The dramatic surge of violent Cash-In-Transit robberies in South Africa has the cash services industry fighting back.
If you’re moving money, it could all end in tears, gunfire and a sickening explosion. This is the misery of the road in the Cash-In-Transit (CIT) business in South Africa.
With over 180 heists in the first seven months of this year alone, injuring at least 62 guards and killing seven, private business is trying to find ways to make money out of thwarting these thieves.
“The challenge is that this is such a sophisticated level of crime that everyone in our industry is really looking at it and saying this is really difficult to combat. This is quite tough,” says Roy Alves, the Sales Director of Axis Communications.
The Swedish company has been manufacturing security cameras in South Africa for the last two decades. It’s been approached to assist with its technology in combating CITs.
“What we’re seeing is that this is an organized crime. This is not a random hit on a vehicle carrying cash. This is syndicated crime that has intelligence. They’re either listening on radio frequencies, or listening on telephone conversations, or having information on the roots of these vehicles,” says Alves.
The leading providers of security equipment to the CIT and banking industry, AllCash Technologies, hosted a high-level panel discussion recently in Midrand, Johannesburg, which looked at ways to impede these heists.
Interpol’s #TurnBackCrime campaign Ambassador, Andy Mashaile, was one of the panelists.
“In 2017, 136 billion rands went through the veins of the financial system, and out of 10 heists, 465 million [rands] was stolen. Only 33 million [rands] of that was recovered,” said Mashaile.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2016/09/01/terrible-time-list-bank/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: ‘A Terrible Time To List A Bank’</a>
The other two panelists were Guateng province’s MEC of Community Safety, Sizakele Malobane, and retired police crime statistics expert and independent analyst, Dr Chris de Kock.
Malobane pulled no punches in giving the perpetrators of CIT heists a stern warning.
“We want to send a message to criminals that we are aware of your arrogance and we’ll deal with your arrogance decisively.There are many ways to deal with it. We can actually respond either by protecting the money… also, we can return fire with fire,” said Malobane.
The use of high-caliber firearms in CIT heists has raised many eyebrows. 
De Kock came armed with statistics that posed crucial questions to the panel. He said 11% of these robberies involve high-caliber firearms.
“These firearms should not be in the hands of the public at all. We’re talking of R4’s (rifle), R5’s (rifle), AK’s (AK-47) and whatever,” said De Kock.
In response, Malobane dispelled some of the suspicions around police involvement.
“It’s not only from the police that these arms are coming from. Most of them, honestly speaking, are actually coming from other countries. These are the kind of weapons that are not used or legal in South Africa, that get used in the process of committing that particular crime,” said Malobane.
Just outside the discussion, AllCash Technologies demonstrated ways to help combat the scourge of CIT heists.
It showed the use of its vehicle vault protection device, called the protection dispensing unit.
The unit is for the protection of assets in the vault area of the vehicle. Once activated, it releases a solid block of polyurethane foam, which envelopes the money, and then hardens into a solid block within two minutes.
In the case of an attempt to blow up the cash van, the explosion hardens the foam, which absorbs the blast.
Also in display here was the Cash Defender MK3, designed to allow the safe movement of bank notes outside of a cash van.
Once activated, it releases smoke and stains the banknotes, rendering them useless. 
Back at the panel discussion, the mining industry, and the use of its explosives in these heists, also came under scrutiny.
“Before we even investigated some of the mining companies, some of them approached us and indicated that ‘we suspect that our explosives are the ones that are being used for CIT’, but not only for CIT, they’re also used for the illegal mining by zama-zamas [hustlers]. So there is an investigation there and I hope that very soon we’ll actually be cracking that particular case,” said Malobane.
For the Interpol ambassador, it was the dark web that was of concern.
Mashaile said 90% of the internet’s usage lies within the dark web, where criminals meet.
“Me and you, and your viewers only use about 10 percent of the internet. The deep web, or dark web, is where a lot of crime is committed. That’s where you can access the hitman industry. That’s where your masterminds in heists meet and communicate freely on that space of the deep web and the dark web,” said Mashaile.
To the crime expert and retired police statistician, the real concern lies within the patterns picked up from his experience.
De Kock says before he left the police in 2013, one of the patterns he noticed was that once one crime is seemingly combatted, criminals move on to the next.
“When we started to manage these figures down from 394 (heists per year) to 182 (heists); 145 (heists) when I left, when it was managed down, it immediately jumped from CITs to ATM bombings. So we must be very careful…the moment you do something, in sociology, we say you have unforeseen consequences,” said De Kock.
Police, government, security companies and the South African community as a whole have had enough of CIT heists. 
For now, the weapons against them are vigilance smoke and foam.

