Soweto: The Fruit of Fear [paperback ed.] 0865430403, 9780865430402, 0802802486, 9780802802484

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TER MAGUBANE

Foreword by Desi

SOWETO

The Fruit of Fear

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Copyright © 1986 by Peter Magubane Text copyright © 1986 by Desmond M. Tutu, Harry Mashabela, Marian Shinn, Monty Narsoo, and Oupa Mthimkhulu First published 1986 under the title June 16: The Fruit of Fear by Skotaville Publishers, 307 Hampstead House, 46 Biccard Street, P.O. Box 32483, Braamfontein 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa.

This edition jointly published 1986 through special arrangement with Skotaville by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 255 Jefferson Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49503 and Africa World Press, P.O. Box 1892, Trenton, N.J. 08608 Allrights reserved Printed in the United States of America. Eerdmans

ISBN 0-8028-3631-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-8028-0248-6 (paper) Africa World

ISBN 0-86543-041-1 (cloth) ISBN 0-86543-040-3 (paper)

Acknowledgments

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the publications in which some photographs, parts of the Foreword, and the poem were first published.

THE FRUIT OF FEAR In 1976 demonstrations by our children led to a nation-wide uprising where many were shot dead by the police and thousands were detained and many were forced into exile as refugees. I watched scores of children, mothers and fathers, gunned down by the police. Apartheid is the result of the fear created by the government. The violence perpetrated on the children bears the fruit of fear with bannings, detention, torture, killings, maimings and long prison terms. South Africa is facing turbulent times. The cnsis is deepening. Those who are engaged in the struggle for liberation depend on this truth and honesty for attaining their ideals. Whilst they tell their story on various platforms with different languages and ideologies, we tell it with photographs against many odds. Because our taskis a physical reality, as photographers we have to physically grapple with intense situations. Peter Magubane.

FOREWORD Our Children Are Dying, Our Land Is Bleeding’ The Most Reverend D.M. Tutu

In 1976, out of growing concern and deepening apprehension about the mood in Soweto, one of increasing anger and bitterness and frustration, I wrote an open letter to the then Prime Minister Mr B J Vorster. In it I was warning him that unless something was done and done urgently to remove the causes of black anger then I was fearful of what was likely to erupt because black people were growing increasingly restive under the oppressive yoke of apartheid and for young people it was represented in the insensitive determinination to enforce Afrikaans as a medium of instruction on them in their inferior schools in a system of education that had been designed by its author Dr Verwoed for inferiority. My letter was dismissed contemptuously by Mr Vorster as a propaganda ploy somehow engineered by the Progressive Federal Party. He did not even think I could as a black person have the intelligence to know the grievances of my own people nor the ability if I did to compose a letter to express those grievances. (See Hope and Suffering, 1983.) A few weeks later June 16th happened and South Africa has not had real peace and stability since then. I refer to this first effort to show that for over ten years I have attempted to alert the authorities in this land to the dangers to which their misguided and iniquitous policies were exposing our beloved country. In that 1976 letter | referred to some of the minimum conditions that would enable blacks to feel that their plight was being taken seriously. I have made many public statements urging the government to act decisively and to give blacks hope. I have since then on many occasions intervened in delicate volatile situations to try and help diffuse them. I have with other black and white leaders gone to Turfloop and Fort Hare Universities to offer our good offices to resolve the perennial problems relating to student boycotts on those campuses. This was the action of someone who believed that problems can be solved by people sitting down together to discuss their differences. This has been a fundamental stance on my part. I have spoken to various white groups and addressed audiences at all the white university campuses (except

University of Port Elizabeth). I have been even to the University of the Orange Free State and | can tell you that that was something else. I have

been to some of than once. I was munity for doing just wasting time.

these universities often more criticised in the black comso because it was said I was I believed andI still believe

that we must try to undo the evil consequences of apartheid, and one of these is that white and black don't really know one another and so | was ready as Istill am ready to talk, especially to young whites to help them see, and so help them to think in the hope that by thinking independently they would come to reject this horrendous policy so utterly evil, immoral and unChristian which their fathers and mothers have tended to support, and by their rejection help to save our country from catastrophe. For I still believe our young people, black and white, will be our salvation. In 1980 on my initiative some of the leaders of the South African Council of Churches and of member churches went to see Mr P W Botha who was then Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues. We were trying to make them understand that unrest would be endemic in South Africa unless its root cause was removed — and that root cause was apartheid. We declared then that we knew that policies was the art of the possible and did not want to suggest they do anything which would erode their support among their constituency. And we put forward four items of things which if they were done would be a dramatic demonstration of the Government's intention to effect real political change leading to political power-sharing. Remember this was in 1980, nearly six years ago. We said: e Declare a commitment to a common citizenship for all South Africans in an undivided South Africa; e Abolish the Pass Laws (even a phased abolition to avoid chaos), detention without trial and arbitrary banning; @ Stop all forced population removals immediately; and e Establish a uniform education system. These were not wild radical demands and if the Government had implemented them then we would have been saved a great deal of anguish, bloodshed and the loss of property and an increase in bitterness and hatred and anger. We were criticised in the black community for going to the Government. These were much the same conditions I had mentioned in my 1976 letter to Mr Vorster. But you know what happened? These were ignored. Despite all this, I tried again last year to see

the State President to talk with him as one South African to a fellow South African, as one grandfather to another, as one Christian to another in the hope that he would act as only he could, the one white South African for whom blacks would have been ready to erect a statue as the man who would have gone down in history as having presided over the dissolution of apartheid and the emergence of a new, a more equitable, a just, a non-racial and truly democratic South Africa. He turned me down. In parenthesis I might add that I have said he needed to be commended for his courage in telling whites that there was no way in which they alone could determine the future of this country forever. Sadly he did not go far enough and so ended up pleasing neither the blacks nor his so-called nght wing. To turn an English expression around, we see the sad spectacle of a man who does not have the convictions of his courage. Yet I was ready to go to Alexandra Township (in February 1986) to help diffuse the tense situation there and to go in a delegation to Cape Town to talk with the government about that situation and the situation in the country. In 1984 far from heeding our calls for negotiation leading to power-sharing, the Government introduced a Constitution which was the climax of the policies of exclusion to which blacks had been subjected since 1910. Seventy three percent of the population was excluded from any participation in this monumental hoax designed to hoodwink the international community that apartheid was being 1eformed. Apartheid is irreformable. It must be destroyed before it destroys our country. That constitution was meant to entrench white minority rule with the coopted help of so-called Coloureds and Indians, collaborators in their own and our oppression and exploitation. The people have rejected it unequivocally and August 1984 saw the beginning of the current wave of unrest. Over |200 blacks have died since August 1984. Blacks are killed mainly by the security forces, almost as if they were flies. Children are detained. Children are killed. It is alleged fifty were shot in the back outside a court. I have heard hardly a squeak from the whites who claim they are concerned for black suffering. That is real actual black suffering, not future possible suffering. They say the state of emergency has been lifted. On Easter Sunday, I saw a Casspir rumbling down Soweto Highway. On Easter Monday in our part of Soweto, much the most quiet part, four Casspirs and personnel carners drove past my house. My wife said, ‘The border is here’ — the troops are still in the townships after the Durban Education Confer-

ence which took a brave decision about the children staying in school and we have the insensitivity of the authorities displaying their military might when they know the presence of the troops in the townships is highly provocative. Nothing that Mr Botha has said has made me

believe that he and his Government are serious about dismantling apartheid. He says we are one nation and just as we are rejoicing then he says we are a nation of minorities — unadulterated and dangerous nonsense of bantustans. If we are one nation, then why should KwaNdebele be going for this spurious independence, why should the people of Moutse die to satisfy a racist ideology? There will be an end to Pass Laws and we say ‘Hurrah! and then we hear that there will be ‘orderly urbanisation’. Since blacks have been artificially stopped from being urbanised, orderly urbanisation will apply to them alone, and so some form of influx control will have to be applied. And then there were the devastating resignations of Dr van Zyl Slabbert and Dr Boraine. The media played down their significance. These two gentlemen were endorsing our long stated views that Parliament in South Africa is a mere charade. The PFP have always given the world the illusory impression that we have a parliamentary democracy when we really have a one party state which is viciously oppressive and unjust and violent in putting down opposition and dissent. You are banned, detained or charged with high treason! Our children are dying. Our land is burning and bleeding... There is a great deal of goodwill still in our country between the races. Let us not be so wanton in destroying it. We can live together as one people, one family, black and white together. Peter Magubane is a consummate artist with the lens and he has quite rightly gained an outstanding international reputation. In the present collection JUNE 16 — The Fruit of Fear Peter's stills have been used to bring to the notice of a wider audience a remarkable record of what has happened ina beautiful but sad and divided land in the traumatic upheaval of the uprisings since June 16th 1976. Since then the crisis in our land has deepened and we are a whisker away from catastrophe. Peter gives all of us an opportunity to realise that this is so — and perhaps we.can be moved to take what action we can to help dismantle apartheid and ensure that such scenes captured in Peter Magubane's lens would not be repeated again and again in our land. Work for justice and so work for peace.

