Forty-four years ago on this day, bullets tore through a peaceful school protest in South Africa ending in bloody riots and an uprising that got the world’s attention. Two of the students from the time shudder as they reflect on that cold, dark morning in June.



Forty-four years ago on this day, ‘Soweto Uprising’, South Africa’s famed student protest, led to bullets, fire and tears and an iconic photograph the world came to associate with the country’s brutal apartheid regime.



On June 16, 1976, a day etched in blood in South African history, 13-year-old school student, Hector Pieterson, was shot dead in the police firing that ensued, a moment captured for posterity by photographer Sam Nzima.



Even today, there are those who distinctly remember the coldness of that dark day, when all that the students protested was being taught in Afrikaans, a language they felt was oppressive.



Oupa Moloto, now 63, who was then a student at the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto where it all started and who was thrown into prison after that horrific day, recalls it vividly. He thought it was going to be a peaceful protest, but it turned out to be a day filled with bullets, police dogs, burning tyres and angry students. &nbsp;



Moloto had first spoken to FORBES AFRICA in 2016 when he had shared all the details. The memories of that day will never fade away.



“Finding ourselves singing in the streets as young people, challenging the government of the day, it was just excitement. The sadness that is going to remain with us and going to be indelible in our lives is when the police started shooting at young people, that is the one incident that one will never forget for as long as I live,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.



The protests started in Soweto and quickly moved to other townships in South Africa such as Alexandra and Tembisa. Towards the end of the week, the whole country was standing up against the government and everybody got involved; even adults and children in Bulwer, a small town in the KwaZulu-Natal region where Duduzile Dlamini-Ndubane was a student at Pholela High School.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="576" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-576x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-46130" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-576x1024.jpeg 576w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-300x533.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-600x1067.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-169x300.jpeg 169w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-768x1365.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-864x1536.jpeg 864w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01.jpeg 900w" sizes="(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px" /><figcaption>Duduzile Dlamini-Ndubane in KwaZulu-Natal</figcaption></figure>



She says they were told not to go to class by a group of male students on that Wednesday morning, and she was not too sure how they had received the information on the nationwide protest against teaching in the Afrikaans language.



“We made our way to the school grounds, we started singing, some students didn&#8217;t even know what was happening but nonetheless stayed with the group. We were then chased out of the school grounds and told to go back home. It was a noisy protest but no police came and there were no injuries,” remembers Dlamini-Ndubane.



Today, she is a professional nurse based in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa and Youth Day to her is a constant reminder that unity is key.



“When we unite behind a great cause, we change not only the current situation, but we make history. Youth need to unite and fight the right causes to change the world for the greater good,” she says.



Back in Soweto, Moloto says the struggle of today is an economic one for young people.



“Students are looking for economic freedom, hence #FeesMustFall; they want to get into the institute of learning without being in debt because they believe education can help them to be part of the economy of the country,” he says.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“When Hector died in 1976, he belonged to no party, he was just a student who died for all political affiliations of the time.&#8221;</blockquote>



However, going back to the Soweto Uprising, Moloto disagrees on how the commemoration of it has changed from then to now.



“In 1977, when we were commemorating, it was more of a unity, all political parties would gather at Regina Mundi to celebrate, today, the fight is no longer in a unified fashion. The municipalities and organizations have their own way of commemorating like AZAPO visits the Tsietsi Mashinini grave and the City of Johannesburg visits the Hector Pieterson Museum. That lack of unity is what concerns me. As long as we are not united when we commemorate, this day does not have an impact,” he says.



“When Hector died in 1976, he belonged to no party, he was just a student who died for all political affiliations of the time; we need to unify.”



After that eventful day, the liberation movements benefited because thousands of students joined political parties inside and outside of the country. June 16 was a catalyst in South Africa’s struggle for democracy, and scripted by the students in the nation’s history books.

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From The Singing To The Shooting: ‘Will Never Forget For As Long As I live’

It is a quarter of a century since the end of apartheid in South Africa. But it’s easy to forget how complex, difficult and violent the birth of full democracy really was. This was particularly true in KwaZulu-Natal, where battles between the African National Congress (ANC) and the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)&nbsp;<a href="https://csvr.org.za/docs/policeviolence/justicedenied.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">claimed the lives of as many as 20,000</a>&nbsp;in the decade between 1984 and 1994.



In the three months before the first elections in April 1994 an estimated 1 000 people&nbsp;<a href="https://csvr.org.za/docs/policeviolence/justicedenied.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">were killed</a>. The British and Americans were becoming increasingly concerned. The conflict between Inkatha and the ANC was just one crisis: another was developing with far right white extremists, who were threatening to resort to violence.



The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported that there was an:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">eight in 10 chance that violence will surge immediately before and during the election, when emotions are at their highest.</blockquote>



The agency also warned of the threat of a right wing coup, although it considered this “unlikely”. (This CIA report is available in hard copy only.)



As the situation grew increasingly tense, Britain’s Prime Minister John Major and the US’s President Bill Clinton became personally involved. Their interventions are shown in documents just released by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">the UK National Archives</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284690/original/file-20190718-116539-n8y2tv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt=""/><figcaption>The cover page of the CIA document.&nbsp;Author provided</figcaption></figure>



The documents reveal just what a close-run thing the first truly democratic election was, and how much time and effort Britain and the USA spent ensuring that the voting went ahead.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Desperate times</h4>



Prime Minister Major took a phone call from Nelson Mandela on 22 February, in which the ANC leader described the situation as “very difficult.” Major briefed Mandela on a meeting between the British ambassador and the Inkatha leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He gave Mandela a full account of the conversation, which he warmly welcomed.



On 24 February there is the first indication of a joint Anglo-American mediation effort to resolve the crisis. This&nbsp;<a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/15736.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">arose</a>&nbsp;during planning for a visit to Washington by Major three days later.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">Our starting point is that the situation has now deteriorated to the point where it seems very unlikely that left to themselves the South Africans will reach an agreement that will enable to participate in the elections. The consequences are likely to be very serious.</blockquote>



The British suggested that Major and Clinton might “offer their joint help to the transition process”.



The following day – having held discussions with Mandela, Buthelezi and President Frederik de Klerk – the British ambassador in Pretoria, Sir Anthony Reeve, was able to report that all three were prepared to go along with the Anglo-American initiative, although with some reservations. The ambassador concluded:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">These responses do, I think, give us the green light to consult the Americans in detail on our thinking.</blockquote>



The proposal was discussed between Mandela and Buthelezi at a meeting on March 1 and both leaders agreed to “explore” the possibility of international mediation. Lord Carrington, who had negotiated the end of Rhodesia and its transition to Zimbabwe in 1980, was on a lecture tour of South Africa. He was approached by the ANC’s Thabo Mbeki who asked whether he might act as one of a panel of mediators.



Others suggested were US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Tanzanian head of state Julius Nyerere.



There followed intensive discussions between London and Washington, over how such mediation might work; indeed, Carrington and Kissinger travelled to South Africa. In the end a failure to agree on the terms of reference for the mediators, and South African government fears that the elections might be delayed, put paid to the plan.



It has been claimed the crisis – the most immediate was that Buthelezi was threatening to boycott the poll – was resolved by&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="http://spas.ku.ac.ke/index.php/faculty/faculty-profiles/89-faculty/44-prof-john-okumu" target="_blank">surprising last minute mediation</a>&nbsp;by Kenyan Professor, John Okumu. Other Commonwealth envoys who had excellent contacts with both the ANC leadership and Buthelezi, including the late Ghanaian diplomat Moses Anafu, doubt this, arguing that forces that led Buthelezi into the election were&nbsp;<a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6115/7/Moses_Anafu_Transcript_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">much bigger</a>.



Indeed, Buthelezi’s brinkmanship had ensured key constitutional concessions. Okumu’s intervention seems then a face-saving device for the IFP leader. A joint statement was agreed between Mandela, Buthelezi and de Klerk on 19 April, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Govern_Political/ANC_18598.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">allowed the election to take place</a>&nbsp;just a week later (April 26-28).



