Winnie Mandela (32 page)

As always, there were a number of children living at Winnie's home, and she was aware of the growing anger. After her ban expired in 1975, she warned in public speeches and media interviews that the rage felt by young blacks could lead to disaster, and appealed to the authorities to heed the protests of the children. Other prominent Sowetans also sounded the alert that a dangerous and potentially explosive situation was brewing. Desmond Tutu, then Anglican Dean of Johannesburg, wrote to Prime Minister John Vorster that he feared bloodshed and violence were almost inevitable. But the repeated caveats and appeals to drop Afrikaans as a language of tuition in black schools were ignored.

Frustration turned to action, and in dozens of schools, children as young as eight began boycotting classes in protest. Anxious parents, who felt that an inferior education was better than no education at all, were seen by their children as having capitulated, and large numbers of them, not knowing how to deal with the animosity of the young, turned to Winnie for advice.

Problems with the education authorities also brought parents to Winnie's door in search of help. When a group of children on a school trip to Swaziland died in a bus accident, the authorities refused to offer any financial help or compensation, even though the pupils had been in their care at the time. The parents struggled to raise the money to bring their children's bodies home, but several days after handing the funds over, they were told that the money had disappeared, and they could still not bury their offspring. After exhausting every other avenue, they turned to Winnie.

Over this period, she was inundated with requests and appeals for assistance, and realised that an organisation was needed to assist parents with their numerous and varied complaints, and look after the children's interests. She approached several of her influential friends, and in May 1976 the Soweto Parents'Association was launched. The chairman was Dr Aaron Mathlare, a former ANC activist, and both Winnie and Dr Nthatho Motlana served on the executive. The authorities clearly disapproved of the organisation, and whenever Winnie addressed a parents' meeting, the security police were conspicuously present and taking notes.

 

The spark that lit the 1976 student uprising was an incident at Naledi High School. During school hours, two security policemen arrived to arrest one of the student leaders, Enos Ngutshana. The headmaster asked the policemen to leave the premises and wait until the end of the school day to detain him, but they refused. When they tried to carry out the arrest, however, enraged pupils set the
police car alight and beat up the two officers. Soon afterwards, under the banner of the Soweto Students' Representative Council (SSRC), the students organised a mass demonstration against the use of Afrikaans in the classrooms. The organisers emphasised that this was to be a peaceful protest, and those taking part were instructed to wear their school uniforms and gather at their schools. The children threw themselves into preparations with an efficiency that would stun the entire country. They made placards with slogans that slammed education in Afrikaans, and worked out precise routes for pupils to follow from each school to the mass protest venue. Conscious that police might intervene, the student leaders asked the principals of primary schools to declare a holiday for younger pupils. However, the smaller children had no intention of being sidelined, and arrived in force, albeit uninvited, to join the march.

On the morning of 16 June, thousands of children took to the streets of Soweto carrying banners, singing freedom songs and clenching their fists in the familiar black power salute. No one, least of all the organisers, could have foreseen that what started out as a youthful protest against being forced to learn in what amounted to a foreign language would set first Soweto, then the whole of South Africa alight, and launch a revolution that would change the face of the country forever.

Like most adults in Soweto, Winnie knew about the planned march, but had no reason to doubt the students' assurances that it would be peaceful. She later made the point that if parents had had the slightest idea that there might be any trouble, they would not have gone to work that day.

When she herself left for the office that morning, she hardly spared a thought for the student march, and was following her normal routine when she received a telephone call from a mother in Soweto, who screamed hysterically: ‘Please come, the police are shooting our children!'

Winnie drove back to Orlando West as fast as she could. Word of the situation spread even faster, and thousands of black adults left their workplaces all over Johannesburg and rushed home, using whatever form of transport they could find. Railway stations, taxi ranks and bus stops were swamped with commuters, and people with cars stopped and picked up as many passengers as they could. It seemed as though all roads led to Soweto.