Excerpted from BLACK SOUTH AFRICA A People On The Boil (1976 — 1986), a book written by Harry Mashabela.

At about 7.30 on Wednesday morning, June 16, 1976 approximately 500 pupils crowded under the shadow of Thomas Mofolo Junior Secondary School in Naledi, a suburb of the vastness called Soweto. As they stood there, clustered like a swarm of bees, the pupils held a meeting. No teachers were in sight. Nor were they anywhere within the school premises. Passers-by who strode past did not seem to take any particular notice of the gathering. A mile away at Naledi High, principal Nathan Molope, a pastor and veteran school teacher, stood, hands clasped behind his back, outside his office. He stared blankly into the the air giving his back to the dull early morning sun as if to warm his hands. Students lingered about. Some went in and out of classrooms, some hung around in tiny groups chatting, laughing. He seemed to be in deep thoughts. When the bell for morning assembly rang students streamed out of classrooms. They joined the groups standing outside. They produced posters or placards from under their clothes and unfurled them amid intermittent cries of “Power! Away with Afrikaans’ and “Free Azania, Power!” Then they moved in a rather confused column not to the assembly quadrangle but towards the main gate. Molope did not know what was happening, he said. But “as you can see,” he added in afterthought, “there's trouble.” He pointed out a thick-set youngster marshalling the studentbody, nearly 700-strong, into Nyakale Street below. He might, the principal said, tell you what's on. Tebello Motapanyane, a student leader at the school and also secretary-general of the South African Students Movement (SASM), darted backwards and forwards urging the students to get to the streets. Brandishing and shouting slogans, they poured into the tarred road, blocking traffic and marching towards Naledi Hall. They were, he said, going to Thomas Mofolo Junior, whence they would march to Phefeni Junior Secondary School in Phefeni, another suburb situated about six miles away. The air was pregnant with excitement. Younger school children, cheering, watched

from the roadside. A white Press photographer tried to get a shot. Tebello saw him, rushed and, gesticulating, warned him not to do anything of the sort. Pictures would get them into trouble with the police. The photographer backed into his car, Tebello dashed back, joining the march. In Central West Jabavu, Morris Isaacson High was already deserted. A crude sign “No SBs (Security Branch police) Allowed. Enter at your own risk” hung at the gate. A group of teachers sat forlornly in front of the laboratory on the southern wing of the school. The headmaster, Lekgau Mathabathe, was not among them. His students, 800 of them, had gone to Phefeni, said his deputy, Norman Malebane. Earlier that morning events at the school had been rather unusual, to say the least. As the assembly bell rang at eight o'clock, students hurriedly collected together and, led by Tsietsi Mashinini, enthusiastically broke into song: “Masibulele ku Jesu; ngokuba wasifela (Let's pray to Jesus; for He died for us),” they sang, without waiting for Malebane who normally conducted assembly sessions. After the hymn, they sang with equal enthusiasm “Nkosi Sikelel' i-Afrika,” the African national anthem. Malebane who had been walking to the assembly, stopped in his tracks. He did nothing whatsoever. Thank God, he laughed, he had been warned and thus did not want to interfere. That would have been disastrous. It would have wrought a lot of trouble for him. Still singing the national anthem, and waving placards, they marched out of the school grounds into Mphuthi Street, leaving behind startled teachers. Two days earlier Mathabathe, the lanky headmaster who was also an executive member of the African Teachers Association of South Af rica (ATASA), Cripple Care Association, Parents Vigilante Committee and chairman of the Post-primary School Principals Union, had disclosed that Soweto high school students planned to hold a public protest march on Wednesday. They wanted to protest in sympathy with pupils at five higher primary and junior secondary schools who had been boycotting classes for five weeks; objecting to compulsory use of Afrikaans as medium of instruction. But the kids had caught everybody with their pants down. The public seemed to have missed the few news reports there were or they considered them not serious, if at all. But whatever the general attitude of South Afnica was, the Soweto schoolchildren were dead serious. And it turned out to be a momentous day, a day never to be forgotten. From Thomas Mofolo, the column which

started at Naledi High but was now almost doubled, marched down Mphatlalatsane Street on the southern part of the township. They chanted freedom songs amid the racuous rallying cry: P-o-w-e-1! Power! Some older people and younger children

stood watching from the sides, with some of the kids swelling the march. Tebello, flanked by his lieutenants, some

wielding sticks and knobkerries, led the column. Across the rivulet within the hollowed open space cutting Naledi from Tladi, the column swung left. It moved northwards through the grassy veld at the bottom of Tladi, then right into Ligwale Street. It turned eastwards. A little above but below Tladi Clinic, waited three police cars. The column approached. The police officers slowly drove ahead. They turned left at the Zola/Ligwale T-junction, but the march turned right towards Moletsane. The pupils, still singing and waving, taunted motorists travelling in the opposite direction. They hit cars with open hands and some motorists, frightened by the marching throng, turned back or fled into side streets. At the top of Moletsane, the march once again turned right towards Molapo, where they collected more other students from Molapo Junior. Cavorting in the streets through Jabavu and Mofolo South, they headed towards Nancefield Station. Then they swung left at the bottom of the Vocational Training Centre moving towards Dube Village, the famed tourist attraction with posh houses, some of them double-storeyed, on the way to Phefeni Junior beyond the rugged ridge ahead. Thousands other students from other schools — Musi, Mncube, Sekano-Ntoane, Mornis Isaacson, Meadowlands, Diepkloof, Orlando North — were already converging in Vilakazi Street outside Phefeni Junior. Phefeni Junior pupils and High, West Orlando nearby from those streamed out, some jumping over fences, to meet them. Woman columnist Lucy Gough Berger of The Star was caught up in the crowds around Beverly Hills and she later wrote: ‘I couldn't get over their size. The boys bulked out of their clothes, the girls, legs like sturdy tree trunks beneath their gymns, squarely stood their ground... One look at the sullen expression of a group of hefty girls put paid to my idea of talking to them. A teacher from the school came to us: ‘Get that car our of here — they're coming!’ he urged. On the brow of the hill, in a great dusty whirl-

wind, a phalanx of high school kids chanting surged down

the road in thousands.

Below us,

pupils from Phefeni began running to meet them. ‘Hurry,’ cried the teacher. Timothy, the driver, turned into the deserted long drive of Orlando West High School. The river of a placard and stick-waving pupils outside the school's meshed fence converged like two rivers of protest in an emotional embrace. That was the moment they saw me snapping away from behind the tree. A black youth of about fifteen years, with a two metre-long sawblade, thrust his face close to mine. Another plnioned me against the car. ‘What do you want?’ they screamed. I mouthed something but nobody heard. All around were menacing clenched fists and shouts of ‘Black Power.’ ‘Get out of this ground now,’ roared a youth waving a whopping big stick. ‘This is black property. Get out, get out white woman,’ they chanted. It was driver Timothy — cool, wise Timothy — whose words in that split second, while the mob hesitated, saved me. ‘heave her alone. She’s from a newspaper, she is not from the Department of Bantu Education,’ he pleaded. ‘Alright Daddy, take your car and take her out of here!’ The youth with the sawblade cleared the way like a cop while the pupils fell back a few centimetres and continued thumping on the windows of the hemmeda-in car. At the gate, the escort ceased. The huge crowd blocked the entire street. It stood almost half a mile deep down the road, awaiting thousands more from Naledi, Moletsane, Molapo and Emdeni. A policeman stood with a stengun cradled and a van full of police dogs next to him. More police arrived in vans, trucks. They were armed and also accompanied by dogs. They climbed out of the vehicles and moved behind five officers, walking side by side towards the singing throng. Opposite both the Phefeni Junior and the Orlando West High schools, the massive, animated crowd standing deep down the road, blocked the street entirely. Impish, bouyant, they sang, waving placards. Five white police officers in blue uniforms stood side by side in the middle of the road about fifteen paces away. They found the sea of black faces below. Behind them more and more uniformed police, most of them black, and riot squad men alighted from police trucks, armed with rifles and accompanied by howling dogs. They strode down the tarred road towards the officers, the amassed pupils.