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Close-run thing</h4>



It had been a close-run thing and South Africa’s first truly democratic election almost came to grief. But there were two more potential obstacles.



In the tense run-up to polling day, a&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="http://hurisa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Goldstone-Booklet.pdf" target="_blank">report</a>&nbsp;on the role of the apartheid state in stoking internal tension and violence was published. The Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, led by Justice Richard Goldstone had been established in 1991: its report was published on 21 April 1994. 



Judge Goldstone’s investigations revealed that sections of the South African Police had armed Inkatha, and pointed to attempts by senior police officers to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume2/chapter7/subsection2.htm" target="_blank">subvert the work of his enquiry</a>.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/12/07/in-pictures-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-gives-nelson-mandela-public-lecture/">IN PICTURES | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives Nelson Mandela public lecture</a>



The charges were explosive and for a while the judge and his family were clearly at risk from white extremists. With de Klerk’s support and the knowledge of Mandela, Goldstone, his wife and a “key witness” (a former South African police officer) asked whether they might come to Britain. John Major agreed, and they were given temporary asylum and a safe house.



The second obstacle was the South African government’s clandestine chemical and biological weapons programme, known as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.unidir.org/files/publications/pdfs/project-coast-apartheid-s-chemical-and-biological-warfare-programme-296.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">“Project Coast.”</a>The British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, contacted Washington about the possibility of issuing a formal public protest unless President de Klerk publicly admitted his government’s involvement in the use of these weapons against ANC and Namibian prisoners.



The British had apparently intervened to prevent the&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CSDS/Books/therollbackofsoafricachembio2.pdf" target="_blank">proliferation</a>&nbsp;of these weapons to other rogue states or terrorist groups. On April 11 the US and British ambassadors delivered their protest to President de Klerk – which apparently did the trick. 



There was an agreement that all the chemical and biological systems would be destroyed and one of the key South African experts, Wouter Basson, who had travelled to Libya on several occasions, was&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/wouter-basson/" target="_blank">subsequently prosecuted</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Political triumph</h4>



The April 1994 election proved to be a watershed for South Africa. In technical terms, the election was a fiasco, but it was a political triumph, according to the Commonwealth’s leading election official,&nbsp;<a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6121/1/Carl_Dundas_Transcript.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">Carl Dundass</a>. Inkatha’s surprising victory in Natal-KwaZulu strongly suggest Natal “horsetrading” involved overturning an actual ANC victory to manage anticipated post-election violence.



Despite all the violence, tension and drama the election ended apartheid and allowed Major to phone Mandela with his congratulations – a highly satisfactory conclusion to an intense period of international diplomacy.



-Sue Onslow; Reader, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study



-Martin Plaut; Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study



-The Conversation



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Archive Documents Reveal The US And UK’s Role In The Dying Days Of Apartheid

South Africa survived colonialism followed by apartheid, and
most recently, a new pandemic, HIV/AIDS. While we are living through the
aftermath of the old order, the words often attributed to Italian philosopher,
Antonio Gramsci, could not be truer: “The old is dying and the new struggles to
be born. Now is the time of monsters.”



The dragons we need to slay are clear. We have unacceptably
high levels of poverty, youth unemployment, child illiteracy and nutritional
stunting. All of which are systematically undermining the next generation’s
ability to enjoy freedom. 



That said, these are but the more visible aspects of our
life together. There are others – the more subtle, social dimensions. 



In 2019, non-racialism – the bedrock of the new South Africa
– struggles to find relevance in the public imagination in light of the
disillusionment many experience in the new political dispensation. It remains
devoid of substantial weight and consequence.



Its original purveyors did not theorize it or write about it
extensively, making it all the more elusive. What we do know is that race is a
social construct and that it has no biological grounding. While it does not
exist in a scientific sense, race has profound political, social and economic
implications. And it continues to be an undeniable fault-line within South
Africa. 



What is clear is that non-racialism does not mean
not-seeing-race-ness. In this lesser sense, it mimics the American notion of a
post-racial society. It is based on the myth that 1994 symbolized a tabula rasa
– a blank page. But 25 years later, the past haunts us. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="387" height="594" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/gettyimages-144859349-594x594-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-40401" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/gettyimages-144859349-594x594-2.jpg 387w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/gettyimages-144859349-594x594-2-300x460.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/gettyimages-144859349-594x594-2-195x300.jpg 195w" sizes="(max-width: 387px) 100vw, 387px" /><figcaption>Mural depicting 1st election in new South Africa, 1994 opposite Parliament, Cape Town, Western Cape (Photo by Hoberman Collection/UIG via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



In our public life, we often find ourselves in a
rinse-and-repeat cycle in which an offensive action is followed by public uproar
and reactive debates. In this polarizing space, the spotlight remains on rabid
racists, leaving implicit and internalized anti-black racism unchecked – both
of which affect most South Africans.



Political entrepreneurs – understanding the wounds we carry
as a nation – capitalize on the moments of uproar by playing on these
incidents. What happens in the context of the misuse of our racialized
experiences is that well-meaning citizens opt to shun any references to race in
order to maintain respectability. This tempts us to see race talk as
unproductive rhetoric, and not as a useful language to name our experiences
with one another in this country.



In our public life, talk about the past has similarly been
weaponised. Our history is either denied or it is deployed to delegitimize, to
silence, and to condone the inexcusable. But it is exactly in this moment that
we need more robust and critical engagement with our histories and their
effects in the present – not less.



When we actually grapple with the historical records, the
findings are chequered. History refuses to simply serve as a pass or a trump
card. It is far too unruly and intricate to merely be functional. History
demands to be reckoned with as a way of understanding the processes that led to
the present. A more accurate way of understanding it is as an unfinished story.
It has no end and it implicates us all. 



A way we can begin to participate in the unfolding of our
history is to infuse non-racialism with substance. We need a larger project
that rigorously surfaces our experiences at the coalface of the color line.
Scholars in the social sciences and the humanities as well as fiction writers
have no doubt begun this theorising labor, and their work has to make its way
into the mainstream. The process of naming the thousands of experiences we have
with each other can begin to inform our imagination about what it means to
simultaneously be inclusive, rooted in Africa and released from Europe’s orbit.



The project of naming our experiences for ourselves is an
act of power. In fact, the true might of colonialism and apartheid lay not in
their arsenal but in their ability to name us, define our borders, to codify
our laws, and thus, frame our self-imagination. 



In this moment, as South Africa reaches the quarter of a
century mark, it is imperative that we take a fresh look at the past. Not
merely as a story of victory, but as an incomplete struggle. At 25, all South
Africans need to join the struggle, knowing that aluta continua and that the
country we inherited in 



1994 is ours to continually liberate. 



We are part of the same cast of characters in history’s
production of South Africa, and we are on the stage now. 



– Dr Sebabatso Manoeli is a historian and non-profit professional. She serves as an Innovation Director at the DG Murray Trust. Previously, she was a History Lecturer at the University of Oxford, and at Stanford University’s Montag Center for Overseas Studies. She consulted for the African Union Commission’s Department of Political Affairs and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation on transitional justice, as well as the African Peer Review Mechanism.

