Island the word “baas” could not come out of my mouth so I said “meneer”. People asked why and I realised I was not going to go anywhere.

Employment

Eventually I decided to go to Johannesburg. I saw an ad for a job as a researcher at South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). I applied for that job and got it eventually. In prison I had written three of my matric subjects and enrolled for another three when I got out. I wrote in May 1992.

The ad asked for a university dropout or undergraduate. When I put in my application I had not yet written the last three subjects but was confident that with the education I had got on Robben Island I could tackle anything. I am a co-compiler of the 1982/83 Race Relations Surveys.

At the SAIRR the white and Indian researchers with degrees got R700 a month but because I did not have a degree (but was doing the same work) I was getting R350. I realised this gap would never be closed; it could only become wider. I was a trainee researcher but doing the same job as a full researcher. After writing Matric in 1983 I enrolled for a BSc part-time through Unisa as I still had that idea of becoming a doctor. Increasingly though I lost interest because I had become good at writing and presenting political issues. In the end I applied to Rhodes University for a journalism degree because I was not prepared to go to a bush university. In 1984 I went there full-time.

Vaal uprising

The Vaal Civic Association was formed in October 1983. It affiliated with the United Democratic Front (UDF) later that year and was involved in a campaign to oppose the Tri-cameral parliament in the black local authorities (BLAs). The tri-cameral elections were held in November 1983 and enacted in 1984. The first thing these BLAs did was increase rent in July ‘84. At that time house rentals in the Vaal were already high. Eventually the Vaal Civic Association organised a protest march against the rent increases. This led to what was called the Vaal uprising on 3  September 1984 – this year we  commemorated the 30th anniversary. It was an important event because what happened there was replicated countrywide. The country was never the same again. It is something people are not aware of but it was a turning point.

I was at Rhodes when this happened. I had joined the Black Student Movement (BSM) which was an affiliate of Azaso, the Azanian Students Organisation, and was elected onto the executive of the BSM in April ‘84. I became its president at the end of the year. We were campaigning at this time against the Tricameral parliament and I was arrested in Duncan Village in East London in about July 1984. I was released and on that day, 3 September, when I came back from appearing in court in East London. I saw what was happening in the Vaal on TV. Things were  burning, shops were being looted and so on – but I was so far away. I didn’t know what was happening. There were no cell phones and many people could not afford to have telephones. I was worried because I had underground material that I had left at home and I wanted to know what was happening. Some of the people I knew were arrested.

In November after exams I came home. There was a crisis centre and I was asked to come in and help the families of those who had been arrested. I went back to Rhodes in 1985 a week or two early to recruit new students. In February 1985 the police searched my room in Oakdene House at Rhodes and arrested me. Later they also searched my home in the Vaal. There was a nationwide search for people identified with the UDF. The police took me by car from Grahamstown to Vereeniging. From there the police took me to Protea Police Station. Nobody knew I was there.

People who saw me arrested thought I was still in Grahamstown. You know people like Stanza Bopape disappeared? You knew how easily you could get killed if nobody knew where you were. I realised it would be very easy to make me disappear because we travelled through some small, deserted villages in the Eastern Cape. During the journey I was handcuffed to the floor of the car.

At Protea Police Station I discovered Terror Lekota and Popo Molefe of the UDF, as well as Moses Chikane, Tom Mantata of the SACC and Simon Vilakazi.  They  were all in single cells. Early on 11 June I heard some commotion at Popo’s cell next door. The police were there. Then they came to my cell and opened it and presented me with four volumes of the charge sheet. The charge was treason. The crux of the matter was that the UDF and its affiliates were conspiring with the ANC and South African Communist Party to overthrow the government by violent means. Some known ANC people like Albertina Sisulu were at the forefront so for them we were like an internal wing of the ANC. And that led to the Delmas Treason Trial. I was acquitted of all charges in November 1988.

The Vaal Civic Association had just been dealing with a local issue of rent increments. I suspect that they thought I remote controlled things in the Vaal because I had come from Robben Island. But I was not even there so I don’t know how they could explain my inclusion.

I couldn’t finish my studies. I wrote to the university and said I was in prison but I believed I was going to get out. I wrote my second year Rhodes exams in prison. My lecturers -Professor Gavin Stewart and Don Pinnock -wrote to me and said I passed very well. Professor Stewart organised a bursary for me, and people like Daniela Kenridge of the Academic Support Programme supported me and came to see me while I was on trial. Rhodes however informed me that as it was not a distance learning university I could no longer study there.  My association with Rhodes was ended then.

I registered with Unisa and continued studying. I joined a magazine called Learn and Teach as a writer. It was an easy-reader magazine that took difficult words and concepts and made them easy. One of the articles I wrote explained what a constituent assembly is. We dealt with complex social and political issues and made them easy to understand.

Graduation

During that time I obtained a BA in Sociology, International Politics and Politics. I graduated in 1990. And I had started in 1976! I obtained a Master’s in 2012. My dissertation is Post-conflict military integration: a case study of the establishment of the South African National Defence Force. It will be published very soon as a book titled Submit, negotiate or fight: we chose to negotiate. I am trying to show – and this is what Nelson Mandela said in 1960 – that a time comes in any nation when you have to decide whether to submit or fight. We chose to fight. I chose the topic because when MK members came back to South Africa they faced these choices when encountering the defence force and homeland defence forces. They negotiated.

I joined an NGO called Kagiso Trust in 1986. I came in as a regional director and was promoted to CEO. It was established with money from the European Union. At that time countries overseas had decided to apply economic sanctions but they knew this would impact on victims of apartheid so they brought in money as a grant for Kagiso Trust, the South African Council of Churches and the South African Catholic Bishops Conference. For the political struggle, Kagiso was set up. I was responsible for the then Transvaal. Kagiso received applications from people for community projects such as alternative education projects thus ameliorating the effects of apartheid. I got to travel to the Northern Cape, Free State, up to Venda and near Botswana because I had to assess projects and their viability.

I would like to work for something like the School of Government now and share what I have learnt, my experience and my expertise because I have the necessary political understanding.

After 1994

Since 1994 there have been improvements in terms of the laws, access to resources and housing. The ANC government has changed the lives of many people but more could be done and there is some corruption in government. It seems we have perfected some forms of corruption seen earlier in other African countries.

The divide between the rich and poor will increase and this might lead to the ANC breaking into an “ANC for the rich” and an “ANC for the poor”. Because more can still be done some still have hope because it was the poor who put the ANC in power. But RDP houses cannot be built forever and social grants are unsustainable because of population expansion.

Many people vote for the ANC because they liberated us but there are serious concerns. There is the perception in city townships that leaders readily give people expensive booze, 10, 12, 15 year-old whiskey, but are failing in service delivery. There is the perception that people who give money are buying people to get others to vote for them. People tell me these things. When people say government doesn’t have money but they see lavish lifestyles they don’t believe them. This will work against the ANC eventually. You find similar sentiments in different places. It is a sad story. This is not what we fought and died for. We died for something better than this. Our comrades trained and travelled to African countries where they saw how people suffer and the leaders live in luxury. For example if you go to the Central African Republic they show you the mansion where former president Bokassa lives, people like Mobutu Sese Seko and some of the richest people, go to Gabon and see how the president lives …. You wonder …

The gap between the wealthy and the poor, the perceptions of corruption and mismanagement in government, in particular local government – these are our challenges.

Statements like “the ANC will rule until Jesus comes again” are unfortunate.  In Eastern Europe I suppose people believed the communist party would rule forever but people woke up and broke down the Berlin Wall; they turned against the Polish government; the masses in Eastern Europe rose up. We are seeing sporadic protests in South Africa, that show there are some people who are demanding more but there are also people who are discontented with what they see and how they live.

Sometimes people say to me: comrade, we need you back. I say we did what we could, we are prepared to show where we came from to show you that you don’t have to be a household name to bring about change. The youth of South Africa need to see where we came from and understand that ordinary people can make a difference. Most youth don’t see beyond the nice life they lead of booze, women, parties and cars. It’s seems as if that’s everything. There’s life beyond that. The future of South Africa is in the hands of young people. I was about 19 when I went to prison. I tried to make an impact when I was very young. It’s up to them now.

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Nokwazi Hlubi reflects on her journey during 20 years of freedom

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404676","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I have been always told that education is one of the most important investments a parent can make in a child ‘s life.

While we were not of means, my parents took us to “bantu schools” and when the uprising of the late 1980s took place in the townships, my parents chose to take us to private schools. Public schools did not accept non-whites then. This is where the contradiction in my life began. During the day I am “black” in this lily-white school with privilege and surrounded by opulence. Then in the afternoon, I am black in a working class township. Our parents were either teachers or nurses. I had to speak the Queen’s English at school and at home. It was mandatory. Through sheer perseverance and hard work, I managed to pass primary school and move on to high school.

While my high school was also full of privileged pupils the opulence was not as obvious. Perhaps it was because the school was a much bigger school. But every now and then I would be reminded by the new Levis that came from America or the pencil case that came from a trip in Thailand. I knew though that the school cost my parents a lot of money; I only had to look at my hand me downs, our fridge at home, and my lunches at school.  I persevered and passed matric.

Through my neighbour who worked for an international news agency, I received an opportunity to be an exchange student for a year abroad. I took it. It was my first flight. It was my first trip overseas.

America was culturally challenging, but the American people were kind to me. I knew that once my year was over that my parents would not be able to afford my tertiary education, so I applied to some US universities and accepted an offer from Grinnell College. The school offered me a full scholarship for my under graduate education.  Iowa was so far removed from what I had known. Grinnell is a small town in the Midwest. It was amongst the flat terrain and cornfields that I began to learn about the world at large. Ten percent of the students were international students. For the first time I met students from Kenya, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Nepal, Greece, Spain and other parts of the world.

For the first time I had professors who said we want to hear what YOU have to say. What do YOU think about such and such? This independent thinking was foreign to me. I came from a system of regurgitation. I soon learnt that before I could express my thoughts I needed to find my voice.  Who am I and where do I come from? Yes I was South African, but what did that really mean? Yes, I am Zulu but what does that really mean? What was my history? How do I reconcile my history and experiences with the person I was becoming? I chose to do an independent study of South Africa without the propaganda and without the censorship. In America, I was free to study, understand and come to my own conclusions. I began to appreciate me and accept who I am.