They joked among themselves as they moved on. Several women, some with babies strapped to their backs, watched in groups from the roadside. Eeriness hung in the air. “Are you really going to kill our children,” a woman in a group asked an African police sergeant as he strode past. “No, there'll be no shooting,” the officer said calmly. “The children are not fighting anybody, they are only demonstrating.” He was still talking when the white officer on the extreme right quickly stepped to the side, stooped down and picked what seemed a stone. Then he hurled the object into the huge crowd. Instantly, the kids in front of the column scattered to the sides. They picked up stones, then hurriedly surged back into the street. “Power! Power!!” they screamed, hesitantly advancing towards the police. Bang, a shot rang out, then another and yet another. In rapid succession. The throng broke up with pupils fleeing in all directions to the rugged ridge behind the two schools, into alley ways, side streets and into homes. Some collapsed in their tracks as they fled, some ran on. Some remained petrified in the middle of the road. Police paid no attention to them. They stared at those running away. A police dog charged at the diminishing group in the street. And the group stoned it dead. Police fire stopped just as suddenly. A kid and a man lay dead, with several others wounded. It seemed everybody was terribly shaken, but much more so the students themselves. They were grim, sullen, baffled. Dumbfounded, they stood in groups all over the area while the wounded lay groaning on the ground. For a moment even the on-lookers who had watched the singing and placard-waving and then the bloody spectacle were petrified with fright. The peaceful protest march had turned sour. In a devastatingly cruel sort of way, an unprovoked show of power. Police climbed on to their vehicles. They drove away and camped on an open ground across the Klip River which runs between Orlando West and Orlando East townships. For a while, the scattered, bewildered pupils stood, as if ina trance. Then they regrouped, returning to the street. Helped by motorists and reporters, they collected the dead and wounded. Some were driven to Baragwanath Hospital about two miles away, some were carried to the nearby Phefeni Clinic. In the confusion, an African policeman was comered by pupils in a toilet at a house near the scene. He was beaten, then handcuffed with his own handcuffs and chased down the streets

across the river. A shyish teenage school girl, Tiny Petersen, searched for her young brother, Hector. She had seen him in the crowds earlier that morning and told him not to disappear for she wanted to go hom with him after the march. Now Hector, twelve and a grade six pupil, had melted away. Where could he be? Had he fled home, leaving her behind? She wondered as she mingled with the milling thousands. He had left home in Jabavu, where they attended school and lived with grandma Martha Tolk, the day before. He had spent the night with their parents in Meadowlands and joined the protest march without touching home in Jabavu that morning. She wanted him to get home with her. Where could he be? Then she saw a group of boys surrounding a youngster who lay injured on the side of a street. She went to them. As she could not clearly see the kid lying on the ground, she moved closer and looked. Hector! It was Hector! He was bleeding. He had been shot. She called him but he neither responded nor opened his eyes. She screamed, hysterically. Mbuyisa Makhubu, tall and wearing tattered, sullied overalls, helped Tiny carry the injured lad away. The tall boy carried him in his arms while she walked on the side. The horror of the whole tragedy was mirrored in their faces as they walked down the street. They took him to the clinic. Here, the nurses asked them to wait while they carried him to a doctor in another room. The big boy left. She waited. Hector was certified dead, but Tiny was not told. Instead, nurses told women teachers who were also at the clinic and the teachers asked her to take them to her home, where they broke the bad news to the family. Wearing white shorts and a white jacket, Dr Nthato Motlana, deputy chairman of the Parents Vigilante Committee, trotted past a group of pupils down Vilakazi Street. He stopped in front of Dr Aaron Matlhare’s house, where another group stood chattering. Visibly shaken, Motlana muttered: “It's bad, terribly bad.” He wanted to see Matlhare, he said. But Matlhare, he was told, was not around. He had taken some of the wounded to hospital. The vigilante committee, said Motlana while waiting, was responsible for the ugliness which had happened. If Dr Sipho Nyembezi, its chairman, had called meetings as he had repeatedly asked him to do, they could have avoided the whole bloody mess by negotiating with the Department of Bantu Education to rescind its Afrikaans order. A teetotaller and non-smoker, Motlana had,

since the banning of the ANC, devoted his life to serving the Soweto community. He had founded the Black Medical Discussion Group in the late 60s to raise funds from its members for needy medical students. And despite his success as a medical practitioner, he was involved in many other community organisations. He had helped form the vigilante committee during the 1972 university students disturbances and the committee had negotiated re-admission of expelled students with some measure of success. Characteristically, he seemed utterly concerned today. Motlana was still talking when he saw Matlhare among another group a distance away. He ran to him. And after their talk, he whispered to me that this committee would be joining hands with the Soweto Parents Association, which was headed by Matlhare, in order to speak in one voice and plan a mass burial of the dead. The vigilante committee would meet that evening, he said. He would tell other members of the new plan. The parents association would also meet. He and Matlhare would confer by telephone after their meetings. As he went away, Matlhare asked me to attend his executive meeting in his surgery that evening. He had, he said, not been to work since early that morning. It was obvious that the merger was on the cards, the evening meetings were mere formalities. A pall of smoke was billowing in Pela Street, not far from the scene of the shootings. A band of pupils were burning a municipal vehicle while thousands more roamed Pela and Vilakazi streets. They were putting up roadblocks with derelict cars from the side of the streets. In Vilakazi Street, a group attacked a milk delivery truck. As the driver fled, pupils grabbed the milk, before driving it away. With it,they conveyed others to strategic points throughout the townships for more roadblocks. Another vehicle, a company car, was set alight; a trailer sped recklessly down the streets amid shouts of “Amandla! Amandla!!” It was driven by some students. A helicopter hovered above, dropping teargas on the crowds milling within the streets. Vehicles were being stoned in Pela Street, the main road from Phefeni to Johannesburg. Rioting had erupted. Confusion reigned everywhere. Police remained across the river with more re-inforcements from the not squad joining them. At Central West Jabavu, just below the Morris Isaacson High School, a mob of angry children attacked the administrative offices after they had chased a white man into the building. They smashed the windows of the building, dragged

the white man out. Dr Melville Edelstein was stoned to death, the building gutted. Black workers watched in horror as the kids, using rocks, crushed the man’s head it is claimed. It was apparent at this stage that schoolchildren directed their venom at police, whites, commercial vehicles, administration buildings and virtually everything connected with the government. Blacks, who would not respond to the “Amandla!” rallying cry by raising a clenched fist and shouting when the kids screamed the same cry and saluted, were also beaten and their private, personal vehicles damaged. A clenched fist, the Black Power salute, had become a passport to safety. Something was burning inside the street above. We could only see dark smoke shooting into the air. I ran up the road to see what it was. “G-e-t back,” a group of students a distance away shouted. I stopped, almost instantly, looking at them. They waved at me to get back. There was no other way. Defiance would spell trouble, | thought. As I retreated I had a brainwave. Glancing to see whether they watched, I Jumped into a yard, then into another, joining an elderly woman. “Oh, our children, what are they doing?” she shook her head in disbelief. A van belonging to the West Rand Administration Board, the notorious local authority governing Soweto, was on fire. Pupils had set it alight. She did not know what had happened to the poor driver. He must have escaped, she said somewhat wishfully. She seemed stricken with fear, fear of what might happen as a result of what was happening. I thought and wondered whether she blamed the children or the police for what was happening. “P-o-w-e-r!” shrill voices pierced the air for the umpteeth time. | got back to Matlhare's house. A group — the house servant in it — still waited outside. I went past into the house. I was still on the telephone inside the house talking to the newsdesk at the office in Johannesburg when the servant banged the door, shouting. “Come out. They'll kill us. They're burning the house,” she screamed plaintively. Without thinking, I also shouted into the phone: “I'm phoning from Dr Matlhare. They're burning the house.” Then I hung up, running behind the servant. A mob of youngsters lingered in front of the house. “Here's his car,” she mumbled, pointing at me, and the mob surrounded me. “Is that your car?” someone shouted pointing at a Volkswagen parked near the motor-gate.