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Over The Rainbow: 25 Years Of Freedom For South Africa

His face contorts slightly as he, slowly, but painfully, returns through the murky mist of 42 years. His hands tremble with emotion as he relives horrific images lodged in the corners of his mind. The birds singing in the blue sky over the idyllic garden of his family home in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, contrasting with the moody, mean, streets of Soweto of yore.
Eightythree-year-old Enoch Duma lived the slaughter of scores of schoolchildren on that fateful winter’s day in Soweto in 1976. It was his job to be there as a reporter for a Johannesburg newspaper and he had his own car. He knew serious trouble was building. Many of the schoolchildren involved used to call him “Bra E” and held him in high esteem.
“I just knew the previous night the people were uneasy as if something was going to happen, some people didn’t go to work. You had people like Tsietsi Mashinini, Seth Mazibuko and other student leaders coming to your house. I was always ahead of what was happening,” recalls Duma.
On the morning of June 16, Duma was out driving through the tense streets of Soweto and saw a big crowd approaching.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2013/12/01/rose-soweto-rose/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: How The Rose Of Soweto Rose</a>
“They ran to my car. Tsietse said ‘hey! Soweto is burning – it is bad, it is very bad, just stay ahead of things. Hide if you can hide because there is going to be trouble tonight. If the police shoot we are going to answer with petrol bombs’. This was something new in Soweto.”
The mood turned ugly when news filtered through the crowd in Orlando that police had shot dead a young student, Hector Pieterson – a bloody killing captured for eternity by the famous photograph by Sam Nzima that he smuggled out through police lines to make the front pages everywhere from New York to Sydney the next day.
“When people heard it was Hector they were very angry. They armed themselves with Molotov Cocktails and started throwing these petrol bombs recklessly. They were just mad,” says Duma.
The birds outside tweet, incongruously, as Duma’s face darkens with the deepening story.
“I can still see the madness in their faces and their anger. They didn’t know what to do,” he says.
“I saw a burning body thrown into a dustbin. I couldn’t stand it I had to drive through. There were moments when I thought I wasn’t going to make it. It was difficult to see where the students were coming from. They were coming out of buildings with Molotov Cocktails and some carried dustbin lids as shields. Among the leaders were very young people. The real fighters were the little girls – they were ready to die.”
Among them, Susan Shabangu who spent months on the run in the clampdown that followed; like many of the survivors, she escaped into exile to fight the struggle and ended up as her country’s mining and social development minister.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/06/01/walking-day-horror/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Walking Into A Day Of Horror</a>
It was a horrific chapter of a rich career that saw Duma, the son of a Baptist minister, born in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, work his way from reporting the courts in his hometown to working on a national newspaper. He joined The Post in Durban through a friend, who was a reporter on the paper, called Duke Ncobo.
“The newspaper wanted a young cub reporter and suggested I should write two stories for the editor. He read them and looked at me and read them and looked at me and said ‘did you write this or did someone write this for you?’ I said ‘no’. He said ‘go to Mr Ncobo’, who said ‘I think the editor likes you’!”
His first arrest came in bizarre fashion. Ncobo invited the young Duma to a party in a block of flats in downtown Durban belonging to the leading lights of the African National Congress including Fatima Meer and journalist GR Naidoo.
An elderly woman living below called the police complaining of the noise; the police, who suspected the party was a front for a political meeting among people of color, encouraged her to press charge. They arrested 27 partygoers including Duma and threw them in the cells.
The court case turned into farce. The elderly lady, in her 70s, complained that the partygoers had banged the floor above her as they danced. In court, the judge asked the lady to demonstrate the dance. There were titters in court as ushers cleared the chairs away and the lady did a high-stepping dance. The judge ruled she hadn’t made sufficient noise to convince him, yet Duma and his colleagues were held to have been a public nuisance.
Duma secured a job on the City Post, amid the bright lights and jazz of 1950s Johannesburg and arrived at Park Station with nothing but a suitcase. A van from the newspaper picked him up to take him to the newsroom buzzing with young journalists.
“You must pretend to be one of them, otherwise they will give you a hard time,” chirped the driver.
These were colorful and chaotic times for young black journalists at the City Post. A regular caller with stories was a young and vivacious social worker called Winnie Mandela.
“Winnie Mandela, she was very young used to come to the office and was very friendly with reporters. The gangsters respected Winnie,” says Duma.
Gangsters and guns were another part of newsroom life at the City Post. Gangs ruled many of the Johannesburg streets in the 1950s – the Spoilers, the Americans and the Msomi gang.
Their leaders used to waltz in off the street with wide-brimmed hats and long fine coats looking more Chicago than sub-Saharan Africa. Often, they carried small “baby brown” pistols, sometimes concealed in a bandage, to intimidate journalists for a number of sins. 
It could be to force them to stay away from their girlfriends or stop writing about them or start writing about them. Often a gun up the nose proved mightier than the pen, until one day.
“One day, they came and they found the deputy editor having a meeting with the reporters. The gangsters introduced themselves and the deputy editor Henk Margolis, an American brought in to work on the paper, says: ‘Gentlemen, can I help you?’
“They pointed a gun at him, Henk noticed this and was not scared. ‘If you think you can intimidate me you are wrong, I was born in Chicago, so I have not time for small fry’. That day we thought there was going to be a showdown. Henk grabbed hold of the leader and pushed him outside. That was the last time the gangs came to the office,” says Duma with a smile.
It turned out that gangsters with police uniforms on proved to be Duma’s downfall. He was arrested numerous times and ended up spending nine months in prison. He went into exile in the United States (US) and with his wife of 56 years, Kitty, he was a prime mover in the divestment campaign – encouraging US firms to pull out of South Africa – that helped usher in the end of apartheid.
A system that stoked the fiery horror of June 16 that people who were there will never forget.

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Soweto Burning: June 16 Remembered

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Rest In Power, Mother

These days the 75 year-old Joe Thloloe is the executive director of the Press Council overseeing the work that he has done for over half a century. Forty years ago he was a dashing young features writer on The World newspaper in Johannesburg. The only problem was the radical words he wrote upset the government of the day.
“From the time the National Party took over in 1948, they were determined to stamp down on the black population. The repression is much older than the 70s, the banning of publications, including books, had started by the 60s.  So what happened in the 70s was merely a continuation of what had been happening,” says Thloloe.
Long before Black Wednesday, police harassed and detained Thloloe for his social activism as a student.
“I was first arrested in 1960, on the day of the Sharpeville Massacre (March 21, 1960, where 69 died), as a student. I spent that whole year in jail. When The World was banned, I was a features writer for it. But, unfortunately for me, on the day the newspaper was banned I was already in jail,” says Thloloe.
<div id="attachment_33917" style="width: 311px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33917" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-33917" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Joe-Thloloe-083-copy-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="452" />Joe Thloloe (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
The founder and president of the defunct Union of Black Journalists (UBJ) says he was arrested for the second time, eight months before Black Wednesday, under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which provided for detention without trial. Sathasivan ‘Saths’ Cooper was the secretary of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), which was among the black organizations banned in the build-up to Black Wednesday.
“It was an eerie period because a few weeks earlier Dullah Omar (a late African National Congress veteran) had brought the news that Steve Biko had been killed in detention,” Cooper told Radio702 in 2016.
Biko was the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) who died from his injuries after he was tortured in Port Elizabeth and then driven, naked in the back of a police Land Rover, to Pretoria. He died on September 12.
“I remember driving through the streets of Johannesburg that morning and the street posters said, ‘Government Bans The World’. Okay, the newspaper was called The World, but it meant the government was trying to shield South Africans from being part of the world, shield white South Africans from information. We expected a lot of bad things from the apartheid government, but I didn’t think they would be as stupid as trying to ban a newspaper. It was quite devastating at the time,” says Max du Preez, Thloloe’s contemporary at the Rand Daily Mail, in Johannesburg.
“If I remember correctly, that was one of moments in my life which fired me on to say ‘one of the things, Max du Preez, you have to do is in your own way fight for freedom of speech, for freedom of the media’.  Eventually, in 1988, I decided to launch an anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper which I think was a very stupid idea,’” adds Du Preez. The newspaper was Vrye Weekblad (The Free Weekly).
Du Preez hoped to educate his Afrikaner people about the evils of apartheid.
You could argue, The World, founded, in 1932 by mining companies in Johannesburg to entertain their employees, grew in the struggle.
“Over time it developed to become a newspaper with news and politics etc. But it was always under very tight white control, the likes of the Nhlapos and Moeranes were the black nominal editors, but above them there’s a person called editorial director, who was in fact the actual editor. He would be the one who would tone down stories making sure that a particular style was kept. Although it carried politics, it carried general news, it was not radical stuff. In fact our competition, The Golden City Post, was much more outspoken,” says Thloloe, a Nieman Fellow in 1988.
The appointment of editor Percy Qoboza, in 1975, saw a radical change in the paper’s editorial line. He accepted the editorship on condition that there would be no editorial director looking over his shoulder.
“Percy was a radically changed man and the texture of the publication changed, its tone changed, it became much more radical in its approach. Percy is credited to have exposed June 16, but that exposure was in fact the work of Joe Latakgomo who had been acting editor while Percy was abroad,” says Thloloe.
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Qoboza, who died in 1988, returned to South Africa on June 1976, after his Nieman Fellowship in the US, and threw himself into black activism. Thloloe says under the stewardship of Latakgomo, The World was already covering stories about students’ political events leading to the uprising of June 16. Qoboza landed on the day it happened.
In those days, several black journalists were embedded in students’ activities in the townships, he says.
“They were the ones saying tomorrow we need to be in such and such place because they knew what was going to happen, where and at what time. That was the way in which journalists worked with the community,” says Thloloe.
Thloloe founded the Union of Black Journalists in 1972.
“We felt we were not given a space in the newsroom to write the way we wanted to write as blacks. Our slogan used to be: ‘We are black before we are journalists’. So, our writing should reflect our blackness and our thoughts as black people and our lives as black people,” says Thloloe.
“There was a very close relationship between the Black Consciousness Movement and the Union of Black Journalists. That was the ideology that was driving our society at that time; that we blacks had to fight the shackles around us.”
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Du Preez and other white journalists were not directly threatened by the draconian press laws until things got worse in the 1980s.
“That came a little later in the 80s, when the political temperature was higher. The government resorted to closing down more newspapers, like the New Nation and the Weekly Mail, and arresting journalists, like I was, and people like Zwelakhe Sisulu and others,” says Du Preez, a multiple award winner and prolific author.
Du Preez and Thloloe agree that the South African media landscape has changed for the better since democracy in 1994.
“The atmosphere in the country is far more open. What we have experienced in the last 23 years was a Constitution where freedom of speech was guaranteed and also we have the dealings of social media. That all contributed to the atmosphere where rigid censorship will be unthinkable in South Africa&#8230; We are a truly open society,” says Du Preez.
“There’s no danger that a newspaper can be closed at the whim of a minister, in the same way The World was. There’s no chance that anybody can get detained in the way we were. Freedom of expression is now guaranteed in the Constitution. On the surface we should be able to practice the best journalism we are capable of,” says Thloloe.
But Thloloe thinks the technological revolution is hindering the standard of journalism, as advertising has dwindled and the profession is losing quality journalists.
“Every person with a cellphone can become a reporter, editor, sub-editor, distributor. That has led to a number of things; newspaper readership has gone down very sharply, advertising has gone down, newspapers no longer make profits. Now you find drastic cost-cutting in newsrooms. Newsrooms are juniorized and the quality of journalism suffers,” says Thloloe.
At least, for now, for most newsrooms, the biggest threat is economic depression rather than ruthless authorities.

