to accept white assistance of any sort and the insistance on creating exclusively black-run organizations seemed a kind of reverse apartheid. The movement’s most eloquent and potent proponent was Steve Biko, a medical student at Natal University. (His death in 1977, after being beaten and tortured while in police detention, would cause an international outcry.) With echoes of its counterpart in the US, the concepts of Black Consciousness seized a generation of youngsters who knew little of the ANC.
They saw the ideology’s practical application in the ascendance of a black government in neighbouring Mozambique. In 1974, the dictatorship in Portugal collapsed, bringing to a halt the independence wars being waged in its African colonies. In Mozambique, the Portuguese withdrew and the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO, in Portuguese) took power in 1975. It was a stunning event. Here was an example on South Africa’s own doorstep of a black nationalist movement that had succeeded. White colonialists had been expelled, black freedom fighters had assumed control. Victory was possible. On black campuses across the country students devoured FRELIMO propaganda. Graffiti of ‘Viva FRELIMO!’ suddenly appeared on walls. The takeover also captured the imagination of liberal white youths: the Mozambican flag was raised on the central administration building of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where it fluttered briefly before being pulled down by right-wing students.
Unknown to Nomkhitha or Joseph, their two oldest sons had become involved in politics. It seemed inevitable: the high school Rocks and Tsietsi attended, Morris Issacson, was one of the most politically active in the township. Abraham Tiro, a charismatic Black Consciousness leader taught there for a while; he had a profound influence that continued long after his departure. (Tiro was later killed by a letter bomb in Botswana.) The school’s principal, although not outwardly an activist, permitted his pupils to form political organizations. (At other schools, more conservative administrators suppressed anything vaguely resembling opposition to the government.)
The boys’ political inclinations were as different as their personalities. Rocks embraced Black Consciousness while in high school. But he became disillusioned with the politics of protest; swayed by the writings of American black militants such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, Rocks concluded that armed struggle was the only way to liberate South Africa. That view was reinforced after he surreptitiously obtained banned literature on the ANC. (The students who had the forbidden books would pass them to Rocks, covered in brown paper to hide the titles, in the lavatory.) Rocks adhered to his conviction after he received a scholarship in 1974 from Joseph’s employer and went to study civil engineering at a technical college in Pietersburg, in the north.
There, having realized his parents’ dream of a chance at an education, Rocks decided to join the ANC. He knew the organization had a representative in Swaziland. One day, he and a friend rented a car and drove over the border to Mbabane. They managed to meet with the representative, who directed them to people in Johannesburg. Eventually, Rocks made contact with Indres Naidoo, a third-generation member of the ANC who was among the first Umkhonto recruits. In 1963, Indres had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for sabotage; on his release in 1973, he was put under house arrest. Still, Indres organized political classes for Rocks and several other young men. The tutorials met for one hour on Saturday afternoons in Dornfontein, a commercial section of Johannesburg. A black woman who ran a large furniture store and was sympathetic to the ANC allowed them to use a back room. Indres demanded strict punctuality from his pupils. The first lesson examined the Freedom Charter; Indres dissected it, clause by clause. The next lesson analysed the alliance between the ANC and the South African Communist Party. Then Indres discussed the Defiance Campaign. And so on, until he had covered the whole modern history of the ANC.
At the same time, Indres was setting up an underground organization to send recruits abroad for military training. He worked with Joe Gqabi, another early Umkhonto volunteer who had also recently been released from prison. Indres would sit on a bench in a downtown park, eating his lunch; Joe, strolling by, casually joined him. There they discussed potential enlistments to their guerrilla army. (The underground group also had an office on Commissioner Street, in the heart of Johannesburg’s business district. Ostensibly an insurance company, the site was considered too unsafe to carry on such sensitive conversations.)
Despite Rocks’ repeated request to be sent overseas for military instruction, Indres and Joe decided to keep him in the country. They were eager to build cells that would operate within South Africa and wanted Rocks to be a part of those structures. Indres entrusted him with distributing smuggled ANC and South African Communist Party literature. The illicit material had to be photocopied, then delivered to the appropriate people. It was dangerous but vital work. Virtually unknown in the townships, the ANC could not compete with the Black Consciousness movement without disseminating its own propaganda. Indres thought Rocks perfect for the job. From their first meeting, the youth had impressed Indres with his seriousness and keen intellect. Rocks was forever encouraging his fellow recruits to broaden themselves by reading; he particularly recommended the novels of Hemingway, Zola, Gorky and Sinclair because of their social commentary.
Rocks successfully hid his ANC work from Nomkhitha and Joseph. They believed he was busy studying to become an engineer at school in Pietersburg. If Rocks appeared regularly at the house in Soweto on Saturday afternoons, it was because he liked coming home. Only Tsietsi had an inkling of Rock’s political involvement, after Rocks began passing pamphlets from the ANC and South African Communist Party to him.
Tsietsi, meanwhile, had become steeped in Black Consciousness ideology. He was drawn to the clubs that sprang up in Soweto under the patronage of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM), a Black Consciousness youth organization. They offered an array of cultural activities to the township youngsters; the emphasis on black pride and self-reliance fitted well with Tsietsi’s loathing of whites.
He was an eager participant in a meeting in 1975 to form an SASM branch at Morris Issacson. Flyers inviting students to the assembly were distributed throughout the school and the turnout was enormous. Tsietsi, as always, mesmerized the crowd with his oratory; they subsequently elected him president. His was a small branch. Most students were too frightened to join the organization openly; they knew how severely the security police dealt with Black Consciousness proponents on the university campuses. Still, SASM had strong support within the school. At the branch’s monthly meeting, its officers usually presented a programme of cultural interest: a Black Consciousness speaker, a poetry reading, a discussion of African literature. The meeting room was always crammed.
As president, Tsietsi cultivated supporters outside the school like Khotso, the boy he had met after the debate at Naledi High School. At the time, Khotso was vehemently against organizations such as SASM; he thought of them as endless debating forums whose discourses could land you in jail. Khotso wanted only to get hold of a gun and overthrow the government. Tsietsi explained that while armed struggle was an inevitable step in the revolution, a political structure was needed before waging war. Patiently, he began schooling Khotso in the ways of Black Consciousness: whites in this country are defining us, Tsietsi explained, and we must begin to define ourselves. We’re not ‘non-white’, we’re black. To assist Khotso in his self-discovery, Tsietsi provided reading material: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael. The banned books opened up new worlds for Khotso. He, like many young black South Africans, was profoundly influenced by the civil rights literature from the US.
Khotso and Tsietsi were constantly arguing. Theirs was an intellectual relationship: Khotso read a book, then debated its merits with Tsietsi. (As friends, they also argued the merits of football clubs and certain girls.) By March 1976, Tsietsi had converted Khotso to the SASM camp. He convinced Khotso to recruit other students to the organization. Tsietsi didn’t want them as formal, dues-paying members, but as partisans. He believed they were embarking on a quest for psychological liberation.
In fact, they were rushing towards a future that no one, not even the youths in their most fanciful imaginings, could foretell.
CHAPTER THREE
June