“No, it's not mine. It belongs to the World newspaper and I work for the Star.” ‘It's a lie. We are burning it. If it's not yours, can we?” “If you want you can burn it. It's not mine.” “It belongs to the police, we understand.” “You can burn it if you want but it isn’t a police car; it belongs to the World.” They looked at one another. “Los hom— leave him,” someone said. “Okay Daddy,” they scuttled in a pack. A little later, however, someone came to fetch the car and it was not a member of the World staffl Had I mistakenly saved a police vehicle? I felt ill at ease. From Matlhare’s house I moved away to the open ground above Uncle Tom's Hall below Phefeni Clinic. A large crowd crammed the area and above them roared a helicopter. It circled above an even more crowded spot ahead. Police vans from across the rivulet below began moving in a convoy up Pela Street. A number of children scattered in all directions. The police convoy stopped in a side street near the clinic along the main road and the helicopter above kept its protective watch. More and more people rushed to the spot. An ambulance pulled up. It stopped in the middle of the road directly opposite the side street. Police surrounded the ambulance. Two white policemen took out a stretcher from the ambulance. They went into the side street. They collected a burnt body of N. Esterhuizen, a white employee of the administration board, from the right side of the pavement. On the left, a van lay smouldering. Some said it belonged to the dead man. Then the ambulance, closely followed from behind by the police convoy, drove off in the direction of Orlando Police Station across the river. The crowds sauntered away. As sunset approached, rioting increased in intensity and ferocity. Smoke, from burning buildings and vehicles, obscured the heavens above. Like a cloud, it hung darkly over the settlement. Below, the vehicles and government buildings smouldered and bands of chanting youths, armed with home-spun petrol bombs, roamed the streets. Thousands of workers were streaming back home too, They alighted from trains, buses, taxis and found the youths milling through the streets. Press photographer Leonard Kumalo, a married man with one child, was caught up in the rumpus. He was accosted by a group after he had been seen by a school girl trying to take a picture. His cameras were smashed and his life threatened because, they said, he was a sell-out. Cold with fright, young Kumalo pleaded for mercy.

“If you are a brother, prove it,” they shouted as they dragged him. “Smash this building.” A youth shoved a stone into his hand. A government office building. “We are going to break it down; you must throw the first stone.” Trembling, he looked up at the building, then closed his eyes, hurling the stone. A window shattered amid cnes of “Amandla, Awethu — Power's Ours.” They attacked the building instantly and it was ablaze in no time. They have petrol, Kumalo thought. He noticed some of the children were keeping an eye on him. He was too scared to ask them to let him go. Like so many others, Kumalo had been unlucky. He had arrived in the townships late but immediately got into trouble. From the burning building, the noters ordered him to go with them to Phomolong. Several other youngsters joined them along the way as they marched, singing and shouting, towards the railway station. Somehow, he felt a little calm. They would not kill him, after all. If they spared his life, he reckoned, he could always buy other cameras. The mobsters stormed into Phomolong beerhall. They hurled insults at the old people drinking inside. Liquor, they shouted at the guzzlers, made it impossible for them to fight for their land, their freedom. Some scuttled out as the youngsters turned things upside down; others joined the kids. The nearby bottle-store was burgled and looted too. “Take brother, you'll quench your thirst when you get home,” a youngster handed Kumalo a half-dozen beers. A teetotaller, he grabbed the loot without much ado. But it was not until later that he managed to escape under cover of darkness. The experience was so shattering, he said, the thought of the police arresting them never struck them as they plundered the offices and liquor stores. Meanwhile in Naledi, Johannes Kgari had joined some people drinking in a neighbour's house the spoils looted from the local bottlestore. They talked of the looting and the shooting. Everybody was helping himself at the bottle-store and they too had grabbed the stuff on the table before them. A bachelor, Kgari had arrived home earlier than usual. He'd left his place of work in the city early because he feared he might find himself in trouble if he returned late. On arrival home he had gone to a cousin's house in another section of the township. While on the way there he saw a crowd of pupils attacking a bus at the corner of Ligwale and Ntshwe streets. The children stoned it as it sped past on the way to Zola and it seemed the driver was on the run for there were no passengers in his bus. It was his first sight of real action.

As he walked on, he heard loud noises further down. He could hear the shouting but not what was being said. Some other children, he thought. The noises came from Emdeni and seemed from a picnic. They cleaned the table. Kgari and other two men stood up. They went out into the street and walked up to Naledi bottle store. They met groups and groups of people carrying liquor all along the way. Some carried the liquor bottles by hand, some in cartons and paperbags. “This is our money,” an old man said and laughed, “how long has the white man been robbing us.” The bottle store was jammed with looters. Kgari and his acquaintances could hardly get close, let alone gain entry. They waited at a distance. The two chaps melted away into the crowds. He remained standing on the pavement wondering what to do. A car pulled to the side. Inside were five students and they greeted him. He knew only one of them. They were going to Mapetla, they told him. He climbed into the car without even finding out what they were going to do there and they drove along Mphatlalatsane Street towards Merafe rail station. The street was filled with people, young and old, singing and shouting. “The pigs have killed our brothers,” said one of the gang in the car. “We'll show them something today.” Another crowd hung around Merafe bottle store. It was looting the store too. Some youngsters emerged from the crowd and gave them brandy bottles and beers, then they disappeared. They drove on and_ finally stopped outside the Mapetla hostel where there was yet another crowd. No sooner had they got there than another car, also filled with school boys, joined them. Some of the boys who were with him went out to the other party in the other vehicle and together they walked to the hostel gate. Some hostel dwellers had been standing there. It seemed they had been waiting for the school boys. The bottle store was being looted. The beerhall adjacent to the superintendent's office was aflame. The two cars moved away one after the other, They went to Moletsane beerhall and bar lounge. They too were looted and burnt down. There was an argument over whether or not the nearby Entokozweni Early Learning Centre should be burnt, with some saying it should and others that it shouldn't. A giant, unique institution in the life of the townships, Entokozweni had been erected by Van Leer, a company with international interests. It is a nursery school for

black children and a recreation centre. “Come on,” said one of the students,

“this is

another symbol of oppression. It must go.” “But tell me who suffers if we destroy it?” another yelled. “Say, is it not a symbol of oppression? “Tt may be, but...” “Then we break it down too.” “Well, we must burn all the houses in Soweto thereafter.” “What do you mean?” “They are also symbols of oppression, aren't they? The boys finally agreed the centre benefited the community and that destroying it would hurt residents. They left it intact and so the nearby Tladi Clinic. Thereafter, they attacked the Urban Bantu Council chamber but their efforts failed miserably. Only the front windows of the massive concrete structure were smashed. By 3am the students were trying to burn Naledi Hall, but seemed to have run out of petrol. Kgari, drunk, felt tired. He had been swept by the mood of the day before. All he now wanted was a complete rest, to get away from it all. Quietly, he slipped away. The executive meeting of the Soweto Parents Association had not taken place. Matlhare himself had been trapped in his surgery, unable to venture out, until after midnight. No buses entered Soweto. Putco Bus Company had suspended services early yesterday evening. The morning was more frightening than even the shootings of yesterday. Soweto was utterly on the binge with residents, most of them young, staggering up and down the streets and still looting bottle stores. Almost everywhere, streets were barricaded with wrecked vehicles and stones. All clinics in the area were closed. Fifteen people had died, thirteen of them as a result of police gunfire. Hundreds of people were missing too. They had failed to reach home last night and nobody knew whether they had been killed or arrested. Ariel Kgogoane, a Kaiser Chiefs soccer star, lay dead in his car across Klip River on the Old Potchefstroom Road, just a stone's throw from the Chinese business complex at the bottom of Rockville. He had been shot by police allegedly while fleeing with his loot from the Chinese shops. The car was partially submerged in the river. Damage included ninety-four liquor outlets. 50 Putco buses, more than 200 vehicles and several score houses into which buses had crashed as drivers fled from attackers. But only 22 incidents of arson, 14 of damage to property, 18 thefts and assaults were, according to the Cillie Commission Report, reported to the police. And it was during the morning, Thursday June

