Rocks successfully hid his ANC work from Nomkhitha and Joseph. They believed he was busy studying to become an engineer at school in Pietersburg. If Rocks appeared regularly at the house in Soweto on Saturday afternoons, it was because he liked coming home. Only Tsietsi had an inkling of Rock’s political involvement, after Rocks began passing pamphlets from the ANC and South African Communist Party to him.
Tsietsi, meanwhile, had become steeped in Black Consciousness ideology. He was drawn to the clubs that sprang up in Soweto under the patronage of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM), a Black Consciousness youth organization. They offered an array of cultural activities to the township youngsters; the emphasis on black pride and self-reliance fitted well with Tsietsi’s loathing of whites.
He was an eager participant in a meeting in 1975 to form an SASM branch at Morris Issacson. Flyers inviting students to the assembly were distributed throughout the school and the turnout was enormous. Tsietsi, as always, mesmerized the crowd with his oratory; they subsequently elected him president. His was a small branch. Most students were too frightened to join the organization openly; they knew how severely the security police dealt with Black Consciousness proponents on the university campuses. Still, SASM had strong support within the school. At the branch’s monthly meeting, its officers usually presented a programme of cultural interest: a Black Consciousness speaker, a poetry reading, a discussion of African literature. The meeting room was always crammed.
As president, Tsietsi cultivated supporters outside the school like Khotso, the boy he had met after the debate at Naledi High School. At the time, Khotso was vehemently against organizations such as SASM; he thought of them as endless debating forums whose discourses could land you in jail. Khotso wanted only to get hold of a gun and overthrow the government. Tsietsi explained that while armed struggle was an inevitable step in the revolution, a political structure was needed before waging war. Patiently, he began schooling Khotso in the ways of Black Consciousness: whites in this country are defining us, Tsietsi explained, and we must begin to define ourselves. We’re not ‘non-white’, we’re black. To assist Khotso in his self-discovery, Tsietsi provided reading material: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael. The banned books opened up new worlds for Khotso. He, like many young black South Africans, was profoundly influenced by the civil rights literature from the US.
Khotso and Tsietsi were constantly arguing. Theirs was an intellectual relationship: Khotso read a book, then debated its merits with Tsietsi. (As friends, they also argued the merits of football clubs and certain girls.) By March 1976, Tsietsi had converted Khotso to the SASM camp. He convinced Khotso to recruit other students to the organization. Tsietsi didn’t want them as formal, dues-paying members, but as partisans. He believed they were embarking on a quest for psychological liberation.
In fact, they were rushing towards a future that no one, not even the youths in their most fanciful imaginings, could foretell.
CHAPTER THREE
June 16
On 15 June 1976 Mpho returned home from school and found the garden filled with Tsietsi’s friends. They were painting with black and red paint on poster boards, bed sheets, lengths of canvas. ‘Away With Afrikaans’, the banners proclaimed, ‘Away With Bantu Education’. Tsietsi and his companions worked quietly; Mpho could feel a muted excitement and tension. He was desperate to know what they were doing. Mpho approached Tsietsi tentatively, constrained by his position as the younger sibling. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he finally asked his brother.
‘You must go to school tomorrow as usual,’ Tsietsi replied. ‘Then we’ll come and close it.’ Mpho was stunned. He could barely believe what he had heard.
Another boy, busily daubing a piece of cardboard, asked Mpho, ‘What time do you have assembly?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
‘Right,’ said the boy, ‘before you get into the classrooms, we’ll be there. You’ll be the first school.’
‘But you don’t know our principal,’ Mpho protested.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll see.’
The boy pushed some paint and a piece of canvas over to Mpho. After considering the various slogans painted by the other youths, Mpho selected ‘Afrikaans Is For Boers’. He rolled up the canvas when the paint had dried and hid it under his bed. He intended to carry it to school under his arm the next morning. Nomkhitha would think it was a class project. Two girls from next door, who had been watching over the fence, gestured to Mpho. One of them mouthed: What is going on? Mpho shook his head. He felt the weight of being admitted to his brother’s circle. Besides, he still was not exactly certain what was about to transpire.
After a few hours – and before Nomkhitha arrived home – Tsietsi and his friends finished their work. They hurriedly cleaned up the paint, tidied the garden, collected their posters and departed. Tomorrow, Mpho thought as he headed into the house, will surely be a great adventure.
From the slogans on the banners, Mpho discerned there would be some sort of protest against the use of Afrikaans in black schools. It was an issue that had been smouldering for months. The previous year the Nationalist government decreed that, starting at the junior-high level, half of all subjects would be taught in Afrikaans. (The edict attempted to appease the right wing of the party, which feared the ascendancy of English.) This was an insult beyond tolerance to the black students. They were already crammed into wretched classrooms with too few teachers and virtually no textbooks or other supplies. When they left school they had little hope of securing a job that paid a living wage. Their parents seemed unable – or unwilling – to challenge the authorities to improve the children’s lot. And now they were being forced to study in a language most did not know.
In the Mashinini family, Mpho and Dee were directly affected by the decree. At the start of the school year, Dee’s teacher began teaching wiskunde, mathematics, in Afrikaans. It was as though a cloud descended upon Dee: he found himself trying to master the language and the concepts simultaneously. By the time he understood that vermenigvuldiging was multiplication, snelheid meant velocity, tyd was time and spoed, speed – the lesson had finished. Dee felt overcome by hopelessness; at this rate, he would never pass his exams.
Other students were similarly despondent. At Orlando West Junior Secondary, the head prefect, Seth Mazibuko, and fellow pupils sent a petition to the inspector of schools. They requested a meeting to discuss the reinstatement of English as the language of instruction. When he refused – the inspector was not about to be summonsed by mere students – Seth and his lieutenants organized a boycott. Students showed up at school but did not attend classes.
Tsietsi visited Seth during the strike. By now, half a dozen other schools had joined Orlando West. SASM leaders seized on this as an issue that could galvanize township youths. They were eager to broaden the boycott, taking it to all the students in Soweto, even those older ones not directly affected by the government edict. Seth agreed to help.
As a kind of test, Seth addressed a meeting of students that Tsietsi organized at Morris Issacson High School. Seth explained the strike, its inception and goals. Tsietsi delivered a fiery discourse on the importance of supporting the youngsters’ Afrikaans boycott. Soon enough, he warned, the senior students would be affected as well. Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception, he, Seth and another SASM activist canvassed other schools in Soweto to assess support for a township-wide boycott. About half the high schools and junior secondaries seemed to be with them; the other half appeared hostile because of fears about the security police.
The SASM leaders called a meeting to discuss the Afrikaans issue on June 13 at a community centre in Soweto. Hundreds of students packed the hall, many of them the contacts Tsietsi and Seth had made in polling the various schools. Six people thought to be police informers were asked to leave. Tsietsi proposed staging a mass demonstration to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans on June 16, the day the students were supposed to sit their exams. A ferocious debate ensued: those opposed to the idea argued that