and could not find work were arrested and sent to prison farms, especially in Bethal, in the then Eastern Transvaal, to labour on the potato farms.71 To avoid being harassed by police for passes, members of the Green-White harassed whites in town, demanding stamps proving that they were employed. Molai recalls:
That Cross Street in town, we used to go from shop to shop and do as we pleased, and the shopkeeper must just shut up. If he attempted to run to the phone, he would find one of us sitting on the desk where the phone was. The police also used to collect loafers, those people who weren’t working, and throw them in the van. Our gang members used to collect all these rubber stamps from shops and we would stamp our IDs [reference book] to pretend as if we were employed. And when they wanted to see our reference and asked us waar werk jy? [where do you work?], they would find a lot of stamps in our IDs, those from Dixies Trading Store, Ellerines, Ackermans, what what. And after seeing the stamps in our IDs they would leave.
Echoing Molai, Tebello ‘Blackie’ Tumisi remembers that the Green-White members refused to look for work as stipulated in the law:
There were these guys called the Green-White. There were gangs, the Spoilers ... eh ... the Caspers ... but the Green-White was the strongest one. It was the most feared gang around here. People used to go to the pass office. But because they were a gang they decided that they won’t go there.
As with other gangs in different places, the Green-White’s era was brought to an abrupt end by the police. Members of the gang were arrested and others were shot and killed. By the 1960s Kroonstad’s black locations were free of gangs.
Fear and distrust characterised the post-Sharpeville period. Matsepe recalls that they adhered to an unwritten code, ‘do not talk’, because it could lead to trouble. Although in the 1960s the government had passed a barrage of severely repressive laws and there was an economic boom which in many ways caused the majority of black people to refrain from participating in politics, the government could not totally contain the black people’s anger. The people were now aware. In the next chapter I look at the role played by the Black Consciousness Movement in conscientising the generation of the 1970s. But first I explore the attempts by some individuals in Kroonstad to operate underground, with the intention of introducing the younger generation to politics.
Endnotes
1 Ntantala, P (1992) A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala, University of the Western Cape Mayibuye History Series No. 6. Cape Town: David Philip, p. 149.
2 Serfontein, D (1990) Keurskrif vir Kroonstad: ’n kroniek van die ontstaan, groei en vooruitsigte van ’n Vrystaatse plattelandse dorp. Johannesburg: Perskor-Boekdrukkery, p. 449.
3 Bonner, P and Segal, L (1998) Soweto: A History. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, p. 13.
4 Serfontein op. cit
5 Bradford, H (1987) A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924–1930. Johannesburg: Ravan
6 Setiloane, JSM (1997) The History of Black Education in Maokeng, Kroonstad. Cape Town: HSRC Press, p. 4.
7 Bonner, P and Nieftagodien, N (2008) Alexandra: A History. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, p. 5.
8 Setiloane op. cit.
9 Reverend Mahabane is renowned for serving two terms as the president-general of the ANC, in 1924–1927 and 1937–1940. See City Press, 8 January 2012.
10 Serfontein op. cit., p. 519.
11 Setiloane op. cit., p. 6.
12 For an in-depth account on the creation of coloureds-only settlements in South Africa, see Parnell, SM (1993) ‘Johannesburg Slums and Racial Segregation in South African Cities, 1910–1937’. PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand.
13 Kentridge, I (2013) ‘“And So They Moved One by One” ’: Forced Removals in a Free State Town, 1956–1977’, in Journal of Southern African Studies 39, 1, p. 144.
14 Free State Provincial Archives (hereafter FSPA), G76, PAE 52 ‘Subject: Kroonstad Coloured School’.
15 Kentridge op. cit.
16 Ntantala op. cit., p. 87.
17 Bonner and Nieftagodien, Alexandra, p. 28.
18 Seeisoville was named after Chief Seeiso Lerothodi of Basotholand. See Pherudi, ML (2008) The History of an African Son from the Dusty Marantha-Maokeng, 1965–2007: Life History with Pictures. Gaborone: Botswana Printing and Publishing Company, p. 104.
19 Nieftagodien, N (2014) The Soweto Uprising. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, p. 14.
20 Pherudi, M (2009) Who’s Who in Maokeng, Volume 1. Gaborone: Botswana Printing and Publishing Company
21 Lodge, T (1983) Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945. Johannesburg: Ravan
22 Serfontein op. cit., p. 567.
23 University of the Witwatersrand Library Historical and Literary Papers (hereafter UWLHLP) AD1433 (Box CK5.3) Kroonstad Joint Council, ‘Draft of Memorandum on Granting of Trading Rights in Locations’.
24 UWLHLP Minutes: Joint Council of European and Natives, Kroonstad, 21 August 1934.
25 UWLHLP Joint Council of European and Natives, Minutes, Kroonstad, 20 March 1935.
26 Kroonstad Municipality Council Minutes, 21 February 1949 to 29 August 1949.
27 Bonner, P and Nieftagodien, N (2001) Kathorus: A History. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, p. 11.
28 Kros, C (1978) ‘Urban African Women’s Organisations and Protests on the Rand from the Years 1939 to 1956’. Honours dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, p. 46.
29 Bonner and Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 12.
30 Umteteli wa Bantu, 6 July 1935.
31 Meli, F (1988) A History of the ANC: South Africa Belongs to Us. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, p. 53.
32 Moloi, T (2013) ‘The Emergence and Radicalisation of Black Political Formations in Kroonstad, 1915–1957’, in New Contree (Special Edition), A Journal of Historical and Human Sciences for Southern Africa, 67 (November), p. 172.
33 Lodge, Black Politics, p. 3.
34 Walshe, P (1987) The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa. Craighall: AD Donker, p. 205.
35 Wells, JC (1982) ‘The History of Black Women’s Struggle Against Pass Laws in South Africa, 1900–1960’. DPhil thesis, Columbia University, pp. 208–9.
36 Limb, P (2010) The ANC’s Early Years: Nation, Class, and Place in South Africa Before 1940. Pretoria: Unisa Press, p. 219.
37 Umteteli wa Bantu, 6 May 1936.
38 Rich, P (1989) ‘Managing Black Leadership: The Joint Councils, Urban Trading and Political Conflict in the OFS, 1925–1942’, in Phil Bonner, Isabel Hofmeyr, Deborah James and Tom