Grinnell ranks top ten amongst liberal Arts Colleges in America. I graduated with a B average and my mother attended the graduation ceremony and true to herself—she was ululating!

I landed in Washington DC determined to become a lawyer.  Little did I know that DC was inundated with lawyers. It also did not help that the LSAT exam kicked my behind! So I continued working as a junior paralegal. My first formal employment was with a US Federal Government agency—I was the PA to the deputy director. I spent two years in this firm. I learnt a lot, but most importantly, I met Thomas Gabriel who became a good friend and confidant.

One day, on my way home, I stopped to purchase the Washington Post. I perused the careers section and found an advertisement from the South African Embassy in DC. The Ambassador’s office needed a social secretary. I applied and after grueling interviews and security checks, was hired.

Without prior events management experience, I was able to put together the simplest of events to complex galas and conferences. More importantly, I worked with institutions such as the White House, World Bank, UN, universities, heads of states and foreign governments. My tenure at our Embassy was also instrumental in that it fuelled my love for diplomacy.  More importantly, it was here that I fell in love with South Africa. Years later, I went on to obtain a Master’s degree in International Relations. I graduated from Webster University with an A-average.

After 15 years of living and working in America I chose to come back home. It is almost 3 years now. I have applied to several jobs and have been to numerous interviews and have yet to find formal employment. I thought that an additional degree will be beneficial and give me the edge, but the question I am always asked by recruiters is whether I have a matric certificate! Perhaps I was naïve to think that education would be an asset.

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Justice Yvonne Mokgoro looks back

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404677","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I will be 64 in October. I was born in 1950, two years after apartheid was introduced. I was born in Barkley Road Township where we had a mixed black community – Indian, Coloured, African, we lived together. It was the first black residential area outside the town of Kimberley. We moved to Galeshewe later, when people were moved into separate racial areas. I was about 6.

At that time, when we moved, four of my mum’s five kids were alive. They moved us en masse by truck. The government had built tiny bright new corrugated iron shacks, with a foundation meant for a house next to a shack and with a toilet right at the back. They had marked out the space where the fence would go. Every shack had been allocated a number by the municipality. When the truck came you went to that shack.

We - four children and two adults - lived in that shack. My parents demarcated their bedroom with a curtain. Our space was the kitchen and bedroom because my brother was still a baby. We were not there for long. They built the houses quickly … in about a week. They didn’t even build with bricks; they poured cement and concrete into a mould, then lifted the mould and added an asbestos roof. That was our first sort of real house because even in Barkley Road we had lived in mud houses with corrugated iron roofing. They were biggish because you would build the house yourself.

Schooling and education

I went to St Boniface Catholic mission school. This school offered a better education than normal Bantu education. They made an extra effort and used to tell us that we had a better education there than kids attending government schools because government wanted to create little servants out of us. The teachers came from Germany and the United States to set up these mission schools.

When we were naughty they reminded us of this. We paid notional school fees, got a good education and about mid-morning we would get a rudimentary meal of bean soup and a slice of bread, almost like samp. For some of us it was the only meal we would have and our parents were so grateful for this.

It was about 5 to 7km from our house to school. I often walked that distance barefoot because we only got new shoes and clothes once a year for Christmas. When the shoes became worn through I used to put newspaper in the bottom. By the time I got to school the paper would be flapping underneath so I would pull it out.

My parents did not finish high school for their own reasons. My dad went up to Standard 4 and my mother went to Standard 6. My mum was a domestic worker. Before we were born she worked in Johannesburg and my dad worked for a soft drink company in Johannesburg before returning to Kimberley. He also worked at different filling stations while my mum worked at different houses. At one time my mum worked at the Poplars Hotel. My dad also worked for the South African Railways repairing the railway lines.

I have a vivid memory of my dad going off to work in his brown, oily overalls and working on the railways. He would come home from work in his oily overalls and we had to warm water for him so he could sponge himself. After sponging off the oil he would have some tea and read the daily newspaper – probably the Diamond Fields Advertiser. He went to work by bicycle.  

My dad was a labourer but I have never seen him drink or drunk, nor fail to bring home that envelope to my mum on payday. He used to rush home on his bicycle at lunch time to drop off that envelope and then rush back to work because come pay day there would be no food in the house. He wanted to get the money to my mother so that she could buy food. … There are still people who live like that today. My father used to say that my mother was able to do magic with the little we had.

I have a clear memory of my mum working for Walter H Adams who owned a men’s outfitters in Kimberley. She walked to work. When I was in Standard 8, I had to ensure I had done my homework at school, and then walk to my mum’s workplace. Because my mum used to go to work with the youngest child, the baby, I had to go and assist with the baby.

In the white suburbs I used to see big houses with beautiful gardens. I’d smell the aroma of good food as I walked along and I’d be so hungry. The Adams’ had a big property with a beautiful house. They were kind people, but I saw how they lived.

What I loved about that experience is that I knew that my mum would have put aside a bit of her lunch for me and I looked forward to it because the Adams’ had a chef. He was from Malawi, Johnson, and he could cook. He had separate pots for the workers and the family and he used to make the most delicious soup and stew. I would look forward to it. They also had a huge orchard with lovely fruit.  

They had two daughters and a son. The younger daughter was Nicky. After I had had my lunch Nicky and I used to play together and eat fruit. My mum was permitted to take home fruit that had fallen from the tree. Nicky and I used to collect fruit and put it in a box for Johnson to make jam or for canning. He was very good. He would give us leftovers of the day’s lunch to take home for dinner. He was such a clean, kind man in his white chef uniform. He has passed on and so have the Adams’. The children relocated to the United States.

I graduated from St Boniface. It was a bit hard. You were on your own. My dad was passionate about education; his passion was reflected in his repeated questions and the advice he gave us. He said it was easy to be a good person, a good human being: to surround yourself with good people, select your friends and look at the type of parents they have.

There were two things we learnt from him. Number one: “I cannot be there to protect you all the time; you have to do it yourself”. Number two was: “education is the most enduring thing I can give you as my children. I don’t have money, I don’t earn a lot, with the little I have I’ll pay your school fees.  This is so you are never ever expelled from school because you did not pay these or drop out like I did. Your mum and I will do everything we can to ensure you get a good education”.

As a family we used to sit in my parents’ bedroom around a Primus stove at night to warm up. We would have family conversations and my mum and dad liked to ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. We could only imagine being those things that we saw, like a nun or a nurse. At school the nuns ate good food and I thought I wanted to live like that so I said I wanted to be a nun. My mum asked “are you sure? Are you very sure?” My parents said we had to work for ourselves and work for a better life for ourselves and our children.

Politics and Social injustice

Before I started high school my parents told us about the ANC and the Young Women’s Christian Association. My mum was a member. They used to meet on Sunday and I used to go to meetings with my mum. Later I understood them to be places where ANC people would meet to pass on information. We children used to carry tightly folded notes between people and were told “run, and then run back!”

I didn’t take much notice. I discovered the social injustice in South Africa for myself, making up my own mind. My parents were politically aware and said things would improve but they didn’t know when. They spoke about it as though it would happen in their lifetime. And it did.

Choosing a career

As soon as I decided I didn’t want to become a nun I left school and enrolled for a BA degree. At that stage I knew I wanted to work with people and decided to become a teacher

I had an encounter with Robert Sobukwe. He challenged me to become a lawyer. I knew girls were studying law and saw it could be done. I was convinced by Sobukwe who was one of only two black lawyers in Kimberley then. I had been arrested for objecting to a young boy being taken in by the police. I was held for a weekend. On Monday, Sobukwe, who had been asked to represent me, got me released.

We walked to the taxi and chatted. I said “I wish we had more black men as lawyers in Kimberley” and he asked why I said men. He encouraged me and said “why don’t we start with you in Kimberley?” I saw myself as a woman Sobukwe, I was going to be a formidable defence lawyer like Sobukwe, but I never practised as this. The first time I practiced I was a public prosecutor. So, I decided to be a formidable prosecutor and get as many convictions as possible.

I ended up teaching I worked at the HSRC and taught part-time at Tukkies (University of Pretoria).  I then decided to go to the University of Bophuthatswana to teach and make formidable lawyers out of my students. Some of them are lawyers, some are academics and some are advocates today. I did what Sobukwe challenged me to do and more.

Becoming a judge

My mother is 85 and my dad was there when I was inaugurated as a judge. He made such a fuss. He and my elder sister were there when I was appointed.

Leonora van der Heever was the only female judge in South Africa for years. When Kate (O’ Regan) and I were appointed we were the next two women judges. In 1994 there were only three women judges but there are 77 now. It has taken 20 years, at a slow pace, but the numbers are growing. We’ve made a point: women can be like anyone else. We have 32% representation.

Considering that we have more women than men in South Africa and section 74 (2) requires that the judiciary reflect the demographics of the country there is a lot still to do. We are lagging behind and it is not because there is a lack of qualified women. I have suggested that the JSC (Judicial Service Commission) identify the obstacles and resolve them if they are serious about their role and function otherwise we can only read reluctance in their response. There must be a good reason why our forefathers and mothers made that provision in the Constitution.

Section 74 talks about race and gender in a nuanced way. Today we have more black than white judges, but the tendency within the JSC is that it’s ok now. Until gender balance is achieved section 74(2) will not have been met and we’re a long way off from achieving that. Women who apply for positions are asked if they have enough experience but men are never asked this. There are enough women who are strong and can be further strengthened to meet the requirements; 32% is a far cry from where we should be by now. Only one Judge President is a woman – Monica Leeuw in North-West. The special courts are all led by men, and only one high court is led by a woman.

The men and women of South Africa must participate in the jurisprudence of South Africa. Jurisprudence is legal thinking. We need the contribution of women on the bench. We need women to also take leadership in the way justice is dispensed in this country. It’s not about numbers but about using numbers to ensure women judges have a significant voice in the development of jurisprudence. Not having enough diversity in the dispensation of justice deprives society of an appropriate balance in the dispensation of justice.

We experienced gender inequality as children. We had to be baptized in the Catholic Church and all had to be given what the Church regarded as civilized names. Our parents didn’t give us Tswana names but with our brother my grandfather insisted that he have a Tswana name and my parents gave in. That drew a distinction. My parents gave in and the Church did not reject the name.

