“I Saw a Nightmare…”
Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976
by Helena Pohlandt-McCormick
The present, from which memory speaks, retreats further and further from the events of June 16, 1976, tempting the historian with historical distance and objective analysis. And yet, 22 years later, these voices from the past spoke urgently and directly, relentlessly demanding that they be heard, that the processes of historical memory not forget them. In temporal terms, they were removed from the events of June 16, 1976, by the intervening years, and yet they spoke directly, clear and sometimes vibrant with emotion, the images of the past crowding through the concerns that control the present. Even the small sampling above of the lived memories of ordinary people revealed the rich multiplicity of experiences, influences, and meanings that emerge with the shift to the experiential point of view of the protagonists. There is, as Ranajit Guha has pointed out, little that will protect against the "distortions" that inevitably alter the stories of the past because of the passage of time between the event and the telling of it. And there is little that will protect against the interference of the historian's own consciousness.
But it is interviews such as these, together with other voices that come to us more indirectly—through recordings, transcriptions of testimony, recorded statements and affidavits as well as through old letters, pamphlets, and speeches from the time of "the trouble"—that, combined with the shift in perspective I have proposed, allow us, through their rich diversity and their indisputable authenticity, to see something of a "past consciousness" that has so often been seized and claimed for narratives that were not the participants' own. In these stories, and with this shift, the participant is no longer "only a contingent element" in a narrative that otherwise belongs to the government, the resistance movement, or the historian. She (he) is instead an active, thoughtful, and spirited agent of her (or his) own history. If the participant directs and speaks (however eloquently or competently) the story her- or himself, just as she (he) made the history and experienced the events, what emerges is the complexity of the historical experience with multiple and intricate layers of meaning. Accounts of the experiences of ordinary people create a historical picture that may not be neat or straightforwardly argued, but that is a little closer to the multiple realities of historical experience. The shift in perspective that is a consequence of the presentation of the stories of the Soweto uprisings through the eyes of its protagonists allows us to see certain things differently, correct heretofore partial presentations, and complicate or enrich past explanations or interpretations.15
^topWe know, feel and understand the weight and burden the children bear. We must now refuse that the suffering and hardships deter our aspirations. They are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We can't, and may not remain silent and unmoved.—Sindiswa Gwazela, 1976
Among the things that most evidently divided students was gender. In the accounts of the young men, much as in the literature on Soweto, it sometimes seemed as if girls were hardly involved, and participant testimony either underplays their role or completely ignores it. Such testimonies underscore how the presence of young women and girls in the uprising has often been sidelined by history's focus on the leadership of the student uprising and on those who have traditionally been heard, tried, or persecuted. The evidence suggests, however, that girls were very much part of the uprising, their participation determined, especially in the early days of the revolt, more by their identity as students than by their gender.
Without a doubt, though, the experience of the uprising would have been very different for boys and girls. The roles of girls as housekeepers and caregivers (in the absence of mothers who worked in the white city) was often already firmly established, as was their acceptance of parental, especially a father's, authority and control. Although girls initially played a part in marches as well as in the student organizations, other realities and responsibilities—women's responsibilities—often intruded and influenced their later choices. For girls, the implications of claiming their freedom to be an active participant in the struggle were manifold and needed to be balanced against the needs of their children, if they were already mothers, and of their larger families. Those who were already mothers were not free agents, while so many young men were. Girls faced terrible choices, veering between the immediate need to protect their children and the compelling long-term goal of ensuring a future free of oppression. Either way, their decision would have been seen as a betrayal. Perhaps for this reason, women or girls also remembered the uprising differently. They were less likely to remember the events of those days only or simply in terms of the public collective memory, and they more often tried to negotiate the often emotionally difficult terrain of public and private lives in their remembering.
In some respect, though, it was the very perception of gender difference—and the assumptions, about the natural passivity of girls, that went along with it—that explains how that difference could be used to the benefit of the students. Young women and girls used their very "invisibility" to the eyes of exclusively male police force to perform some of the movement's most important tasks, such as facilitating communication networks between male activists in hiding.
60Unless prompted, men seldom included in their testimonies any commentary on the role of young women. Sam Nzima thought that girls had mostly stayed in the background. Sam: "They were not [involved]." Sam: "They were not [involved]. I don't remember a single girl who did [take part]. There could have been some, some girls in other areas maybe that would be active, but not so much. You could think about this and understand it in this light that, in the whole group that eventually left the country, there wasn't any girl, not a one that I think of … from the northern Transvaal. […] Girls were just in the background. We never had a meaningful active participation of schoolgirls in the struggle during those days." That this was not generally true is evident from Zakes Molotsi's references to the girls who went into exile with the groups he helped across the border into Botswana, although he agreed that the "percentage of women was small."16 Even in Sam's story, the girls eventually reemerged from the background, briefly. During the first strike at Tshivashe High School, police tried to arrest the "ringleaders" they thought they had identified. Sam Mashaba was among the first to be singled out, but the police released him and the others for fear of a major confrontation with the students when the girls also joined the strike in support of the boys. It is not clear whether the presence of girls stayed the hand of the police, but, in Sam's eyes and in those of the police, this was behavior that was completely unexpected.
Sam: "the police ... didn't expect that girls could stand up and do such a thing." Sam: "Then
what happened was, while I was there, the girls started to join, to come march from their dormitory and joining up with the boys. And
they demanded that I must be taken out. Then the police realized that arresting me was going to cause much havoc to the school than otherwise.
[...]
That was the only day whereby we saw girls, waiting, standing in solidarity with us, marching out of their hostels singing and they came
and they joined with the boys in the year that I was being arrested. And I think this should have signaled a clear message to the police
that didn't expect that girls could stand up and do such a thing."
At the level of leadership and institutional organization, the youth movement seems to have been dominated by young men and boys—an
analysis echoed in most of the historical literature and collective memory. Sydney Khotso Seathlolo (18) took over from Tsietsi Mashinini
when he left the country in August 1976. He, in turn, left for Botswana after a car chase, in mid-January 1977, during which he was shot
and wounded, and he was replaced by Daniel Sechaba Montsisi (20). It took six months before Montsisi's arrest necessitated another change
in leadership. Trofomo Sono stepped into his footsteps. However, behind these prominent names, there were young women, who would leave
their mark on SASM (South African Students' Movement) and the SSRC (Soweto Students' Representative Council) and were on the streets and
among the demonstrators. As Sam Nzima's photograph of Antoinette Musi (now Sithole) running alongside Mbuyisa Makhubu and carrying her
brother's limp body showed so clearly, they shared the pain, willingly and unwillingly. Of 662 people in detention as of September 30,
1977, at least 62 were women and girls.17
Who were these young women? Among them was Lilli Mokganyetsi, who had become very active in the student movement and who, despite being shot by the police at one point, continued attending marches. Among them also were the daughters of Patience Tshetlo, one of whom attended Phefeni High School, the other Phefeni Junior Secondary School. "She was really involved. She nearly got to exile." Patience remembered that her younger daughter was the courageous one, active on behalf of the SSRC in the schools, and a participant in the attempted march on John Vorster Square to claim the release of students who had been detained. Patience: "she was the one, she was involved in this..." Patience: "Ja. But she was the one, she was involved in this. She was staying … they usually send them in school, to go to that school, tell them that at this time, this time, they must go, and do this and this, the SRC [Student Representative Council]. Mhmhmh. When it became clear that nothing was going to prevent their daughter from participating in student action, Patience Tshetlo and her husband invoked their powers as parents, possibly more effectively because their children were girls, and "sent them to Pietersburg, their father sent them to Pietersburg."
Patience: "...she would be in exile." Patience: "Ja, if I didn't send them to Pietersburg,
she wouldn't be here, she would be in exile.
[…]
Oooh, is better because I didn't have a boy that time. Because maybe it would ... you know the other parents, their children were lost that
time, they don't know where are they. Maybe if I had a boy, a little boy of 16/17, I wouldn't know where he is now."