17, that the uprising spread to Alexandra; Vosloorus and Katlehong in the East Rand; to Mohlakeng, Randfontein, in the West Rand; to the University of Zululand where students burnt down the administration building and the university library; students at the University of the North in Pietersburg demonstrated in protest at the Soweto shootings and so did students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. A total of 87 black students in Durban were arrested during a protest march. Hel! broke loose later that day after Prime Minister John Vorster, speaking before Parliament, told the nation over the air that law and order would be maintained at all cost. Police, who had all along been alittle restrained, threw all caution to the wind and by the end of the day 65 Africans were dead; 62 of them shot dead by police — 48 adults, eight youths and six children. @ What were the effects of this uprising? Was it all in vain? Politicians seldom admit that they act in response to public demands. Especially if that public comprises underdogs as does black

South Africa. However, it is true to say the government not only reacted to the 1976 upheavals by banning most community, cultural and political organisations, including the media, but also acknowledged, for the first time in the history of the country, the permanence of the African people in the urban areas or in the so-called white South Africa. In consequence, more schools, including a teacher training college, were provided; we today have 191 lower primary, 147 higher primary and 62 secondary schools in Soweto and Alexandra alone. But it is also true that the government further alienated and embittered the African people. In its efforts to dam the tide of black anger against white authority, black people were co-opted into the system to assist in the oppression of their own people. Structures like community councils were set up, much against the will of the people, to “run or administer” their communities in the townships. And this landed the country in a fiercer, more brutal strife. Resulting in more violent deaths as has been our bitter experience since that Monday in September 1984.

When Alexandra went up in flames by Marian Shinn

Alexandra is the forgotten slum of Johannesburg. A collection of shabby, crumbling red brick houses, concrete hostels and small stores it is almost as old as Johannesburg itself. Its roads are dusty and separated from the houses by deep dongas and grassy pavements. Dogs, black hairy pigs and tatty chickens browse about the old car tyres, broken crates and litter that collects there. Alex is diagonally across Johannesburg from Soweto, the biggest black urban area in South Africa. Alex is also neighbour to Sandton, a luxurious,

dormitory town of those who make their money out of Johannesburg. On winter mornings Alex is coddled in smoke from old coal stoves. The morning of June 18, 1976 was no different. If the smoke was thicker than usual white commuters to Johannesburg from Sandton did not notice it as they travelled the MI and Louis Botha Avenue to work. Alex had been smouldering overnight. The discontent and anger that erupted in Soweto two days earlier erupted in Alex that Friday morning. June 16 is an unforgettable day in South Afncan history. It shattered white illusions of peace and prosperity. It started politicians and civil servants talking about the need for “change”. Soweto school children marched on June 16 to try to see education officials about the “language issue”, They realised their parents, teachers and school boards had been unable to persuade the Government to change its iniquitous policy of forcing black kids to learn half their subjects in Afnkaans. If this language is spoken at all by the Soweto

people it is usually their third language after English and Sotho or Zulu. There were also insufficient black teachers qualified to teach in Afrikaans.

Reason had failed so the kids decided to talk to the education authorities themselves. On the way they met a group of policemen who stopped them. These men were ignorant of the trigger hair emotions that had built up over the issue. A shot was fired. A stone was hurled. Which was first will be argued forever, but they sparked off the worst three days of shooting, mob violence, looting and destruction of property that South Africa had ever seen. Similar incidents rippled through the country during the next six months. No one knows how many blacks really died by police bullets for the loss of two white officials. That Friday in Alex was ugly. Fellow journalists who watched the sparks flare in Soweto felt that the violence in Alex was more Vicious. I arrived, with another reported and a photographer, shortly after 8am to cover the story for The Star. We followed the grey police van on a tour of the township. One cop was hanging on the back door lobbing tear gas cannisters into beerhalls and shops that had been broken into by looters. At one beerhall, with its smashed door hanging like a severed limb, a woman tottered out with two plastic chairs on her head and two hooked under her arms. She tried to look inconspicuous. Guilt and fear stamped on her face. The police ignored her and lobbed a tear gas cannister into the hall. She was lucky they didn't shoot her. Before the day was over 17 looters had been officially shot dead by the police. We parted company with the police van as it headed towards the police station, and headed into a road block of tree stumps, rocks and drums. Against it was propped a poster which had become the anthem of June 16: “Why kill kids for Afnkaans?” We reversed away from the block and headed for the WRAB offices to see if they had been hit and to use their phone. It had been among the first properties attacked. The kids, bent on smashing the bureacratic system that stifled their lives, tore through the the place, smashing windows and overturning filing cabinets that contained records on indi

viduals, their application for homes, and legalities governing their rights to seek work. White officials had scrambled over each other to get out of the buildings before the kids found them. Vehicles in the yard had been smashed with sticks and rocks. One Volkswagen had been overturned like a tortolse and newspaper stuffed into its entrails in a crude attempt to set it alight. Soon after this attack the police cut off the township from the outside world. Road blocks were set up and shops, factories and offices in the nearby industrial area of Wynberg were closed for the day. The police then told all private cars to leave Alex. We drove our car to the other side of the barriers and walked back into the township. By this stage of the morning — about 10am — most of the beerhalls, churches, offices and shops had been attacked. Buses which had been hijacked by boys barely able to reach the pedals, were rammed into beerhall walls leaving huge gaps for the looters to get through. Beerhalls, after WRAB offices, were prime targets. WRAB used beerhall profits to finance its administration and made promises to use profits to build more homes. The kids felt their parents’ drinking, aggravated by the sociological conditions under which they were forced by legislation to live, was being exploited. The confusion in Alex that day sparked plenty of enterprising people to take advantage of it. Battered shop fronts suddenly became the entrances to Ali Baba’s caves of beads, scarves and plastic trinkets. The price the looters paid was limbs slashed as they pushed their way through broken glass. We phoned most of our stories through to the office from a shop with a congealing carpet of blood from slashed looters’ feet. Many of the shops in Alex line one side of First Avenue. They were Indian owned and looked the same — small, with corrugated iron roofs stretching to cover a wide concrete veranda. Their stock is clothing, basic provisions, bicycle spares and bolts of cotton. They all smell musty. The shopkeepers lived behind their shops in houses around a dusty courtyard. They had their own, humble mosque. An eerie sound came from this mosque at midday as the Imman called their shopkeepers

to prayer against the din of a police loud-hailer warning people to keep off the streets. Across the road from these shops were red brick houses and some open lots shaded by huge blue gum trees. Most of the shops had barricaded themselves at the first sign of trouble, but some were not so lucky. Their shop windows were smashed, but looters found some difficulty, trying to get passed the bars. One family in Vasco da Gama Street, was rescued by police, from a mob that was beating its way into the shop. By late morning the routine for action in First Avenue had been set. Looters darted between the houses to cross the streets to try to bash an entry into the locked and shuttered shops. A group of young policemen, whom our group of journalists had attached itself to, would fire into the crowd from the top of the street, walk down to check the damage and retreat up the street. As soon as we were out of sight, the crowd

would filter out from behind the houses and attack the shops again. The police would fire into the crowd and off we would go again. The police did not seem interested in taking preventative action. Once, while walking passed the alley to the shopkeepers’ courtyard a man asked me to ask the police to guard their shops. “Every time the police patrol, they go away. When the police go away then the mob comes back. Please ask police to stay in front of our shops.” I passed this on to Colonel Theunis Swanepoel, known as the Rooi Rus for his loathing of anything liberal and his effective interrogation methods. He ignored this request. It was from First Avenue that we heard a long burst of shooting in a nearby street. When it was all over we walked down to have a look. A bus had been driven through the wall of a beerhall and the looters had been having afield day carrying out as much booze as possible. The police had opened fire on them causing them to drop their crates and scatter. While taking photographs of the debris a man from a nearby yard came running at us, crying and shouting. His friend had been shot. With the police we ducked under a single strand wire gate to a gravel yard. The man showed us the body of his friend. Peter Jones had been contemplating his fate

in the outside loo. A stray bullet, meant for the beerhall looters, hit him in the head. He lay crumpled at the door of the corrugated iron shack, his trousers around his ankles. He was the first dead person I had seen. He looked like a hundred corpses I had seen in movies and news photographs. I felt no horror, just a detatched acknowledgment that he was dead. He was just one of the many who would die accidentally in the next few days. Colonel Swanepoel wrote down the man's name in a spiral bound notebook and we walked away. Only once during the day did our group run from an angry crowd. Police in the next street shot and killed a driver of a car who had ignored their warnings to stop.

