from the area. Incensed, the youngsters retaliated by burning down the houses of black policemen, attacking other buildings and destroying vehicles. Soweto was alight once again.
The violence continued for several days; Tsietsi explained the youths’ actions in a lengthy interview in The World newspaper. ‘The students felt they had had enough,’ he said, ‘not only of the system of oppression at school, but of the system of this country – the way people are ruled, the way the laws are made by the White minority and all that. Students had had enough of what was being given to them by the White man, our parents and our teachers . . . What the people of today, especially the White people, should realize is that the student of today is not saying the people must be free, but the people will be free. I believe the time is near when people will be free.’
Despite the failure of the marchers to gain entry to Johannesburg, the SSRC leaders were encouraged by the protests, especially the stay-away. They saw the latter as having great potential to damage the government. Tsietsi and his colleagues immediately began planning for another strike later in the month; the more workers they could draw in, the more successful it would be. They found the preparations difficult. For reasons of security, the SSRC leadership led a kind of nocturnal existence, working from late in the afternoon until the early hours of the morning. Tsietsi again went from school to school, trying to keep morale up and resentment against the police simmering. He warned students against intimidating adults this time. The idea, he said, is not to confront them on the morning of August 24 – the date of the next stay-away – but to educate and prepare them.
The brutal methods the police employed to crush their rebellion made some on the SSRC yearn for more radical measures. At a meeting to complete the details of the stay-away, Tsietsi was suddenly called from the room. Khotso Seatlholo took over as chairman; he managed to convince the representatives they ought to attempt another march into town. ‘We will always be easy targets for the police in the township,’ Khotso warned. ‘We are dying in Soweto, but that doesn’t affect whites in any way.’
When Tsietsi returned, Khotso informed him they were discarding the idea of a strike in favour of a march. Tsietsi rejected it as a failed strategy. ‘Whites seem to value property more than lives,’ he said. ‘They’ll still shoot at us, whether we’re in town or in the township. So why waste our lives? We can do something much quieter and more effective: hit them where it hurts, in their wallet.’ At that, Tsietsi called for a vote; the representatives agreed to pursue the stay-away. (Tsietsi later issued a statement to the press that condemned ‘police action in Soweto by irresponsibly shooting at students on their way to school or black children playing in the location as it has been reported in the newspapers. We see it as an unofficial declaration of war on black students by our “peace-officers”.’)
Tsietsi’s identification as the president of the SSRC, his photograph in the newspapers, his public statements – all seemed to taunt the government and intensify its determination to arrest him. Unable to catch Tsietsi at home, the police tried another tack. They claimed that for his own security, Tsietsi ought to hand himself over to the authorities; a group of disgruntled workers wanted to kill him because of the uprising. When that failed, the police posted a 500 rand reward for information leading to his arrest. Tsietsi Mashinini was now the most hunted man in South Africa.
Suddenly, people who had shunned Joseph and Nomkhitha offered to hide their son. The Mashininis took a dim view of such proposals. The reward was the equivalent of a year’s salary for a domestic worker and thus a considerable temptation, especially to poor township residents. The SSRC officers were equally sceptical and decided to limit knowledge of Tsietsi’s whereabouts to two people. Barney Makgatle, who was older than most of the activists, became Tsietsi’s chauffeur. He had years of driving experience, knew the township’s byways, and could spot a roadblock from a long distance. Selby Semela, another SSRC member, took on the role of companion to Tsietsi. A measured, cautious youth, Selby often acted as a balance to Tsietsi’s extreme self-confidence. They made for a strange trio: the driver, the comrade and the impassioned leader, traversing the township at odd hours, addressing students at various schools, distributing pamphlets, sleeping in a new safe house each night.
Tsietsi began to lead the police on a chase. With Drake Koka providing an ever-changing array of cars, a mythology arose about Tsietsi’s ability to evade capture. People likened him to Nelson Mandela, who was given the apartheid-modified appellation of the Black Pimpernel in the early 1960s for his escapades while being hunted by the government. One such story about Tsietsi had him presiding over a meeting of SSRC members at Morris Issacson High School when it was surrounded by security officers. Acting on information that Tsietsi was inside, they made the youths leave the building one by one. Tsietsi, dressed in girls’ dungarees and a beret, sauntered past the policemen; they looked him up and down – and let him pass.
Another tale put him at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto in the middle of the day. Poppy Buthelezi, a young girl who had been shot by the police on June 16 and was paralysed from the waist down, was hospitalized there. As the weeks passed and the uprising progressed, she heard the parents of other wounded students muttering about how this was all the fault of Tsietsi Mashinini. One afternoon, a young man bearing a large basket of fruit appeared on the ward. Striding over to Poppy’s bed, he handed her the delicacies. ‘Tell them you got this from Tsietsi Mashinini’, he said, then disappeared down the hallway.
One such story was immortalized on film. Drake had asked a friend’s grandson, who was visiting from Germany, if he could rent a car in his name; since the grandson was unknown to the police, the vehicle most likely would not raise suspicion. The young man agreed. Drake rented a small grey car and gave it to Tsietsi and his companions to use. With no real purpose and full of teenage bravado, they drove it directly to the Moroka police station in Soweto, where they remained for a time. As they left the car park, the youths thrust their fists out of the windows in the black power salute – a gesture that was captured on film by a passing photographer, Peter Magubane. Drake would see the picture on display in London after he went into exile. He was astounded by the spectacle: the apartheid regime’s ‘most wanted’ fugitive sitting on the doorstep of the police, virtually daring them to look up from their desks and arrest him.
Nomkhitha feared Tsietsi’s luck would not hold. And, if the police did capture him, she believed he would die in detention. The authorities would say he had hanged himself, or jumped from a window, or done any of the other implausible things they gave as explanations for the scores of activists who died while in police custody. Tsietsi scoffed at Nomkhitha when she spoke of her concern. ‘I wish I could see my funeral,’ he laughed, with all the arrogance of youth. To a black journalist, Tsietsi said: ‘I don’t say they can’t get me. I know they can kill me any time. What they don’t know is that they cannot kill the spirit. They will kill me now, but there will be another Tsietsi, a day or even an hour later.’
Despite the brave talk, Tsietsi understood the precariousness of his existence. One night he took Khotso Seatlholo to the weekly meeting at the House of Exile. ‘This young fellow is going to be very close to you,’ Tsietsi said as he introduced Khotso to Drake. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but in the event of a slip-up or my leaving, please give him the same help you’ve given me.’ Turning to Khotso, he added, ‘Any time you do anything as a member of the SSRC, you must consult with Drake.’ The formalities thus completed, Tsietsi and Drake launched into a discussion of the night’s topic: the failures of the first stay-away. Drake criticized the SSRC for not giving workers advance warning of the strike. They need to be better educated, he insisted, and they need more pamphlets. Tsietsi agreed; he and his associates were already addressing the deficiencies as they prepared for the next stay-away.
But Drake doubted whether Tsietsi would live that long. The police now suspected Drake’s involvement with the youth and an officer had told Drake his colleagues would kill Tsietsi when they found him. On the same day, Drake heard that a bullet fired at Tsietsi as he drove through the township had missed his head by millimetres. Drake took the incidents as warnings. Given