The several reasons for the real and imagined absence of young women and girls become clearer when we shift the analytical gaze away from
the clearly male representations so as to include and hear females. Girls were much more likely to have been drawn into family relationships
and duties and at an earlier age. The presence of children, either their own or younger siblings they were looking after, made the choices
and the judgment young women faced—what Zakes called the "courage to cross the border"18—both
harder and more poignant. In a time of great distress and uncertainty, Sindiswa Gwazela, for example, a young activist and mother who was arrested
by the police on November 24, 1976,19 wrote to her sister to "arrange for Tumies [short for
Itumeleng] future" and to "give her love, please give her all the love she'll need."20 To her 9-year-old
daughter she wrote:
My Darling Baby,
Today is the day that I have to make a decision and you'll realize that it is a hard decision, when of course you've grown up to understand some of the difficulties one can be faced with.
[…]
I am sure your father can offer much better and the day you grow up, please my love be a better person don't be like me who is scared, who has no guts, who is a sinner in many a ways than one. God is my baby, remember that when all else fails, god is always.
There are weapons and wisdom that you can always employ, like pray Darling never forget this, say thank to people, say please, I'm sorry, forgive at all costs and lastly never betray trust never Honey! Please never.
I love you better than anything in the whole big world. I gave birth to you because I wanted you and for nine years, oh! yes nine solid years I breathed, I walked, I simply lived because, you were my show piece, my sole reason for living, but I failed you badly…
[…]
I love you my baby, God bless your soul.21
Sindiswa Gwazela's letters, confiscated by the police at the time of her arrest, permit a rare glimpse into the private turmoil of the young participants in the uprising. They clearly reveal how she was less able to protect her private life from the impact of her involvement in public politics. In Gwazela's case, even the most public events of the uprising brought private pain. Mbuyisa Makhubu, the boy who had picked up the dying Hector Pieterson from the ground on the first day of the uprising, was her nephew. In another letter, to Nombulelo Makhubu, her sister and his mother, she wondered, with reference to his disappearance for fear of the police, "what he might be going through, am I proud of that boy is a hero [sic], a soldier that never turns back on his pledge or vows, 'Vivat, Mbuyisa KaMakhubu.'"22
Gwazela was one among many young women detained for their participation in the uprising. On the day of her arrest she wrote a letter to a friend called Thabo. Its opening lines were ominous: "Never writing a letter was such a heavy task, just now it dawns on me that it might just be the last…" Clearly already in dialog with him, and referring to a conversation that took place earlier about "your concern and your doubts," she wrote about the decision she had had to make to continue the struggle that the children of Soweto had begun on June 16, 1976:
Thabo, I'm not turning back, this has become sort of a fixed course, me and you know, from our own experience in this land the dehumanization of racism and the extent to which it's proponents will go to impose their will on others. We know the pain, agony and suffering which accompanies the struggle for freedom.23
Undoubtedly, fear for the future of her own child made the struggle more poignant for her. She continued:
We know, feel and understand the weight and burden the children bear. We must now refuse that the suffering and hardships deter our aspirations. They are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We can't, and may not remain silent and unmoved.24
From the letter it is clear that the decision to be politically active and part of the struggle was not an easy one, especially for a woman, or one easily accepted or supported by everyone:
Pressures exercised by the system must not impose conditions contrary to our wishes and must not cause a delay in the struggle for liberation, just now as writing I know that I've spoiled my friendship absolutely but then again try and understand, my dear Thabo that, I'm with no alternative at all. I know now again that you'll think your suspicions were right, fine, if that's what you'd like to believe of me, an idiotic, suicidal, masochistic and irresponsible being, probably yes.25
A decision that would brand her as a sellout, or as someone who could not see the struggle through, was too much to bear, no matter how good the reason for withdrawing might have been:
But Thabo I could never bear the wrath of my people should I chicken out, you know that no amount of explanation is going to leave me blameless, people would always view me as one of those, I promise you I'd rather perish than leave with that branding.26
The postscript to the letter was again full of imminent danger and clearly indicated that Gwazela knew of the risks involved in her political life.
75P/S I'm sacrificing so much on this, that's including my baby but then again maybe for her benefit. I'll keep in touch if you don't hear from me know the game ended. I can trust you to know Tumie is alright. 11731 O/W/E, my mother is Mrs. H. T. Macala. This remember is for the love of my people that I'm doing it.27
Lilli: "… I was the person who was taking all these kids." Lilli: "I mean that time it was, parents were crying, you know, parents were crying there children were disappearing by day, every day. And you know, when parents were crying … I was the person who was taking all these kids. I mean in our vicinity, you know. Have you seen this … something like for instance your mother getting to a neighbors, crying, no my children are not at home, I have learned that they have skipped the country, what, what, what. You know, I would be there, knowing very much that I am this person who took them." For those young women unencumbered by children, there may have been less that held them back, less that hindered their equality with the boys. Young and energetic, Lilli Mokganyetsi in her story takes us deep inside the activities of the student movement to reveal that young women and girls were quite central to the uprising, although their experiences were often quite different. She too understood that political activism had profound personal consequences, perhaps more strongly at the time of the interview in 1993 than back in 1976. She knew that parents' pain and worry centered around the disappearance of their children, never quite knowing whether they had been killed, detained by the police, or driven into exile. Nevertheless, she contributed to that worry by helping many of the young activists leave.
Traditional assumptions about girls' essential passivity and domestic identity clouded the perceptions both of parents and of the police, at
least for a while, and students made good use of such assumptions of difference while using them to further their own goals.
Sam: "they wouldn't dare to just be out." Sam: "I have never given myself much time of looking
at the reason why, but I would think that this has been partly because of the cultural background [unclear] where women are women, they don't
have to be active in anything. I want to believe that we had some girls that sympathized and understood the conditions, but they wouldn't
dare to just be out."
After student activists learned that she had been shot in one of the marches, they
approached her and introduced her to Dr. Nanaoth Ntshuntsha, a Soweto naturopath. At first she was suspicious, surprised at the "shabbiness
of the house, not to say it was dirty, you know, just not what we really expect from a doctor's house," and, unfamiliar with the word
homeopath on the diplomas he showed her, she looked it up in the dictionary. He asked after her name and translated from Perpetua, her
middle name: He never referred to her by anything but "Everlasting" after that.
Lilli: "but I could guess that he was running away from police." Lilli: "… he said to me,
please Everlasting, if there are boys whom you know that police are looking for, interview them in style, and if they want to go to Russia,
you bring them to me. Please. Okay, so now you know, this, every day, I was moving from home to that doctor.
I was now organizing for him [Ntshuntsha], all the boys in the location. You know, some of them, when I look at them now, I just close my
eyes. I was organizing people for him. Fortunately enough, in our neighborhood, the very following house next to us, there were boys whom
we were attending with at the very secondary, but they were not staying there, they were staying in Moletsane and such another township. But
so indeed they were staying in our neighborhood, the very next door house. And it was only boys, it was only boys. You know, during the day,
they are not there. It's only one. You could see that there was something happening, maybe they were running away from police from their homes.
So now, one day, I … approached him, I said, "why are you staying here?" He said, "no I am looking after my sister's children." You know,
I went, but I could guess that he was running away from police. Then I gave [told] him everything. He said: "I am telling the truth?" I
said, "yes. But I'm not going there with a group, a mob. I am going with you alone, let's go there." We went there, everything was successful.
The first group of boys went away. There were eight. They went away [her voice almost a whisper]."
It quickly became clear that she was not there for treatment of "this hand [that] was really troubling me. You know when I woke up, it would
be as swollen as this, and I can't do anything and if you get to the doctor, there is nothing they can help me." For several months, Lilli
became the go-between who facilitated the way out of Soweto for those boys who were in hiding. To those who needed a way out, she would tell about
Dr. Ntshuntsha, interview them, and give them directions to his house, from where they would be taken to the border. It was not unusual for girls
to run errands for their parents, and Lilli used traditional expectations of her as a girl to cover for her clandestine activities.