Crime scene blurred law enforcement and forensic background

South Africa Fights Back Against Cash Heists

On February 5 2013, Annette Kilele and Marie Muyembi both received the same tragic news. Both women are refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo living in Johannesburg.
Kilele’s husband, Kilele Mukuti, and Muyembi’s brother, David Bakajika, were arrested, along with 18 others, by South African police on charges related to a coup attempt targeting their head of state, Joseph Kabila.
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After a month-long and expensive battle, their men were denied bail and were detained for almost two years. However, a surprise decision by the judge changed all that. In late November 2014, Bakajika was released. Mukuti was not.
Both women now face a different set of challenges; Kilele must continue to support her five daughters despite her husband’s incarceration, while Muyembi must help her brother, and his two children that she cares for, come to terms with his traumatic return.
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The Women They Leave

As early as 8AM on December 8, in the farming town of Middelburg in Mpumalanga, a province in north east South Africa, a portion of Beyers Naude Street, near the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court was cordoned off. A heavy group of armed police guarded a huge crowd marching up and down and shouting political slogans.
Inside the court two men, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Jackson, stood in the dock awaiting their fate on a plea for bail before their trial for assault and kidnapping. Before 11AM, Magistrate Jongilizwe Dumehleli dismissed the application. As the news reached the crowd outside, a celebration erupted and cheers and clenched fists were raised in song. A hero’s welcome greeted Victor Rethabile Mlotshwa, a plaintiff, as he emerged from the court surrounded by African National Congress regional leaders.
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“I am grateful of the judgment today, I hope the justice will be served and these people get what they deserve,” says Mlotshwa.
Dressed in a baseball cap, golf shirt and pair of blue jeans, Mlotshwa and his mother were ushered to the back of a big truck, stationed outside the court, where politicians delivered speeches condemning racism in the divided town of Middelburg.
In November, video footage emerged on social media showing Oosthuizen and Jackson forcing a crying Mlotshwa into a coffin and threatening to pour petrol on him to burn him alive. The video sparked widespread outrage and the two were locked up.
“Thanks to technology, we would not have known about the video. Now, there’s concrete evidence against these racists. These days we are even afraid to send our children to work on farms because they suffer the same fate as the young Victor. If you can go to the farms and dig you will probably uncover skeletons of black people they are killing,” says Patricia Shongwe, a 50-year-old protester.
Thembi Magubane is a restaurant worker in Witbank, a 30-minute drive from Middelburg.
“I dropped everything to be here. This is the same treatment we get at the restaurant where I work. They force us to speak Afrikaans [which] we don’t understand and when something goes wrong we are to blame. We are treated like animals by these racist whites all the time,” says Magubane.
The only white person in the crowd supporting Mlotshwa was an ANC supporter who introduced herself only as Rose.
“I want to go in there and bliksem (hit) those guys, racism has no place in this country,” she says.
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But not everyone was in a celebratory mood; six white farmers who supported the accused were peeved. They accused the presiding magistrate of bias and indecisiveness.
“No, we are not their family members, we are here to support our community members. Farmers are killed every day but you don’t see us forcing judges to make decisions. This is appalling,” says one of them.
Tessa Riekert, leader of National Conservative Party in Mpumalanga, says she believes the accused deserved bail.
“I don’t think this was a fair judgment. Our famers are being killed daily, two or three or four famers. We have one farmer who was stabbed 49 times and killed, but the suspect was set free on a bail of R2000 ($145). So, is he not a danger to society?” says Riekert.
“What they have done is wrong, I absolutely don’t agree with it. They haven’t proven guilty but don’t we all make mistakes? This guy walked away with his life but our farmers don’t, they gang up on them and they kill them. [The crowd] forced this judge to get to this decision, by being here, by shouting political slogans. I am very disappointed murderers are walking in the street right now and they are carrying on with what they are doing. Honestly, I don’t think the court will give them a fair trial. We are in a minority, we cannot pull out a crowd like the ANC is doing right here. White genocide is ongoing every day,” she says.
The accused were to reappear on January 25.
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MIDDELBURG, SOUTH AFRICA NOVEMBER 2016: (SOUTH AFRICA OUT): Theo Jackson and Willem Oosthuizen during their appearance at the Middelburg Magistrates Court for allegedly assaulting and forcing a farm worker, Rethabile Victor Mlotshwa into a coffin on November 16, 2016 in Mpumalanga, South Africa. There has been an uproar after a viral video showing Jackson and Oosthuizen assaulting and forcing Mlotshwa into a coffin. The two accused abandoned their bail applications sighting security concerns. The case was postponed to January 25, 2016. (Photo by Alon Skuy/ The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