Dr Motlana was one of the few adult eyewitnesses to the early events on that fateful day. Between 7 am and 8 am, he noticed a constant parade of schoolchildren passing his house in Dube, and followed them. At the Orlando West school the police tried to stop them from going any further, but the children kept on marching. Suddenly, the police opened fire – but instead of achieving the desired, tried and tested result of halting the march and dispersing the protestors, the shots ignited bedlam. What followed was a crazed anger and trail of violence and destruction that took everyone, including the police, by surprise. In the blink of an eye, Soweto
became a bloody battlefield, with children trying to shield themselves from police bullets with dustbin lids, and police using live ammunition in preference to more common anti-riot measures such as dogs, tear gas and baton charges.

For Winnie, the images of 16 June could never be erased. As she drove through Orlando, a sea of young black faces met her. Hector Petersen, the thirteen-year-old boy who was the first to die, had just been killed. She was in agony at the sight of dying children whose bodies were torn apart by bullets.

Dr Motlana saw police on the back of a truck shooting at a group of children, all around six years of age, playing by the roadside. He rushed to the police station and demanded to see the commanding officer, asking what the hell the police thought they were doing, shooting at small children. The brigadier's reply was both crude and abusive.

Motlana worked tirelessly all day, removing bullets and shrapnel from wounded children, cleaning and suturing gaping wounds. The victims were too scared to call for ambulances or go to Baragwanath Hospital lest they be arrested, so their parents and friends carried them to Motlana's surgery. The scenes played out there were duplicated in doctors' rooms all over Soweto.

Winnie's heart was in her throat as she saw the crowd of children move to the main road, and she watched, aghast and helpless, while they unleashed their pent-up rage on the police and anyone else who crossed their path. Some estimates put the number of children involved in the 16 June protest at 30 000, but whatever their number, nothing and no one could stop the rampage.

Stones rained down in showers, like giant-sized hail. Cars were smashed and property was set on fire. Children as young as eleven hijacked buses, teenagers dragged drivers out of government cars. They smashed and burned everything in sight. The noise was deafening, and no one could get close enough to even try to reason with the crowd. An elderly man in a van tried to drive past to deliver his goods, but was ordered to stop and get out of the vehicle. Seeing children in school uniforms, and clearly unaware of how grave the situation was, he ignored them. Winnie watched in helpless horror as the children started throwing bricks through his windscreen. One of the bricks hit him on the head and he flung himself out of the van. As he fell on his back in the road, he lifted his arm and shouted ‘Amandla!' before he was pelted with stones, and died. In years to come, whenever Winnie recalled the terror of 16 June, it was the face of that man she remembered, and it always brought tears to her eyes.

The situation rapidly spiralled out of control. Winnie was horrified when she saw the police pulling a white body from a dustbin while children looked on and sang freedom songs. The volcano of blind anger and hatred that exploded in Soweto in 1976 was no different from that of the French or Russian revolution, Tiananmen Square, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and countless other violent confrontations.
Nothing could stop the red-hot spewing lava until the anger was vented. The children of Soweto had planned a demonstration, not a street war, but the ill-considered response by the police was all that was needed to turn the protest into a powder keg.

Before 16 June, black parents were inclined to oppose any action that interfered with their children's schooling. After that date, although the pupils' militant reaction filled them with apprehension, parents were united in their condemnation of police brutality. In a single day, control had passed into the hands of the children, and parents found themselves powerless to stop the madness. The children called for boycotts against certain stores, and if adults were found with shopping bags from those shops, the contents were confiscated and destroyed. The children called for strike action, and the adults had to comply or face merciless reprisals. The parents became the pawns with which the children challenged apartheid. If the adults did not go to work, or stopped buying from stores owned by whites, the economy would suffer. It was a powerful weapon, and the children were wielding it.