The car careered into a wall and overturned. The badly injured passenger was dragging his battered and bleeding body through a window when a crowd of about 100 youngsters started shouting at us. They carried sticks and dustbin lids and started to hurl stones. The policemen, probably in their early twenties, looked scared. The one next to me fired a shot in the air and yelled at me to run. Then the police lowered their rifles and fired short bursts into the crowd which was now about 50 metres away. We ran into the next street, with the policemen firing and running with us. Later we walked back up the road. The passenger of the overturned car was dying in the shade. The police would not call an ambulance because it would get stoned. The body of a youngster I saw drop with the first few bullets was lying under a sheet of corrugated cardboard. His friends, who had covered him, were standing by quietly, not sure what to do next. I stopped to talk to them as my colleagues and policemen walked on. I felt no fear and received no hostility. A lone white among a dozen black kids. All I was asked was why the police were shooting at them. “Why are they killing us? We have just come to see what is going on”. Their dead friend was one of the idle and curious, out to watch the action, they said. While we were talking, a police van roared past, tossing out a tear gas cannister as it went. I parted company with these kids as we wept

advice to each other on how to handle tear gas and not to rub our eyes. We were fast becoming veterans of police action. The violence petered out by late afternoon. Workers returned from their factories and offices to find there were no buses running. Services had been cancelled as too many buses had been hijacked, rammed into walls and set on fire. We went back to the office to swap stories, and have our first food and drink of the day. Not once while I was in Alex did I feel afraid. Once, when we ran from an angry crowd, Ifelt nothing, probably because I was on the side with the guns. But when I was alone with the group of kids, I did not feel afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of. Two whites had been killed in Soweto. One of them Dr Melville Edelstein, had had his head bashed in with rocks. Journalists had been threatened in Soweto and their car windscreens smashed. I had witnessed none of this so was probably immunised by ignorance. That night I returned to Alex with three colleagues. Police would let no one past their roadblocks and frustrated journalists were hanging around ambulances and police trucks listening to snippets of news that come over their radios. There had to be a better way to get a story so we drove around Alex looking for an unguarded entrance.

We found one. A dirt track hidden among tall reeds and grass at the bottom of the hill on which the township is built. We eased our car over the rocks and washaways into the township — more scared of being discovered by a diligent cop than a youngster with a rock. Alex at night is eerie, but on a night like this it was horror movie material. It was a pitch black night. There was no street lighting. Nothing moved. Most of the houses were in darkness. Occasionally we passed a grimy window, covered with a fraying cotton curtain behind which glowed a paraffin lamp or flickering candle. Always in the distance, a lone dog barked, jolting our stretched nerves. Trying to sneak across an intersection we met a convoy of trucks and armed men. We waited for them to pass and tagged on the end of the convoy. No one questioned us. They must have presumed that as we were so far inside the township someone must have given us permission to be there. We toured past shops and beerhalls, some

still smouldering and shot with the occasional flicker of flame. The convoy stopped every 15 minutes and a handful of cops, armed with rifles, would dart into a looted or gutted building to carry out a body. Only once we saw another car — probably someone going home late. Alex, beaten, wounded and tired, had huddled into its black corner for the night.

Behind those dust-coated windows were people weeping for their dead. There were mothers who lay awake wondering when or if their children and husbands would come home. Throughout the next week they would search mortuaries, hospitals and police stations in search of answers they were afraid to hear. But many would never find out. Until one day, perhaps, when their sons and daughters would return. With guns in their hands.

Afrikaans... the spark that lit South Africa's black townships in 1976.

The students are restless

— but it all starts cheerfully Boys and girls cavorting in the streets in Soweto in protest against the proposed use of Afrikaans as medium of instruction.

A peace sign to the police before a funeral in 1976. The position has since deteriorated

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Anger begins to rise in Soweto The excitement that permeated Soweto before the violent storm in June 1976.

A homespun ‘‘fire roadblock”’ in Soweto in June 1976.

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The police arrive in force

Commercial vehicles and administration offices became

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Eastern Cape in 1976.

Police reinforcements assemble on the open ground between the Orlando West and Orlando East townships before going into attack on June 16, 1976 soon after Soweto had erupted into violence.

The trouble spreads A policeman in hot pursuit as youngsters flee in all directions.

An official of the West Rand Administration Board lies dead on the side of a street in Orlando West, Soweto, on June 16, 1976.

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JUNE 17 The police move into Alexandra township On your marks! The beginning of a police march into Alexandra on June 17, 1976 to confront rioting youths.

Fear and bewilderment in the face of

approaching policemen.

BELOW: A house on fire? As youths retaliate perhaps.

The blazing township A leap to safety as armed police give chase. It was in Alexandra

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An act of surrender. As police arrive at the scene of plunder, a man desperately raises his hands in an appeal not to be shot.

Beerhall gutted. The day after, with people silhouetted against the misty early morning.

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A crying, bewildered, teargassed little girl gets a helping hand from an older schoolgirl.

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Overcome with grief? The picture was taken at the funeral of an unrest victim.

Determination even the face of death. T picture was taken a funeral of one of the many unrest victims

Spirited farewell of the first victim... Hector Petersen.

BELOW: A guard of honour... decency still prevailed when Hector Petersen, the first victim of the June 16, 1976 upheavals, was buried.

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How long? The children are angry.

ABOVE: Overcome with grief, the mourners huddle together.

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A sponsored '‘self-defence”’ launched by Mzimhlope hostel inmates against students in Soweto in 1976.

ABOVE: Inhabitants of Mzimhlope fleeing fron the wrath of nearby hostel dwellers.

LEFT: Mzimhlope hoste inmates ready to take up arms.

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A life smothered with a bullet in Soweto. It

was one of the Green Car's victims in August 1976; the headlines say it all.

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1977 : new hope from the ‘Geneva Accord’

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& Rei Witnessed by an old man (with back to the camera and in the foreground), student leaders confer with a police officer at Soweto’s Elkah Stadium before a march to the Urban Bantu Council Chamber at Jabulani. The youngsters clinched a deal with the police not to interfere with their march. a

:

sion for a rally is granted antu Council had proposed to ;e rents and the Soweto school : opposed to the idea. So rched and waited outside the icil Chamber at Jabulani for the cil Chairman. Not only to tell him 1ey did not want rents increased, but 30 to call on him to resign. The Council collapsed soon after this visit.

.. . but soon trouble flares once more to rents being raised, ended in di: After waiting in vain for the Council Chairman to come out to meé students attacked the Council then as the police turned up assembly broke ut running in all diz

LEFT: The face of agony and bewilderment in the midst of teargas explosion.

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1978: and there are funerals in Zwelitsha...

The desolation, pain and ecstacy... all mingled together. It was at an unrest funeral at Zwelitsha, King Williams Town, in the Eastern Cape.

A comrade has been buried...

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Hardly a weekend passes without a funeral procession. This was in the Eastern Cape.

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A sign of the times. Roadblocks in Soweto, Alexandra, Sebokeng, Langa, Gugulethu, Mangaung, Umlazi, everywhere.

Burying the dead has become as precarious as

attending a political rally.

You cannot be sure all without yet mthrm

Vicum.,

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ABOVE: -The teargas. It is a Major weapon in dispersing crowds at meetings, funerals and commemoration SEIVICeS.

Burying the dead can sometimes be just as agonising as death itself.

The loneliness and misery of it all captured in this burial of a Port Elizabeth man, Lungile Tabalaza. He died in detention.

An injury to one is an injury to all. Yet anoth funeral scene.

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All smiles and a handshake even from the dock. The trialists were charged with inciting the 1976 events in the ‘‘Soweto Eleven”’ court case.

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A long time no see! ... an emotional embrace, at long las

The decade since June 16 1976

It was announced in July that heavily armed police were patrolling the border to intercept armed insurgents from entering the country and to prevent youths from leaving for military training.