The Coffin Shame Of A Land Where Racism Lives

They call them zama zamas which means ‘those who try their luck’. Wearing his traditional Zulu earrings, looking hirsute with whiskers on his face, this is Dumisani Ngcamu, otherwise known as Ntshebe – ‘the bearded man’. He is an illegal miner and has been risking his life for eight years trying to scrape a handful of gold dust underground to support his eight kids. He works in abandoned mineshafts around Johannesburg, a city in South Africa built on gold.
“You see, here in Johannesburg, gold is everywhere but people don’t know that. Sometimes you don’t have to go deep, it’s closer than you think,” says Ngcamu.
A trip to Johannesburg from his village Nquthu, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, looking for greener pastures, led Ngcamu to illegal mining even though he never worked in a mine. Immigrants from neighboring Zimbabwe, the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique introduced Ngcamu to this industry as a marketer of syndicates.
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“I was earning R30 ($2.20) a day, I did not mind how small it was because I had food on my plate. I knew this was a serious job when I got arrested, but luckily for me I had learned every process of mining. I knew where to find gold,” says Ngcamu.
After he was released he went on his own and started mining in built-up areas.
“I mined within near distances, I reached barriers where you would find houses and firms, I then realized I could make more money in abandoned mines. That’s when I started working with other people,” says Ngcamu.
It all revolves around a shanty town called Denver, near Johannesburg, where most of the residents are from the KwaZulu-Natal. Here, shacks and shady corners are full of idle youth who drink to drown their sorrows and clusters of people playing chess and cooking meat. The majority of people in this area are the poorest of the poor and try to make a living through illegal mining and crime.
“Whenever government officials wanted a gunman, they knew Denver was the perfect place. R5,000 ($370) was enough for criminals here, but today you won’t find a single criminal because everyone is involved in mining,” says Ngcamu.
“You would hear that a policeman has been shot at Denver hostel on a daily basis, no police officer would enter this place back in those days, but today we are able to communicate with them.”
The troubles on the surface match the problems underground. There’s fighting between factions and theft among rival groups of illegal miners.
“They used to rob our stuff. When you’re down there you need to act like an animal. Things I encounter down there are devastating. I saw someone being hit with a hammer on the head; if you are a handsome young man, without a beard like mine [laughs], they would rape you and kill you. I was lucky not to get caught. Shootings and a person being lost is common in there.”
Ngcamu survived a horror encounter with a rival faction.
“You even have slaves. They catch you, tie you up like you a goat, hold you hostage and make you work for days. Your job would be to work and you deliver the gold dust up until the exit point. If you say you tired, they kill you, and luckily I managed to escape,” he says, while chuckling.
He says foreigners are most prone to such torture.
“When I look at this country, foreigners are not seen as humans, they are seen as animals. Those [foreigners] who I mined with were mostly victims of such things. If it is a group of mixed nationals, then things will get sour.”
Such experiences led Ngcamu to appoint people to act as security guards who would look out for them while they dig. He knew where to find them.
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“You know who is a criminal in your area so we appointed criminals from Denver. We told them the money they will make with us is better than what they would make from crime.”
“Now we are free, because we know people are looking out for us. Everyone is benefiting. Police are happy because there is no crime,” he says.
Illegal miners even pay the guards with a plate of gold dust after they have returned. As it is a community business, women and children are also involved. Women are mostly employed in the manufacturing of the gold. They are tasked to use a piece of equipment called a phenduka – a hand driven cylinder.
Iron balls and water are added inside the perforated phenduka stand. After spinning, the water is sifted into plastic buckets until liquid mercury is visible when being strained. The end process is burning the liquid mercury until it becomes solid gold, then it goes to the market.
David van Wyk, a mining analyst who has studied illegal miners for decades as a researcher for the Bench Marks Foundation, knows the lives, challenges and syndicates of zama zamas. You’d be forgiven if you mistook him for Albert Einstein with his vast knowledge.
“In Africa, before colonialism, people did small-scale mining. Traditional African mining was small scale artisanal mining all over Africa. You still find it in Burkina Faso, it also happened around Great Zimbabwe. If we want a situation that is not so disorderly, that is no so violent and unsafe, we need to pass regulations for small-scale mining and allow it to take place,” he says.
According to Van Wyk, small-scale mining started 200 years ago, before big companies started operating, but it is seen as a threat to the weakening South African mining industry.
“As we have a downward curve in the availability of gold mining, we have an upward curve in small-scale mining.”
“Economically their costs are very low, they do not use a lot of water they do not use a lot of electricity, they don’t use a lot of technology,” says Van Wyk.