Lilli: "this is the time we have been oppressed ... we have got to do something.." Lilli: "They discussed, they made a conversation, he … My father … is not professioned but he has been to school, he understands this. He also is in the very same thing, he doesn't, although he doesn't do anything. But he understands, this is the time we have been oppressed, and then we have got to do something. Although he is not one of those [activists] … but he understands. Okay, he discussed with this man, he discussed, he discussed. And then, you know we were not paying him anything. But my father said, 'no, how can that really happen.' He said, 'no I am serving for the black community.' He said, 'even though, but I feel it's unfair. I feel, I am going to give you … anything maybe you might be often here.' Then he gave him something, you know, just a little fee. So now the problem of healing was over." For a while she was even able to outsmart her father who had "noticed that there was a certain movement here." To his questions she replied that friends had introduced her to a doctor who could help her with the hand that by this time was hurting her very much. Upon his request, she took her father to see the homeopath. Her father was as surprised as she had been at the condition of his house, but Dr. Ntshuntsha managed to convince him that Lilli was indeed there for treatment of the bullet lodged in her upper arm. (See Chapter 6, "The Wounded")
Lilli was supposed to leave South Africa with Dr. Ntshuntsha and the last group he was to take across the border in December of 1976. Her
older sister, however, alerted her father. It was a time when, as Zakes Molotsi put it, "most of us, our parents … parents just [saw]
everyone disappear." Lilli's father pleaded with her not to leave, to complete her education, still arguing that it was the only proper
path to advancement. By keeping her busy he managed to break the connection between Lilli and Dr. Ntshuntsha just long enough that she
missed the planned departure into exile.
Lilli: "Dr. Ntshuntsha has been arrested on trying to cross the border..." Lilli: "Then my father addressed
me, very strongly. That was the first time that I have seen my father as pained as that. He said to me: '[I] don't say you mustn't do anything.
But look now, you are still doing Form 2, Form 2. I don't say you mustn't … you can, but first of all, if you leave now you must know that
you are not sure that wherever you are going, you are going to be taken care of. You don't know whether you are going to have a bed to sleep
on, whatever. You see … so many things. So now, it is wise for you to attend school, at least if you have passed your Matric, you can do
anything. Then you'll be our ambassador maybe."
The following day he took me again to the shop. So that I should lose contact with this man. And of course, I lost contact with him. The day when
they … when now I knew that it was supposed, … it was on the sixth of December, when Dr. Ntshuntsha was supposed to leave the country with
Jabu and me. Two weeks thereafter we heard, I read in the newspaper that Dr. Ntshuntsha has been arrested on trying to cross the border,
Jabu was shot, but he managed to escape, they don't know whether he is still alive, or what. Dr. Ntshuntsha is at the Natal prison, Pietermaritzburg
prison. So now I could have been part of it. That was the last time that I ever heard of Dr. Ntshuntsha. That was the last time that I ever heard
of people who are sent."
Dr. Nanaoth Ntshuntsha was detained on December 14, 1976. According to the South African Institute of Race Relations, which reported on the
case, his wife was refused permission to see him and could not find out where he was being held. On January 11, 1977, the security police
reported that he had been found dead in his cell three days earlier. He had allegedly torn a vest into strips and hanged himself.28 (See also: Chapter 3 "Telling Soweto: Part 1—The Cillié Commission")
Lilli: "I'm number four. There are still five kids who my parents have to take to school." Lilli: "[W]hen I was doing Form 5, I got pregnant, and then I had to leave school and then I stayed at home. At home … you know, it was so painful, then after giving birth, you know, the immediate thing that I could grab was this teaching. So you know, I even felt somehow that, because we are that family of nine, I'm number four. There are still five kids who my parents have to take to school. It seems now if I am to get to the varsity I'm going to deprive the others, because when I was in boarding school, of course, I had everything that I wanted. Everything, so now I felt let me grab this, at least at [teacher training] college it's not so expensive. And then if I would let to further my studies, I would do that while working a family home now. Soo, that is why. […] then I completed my Matric there, and then when I did my college education I went to Kwakwa in the Free State, completed there, and then I started teaching in 1986 at Mutse [?]the very town, in KwaNdebele. " Lilli's father, like Patience Tshetlo, invoked all of his parental and fatherly authority and sent her away to boarding school in Pietersburg, in the homeland of Lebowa, north of Johannesburg. After that, she remembered, things changed and "everything wasn't just as good from there on." Even as her own perspective of the conditions of black South Africans became more sophisticated and she began to understand what she had been fighting for, she found herself in a setting in which "everything, it's wrong. You don't have a say, you don't have to ask—everything, it's dictated to you. If you ask, if you start asking the principal why are you setting us this type of food, whereas we pay him, then you are chased away from school." If the students addressed oppression or asked a question, they were immediately labeled "politician, and then they would chase you away. Before chasing you away, police has to come in the school premises, harass you, take you to jail." An unexpected pregnancy, growing responsibilities, and the reality of five younger siblings coming up behind her completed the process of exclusion and forced her to give up the dream of university. She did, however, eventually finish high school and attended a comparatively inexpensive teacher training college. She became a teacher in 1986.
Young women remained, then, and even in the later literature, historically invisible because they suffered under several burdens. The student 'movement was profoundly gendered and chauvinism dictated that the leadership generally be in the hands of the young men. Their ability to act independently was also contingent on family relationships, economies, and duties. Strong cultural norm constrained their ability to act independently, and they often had to define their role in a multiplicity of ways, negotiating the difficult and contradictory terrain of competing duties and loyalties as one or the other circumstances that shaped their lives made its power felt.
Responsibility for children, their own or younger siblings, and bonds within the family and among friends were among the conditions, processes, and practices that determined the involvement of many young women in the resistance and shaped their experience within it. Girls therefore also remembered these events more in relational terms of their links with other people, their children, their parents, their lovers, and their friends, rather than in the political terms of resistance and heroic narrative.
^topFortunately enough, we secured contacts with Sandile Seth Mazibuko who introduced us to the Urban Community.—Allen Budeli, president of ZOSO, 4 June 1977
Geographical distance and different concerns would certainly have separated rural and urban youth. During my research, several black colleagues and friends claimed a more prominent role for student organizations in the countryside. They pointed out to me that students were united by a common purpose, that networks of communication had been established well before June 16, and that the uprising happened everywhere simultaneously. This opened up tantalizing possibilities about the level of organization in the student movement, raising the possibility that political action had been coordinated and preplanned, and threatening to overturn accepted understandings of the uprising as having originated in Soweto. The evidence, however, suggested otherwise and was supported by the literature and by the popular notion of the centrality of Soweto to the resurgence of resistance among the youth.
It had always puzzled me how the uprising could have spread as fast as it did, and thoughts of preexisting networks and of strong student organizations in the rural areas stayed with me during my research. I therefore immediately recognized the importance of several documents produced by the Zoutpansberg Students' Organisation (ZOSO).
85 Found among documents confiscated during a raid by the South African Security Police on Lekton House on October 19, 1977, was a handwritten report of ZOSO. It was dated June 4, 1977, and signed by Allen Budeli, B. P. Ramaphosa, and M. L. Ramabulana. Like many such student documents, it had been submitted as evidence in a civil-court case brought by the West Rand Bantu Administration (WRAB) against the insurance company that had covered WRAB against riot damage.
On September 6, 1976, student "delegates from Khwevha, Mphaphuli, Tingazwanda Training College, Venda College of Education, Phiriphiri and Rambuda" had launched the Zoutpansberg Students' Organisation at Sibasa, a small town in Venda, an area—it is roughly 200 miles north of Johannesburg and abuts the Limpopo River and the border with Zimbabwe (then still Rhodesia)—that was slated to become one of South Africa's "independent homelands."29 Here was evidence that Soweto was not just Soweto, that a privileging of the geographic place that was Soweto had resulted in a muting of stories from further away and in a neglect of the multiple ways in which the events that started in Soweto were picked up by others around the country.