Monty Narsoo

1976 According to the government-appointed Cilliie Commission of Enquiry 575 people died. Police action resulted in 451 deaths,

In November the UN Security Council declared that a further acquisition of arms by South Africa would be a threat to international peace. An indefinite arms embargo was imposed.

3 907 people were injured. The police were responsible for 2 389 injuries. Both the death and injury figures were disputed by various sources as being too low.

Only about 3000 pupils out of a possible 21 000 pupils applied for re-admission to Soweto schools.

5 980 were arrested for offences related to the resistance in the townships.

On 12 September, the founder and first president of the South African Students Organisation (SASO), Mr Steve Biko, became the 40th person to die in detention. Ten people died in detention that year,

Within four months of the Soweto revolt 160 African communities all over the country were involved in resistance. It was estimated that at least 250 000 people in Soweto were actively involved in the resistance. Resistance in the various communities were located in all four provinces and the homelands. A police witness said to the Cillie Commission that at least 46 incidents of arson, strikes and disturbances occurred in Venda, Lebowa and Gazankulu. The Internal Security Amendment Act replaced the Suppression of Communism Act. The new act enhanced the powers of the Minister of Justice and included the declaration of unlawful organisations, prohibition of publications, prohibition of attendance at gatherings, the restriction of persons to certain areas, detention of persons in custody and witnesses.

In July 1976 the government 123 persons were banned.

gazetted that

On October 19 major black consciousness and other organisations were banned. Forty-two people were detained and at least seven people were banned. Various newspapers including The World the Weekend World and a Christian Institute publication, Pro Veritate, were banned. In June the Urban Bantu Councils collapsed when the majority of its members resigned under pressure from students.

230 000 people were arrested for pass law offences. Funds for Bantu Education increased from R78 million in 1976-77 to R117 million in 1977-78.

In November the National Party won 134 seats in the general election, the highest proportion ever gained by one party in South Africa.

401 people were charged in security trials.

In 1976 large numbers of students left the country and went into exile. In July 1976 the Minister of Police imposed a nationwide prohibition of meetings which was renewed until the end of the year. @

700 people were in detention by the end of 30 November.

e

South African troops invaded Angola in support of the Unita and FNLA alliance. They penetrated up to 900 km into Angola.

e

The Transkei was declared an independent homeland.

1977 e

The period for continuous military service for white youths was increased to two years.

1978 Mr P.W. Botha was elected as Prime Minister.

The (Coloured) Labour Party, (Indian) Reformed Party and Inkatha formed the South African Black Alliance.

In May the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) was formed to fill the gap left by the black consciousness movement, banned in 1977. It was estimated that 4000 refugees were undergoing military training in Angola, Mozambique, Libya and Tanzania. As at 30 June 1978, 14 390 people were con-

1980

victed on unrest related charges.

e

As at 30 November 261 were detained during 1978.

@

In January, Dr Richard dead in his home.

@

Bophuthatswana becomes an independent homeland.

In April the Coloured Representative Council was dissolved.

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In October the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) was formed.

In April the Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa changed its name to the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania.

Turner

was

The Senate was abolished in 1980 and was replaced by a President's Council consisting of 60 members of the Chinese, Coloured, Indian and white communities.

shot

The Taxation of Blacks Amendment Act made further provision to put ‘African taxpayers on the same footing as those of other races.’

1979 e

The inaugural conference held in September.

of Azapo

was

In June the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) was formed. By 30 November 334 people were detained. In the period 15 November 1976 to 15 June 1979, 110 bombings by insurgents occurred. In 1978 1096 publications were banned and 300 films banned or subjected to age restrictions and excision.

FOSATU

was formally constituted in April

with 12 affiliates representing 45 000 work-

ers.

The Wiehahn Commission of Enquiry into labour legislation recommended the legalisation of African trade unions. This led to the government amending the Industrial ConCiliation Act to put this recommendation into effect. The Riekert Commission recommended the limited easing of restrictions on the mobility of urban workers. 335 people were charged in terms of Section 16 of the Immorality Act in 1979. The boycott of Fattis and Monis products in May in support of the Food and Cannings Workers Union was the first consumer boycott since the late fifties.

The number of strikes in 1976, 1977 and 1978 were 245, 90 and 106 respectively. The Soweto Civic Association and the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation were formed in 1979. During 1978, 9 832 persons were removed to the homelands. 108 911 families were moved in terms of the Group Areas Act up until the end of 1979. The South African was formed.

Allied

Workers

Union

The Azanian Students Organisation (AZASO) was formed in November,

On September 14 the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) was formed, comprising 9 affiliates. In October the Media Workers Association of South Africa called for a boycott of all commercial newpapers. MWASA was previously known as the Writers’ Association of South Africa. In April the African United Automobile Workers Union split and the Motor Assemblies and Components Workers Unions of South Africa was formed (MACWUSA), In July 10 000 Johannesburg municipal workers went on strike.

16 707 were convicted on politically-related charges. 768 people were detained up until November 1980. In January three guerrillas were shot dead in a siege at the Volkskas Bank in Pretoria. Two hostages were killed and 9 hostages and two policemen were seriously injured. The increase

in African school attendance

increased by 89% since 1965.

Boycotts of schools and universities started at secondary schools in Cape Town and spread to primary schools and spread finally to schools country-wide. The boycott of red meat was called for by the Western Province General Workers Unions. A boycott of Colgate was also called for by the Chemical Workers Industrial Union.

1981 The National Party won the general election by winning 131 of 165 seats in parliament. The Anti-South African Indian Council Com-

mittee and the Transvaal Anti-SAIC Committee were formed to oppose South African Indian Council elections. Less than 20% of registered voters cast ballots. In Fordsburg the percentage poll was 1,75%.

In February Neil Aggett died in detention and Ernest Dipale died in August.

Over fifty organisations banded together to campaign countrywide against the 20th anniversary celebrations of the South African Republic.

87 people were either refused passports or had them withdrawn.

264 people were detained.

85 people were restricted under the Internal Security Act.

Sporadic boycotting of schools and universities continued.

12 African National Congress members were killed when South African armed forces attac’:ed Matola in Mozambique.

At least forty attacks by ANC insurgents occurred during 1981.

Siphiwo Mtimkhulu of COSAS disappeared in April, 1982.

1983 In September the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act was passed. This act made provision for a State President with wideranging executive powers and a tricameral narliament.

630 people were detained in 1981. Tshifiwe Muofhe November,

died

in

detention

in

Just under twenty people were banned in 1981.

In August 1983 the United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched with 575 affiliate organisations.

The Ciskei became an ‘independent’ homeland in December. The Government-appointed De Lange Commission of Enquiry into Education recommended equal opportunities for education including equal standards for everyone.

In May the Transvaal Indian Congress was revived. The National Forum Committee was estab-

lished. 100 organisations were present.

A boycott of Wilson-Rowntree sweets was called by the South Afncan Allied Workers Union.

In August more than two thirds of white voters Supported the new consitution in a referendum.

There were 342 strikes affecting 87 189 workers as compared to 1976 where there were 245 strikes affecting 28 013 workers

CUSA's membership reached the 100000 mark. Its fastest growing affiliate was the National Union of Mineworkers.

1982

The boycott of buses in Mdantsane, Ciskei was Started in July, 1983 and was called off in March, 1986.

In March, fifteen National Party members broke away to form the Conservative Party.

Boycotts and demonstrations at schools affected 10 000 pupils country-wide.

In the Western Cape two federations of Civic associations were formed. They were the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee and the Federation of Cape Civics. The National formed.

Union

of Mine-workers

At least 22 meetings were banned. Simon Mndawe custody.

was

48 people died in 220 incidents of insurgency since 1976. 172 ANC insurgents were killed during that period.

Membership of FOSATU passed the 100 000 mark. The Internal Security Act of 1982 replaced the Internal Security Act of 1950, the Suppression of Communism Act of 1953, the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956 and sections of the General Laws Amendments. The Act served to consolidate all security legislation. Other security legislation passed were the Protection of Information Act, Intimidation Act, and the Demonstrations in or near Court Buildings Prohibition Act.

and Paris Malatji died in

1984 e

Boycotts and demonstrations in schools affected about 7% of the school population. In August demonstrations affected 800 000 school children. 175 people were killed in political violence incidents. On September 3. violence erupted in the Vaal Triangle. Within a few days 31 people were killed.