He believes the reason there is factional fighting is because of the syndicates the zama zamas work for. Syndicates struck a deal with the zama zamas to buy gold from them; they then sell the gold to the formal economy. They provide zama zamas with food and water and make deductions when workers, like Ngcamu, return from digging. Van Wyk, though, says some of the syndicates are against illegal mining.
“My allegation against the Chamber of Mines, who are always making a noise about zama zamas, is that their people are involved. My second problem with the Chamber of Mines is that they represent monopoly mining, that’s why they are very much against zama zamas.”
“In South Africa, if you are black and you shoot an animal, you are a poacher, but if you are white and shoot an animal you are a trophy hunter; same applies to mining.”
The Chamber of Mines of South Africa refutes the claims.
“It is simply a mischievous claim. As is the case in most countries around the world, mineral resources in South Africa belong to the state and may only be mined by licensed operators. It doesn’t matter whether it is small-scale, medium-scale or large-scale mining, the point is, it needs to be regulated,” says Charmane Russell, spokesperson of the Chamber of Mines.
“If we formalize zama zamas and actually create laws and regulations and organize them into cooperatives, then there can be training in mine health and safety for these guys,” says Van Wyk.
Mines Rescue Services has been rescuing trapped illegal miners for the past 92 years.
“The challenges we face is that there are no maps, no mine plans. We do not know where to go. We work in extremely dangerous conditions. That’s why we have to work with illegal miners to guide us to a place where these guys are trapped,” says Christo de Klerk, CEO of Mines Rescue Services.
De Klerk and his crew use specialized equipment to roam underground and search for illegal miners. He believes the conditions illegal miners face is inhumane.
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“If you look at the amount of the bodies we have recovered, a lot of those bodies were killed during the faction fighting; these people are armed and very dangerous.”
“Authorities have to get together to stop them, we have to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants, we have to try and close all these holes, the prosecution of these people is important but the main thing is that the syndicates who buy gold and sell the gold must be infiltrated and stopped,” says De Klerk.
Ngcamu disagrees.
“Government needs to rethink things; they shouldn’t listen to those who say shafts should be closed because it is risky. We know it is risky; they should stop acting act like they are in sympathy with our lives when they just want to prevent us from getting small fortunes. We’re hungry, they should let us eat,” says an irate Ngcamu.
Not far from Denver, Ngcamu takes us to a place where they first started mining. It seemed like a long day at work for the security guards who were looking out for the illegal miners. Not far away is a metals factory. Pointing towards it, Ngcamu has a story to tell.
“You see when they started operating here, they would call the police on a daily basis to come and arrest us for mining next to their company. Luckily for us, the officers were black, they were our brothers, and they understood us. Criminals used to steal their metals, but now it has all stopped. They do their business we do ours, it’s just a mutual agreement,” he says.
After some explanation and pleading, one of the security guards who didn’t want to be identified agrees to speak and sugarcoats how they deal with criminals.
“We tell them what they’re doing is not right and should never repeat it. A lot of people know what gold looks like so they would be taking chances to undermine us,” he chuckles.
“You see, if government closes these mines that would mean he has killed all of these guards and their families. That would make government responsible for deaths of these people,” says Ngcamu.
The whole country was in shock as scores of miners were rescued in an abandoned mine in Langlaagte, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Four dead bodies were recovered in a day that proved to be the last throw of the dice for illegal mining, events there brought about a lot of public debate on how to stop it.
“What happened in Laanglagte doesn’t deter me; whenever you enter a certain job you will face challenges. Even in firms, you can die reading a newspaper; you can die even though you occupy a top position. So what happened to our brothers won’t make us cry, to our brothers’ families we send our condolences but we expect anything down there. When we go down we pray, when we return we pray,” says an unapologetic Ngcamu.
The mine in Laanglagte is abandoned by Central Rand Gold, leaving opportunities for Ngcamu and his crew to make a living. Van Wyk believes Central Rand Gold, listed on the in the London Stock Exchange, should never have received a mining licence in the first place. The mineshaft is situated at George Harrison Park which has been a national monument since 1946. Next to the park is the 99-year-old school, TC Esterhuysen Primary School, with its football pitch 10 meters from the mine pit.
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“The mine did not have water, so they used the school’s water, which is illegal as well. When we talk about illegal mining, we always blame zama zamas, but people don’t know how many big monopoly mining operations, listed on the London Stock Exchange, that are operating illegally and flaunting the laws of this country,” says Van Wyk.
Ngcamu says nothing will stop them from mining.
“If I stop, what will I say to my two kids at university? People need to be fed, for me stopping is not an option.”