The issues that students in Soweto protested were neither new nor different for student activists in the rural areas: Bantu Education, the ineffectuality of their parents' generation, abuses by local authorities. As another student activist from Venda pointed out, "it is important not to focus only on urban areas,"30 not because a rural focus is necessarily better, and not because attention should be deflected away from Soweto, but because a careful consideration of how these issues played out in the more rural areas allows a more complex and rich understanding of the nature and extent of the Soweto uprising. It is an understanding that more closely reflects the power of the youth movement, permits a sense of how the students were gripped by a new sense of agency, and sheds light on the universality of the issues the students tried to address, issues that, while emerging from outside the city, also informed the leadership in the cities. This awareness engaged their imaginations, gave them a sense of power, and helped them to counter any fear they might have had of the police. It confirmed the justness of their issues and strengthened their resolve, and it explains how the uprising could have sustained itself for so long and in so many communities in South Africa.
Students were acutely aware of the issues that divided them and that provided the security police with the means of undermining them. Although these differences were real and not easily put aside, students worked hard to turn them to their advantage. There is some evidence, here and in the life history of Mamphela Ramphele and of other members of the Black Consciousness Movement,31 that the connections to the countryside were real, strengthened perhaps by the practice of the South African government to banish people to their rural hometowns as a way to remove them from the hot spots of political activism in the cities. Ramphele, for example, was restricted to Tzaneen in what is now the Northern Province in 1976. Although she was officially silenced, her presence there would have had an impact on local politics and would have provided opportunities to visit and socialize, if not organize and conscientize. Evidence such as that of ZOSO, the student movement in the north, has implications not only for the genius of the Black Consciousness Movement, which managed to turn the practices of the government in its favor. Despite the exceptionality of these documents and the limitations of the evidence, it also suggests important new directions in research, which has tended to sidestep the rural dimensions of the student movements of the 1970s and which might lead to an upending of accepted theories of the uprising. Assumptions that the uprising spread unidirectionally outward from Soweto need to be reexamined, and they are better understood when we begin to pay close attention to the voices of the participants everywhere and to hear their stories about what the many influences and their directions were.
Just as the women's stories shifted the perspective to a more gendered analysis of the uprising, Sam Mashaba's story introduced into my view of Soweto a physical shift to a point of view geographically outside of Soweto. It also introduced a conceptual shift and provoked a consideration of the directionality and the causality of this movement that engulfed the entire country.32 For young people from the city "there is no question about the prominence of Soweto" in the uprising, and there is no question that the uprising began with a student march there. Zakes: "most of us were from … in Soweto" Zakes: "So now, it's where all these things started, thus far if you look at the generation which left during '76, basically, most of us were from … in Soweto. Other areas started to come later, but '76 most of us were from the Soweto area. Because we were the people who were directly affected." "The stuff in our schools pales against what happened there" in Soweto, one student said. There were, however, many local dynamics that mirrored the issues in Soweto, informed them, and further radicalized them. In Venda the impending talks about "independence" and the hated homeland leader may have been foremost in the minds of student activists, and yet "still it was connected."33
90The exclusive focus on Soweto was shared even by the Botswana officials who were debriefing young South Africans fleeing across their borders into exile34 and establishing whether or not the person before them was leaving the country for political—and therefore legitimate—reasons. Those who fled into exile from places other than Soweto were often treated with suspicion and disbelief. The newspapers reported only on the SSRC (Soweto Students' Representative Council) and SASM (South African Students' Movement). Border guards had never before heard of the Zoutpansberg Students' Organization, and suspicion of ZOSO was present even among the young activists themselves. At a meeting of young exiles called by the South African Youth Revolutionary Council, which replaced the SSRC in Botswana, the division became clear. Almost everyone present had been in Soweto, and Tsietsi "Sheriff" Mashinini was extremely wary of the young activists who were from Venda and other parts of the country that were not familiar to him.35
But students like Sam Mashaba at Tshivase (Sibasa) High School, "which was seen to be the centre of this movement" in Venda, were very aware of the broader issues of apartheid and of the immediate concerns in their own schools. Sam: "I knew what was happening in South Africa." Sam: "I grew up in a family that was a bit open, that had a vision, regarding the injustices, the unjust practices that were taking place. And the main contributing person to my background here, was my elder brother, who kept on indoctrinating me while I was still a very small boy. So when I went to secondary school, for my secondary education, already I knew what was happening in South Africa. Maybe in a broader struggle than most of my contemporaries." Mashaba led much of the strike action at his school, together with a young man who had been sent to school in rural Venda from Pretoria, the city immediately to the north of Johannesburg. Students at Tshivase (Sibasa) High had successfully boycotted classes at their own school for about three months and felt that they could do anything, that nothing could stop them. In November 1976, with year-end examinations looming, the student leadership "faced an education dilemma" [sic].36 Sam: "Mainly I was leading it." Sam: "What should I tell you more about my involvement? I should tell you that when the whole strike happened 1976 I was leading it at school. Mainly I was leading it. To an extent that when I was arrested I became accused number two, and accused number one was a friend of mine, that we associated with very well. But I became accused number two, and this accused number one was a young man that came from Pretoria." To take the exams would mean to support Bantu Education. A boycott would prevent them from continuing into the next academic year. There are a series of strong parallels between Sam's version of this story and ZOSO's report, according to which the executive "decided to boycott the sitting for exam by means of circulating pamphlets throughout." Sam's description of these activities lends support to the ZOSO report.
So we would go out and organize other schools as well, go traveling as long distances as, covering long distances as about 40, 50 kilometers, without any sponsor. We would just do that from our pockets, as students from our pocket moneys, sacrificing our time.37
Students at other schools, such as Mpapuli High School, were more cautious and fearful of the nearby police station. "The aforesaid boycott," the report continued, was therefore "almost a failure due to various conditions prevailing at the school concerned. Ultimately a rough division appeared in the ranks of the students."38
[I]t was the first day of writing examinations for the senior students, that's form five, standard ten. And then we decided that we were going to tear, to destroy all the examination papers, because we didn't want to write "Bantu" examinations.3995
[S]ubsequently those from Tshivhase High decided to use force to that effect.40
Sam: "...we ordered the busses that they should take us to where we wanted to go." Sam: "To be
transported to other schools so that we should destroy the [whole] examination process in all other schools… The busses came from diverse
angles, diverse areas of the country, mostly from the eastern side of the country. And also from the northern side of the country … Makuya,
such areas, as you know. And so we knew, that we could possibly come up with about four busses, and we did that. We went out of the school
premises and we went to the main road and we blocked the busses, hauled all of the passengers out, got into the busses and we ordered the
busses that they should take us to where we wanted to go. And they took us to the schools where we wanted to go.
So, I led the whole group and we got into the examination room where the students had already sat, and we told them that they should get out,
grabbed all the papers that they were having, even those that were not distributed as yet, and we destroyed them. We bent them, we tear them,
just confiscated all of them, and we even went to the office of the principal and we demanded that we must be given the balance of all the
papers of other subjects. During those days they would bring all the papers of the examinations of all the subjects [even to return in the
two weeks to come?]. So we demanded all those papers, and we were given all those papers, and we destroyed them."
"Vendaland," as Seth Mazibuko called it in his letter cited below, is a rural area, and the schools—Tshivhase, Mpapuli, Khwevha—were
many miles apart. The students from Tshivhase therefore decided to hijack buses to get to other schools and disrupt the examination process
there.
