me to play around with my hand in a bucket full of frogs. I simply could not stand the slimy creatures. In the final exam, by the time I eventually mustered enough courage to hold on to the frog (half an hour into experimental time), I was desperate. I squeezed all life out of the poor devil, and was so confused that I connected gas for use on the burner, instead of oxygen, to the muscle chamber, which killed off any prospect of muscle reaction. I was devastated. I sat down after wiping off tears of frustration and wrote about the theory behind the experiment in a desperate attempt to redeem myself. I was relieved to pass physiology in the end – never mind the third-class pass obtained.
Anatomy, another major second-year course, was much more interesting and better taught under the leadership of Professor Keen. Our first day in the dissecting room was marked by anxiety and fear of the unknown cadavers. How were you to overcome your sensibilities, and not only handle dead bodies but dissect them as well? Necessity triumphs over many barriers. The initial fear of the cadaver gradually gave way and with less than reverence some of the students started playing with body parts. It may well be that the unspoken and unacknowledged guilt about breaking an important taboo compelled you to be outrageous so as to be able to make light of the moment and live with yourself. We often had to be called to order by Professor Keen, who insisted on decorum in the dissecting room.
The blind faith of my high-school years, which urged me on to make the difficult career decision, paid off handsomely. My good matriculation grades and above-average performance in my premedical courses at the University of the North attracted the attention of the Medical School administrators. In addition to the full-cost grant from the Department of Bantu Education worth R450, which was then available to every African student, I won the 1968 South African Jewish Women’s Association Scholarship worth about R200 and the Sir Ernest Oppenheimer Bursary worth R150 annually for the rest of my medical school years.
For the first time in my life I was in the lap of luxury. I could not bear the thought of spending this considerable sum of money on myself alone, as many of my contemporaries did. They bought clothes, music systems, and sometimes even cars. I led a modest life and sent my mother about R50 every so many months. That support was crucial for my mother to educate my younger brothers.
The rest of my medical subjects became less and less interesting to me as extracurricular activities began to take centre stage. Mediocrity became the hallmark of my performance. I scraped through the remaining years at medical school, gaining second-class passes as the best grades. So low was my interest in my medical career that I did not even celebrate my final-year success or attend graduation. A career so hard fought for became less and less attractive the closer I came to attaining my goal.
Chapter 8: Initiation into activism
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP OFTEN SHAPES YOUR LIFE IN significant ways. My friendship with Vuyelwa Mashalaba, a classmate who I met in the first few days at medical school in January 1968, played a major role in shaping my future interests. Vuyelwa was a strikingly beautiful woman with sharp features, a smooth olive complexion, and a strong, well-proportioned body. She exuded self-confidence and spoke with a distinctive, polished English accent. She came from a family of strong, high-achieving sisters, headed by their widowed mother, who lived in Maclear, in the Eastern Cape.
Vuyelwa played tennis and loved classical music. She also had a large record collection of Miriam Makeba’s music. She rekindled my love for classical music and tried to teach me tennis. Her enthusiasm failed to compensate for my lack of talent in sports, and we agreed to abandon what was clearly a road to nowhere.
Vuyelwa soon introduced me to her circle of friends, which included Steve Biko, Charles Sibisi, Chapman Palweni and Goolam Abram and, later, to Ben Mgulwa, Aubrey Mokoape, Ben Ngubane and many others who were student leaders at the time. We all attended student body meetings regularly from the middle of 1968. It was a completely new world for me. I listened quietly but with great interest to the debates on student politics of the day, which were dominated by criticism of the white liberal politics of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). I had to strain to follow the quick exchanges peppered as they were with acronyms, which were like Greek to me. I also marvelled at the self-confidence of student activists and the facility most of them had in using English to communicate.
Steve Biko was the main critic of white liberal politics, having been active as a NUSAS official and a member of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) at Natal. The thrust of his criticism was that white liberals’ opposition to racial discrimination was ineffectual and unlikely to lead to any fundamental change in South Africa because it lacked a coherent critique of racism and its socioeconomic manifestations. He contended that few white liberals were themselves committed to non-racialism and social justice to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice their privileged position in society in the quest for greater equity. He cited the ease with which former NUSAS leaders and other activists settled into privileged positions once they graduated from university as evidence that white liberal politics was viewed as a pastime that one pursued so long as it did not interfere with the ‘real’ world of white privilege.
Steve also spoke out against the paternalism of white liberals who tended to dominate opposition politics in the 1960s. He felt that their paternalism in part stemmed from their deep-seated feelings of superiority towards black people. He criticised their definition of multi-racialism, which assumed the superiority of Western culture and the automatic assimilation of blacks into its fold. He was critical of the reliance blacks placed on white leadership. He charged blacks with lack of faith in themselves and of having internalised an inferiority complex: such self-inflicted psychological oppression ensured their continued physical and political oppression. He urged black students to see themselves as black first and foremost, and to commit themselves to the total liberation of all black people in South Africa.
Steve’s conclusion was that the only way to effect fundamental change in South Africa would be for the oppressed people themselves to take the initiative and to work for their own liberation. He drew on the experiences and the approaches of the Black Power movement in the United States for inspiration, as well as on the Négritude writers such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire who he quoted extensively in his speeches and later in his writings.
Ben Ngubane was Steve Biko’s main opponent in the debates. Ben’s view was that the forces of apartheid were powerful and evil and should be denied the pleasure of seeing disunity among the anti-apartheid ranks. He conceded the points Steve was making in his critique, but disagreed with the suggestion that black politics be consolidated away from the white liberal fold.
Ben defended NUSAS on the medical school campus to the very last, when the student body finally voted narrowly in favour of Steve’s motion of central disaffiliation from NUSAS. This paved the way for the black South African Students’ Organisation (SASO)10 to operate on a par with NUSAS, using a campus branch affiliation system. Ben argued that NUSAS had stood firm in the face of harassment by the apartheid state and thus deserved the loyalty of all freedom-loving students. He was an eloquent speaker, but was no match for the younger and more passionate Biko. Ben often lost his temper, and became more cynical and disillusioned, finally fading out of the political arena, only to re-emerge in the 1980s as an Inkatha official – a not insignificant political move, crowned with a cabinet post in the first Government of National Unity in 1994.
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The tentacles of apartheid spread everywhere in South Africa in the 1960s. The section of Natal University which catered for black students was known as the University of Natal Non-European Section. (This became known as the University of Natal Black Section (UNB) after SASO requested that the name be officially changed in 1970.) Professor Owen Horwood was principal of the university at the time. He later became Minister of Finance, and was revealed to have been party to the Information Scandal which rocked the National Party government of John Vorster, and finally forced Vorster to resign. Horwood
