from school and found the garden filled with Tsietsi’s friends. They were painting with black and red paint on poster boards, bed sheets, lengths of canvas. ‘Away With Afrikaans’, the banners proclaimed, ‘Away With Bantu Education’. Tsietsi and his companions worked quietly; Mpho could feel a muted excitement and tension. He was desperate to know what they were doing. Mpho approached Tsietsi tentatively, constrained by his position as the younger sibling. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he finally asked his brother.
‘You must go to school tomorrow as usual,’ Tsietsi replied. ‘Then we’ll come and close it.’ Mpho was stunned. He could barely believe what he had heard.
Another boy, busily daubing a piece of cardboard, asked Mpho, ‘What time do you have assembly?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
‘Right,’ said the boy, ‘before you get into the classrooms, we’ll be there. You’ll be the first school.’
‘But you don’t know our principal,’ Mpho protested.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll see.’
The boy pushed some paint and a piece of canvas over to Mpho. After considering the various slogans painted by the other youths, Mpho selected ‘Afrikaans Is For Boers’. He rolled up the canvas when the paint had dried and hid it under his bed. He intended to carry it to school under his arm the next morning. Nomkhitha would think it was a class project. Two girls from next door, who had been watching over the fence, gestured to Mpho. One of them mouthed: What is going on? Mpho shook his head. He felt the weight of being admitted to his brother’s circle. Besides, he still was not exactly certain what was about to transpire.
After a few hours – and before Nomkhitha arrived home – Tsietsi and his friends finished their work. They hurriedly cleaned up the paint, tidied the garden, collected their posters and departed. Tomorrow, Mpho thought as he headed into the house, will surely be a great adventure.
From the slogans on the banners, Mpho discerned there would be some sort of protest against the use of Afrikaans in black schools. It was an issue that had been smouldering for months. The previous year the Nationalist government decreed that, starting at the junior-high level, half of all subjects would be taught in Afrikaans. (The edict attempted to appease the right wing of the party, which feared the ascendancy of English.) This was an insult beyond tolerance to the black students. They were already crammed into wretched classrooms with too few teachers and virtually no textbooks or other supplies. When they left school they had little hope of securing a job that paid a living wage. Their parents seemed unable – or unwilling – to challenge the authorities to improve the children’s lot. And now they were being forced to study in a language most did not know.
In the Mashinini family, Mpho and Dee were directly affected by the decree. At the start of the school year, Dee’s teacher began teaching wiskunde, mathematics, in Afrikaans. It was as though a cloud descended upon Dee: he found himself trying to master the language and the concepts simultaneously. By the time he understood that vermenigvuldiging was multiplication, snelheid meant velocity, tyd was time and spoed, speed – the lesson had finished. Dee felt overcome by hopelessness; at this rate, he would never pass his exams.
Other students were similarly despondent. At Orlando West Junior Secondary, the head prefect, Seth Mazibuko, and fellow pupils sent a petition to the inspector of schools. They requested a meeting to discuss the reinstatement of English as the language of instruction. When he refused – the inspector was not about to be summonsed by mere students – Seth and his lieutenants organized a boycott. Students showed up at school but did not attend classes.
Tsietsi visited Seth during the strike. By now, half a dozen other schools had joined Orlando West. SASM leaders seized on this as an issue that could galvanize township youths. They were eager to broaden the boycott, taking it to all the students in Soweto, even those older ones not directly affected by the government edict. Seth agreed to help.
As a kind of test, Seth addressed a meeting of students that Tsietsi organized at Morris Issacson High School. Seth explained the strike, its inception and goals. Tsietsi delivered a fiery discourse on the importance of supporting the youngsters’ Afrikaans boycott. Soon enough, he warned, the senior students would be affected as well. Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception, he, Seth and another SASM activist canvassed other schools in Soweto to assess support for a township-wide boycott. About half the high schools and junior secondaries seemed to be with them; the other half appeared hostile because of fears about the security police.
The SASM leaders called a meeting to discuss the Afrikaans issue on June 13 at a community centre in Soweto. Hundreds of students packed the hall, many of them the contacts Tsietsi and Seth had made in polling the various schools. Six people thought to be police informers were asked to leave. Tsietsi proposed staging a mass demonstration to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans on June 16, the day the students were supposed to sit their exams. A ferocious debate ensued: those opposed to the idea argued that the security police would crush them. People might be arrested, hurt, perhaps even killed.
But the march’s opponents were no match for Tsietsi. He was at his most impressive in front of an audience: cajoling, gesticulating, pacing the room, insisting that nothing would happen if the demonstration remained non-violent. Khotso Seatlholo, who arrived at the meeting late, could feel the sentiment in the room turning in his friend’s favour. Tsietsi roused the crowd with quotes from great works of literature, his favourite being Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’:
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
The proposal was passed unanimously. The students nominated two delegates from each school to form an Action Committee, headed by Tsietsi and Seth. They adjourned the gathering with a decision to work out the actual details at a meeting on the day before the demonstration. Afterwards, Tsietsi and a few members of the Action Committee knocked on the door of Duma Ndlovu, a young journalist who worked on a black newspaper, The World. Duma wrote a column on school sports; his presence at a match generated much excitement among the youths, for it meant they would read about their school in the paper the next day. He knew many of the more prominent students, including Tsietsi who, in Duma’s mind, stood out from his peers for his assertiveness. Tsietsi wasted little time with formalities. ‘Something big is going to happen on Wednesday,’ he said to Duma. ‘Be sure to be in Soweto.’
‘What?’
‘We can’t tell you, just be sure to be in Soweto.’
‘Look, I can’t get my editor to put me on a story if I can’t tell him what it is.’
‘Tell him it’s going to be big. And be there.’
Over the next two days, the Action Committee delegates fanned out through the township, visiting the various high schools and junior secondaries. Their mission was to inform students of the impending march and rally support. Draw up placards in secret, Tsietsi’s representatives urged the astonished pupils. Don’t tell your parents. During the march, remain disciplined. Follow the instructions of your school leaders. Above all, do not be afraid.
Tsietsi convened the final planning meeting in the afternoon on June 15. He and the other Action Committee members devised a formula for the march: students from about a dozen schools