This led to the arrest of some of the student leaders, who are 37 in number. The necessary arrangements were made to secure legal advice (N.B. This case is still on even now there due to lack of substantial evidence by the state against the accused.)41
We were 35, all the students that were arrested at school and we went to prison. We stayed for about two months in prison. And eventually we were taken to court, where we appeared, magistrate's court, locally at Sibasa. And we had some legal representatives that we didn't understand so much as to how they were organized, but later on we understood that it was through the BPC political organizations—Black Consciousness movement. So these representatives, legal representatives, they came and they stood on our behalf until the case was transferred from the magistrate court to the regional court, and it went to Louis Trichardt. At Louis Trichardt, that is where the case ended eventually. But there had been some rumors then, you know, there had been some rumors that we would end up locked [up], that we were going to end up in Robben Island, and all things like that.42
But for this unusual document that sketched the (brief) history, constitution, and strategies of ZOSO, the shift in perspective that Sam's story suggested may have remained part of one person's narrative and understanding of Soweto. This handwritten ZOSO report was significant evidence by virtue of its being found among documents confiscated by the South African Security Police during a raid on SASM headquarters at 505 Lekton House, in Johannesburg on October 19, 1977. Its presence among those documents was both signpost to and evidence of the connections between the youth movements in the city and those active in the countryside. Allen Budeli, an 18-year-old student at Khwevha High School, between the towns of Louis Trichardt and Sibasa, was the founder, a member, and the president of ZOSO. He had helped launch the organization in September and had drafted the report. SASM's links to Black Consciousness and a perception among students of its radical character had made it suspect for many. The Student (Black) Christian Movement, for example, was one of the strongest groups in the schools. It was rigid about not getting involved in politics and did not want anything to do with SASM.43 The founding of ZOSO by Budeli, Ben Ramaphosa, and Emmanuel Ramashia—all members of SASM—was an attempt to create a representative council more inclusive of all students and less readily seen as connected to SASM, SASO, or Black Consciousness44, a necessity that the youth organizations in the city similarly grappled with. "We tried very hard," the ZOSO report read, "to open contact with either SSRC, SASM or both." In May, Seth Mazibuko, one of the leaders of the SSRC and later of SASM in Soweto, introduced the student leaders from the north to the urban community. After the initial meetings,
[a]s a follow-up were held talks with the current SASM organiser, S. S. Mazibuko and company. The following steps were, inter alia, agreed upon:100
(I) Affiliation of ZOSO to SASM.
(II) Financial backing to be provided for ZOSO.45
ZOSO quickly established three branches in northern rural-area schools and was successful in organizing commemorative services at almost every secondary and high school. "More importantly," ZOSO could report, "almost all business centres closed in solidarity with the 1st Anniversary of our Liberation Struggle's Major Offensive."46 When repeated and sweeping, sometimes mass, arrests in the second half of 1977 started breaking the momentum of the uprising,47 the student movements too shifted their tactics. Allen Tembane Budeli, who had several times traveled to Johannesburg to meet with members of SASM and the SSRC there, was elected president of SASM during the Fourth General Students' Council meeting on July 4-7, 1977, at St. Ansgars Conference Centre in Roodepoort, near Johannesburg. He replaced outgoing president Mzuvukile Maqhethuka.48 The election was not an accident. Budeli had a gift for leadership and a remarkable command of language and was prominent among other high-school students for his outstanding academic record. In addition, he had helped establish student representation in the north and nurtured the links to the city. There had been connections and shared agendas all along, and his election was designed both to give profile to the other regions of the country that were involved in the struggle, to increase national effectiveness through regional representation, and to protect the leadership of the movement against police harassment, which had grown in intensity in the cities. There was a sense that Seth Mazibuko was under threat and that there was a need to diversify the leadership.49
Until Budeli's arrest on October 1, 1977, vice president Seth Mazibuko then reported to him in Sibasa. This correspondence was marked by news of detentions, financial problems, and a general sense of struggle in the face both of continued confrontation with the authorities and of loss of leadership, either to detention or to flight into exile. In handwritten draft notes for a "history of SASM from 1976-1977," Mazibuko commented on the many arrests and detentions of SSRC members during the year and wrote, "SASM in 1977 has not yet done much … but [is] promising to do so, but at the Cape is doing much and up North."50
On September 28, 1977, he wrote:
I [am] hereby informing you about the [im]mediate departure of Zweli Sizani the Organiser of the Organization and the detention of Sibongile Mthembu the General Secretary. Zweli Sizani has left the country after being highly wanted by the security police. Sibongile Mthembu was found in a house at Emdeni Extension, in Soweto on the 6th August.51
In another letter, Mazibuko explained that he thought it was going to be necessary for the National Executive to meet soon because the departure of the two executive members "has disorganised the aims and the agenda of SASM for this year." In the letter he described his trip to King Williams Town, Dimbaza, Durban, Graaf Reinett, Thaba Nchu, Vereeniging—crisscrossing South Africa—during which he requested reports from each branch and was "very happy to tell you that SASM members are working hard. In Graff Reinett [sic] we have three SASM members who are detained." Three new branches of SASM had been established in Alexandra township, Thaba Nchu, and Vereeniging, and plans were being drafted for a national seminar. Mazibuko expressed the hope that he would soon be "coming up to see you," pending the outcome of a discussion with the acting executive.52 It was not to be, and the exchange ended with this letter (written in October 1977) to all branch and general secretaries of SASM:
I am very much aware of the pressure and harassment of the police to SASM members and Executive but I request that we must keep ourselves in order and in touch.
I again sadly inform you about the detention of our President Allen Budeli from Sibasa (Vendaland) and the other members of SASM and highly praise the work SASM has done up North and other areas.53
105 The challenges to such organizations as ZOSO were considerable. ZOSO reported that they lacked the funds to facilitate their plans, that parents were "disorganized … such that they are in no position to support us either morally, financially and/or otherwise," and that the dearth of news media in the north meant that little attention was paid or publicity given to malpractice by the authorities there. Nevertheless, ZOSO planned to strengthen its branches at other high and secondary schools in the country. Tshisimani Training College, "under the tight grip of Apartheid inspired agents," was to be a particular focus for its attention and energies.
The developing connections between Budeli and the South African Students' Movement in Soweto made apparent that students themselves began to look beyond the boundaries of Soweto. After the first stay-at-home, September 13-15, 1976, the SSRC met at Madibane High School in Diepkloof to discuss a demonstration in downtown Johannesburg. Murphy Morobe , who had "read about [a similar demonstration] in the newspapers as happening in Cape Town," was impressed by this idea and "took it up with the SSRC" and "pointed out that we should do the same as the people in Cape Town." September 23, 1976, was chosen as the date for the demonstration.54 This again showed how multidirectional were the inspiration and ideas for further action:
Morobe:I had read that students were demonstrating in Cape Town.
[…]
In the city
[…]
Adderley StreetYutar:And that gave you an idea to get the students in Soweto to do the same thing in Johannesburg?Morobe:Yes.55
Gail Gerhart has commented that it was more by "media coverage and word of mouth" than by "any coordinated effort on the part of students" that news of the events in Soweto spread and other parts of the country joined in demonstrations, marches, and the inevitable and deadly confrontations with the police.56 An unspoken assumption underlies this assessment, that the momentum and agency that compelled the uprising came from somewhere outside of the student body. The other unexamined assumption in this statement is that Soweto stood at the epicenter of the uprising and that the uprising spread outward from there. It is testimonies such as those of Sam Mashaba and the many others who were the active and thinking, if not always perfect, wise, or unanimous, agents of this history that will literally and figuratively shift the vantage point from which Soweto is looked at.
^topWhen we look at differences such as those produced by gender and by the rural-urban divide, we are confronted with the question of how so many individual accounts can possibly add up to the homogenous whole of collective memory, of how such differences were reconciled to produce collective action. The examples so far have shown that how students came to exist as a collective was part of a historical process in which divisions and differences that threatened to split the student movement apart were set aside or overcome, where negotiation, accommodation, and adaptation created a collective consciousness that was strong enough to produce and maintain solidarity.
