In 1969 she decided to return to Uitkyk in search of a better job and greater support from being closer to her family. She took up a teaching post at Ngoanamago School, which offered her a principalship, and thus a slightly higher income. This was the beginning of her wanderings from post to post seeking better prospects. She ended her teaching career at Maupje in February 1979 when she finally retired at the age of sixty.
At the end of 1967, the year of my father’s death, I spent the summer vacation in Johannesburg with Dick Mmabane. During my stay at the house of my mother’s elder sister, Mamogolo Ramadimetsa, which had been my base during that holiday, I was rudely interrupted by a telegraphic message from Natal Medical School:
YOU HAVE BEEN ADMITTED STOP PLEASE REPORT TO MRS WHITBY AT THE REGISTRATION OFFICE NOT LATER THAN 11TH JANUARY 1968 STOP
I was dismayed. I could not make head or tail of it. It was my first encounter with a telegram. My anxiety about my admission to the medical school led me to read the STOPs as directives for me to stop entertaining the hope of being admitted to the school. I burst into tears. Fortunately Mamogolo Ramadimetsa was there to calm me down and reassure me. It was a rude initiation for a country bumpkin into the world of telegraphic language.
The level of material deprivation which I endured in the late 1960s and 1970s seems unbelievable even to me today, looking back. Train fare for a second-class return ticket was simply beyond the means of my family. My mother, the only breadwinner, was earning R86 per month as a teacher. I had to appeal to Mamogolo Ramadimetsa to lend me R55, which enabled me to buy a ticket from Johannesburg to Durban, shop for some provisions, and have a bit of pocket money to see me to the medical school doors. Dick Mmabane gave me some money as well, which helped. I had to take each challenge as it came. I refused to think about where the next block of money would come from.
I sat nervously in the train compartment, before being joined by Khoadi Molaba, from Alexandra township in Johannesburg, and later by Patrick Jwili and his mother, who joined us at Balfour Station. Mrs Jwili was clearly very proud of her son, who had earned a master’s degree from an American university after having completed his BSc at Fort Hare University in the Cape. She had misgivings about my intention of being in the same class as her son and Khoadi Molaba, who also had a Fort Hare BSc. She mercilessly set out to whittle away any remnant of self-confidence I had. How could I, a female and lacking as well the head start of a degree which the other two possessed, hope to make my way at medical school? Another vote of no confidence.
Patrick Jwili turned out to be a very amusing character who had acquired a fair number of Americanisms and unfortunately did not in the end make a success of his medical studies. He was excluded in third year. As things transpired, Mrs Jwili was partly right. My squeamish nature made my life very difficult. One of the compulsory experiments in physiology involved pithing a live frog (destroying the spinal cord by inserting a sharp needle into the spinal column), dissecting out its calf muscle, and running a series of tests to measure muscle function under different conditions. There were various stories at medical school of people whose careers had been frustrated by this particular experiment. One such person, Matsapola, was reported to have stabbed the frog in frustration and left it pinned to the experimental table, walking away never to be seen again at the medical school. The experiment acquired the nickname ‘Matsapola’ from this unfortunate incident.
Our physiology teacher tried in vain to desensitise me by encouraging 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)