The interview covers early childhood, family history (the backgrounds of grandparents, parents and siblings), education, employment, social life, religion and political activities. The idea is to have a deeper understanding of the individual’s life. Through the life histories of my interviewees I was able to gain an understanding of the circumstances – from an individual’s perspective – that caused them to be involved in the political processes in Kroonstad’s black residential areas. This technique also helps to explain their actions.
Life history interviews, as will be seen in the book, have their limitations. Sometimes interviewees tend to confuse events or the date when events happened – or participants in the same event recall it differently. For example, in an interview Tsepo Oliphant, who was born in 1958 and in 1976 was doing Junior Certificate (JC, today’s Grade 10), confused the date when the students at Bodibeng High School demonstrated in 1976. He claimed that the demonstration took place on 15 June, a day before the Soweto uprisings. The demonstration was actually on 24 August. Again, when I interviewed former students at Bodibeng about the morning they took to the streets in 1985 demanding that the prefect system be replaced with a student representative council (SRC), they could not remember who among the teaching staff had announced the prefects.
It is for this reason that the celebrated oral historian John Tosh cautions that life histories should be ‘heard alongside the careful marshalling of social facts in the written record’.12 One of the ways to overcome the limitations of life history interviews is to interview more than one person. This helps when verifying information. Although oral history has its limitations, it is nonetheless a capable methodology to discover ‘hidden histories’ or undocumented histories of ordinary people. Hence, Tosh asserts that ‘problems in [oral history] should not be grounds for having nothing to do with oral history’. And the sociologist Monique Marks asserts that notwithstanding the limitations, oral history ‘is a satisfactory source’.13
My first contact with Kroonstad was in 2006, when I was employed as an oral historian for the South Africa History Archives and Sunday Times Oral History Project. Part of the project was to introduce oral history in schools, with the objective of training high school and secondary school students to research the history of their local communities, write a report and present it. Two schools were identified in each of the four provincial towns in which the project was to take place. Among them were Bodibeng and Brentpark Secondary in Kroonstad. After contacting the schools and presenting the project, I began my preliminary research. I interviewed a substantial number of people in each town, including former teachers, religious leaders, members of youth and student congresses, adult political activists, ‘ordinary’ members of the communities, and many more. From these interviews (and archival research) it became clear to me that Kroonstad, particularly its black townships, has an interesting history which, surprisingly, has not been adequately documented.
Towards the end of 2007 I registered for my doctoral studies in the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ programme, headed by Professor Philip Bonner at the University of the Witwatersrand, and I chose Kroonstad as my case study. Conducting research in a township that is not your birthplace, or a place where you have spent most of your life, has its challenges. But it also has its advantages. To my interviewees in Maokeng I was an ‘outsider’ and I was constantly reminded of this – although not maliciously. According to Marlize Rabe, ‘... the insider versus outsider debate is ... not new in social research’.14 Kikumura, cited by Rabe, sums it up as follows:
On the one hand, advocates for the outsider perspective generally argue that access to authentic knowledge is more obtainable because of the objectivity and scientific detachment with which one can approach one’s investigation as a non-member of the group. On the other hand, proponents of the insider perspective claim that group membership provides special insight into matters (otherwise obscure to others) based on one’s knowledge of the language and one’s intuitive sensitivity and empathy and understanding of the culture and its people.
With the help of Mr Mpopetsi Dhlamini, a former teacher, inspector and long-time resident of Kroonstad, I identified people for interviews. After retiring, Dhlamini founded Rebirth of Kroonstad, a non-profit organisation focused on capturing the history of Kroonstad, and particularly of Maokeng. Dhlamini was born in and had lived all his life in Kroonstad, and his vast knowledge of the area and of people from different backgrounds helped me to understand the political nuances of the town, and to gain access to the ‘relevant’ people (as he put it) and learn who to contact for other sources such as archival materials, especially in the municipality. He introduced me to people as the ‘young man from Wits [University], who is doing a very important job: writing the history of Kroonstad, something that is long overdue’. He always emphasised to the residents of Maokeng that it was imperative for them to participate in the research by granting me interviews, because one day they would be ‘gone’ (dead) and their history would be forgotten or, worse, distorted.
This seemed to work. People made time for me. They welcomed me into their homes and offices. Some, like Hennie Ludik, a former employee of the Town Council of Maokeng, even entrusted me with their personal photographs and a few pamphlets.
Inasmuch as Dhlamini’s knowledge of the area and its people was helpful, it proved, at times, also to be detrimental. He referred me only to the people he knew – the people who, according to him, would ‘give you the best and honest interviews’. He tended to dismiss other people as ‘irrelevant’. In my observation these were mainly people he did not take ‘seriously’ (that is, people outside his circle). Moreover, he seemed mostly acquainted with the older residents, people of his generation. However, he also introduced me to some of the key members of the student and youth organisations in the township, although his knowledge of this generation was limited. To gain access to them I had to rely on referrals by other former members of student and youth organisations I had interviewed.
This book is based on interviews with eighty respondents from different social, economic and political backgrounds conducted over a period of six years, between 2006 and 2012. Among them are former teachers, local councillors, civic leaders, gangsters, religious leaders, former trade unionists and former cadres of MK and APLA, and former student and youth activists – representing a diversity of backgrounds and voices that have helped to bring to life the rich and complex history of Kroonstad’s black townships.
Endnotes
1 The name Maokeng was used long before the Anglo-Boer War to refer to Kroonstad as a whole, but was not used formally until 1984, when the Town Council of Maokeng took over the administration of the African townships.
2 Twala, C and Seekings, J (2010) ‘Activist Networks and Political Protest in the Free State, 1983–1990’, in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds) The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 4, 1980–1990. Pretoria: Unisa Press, pp. 766–7.
3 Serfontein, D (1990) Keurskrif vir Kroonstad: ’n kroniek van die ontstaan, groei en vooruitsigte van ’n Vrystaatse plattelandse dorp. Johannesburg: Perskor-Boekdrukkery.
4 Nieftagodien, N (2010) ‘The Past of “The Local” in History Workshop’s Local History’, in African Studies 69, 1 (April), pp. 41–2.
5 Kay, P (1984) Notre Dame: Under the Southern Cross. Johannesburg: Ravan; 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.
6 Krog, A (2003) A Change of Tongue. Johannesburg: Random House, p. 113.
7 Krog, A (2009) Begging to be Black. Cape Town: Random House Struik, p. 172; see also Krog, A (1995) Account of a Murder. Johannesburg: Heinemann.
8 Seekings, J (1992) ‘From Quiescence to “People’s Power”: Township Politics in Kagiso, 1985–1986’,