110There are several other factors that produced a unity of purpose and resilience among students despite internal differences, despite the immense force brought to bear on them. We have seen how strategic alliances (with girls and with students in the rural areas) were used to strengthen the student movement overall. As a fledgling resistance movement, the students were in a process of reconciling multiple identities, recalling older histories of resistance, exploring new ways of identifying themselves and their organizations, experimenting with their power. The Black Consciousness Movement delivered some of the language as well as some of the mechanisms. At just the right time, it provided the language of self-conscious pride, of necessary solidarity produced by the mutual experience of oppression. It gave the term Black a new political and collective content, and it modeled forms of leadership, organization, and communication (networks of communication, type of leadership, the making use of preexisting groups) that stood the students in good stead. This process was accelerated by the violence of the state. There are certain moments that created solidarity, sharpened the purpose of the protests, and clarified who counted as a student. Difference too could become a source of creativity and strength.
The many student organizations into which the students had organized themselves—ZOSO, SASM, SASO, SSRC, Action Committee, BPC, BPA, SPA—seem at first glance to reflect some of the divisions and differences among the students. The question of who the participants in the uprising were and who represented them institutionally was complicated by terminology as well as by institutional divisions, with multiple memberships by one person,57 the necessity to replace leadership as people were detained or fled the country, and the creation of new groups (either as umbrella groups, as in the case of the BPA, or as extensions of old ones, such as the SSRC, which grew out of the Soweto Action Committee, which had originally organized the march on June 16), often confounding any simple description.
In terms of the young people who organized or took part in the uprising, the most important organizational division before June 16 was that between SASO (South African Students' Organisation) and SASM (South African Students' Movement), which represented students at higher-education (tertiary-level) institutions (universities, teacher-training colleges, etc.) and students at high schools and other secondary schools. Sam: "...to make all students being aware of what was taking place." Sam: "[There were] Quite some few students, not few, but maybe the majority of the students, that […] didn't understand anything about the ills of apartheid. That they didn't understand anything about the worthiness of the black man, that didn't have any confidence in themselves, that wouldn't be able to face a white person and talk like we are talking, such things. The majority of the people wouldn't understand really. So, the problem of conscientization, it was a good program, to make all students being aware of what was taking place." It was for those students who had undertaken the task of this "conscientization," their own as well as that of others, that organizations such as SASO, SASM, and the BPC (Black Peoples Convention) played an important role. Members of SASM formed the Action Committee, which planned and organized the march for June 16 among high school pupils in Soweto schools on June 13, 1976, at the DOCC (Donaldson Orlando Community Centre) hall. The Action Committee was later (on June 31) transformed into the SSRC (Soweto Students' Representative Council), with two representatives from each Soweto school. The SSRC, the Action Committee, and SASM were therefore the organizations of the youth, whereas the "adults acted in the capacity of organizations like the BPC, SASO, SPA and BPA."58
There were, however, many connections between these organizations, and people sometimes belonged to several. The BPC had some of its members59 teaching at Soweto schools. It was their "duty … to conscientize students with regard to the struggle for liberation … in the context of Black Consciousness which is an attempt to rid Black people of psychological and physical oppression by means of collective bargaining,"60 thus providing the link between the BPC and SASM in the schools. There were a few principals like L. M. Mathabathe at Morris Isaacson High School,61 "an approachable man, unlike most of the principals," who was "well-disposed" toward Black Consciousness, making "himself easily available for service" to the community. When he was approached by SASO to help with a plan for Free University Service, an alternative higher-education system, "he availed himself without inhibition, as most other people usually are afraid because they are civil servants and they do not want to be involved too much in community work," and "they are afraid that the government might not like their participation in activities which have an aura of Black Consciousness." Notwithstanding his support for the students, Mathabathe was not, Aubrey Mokoena said, involved in the unrest.62
Although the SSRC was an organization in its own right, planning the second demonstration to demand the release of detainees for August 4, 1976, the students also called on the BPA (Black Parents' Association) to represent them and present a memorandum they had drawn up, which set out the students' minimum demands and was addressed to the minister of police. The BPA (Black Parents' Association) in turn asked the SSRC to draw up and publish in the newspapers a statement calling off the "riots" and asking students to go back to school. This statement appeared in the press on August 5, 1976.
115The links between any of these organizations and the ANC or PAC, both of them liberation movements in exile, have always been debated. Dr. Nthatho Motlana pointed to the continuous "awful schism between the PAC, the Black Consciousness Movement and the ANC" as reason for the founding of the Black Parents' Association: "We needed to form an organization that could bridge the gap."63
It was the BPA that intervened on August 4 to prevent confrontation between the students and the police during the march on Johannesburg. Aubrey Mokoena, who was arrested on August 14 and taken to John Vorster Square police station,64 was one of its members. The BPA was rendered inactive by his arrest, along with that of three of its members—Motlana, Winnie Mandela, and Kenneth Rachidi—and by the banning of public meetings. Until then,
this body was given recognition by all Black organisations. It gained support and respectability because it was an umbrella body and adult mouthpiece during the riots. What gave it prominence and advertisement was the mass funeral that it planned to hold the 3rd July and the task it set itself to receive relief funds for the riot victims. This gave it credibility. The students had a lot of respect and confidence in the BPA, particularly that their organization, SASM, was a constituent body of the BPA, hence the SSRC [Soweto Students' Representative Council] submitted its memorandum of grievances to the BPA for representation to the Minister [of Police].65 [Emphasis added.]
Winnie Mandela bridged not only the gap between the generations but also that between the resistance organizations. She was "not only … actively involved in the BPA, she was also a leader of the ANC."66 As such she was the obvious target for investigations by the (security) police, and her links to students were closely scrutinized, as is described in the essay, "Winnie Mandela—Youth Leader?"
[Gilbey:] Winnie had embraced Black Consciousness wholeheartedly. Black pride was a cause she could sincerely identify with. The trial she had attended following her unbanning was that of twelve student leaders whom she described as "a source of real inspiration and the leaders of tomorrow" [Cape Times, 3 October 1975], and she subsequently met and had talks with Steve Biko and other student leaders. As a result she was identified as a Black Consciousness activist by the government, although her position did not reflect that of the ANC, which continued to be a multi-racial concern. In her reaction to the energy of Black Consciousness she may not have reflected the position of the ANC's imprisoned and exiled leaders but she was very much in step with the feeling spreading among black youth across the country.67120
[Motlana:] The youth, many of whom came under the influence of Black Consciousness, related very well to Winnie Mandela; they never had problems accepting Winnie's leadership, she transcends these differences. They go to her from all over. So in the BPA (Black Parents' Association) we needed the kind of role Winnie can play, her ability to bridge the gap between the youth and the adults and the different ideological factions.68
One of the reasons for what Motlana had called the "awful schism" was without a doubt the fact of exile, the physical and experiential distance it had created between the PAC and the ANC, and the new generation of student activists, quite aside from historic differences between the ANC and the PAC. Two important issues have shaped the debate about the roles and standing of these organizations in 1976 as well as in the period that followed, as the ANC took the experience of the students during 1976 and sought to embrace it—or to appropriate it into the narrative of its own, and now dominant, liberation history. The first issue, about the differences between the Black Consciousness Movement and the ANC, was centered on the somewhat narrow idea that the Black Consciousness Movement espoused a clear antiwhite philosophy while the ANC continued to be a multiracial organization. The other issue was the question of how much of a hand the ANC had had in the organization and planning of the uprising on June 16. Ironically, this too became the major preoccupation of the South African government, which was to go to great lengths to try to prove these connections, as is shown in Chapter 3, Part 3: "Confronting Each Other: The ANC and the Cillié Commission."
Sam: "...I already had a clear vision of what was taking place." Sam: "We had materials at
home, books at home, that my brother would tell me "you'd better read these books," and I would read such books. [...] I will remember
books such as "Roots," I read it through, at my very earliest age. Some few other that I read, the pamphlets from the organization,
about the life of Mandela, his struggle, the Rivonia trial. I read those things before I went to my secondary school. So when I went
to my secondary school, I already had a clear vision of what was taking place."