Throughout my childhood because we were four girls my dad raised us as strong girls. But as soon as the boy came along there was a focus on him and he was well looked after and his interests prioritised. Fortunately by then my father had already raised us to know that girls could also have an education and a profession.

I went to an all-girls school where we were taught Domestic Science and sewing. For quite some time we didn’t have a dedicated Maths teacher. Girls were not encouraged to do Maths but at break we would go across to the boys’ school and be taught by their Maths teacher. Boys were taught Latin because it was envisaged they would become lawyers but we weren’t given the opportunity to learn Latin.

Inspiring leaders

As a man Nelson Mandela inspired me with the values he espoused. It is not for nothing that I chair the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. The values he stood for are service to society, your community, your country, selflessness and humility. I had great respect for that man. He influences me to this day … seeing your job as a service and not as a job, serving humanity as a whole. Every human being is worthy of receiving service. Serve the best way you can. Treat people the same. Do the best you can for everyone no matter where they come from. Integrity in the way you serve is very important.

Madiba’s humility … he relates to you like a grandfather would. He reminded me of my paternal grandfather. Nelson was warm, a product of his time. He was always striking up conversations.

When you are humble it is not about who you are, but about what you can do for people because of the position you are in. My dad always said:” don’t worry about the trappings, don’t worry about the money that goes with what you become, but what you can do. You must feel really good about the work you have done. Make sure you do your job well so that you’ll feel proud when you look back and people will give you recognition and maybe money for that.”

Poverty doesn’t mean you can’t be good parents or good. Values are important. Values which build, motivate, encourage … you can be poor and good. I don’t want to be poor. I don’t like to see people live in poverty. You don’t have to be rich to have dignity.

Parents must stay connected. A family is the core of society. We shouldn’t rely on government for everything. We should also contribute to building value-based communities. Government can provide whatever it can but we will achieve social cohesion if we build communities. There are various ways to do this. Sport builds discipline. We had athletics, basketball and, for the boys, soccer. We had to be on time, have our uniform, do our best to win and not cheat. These are values being taught at a formative age.

We have to work together. Rich people must learn to give. If you have, even at the most basic level, it is a pleasure to share, to give delight and make a difference in the lives of people.

A vision for the future

The wealth gap in this country worries me. If we are tasked to serve, please, let’s serve, let’s do our work, try to instil the values of respect and self-respect. Serving other people well shows you have self-respect and respect for your work. Education doesn’t just mean letters and numbers; it’s also about values, about being a human being with integrity and dignity.

The young people today have so much opportunity to reach their potential and do the best they can for themselves and others. They should recognise, cherish and use the opportunities to make something for themselves. When you have become what you wanted to, use your talent and potential to serve. Make sure as a citizen that you play a role in helping to build your country. This is your country. You don’t have any other. You’ll be building it for yourself, your children and your children’s children. You can’t go around the world looking for another country. Ask yourself what you have contributed to building this country.

We underestimate the extent of the influence we humans can have on others. Values are there to be shared. We always talk about the values of Ubuntu which, in the final analysis, means the values of connecting to others, of inter-connectedness. Find something that connects you to another person and build on that. Build that connection; build a value-based community.

Today we see progress but we have not reached what we envisioned when we drafted the Constitution. Those who can, must help achieve what we envisioned. Those divisions that still exist have to be dealt with. I understood what he meant when Thabo Mbeki said we have two societies and because of my background I understand that wealth gap.

The youth must recognise that education is an opportunity. They must appreciate it and make the most of it. Based on the skills acquired through their education and their talents they must play a role in building family, community, society and the country; they must play a role in building a legacy.

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Neels du Toit reflects on transformation into a democratic South Africa

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My story is influenced by the transformation into a democratic South Africa and is not necessarily only linked to 1994.

As an Afrikaner (without going into the debate about the definition of Afrikaner) the apartheid times were obviously not bad to me. I never had to carry a dompas – in fact I remember at high school signing these “reference books” for farm workers, forging my father’s signature. I remember going to school in a bus passing black children walking to their school. Today I ask myself how I could have been so ignorant to believe that these and other examples reflected a normal society.

I also had to do military training because we had to fight the “enemy”. I remember news about people dying on the borders of our country in all kinds of mysterious and less mysterious ways.

Is the so-called new South Africa better for me as a previously privileged? Of course it is. Anybody denying this is not prepared to face the facts.

Democracy brought us significantly closer to a normal society. The obsession with ethnicity including race is in the process of being broken down. Personally I discovered that the racial divide had actually been a burden. Today it is possible for me to enjoy being part of a multi-racial family and (with some exceptions) it looks as if the average person has accepted that as “not so abnormal”.

I think the social cohesion policies of government should be in bold. There are no laws that put people into categories, yet this is what one sees happening. It looks as if we had been brainwashed over many years that the “they” are different from “us, and my view is that our government should do more to rectify this perception.

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Mxit

People shared their stories on Mxit. Below is a small selection of the stories shared.

Yolanda Moroa (Western Cape)
’s celebrate 20 years of freedom...

Letlape Salaminah (Mpumalanga)
My good story is that after 20 years of democracy we have got the chance to reflect on the distance we have covered since those dreadfully unhappy days. We celebrate 20 years of South Africa as a free, non racial, democratic and united country. South Africa remains stable and continues to grow, not despite democracy, but because of democracy and freedom. The electorate has spoken and the work commences.

Franscinah (North West)
On 27 of April 1994 South Africans of all races voted for a democratic and non racial government. Black and white, young and old and the disabled stood in long queues in the sun for many hours waiting to make their mark.

Thabang Mokoena (Gauteng)
My family stayed in a shack for more than 10 years.  They even lost hope of finding a comfortable house for the whole family. Our home was not safe for us because the rain poured and the wind repeatedly blew the zincs. So thanks to the government for providing us with an RDP house that has electricity and water.

Issar Saar (Gauteng)
In 1994 there was a change in my province because Nelson Mandela was the first president in South Africa.

Dube Nhlakanipho (KZN)
South Africa has changed. Before 1994 we now live a better life because of our heroes -.  respect Madiba and all the team. Amandla amandla - that word was being shouted by small children every day but now we shout freedom!

Sharon Hlungwani (Limpopo)
My story is lovely. I was born in this country and i know more about this country. Long time ago we were ruled by white people and we were punished by white people. Now we are lucky to be having freedom just because of Tata Nelson Mandela. Now I am happy.

Mayibuye Ndlovu, (KZN)
SA is a better place now than before 1994.  In our area people have RDP's and roads. But if I was given the opportunity to be a part of upgrading my community I could do something.

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GCIS

Government Communications asked its staff to share their stories.

Heritage Month: Make the most of what you have - Sibusiso Banda's story

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404679","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I don’t remember much about days before 27 April 1994, when South Africans of all races voted for the first time. I remember that my parents were excited about going to vote, I just didn’t know why. I was four-years-old at the time.
My story is that of post-apartheid challenges as I was raised by my mother’s wages from the domestic work she did. She was good at it and always hard working. Despite her circumstances that were never easy, I don’t remember my mother requesting us to be anything more than ourselves. I remember when I was in high school she once asked if I had decided which university or college I was planning on going to to further my studies. When I told her I was planning on going to study radio production at a college in Johannesburg, she wasn’t disappointed.

She never fantasized about us becoming lawyers, doctors or accountants in the house. She knew that ours would be a story of freedom of choice that black people didn’t have before. So a year after studying radio, I again exercised my choice and went to the Tshwane University of Technology to study journalism in Pretoria.

Choice is sometimes hindered by circumstances. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth and  I haven’t been able to pick and choose every internship I want. I was offered training by Media 24 in Cape Town and turned that down as internships offer little wages to either pay rent or buy food - doing both with that stipend is near impossible. So I’ve turned down work I know I would have loved because of those circumstances. I also understand that as I face those challenges, I can’t complain too much about them because the opportunity that was offered would not have been made to people like my parents when they were younger during the hard days of apartheid.

After that realising the struggle I’d have in relocating to another province, I then applied for another internship with Pretoria University and I was given it. Persistence is something I also picked up from my parents. They also put me under immense pressure when they decided to name me after Nelson Mandela, the good thing is that it’s only a second name (or middle name to our friends that butcher the English language, the Americans). 

I have always wanted to live in Cape Town, so last year when I was studying and working at Pretoria University, I started saving money so I could take up opportunities in the Mother City. So when an opportunity came, I took it. Now I am intern at GCIS in Parliament.

At least TUT gave me work in the field I am interested in, I had to help chair second year students with their diary meetings for broadcast journalism practicals, assist them when editing their video footage and produce their news bulletins. It was not with a big news organisation as I’d hoped, but it’s relevant experience.

I don’t deny the challenges that other young people have, I acknowledge that South Africa has high rates of unemployment. We can sit, discuss these, complain and then not realise that some people have opportunities to change their circumstances as I have. Some people can apply for government student loans and study and only repay these loans when they get employment.

Freedom has given us choices that our parents didn’t have when they were young.

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Reginah Pooe - 25 years in government communications

Reginah Pooe, who worked for government for more than 25 years, told her story before going onretirement in July:

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404680","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was working as a cleaner for white people in Pretoria when my cousin first told me about a job in government.  This was in 1988 and I was hired to clean and make tea.  In those days, whenever the employers wanted someone they would approach the other staff and ask them if they knew anyone they could send.  My cousin Elizabeth was the one who took me here.  When I started it was called the Bureau of Information, but after it became the South African Communication Services (SACS) and finally Government Communication and Information System (GCIS).

When you arrived for the interview the first thing we had to do was fill up a paper with names of people that you knew.  The interview was like this.  They would say to you – your cousin brought you here.  They would call and ask her “Do you know this person?” You had to answer questions. They would also phone the people on your list. They wanted to know how you were related to them, how you knew them – had you been in jail or not – those kinds of things. You must know all the people whose names you had written down.  They would ask the people living far away about you – they did not want to hear from those living close by but instead from those from far, like Johannesburg.
Once you were employed, sometimes you would work for up to three (3) years before being registered so while I remember that I started here on the 2nd February 1989, I see now that this was actually 1988.  The whole year they did not register me. 

When we came to work, you would find police outside with their dogs and inside at reception.  If someone came to visit you – say your mother or your cousin – they made them wait outside – they were not allowed in reception.   They would ask “What do you want here?”  They did not even want people outside the building as there were police with their dogs there too.   Instead, you would need to meet them down the road.  I am not sure what the dogs were doing inside but they were brought in to sniff around.

