to Rocks’ plight. To work for the opposition press was to challenge the ruling authority; reporters were routinely detained by the police, interrogated, even assaulted. Besides, providing sanctuary for Rocks would give them the opportunity to do more than just chronicle the uprising.
Indres and Jenny decided they would call Rocks by a codename. She suggested Sipho; her young son and daughter had a storybook entitled Sipho’s Trumpet. As agreed, Indres delivered Rocks to the small, unremarkable house at 29 Roslin Street in the middle of one night. ‘You must be very disciplined,’ Indres warned him before opening the car door. ‘You mustn’t leave the house, you mustn’t drink. Jenny is going to give me a full report of your behaviour.’ Then he said farewell to Rocks and raced back to the township, where he reported to Joe Gqabi, his fellow Umkhonto leader, that Rocks was now deeply hidden.
Rocks quickly settled into a routine. Clive and Jenny departed for work at their respective newspapers early, dropping Thandi, their daughter, at a crèche; their maid Nelly looked after Joshua, the baby. That left Rocks with the house virtually to himself. Despite the high wall that surrounded the house, Jenny advised him to stay away from the front rooms unless the curtains were drawn. He was not to go into the garden during the day nor answer the telephone. Thus confined indoors, Rocks methodically worked his way through the couple’s books. He cooked meals for himself. After Nelly fetched Thandi from the crèche, he spent hours feeding her in the kitchen, playing with her, cradling her.
Jenny came to like him immensely. She had been frightened of bringing a black stranger into her home, concerned that he might feel ill-at-ease with a white family or, worse yet, act obsequiously grateful. Her anxiety proved baseless. Rocks’ warmth and charm were immediately appealing, as was his relationship with Thandi; she, quite literally, jumped into his arms whenever he entered the room. Jenny knew little of Rocks’ background, but guessed he must come from a large family from the way he cared for her daughter. She also found his intellect impressive. Rocks seemed unlike many activists in the anti-apartheid movement Jenny had known, whose obsession with the cause made them appear one-dimensional. Here was a young man who read widely, who took a keen interest in other societies and other political systems. Late at night, after they had put the children to bed, Clive, Jenny and Rocks would sit in the garden and, under the cover of darkness, discuss politics endlessly.
Jenny’s biggest worry was that Rock’s presence would be discovered. No one, not even members of their families, knew that Rocks was hiding with them. Jenny tried to dissuade her friends from popping round for tea. As a preemptive measure, she made arrangements to meet the ones most likely to call on her in town. She managed the few unexpected guests by hurriedly concealing Rocks in Thandi’s bedroom at the opposite end of the house and confining the intruders to the lounge. As a last resort, Clive devised an emergency escape route for Rocks. He was to scale the ladder that hung on the garden wall (which Clive had put there years earlier for the neighbour’s children). Keeping close to the shrubs, Rocks would head to the road, then continue on to the nearby black township of Alexandra. Clive would wait for him at an arranged pickup point when the danger had passed.
Some gatherings at her home, like Thandi’s second birthday party, could not be avoided. Jenny and Clive considered cancelling the celebration, but Thandi had been anticipating it for weeks and would have been inconsolable. And they doubted they could contrive a credible excuse for their respective families. So on the appointed Saturday afternoon, Jenny locked Rocks into the laundry room with a blanket and pillow, a pile of books and a radio that he could play softly. The house filled up with the twenty or so guests: Helen Joseph, a tireless anti-apartheid campaigner; the Naidoo family; uncles; grandparents. As the day was warm, the smallest children took off their clothes and ate their ice cream in their underwear. Jenny could not relax. She had to make certain no one wandered over to the laundry, which would require explaining the locked door. Luckily, the balmy weather kept everyone in the garden; the party passed without mishap, and Jenny saved a piece of birthday cake for Rocks.
Jenny did not worry that Thandi would divulge Rocks’ existence. She told her daughter that Rocks was a visitor, a not-unusual occurrence in their household, and made light of his presence. Nelly, the maid, was a bigger concern. One day she asked Rocks why he used the boss’s toilet and not hers, the one reserved for (black) servants – the common practice in most white South African homes. ‘I’m a journalist from Cape Town and I work for the same organization as Clive,’ he replied, reciting the story he and Jenny had invented as his cover. ‘When Clive goes to Cape Town, he stays with me.’ Nelly seemed unconvinced.
Her suspicions deepened when two white men rang the doorbell one morning, claiming to be electricians come to check the meter. They seemed most interested in Rocks who, despite Jenny’s admonitions about staying indoors, was sitting in the garden by the pool. ‘Who is that boy?’ one man finally asked Nelly.
‘Oh, he’s my son from Cape Town,’ the maid replied. ‘He’s here to get money from me.’
After the men departed, Nelly said to Rocks: ‘I know you aren’t who you say you are. Where are your parents? At least I can tell them that you are still alive.’ Rocks gave Nelly his address in the township.
The next Sunday, dressed in her best church outfit, Nelly went to the Central Western Jabavu section of Soweto. She walked up Pitso Street, singing and clapping her hands the way township women are wont to do on the Sabbath when moved by the spirit and coming home from church. Singing and clapping, Nelly made her way to the Mashininis’ house where she found Nomkhitha and whispered something in her ear; then, still singing her love of the Lord and clapping her hands to a mighty rhythm, she headed back down the road and returned to the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
The police raids on the Mashininis’ home continued, despite Tsietsi’s departure. One night, pushed beyond her tolerance, Nomkhitha snapped from the strain. ‘He’s gone, he’s left, he’s not here!’ she shrieked, chasing the security men outdoors. ‘Now leave my house! Leave my house!’
Nomkhitha’s hysteria only intensified ten-year-old Tshepiso’s panic. He stumbled through the next day feeling terrified: terrified the police would take his parents away; terrified Joseph and Nomkhitha might get caught in a riot on their way home from work; terrified he and his siblings would be left to fend for themselves. No one explained anything to him. The adults were always huddling, whispering, trying to keep their fears from the children. Nothing that happened after June 16 made sense to him.
As if the police brutality were not sufficient punishment, certain friends and relatives ostracized the Mashininis. Some avoided Nomkhitha, they said, because she was Tsietsi’s mother; he was the reason children had died or were in jail. Others stopped talking to all members of the family. A few particularly spiteful types propagated rumours: if you visit the Mashinini house, you will be arrested; if you are seen with a Mashinini, you will be arrested; and so on. (One bit of gossip had it that Nomkhitha was a sangoma, a witch doctor.) The revilement took a terrible toll on her and Joseph.
Not everyone treated the couple as pariahs, though. They found much support in their church: there the minister offered prayers for the children who were in detention or had fled and often mentioned the Mashinini family specifically. Members pointedly visited Joseph and Nomkhitha at home to partake of special services for the students. And many congregants spoke of their admiration for Tsietsi. They came forward to tell stories of previous encounters with him. While some were obvious fabrications, meant to aggrandize the narrator by his association with Tsietsi, most seemed true. The anecdotes conveyed a pride in knowing Tsietsi and solidarity with his family.
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