There is little doubt that some students, especially those who had studied and read a lot and who had engaged with the history of struggle
in the country, would have had some knowledge of the ANC, its ideals, leaders, and political history. And there is little doubt that, for
some, connections had been made. Sam Mashaba remembered being quite aware of the role of the ANC in the history of resistance.
(tertiary-level) institutions (universities, teacher-training colleges, etc.) and students at high schools and other secondary schools.
Zakes: "The ANC, was ours." Zakes: "The ANC, was ours. You know, I grew up within the ANC.
A differently father organization, it gives you … not to hate, the politics of hatred, our politics was not based on the question of race,
or to hate a certain racial group. No. It was based on the apartheid system, to understand correctly what is apartheid. And in the end what
will result in this system itself to be checked, for future generations and all this … So that one could be brought in a position to look
at it in a broader way, not narrow.
So this, and the question of recruitment. To teach how to recruit for the ANC. So it was, that time it was still a build-up to 1976. By
then already, we have penetrated, even the student organizations. Because if you remember, there was SASO, there was SASM, which was through
ANC … we have our people within the student organisations, so that [telephone] …
We were still at the point where I was telling you about the cells, how they functioned, the aims and objectives … The recruitment,
if you remember, started before the uprising. By the time the uprising came into being, already most of some of the youth, had left the
country… to Botswana, they started there […] By February/March there was already a movement already."
Zakes Molotsi's was a decidedly ANC point of view, from which it was assumed that the ANC
had been quite present in the townships, that they had begun recruiting students before the uprising, and that its members had penetrated the
student organizations. As a member of the youth, he did, however, recognize the weakness and ineffectiveness of both the ANC and the PAC, and
he understood the need for a common cause and purpose despite the differences among them.
Zakes: "there was no tension, on the ground." Zakes: "No, there was none [tension]-that time, it
was a close[d] society. There was no ANC, there was no PAC. The organization, these organizations, they existed underground, but above the
ground level, they were really not there, because it was difficult to talk about these organizations. You could not even refer to them by
names in '76. So that is why it was a question of-everybody was just associating with any other [unclear] as long as we all agree. That's
why even now, it's … so important even now that people should accept, my belief, that we should accept, yes, you are right to believe
in whatever way you want to. As long as we don't take those differences physically. Inside here they existed, but it was not about that. So
it was not easy to trace that this particular person belongs to the ANC, this one belongs to the PAC, this one belongs to AZAPO. It was very
difficult to do that.
[…] there was no tension, on the ground."
The fact is that the students found themselves very much on their own in 1976 with little to hope from the exiled liberation movements or
from the senior movements like SASO and the BPC (Black People's Convention),
whose leadership had already been weakened in the years immediately prior to 1976, and whose remaining leaders, like Kenneth Rachidi, Tom Manthata,
and Aubrey Mokoena, were quickly detained by the authorities.69 They organized themselves as best
they could, defined and redefined their institutional identities as needed, and developed multiple strategies and communication networks between
and within their organizations, all in defiance of repeated efforts by the authorities to smash them.
The understanding, and probably the reality, of who had organized the marches, who had started the protests, when they had started, who "owned" the movement or who was responsible for certain actions and processes, how much planning there had been and by whom and when—all this depended very much on the position of the speaker at the time and on the act of remembering the events of Soweto, remembering them in the time of the present. None of the lines that divided students and organizations were static. Students straddled different organizations and negotiated the difficult terrain of leadership, planning, and organization as the ever changing situation dictated. Some boundaries were eventually blurred by the solidarity engendered by severe police action, and they in turn gave way to new differences and divisions among those who participated in the uprising. Neither the chain of command nor the ownership of the uprising were ever completely clear, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to impose order on the way the events or different historical actors in Soweto (and later in other parts of the country) interacted with each other, what the direction of influence or leadership might have been. Historical accounts have tended to focus on the leadership and the organizational structures and have deflected attention from those who believe they began it all, perhaps in smaller and less organized ways, by protesting Afrikaans in their schools long before the student movements articulated their own responses to a ruling that did not immediately affect them, and long before those movements organized themselves to express their solidarity and, in the process, to a certain extent, imposed their leadership on their younger counterparts in the schools.
Sifiso Ndlovu: "Ours was one of the schools chosen" Sifiso Ndlovu: "Ours [Phefeni Junior Secondary School] was one of the schools chosen where the pilot program of this directive was to be implemented." Sifiso Ndlovu] In a small but important book published in 1998,70 Sifiso Ndlovu, and his informants, Njabulo Nkonyane and Paul Ndaba, introduced an account according to which the impetus for the march and for the sustained resistance against Afrikaans came not from the high schools (senior secondary schools) but from the junior secondary schools.71 The evidence seems to support this, and it is clear that students at several different schools most affected by the new Afrikaans ruling were the first to oppose it, clashing with teachers, principals, and eventually the police.72
125Already in late May 1976, however, at the General Student Council meeting of the high-school student organization SASM (South African Students' Movement)73, at St. Ansgars, the executive adopted a resolution on the issue of the "Afrikaans Strike," thus not only recognizing the relevance of the issue but also taking an active stand on it. It noted:
1) The strikes that have been going on in Soweto against Afrikaans being used as the medium of instruction.
2) It's national implications to Black people in this country.
Then resolves:
1) To fully pledge on solidarity with the schools on strike against
2) To actively sympathize with those schools on strike.74
The students had decided at their subsequent meeting, on June 13, that they would march by "any route leading to Phefeni Junior Secondary School" from schools all over Soweto to demonstrate their solidarity with those schools and students that had already been on strike and protesting the new imposition of the Afrikaans ruling.
The march on the morning of June 16 took students out of their classrooms and had them moving together along the streets of Soweto toward a common goal. It was a process that gathered immense momentum as it unfolded, and it produced a sense of togetherness and solidarity while simultaneously creating an almost physical connection between schools along the route, giving spatial dimension to the sense of belonging. The students moved through Soweto roughly in three columns: one, from Morris Isaacson and led by Tsietsi Mashinini, Lazarus Mphahlele, and Mefi [Murphey] Morobe, passed Thesele Junior Secondary School in Mofolo and the Sizwe Stores; another, from Naledi Senior Secondary School, was led by David Kutumela and Tebello Motapanyane and gathered up students from Thomas Mofolo Junior Secondary School and Moletsane Junior Secondary School; a third column came from Sekano-Ntoane Senior Secondary School, collecting students from Senoane Junior Secondary School, and it moved along Potchefstroom Road, where they were joined by students from Ibhongo Junior Secondary School.
Once gathered at Phefeni Junior Secondary School, Tsietsi Mashinini was going "to address the students on the Afrikaans issue, telling them why other schools had to show their solidarity with the schools that were on strike against Afrikaans being used as a medium of instruction and also that the students should not go back to school, not until the demand against Afrikaans has been met."75
130By all accounts, it seems, Seth Mazibuko was the link between the affected students from junior secondary schools and the less affected, but possibly politically more organized, students in the high schools, as he was later to be the person who linked the student movement in the city to that in the countryside:
Seth … was given the mandate to drum up support for us from other junior secondary schools who were also affected by this issue… We would try to meet but we had problems from the police… Other schools did not have the problem. They would go to school and discuss issues. This is what happened at Morris Isaacson, and Naledi High and all other high schools…76
Seth Mazibuko described how pamphlets, "inviting the pupils to attend the SASM meeting at the DOCC Hall, Soweto, on 13.6.1976 at 2 P.M.," were distributed at Phefeni Junior Secondary School on June 11, 1976 He did not himself see who was distributing the pamphlets at his school but received one from another student there.