You could just see that there was apartheid. We had our own toilets.   In the Midtown Building, there was a little room on the side – that was the toilet that we had to use.  African people must use that toilet.  The money was also very bad – it was about R200.  When I was cleaning the houses for the white people I was getting more, so when I first came here I started saying “No, I can’t”.  But the people said “You must just stay in government, they will increase this money.”  I had to stay until we got a little bit more.

The white people also did not like us talking English - “Almal moet Afrikaans praat”. They did not allow us to speak English.  That is why we all learnt to speak Afrikaans. 

It was difficult as we did not talk freely with people.    It was very tough.  There were other people that we used to talk to but it was just different. We now have a lot of friends because there are many black people working here.  You can fight today but tomorrow it is finished. It was not like that then.

There were also other people that had to go for discplines.  Some were accused of stealing. Like Wilhemina.  She was accused of stealing a “special” cup. They even went to Wilhemina’s house to check but found nothing.  Later Wilhemina saw another lady using the cup and asked “Is that not the cup that you said I stole?” The lady said “Sorry – someone was keeping it in office and we didn’t see it.” It was tough for us but like a joke to them.

There was also another time when shoes (part of our uniform) that were stacked in boxes went missing.  They had to take this person (they suspected) out – he could not even come near the building – they would take you far away and say “Don’t come here again. You are a thief”.   The person was just a suspect – maybe the other people took these things. I think it was the policeman with their dogs that took these shoes as it was very difficult for us to take anything as they were always searching us – here and there.  How is it possible?  Still now I am crying for him.

We were also not allowed to be involved in politics.  When you work in government, you should not be involved in politics. No.  They would also ask you when you first started – Are you involved in politics?  But there was a boardroom where people from outside were meeting.  This was a National Party meeting – I think so. We did not know what they were talking about.  We had to deliver tea and push the trolley but we were not allowed to go inside.  These meetings took place at night.  This meant that the cleaner came back very late.  What were they talking about at night? 

When it came to the change, all white people were leaving. We did not know why.  When we asked they said that they were not qualified for the job.   They left quickly.  There were then a lot of black people coming into the office.  The change was quick.  A lot of white people left and black people came in.  We were just waiting to hear what was going to happen with us.  Now that all the big bosses were going, maybe we would also have to go.  We did not worry though – we decided just to see what is going to happen.

With GCIS we saw changes – the first was that they said that we could not clean and make food at the same time. They would get a contractor to clean and we went to school to learn catering.  Those who did not have Grade 10 /11 - they took us to school to learn so that we could do something.  There was no forcing but those who liked to go went.  I am glad as I got something from GCIS as I can do my own catering and can help people doing something.

There was then not only a change of people, but also a change in working.  Some of the cleaners then became office workers and they are still working. Conditions are better – they are not bad.  You get a lot more sick leave days now.  In the past, we were also only allowed to go for three weeks leave. 

Everything has changed and it is better.  And I am happy as I am now going on retirement – I am enough working.

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Sam Mtombeni looks back

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404681","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]In 1986, I started working here in government communication after having worked in Consol Glass and Coke as a piece worker.  After this I decided to come to Pretoria to look for work.  I tried all over to get work – asking in shops.  At other places they said “No jobs. No jobs”. I thought I would try the policeman who was outside the department – there were about 3 or 4 of them on different street corners during that time.  When I was going past a policeman asked:  “What are you looking for here?”  “Baas, ek soek die werk” – that is how we talked to the white man. If there was anything available, they would say that you should go up and fill in the forms.  They asked you if you wanted this job and decided who was right for it.  For four to five months we worked as casual workers and then they would choose the people they wanted. 

I was employed as a handyman, cleaner – and had to change globes in the department.  I also had to water outside every morning and clean the basement as well. At other times we were sent to fetch trunks from the Ministers home.  They were full of video cassettes but we were not sure what was on these.

Working for government at that time was not the same for black guys as it was for the whites.  We were treated differently, like we had to use separate toilets. We also started work without being registered and had to wear a uniform – shoes, jacket and a trouser. The pay was not good – and we were given cheques that we had to change at the South African Reserve Bank.

At the time, government communication was in two buildings and we worked hard in both of those places.  We tried to change this – to take some people to work at one building and others at another.  They did not allow this and we were taken by a small bus to the other building to work.

Things were different then. There were also policemen and their dogs in reception, outside the building, on all four street corners. Every two hours, they would take their dogs and go and search the basement of the building.  This was done every day.  I am not sure if they were looking for bombs or not.  As they walked the dogs would always drop their poo.  We were then told to go and clean this up. The Minister at the time – Minister Nel I think it was, was also the only one who was allowed to take the lift to the 7th Floor.  There was no stopping until he reached this floor.   Black people were not allowed in that lift.  

When things were about to change, the white people said that our government – meaning a black government - is coming.  We raised with them that we had worked with them for a long time, that we had long service and should get compensation but they refused.  They left the government – they said it was now our government - and went elsewhere.  We just continued with the new government – we carried on. The new government works with us.  They meet and speak with us. 

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Joy Khakhane recalls the stories she heard

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404682","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I heard about apartheid from the stories that my family told and I also learnt about it in school. It was a system used by the white government to separate blacks from whites in South Africa.

My grandparents related the horrible stories since they were more exposed to apartheid in the cities. They were not allowed to be on the streets at night. Before you could move into a house in any area you had to apply to the Group Areas Act. Areas were divided into different sections according to their home languages. My family had applied for a house in an area where coloureds were living. The application was declined and they were told they could only live among Sesotho speaking people.

They could not receive visitors as they wished. Residents had to go to the local police station and report to the officers that “John is coming to visit for the weekend,” or else if he was found walking down the street without prior approval, he would be arrested.

When I compare life now with that era, life has changed for the better. All South Africans have equal access to education at any school or institution, public health care services without race discrimination and black men and women occupy high positions in the job sector.

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GCIS Acting CEO Phumla Williams tells her story

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404683","attributes":{"class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I was born in the 1960s in Pimville, then called Old Pimville, in Johannesburg.

Growing up at that time and being raised by a single parent had its own challenges. My mom was a live-in domestic worker and for the better part of my life I was raised by my grandmother. I could see my mother only on Thursdays when she was not working. When I was about seven or eight my mom used to take me to her employer.

Young as I was I could see there was a difference between me and the children of my mom’s employer. We were more or less the same age but I was struggling with just having the basics like shoes and they had shoes. At that time I could not really conceptualise the differences but I could see what I had and what they had.

I grew up and started my schooling in a black township. It was in a Catholic School. In those days the schools were structured such that if you were Xhosa-speaking you had to go to a Xhosa-speaking school, if you were Zulu-speaking you had to go to a Zulu-speaking school. The Xhosa-speaking school was far away and my mom could not afford to send me there so I went to the Zulu school as it was nearby and would not have a lot of money in terms of transport.

The conditions of schooling then and those of my kids today, it is a huge difference, it is something that I will always remember. For example, in one of our classrooms there was no door and when it was winter, my mom used to wake up early to make a fire and put stones in the oven. She would wrap these in cloth and this would sustain us and keep us warm for quite a while.

My mom at that stage worked at a clinic as a cleaner and tea lady and not as a domestic worker so it meant she could be with us. In primary school in about Standard 2 or 3 I was living with my mom. During that time, my mom could only afford to buy us shoes and the basics, like jerseys once a year. The pair of shoes and jersey had to sustain you throughout the year. She also couldn’t afford to get a full school uniform so she used to pad our clothes because the school was quite strict about the uniform.

By the time I was at high school I knew the system was wrong, I knew something had to change. We grew up in the Catholic school and used to go to a Cathedral once a year. Even there you could see the disparities. The one thing that still strikes me and that even changed my life was that we grew up knowing that an elderly person takes precedence in terms of sitting.

I remember one Easter holiday, we went to a Cathedral. In that Cathedral the grannies were made to stand up for the kids of the white parents and we had to sit on the floor because normally the Easter service used to be quite full. I was already a teenager and found this odd.

By the time student politics crept in I knew the system we were living under was wrong and the poverty of my mother was real. One day my mom collapsed in the house and we had to get neighbours to come and assist. We were only told as adults much later in life that my mom had collapsed because she hadn’t eaten for three days.

This was because she gave us children priority. She didn’t have enough money but she would buy a bag of mealie meal and she would want to make sure that it would last. She would give us our supper. She also wanted to make sure we would have breakfast and lunch when we got home from school. She had collapsed because of low blood sugar.

Come ‘76 I was in high school. It wasn’t a problem for me to get involved. It felt natural to because I was already saying something has to happen. We said “mom, we have to do something”. My mom didn’t want us to get involved because she was scared. My mom’s biggest fear at that time was that we would get shot. We were three sisters and my older sister and I were so militant - we were not afraid.

When I left the country I left alone and joined the African National Congress (ANC). I left via Swaziland at the age of 17. I did so with my mother’s blessing. With the ANC if you left the country you had the choice of going into the army or going to school. I opted to go into the army.

I was afraid of the unknown, and was terrified of leaving my mother, because we were a close family. I felt so strongly about this though that it overtook everything. It helped to be young. At the time what was in my head was to bring about change. I did two years of training in Angola, one year in the Soviet Union and a few months in East Germany.

Then started working in Mozambique and Swaziland and finally I was brought into the country. I had to learn new languages, Portuguese and Russian, but I must be honest, I am not that great at them. In Mozambique I was in the political unit responsible for all the internal underground units of the ANC that were doing political work. The struggle of the ANC was on a political, international solidarity and military front.

I then came back into the country to do ANC political work servicing some of the internal ANC units.

In exile, being a woman was an asset. It toughened me up. Men and women were fighting the same war, the same enemy; it came with its own challenges but women were treated no differently. Men and women were given the same tasks. The women and even many of the ANC men had to go through a transition.

Many men were initially fixated on the idea that the cooking had to be done by women but later had to accept that there was a roster and everyone had to have a turn to cook. Many men had to drop their stereotypes so I can relate to the gender streamlining and transformation efforts today. They called us the flowers of the nation but when it came to being treated the same some of the men had to be inducted by the other men in the camp. At one stage I was the only woman in the camp.