They Dig, They Die

A year ago, students were hailed as heroes when they fought for free education. With spirit, focus and a determination to pull together in a common cause, they won an important battle on the slopes of the Union Buildings to freeze university fee increases for 2016.
Fast forward 365 days and that victory is a fleeting memory overshadowed by 831 arrests  that represent a temporary truce that has been broken. This year, students radicalized. Violence escalated on campuses and out onto the streets. In Braamfontein, Johannesburg, students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) switched from revolutionaries to petty criminals. In the name of free education, buses were set alight and shops were looted.
In Cape Town, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech was delivered to the thud of stun grenades outside Parliament. Students also began throwing petrol bombs and smashing police vehicles and library windows.
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It followed a police crackdown where students were placed under curfew, had their dorms raided and leaders arrested. It led to 831 arrests and 411 criminal cases, says South Africa’s Acting National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Charles Phahlane.
“There are those who have bombarded us with calls to withdraw police officials from university campuses. We reiterate that it is the violence and criminal acts being committed on those campuses that have invited the presence of the SAPS,” says Phahlane
Former Wits SRC leader, Shaeera Kalla, was hit nine times in the back with rubber bullets while she stood with her hands raised while protesting on campus. Police maintain the crowd had, prior to this, interrupted a test and torn up papers.
Former Wits student leader, Mcebo Dlamini, was detained and held in prison for three weeks before successfully appealing and being released on R2,000 bail.
In light of the extreme nature of this year’s protests, public sympathy has waned. Phahlane maintains the police have reacted with minimal force even when “attacked and pelted with stones”.
Still, the cries of the students involved in the #FeesMustFall movement remain unchanged – free education for all.
“Conversations that were once relegated strictly to the humanities are spilling over into other departments, faculties and disciplines in ways that will hopefully consolidate them in the future, as repositioning and reconstructive efforts begin to take root,” says Brian Kamanzi, a writer and electrical engineering master’s student at the University of Cape Town.
“Currently, a Bachelor of Science program at the University of Cape Town could cost as much as R50,000 ($3,700), a steep price for education in a country where the average annual income is R88,000 ($6,600).”
“Over the years, enrolment in the country’s 26 higher education institutions has steadily grown and in 2017 it is expected to reach 1,053,420. While the intake of students considerably increased, the government’s contribution to universities’ income decreased by 18.4 percent, with the total state budget for public higher education accounting for only 0.74 percent of the gross domestic product.”
Kamanzi argues an overwhelming number of students need loans for education and are forced into debt cycles.
Concerns have also been raised that the students lack unity.
“This has been particularly disconcerting, as the discourse on inclusion of black radical feminism and representation of women and queer activists in leadership structures and media encounters has visibly given way to popular male figures and increasingly centralized leadership,” he says.
Kamanzi also defends the violent acts of students, saying that they were in retaliation.
“What followed was mass arrests, internal expulsions and court interdicts, including denial of bail in some cases; more than 830 protesters have been arrested since February. At the same time the media has not properly reported on the violence against student protesters, which has escalated to incidences of sexual assault by private security and the police.”
Amid all this, universities struggled to keep their doors open and complete the academic year. The country is also facing a $400-million graduate brain drain.
“Progress in negotiations across the campuses is difficult as many protesters are in jail, suspended or expelled. The success of the movement shall be determined, I believe, by its ability to move beyond the campuses and involve broader society,” says Kamanzi.
The question now is not how these protests will end, but if they will end.

The Valiant Cause Losing Its Way

Three thousand people camped outside a courthouse for a man they didn’t know until the day before.
He arrived at court at 11:20AM in a white Toyota Corolla with tinted windows. At 1PM, the investigating officer said he forgot to bring the affidavit for the case and had to fetch it. This delayed arguments.
Crowds covered all three exits of the court, vowing to stop their man from being taken away. They even stopped police, who appeared unusually tame, to search cars to check whether their man was inside.
Inside the court, was Evan Mawarire, a pastor first charged with incitement of violence and then for trying to overthrow the government. This, after months of posting social media videos criticizing the Zimbabwean government. The videos tapped into mounting anger over high unemployment and corruption which sparked rare peaceful protests against President Robert Mugabe.
Mawarire appeared in a packed Harare Magistrates’ Court, also known as Rotten Row, draped in the Zimbabwean flag after spending the night in police cells as officers searched his house, church and office. Scores of lawyers in court waved their qualifications in the air when Mawarire was asked who would be representing him.
Outside, it was like church. Pastors from different dominations led the crowd in prayer every 30 minutes as the judge heard arguments.
“All we want is Mawarire back with no scratch. Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again. He has helped us not to be afraid anymore,” says one of Mawarire’s supporters, Kenneth Handina.
People sang and danced to gospel songs, even likening Mawarire to Jesus on the cross. They also sang struggle songs such as “Senzeni na?” –“What have we done?” in isiNdebele – an anti-apartheid song.
“This is what this government does and has been known to do. They always want to make sure we live in fear and when they say jump we follow,” says jobless graduate, Vimbai Moyo.
As the sun went down, the crowd grew. Some brought food and candles.
“We have been here since morning. Even if they delay, we won’t go. If we have to sleep here we will. We are all in this together,” says another Mawarire supporter, Allan Hunter.
The lawyers argued, successfully, that the charge of subversion had been added at the last minute, denying him a fair trial.
At about 7PM, Magistrate Vakai Chikwekwe ruled that the state had broken its own law and Mawarire was free to go. The crowd erupted. There was a surge towards the main entrance of the court with the crowd singing “Ichokwadi Mwari Varipo”— “It is true, God is there” in chiShona, the tongue of Harare.
As the pastor emerged, people waved their hands in the air and jumped in celebration. They hugged, ululated and pushed towards him. Many sat around him as a sign of respect as he addressed the crowd amid flickering camera flashes. A handful climbed trees for a clearer view.
“I want to thank you, all Zimbabweans, because we are now united. May the Lord bless you all because the country you are building is for your children; let’s continue building, don’t stop. God bless you all,” says Mawarire.
As he left, people danced on the street, hooted car horns and sang. Many cursed the police for the arrest and vowed to speak up against Mugabe’s regime.
“We don’t want politicians trying to capitalize on this. It is up to us as citizens to reclaim our country from this government so we can have a better life. If the government of Zimbabwe was not threatened before, maybe now it’s time to be,” says Tinashe Gambuza.
Zimbabwe had not seen anything like this in over a decade. As we left, a group of guys danced on top of a car singing yet another struggle song, – “Get ready mama and prepare for your freedom; freedom is coming tomorrow”. With that, everybody disappeared into the cold night.