The Day The World Turned Black

At midday, on a bright Wednesday on June 8, 1966, the small sugarcane farming community of Groutville, outside Durban, in South Africa’s coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal, was shocked and surprised. On that day one of the most powerful United States politicians landed in a small aircraft, on a soccer field, in their town. Against the law, the New York senator Robert Kennedy stepped out of the plane on his way to visit the banned chief and President of the African National Congress (ANC), Albert Luthuli.
Albertina Luthuli, now 84 and Albert’s eldest daughter, was a medical student at the Non-European Medical School in Durban at the time when her mother called her home because an important visitor was coming to meet her father.
“That one was a historic moment in the history of apartheid South Africa. Robert Kennedy’s bother, JF Kennedy, who was the president of the United States had been shot in Dallas. Robert Kennedy had been the attorney general under John Kennedy. He felt that what his brother was doing was important to change the world… and South Africa was the hotspot of human rights violations at the time,” Luthuli tells FORBES AFRICA at the house in Groutville where she grew up. It was converted into the Luthuli Museum in August 2004.
In 1966, the South African government warmly received Kennedy and his wife Ethel. Government officials took them around the capital city of Pretoria and to the urban township Soweto, where they visited mineworkers in hostels. Albertina says the government took Kennedy where they could show him a success story about South Africa, but he was not fooled, he insisted on meeting the banned ANC leader in his village to learn of the struggle Albert was leading against oppression.
“Pretoria’s response to that was that our leader is a communist, therefore we would not let you go see him,” she says.
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The government didn’t want anything to do with Kennedy’s visit to Luthuli but the American embassy took him there under diplomatic immunity.
“Can you imagine? They landed on a soccer field right down there and then they had a talk. Under the restraining orders Chief [Luthuli] was only allowed to talk to one person at the time. So, they sat on a bench outside this yard, which is the big memory of that event, and they talked. They sat close to each other, there was chemistry,” recalls Albertina, a retired medical doctor who spent 21 years in exile.
She says the meeting of minds on a bench was a great annoyance to the government. Last year, the daughters of the two leaders remembered the day and sat together on the same spot their father sat 50 years before. Kerry Kennedy had flown to South Africa just to meet Albertina.
Within two years of the meeting on the bench, both men would be dead. Like his brother, Kennedy was shot dead by an assassin in California, just two years after visiting Groutville in defiance of the South African authorities.
“It was an act of intolerable defiance; they couldn’t really take it lying down. This man has visited Luthuli and at that point they felt they were controlling with banning orders. They had refused international leaders who wanted to come see him. To them this visit was completely unacceptable,” says Albertina.
“As family we believed it played a part in the death of my father, because they were quite happy when the special branch kept my father under surveillance so that he doesn’t influence others. But I can confirm the executive ANC members, like the Mandelas, they used to meet him underground and discuss their matters.”
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In August 1962, the future president, Nelson Mandela, was disguised as chauffeur while driving his fellow activist Cecil Williams. They were arrested on their way home from Durban to Johannesburg, at a police roadblock in Howick. Mandela had just returned from traveling through Africa and London where he had received military training and drummed up support for the ANC. He was jailed for five years for leaving the country without a permit and causing strikes.
“Mandela had a background with the youth league, so the youth of the time worked very close with the leadership of the movement. When the ANC decided it was time for the armed struggle it was at the same time continuing with the non-violent militant struggle. Mandela was then given the task to champion the cause of the armed struggle in particular in Africa. So he used to come to my father to report about the progress,” says Albertina.
Just before Mandela was arrested, he convinced Chief Luthuli to support the armed struggle. It was launched on December 16, 1961, a few months after Luthuli had accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
<div id="attachment_32883" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32883" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-32883" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Albertina-187-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="295" />Albertina Luthuli stands outside the Luthuli Museum in Groutville (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Albertina says the young militant Mandela learned to be disciplined from her father, which helped South Africa transition to democracy in 1994.
“He learned the struggle was going to be long and difficult. When he was on Robben Island, he became a teacher like my father,” she says.
The truth about the death of Chief Luthuli in 1967 is not so easy to uncover.
“The circumstances around his death haven’t been told and we can’t tell because we were not there. Only the government of the day told its version. When they had the inquest, the postmortem, the district surgeon and everybody else, they were all functionaries of the system. So they did as they were told,” says Albertina.
Chief Luthuli was president of the ANC from 1952 until 1967, when he died, in what was said to be a train accident, 10 kilometers from his Groutville home. As with the Kennedys’ assassinations in 1963 and 1968, many believed Chief Luthuli was assassinated by a government wanting to get rid of him.
Just like their home when she was growing up, Albertina’s surgery was constantly raided by the police, in Clermont, a township outside Durban. Because she feared for her life, and those of her children, Albertina went into exile with her husband Pascal Ngakane, an ANC activist and also a medical doctor. Albertina worked in health in the United Kingdom, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
At home, the Chief, as many called Luthuli, was just an ordinary father who loved his wife and children. Albertina, the second-born who had six siblings, described her home as peaceful where hard work was king. The Chief met his wife Nokukhanya at Adams College where he taught and she was a student.
“Both our parents were teachers at Adams College. My home was really a school away from school, with parents entrenching hard work. All of us were asked what we wanted to be when we finished school, so that they could have a hand in helping you along the line,” says Albertina.
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She grew up at a time when girls weren’t encouraged to pursue science and mathematics, but in the Luthuli family this was not the case.
“You found the schools, even the one I went to, St Francis College, sort of shutting you down because you are a girl, because you will be sitting in class with boys. So, my father took it upon himself to speak to the principal and said ‘this is what my daughter wants to do. She’s not going to be distracted by boys, she knows what she wants’. That’s how I later became a medical doctor,” she says.
It wasn’t just family. Groutville, a village in the heart of sugarcane fields, drew workers from afar. Many of these farmworkers had never been to school, so menial jobs were all they could do. The Chief reached out to these people, living in compounds, offering them basic lessons and political teaching.
“He started a night school, but it wasn’t a registered school; it was an informal school where he also taught these men about their basic rights, how not to become victims of abuse in the hands of employers,” says Albertina.
“One of the things he loved was music. Here at home we had a choir. All of us, the mother, the father and children, would sit here in the dining room and sing together. My mother sang soprano, father a baritone and us children fitted in cantata,” she says.
“Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was educated at Adams College and he grew up in this environment where (Zulu) royalty didn’t pay much attention to education, so he became this education hungry heir to the Buthelezi throne. It was close to the Zulu King throne. He visited my father and introduced himself,” says Luthuli.
From then, Buthelezi joined a group of Zulu chiefs mentored by Chief Luthuli.
“If my father had not died in 1967, a lot of this war, between Zulu to Zulu and Zulu to other Africans, could have been avoided. I believe that, because Buthelezi admired my father, he could have reconciled the differences between the parties. The people around Buthelezi encouraged the black on black violence,” she says sadly.
The untimely death of a father that sadly may have led to the untimely death of many innocent sons.