The issue of women has always been on the agenda of the ANC because the women in the African National Congress have been in the struggle for as long as I can remember. When the Freedom Charter was put in place the ANC women had already said “we want to be heard, we also have similar challenges as women and we want our rights to be addressed”. In the camps from time to time leaders from the ANC Women’s League used to come and talk to us and there were endless debates about gender equality. It was not an easy life but it was a rewarding life experience for me.

I went through two camps and had different experiences in each. The first was in Quibaxe and this was very punishing and quite painful. We lived in the bush and it was very mountainous. The better part of my training was done in Katenga. Here it was much better because we had electricity and a building. It was a training camp. The challenges of being a woman in the camps will always be there though. You want your privacy.

Living in the camp there was never a shortage of food. Our experience included learning to appreciate different foods. In my time I ate snake, wild cat, and monkey. There was a lot of fruit in Angola, lots of lemons, guavas, avocados so we could eat anything. I never starved.

We had to deal with snakes and an infestation of rats. The rats were almost as a big as a cat, huge, and they would always pounce at night but we learnt to live with them. The rats would go for your toes and heels so we women used to wear our boots while we slept. The women were incredible. Every other night you would hear the men scream, not the women. A scary incident involved an attack by a snake. We never felt it or heard it come in. When we woke up - there were three of us - we saw a big puff adder on us. We waited until lunchtime for the snake to leave. When it did we burst into tears.

In 1988 I returned to South Africa and sadly was arrested in ’89 because of an ANC cadre who had turned and become a spy and spotted me in Soweto. They arrested me before I could even meet the person I was going to meet. I went on trial and was sentenced. At that time the ANC was getting closer to forcing the apartheid government to its knees and into negotiations so I was released in 1991.

I had been in so many prisons but when I was released I was in Pretoria Central prison with Marion Sparg. After my release I went to work for the ANC. My mom was still alive and when I came home she was my greatest support system. She was a pensioner and was using her own money to travel to court to be in the front row during every one of my court appearances.

Going into the public service was a natural option for me. Education was a mission deferred but not forgotten. When I got arrested the first thing I did was go back to school and finish my Matric. I decided to use the next seven years to get an education. When I was growing up I had wanted to be a lawyer, but by the time I was in prison I was clear I wanted to work in the public service. I did my undergraduate, honours and master’s degree in public administration. After the elections I went to work for the public service.

We sacrificed quite a lot of our lives as young people but when I look back I feel we have made a contribution. South Africa would not be where it is now had we not been resolute about changing the system. Have we made a difference in 20 years? Certainly we have made a dent. My kids no longer know any differences in terms of race. They see South Africans as South Africans. When I was growing up I saw South Africans as black and white.

My son and my daughter went to a school that has all the basics. I’m working as a senior manager in the public service and I don’t think that would ever have been possible. When I joined the provincial government of Gauteng I think there were two Africans in that government communication department: a messenger and a tea lady, the rest were whites. Today the public service is completely different.

There is a huge difference between Pimville of 1978 and today. Today there is a tarred road, electricity and more than one clinic. There is a lot we have achieved but there are many challenges. I am eager to get young people to see public service as a career of choice because it is public servants that can bring about change in terms of disparities and laws and make South Africa a better place to live in.

My mom is no longer alive but at least I could spoil her a bit at the end of her life. She was not educated. She only went as far as Standard 4 but she was probably one of the most interesting figures in our lives. I have memories of us asking her questions and she tried to explain in the most rudimentary way our experiences and apartheid. She was amazing in the way she tried to contextualise what was happening. I knew the word apartheid from my mom. She tried to say it was wrong but I’m not sure she knew whether it would change.

I am beginning to dislike the word “born frees” because I think a lot of young people are failing to appreciate the sacrifices that were made for this freedom, and the challenges we still have as a country  that won’t go away if they don’t get involved. They say “we are born frees, you are dinosaurs”. They don’t appreciate that for this journey to have got this far it was because of young people who made sacrifices. They need to contextualise what we have today and what still needs to be done. It’s not unheard of to hear young people saying “government is not giving us any work”.

They must take a step back and create a job for themselves. I say this to my kids all the time. Young people are on a honeymoon; we need to bring them back to reality.  The struggle is not over. It is a struggle for a better life for all of us even their own generation. They must realise they must do something to carry the baton.

The struggle today is for economic freedom. All of us have to fight the war. We need young people to take the country forward. We still have inequalities, the two South Africa’s, the haves and have nots, the gender and communication divide, unemployment. Those require all of us, not government alone. They require that everyone put their heads together. We have a plan but everyone has to get involved.

Government can do so much, the private sector can do so much and citizens can do something, young people in particular. Regarding unemployment, we need young people to start something themselves, not say “I’ve been applying everywhere and can’t get a job”. Let them also think and be creative and work with government and some of the companies in the private sector who offer internships, who give them a lifeline. They need to take it forward. There is still a lot for us to do as a country and for all of us who can still work and make a contribution.

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Former MK member Lennox Klaas takes us down memory lane

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"404684","attributes":{"alt":"Lennox Klaas","class":"media-image","id":"1","style":"float: left; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;;;;;;;","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]My name is Lennox Klaas but I have been all over the place and in every place I was deployed I had to use a different name. With the exception of Lennox Klaas all my other names are aliases.

I was born 53 years ago, in 1961, in Port Elizabeth (PE), the place I call home and visit whenever I can. I lived in Kwazakhele until the age of 15 and went to school in Port Elizabeth. Those first 15 years I lived an ordinary life in a black township. You didn’t know what was happening beyond what was within walking distance. The life of most black families was the same. If you hear one story you’ve heard every one.

We were a family of five who lived in a typical two-bedroom house. Everything was crammed into that house. You could take the space and make it into anything you wanted it to be: your bathroom, your bedroom, your sitting room, everything. So we were very fortunate in that we had as many bedrooms as we wanted in that two-bedroom space. That’s how lucky we were.

My mom and dad were typical black family folks. My mother worked on the production line at Industex. They made material that people used to buy to make clothes and my mom used to work with wool. My dad worked for a place specialising in cables and then he worked in the motor industry, Ford, GM, all those motor industries you see in Port Elizabeth. Like many families he was a victim of alcohol abuse so he didn’t last in his job.

The year 1976 brings back memories for so many of us. It was a time very few of us escaped, even us in PE. In and around my home we had so many fellows, about 26, in the immediate vicinity, studying at Kwazakhele High School. They were rounded up and arrested. All of them were members of SASM – South African Students Movement. Members used to meet clandestinely to discuss how to change the country and fight the apartheid system. They were connected with other students across the country.

Every time you visited their homes you would find a tense situation. People would say things in not so many words. Depending on how they trusted you, they would share things in a secret way. You would find that the parents and older brothers were keen to share things about life that were foreign to you. That was the beginning of political orientation for many of us. They spoke of the ANC and gradually even the military wing of the ANC, MK, and the possibilities of us joining these organisations. These were the debates and discussions you were exposed to. You were surrounded by politically involved people.

In 1976 I knew of the existence of the banned ANC and PAC and all liberation movements. We couldn’t talk about those organisations, their leaders or members; you could not even talk about the family members involved because you became banned by association. You could be arrested. You learnt how to outwit, outsmart and get around this. You learnt to be grounded, modest and disciplined because you knew if they were to arrest you, you would be history.

When Steve Biko was captured and murdered by the system that elevated political awareness in PE. Steve Biko was detained elsewhere and kept in a notorious place – Sanlam. The Sanlam Building in PE was the headquarters of the security branch. Those guys were known all over the country. They used to boast about their methods of getting information. They would boast and threaten us when they arrested us. Imagine the kind of human being you were dealing with.

You knew that if you were captured, even if you have no clue what they are talking about, you will eventually have to tell them what they wanted to know. Youwould draw them a map of the Soviet Union even though you have never been there because they believed you had been trained there. You had to find a way to be creative, draw that map and answer their questions without giving away anything. Steve Biko was captured, tortured and murdered there. From time to time they used to take us to the place where Steve died. You were 15, 16 and they’d show you the blood stains all over the place.

Another turning point was the death in 1978 of Prof Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, leader of the PAC. He was an intellectual who was also held on Robben Island. He contributed to making South Africa what it is today. He can be put on the same pedestal as leaders like Tambo and Rolihlahla.

Sobukwe died. At the time he was not allowed to leave Graaff-Reinet. When he died I was a member of a committee put together to form a student movement that came two years later: Cosas. In 1978 we were young pressure groups that had all these other associations and formations.

In 1979 I had the responsibility to arrange transport to attend Sobukwe’s funeral and join other pressure groupings associated with trying to undo the apartheid system. There were factions because by then most organisations had been banned including newspapers like World. Anything that sought to give some kind of resistance they would silence it by banning it so all associations and pressure groups were operating underground.

We were a group of youngsters. None of us had a license but we got a van from a lawyer who was a sympathiser. We drove to Graaff-Reinet and met guys from all over the place. Bishop Desmond Tutu was there and I can tell you right now he assisted a great deal because it was announced that Mangosuthu Buthelezi was at the funeral. He was the paramount chief of KZN. The sentiment was that Buthelezi had joined the system of Lennox Sebe, paramount chief of Ciskei, Mathanzima, paramount chief of Transkei, Mangope, the paramount chief of Boputhatswana … they were grouped together and they constituted the enemies of the people.

The meeting decided to attack and kill him to drive home black South Africans’ resistance to the Bantustans. It was a tense moment. Tutu played the role of Jesus Christ. Tutu stood between the mob and some of the kicking found its way to Bishop Desmond Tutu but he was not going to leave Mangosuthu Buthelezi alone. In retrospect it was a good move to save Buthelezi. Thanks to him, thanks to Tutu, Buthelezi survived and was escorted away. These are some of the thing South Africans have to be told. Without Tutu I am telling you right now for sure Buthelezi would have been dead.

A number of engagements took place during the funeral. We received step-by-step instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail, what we call a petrol bomb. We had to go back to PE and teach other people how to make them. It was a popular weapon then to confront the police and everyone else defending the system.

At that time a bomb rocked Cawood, an area in PE. Later on we were told there had been a problem with the timing device. Then ANC didn’t target human beings. Soft targets were not part of the strategy but installations and buildings were particularly when there was nobody there, say at midnight.  This was so as to register a particular position. Something went wrong with the timing device and the person who carried the bomb died during the explosion. You can imagine how the white people in the vicinity panicked.