“He Has Helped Us  Not To Be Afraid Anymore”

<h1>From Schoolboy To Rebel In A Month</h1>
<h6>Oupa Moloto is a little heavier and a lot wiser than 40 years ago when he ran riot in the streets of Soweto as a slender 19-year-old.</h6>
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It was a day Oupa Moloto never thought would end in fire and tears. The children had prepared a peaceful protest; they were excited, as well as angry. Moloto was one of the thousands of unhappy students who didn’t want to be taught in Afrikaans, a language they felt was oppressive and merely the gateway to menial jobs.
Moloto was at Morris Isaacson High School, in Jabavu, Soweto. He was part of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM), which followed black consciousness – the philosophy that inspired young people to take pride in their race.
Through it, Moloto took the first step on a path that would see him locked up in 16 prisons and end up as a guerrilla fighter in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC).
On a winter morning, he met up with his schoolmates to plan the march. Members of SASM were pushing for tougher forms of protest, but the masses held sway. A peaceful march it was; they had never marched in their lives.
“It was going to be exciting,” laughs Moloto.
On Tuesday, June 15, 1976, SASM members spread the word around schools. That night they painted placards against the system and Afrikaans.
“On the day of the event, June 16, school started a little earlier, the mood was different, the students were excited but the teachers couldn’t pick it up,” he recalls.
Few teachers knew of the march. At Morris Isaacson, slim, light-skinned and bearded Tsietsi Mashinini, the SASM leader, spoke passionately for the march at the morning assembly. They prayed and marched singing: “Senzeni na? Senzeni na?” (What have we done? What have we done?).
Other schools had heard about the march and headed to Orlando West to meet up with the main body. Hector Pieterson was not meant to be part of the march, he saw his sister Antoinette and ran to join her. He was shot and bled to death; his image went around the world and epitomized the brutality of the day on which scores of schoolchildren died.
The police blocked the streets and released a snarling dog sending students running in panic. The girls screamed and the boys stoned the dog.
“I don’t know where the petrol came from, but it was poured on the dog to burn,” says Moloto.
With angry youths fighting and retreating, the students scattered; attacking government property and anything to do with the system. By this time, parents had joined in, says Moloto.
Amid the chaos, there were workers digging a trench for a cable, under the guard of a white boss with hands in pockets. When the angry teenage mob came, the man was thrown into the trench and made to dig, says Moloto. The terrified workers were made to stand and watch their white boss dig with their hands in their pockets.
The violence swept through Soweto and spread to the train stations, forcing drivers to avoid stopping. Soon there were no longer trains, says Moloto.
“In fact, I think hijackings started in 1976, if you come with a company car, you will be taken out the car and they will drive around and burn it.”
As the uprising raged, bystanders suffered. There was a welfare office, not far from Morris Isaacson High School, run by Dr Melville Edelstein, who was loved by the people.
“When we were marching, he was standing at the gate wearing a white dustcoat and was waving to students, they had a good relationship, but in the evening he was brutally killed because of the color of his skin. He was white,” says Moloto.
A white teacher at Morris Isaacson was luckier and airlifted to safety by police.
Moloto woke up the next day and walked to school. He saw petrol tanks burning; the looting was chaotic.
Then came the crackdown. Police arrested students and many went on the run.
“When we went back to school days after the violence, we were told most of the leadership was arrested,” he says.
The shattered schools of Soweto came together again for a peaceful protest in the heart of the economy, downtown Johannesburg, on August 2. It was the biggest protest by far, says Moloto, but no one was hurt.
“The demand was to release those that have been arrested,” he says.
The students changed strategy.
“We called for a national stay away, that we should be indoors, nobody will be shot,” says Moloto.
The students decided to hit back at the economy by stopping people from going to work. They blocked and burned buses. In a few short weeks, Moloto evolved from a high school child, in blazer and tie, to a rebel.
Today, Moloto owns taxis, and has shares in the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System. He runs a butchery in Soweto and is also the project coordinator of the June 16 Foundation. After all, it was a day that changed his life.
<div id="attachment_4915" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4915" class="size-medium wp-image-4915" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-88415897-300x206.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="206" />Young rioters surround a burning bus during the Soweto Uprising in Johannesburg, 17th June 1976. The riots were a reaction against the government&#8217;s repressive apartheid policies. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)</div>
<h1>“Light Show Me The Way, It’s Dark And The Road Is Far And Long”</h1>
<h6>Barney Mokgatle not only lost his innocence; 
he also lost his country.</h6>
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It was the very first shot that killed Hastings Ndlovu. That was when the wall of apartheid was cracked and it fell. If it wasn’t for that bullet, we wouldn’t have fought,” says Barney Mokgatle who was next to Ndlovu when he fell.
“Nobody can claim that Hector Pieterson was shot first.”
Mokgatle was the lieutenant to Tsietsi Mashinini who led the march in 1976. Mokgatle, looking younger than his peers, is now a senior member at church; he believes black consciousness is next to Godliness. He is also a member of the royal family at the Royal Bafokeng, near Rustenburg, in the North West province of South Africa.
