Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Sources
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Illustrations
1.Joseph and Nomkhitha Mashinini signing the registry (Mashinini family)
2.Tsietsi, Barney Makhatle and Selby Semela in London (© The Star Newspapers)
3.Tsietsi and Khotso Seatlholo, Botswana (Khotso Seatlholo)
4.Tsietsi in New York (Photograph by Chester Higgins, Jr. © The New York Times)
5.Mpho, Paul Fakude and Themba Mlangeni, 1977 (© The Star Newspapers)
6.Tsietsi speaking with General Obasanjo (Khotso Seatlholo)
7.Dee and Victor Modise at the Pyramids in Cairo (Dee Mashinini)
8.SOMAFCO Students Union Executive Committee (Dee Mashinini)
9.Dee with international student volunteers at SOMAFCO (Dee Mashinini)
10.Dee singing with other students at SOMAFCO (Dee Mashinini)
11.Rocks in East Germany (Mashinini Family)
12.Tsietsi with an unidentified friend in West Africa (Mashinini Family)
13.Joseph and Nomkhitha, June 1990 (© City Press)
14.Mashinini family, 1995 (Dennis Jett)
15.Dee with Tsietsi’s daughters, Thembi and Nomkhitha, at the unveiling of Tsietsi’s tombstone (Dee Mashinini)
16.Joseph at Tsietsi’s grave, October 1997 (Lynda Schuster)
Map by World Sites Atlas (sitesatlas.com)
Prologue
On 4 August 1990, Tsietsi Mashinini finally came home.
Few were accorded the welcome given the young man. And rightly so: despite all his years in exile, Tsietsi remained a legend among South Africa’s black youth. He led the 1976 Soweto uprising, in which thousands of students rebelled against the white-minority government – and hundreds died. Tsietsi’s ability to elude the police, as one of South Africa’s most wanted men, had made him a legend. He was spotted dressed as a stylish girl here, a workman there, a priest on the other side of Soweto, the vast black township. Then, just when the police seemed on the verge of capturing him, Tsietsi escaped over the border.
And so on that brilliant winter morning, hundreds of his admirers descended on Jan Smuts International Airport to await Tsietsi’s return. They jammed the cavernous arrival hall: chanting his name; singing liberation songs; doing the toyi-toyi, the war dance imported from Zimbabwean guerrilla camps that made them look as though they were running in place. Suddenly, a shout went up. Through the doors that led to the cargo area, the youths saw the pallbearers emerge, carrying the coffin. They saw the hearse pull up to the curb outside to receive it. They saw the family huddle around the vehicle, weeping. And they knew that Tsietsi Mashinini had finally come home.
This was not the way it was supposed to have happened. Like so many Africans, Nomkhitha, his mother, believed in the voices of the ancestors. Her long-dead father had appeared to her in a dream to say Tsietsi would return one day to rule South Africa; Nomkhitha had clung to that promise during all the years of her son’s exile. But then came the telephone call telling of Tsietsi’s sudden and inexplicable death in an obscure West African country. So instead of a triumphal return by a conquering hero, a funeral procession of family and followers bore Tsietsi back to the city of his birth.
It was the end of a story that had, in one way or another, entangled all the Mashininis. For Tsietsi set in motion a series of events that would forever define his family. From the time of the Soweto uprising, the Mashinini name became a magical thing among black South Africans – and a thing of infamy among whites. Many of Tsietsi’s twelve siblings and even his parents, heretofore mostly apolitical observers of the country’s gross inequities, were inexorably drawn into the fight against apartheid.
His oldest brother rose through the ranks of the outlawed African National Congress’ army to command ‘freedom fighters’, guerrillas who infiltrated South Africa from neighbouring countries and blew up military installations. Another was twice arrested for his political activities, brutally tortured, tried for treason, released – only to go on to help orchestrate the insurrection that rocked the nation from 1984–86 and ultimately brought the white government to its knees. Yet another fled the country when he was only fifteen, was educated by the ANC in Egypt and Tanzania, and became a senior official in the ANC’s exiled diplomatic service. Even Nomkhitha, the family matriarch, spent 197 days in solitary confinement in a South African