The police decided to widen the net and they arrested everyone they believed could have information. I was arrested then. I was detained for a few days and was questions about who was responsible, where they came from. I had nothing to hide because I really knew nothing. I was tortured – they used electric shocks - and I was about to tell them a story just to take off the pressure, but then the clever ones among them realised I knew nothing. By then a great deal of damage had been done. They let me go but I had to admit to some kind of guilt.

At that time some schools were associated with the apartheid system and Bantu education.  They were set alight by activists to register a point. So, I admitted to setting alight a school that I knew was intact. They were not clever enough to assess the damage. So, when we went to court, the case was thrown out. That was how we survived. This was around 1978.

We had visitations from some of the guys, members of MK, who would come into the country to brief us and advise us about people that we should be careful of. The system was working overtime and had found people to work for them as informers; they were double agents. We were told not to let them know that we knew they were spies. We didn’t have double agents. We didn’t have the capacity to create double agents, to brief them and get them to pretend to work with the system. That was so beyond us but some of the people at our meetings were working for the system. It was very difficult to know who they were.

So, 1978, 1979 Cosas was banned in Port Elizabeth. By that time every black household had lost someone, a son who was arrested, serving on Robben Island, dead or in exile. Everyone was active, including our parents.

You were constantly on the road. I stopped sleeping at my parents’ home as early as 1978. At intervals I would go to school but I would see them coming and we knew they were coming for us so we used to jump the fences. They even beat our teachers and it became very impractical to go to school because we were exposing all these people.

I never slept in the same place twice. You can imagine what that does. Eventually Port Elizabeth becomes as small as your fist because you’ve exhausted all of your options. At a time I used to sleep right behind my mother’s house because I knew they wouldn’t think to search so close to the house. It became so risky because we were risking my parents’ house and all the houses around there. My friends were disappearing, they were dying. Eventually I had no choice but to leave Port Elizabeth.

A friend - Siphiwo Mthimkhulu - and I were planning to go to East London. He was also not sleeping at home. We had a way of communicating. Someone who was not involved would innocently convey a message. One fateful Wednesday, a person told someone and the system had come and found Siphiwo. They shot him, but he did not die. He was paralysed and had to use a wheelchair. He was going to be released but the system knew they had a case to answer because the parents were suing the Minister of Police for the shooting.

It was a big case in Port Elizabeth and they knew that they were going to lose. They then poisoned him. They gave him thallium. It was a poison used to kill rats used somewhere in Europe and then banned because it was killing these rats so brutally. The rats’ eyes used to pop out and the fur would disintegrate and fall out. You would find the rat unable to run because the poison had weakened the joints.

And that’s what happened to him. He lost his voice, his hair started falling out ... he could not even walk. He was dying in that wheelchair. But he was not dying fast enough. They kidnapped him and shot him. Up until today nobody has taken responsibility but there was a captain who after 1994 went to his mother to apologise and ask her forgiveness. His name was Nieuwoudt. That was how brutal they were.

The ANC approached us and gave us a contact inside the country responsible for getting us out. We were in contact with a veteran of the ANC, who had been an underground operative all along but we did not know this. He was an old man. He is still there. He talked to us about the politics of the ANC, what it was and what it was not, he taught us to be grounded.

We let him know when we were ready to leave. We left in groups. The first group of six left early in 1980. We were very excited. The process of leaving involved a web of underground activities. I was given responsibility to lead the group. From Port Elizabeth we were to go to Queenstown. From there an underground operative was going to take us to Sterkspruit near Aliwal-North and from there another underground operative would take us to Lesotho. Each part of the journey someone else would help you. We did not know that until much later.

I was given strict instructions. Imvo is a daily Xhosa publication, mostly found in the Eastern Cape. The target audience was Xhosa readers. It had a font and look and feel, features that made it easy to spot from a distance. I had to carry a copy of Imvo, find a place in the waiting room where the transport would drop us off. I should be the only one there. The others had to hide far away. I had to read the newspaper upside down because there could be more than 20 people reading Imvo because it was Eastern Cape newspaper.

I had to do something different with mine so that the person who had to meet me could find me. The code I had to give the person who had to meet with me meant “my friend” in Xhosa. My worry was “what if the person coming to meet with me was old?” In my culture I really could not refer to him as “my friend”. If I did not say “my friend” the person would leave and we would be in trouble.

We were given money for a return trip from PE to Queenstown. Because we were youngsters and excited we calculated the bus fare from PE to Queenstown and with the rest we invited friends. We knew we were not going to see them again. We wanted to be nice. We bought them goodies, we played music, it was nice even though we did not tell them "guys you will not see us again". We wanted them to remember us and think of good times.

We got to Queenstown around midnight. We were very scared. I did what I was told. It was like in a movie. I saw this old man coming. He told me: “You are going to have to round up the rest of the guys. The contact in Sterkspruit has been arrested.” The Boers got to know about this operation, and we had to go back to PE immediately. This man disappeared.

I was confused and have to break this bad news to my friends. We didn’t have a cent to go back. Queenstown was very brutal at that time and we had to get out of there. We would have been arrested. We went to get a taxi and obviously couldn’t tell them we were going to PE so we picked a place nearby. We said we were going to Alice, school was opening and our parents didn’t know we were in Queenstown.

Money? “We don’t have money but we’ll pay you when we get there”. Already in Port Elizabeth there were rumours we had left the country. When we got to Alice we didn’t know anyone but one of the guys, Bongo, remembered his mother was from there so he said we would go to his grandmother’s house. Now we had somewhere to go. We offered the taxi drivers the new clothes we had taken before leaving PE. Some of us had older brothers who were working and had money to buy clothes. So we stole some of their clothes. When we got to Alice we started looking for the grandmother.

The first old person we met knew the place and showed us where to go. There were six of us. Can you imagine the size of these rondavels? She wasn’t there. She was at a function. So we waited for her. We lied to her when she got home from the function. We said we’d been on a school outing to play football and the bus got stuck so we thought we’d spend the night with her.

I am not proud of what I am about to tell you. We had to find a way to get food. One of us was tasked to go and propose a lady whose parents owned a big supermarket, a big wholesale kind of place. There was a pretty young lady whose parents owned that shop. One of us had to go and be nice to this lady. One fellow, Andile, went there. One of us had 5c and we gave him that to buy stuff. He came back with all these plastics of food and change. I am not proud about this. I don’t know what became of that shop but the food sustained us for two weeks. That lady gave us food, we were comfortable ... she loved Andile. We even took care of the grandmother. We were afraid to go back to PE, but we needed to face reality.

When we got back to PE we were arrested and said we had been in Alice. And when they traced us they found out we were there. We told them that we were tired of what was going on in PE, people burning things, blah blah, so we decided to go to Alice and cool off. They liked that story and we survived but we never gave up on the idea of going into exile.

I successfully managed to leave the country. It was an express way of leaving the country. In 1979, early ‘80 there was a raid in Lesotho. So many people were shot there. One of them was a guy from our area and he was admitted to hospital. The mother of the guy was planning to visit the guy. The papers were legal, everything was legal. We were disguised as the grandchildren of the woman. Fake passports, fake this, fake that had to be arranged. This is how we legally illegally managed to cross the border.

We met the ANC in Lesotho. They were expecting us. They found us at the hospital and took us to the ANC reception areas. We officially joined the ANC in 1981. It was the start of a very exciting journey. We were given the choice of taking up arms and joining MK or going to Europe to pursue our studies but because of our need to liberate the country yesterday we opted for military training. We went from Lesotho to Maputo, to Lusaka, to Angola for basic military training… six months. Everywhere we went we were inducted. Lectures, exposed to people doing different things, until about three months later when we landed in Angola. Some people even took ten months to get there.

I was in Caculama camp. The tradition in each MK camp was that there would be a mock attack the first time you arrived in the camp. You could not be in the camp and be afraid of the sound of a gun. When you arrive the people who had done their training would perform this ritual; they were going to mock attack us.

When you arrived it was so dark you could not see your finger but you were allowed to walk touching the person in front of you. The only person who knew where you were going was the one in front of you. You had no clue where you were.

I’m telling you … there’s a signal given when everyone is in range and they start firing. I’m telling you the fire you hear can make you very crazy. They fire blanks but at night it is like live ammunition, the whole area lights up and you are confused because they’re shooting you, making smoke grenades, you are sure you have lost your leg and you hear people speaking Portuguese, foreign languages … You must know that at that time the bandits of Savimbi were operating in Angola, they  were fighting against MK because they thought MK was assisting MPLA, the Angolan government, and they were joined by the SADF because these people were also talking Afrikaans.

Remember we also had white people in the camps who were part of MK. Some of us would be captured during that thing and it was like a real kidnap. They would take us to outposts, they had big guns, they were talking foreign languages and asking us questions. You feel “I don’t know where I am, let me die, what can I do?” and you say whatever they want to hear. Remember some people were sent there by the Boers to infiltrate so they did not know that and they would question them.

Savimbi was supported by the Boers. There was a battle, Cuito Cuanavale, so many of my friends died there, so many of the Boers died there. Boers, Cubans, Soviets, MK, Namibians were in Angola. There were so many people in Angola because it was strategic to all of us. It was not incomprehensible that Savimbi and the Boers would raid us so those mock attacks helped us know who is who. We learnt later that it was a mock attack.

My training was long and not easy. I was deployed in what was known as anti-air. Ours was a base outside the main base. We had to look for planes coming to attack the base. We had anti-air guns as big as your cars that were so accurate. You could see the plane miles and miles away and would take out the plane long before it reaches you.

Our camp was in a no-fly zone so if we saw a plane coming we knew it was a hostile plane. You don’t just shoot when you are trained. You do certain things to say “look, I see you”. You fire in such a way that you direct the plane away from the base. From time to time Cubans and Soviets would invade our air space in mock-attacks to check our state of readiness.

The military training that you get… you are trained to do close combat, you are given tools to harm the person at very close range without a firearm, you are trained to harm someone using firearms... Depending on where you are going to be deployed you are trained to harm people with poison and hot and cold demolition. I trained in urban guerrilla warfare. I was taught to infiltrate and co-exist with people in South Africa without raising suspicion. My training was six months and then I had three months’ training in my specialisation, anti-air.