My Father, Kennedy And Me

More than 60 years ago, brutal authorities choked the life and jazz out of a vibrant corner of Africa.
They called it Sophiatown – the Chicago of Africa – a free-wheeling, musical, multiracial community close to the heart of Johannesburg and the birthplace of many an African musician. Too close, according to the apartheid authorities.
“We won’t move!” was written on the walls. Police made sure people did on a February morning in 1955. Before sunrise, they drove out 110 families with nothing but hastily packed belongings. This foreshadowed almost two decades of forced removals of thousands throughout South Africa.
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One of them was 14-year-old Don ‘Bra Don’ Thinane who had grown up with Indian and Chinese neighbors – “a mixed bag” he says. He recalls his father leaving to search for a new home two days before the trucks and bulldozers arrived to take him away. “He knew that in about a day or two days they are going to demolish the place,” says Bra Don, who found himself dumped in Meadowlands, Soweto, with his grandmother and uncle, because of his race.
We go for a drive in search of memories from 60 years ago. Bra Don tells me this was his playground where he used to rollerskate: we are on 5th avenue heading towards Sophiatown. “Hey! Isn’t that Xuma’s place,” he exclaims as we pass the home of the first black South African to become a medical doctor, former ANC President A.B. Xuma. One of few places that survived the nationalist government’s wrecking ball.
We drive on looking for Gerty Street, where Bra Don used to live. I spot the name, barely visible, worn and stencilled in black. We turn right into the street, immediately the mood in the car changes, and so does Bra Don’s face; his eyes widen and light up as nostalgia washes over.
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“I used to scale this wall,” says Bra Don when we get to the barrier that stretches from Gerty into the Melville Koppies, a place where he spent his afternoons, and one of the few things left. “There’s nothing that can show me our house here! They literally broke it down,” he says as we carry on looking for anything familiar.
It was also in Sophiatown that he found the discipline of boxing, under the strict coach Harry Mikela. In playing the trumpet, he learned from the elder brother of Stompie Manana, one of the fathers of African jazz. It helped him escape the rough streets and in 1980, through study, he became a lawyer. Now, at the age of 71, he is one of the best known black advocates in the land.
Bra Don is one of many happy to see Sophiatown back on the map. The apartheid administration renamed it Triomf – meaning triumph in Afrikaans. In 2006, it was rechristened Sophiatown.
The jazz that died under the ugly din of bulldozers, removal trucks and police batons, is also back.
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Back To The  Future In The Streets Of Soul

Friendships are sometimes forged in the most unlikely of circumstances. Against the backdrop of legalized racism, apartheid South Africa was one such circumstance. During its darkest years one could be forgiven when reading a “white” newspaper for thinking black people did not exist. And yet it was in this environment that Nelson Mandela and a young, promising, white journalist forged a friendship that would last a lifetime.
Benjamin Pogrund, 82, sits in his Jerusalem apartment, smiling. The veteran journalist and a pioneer of black reporting at the then all-white daily newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, joined the press as a missionary which, he’s quick to admit, is a very bad thing for a journalist.
At the time, black South Africans were not featured in the mainstream press. There were some stories about court cases, riots or mine accidents where black people were mentioned but it was “crazy” how they were ignored, remembers Pogrund. He took it upon himself to change things.
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“Benjy Boy”, as Mandela called him, describes his success as being in the right place at the right time. He says the Rand Daily Mail was an awful paper when he joined, with a new editor, Laurence Gandar, who luckily had the same political views as Pogrund.
“He liked what I wanted to do, because I started covering black politics, which hadn’t been done before,” says Pogrund and a friendship between the junior reporter and senior editor soon flourished.
But covering black South African life meant being ostracized at work and in the Jewish community to which Pogrund belonged.
“I was dealing with an all-white paper,” he explains. “So I was like a cat being dragged in from the night, they hated me.”
At the time the Jewish community was split, between businessmen who surrendered to apartheid so their businesses would succeed, and liberals.
Soon Pogrund began covering everything from housing, education and jobs, to pass laws. And through the years he became a confidant for the leaders of black resistance, among them Mandela.
The two had countless secret meetings. While most of the police force would be out hunting for Mandela, he’d show up on a dark street corner disguised with worker’s overalls to meet Pogrund.
“His followers probably wanted to cut my throat, they probably thought I’d trapped him and I’d hand him over&#8230; but we got away with it,” he chuckles.
For Pogrund, it was Mandela’s generosity of spirit that always stood out. He sums it up with one specific story – Mandela called for a major strike against the government. The day came and the government issued a statement saying it had failed. The Rand Daily Mail ran with the headline “Strike Has Failed, Says Government,” without consulting Pogrund. The strike itself didn’t go as planned but it wasn’t the failure the government claimed it was. Hundreds of thousands of workers did stay home, but when they read the newspaper, a paper which they respected, they were scared of being dismissed, and went to work.
Pogrund remembers sitting in his office, feeling miserable, when his phone rang.
“And there’s Mandela’s warm, cheery voice, and I started stuttering an excuse, ‘Nelson, I’m sorry we screwed up’&#8230; He said to me, ‘It’s okay Benjy boy, I know it wasn’t your fault.’ I loved that man ever since.”
Pogrund and Mandela’s relationship extended beyond the clandestine meetings. While still in prison, Mandela insisted that Benjy Boy bring his second wife, Anne, for a visit. He even sent a card to their son Gideon for his bar mitzvah – a coming-of-age ceremony in Jewish tradition.
As for the Mandelas, Pogrund jokes that he was their Jewish uncle, telling how he helped Mandela’s daughter, Makaziwe, get into an American university.
“Over the years, now and again I’d go and visit her regularly, and she’d say to me, ‘please get my father off my back, he’s driving me crazy. He wants me to go to Harvard, I don’t want to go Harvard, I’m happy here at UMass Amherst!’’
Pogrund eventually found sanctuary in Britain where he worked on Fleet Street. From there he went to America and onwards to Israel to help build the Yakar Center for Social Concern. He’s been here almost two decades.
But ties with South Africa run deep and although he believes a lot has been accomplished, he is sad and angry by what hasn’t been.
“The country now has clean water and more access to healthcare, jobs, everything like that. Everything is better… but on the other hand, the failure is colossal.”
The reasons include government corruption, the heritage of apartheid and the currency. But most importantly &#8211; education.
“The majority of schools are described as dysfunctional, lacking ordinary toilets, electricity, blackboards, desks, books.”
Pogrund looks at how countries like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan used education to come out of poverty, but says South Africa just isn’t getting there.
“There are a lot of people doing well. But the bottom people have it bad, and this carries over into people going to universities who shouldn’t be there&#8230; they haven’t achieved enough.”
And his beloved profession has become a disappointment.
“Under apartheid, we had some very committed, very good journalists. People didn’t sit around discussing press freedom, they just did it. They had a commitment, they got on with it. But whereas we were unable to exercise our full rights, now the opposite is true – and there isn’t the competence to do it.”
For a man of many words, there’s one thing he can’t get himself to talk about: Mandela’s last days. The laughter stops and sadness takes over; at times it’s even difficult to hear him.
“He had a miserable last couple of years. Miserable. It’s too personal.”
In the just over two years since Mandela passed away, Pogrund is more convinced than ever that the world desperately needs another Mandela.
“Israel is in a need of another Nelson Mandela, England is in need, every damn country is in need of a Nelson Mandela.”
Sadly, he is gone.

