When Mahabane arrived in Kroonstad he was politically moderate, but this changed after a visit to Ghana in 1957, when, according to some interviewees, he became actively involved in community issues, particularly conscientising the younger generation. In that year Ghana had won its independence under Kwame Nkrumah. ‘Baba’ Jordan recalled that he was told that Mahabane came back radicalised from Ghana, saying in a sermon that ‘the message from Nkrumah for blacks in South Africa was that they must get the boot of the white man off from their necks’. Lindiwe Gladys Mwelase, a relative of Majoro, returned to Kroonstad in 1956 after spending some time working in Johannesburg to find that Majoro had been arrested. ‘They accused [her] of being too influential about the pass resistance. I asked the people and they told me that they burned passes and she stayed behind when others fled.’ It is unlikely that Majoro was arrested for mobilising women to burn their passes as at this point passes had not been issued to women (this only happened the following year) and the burning of passes took place after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.
Despite the demonstrations the government swiftly implemented the extension of passes to women, starting with women in Winburg in the OFS. In 1957, passes were issued to African women in Kroonstad. Motadinyane, who was working at the day-care at Dorcas House at the time, recalls that ‘[t]he municipality police came to our workplace and took us to the hall. When we arrived there they took our photographs. We were the first group of women to be given passes.’ Like the men, women experienced the unpleasantness associated with passes. ‘Life became hard,’ said Motadinyane. ‘Police would knock at our doors in the middle of the night, demanding to see our passes. In my case, when they arrived at my place and demanded to see my pass, I would tell them to show me theirs first.’ The suppression of the anti-pass demonstrations marked the end of the ANC’s above-ground activities in Kroonstad’s black locations. But it did not end the protests. In 1959, the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations had reached their breaking point, after an increase in the number of raids by the municipal police.
The 1950s saw the NP government reversing all the limited reforms of the early 1940s and promulgating racial and segregationist laws which adversely affected African labour. In order to curb urbanisation, the government tightened and strictly monitored influx control. Through the pass system it divided Africans between those who had rights to be in an urban area and those who did not. Put the other way round, Africans without the ‘section 10’ rights65 were prohibited from being in an urban area permanently unless they were employed there, and if not employed they had to return to their reserve. The ‘urban right’ determined who had right to employment in an urban area. In a small town like Kroonstad, which had a limited manufacturing sector, it became extremely difficult for the majority of Africans with no right to be in an urban area to find employment. Consequently, gangs emerged, and the majority of the unemployed could not keep up with the rental payment demanded by the council.
In its attempt to recoup its rental money, the council unleashed its police force to raid – sometimes twice in a day – all households in arrears, claiming that these households owed it £300. On 22 February 1959 the residents held a meeting where they tabled their grievances to Mr De Vries, the manager of the Non-European Affairs Department. The grievances included their resentment of having to queue for long hours for permits to seek work only to receive them past noon when there was no more time to look for work. Mr De Villiers undertook to look into their grievances and promised to meet them again in March, but when the date of the meeting arrived he could not attend because he had honoured another meeting in Durban. He failed to attend another meeting on 1 April. The following day the residents met again and to this meeting came seven Europeans – officials and police (it is reported that some of them were displaying their revolvers). At this meeting the residents voiced their lack of confidence in the Native Affairs Department. Then the residents dispersed and not long afterwards shots were heard. Three Africans were shot and thirty-nine arrested, among them thirty-four youngsters. The residents of Kroonstad’s locations responded by smashing windows at the post office and the Bantu Social Centre; they also cut the post office’s telephone wires and stoned some cars.66
Godfrey Oliphant, who was present at this meeting, places Tsolo Nyakane at the centre of this brawl. He believes the incident was the result of the influence of members of the PAC. ‘There were guys who came in from Vereeniging. One of them was Mr Nyakane [Tsolo], who [made] people realise that they were being harassed by whites.’ He recalled how teacher Ndamse of the ANC stirred up the atmosphere:
[Ndamse] spoke passionately about the attitude of the whites. He [went] to the whites and said, ‘You are treating us like children.’ The whites had the backing of the police. When they started shooting I remained behind because one of my neighbours got shot not dead ... [Amon] Mahomane and my brother Botiki got involved and they were arrested.
What is apparent from Oliphant’s recollection is that at this point the PAC was making inroads into Kroonstad’s black locations. Nyakane was the PAC’s branch secretary in Sharpeville. In the early 1950s a section of the membership of the ANC which referred to itself as the ‘Africanists’ developed some uneasiness with what they perceived as the influence of the communists over the ANC. The tension reached a climax when the ANC invited the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats, the Liberal Party and the South African Coloured People’s Organisation to form a Congress Alliance. Criticism of this move by the Africanists led to some of the leading figures being expelled from the ANC, notably Potlako Kitchener Lebalo.
In 1955 the Congress Alliance adopted the Freedom Charter in Kliptown, outside Soweto. The Freedom Charter was touted as the principles document for a non-racial and inclusive South Africa. The Africanists denounced it as communist inspired. Most importantly, they rejected it because of the controversial preamble: ‘South Africa shall belong to all who live in it’. Simon Ramogale, who joined the PAC in 1960 in Tembisa on the East Rand, and was incarcerated on Robben Island between 1963 and 1966 for his role in the organisation, said: ‘We used to say the land cannot belong to all who live in it; the land must belong to somebody. We had some leaders within the PAC who said, ‘ “South Africa is not a prostitute that belongs to everybody who lives in it ...” ’
In 1958 the Africanists broke away from the ANC and in April 1959 they launched the PAC. In line with the ANCYL’s programme of action, the PAC called for the anti-pass campaign. Leading figures in the PAC travelled across the country mobilising African people for this campaign which was launched on 21 March 1960. It is possible that Nyakane had gone to Kroonstad during this period to canvass support for the PAC there. After all, Kroonstad was a Basotho-dominated area and he, Nyakane, was a Mosotho too.
The shooting and arrests of 1959 did not deter the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations. They demonstrated again in March 1960. The call by the PAC to African men to leave their passes at home and present themselves at the nearby police station for arrest hit the right chord with many African people. Although a clear imbalance was evident in the numbers who participated in this campaign, in Sharpeville and Langa townships masses of people took part; Lodge estimates that in Sharpeville, for example, about 4 000 Africans, men and women, heeded the call.67
After 21 March the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations protested, possibly in solidarity with the victims of the shooting in Sharpeville. The majority of the people interviewed for this study recalled that the residents, at least those who were pass-carrying citizens, had planned to burn their passes. The ANC leaders had announced that Monday 28 March would be a day of pass burning. It is possible that Gladys Mwelase, whom we met earlier, was referring to this protest when she was recalling how Majoro was arrested. In an interview, Violet Motlhacwi remembered the time when Majoro was arrested at a place called thoteng (refuse dumping site), where she had led the residents to burn their passes. But Motlhacwi went on to note that after Majoro and the others had been arrested, Stara Naledi, a prominent businessman in Kroonstad’s locations, sent a certain Gumede to Johannesburg to seek the legal assistance of Oliver Tambo. According to her, Tambo came to Kroonstad and successfully represented Majoro and the others.