Central to all of this is the politics of the ANC. Before you were given a gun by the ANC you had to understand the politics in front of the barrel. You cannot just shoot someone because you are angry. For about five months you are not given a gun; you have to carry a big log. Discipline was very important and they used various ways to teach and test discipline. A lack of discipline gets people killed.

My turn to be deployed in the country for operations came in 1983. Someone came to select a unit that was to leave Angola. Part of the training is what we call DLB – dead letterbox. I was so excited. I thought I was going to do DLB. I’m going to be distributing arms. A DLB gives coordinates for where arms are hidden.

When you are staying in an underground house you know mos there is limited movement but where I stayed in Lusaka there was lots of movement. Much later the person who came for me in Angola came to take me from this house. Some of the people were civilians. They did not train. What is going on here? I stayed in the same house as Pallo Jordan, I was working in the same place as Thabo Mbeki. I was staying in the same place with Joel Netshitenzhe. I met people who had nothing to do with the military. Why am I here?

I insisted I was not going to work there. I was a soldier, going home, going to fight. They said we told you in Angola I had been selected for DIP – the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity, not DLB. They were recruiting me to join DIP. Why me? I was never a journalist. I knew DIP had something to do with Radio Freedom, something to do with journalism, something to do with Mayibuye. I questioned: “What am I going to do here?”

Mbeki was the director. Pallo was the head of the research unit. It was a serious wing of the ANC. There were all kinds of things like Mayibuye, publications that were banned in South Africa. The ANC had radio facilities in Angola, Tanzania, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Lusaka and I was deployed there, at Radio Freedom, from 1983.

Established in 1978, Radio Freedom used to broadcast using the resources in these countries. We were able to broadcast messages of hope to South Africans who risked their lives to hear the speeches of Tambo and Modise. They were the voices of people you would never dream to hear. We used radio to mobilise people and assist people who had joined the liberation movement. Radio Freedom used to teach people how to identify the enemy.

We managed to get people to come over to our side; there were people who came to see that the ANC was not a beast and they joined the liberation movement.

The policies and principles said a human is not an enemy but their actions are. What would liberate South Africa was not the barrel of a gun or sanctions or the tried and tested leadership of the ANC but the commitment of people saying they wanted liberation. The people of South Africa and abroad made a collective effort to liberate the country so they share the blame and the glory. Individuals didn’t achieve liberation, a collective effort did.

Radio Freedom invited people to participate. So many people were influenced by the messages of Radio Freedom. My role was to monitor all radio stations broadcasting in South Africa. We used to record all the news and share the day’s events with our colleagues. We would broadcast at 19h00 and comment on current events. We taught people how to form defence units. I eventually moved from monitoring to presenting and became head of the Lusaka office of Radio Freedom.

Today South Africa is no doubt a better country. We have foreign nationals coming here every day, whether documented or not. They would never leave home if things were not good. We need to embrace foreigners and show them love. We need to educate South Africans about foreigners and account for all the people in this country. Obviously there are things to improve as individuals, as departments and as a country. Let’s take all that has happened and using a football metaphor see it as the first half. Let’s go into the second half of the game and change these things.

Our challenges now are xenophobia and poverty. People who have given their all should be empowered. Handouts are not sustainable and administrations change their policies. We need education and government and private-sector initiatives to foster entrepreneurship. Between 12 and 16 million people benefit directly and indirectly from all the people employed by government.

How do you overcome poverty? Get educated. Play the Lotto. Some people wait to inherit, some rob a bank. Our biggest challenge is unity. We should all be singing from the same page. Hatred will not get us anywhere. People must be united in their attitude to crime and poverty.

This was the vision of Madiba: a society where people help each other. If we try to do things that are a pipe dream we will surprise ourselves. Did we ever believe what would happen to Madiba? The lesson I learnt from the ANC is ubuntu. If I had to personify the ANC and MK I see the image and picture of Madiba, more so now because he can never be wrong.

The ANC has stood the test of time. The organisation is as strong as its members. I love this country, the organisation and I love what I am doing. I manage the radio component of government. We sometimes do syndicated programmes with community radio. Today’s community radio offers an alternative voice. We open the lines and members of the community call in. We are breaking the barriers between people and the ministers through unmediated communication.

I am happy about the world my children live in now. They are optimistic, they love this country and if you were to multiply that with half the population we would have a very powerful society.

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Andrew Mohamed tells his story

My paternal grandmother married an Indian Muslim man who wanted to work in the Orange Free State but in those days Indians weren’t allowed to be in the Free State after 9pm so he pretended to be Coloured. She was Christian and Catholic. After my grandparents divorced my father had a Catholic upbringing and retained his father’s surname.

My dad was quite religious as a child but as he grew up and matured, he joined the workers’ movement and became a Marxist.  Later, as he grew older and faced the uncertainty of death, he became quite a strong Catholic again.

I was born in Johannesburg in 1962. The very story of how I was born is illustrative of apartheid. The hospital where my mother delivered was for whites only. Though they had taken her in, she was kept in a small room because she was not allowed into the main ward. She had decided my name was going to be Enver and the nurses made a mistake and they wrote Andrew on the wristband. My parents decided they quite liked it.

My father was politically active in those days and he felt he could possibly be persecuted by the police. He had met my mother at the school where he was teaching, and they decided they would leave South Africa and go back to London. My father had got a job at King’s College so in 1964 we left South Africa. My father had got his PhD in London.

I’m from an Afrikaans-speaking family so in my first years I couldn’t speak English. When we first arrived in England I spoke Afrikaans. I had a friend there, Jeremy, and I spoke to him in Afrikaans. I REFUSED to speak English. I only started speaking English at the age of four when we were about to leave for Zambia. My father had got a job at the University of Zambia so we moved to Lusaka where we stayed for two years.

I’m left-handed but I went to this Catholic pre-school where they believed it is evil to write with the left hand so they would tie my left hand tied behind my back and force me to write with my right hand. I learnt to write with my right-hand and I still do but it caused a problem, some sort of induced dyslexia which I still have. I learnt to write and spell slower than other kids.

Shortly before my sixth birthday we moved to Lesotho where my dad had got a job at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS). I went to the on-campus school for the kids of the lecturers. At that time the entire university staff were expatriates from all over the world. They were known as internationals – from America, Japan, England, Holland – were teaching at the university so it felt like an international school and all the kids had strange mixed accents.

I lived outside South Africa for all of my early childhood and had no context of apartheid or racism.

When we moved back to South Africa in 1975 it was shocking. I couldn’t speak Afrikaans. My father had got a teaching job at the University of the Western Cape and I was put in a school on the Cape Flats, Alexander Sinton.  We’d have morning assembly and sing Die Stem. It was strange to me that every kid around me was Coloured. It just seemed so strange. I was used to a very, very mixed environment. I was taught in Afrikaans. I couldn’t understand what was being said in class at all. At that point I realised there was something seriously wrong with South African society and became aware of apartheid.

The next year, 1976, I went to boarding school at St Barnabas College in Bosmont, Johannesburg. It was largely funded by Anglo-American and probably the only multiracial school in South Africa.

That year apartheid really struck me. It was the year of the Soweto uprisings. We would buy the newspapers and see these kids being shot. That year my father was detained. That was really what made me become politically active. The Coloured schools were not really involved in the 1976 uprising. You had a couple of them boycotting in the Western Cape but not in the Transvaal. They used to have prayer meetings but there were no demonstrations or boycotts because people were divided. Coloured people had become divided from the African majority. They would not necessarily express solidarity. There was no commitment to the struggle at that point.

They probably also did not get involved out of fear. There were also Coloured people who believed apartheid was correct, who believed that whites were superior to them and that they were superior to African people. Someone once said to me that it was right that whites get better facilities because they pay more taxes.

I think a small number of people thought that way, but it must have existed from the days of slavery, from the time that Cape Malays were first brought to the Cape as slaves. It would have been different in different communities but I think it’s that far back. I was reading a book by Henk Verwoerden called A mouthful of glass about Demitrios Tsafendas and you pick that up in that book.

In 1980 I was in Matric when protests in Coloured schools in the Western Cape began. Schools in the Transvaal joined until it became a fairly widespread national protest. It was a protest against the separate education systems. Within my school some people felt we should not join the protest. Our parents didn’t like it because they paid such high school fees. But we formed an SRC and joined the protest. I was chairperson of the SRC. We formed a series of SRCs – we had 22 SRCs that sat on a joint committee; in the Western Cape there was the Committee of 81 – which was 81 schools.

At that point we realised you can’t protest separately and have separate uprisings in the African and Coloured communities. Earlier, unified protests had happened with the ANC,  Coloured People’s Congress and Congress of Democrats but that had subsided when the ANC was banned and the leadership moved into exile. This was a reawakening among the youth.

We decided we’ve had to form one united movement. Within the African schools there was already a movement called the Congress of South African Students - Cosas. The drive I was involved in was to try to have one movement under Cosas so I started meeting with Cosas leadership.

I was arrested in 1980 with a huge group of people. I was in Matric, and charged with organising and participating in illegal gatherings. The charges were dropped. I was kept overnight and released early in the morning. Had they known I was a student leader I would definitely not have been released. It was a serious threat that we were forming a united movement.

At this point I began to meet people who claimed to be part of the ANC underground. I began to get ANC literature and pamphlets from people, but this one guy – Sello – said if we wanted to join the movement we must prove our loyalty and blow up something. I cannot possibly believe that the ANC would encourage untrained school kids to handle explosives and go and blow up things. I cannot believe he was an ANC person.

As a student activist I used to take my 15-year-old sister to meetings. We used to be harassed by three security police from the Special Branch – the division of the police that dealt with political activists. One day I was going to a meeting. I felt it was very important that I get to this meeting and my sister was with me. Somewhere in the Coloured township of Bosmont we were followed by Special Branch guys in a car. We were on foot. We split up and they followed her, grabbed her and took her to John Vorster Square. They took her to the ninth floor and made various threats like they threatened to push her out of the window.

I became of the opinion that we were not going to advance anywhere with the struggles we had in the country and that the only way to change things was through a military struggle. I decided with five other people to go into exile and join the military wing of the ANC.

We made an attempt to leave but were unsuccessful and afraid to go home as we would probably be arrested. We found an abandoned mine building near Maraisburg Road and stayed there for some days. We noticed some movement of vehicles on the road near us, so we knew we had to get out of there.