Ndlovu in Counter-memories points to differences among students along a line that divided high-school students from junior secondary schoolchildren.77 It was a line that closely paralleled the divide between those who would immediately be affected by the new imposition of the Afrikaans ruling and those, who by virtue of their more senior standing, were not directly affected by it. (See essays: Setting the Stage and The Schools.) It is a divide that Seth Mazibuko also echoed:
We [Phefeni Junior Secondary School] were just separated by a fence from Orlando West High, and definitely, Orlando West High being our senior school, you would imagine that now we would have gone, maybe, to seek for help there, or direction, but they didn't know that there was something happening … just—you know—a fence away. Pretoria didn't know about it, Tanzania, where the ANC was, I doubt if it knew about it78.135
Whether separated by a fence or by the thousands of miles of exile, the gap between different groups seemed infinite sometimes. Given the government's propensity to exploit any schisms or tensions among or between the students or between organizations that represented them, even to use witnesses against each other, it was not surprising that the testimonies of participants that were recorded by the Cillié Commission were filled with examples of these tensions and differences.
Related essay:
Layers of Meaning—Testimonies in Time
Zweli Sizane, a senior member of SASM, wanted to stop the demonstrations
because he was "afraid that most students would get killed." Mokoena, toward whom he had expressed his doubts, had argued that he should
not try to stop the students because he might be labeled a sellout.79 Nevertheless, on the morning
of the planned demonstrations, Sizane, together with two journalists, tried to keep track of the various groups of students marching toward
Phefeni Junior Secondary School (aka Orlando West Junior Secondary School). Stopped at the school before any of the groups had arrived, they
found only Phefeni students in the yard. The students at Orlando West Senior Secondary School next door were in class writing their half-yearly
examinations. Again, what struck a note of discord was the proposal to use force to bring other students on board:
He [Tsietsi Mashinini] also told us that if Orlando Senior Secondary School was not present at eleven a.m. at the Phefeni Junior Secondary School, then he was to tell the students to march further to Orlando Senior Secondary School, assemble outside the Orlando Stadium and from there Orlando Senior Secondary students would be fetched. Force would have to be used if they are reluctant, for Orlando Senior Secondary was believed, from the students from Orlando Senior that were present at the meeting on Sunday, to be uncooperative.80
The participants and witnesses to the uprising did not all speak with the same voice. The evidence consistently points to a division among the students. Those who were active and already organized in SASM and at high schools that already had a tradition of political activism (e.g., Morris Isaacson, with a liberal principal and the influence and presence of Tiro) were distinguished from those who were active on the Afrikaans issue (e.g., Phefeni Junior Secondary School) but not affiliated to an organization. SASM provided the forum when students did begin to organize, although it was by no means the prime mover behind the uprising:
At the DOCC on June 13th … this is when and where plans were made for a three-day boycott and demonstration on June 16. SASM did not really control the meeting, it called it, it convened it … it created the platform.140
[…]
So we came together at the DOCC and it was at this meeting that we resolved to have a peaceful demonstration by all students in Soweto.81
It is a division emphasized by Ndlovu and the voices he documents, but it was further supported by a curious separation in the later narratives about Soweto, which have as the target of the march Orlando West High School and, alternatively, Phefeni Junior Secondary School—"just separated by a fence"82 from one another. The close physical proximity of the two schools, even though one was a high school and the other a junior secondary school, may explain the apparent difficulty of distinguishing between them:
[O]ur preparation was such that we saw ourselves on this day marching from all different points of Soweto, towards Orlando West high school, where one of the junior secondary schools which had been longest in boycotting classes around Afrikaans issue was located. And the idea was that we would be marching towards that point as a way in which we are going to pledge our solidarity with that secondary school."83
Murphy Morobe , speaking on Radio 702 on June 16, 1993, was also explicit about the distinction between junior and senior students, and he emphasized leadership by the latter:
[A]lmost all of the high schools in Soweto marched. And I think that one, one, when one talks about numbers it is difficult to estimate, but it literally ran into the thousands because there was no high school that did not go out… [T]he message of the issue was exemplified when almost all the students came out. Even at primary schools. We tried our best to discourage primary school children at that point from joining us in the march, and we actually arranged such that … in fact they could be advised to be dispersed early and to not join the march.
[…]
We were worried. I think that there was a concern, we wanted to restrict the activities largely to high school students, those who were directly affected by this. And also, in fact, the degree of responsibility that in fact one could place on high school students was different from what you could place on primary school children. So, we had to make … we tried to make that distinction.84 (See Chapter 5: "Afrikaans".)
The term student was itself contested and confusing. Sifiso Ndlovu:
145One has to also point out the problematic manner in which the terms "student" or "pupil" are used when discussing the origins of the uprisings. These terms are used simplistically, in a way that does not highlight and take into cognisance [sic] the various differences among us. We were not a homogenous group.85
This was especially true where the language was caught up in the government's attempts to discredit the youth, define the participants in accordance with its own agendas and assumptions about the capabilities and capacities of young people and adults, or defer responsibility to outside, older agitators—sometimes with arguments that bordered on the ridiculous:
Cillié:What is a student, according to the definition of SASO?Mokoena:A student is one who is in an academic pursuit in any field of study at an institution of higher learning… that is post-matric.
[…]Cillié:Mashinini was a scholar at Morris Isaacson School… Now what did you call him? A student or a scholar?Mokoena:Well, we called him a student. The word student was rather used loosely, except that in our constitution [SASO] we specify that it … referred to those who are studying in post-matriculation courses.Cillié:So you say you have used the word "student" loosely?Mokoena:Yes, even the newspapers use the word loosely and they do not make a difference, a strict difference between high school student and university student.Cillié:Well, it is a high school scholar surely.Mokoena:Yes, arguably so.Cillié:I do not understand why you say arguably so. It is so, isn't it?Mokoena:Well, I suppose the press media have influenced people to use the word "student" commonly. If you read a newspaper they always talk of students have gone back to school, students are not going back to school and so on. They do not say scholars. Another sense in which the word "scholar" is used is at the high university level where you say professor so and so is a scholar, he is an outstanding scholar in this discipline.Cillié:No, no, you know that is not the scholar I am speaking of. Were you ever at a university?Mokoena:Yes, I was.Cillié:Where?Mokoena:At Turfloop.Cillié:There you were a student.Mokoena:Quite so.Cillié:When did you leave there?Mokoena:In 1972.[…]
Cillié:Now since then you were no longer a student because you were not at a university.Mokoena:No, but I was a student because I was studying with the University of South Africa.[…]
Cillié:Were you still during 1976 a registered student of the University of South Africa?Mokoena:Definitely.Cillié:As such did that admit you to membership of SASO?Mokoena:Yes…Cillié:People who were at different schools, for example the Morris Isaacson School, they were strictly speaking scholars.Mokoena:Yes.Cillié:Loosely they were referred to as students.Mokoena:Yes, quite so.Cillié:They would be entitled, most, to associate membership of SASO.86Even among the "students" themselves, their status and the terminology associated with it were complicated, especially where commitment to and engagement with the struggle against the Afrikaans-language issue and questions of who the architects of organized action had been were at stake. Like the different paths that led to Phefeni Junior Secondary School, the experiences and actions of ordinary students caught up in or creating the events of that day were vastly different, depending on many factors and realities. As Ndlovu, himself a 14-year-old student at Phefeni Junior Secondary School in 1976, had pointed out above, some students had never heard of or joined a student movement:87
Students from the various high schools in Soweto were not at first interested in our plight and struggle, as they were using English as a medium of instruction. They carried on with their studies as if nothing was happening during the formative, crucial days leading to the uprisings. I remember that in my school the senior students, Form Three (Std Eights), were both aloof and dismissive towards us. The Form Four and Five students from our high school and our neighbours, Orlando West High (popularly known as Matseke) were equally uninterested. The majority of the senior students were very reactionary and perceived us as young upstarts and delinquents who were interfering and disturbing "normal" schooling. Therefore like the Tsietsis of those early days, they simply went on with their studies in March, April, May and early June 1976 without questioning the status quo.88The Confrontation