The White Knight Who Wrote Black

For Herman Mashaba it was a long and tiring climb to the top. An apartheid police crackdown on student politics forced a young Mashaba out of the University of the North, in his second year. He was forced to work as a clerk.
“One day we were ordered by police to leave the university immediately. I never understood why they had to involve law enforcement in solving matters with the students. I simply packed my bags and went home,” recalls Mashaba.
In two years, he saved enough to buy a car. Mashaba had a short stint as sales representative for a hair products company – SuperKurl. It was here where he met a white Afrikaner business associate, Johan Kriel, who was also a pharmacist. The law didn’t allow the two to go into business together. But they found a way around this to start a company called Black Like Me.
In 1984, Mashaba quit the job, after two years, and started selling his own hair products from the boot of his car. From the seed capital of R30,000 (around $2,000) he borrowed from friends, Mashaba had built a R10-million ($725,000) factory in 1993, running in the heart of Mabopane township, north of Pretoria.
Apartheid laws prevented Mashaba from buying or renting land in an industrial area, so he was forced to build his own 6,000-square-meter factory.
Soon, Black Like Me products went all over Southern Africa but clearly somebody didn’t like it and threw a match.
“November 17, 1993, is a day I will never forget. It’s a day I have difficulty explaining but out of it came a lot of lessons. The incident itself was horrific; how I survived was a miracle. Only God knows,” says Mashaba.
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This was to become Mashaba’s worst day, the destruction of seven years of producing Black Like Me products from a dusty township factory.
“I stood there watching the fire department people fighting the fire in my factory. I immediately realized it was not an accidental fire, it was spread across the factory. When the fire department combed the place, this arsonist came through. Unfortunately, when the workers started to arrive for the six o’clock shift, the factory was gone to ashes. You can imagine over R10 million in 1993, it’s close to R100 million today. More than 150 people were crying for their jobs,” says Mashaba.
He says there was no time to cry. His suppliers’ trucks came to deliver stock to the burned down factory that he had to find an alternative storeroom for. By 9AM, he assembled his management team and discussed an alternative. In two weeks, Mashaba found a smaller place to work in in Midrand, north of Johannesburg. But it took two years to get back to full production.
“The lesson for me was that while I went through this people moved on, that’s where I lost market share. The products were not on shelves. The same day when the factory burned down, I had a call from our office in Johannesburg, to tell me about a delivery from Lesotho. The delivery turned out to be bags of marijuana. I asked them to get police involved. The tragedy of it is there was never an investigation,” says Mashaba.
Despite him asking people for information and offering a R50,000 ($3,600) reward, no one was prosecuted for burning down his factory.
Mashaba credits his culture of saving for getting him back on his feet. When the insurance was taking too long to refund, Mashaba used his savings to get the new factory in Midrand.
“I didn’t even get half of what I was insured for, and they took time to pay me. You can imagine the banks at the time, as blacks, they were not interested in us. The only relationship I had with banks was to deposit my money,” he says.
“Fortunately, I never allowed circumstances to determine my fate. I have always believed I was in control of my destiny. I don’t want politicians’, or anyone’s, favors.”
The fire is one of many stories in Mashaba’s first book: Black Like You. Mashaba’s second one, launched this year, is called Capitalist Crusader, a title borrowed from a headline for a FORBES AFRICA cover story on him. In the book, Mashaba speaks about issues that see him vilified by his people who accuse him of being an insensitive capitalist.
“I want to be known as a capitalist. I wrote the book openly, so that people know my agenda upfront. At the same time, I don’t want to be misrepresented. Unfortunately, collective thinking to a large extent misleads people. Most people’s agendas are not what they preach. Let’s judge each other on the basis of what we are doing not what we are preaching,” he says.
Mashaba says the government is to blame for high unemployment.
“This higher unemployment of South African people is a man-made phenomenon created by the government. It looks like it is in our government’s interest for people not to work, so that they depend on government grants. If they really wanted people to work, they would create an environment for entrepreneurs and capitalists to create work for people. We need a free market. They must ask their colleagues in China and Russia what communism did to people,” says Mashaba.
“To protect democracy you need active citizenship, you don’t need to be politicians. If South Africa wants to be a model and a prosperous nation, we need a free market system. You cannot prosper by the government being the driver of the economy. Just create the environment that will allow the 50-odd-million South Africans to be the players. And the sooner we abolish all race-based legislations, the better for the future of this country. It is very dangerous to run the country on the basis of race and tribalism.”
In early 2014, Mashaba stepped down as a chairman of the Free Market Foundation, a post he held for two years, to join main opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA). He was vilified by many in the black community and called a traitor for joining what they say is a party of white privilege. Mashaba maintains he has no political ambitions, despite being approached by many to throw his hat in the ring for the mayor of Johannesburg.
“There’s no way you are going to see me toy-toying. I never toy-toyed in my 56 years of living, so I don’t think I will start now. I think I will be a stupid politician. If there was no DA, there would be no one I would vote for. Yes, they are not perfect but they represent my value system,” says Mashaba.
Today, from his sunny office in Sandton, the richest square mile in Africa, Mashaba leads Lephatsi Investments, a company with interests in mining, construction and logistics.
He invests in young companies with ideas. After two decades, Mashaba hasn’t forgotten his worst day of fire, fury and despair – he lives to help young go-ahead companies survive theirs.

‘How I Survived Was A Miracle’

