course, Rocks could not talk to his father about what he saw as the injustices of apartheid; Joseph would allow no such discussions under his roof. The 1960s were a time of terrible political repression. After its banning, the ANC had gone underground and, ending a fifty-year-old tradition of non-violence, formed a military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). On 16 December 1961, the day Afrikaners celebrated the defeat of thousands of Zulu warriors in the previous century, Umkhonto exploded a series of home-made bombs around the country. The attacks were timed to avoid injuring people and were aimed at symbolic targets: the Bantu Affairs Commissioner’s offices in Johannesburg; a nearby post office; electricity pylons in Port Elizabeth. Umkhonto committed scores of similar acts of sabotage until July 1963, when the police raided its secret headquarters at a farm in Rivonia, near Johannesburg. The officers arrested most of Umkhonto’s leaders; eight of them, including Nelson Mandela, were sentenced to life in prison after a highly publicized trial in April the next year.
The raid on Rivonia effectively stilled black political opposition for a decade. What remained of the ANC and Umkhonto were forced to reassemble in exile, far from South Africa’s borders. The PAC too had to reorganize outside the country. (Poqo, or ‘pure’ in Xhosa, a terrorist group with ties to the PAC, had engaged in acts of violence for a brief time; the police destroyed it in 1963 by arresting thousands of its adherents.) An entire generation of black activists was imprisoned, banned or exiled. To deter the resurgence of political movements, the police assumed unbridled powers of arrest and detention and recruited an army of black informers; the government imposed harsh restrictions on the press.
The measures left blacks utterly intimidated. The life imprisonment of the ANC/Umkhonto leaders on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, seemed the end of politics itself. People shunned the discussions that had animated so much of daily life. To speak of such matters was to invite repression. The ANC’s protest campaigns of the 1950s, the Freedom Charter, the actions of Umkhonto – all slipped into obscurity, suppressed by parents too frightened to tell their children. Newspapers could not even print Nelson Mandela’s photograph. One evening, Rocks asked his father about graffiti he had seen spray-painted on an electrical sub-station on his way home from school. ‘Who is Mandela?’ asked Rocks. Joseph slapped him across the face and walked out of the room.
If working at his father’s construction firm exposed Rocks to the quotidian indignities of apartheid, it also opened his eyes to the future. He decided he would become an engineer. Rocks had wanted to study law, but law required a knowledge of Latin, and his teachers at school discouraged him from attempting the language. Engineering seemed the next best thing: the draughtsmen with their drawing tables and precision instruments appealed to Rocks’ sense of order. Nomkhitha was delighted.
When Rocks entered high school, Joseph acquired an old, abandoned trailer from his company and set it in the small yard behind the house. It was a kind of study for Rocks, a refuge from the raucous children who inhabited every corner of his home. He crammed for his matriculation exams there. Rocks also attended study groups at his high school; called ‘cross-nighting’, these marathon sessions began in the evening and continued until the early hours of the morning. (Rocks’ school, Morris Issacson, was one of the few places in Soweto that had electricity.) After supper, Rocks would take a blanket and a thermos filled with coffee and walk back to school. There he and his friends thrashed out the finer points of a subject, filling the blackboard with equations or quotations, until they drooped with exhaustion. They were determined students: one way or another, their lives would be different from their parents’.
Tsietsi, the next-born, was, by contrast with his older brother, a great extrovert. As a youngster, he appeared highly-strung and given to histrionics: when denied something he wanted, Tsietsi cried until he vomited. He would suddenly and inexplicably start to sob, as though he had been hurt. But as Tsietsi grew, he evolved into a charismatic personality who charmed everyone he met.
He was the leader among his siblings. Acknowledged as the cleverest in the family, Tsietsi dominated the dining-room table at night: doing his homework, helping the others, discussing the finer points of a vexing problem. As with Rocks, Nomkhitha imbued him with a love for reading. Tsietsi, in turn, conveyed this passion to the younger children, especially when they had became too numerous to command much of their parents’ attention. In this manner, he became something of a mentor to his brothers.
As the second-born, Tsietsi seemed to escape much of the pressure Nomkhitha and Joseph imposed on Rocks. He developed a playful nature and a lively imagination; among his many inventions, he created a clandestine society called The Secret Seven, based on the children’s books by Enid Blyton. The Secret Seven included two of his brothers and four friends. Tsietsi found hidden meeting places, to enter which required a secret password. There the seven youths devised stories about engaging in exciting and daring undertakings. At the end of each meeting, Tsietsi brought out a cake or some other special treat that he bought with the two-cent dues collected from the members. Like the books that Tsietsi devoured, the game transported him and the other boys beyond the wretchedness of life in the township; for a brief moment, they could dream childhood dreams.
Like Rocks, Tsietsi was a gifted athlete who excelled at softball, tennis and dancing. But he devoted the most energy to karate. The speed and discipline it required suited Tsietsi’s personality perfectly and he liked the fact that the flashy, martial-arts moves made him an exotic figure among the thugs of Soweto. Tsietsi was forever frightening Nomkhitha with sudden karate chops and high-pitched yells. When his siblings begged to learn, Tsietsi taught them turns and kicks, lining them up in the yard for drills. They were thrilled: this was the big brother who deigned to notice them. And they adored him.
To those outside the family, Tsietsi seemed an appealing, if frenetic, youth. He affected what was called an ‘American hippy’ mode of dress: bell-bottoms, peace symbols, an Afro hairstyle. (Tsietsi habitually stole clothes from Rocks – especially for social engagements with girls, who thought him something of a dandy.) Just as he was a force within his family, Tsietsi exhibited a natural leadership among his peers. He was a whirlwind of activity: president of the Methodist Youth Guild; chairman of a youth burial society; chairman of his school’s debating committee and of the Debating Group Association; chairman of a social club; head of a softball club; a freelance writer for the black edition of the Rand Daily Mail. Dispatched by Nomkhitha, Rocks spent countless evenings trying to find Tsietsi and bring him home for dinner.
Tsietsi also had a contentious side to his nature. He made and lost friends with equal swiftness – often because of his penchant for provoking people. Tsietsi’s siblings knew this aspect of his character well: pushed beyond his tolerance one day, Lehlohonolo (or Cougar, as he was called) threw a stone at Tsietsi’s head while he was standing in the kitchen. Tsietsi ducked, and the projectile hit one of the yellow cabinets. The dent that it left became part of family lore.
In the same manner, Tsietsi delighted in testing established limits. One day he decided, against all the regulations, to light up a cigarette in class. It was a free period and the teacher had left the room. Another instructor happened to walk by at that moment; smelling smoke, he entered the class to investigate and found Tsietsi with the forbidden tobacco, surrounded by his friends. The teacher immediately brought them before the school’s disciplinary board. Tsietsi was suspended from school for a few days; his companions received lashings with a cane.
Despite his carefree personality, Tsietsi was a brilliant student; Nomkhitha thought he would become a lawyer. A weekly radio programme about famous court cases, Consider Your Verdict, particularly fascinated him. Tsietsi started out in a chair listening to the show, but in his excitement slowly crept towards the console until, at the climax, he was virtually sitting on top of it. Afterwards, he and Rocks had heated debates in English about the episode’s outcome. Sometimes friends from the neighbourhood joined in; the younger Mashininis would listen in awe as Tsietsi, who had a singular command of the language, dominated the arguments.
Tsietsi’s love of English and English literature prompted his