There were a number of stayaways from work called in 1984. The major stayaway occurred on 5 and 6 November when 500000 workers and 400000 students stayed away.

Mr P.W. Botha was elected the first executive state president in September. The elections in the (Coloured) House of Representatives had a poll of 18,1% of eligible voters. The percentage poll in the (Indian) House of Delegates was 162% of eligible voters. This was a result of the campaigning against the election by black political organisations. 50 members of community councils resigned after pressure from students, youth and civic organisations. There were 30 petrol bomb attacks against community councillors.

99-year leasehold rights for African people were extended to the Western Cape. There were 58 incidents of sabotage.

469 strikes occurred involving 181 942 workers. 300 families in Mogopa in Western Transvaal were forcibly removed from their ancestral homes. 50,13% of pupils in the Department of Education and Training passed their matriculation examinations. On 23 October 700 police and army personnel were used in the Vaal Triangle. The ban on all outdoor meetings was renewed for another year.

530 people were detained in terms of security legislation. Another 1127 people were detained under other laws. Sergeant Jan Harm van As was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the death in detention of Paris Malatji. This was the first conviction for a death in detention. Some political prisoners released were Heman Andimba Toivo ja Toivo, David Kitson and Dorothy Nyembe. On 16 March Mozambique and South Africa signed the Nkomati peace accord.

During the first six months 575 people were killed in political violence incidents during the course of the state of emergency. More than half were killed by the police. 7200 people were gency regulations.

detained under emer-

From September 1984 to 24 January 1986 955 people were killed in political violence incidents, 3 658 injured. 25 members of the security forces were killed and 834 injured. There were 3 400 incidents of violence in the Western Cape.

On 21 March 20 people were shot dead by the police in Uitenhage. There were 136 incidents of guerrilla activity. This was 34% more than all the incidents in the last 10 years.

Since September 1984 damage asa result of political violence amounted to R138 million. In July the value of the Rand dropped to

below

US$0,40c.

Foreign exchange

deal-

ings were suspended for 3 days in July.

The Soweto Parents Crisis Committee was formed in October.

In December Inkatha said its membership was now over a million people.

1985 was the 30th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. In June the African National Congress had its first consultative conference since 1969 in Zambia.

In the latter half of the year the ANC was visited by businessmen, students, the Progressive Federal Party and clergymen from South Africa.

Clashes occurred between supporters of the UDF, AZAPO and Inkatha throughout the year. The government announced in April that it will repeal the Mixed Marriages: Act, the Prohibition of Political Interference Act and

the Immorality Act. On November 30 the Congress of South African Trade Unions was formed with a membership of 500 000. 1986 marked the centenary of Johannesburg. The Community Support Committee

1985 On 21 July a state of emergency was declared by the state president and it affected 36 magisterial districts. He withdrew the proclamation on 7 March 1986.

was formed to oppose centenary projects.

Consumer boycotts of white business began early in the year in the Eastern Cape and later spread country-wide.

In September the Metal and Allied Workers

Union launched a boycott of white shops in Pietermaritzburg to pressurise BTR Sarmcol into reinstating their workers.

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In September Inkatha and the Progressive Federal Party hosted a meeting to form the Convention Alliance. Both oganisations later withdrew from the steering committee. In May trade unionist Andries Raditsela died a few hours after being released from detention. In June a raid on Gaborone, Botswana by the SADF resulted in the deaths of 15 people.

e

At least 11 political activists were either killed by unknown assailants or went missing.

e@

In August clashes between protestors, impis, residents and the police leave 70 dead and 140 injured in urban townships.

e

The Congress of South African Students was banned in August.

e

The government freezed foreign loan payments.

e

The USA imposed limited sanctions against South Africa in August.

@

South African troops attack South West African Peoples Organisation's targets 250 km inside Angola.

e

The right-wing Herstigte Nasionale Party won its first parliamentary seat in 17 years.

e

Twelve UDF treason trialists were acquitted in December.

@

Six people died in a landmine explosion in the Northern Transvaal in December.

@

A bomb in a shopping centre in Amanzimtoti near Durban killed five people.

1986 e

Soweto pupils returned to school in January in response to a call from the Soweto Parents’ Crisis Committee.

@

In February the leader of the Progressive Federal Party resigned from Parliament because he said Parliament is incapable of bringing about the desired reforms.

e@

167 people die in political violence in January.

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Alexandra exploded several more than 30 people killed.

e

The state of emergency is lifted on 7 March. On 14 March, 14 people have been killed

times,

with

e

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since the lifting of the state of emergency. At the National Education Crisis Commitee meeting in March it is resolved that the boycott of schools should end.

South African Communist Party leader Moses Mabhida, is buried in Maputo, Mozambique in April. Representatives of 34 organisations attend the

KwaZulu-Natal

Indaba

to discuss

re-

gional representation in April. The UDF and National Forum Committee refuse to attend.

e@

A journalist, Mr Lucky Kutumela, died in detention in Lebowa in April. A week later, Peter Nchabeleng died in the same police station.

e

In April there is a complete stayaway of black workers in White River and Nelspruit. The boycott of white shops in Port Elizabeth is relmposed.

e

Since September 1984 to March 1986, 1 416 people have died. March had the highest monthly figure of 17].

Comment

There was a long lull after the crushing of organisations in the early sixties. There was the emergence of the black consciousness movement and then there was June 1976. A revolt of the youth that was bloodily repressed. In 1977 major organisations and individuals were banned. A briefer silence followed. Students, civic and political organisations reemerged in the late seventies. Workers organisations consolidated. Organisations and mobilisation increases. Resistance increases and repression and attempts at reform increase. The economy of the country nose-dived. We now have the most sustained, resilient and wide-spread resistance ever. Organisations have developed a myriad of tactics of resistance and defence since 1976. Repression and violence have spiralled upwards as the struggle for freedom has surged and retreated. The periods of retreat have continued to halve. Sixteen years passed between Sharpeville and Soweto, eight years between Soweto and Sebokeng. The decade since seventy-six may be the interregnum between the old and the new.

_ CONNETOQUOT PUBLIC LIBRARY 760 OCEAN AVENUE BOHEMIA, NEW YORK 11716

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Te KINGDOM BO OKSTORE af Coneee * Gifts * Framing t Rochester NY © (716) 328-1588 Make For:

SOWET

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The Fruit of Fec is

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In 1976, Bishop Desmond Tutu warned the South Afric government that black people were growing increas ngl} restive under the oppressive yoke of apartheid and that h feared an eruption of violence if some minimum conditions a

were not met.

Tutu’s warnings were ignored, and on June 16, 1976, school children in the sprawling townships of Soweto took to the streets in protest. They were met with brute force — tear gas and bullets. Approximately 700 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded in unrest which soon spread to the rest of the country. There has been no cal b peace or stability in South Africa since that day. In this pictorial essay, Peter Magubane relates the events surrounding June 16 through his camera lens, giving a poignant eye-witness account in tribute to the fallen Ta and commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Sowetc \

4 |

uprising. As Desmond Tutu writes in the Foreword, these photographs are intended “to bring to the notice of a wider audi ence a remarkable record of what has happened in a beautiful but sad and divided land in the traumatic upheaval of the uprisings since June 16, 1976. . . . Perhaps we can be

moved to take what action we can to help dismantle apé rt

heid and ensure that such scenes captured in Peter Magubane’s lens would not be repeated again and again Ss our land.”

Born in Johannesburg in 1932, Peter Magubane began his| career as a photographer with Drum magazine in 1956. In 1965 he became a staff member of the Rand Daily Mail, a Johannesburg newspaper. His experiences over twenty years as the only major black South African news photographer include arrests, solitary confinement, and banning t 1: orders. Magubane has published several previous books and he completed photographic assignments in various parts of the }

Photograph courtesy of The New Nation newspaper /Cover design by Willem Mineur

4 '

world

for Time

and Geo.

He has also worked

news and has had a number of exhibitions in the States and Europe. Magubane still maintaifs@ Hc Diepkloof, a section of a black township of Soweto ¢ Johannesburg.

Africa World Press, Inc. New Jersey

ISBN

0-86543-040-3

in tel

=)

Grand Rapids, Michigan

ISBN

_