Back in 1976 he was just another rebel in school uniform. When Ndlovu was killed, Mokgatle suggested the march be dispersed. Instead police descended on schools across Soweto looking for Mashinini; meanwhile Mokgatle was driving the wanted man around.
“Now the police were hunting us, we could not sleep in one place for two nights because there were people who were selling us out,” says Mokgatle.
Soweto activists Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, parents and principals pressurized Mashinini, Mokgatle and friend Selby Semela to leave the country. They argued that police wanted to kill them, rather than charge them, because in court they could attract public sympathy, he says. There was also a reward of R500 on their heads – a fortune in those days, enough to buy a new house.
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When they tried to leave, there were roadblocks everywhere on the way to Botswana, Mozambique and Swaziland. Mashinini and Mokgatle organized a second mass demonstration across the country that they believed could prove a diversion. The ruse worked.
“When they relaxed on the roads and borders, that’s when we slipped out. We went through the bushes at night and there was a song we sang on the way,” he recalls.
As Mokgatle sings, I could feel the emotion and see the anguish in his face 40 years on.
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“Sedi laka, mponesetse tsela
Ke tsamaye
Ho lefifi, hape ho sebaka
Ntsamaise…”
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In English: “Light show me the way,
It’s dark and the road is far and long,
But when I’m with you I’ve got power…”
When they slipped out of South Africa, they did not know the way to Botswana. Those who had organized their escape moved the rebellious youths from one village to another.
“It was a relay in that fashion, at night, through the bush,” he says. “We could hear the lions and elephants from a distance and we were not aware of the danger, we had no fear.”
They reached the Botswana border the following morning; as they stood on the border fence, about to jump, Mokgatle remembers saying “We shall return.”
In the capital, Gaborone, journalists awaited them.
“That’s how South African police knew that we had skipped the country because of what they had read in the media,” he says. There were attempts to kidnap them and bring them back to South Africa. They knew they couldn’t afford to stick around.
Through Tutu and the World Council of Churches, they organized tickets to fly to Holland. When they landed in Lusaka, Zambia, they did not have a visa for an overnight stay, so they switched to British Caledonian to fly straight on to Holland even though they had no travel documents when they landed in London en route.
“Because we didn’t have passports, that’s where the problems started, that’s where we had to change destination, we were arrested and detained at Gatwick airport,” he says.
Journalist Jon Blair, a South African living in England, helped by telling media houses that three Soweto uprising survivors were detained at Gatwick airport. Years later, Blair made the first British documentary about the 1976 uprising.
“The following morning it was like bees coming to the airport,” he says.
The African National Congress (ANC), the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Pan African Congress (PAC) were all there. The ANC took them under their wing because they were the most powerful. The trio refused to join the party because they had different political ideas. The ANC walked away, says Mokgatle.
“We had to fend for ourselves and that’s when the Nigerian embassy in Botswana contacted us. We went to meet Nigerian head of state Olusegun Obasanjo,” he says.
The military ruler told them Nigeria would support them if they were a national body rather than regional. Hence they changed from the Soweto Student Representative Council to the South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO). From there, they were independent of the ANC, with Nigerian backing.
The Soweto schoolboys Mashinini, Mokgatle and Semela were sent to different countries. Mashinini to Nigeria; Mokgatle stayed in England; Semela to the United States.
Mokgatle’s role was to talk about divestment in South Africa, trying to tell the world why they were fighting the oppressive system, as well as raising funds for scholarships for those who didn’t want military training.
“We were conscientizing the world,” he says.
Mashinini and Semela did the same in their allocated countries.
“Our struggle helped the country, it made the ANC and PAC wake up, they had to fight rigorously. To be honest, the ANC and PAC were not active before June 16, it’s only when we fought and struggled and became independent in London that they realized that these guys are going to take the limelight from them, they had to wake up and do something,” he says.
<div id="attachment_4916" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4916" class="size-medium wp-image-4916" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-102096119-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" />Demonstrators in the streets during the Soweto uprising, South Africa, 21st June 1976. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
Mashinini died in Guinea where he was treated like a son by former president Ahmed Sékou Touré. He was introduced by Miriam Makeba – a South African singer and human rights campaigner nicknamed Mama Africa. Mokgatle suggests Mashinini was murdered.
“I still say to the comrades that there needs to be an investigation done, because what killed Tsietsi, nobody would say. Except for the gashing wounds behind the head, next to the eyes, we could tell he was beaten, who killed Tsietsi and who bought those people. He did not die a natural death,” he says.
Makeba, who was in Brussels, broke the news to Mokgatle in England.
“Miriam called me and said Barney your brother is dead, he passed on last night,” he recalls.
He asked her for a ticket to Guinea so they can arrange to take Mashinini back to South Africa. She refused and told him to go to Zimbabwe to meet the body.
He met the body in Zimbabwe in early 1990, by this time Nelson Mandela was released and exiles could go home.
Mokgatle came home in 1992; Semela still lives in the United States.
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Walking Into A Day Of Horror