In March, I was assigned to the Four Nations Challenge, a basketball tournament at the Wembley Sports Arena, Johannesburg, South Africa. Winter had started early, so I wore my favorite Springbok rugby jacket. Back home, in the Eastern Cape, we wore scarves and jackets to rugby stadiums on rainy winter days. Rugby is in our blood. I passed my first rugby ball at the age of five.
At the Wembley Arena, I met Carey Odhiambo, the coach of Kenya’s basketball team. Odhiambo liked my green and gold jacket; he spoke of Springbok success and doing Africa proud. At the time, South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, were ranked second in the world , but are now fifth – an all-time low.
My acquaintance from East Africa, where rugby is still amateur, couldn’t care less about how many black and white players were in the team, until I raised the point. The Springboks are a far cry from representing the demographics of our population. But, Odhiambo didn’t mind, as long as the team was winning. Interestingly, Odhiambo’s basketball team was the antithesis of the Springboks: all his players were black. On the other hand, the Boks seem like a European team dotted with one or two African expatriates.
<div id="attachment_4128" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4128" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-4128" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-473610208-300x239.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="239" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; MAY 16: Elton Jantjies of the Lions converts a penalty during the Super Rugby match between Emirates Lions and Brumbies at Emirates Airline Park on May 16, 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Duif du Toit/Gallo Images/Getty Images)</div>
Odhiambo was unaware that millions of blacks, like me, reluctantly support the Springboks because of this. But we smoked a peace pipe and exchanged jackets. Would that happen with a white South African compatriot?
South Africa has suffered from 500 years of colonialism, and apartheid, where opportunities were governed by racial privilege. Because of this history, almost everything in South Africa is a racial issue.
Let’s touch on where the Nelson Mandela Rainbow Nation farce began. In 1995, a year after the country’s first democratic elections, South Africa hosted its first Rugby World Cup and won it. On the day of the final, blacks and whites were behind the Springboks, that was all white save for one player, Chester Williams. We won the World Cup and hoped that talent from the townships would be nurtured.
A year after the World Cup, a new and unapologetically racist coach, Andre Markgraaff, was appointed and went on to win eight and lose five test matches before resigning. Markgraaff was taped referring to black rugby officials as kaffirs, a gaffe he profusely apologized for. He did not select a single black player in his year as coach. In 1997, an inexperienced Carel du Plessis took over. Of his eight matches, Du Plessis won three. Not a single black player was involved in that mediocre record, resulting in Du Plessis getting the boot.
It took a third coach, Nick Mallet, to at least select six black players in three years. Mallet, who took the team to the World Cup in 1999, won 27 and lost 11; between 1997 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2003, little happened under Harry Viljoen and Rudolph Straeuli.
<div id="attachment_4126" style="width: 221px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4126" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-4126" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_APP1999100536076-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" />South African centre Kaya Malotana runs with the ball during a training session at the Goldenacre rugby stadium in Edinburgh, 05 October 1999. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE)</div>
The Springboks won a second World Cup under Jake White in 2007. Under White, they won 36 of their 54 matches and 23 black players were selected in four years. The transformation work done by White, and his successor Peter de Villiers, who saw 21 black players earning Bok caps between 2008 and 2011, was commendable. Sadly, the incumbent Heyneke Meyer is undoing this.
Meyer has been the coach since 2012 and is in charge of the Springboks at the World Cup in England this year. It’s not guaranteed he will win, or even reach the quarterfinals, at the World Cup based on the recent lacklustre performances. In the five games leading up to the World Cup, Meyer lost to Argentina for the first time in the country’s history in August. The team’s world ranking is its lowest since 1996.
Meyer is spoilt for choice when it comes to talented black players. Yet he chose to overlook them and picked white players who are older than 30 instead.
A case in point is Jean de Villiers, the captain who has served the Springboks well since 2012. But, the 34-year-old center is laden with injuries and has lost his pace. Meyer’s patience with De Villiers cannot be justified on the grounds that there’s a dearth of capable centers. This is one in the eye for the 26-year-old utility back, Lionel Mapoe, from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, who had a brilliant Super Rugby tournament with the Golden Lions. Despite coming through the ranks, he has played only one test, against New Zealand, in July.
Elton Jantjies is another case. He has played twice for Springboks and was the best South African flyhalf in Super Rugby. His sin is being black. Meyer has shown no interest in picking him, instead favoring the white players, Pat Lambie and Handre Pollard. Statistically, Jantjies had a better Super Rugby than them.
The South African Rugby Union (Saru), the toothless governing body, and the sport ministry, has given Meyer so much carte blanche that he thinks he is doing the right thing.
<div id="attachment_4127" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4127" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-4127" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par8238225-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />South African Springboks center Lionel Mapoe stands during the National anthem ahead of a Rugby Championship Rugby union match against New Zealand All Blacks on July 25, 2015 in Johannesburg. AFP PHOTO / MUJAHID SAFODIEN</div>
To rub salt into the wound, Saru has extended the deadline for transformation. Saru’s target for 2019 is for a 50% white, 30% black and 20% colored representation of Springboks and domestic Currie Cup teams.
Kaya Malotana, selected by Mallett in 1999, was the first black African Springbok. The 38-year-old director of coaching at Alberton Rugby Club, near Johannesburg, bemoans a lack of will. The Eastern Cape winger, from the small town of Lady Frere, earned one cap for the Springboks.
“The problem with doing things when under pressure is that you set unrealistic targets. Fifty percent black and colored representation is setting everybody up for failure because not enough players of color are being selected in Super Rugby. People will turn around and say, ‘these black players have compromised the quality of the Springbok team,’” says Malotana.
I want to demystify the notion that people who question transformation in South African rugby are not supporters. This is not true. During the World Cup, black people will put their differences aside and don their green and gold regalia and support the Springboks. Dee

Why I Support My Country With A Heavy Heart

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but, the appalling silence of the good people.” This Martin Luther King Jr quote brought courage to Mike Tshishonga’s soul, inspired him to be a whistleblower and ushered in his two worst days.
The first cost him his home and pride, leading to seven years in the wilderness. The second cost him humiliation, vilification and yet another job he loved.
The fury and conflict that raged around Tshishonga belies the peace and quiet of where he was born in 1946; in rural Venda located in Louis Trichardt, a small town nestled in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province; a peaceful place were wild animals roam. Even though the harsh apartheid regime was in force, Tshishonga grew up in a loving home and left to study law. He took King’s quote with him.
He hates crime and corruption. His battle for justice began in 1985, when he was the Secretary of Justice in the old Bantu system. At the time, Venda chiefs carried out ritual murders for strength and power. This was a burden on Tshishonga’s shoulders.
“They wanted human parts. One chief, Ramovha, was involved in these ritual killings. He was tried and found guilty of murder. His friends wanted me to recommend he be removed from the death sentence but I refused,” says Tshishonga.
Tshishonga became detested and resented among Ramovha’s friends and family. But he felt it was the right thing to do. Justice had to prevail.
Another ritual murder occurred; this time involving Chief AA Tshivhase, who was also hung for his crime.
“Tshivhase had a lot of political capital. As a result, parliament passed an act saying the president has the power to demote, transfer or reduce the salary of any public servant without giving any reason.”
This prompted Tshishonga’s dismissal.
“The president had been told that a lot of chiefs were involved in this and I was the problem that needed to be taken care of.”
Tshishonga had fought a losing battle in a place he called home. He left with nothing and had to stay with his in-laws.
“When you are a man and supposed to take care of your family but you can’t, and your mother-in-law has to take up the responsibility, it is traumatic, but pain makes us grow. It is a stepping stone to another level. It is not there to kill one but rather to give strength and greater wisdom,” he says.
After seven years of pain and penury, Tshishonga was rehabilitated in a new democratic South Africa; appointed as the Deputy Director General of the South African Justice Department in 1994.
“I was happy when someone who respected how I had stood up for justice recognized I was right and traced me down for this position. Those were very tough years for me but I will always speak up against wrongdoing,” says Tshishonga.
“During the years when Mandela was the president, everything was smooth. I was responsible for the liquidation division at the department.”
Little did he know, an even worse day was yet to come.
In 2003, Tshishonga was in hot water, again, for opposing the appointment of Enver Motala as liquidator for the Retail Apparel Group (RAG), then worth more than a billion rand. Penuell Maduna, the then Minister of Justice, ordered Tshishonga’s department to appoint Motala as liquidator for RAG. It was to be the biggest liquidation in the country’s history.
“We had a panel that decided which liquidator, out of 300, got which job. This was to avoid corruption because liquidation is a lucrative business. It is not, according to the law of insolvency, the minister who dictates who gets what job.”
“I think Maduna and Motala wanted to share the spoils. As always, I was very vocal about fighting corruption. Maduna then tried to get rid of me but they didn’t have any legal grounds to stand on.”
Tshishonga invoked the Protected Disclosures Act. He lodged a complaint about the irregularity with the Public Protector, the Auditor-General and even Essop Pahad, the then Minister in the Presidency under Thabo Mbeki.
“Essop suggested we sit around the table and address the matter but Maduna did not cooperate with me. No one seemed to care that such corruption and nepotism was taking place,” he says.
Pahad, when contacted by FORBES AFRICA, claims he has no knowledge of the matter.
In October 2003, when it came to light that his objections were going nowhere, he called a press conference.
“I had to become creative. I disclosed the information relating to the impropriety and nepotism of the minister to the whole country.”
Tshishonga was suspended with immediate effect. A disciplinary committee was convened. The suspension lasted nearly four years. This ushered in his second worst day. All hell broke loose.
“Vusi Pikoli, Director-General of the justice department at the time, said they can’t take me back because the trust between me and the department had been broken. They offered me a settlement and I refused. Getting rid of me was not getting rid of corruption,” he says.
Pikoli denies this.
“All I can say is that cases of fraud and corruption, where reported and detected in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development when I was the Director-General, were dealt with,” he says.
The Labour Court ruled Tshishonga be reinstated in early 2004. He returned to his office, unaware that he faced the worst months of his life.
“I would go to the office and no job was coming to me. I had my desk, computer and everything but not work. I would go there, do nothing and leave the office at knockoff time. It was difficult for them to transfer me to another department because it would be against the Protected Disclosures Act. Any person who blows the whistle must not be redeployed because they have raised a concern that needs to be addressed.”
With no work coming his way, he started writing a book Whistleblower: The Mike Tshishonga Story, published in 2010.
“Instead of complaining about it, I decided to spend the time writing a book about the true events so that the outside world knows what happened,” he says.
Nobody spoke to him; he was in the office each day for nearly a year. He finally agreed to a settlement of R3 million (around $200,000) to leave the position. He left the department but not without suing for defamation.
“Maduna has told the media that I am a dunderhead, a relic of the apartheid regime who is a timid public servant and does not belong to the department.”
Tshishonga claimed 12 months’ salary for his trouble. The Labour Court ruled in his favor. He read self-help books and the book of Proverbs in the Bible to help him cope. He says he is strong as steel.
“The word death is not in my vocabulary. By killing another person, you are not giving yourself insurance that you would not die because one way or the other, you will.”
The then spokesperson at the office of the Public Protector, Charles Phahlane, was quoted in the media as saying the Public Protector was not provided with enough information to investigate the matter.
At a forum on November 17, 2010, South Africa’s current Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, said she is encouraged by the existence of whistleblowers.
“I note with a sense of discomfort that one of the conference speakers is Mr Mike Tshishonga, who unsuccessfully approached the Public Protector, before my time, for relief regarding an occupational detriment… His complaint was not upheld by the Public Protector and eventually got such relief from a court of law after a costly and lengthy litigation process,” she said.
Maduna denies the allegations made by Tshishonga.
“Mike is the most timid public servant… At worst he is the sort of person who would not be able to box himself out of a wet paper bag,” he reportedly told a local newspaper.
Tshishonga’s unwillingness to yield to pressure by his corrupt peers shows his true nature. He is currently preparing to blow the whistle on a South African politician in the coming months; and he leaves us with a proverb.
“The scorpion was drowning in water. Somebody picked it up to save it. Once safe, the scorpion stung him. The person asked ‘Why would you do this after I helped you?’ and the scorpion said ‘It is my nature.’”
Let’s hope Tshishonga is not stung.

“Death Is Not In My Vocabulary”

I consider it an opportunity of a lifetime, having met and taken pictures of our very first democratic South African president, Nelson Mandela. He has always left me with a sense of wonder; at the same time, he inspired me to believe that it is up to us to choose what we do with our circumstances.
The first time I came into close contact with Tata was in 1990—the day after he was released from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town. My colleagues and I rented a house in Vilakazi Street, Soweto, to keep watch as Mandela was expected to tour his former neighborhood for the first time in more than 27 years.
It was amazing; he was so much at ease and he spoke to people as though he had last seen them yesterday. He visited some families in their homes and asked about their health; how were the children? Were they doing well at school? He would stop and make time to talk to small children. I was in awe of this man, thinking that someone with his kind of history, would display arrogance and pride.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-842" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Juda-Nelson-Mandela-1-1024x760.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="352" />
The highlight of the day for us was that he even let the journalists take pictures with him! Did he really notice us? Journalists are so used to being pushed around and today here was a man, who was the talk of the whole world, letting us into his world—what a man! I will forever cherish that picture. I enlarged it, framed it and hung it in our living room.
Mandela is a brave man. He had few reasons to want to pay a courtesy call on the family of Hendrik Verwoerd—the architect of apartheid whose government vilified and locked Mandela away—but he did. Mandela went to in Orania, the Afrikaner-only community in South Africa, to sip tea with Betsie Verwoerd, the late prime minister’s widow.
Ahmed Kathrada—one of the men who faced the death penalty with Mandela—said everyone talks of reconciliation, Mandela gave it content. This is a man who went to the conservative Free State to address farmers. He even went to the steel-making blue-collar community of Vanderbijlpark, near Johannesburg, to address a group of right-wingers; each time, leaving me with a sense of wonder.
In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections. Mandela was to cast his vote in Ohlange High School, Durban. I was all set to capture this historic moment.
I had 10 packets of film and I started loading my two cameras. Having done that, some silly thought crossed my mind; what if the films have a factory fault? I took them out and loaded new ones. I went to take a shower, coming out of the shower I wondered what if someone tampered with my camera while I was in the shower. Eish! The door was not locked, then surely someone must have tampered with my cameras. I had better be safe than sorry; I discarded the films and loaded my cameras again. Now I was panicking, I was nervous, I tried to sleep, but my mind was racing thinking about the worst that could happen the next day.
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I do not know when I went to sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night thinking what if the room service guy had come in while I was sleeping and exposed my films. I took them out and replaced them, again. Suddenly I was left with only four packets of film. Now my worry was that the four packets would not last; where would I buy film at this time? Maybe I should try in the morning? No, that would be too risky, I thought. I would definitely miss the story.
Needless to say the long awaited moment arrived. When I clicked my camera non-stop as Mandela cast his vote, it was the most beautiful feeling I have ever had in my life of taking pictures. It was a glorious moment and I was filled with peace and hope. This was no picture of violence, this was no picture of gruesome murder, this was no picture of strife, this was a picture of triumph and jubilation.
The ensuing presidential life never changed him. Protocol was never an issue, his bodyguards needed to be on the lookout at all times, because he would stop anywhere to chat to people—a true people’s president.
In 1996, Mandela received his Honorary Doctorate from Oxford University. The crowds were waiting eagerly for his arrival and as he came out of the car, he waved to the crowds in Madiba style. I was taking pictures when I noticed that he was coming towards me. I followed him with my eyes preparing to take a shot at any moment, he stopped right in front of me, extended his hand and greeted me and said: “How are you? Are you fine? Good to see you again.” My knees went weak. I do not know what I said, I mumbled something, I was just nodding my head, I was stiff, I tried to smile at the same time, I was close to tears.
I did not want to share this with anyone, after some thought I was convinced that, no, the old man must be mistaking me for someone else. I could not believe he had singled me out of the whole crowd. Phew! This man had the memory of an elephant.
<div id="attachment_841" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-841" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-841" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/mandela-mbeki-de-klerk-33-1024x757.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="350" />Former President Nelson Mandela, (C) waves next South African President Thabo Mbeki (L),Former South Africa President F.W de Klerk ,(R) behind Johana Rupert Chairman of Sunshine golf circurt of South Africa and Dr Hasso Plattner (R-T) founder of Hasso Plattner Foundation at the opening ceremony of The Presidents Cup Tournament held at Fancourt in George South Africa November 20,2003.REUTERS/ Juda Ngwenya.</div>
In 1997, Mandela was on a state visit to Libya and as he was escorted to the hall where they were going to have dinner he saw me and a colleague who worked for SABC, he greeted us and asked if we were being are taken care of in Tripoli, furthermore, were our families fine at home. He even suggested that we sit with him at the table, but as soon as he stopped and greeted some dignitaries, we disappeared in the crowd.
I met him again in Lusaka when I was covering a SADC meeting. Mandela personally introduced me to the president of Burundi. I also noticed that before I took any pictures he would always greet and chat—I think it is his way of making people feel at ease and comfortable with him. He has a way with people, while you feel honored to know him; he honors you and has a way of making you feel important.
Mandela is a man of integrity; as I look back from the time he was released, his pre-election campaign, his time of office, his retirement, through it all it, he did not change.
One other thing I love about Mandela is that he makes for good pictures, easy and comfortable pictures. Reuters presented him with the picture I took of him casting his vote in 1994. He was pleased and appreciated the gesture. I have nothing else but the deepest respect and honor for him.
Today I am one of the best known South African photojournalists and I attribute the best years of my career to this man who directly and indirectly encouraged me to be the best that I can be.
I thank God for his life.

Tag: Apartheid

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