The Bang-Bang Club (37 page)

I was stunned. Was a peace-keeper actually admitting that they had been the ones to shoot us? It was almost five years after Ken’s death in Thokoza but it somehow had remained a festering sore. The pain only recently had begun to lose its sharp edges. I wanted to know more - for Ken’s family, for me, for the record - and I asked Mkhize how I could reach him.

Back in Johannesburg, I told Joao about this chance meeting. He and Viv had just announced that they would get married the following month and their happiness turned into a moody retrospection. We began checking up on Mkhize and everything he had said about himself was correct. But his name was not on the list supplied to the
court by the military authorities at the time of the inquest. Was Mkhize an avid newspaper-reader who had inserted himself into an event to gain dubious credibility, or was he telling the truth, and so validating our belief that the military had covered up their role in Ken’s death?

There was only one way to find out, and two weeks later Joao and I drove down to Durban to meet him. We were both anxious, tense and testy with each other. I was unsure of how to approach Mkhize. I did not want to say something that would turn him off talking to us. I had earlier cautioned Joao to keep his temper in check - the subject of Ken’s death usually made him aggressive, or he would instead withdraw into a sullen, oppressive silence that could be extremely intimidating.

I need not have worried; Joao, of course, wanted to hear what Mkhize had to say as much as I did. We had arranged to meet Mkhize at his family’s home in KwaMashu township, outside Durban, but he was not there when we arrived. We waited for two hours, watching cats, dogs and chickens in Ma Mkhize’s backyard. We started quizzing her about her son. She told us that he and all four of his brothers had been ANC soldiers in Umkhonte we Sizwe (the ANC’s armed wing), and that Brian Mkhize had indeed been in Thokoza as a peace-keeper in April of 1994. After a while the conversation dried up, and we decided to leave: there was no point in waiting at the house if he was avoiding us.

It was 14 February, and Ken would have turned 36 that day. Joao kept thinking about the irony that we might meet one of the soldiers who had possibly killed Ken, on his birthday. Even though Joao reminded me, I forgot - the coincidence did not have much meaning to me. I am not sentimental, nor given to omens. I did, however, want to find out more: I was curious to know what a peace-keeper had been thinking of when he or his colleagues had shot us. I wanted to know if there was a relationship between the person who pulled his forefinger to release those bullets, and myself, on the receiving end. I had always been sure that it had been an accident, but was there more to it? And afterwards, had any of them expressed a malicious glee that journalists
were dead and wounded, even if it had been accidental? Or had there been regret?

We called the Mkhize house at midday, and Brian was there. He said he was tired, and needed to sleep - but agreed to a meeting later that same afternoon. As Joao and I again drove towards his home in KwaMashu township from our hotel in Durban, we were not sure that he would be waiting for us; and if he was there, we had no idea what he had to tell us. The memories of Ken’s death had been swamping us ever since Mkhize’s unexpected revelation in Richmond. It had been five full years since that day in Khumalo Street. Joao and I had started writing this book almost two years previously, partly from a need to tell what had happened during the Hostel War: so much more than that which we had managed to capture on film. We also needed to understand the people we had been in those years, and while the writing had not provided us with all the answers, it had, at least, clarified the questions. We began to query just why it was that we were so hung up on Ken - on proving that the peace-keepers had killed him and on ensuring he did become an icon of South African photography. There was more to what we had been doing than creating a ritual closure which the inquest had failed to deliver. We had partly been using Ken’s death as a shield against having to address why we continue to do work that has brought us so much guilt and pain.

As we approached the Mkhize home, we were hoping that his confession would give us the chance to let go of Ken, to allow us finally to confront ourselves without the filter of Ken’s memory. If we could let go of the past, we could move on, cease the morbid obsessions that settled on us from time to time - as Viv had said to Joao back in 1994, ‘You don’t smile any more.’ We wanted to regain the joy we used to get from photography, as well as a full enjoyment from the ordinary things in life - something that had been impaired over the last years. It was time to put things in perspective: we had not personally suffered like some of the people we photographed, but neither were we responsible for their suffering - we had just witnessed it.

We parked on the grass verge outside the house and as we got out a
tall man stepped forward from a group of black youths who had been looking curiously at us and said, ‘The guy you want is inside. Go on in and wake him up.’

In the lounge we waited apprehensively on the edge of the soft couch. A soccer match was on television and the sound was turned way up. Then Mkhize came out, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He suggested we go talk in the car where we could have some privacy. That day in Thokoza had disturbed him for years and he cut through our preamble and came straight to the point. He described the fear that the under-trained peace-keepers had felt at being told they had to storm the hostel. They had panicked and unthinkingly opened fire. ‘I think,’ he said finally, ‘somewhere, somehow ... I think somewhere, one of us, the bullet that killed your brother - it came from us.’

GLOSSARY

Acholi:
tribe in northern Uganda, renowned for their ritualistic traditional funeral songs.

Afrikaans:
language of the Afrikaner people, a simplified version of old Dutch.

Afrikaner:
Afrikaans-speaking white South African, descendent of Dutch, French and German colonists.

AK-47:
Kalashnikov semi-automatic assault rifle, standard infantry weapon of East Bloc countries; most widely used guerrilla weapon.

‘All night, nyaga-nyaga with the fokken amaZulu’:
(Tsotsitaal) ‘There has been trouble with the fucking Zulus all night long.’

amaButho:
(Zulu) group of Zulu warriors, traditional age-based system of military service.