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’

It was chaos in the sun. Hundreds of students ran taunting and hurling stones at lines of police armed to the teeth, with tear gas and batons. All of this at a seat of learning, the University of Zimbabwe, in the quiet, green suburbs of Harare, which we filmed for the evening bulletins of South African network television.
“How many O-levels do you have?” shouts one cheeky student, to a distant line of police, before ducking and running.
The reply from the police: a broadside of tear gas that sends us scattering and choking; the cheeky student waits a few seconds before running back with a quip.
“I didn’t think so!”
The issue, in May 1995, was student grants, or the paucity of them, as the government of Zimbabwe tightened its belt.
Day after day, the future lawyers, politicians and financial managers threw stones and held never ending open air meetings to berate the university’s chancellor, the late and avuncular Gordon Chavunduka. Everyone knew he was a sangoma – or traditional healer – known for their spiritual powers.
“Surely he, of all people, should have seen this coming!” says one orator, to the laughter of hundreds.
In those sunlit days this was truly an ice cream war. The lads on their tricycles, with ice boxes fixed to the front, used to gather a safe distance from the fighting. It meant you could dodge a police baton, run across to the ice cream sellers for a cooling cone, then charge back into the tear gas and mayhem.
It got worse as the winter of 1995 wore on. The police were reluctant to ill-treat the students, a number of whom were the sons and daughters of powerful people, when the TV cameras were about. So, one evening, they waited until our crew had left to feed their pictures to Johannesburg, before attacking the students with a vengeance. Riot police clattered through doors, broke bones and cut heads, flailing their way through campus. I can’t forget the image of one of the student leaders, Brian Kagoro, who is now a lawyer working for the UNDP, with several meters of bandage wrapped around his broken head.
This upping of the stakes provoked revenge. When the police sent a patrol car to the campus the students chased off the drivers and battered the vehicle onto its side. Worse still, one of the students opened the fuel tank,  screwed up a newspaper, stuck it inside and set fire to one end – a large petrol bomb was about to go off.
The seconds ticked by as everyone watched the flames lick their way towards the fuel tank. Then an unwitting saviour strode in from nowhere. An English lecturer, who looked the part with a scruffy brown jacket, thick beard and a pipe, strolled through the scene of trepidation without noticing the chaos around him. As he drew level with the burning newspaper, he stopped, did a double take, before pulling the burning paper out of what was about to blow. The rest of us looked through our fingers and laughed in knowing relief. The lecturer walked off, puffing on his pipe, as if nothing had happened.
Fast forward to three years later and the riot police of Zimbabwe were finding their feet. On this sticky November day in 1997, I saw two helmeted riot police standing in the tree-lined Africa Unity square in the heart of Harare.
An old man approached the two riot police and must have asked them a question politely because I saw him clapping his hands as he spoke, a sign of respect in Zimbabwe. One smacked the old man to the ground with his baton while his fellow policeman kicked him in the guts. I ran over to help the old man up.
“Leave him alone,” I screamed knowing they could take me next.
One of the policemen looked me in the eye and threw a spitting, Israeli-made gas grenade, sending me coughing and wheezing out onto the street where thousands were running in anger. I kicked the gas grenade 30 meters across the road; to throw it back was to risk arrest. I never saw the old man again. Troops were on the streets weeks later.

Ice Cream, Gas And Thugs In Uniform

This calm encounter on a spring morning in Sandton, