I still need to make my point.
‘Seriously, we need to understand that even though your chances on trial may be bleak, there are hidden possibilities that may delay or change things. If you take this political stand, these possibilities will no longer be open to you. The option of standing on principle comes at a terrible price, and you must be aware of that. This is also a strategy that is untested. It is not as if you are putting up a defence or an argument in extenuation, and even if you were, no ANC cadre has ever been granted POW status or anything even approaching it.
‘But you will not even get that far. Your stand on non-participation will prevent you from doing anything other than making a statement, and I am not even sure if the judge will allow that as he may think that you are making a mockery of his court and his authority. However, you must also know that if you choose this route, I will give you total support and do everything I can to keep you alive for as long as possible.’
Businesslike, Jabu replies, ‘We know you are doing your job by saying these things. We appreciate that. It shows us that you have our interests at heart. But it was you who sketched out the POW option to us in detail and we have discussed it and come to the conclusion that it is the one we want to follow. We would like you to consult Chris Hani, our commander in Lusaka, as well as Govan Mbeki. We would have liked to consult with the leadership on Robben Island but we know that that is obviously not an option. We will try to get word to them and see what they have to say. In the meantime, we will continue with our own discussions.’
15
In 1978, front page photographs of ANC men in a shootout with police convinced Joseph Makhura that he was wasting his time as a gardener at the Berea Park Sports Club in Pretoria. He was tending bowling greens while others were dying for his freedom. Joseph decided to travel to Swaziland and join the ANC.
Joseph Makhura: ‘My family had always stayed in Lady Selborne near Pretoria where we had a decent house and land that we could farm. My mother told me that when I was two years old, my family was forcibly removed from the land and taken to a small house in Mamelodi. All the people from Lady Selborne were split up and resettled in Mamelodi and the townships of Garankuwa and Atteridgeville. My mother and my uncles often talked about Lady Selborne for hours. My mother would bring out her pictures of our house. Mamelodi was different, it was a tough place.
‘My mother was not happy about her children growing up in Mamelodi, with all the drinking and crime and violence, so she sent me to live with my grandmother Sina and my grandfather Joseph, who worked on a farm at Hartebeespoort Dam. I was three years old. I remember crying at being separated from my mother, desperately wanting to stay with her, but I also think that she was battling to cope in many ways. She was a single mother. I never saw my father and she never mentioned his name. I also think that the move from Lady Selborne really affected her and made her very depressed.
‘The farm my grandfather worked on was owned by a white man called Koos Viljoen. My grandfather looked after the cattle. My grandmother was a domestic worker and gardener for a white family who had a house in the suburb of Cosmos near the dam. They were absentee owners and would use the house on the occasional weekend. My grandfather was a kind and gentle man who never hit us, even though we were quite naughty.
‘Initially the house my grandfather lived in was a single room. He built on a kitchen and bedroom and we were joined by my sisters and some cousins whose parents were also living in Mamelodi. They worked during the day and worried about leaving the children alone from five in the morning until eight at night.
‘The farm had its own troubles. Koos, “Baas Koos” as we called him, was a man with a terrible temper. From time to time, he would arrive and count the cows, and if there was anything wrong he would scream and shout, calling us “kaffirs” and my grandmother a “kaffermeid”. We were frightened of Baas Koos when he behaved like this and would run into the house and peek through the curtains, praying that he would not hit my grandfather. On these occasions, my grandfather would explain to Baas Koos, but he wouldn’t listen. I remember him shouting at my grandfather to be quiet: “Shut up, kaffir!” Then my grandfather would stand there, head bowed, looking at the ground. One day I asked what “kaffir” meant. He replied, “Kaffirs are white people.” It was a strange answer. I didn’t understand it then, and I’m not sure I do now.
‘I remember another day Koos came with a sjambok and thrashed my grandfather, shouting at him that he was stupid and needed to be taught a lesson. My grandfather sank to his knees in the dust in front of Baas Koos, covering his head with his hands while he was whipped. Watching through the window, I started to cry, wanting to go out there and do something although I was too afraid. I heard Baas Koos shouting and swearing at him, the sjambok cutting through the air, and then I heard my grandfather start to beg for mercy in Afrikaans. I couldn’t really understand the language then, but it was obvious that he was crying and pleading with Baas Koos to stop, which he did after a while, panting from the effort. Shoulders heaving, he turned, threw the sjambok into the back of his truck and drove off fast, leaving my grandfather lying on the ground. I rushed out and helped him into the house. He never said a word as I laid him on his bed, bleeding, eyes closed in pain. He turned to face the wall so I could not see his face. I climbed onto the bed with him and put my arms around him, hugging him tight. He didn’t move. When I asked if I could help, he waved me away. I did not know then but I know now that he was ashamed. He did not want me to come too close to his humiliation.
‘I don’t know if Baas Koos was in trouble or drunk or what, but he began to beat my grandfather more often. Each time it was the same thing. He would never listen to my grandfather, just whip him until he lay cowering on the ground. It got to the stage where my grandfather, when he heard the truck coming, would stay in the house, too terrified to go out. Baas Koos, sjambok in hand, would stand in the yard, shouting at him to come out. My grandfather would go out and sometimes he would be beaten and sometimes not.
‘I was very close to my grandfather. He was the father I never had and he treated me like a son. I asked him once why he didn’t fight back. He said, “If I fight back, my son, we will have to move from this place – and there is nowhere to go.” I understood that this was the way things were. I accepted it and also became afraid. Then something else happened.
‘To make extra money, my cousins and I and some other local boys would sell earthworms to the white fishermen at the dam. On one occasion a white boy came up to me. He was smaller and younger than me. He asked me something in Afrikaans. I could not understand what he was saying, so I said nothing, and suddenly he hit me with his fists. I let him. I stood there as my grandfather did before Baas Koos, the blows raining down. They didn’t really hurt as he was not that strong. He was smaller than me. While he hit me, I remembered my grandfather saying to me, “If you hit a white man, you create much more trouble.” After a short while, the boy stopped hitting me and left. I felt a burning in my chest which wasn’t pain, it was an anger so strong that it felt like there was a force in my chest. Walking home, I was so disappointed and ashamed of myself, I began to cry.
‘On that farm, we were always hungry. There was never enough food. We had pap at night and in the morning we would eat the brown layer of pap at the bottom of the pan. It was hard like a biscuit. We never had meat except if we killed birds and rabbits with a catapult.
‘The only other time we would have meat was when a cow died. Then Baas Koos would give the dead cow to my grandfather. That man gave us nothing unless it had no use for him, we were always hungry and we lived in fear of him and his sjambok.
‘Koos was one of the reasons I left the country. As I grew up, I never forgot him, and I promised myself that when I was much older, I would get trained in MK and come back and kill him. I hated him for what he did to my grandfather, for making him beg like that. Man, it marked me. Even