Only a small section of Soweto had electricity, and at night the sprawling township was usually plunged into darkness. But in the weeks following the riots, the flames of youthful rage lit up the sky. Dozens of government buildings, many of them schools, were burned to the ground. Shops, post offices, houses and hundreds of vehicles were set on fire. Beerhalls and bottle stores were razed to punish those who lured fathers into squandering their wages on liquor and prevent the proceeds from financing the hated Bantu Administration Board. Shebeens, too, were targeted, and rivers of alcohol flowed down Soweto's streets and alleyways. Winnie's old friend, shebeen king Elija Msibi, found himself in an unusual situation. Thinking that a man of his wealth would automatically oppose the revolution, or at least the wanton destruction of property and livelihood, the police asked him to become an informer. But Elija's sympathy lay with the youth, and he consulted the ANC leadership on how he should proceed. They told him to play along, using his illiteracy and inability to speak English as excuses if the police grew impatient with the quality of information he fed them. The ploy succeeded, and Elija was able to pick up a great deal of useful information, which he passed on to Winnie, not the police. Thanks to him, many of the young militants escaped arrest, and sometimes he hid them in his own house until the danger passed. The entire body of student leaders was on the run, and so were thousands of schoolchildren. Tsietsi Mashinini, the president of the SSRC, was among those who fled the country. He had become known as ‘the little Mandela', and one newspaper even published a report suggesting that he bore such a close physical resemblance to Mandela that he might well be his illegitimate son.

During the weeks that Soweto was a war zone, Winnie and other prominent residents had their hands full. She went from one police station to another demanding the bodies of children who had been killed, spent hours comforting
bereaved parents, arranged more funerals than any individual should ever have to, and coordinated the help that poured in, including donations of coffins. Taxi drivers ferried people to the burials free of charge. The violence had quickly spread to other townships, and it seemed as though the killing would never end.

The police blamed Winnie and Dr Motlana for inciting the students, and claimed they had been responsible for setting South Africa aflame. Winnie reacted by stating she could only wish she had so much influence, and Motlana lashed out at the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger, describing him as a ‘particularly stupid' man whose actions had aggravated the situation. A more perceptive politician, said Motlana, would have demanded that the police show more restraint. Winnie and other black leaders knew only too well that the uprising was a manifestation of deep-seated anger, fuelled by youthful indignation and reckless disregard for the traditional structure of a society that had short-changed its young.

The government put the number of dead in Soweto at 600, but Winnie estimated the fatalities at more than 1 000, mostly children, some younger than twelve. More than 4 000 people were injured, and thousands of youngsters fled into exile in neighbouring states. An untold number vanished into detention, and hundreds of parents never found out what had happened to their sons and daughters.

 

South Africa was at war with itself. Smoke from the fire started in Soweto drifted across the entire country and formed a large black cloud over the future of white South Africa. As Winnie and others had predicted, the anger was contagious, and by the end of 1976, few black townships had not been touched by violence, school and consumer boycotts, and the death of youthful militants. Winnie urged the Soweto Parents' Association to join forces with other organisations to form a national Black Parents' Association that could liaise with the children. She insisted that the onus was on the older generation to fight for their rights rather than leave it to the youth, and she remained steadfast in her opposition to the system that had bred the state of anarchy, declaring publicly: ‘We shall fight to the bitter end for justice.'

The Black Parents'Association (BPA) was formed under chairmanship of Bishop Manas Buthelezi, a cousin but political opponent of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Winnie, Dr Motlana and Dr Mathlare served on the executive, and the organisation agreed to convey the students' grievances to the authorities. They sought a meeting with the Minister of Justice, but he refused to see them. While one of the BPA's main tasks was to muster medical, legal and financial assistance for the students and their families, it also aimed to bridge the divide between the ANC, the PAC and the Black Consciousness movement. Winnie was a pivotal figure in forging unity, because the youth related to her, trusted her, and never questioned her leadership. Dr Motlana said she, the only woman on the executive, was ‘more than a man:
powerful, faithful and honest'. Above all, she was brave. It frightened some of her colleagues that she would stand in front of police armed with machine guns and speak her mind, showing no fear. When they threatened to lock her up, she merely shrugged. Motlana was struck by her
savoir-faire
and her ability to switch between angry defiance and the aloof dismissiveness of ‘an Englishman with a stiff upper lip'.