We left the mining building, went to Dube and stayed with the elder sister of one of my fellow students. After a while we again noticed movement, left and went to stay at the school (it was school holidays). We managed to make contact again with Sello and he gave us the name of a contact in Gaborone in Botswana.

It was up to us to make our way to Gaborone so we organised two giant black Valiant taxis to take us to the Lobatse border. There were three of us in each car. We planned to jump the fence some distance from the border gate. After about two or three hours of driving it was very clear there was a police roadblock in the road up ahead.

I was in the second car and we were about 1 km behind the lead vehicle so when we saw the other car was flagged down we turned onto a farm road and drove around all night, not knowing where we were. Near morning we realised we had a problem. We stopped near a village and the taxi driver got out and asked a woman for directions. She said “oh you see that fence over there? That is the border”. And there was a little dry riverbed. He asked about patrols. She said “there’s no problem here. We cross every day to collect firewood on the other side”.

I had a spare pare of trousers in my rucksack, a t-shirt, some underwear, toothbrush, one-and-a-half litres of Coke in a glass bottle, and that was it. One guy, Lesley, had some money, but not much. So, we crossed over. We didn’t really know what the shape of the border was so we decided to move north as far and fast as we could. We crossed basically into the Kalahari Desert at Pitsane Moloto; it’s 200 km west of Lobatse. In spite of that we kept moving north until nightfall.

When it got dark it was really dark and we couldn’t really see so we decided to stop and continue walking in the morning. And then we saw this little light bouncing up and down and we hid. As it came closer we realised it was a man on a bicycle. We stopped him and said we wanted to go to Lobatse. He said “this is nowhere near Lobatse” and said he would take us to his village just a little way away. We walked and walked to the village. We slept with the goats that night.

The man got his daughter to show us the path to the main road. We walked until about four in the afternoon when we hit the road and within about half an hour we got a lift to Gaborone.

I had the contact, we found a public telephone, phoned the number and there was no reply. We had an address. We went there; it was a bookshop. It was closed. It was after five. We were wandering around, trying to figure out what to do when we saw three girls in the street – we looked terrible after covering over 150 km and sleeping with goats. I had an Afro, a huge one, it was full of grass and dirt – and we asked where the owner of the bookshop was. They offered to take us to his house, which they did.

We knocked on the door. This young girl opened the door. She saw us and tried to slam the door in our face. I got my foot in the door and said “I have to speak to your father”. She said “he is not here”. A young man, I think it was her boyfriend, came to the door. He said the man was in London and had not been there for a long time. We explained that he was our ANC contact. The girl told us her father had absolutely nothing to do with the ANC and was not South African.

The young man phoned the local ANC office and a guy from the ANC fetched us in a bakkie. He made us lie flat in the back. We were kept indoors on a farm for two weeks. The ANC told us we had to declare ourselves as refugees to the United Nations (UN) and to the Botswana police. We had crossed the border illegally so we were threatened and given an ultimatum: We had to get out of the Gaborone area and go to the UN refugee camp. We went to the UN and were each given five pula and a third-class train ticket to Francistown. 

We were escorted by a member of the Botswana police. Once we were there we waited almost a day for the UN truck which took us to Dukwe. It was a massive place. At one time it had over 5 000 Zimbabwean refugees and about 1 000 Swanu refugees from Namibia. There was a PAC and an ANC section in the camp. We were dropped at the ANC section just after dark. The problem there was food: the rations just weren’t enough.

After two months the ANC gave me a blue UN passport. It had my photograph inside; it was obviously a forged passport. I had adopted the name Tshepo Thabane. We activists didn’t use our real names when we met outside the country. The ANC bought plane tickets and I went up to Lusaka where I met various members of the ANC leadership, in particular Reginald September who I would sit with daily.

Reginald asked why I wanted to go into the camps. He said there were thousands and thousands of MK cadres in the camps and they couldn’t find a way to infiltrate the country. He said I would be more useful if I got an education because the struggle was not just about overthrowing the government but also about building a future, about putting something new in place.

He told me the ANC had a college in Tanzania called Somafco - Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College. I went to Tanzania after a couple of months and was stranded 250 km away from Somafco in Dar es Salaam because we didn’t have transport. Eventually a Somafco truck came and picked me and Lesley up. The other guy, Nkululeko, who had crossed the border with us, had gone to Angola and joined MK. He later became mentally unstable.

Life at Somafco was extremely difficult. There was not enough food. Often we would get sour porridge in the morning and sweet potato in the evening. That was all. At times we had sugar beans and pap and the sugar beans were infested with weevils. I was vegetarian but had had to start eating meat in Botswana to survive.

Life was hard but we had great spirit. Disease, like malaria, also made it hard. I graduated but got malaria very seriously. At some point I weighed 35 kg and couldn’t walk. We were on chloroquine phosphate but you could only take it for a year. As soon as I stopped taking it I got sick.

I’d done photography at school and Eddie Weinburg, an ANC photographer, had set up a lab at Somafco for the students. I worked there as an apprentice. Eddie died.

I had obtained a scholarship to Asmara University in Ethiopia but I was asked to stay in Tanzania as there was nobody to run the photographic lab. I gave up my scholarship, ran the lab and trained others in photography.

I applied to the ANC scholarship committee for a scholarship so that I could study in Russia. I wanted to go to Russia because I was Marxist because of my father’s influence and had had access to many banned books while I was at home.

I went to the USSR in 1982 and studied at the People’s Friendship University in Moscow. I couldn’t speak Russian and had to learn the language the way a child does. I learnt to read and write Russian quite quickly – within six months. I was going to do Physics. I never finished my master’s degree because of insomnia. I couldn’t sleep and eventually had to leave. I went back to Somafco where I taught Maths and ran the photographic lab. This was when malaria became a real problem: we were losing a person a week.

In 1987 I returned to Russia as the commissar of a group of MK cadres who went there to study. We went to the town of Pushkin near Moscow. It was in Russia that I met my wife – a student doing her PhD on the armed struggle. She eventually got emotionally involved and wanted to help.

Just after Christmas in 1992 my wife and I arrived in South Africa with nothing but two suitcases.
From 1992 to 1994 I worked for the ANC putting together the first election campaign which did not involve radio, TV and posters but going into communities and holding rallies and imbizos. Those were very intense times. With Nelson Mandela I went all over the country as a photographer and met people from Robben Island and other struggle figures.

After 1994 the ANC had to scale down its staff. It was closing down its photo lab so I took all the equipment on condition that I could provide the staff with employment. I set up a photographic lab under the Centre for Democratic Communication which I ran, before becoming a freelancer and then joining government in 1996 as a contract worker.

Is life better? A hundredfold better because of the dignity you have these days. I was from a privileged family. Both my parents were lecturers and could afford things but there was no dignity. People regarded you as inferior. For example the Zoo was only open to blacks on Thursdays, at the Lesotho Border there was a separate queue for whites at passport control and at the station there was a separate platform for whites. People would move away from you if you went to the platform for whites.

Economically things have changed too. You are free to attend the schools you want to. It is difficult to perceive the change because we cannot see it happening. It’s like watching a tree grow. What my life was like versus that of my daughter at 17 is that she could afford to be a child, to engage in sport and music and clubs. I couldn’t. I was too politically involved. From 1980 politics and the struggle were my life. She appreciates the freedom she has.

The toughest part of exile was the isolation from my family and I got to a point where I lost all hope and belief that we would achieve freedom in my lifetime. After 1980 there was a complete lull in the struggle and political activity but after the UDF it took off again and in about 1986 I started believing again. From about 1983 to 1985 I had lost hope.

On hindsight no one in their right mind who knew how tough it was going to be would make the decision to go into exile.  

I think the struggles today are as important as ours were. The most important one is the struggle to get educated and the challenges that face this nation are HIV and AIDS. The fundamental problem right now is unemployment. It cannot be overcome by our current business system. There is only one solution and that is entrepreneurship. Education is the place to start.

Note: The three guys in the Valiant up ahead of us that night were detained for about nine months, brutally tortured and put on trial. One turned State witness against the other two and against me. The taxi drivers as well as the woman who had helped us in Roodepoort were all shot.

I no longer take photographs.

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September stories


Remembering Suliman “Babla” Saloojee on the 50th Anniversary of his death

The 9th September 2014 marked the 50th Anniversary of the death of Suliman ‘Babla’ Saloojee, the fourth person to die in police custody. While the inquest suggested that the cause of his death was unknown, many believe that after having being arrested he was severely tortured, killed and thrown out of the seventh floor window (a height of 20m) of Gray’s Building, the Special Branch Headquarters in Johannesburg.

Suliman "Babla" Saloojee was born on 5 February 1931 in the small town of Belfast, in Mpumalanga. Babla left home to get a basic education. After completing this he worked as a legal clerk, but often presented himself as a qualified lawyer when his comrades were in trouble with the police. In this way he was able to trace the whereabouts of detainees, obtain legal assistance and arrange for essential provisions to be delivered to them.

Babla was member of the Transvaal Indian Congress, and was part of the Picasso Club - famous for painting anti-apartheid slogans around Johannesburg, and frequently helped exiles flee the country. Those who knew Babla fondly recall that he was a witty, engaging and charming Comrade. They also recall that he was a brave man who was dedicated to the emancipation of all South Africans.

Babla participated in many of the major anti-apartheid campaigns such as the Defiance Campaign. He also assisted in smuggling a number of political activists out of the country – including his close friends Abdulhay Jassat and Mosie Moolla who had escaped from detention despite a massive manhunt launched by the security police.

Mosie Moolla recalls the last time he had seen Saloojee. “Babla was with me when I fled South Africa. I last saw him at the border between South Africa and Botswana, where we said goodbye.  He was an outstanding individual. He played his part. There were no whims, no questions about monetary gains. He believed in a cause and gave his life for it.”

Babla was detained on the night of his engagement to Rookie Adam in 1961. In February 1964 he was served with a banning order. On 6 July 1964 Babla, along with Ahmed Essop “Quarter” Khota, was arrested and taken to Marshall Square.  This was the last time he was seen alive.

In marking the occasion his close friend and comrade, Ahmed Kathrada, stated, “Sometimes, we place too much emphasis on those who were imprisoned. We tend to forget those who gave their lives and are no longer with us to enjoy the fruits of democracy. The stories of these comrades remind us that freedom did not fall from the sky – it was fought for. It reminds us that we should appreciate what we have today.”

References

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