ANC:
African National Congress; black liberation movement founded in 1912, banned in 1960, unbanned on 2 February 1990. Oldest surviving political organization in South Africa, now has majority in Parliament.

apartheid:
(Afrikaans) ‘separateness’. Official government policy from 1948 to ensure racial separation at all levels of society.

APLA:
Azanian People’s Liberation Army. Armed wing of the radical black Pan-Africanist Congress, now disbanded.

asigibeli:
(from gibela - Zulu for ‘ride’) call for a work stay-away, to not use transport to town.

assegai:
(Zulu) short Zulu stabbing spear.

AWB:
Afrikaans acronym for Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) Militant neo-Nazi organization.

AWOL:
absent without leave.

 

baas:
(Afrikaans) master, sir, boss. Former mode of address by non-whites to whites.

big machines:
township slang for an assault rifle, usually an AK-47.

black:
person whose skin colour is not white. Apartheid terminology referred to Bantu-speaking Africans, non-Bantu-speaking Africans and people of mixed race (coloureds) as non-whites.

Black Maria:
police vehicle used as a mortuary van.

black-on-black violence:
term used by authorities to describe violence between black political groupings. Also ‘faction fighting’ in attempt to tribalize and de-politicize the conflict.

Boer:
literally ‘farmer’. Afrikaans-speaking white, used by Afrikaners as a self-defining term, referring to pioneering farmer or descendant of early Dutch or French Huguenot settlers.

boers:
derogatory reference to white ruling class, especially security forces and Afrikaners.

Boer Wars:
the Transvaal Boers won the right to partial independence from imperial Britain as the Zuid Afrikaanse Republick (ZAR) after the first Boer war of 1880-81. The second Boer war (1899-1902) saw the ZAR and the Orange Free State re-colonized by Britain.

boerewors:
(Afrikaans) highly spiced pork and beef sausage, almost the national dish crossing ethnic and racial lines.

Bophuthatswana:
until 1994, a nominally independent national state for Tswana people, consisting of seven unconnected pieces of land. One of the ten apartheid homelands.

boytjie:
(Afrikaans) small boy, Afrikaans term of endearment.

braai:
(Afrikaans) barbecue.

braaivleis:
(Afrikaans) social gathering at which meat is barbecued or grilled.

button:
slang for Mandrax tablet.

button-kop:
(kop - Afrikaans) ‘button-head’, habitual Mandrax user.

bushveld:
countryside dominated by thorn trees; usually cattle or game area.

 

Casspir:
armoured, mine-proofed SA military vehicle.

CBS:
US television network.

Charterist:
follower of the Freedom Charter, the ANC’s original manifesto.

CNN:
US television network.

Coloured:
apartheid terminology for a person of mixed race, alternatively non-Bantu African.

comrade:
young militant activist affiliated to one of the liberation movements.

com:
abbreviation of comrade.

comtsotsi:
comrade + tsotsi - thug masquerading as comrade.

 

dagga:
slang for marijuana,
Cannabis sativa
.

dead zone:
no-man’s-land in township during Hostel War.

‘Die Stem’:
‘The Voice’ - Afrikaans poem by C.J. Langenhoven, set to music, became the South African national anthem. Strongly Afrikaner nationalist. Now one of two with ‘Nkosi Sikeleli’ iAfrika’.

dompas:
slang for the detested reference or pass book, which Africans were required by law to carry to prove they had permission to be in an urban or white area. Repealed in 1986.

Durban Poison:
potent marijuana that is grown in KwaZulu-Natal.

 

Emergency Regulations:
rules under which a temporary State of Emergency is governed.

 

f5.6:
lens aperture setting, to control light and/or depth of field.

Fokoff:
(Afrikaans, slang) fuck off.

Freedom Charter:
document written and adopted in 1955 by the Congress of the People at Kliptown. It propounded a non-racial society, liberty and individual rights. Those liberation movements that followed its guidelines were called Charterist as opposed to the Black Consciousness movements such as the PAC.

 

ganja:
(Caribbean slang) marijuana,
Cannabis sativa
.

group areas:
areas set aside for exclusive occupation by a particular race group in terms of the Group Areas Act, 1950.

 

Heytada:
(Tsotsitaal) township greeting, short for heytadaso.

highveld:
high-altitude grassland on inland plateau where Johannesburg and the Reef are sited.

hola:
(Spanish) greeting previously used only by those supporting the liberation movements, now almost depoliticized.

homeland:
one of ten areas set aside under apartheid for particular African tribes or language groups, earlier known as Bantustans, to ensure black South Africans were citizens of nominally self-governing or independent territories and thus leave South Africa with a white majority. Four opted for full independence in the 70s - Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei and Venda. All were reincorporated into SA in 1994.

 

IFP:
Inkatha Freedom Party.

impi:
(Nguni) band of armed men, regiment, often with tribal connections, especially Zulu.

impimpi:
police informer, spy, sell-out. Possibly from ‘pimp’, as in ‘to pimp on someone’.

induna:
(Nguni) headman.

influx control:
regulations controlling the movement of Africans out of the homelands and into white SA.

inkatha:
(Zulu) woven grass ring, cloth or clay used for carrying heavy loads on head, also the name given to the Zulu movement that became the Inkatha Freedom Party, abbreviated as IFP.

Inkatha Freedom Party:
Zulu nationalist and royalist political party, founded 1990.

inkosi:
(Nguni) mode of address to a male superior, chief or lord.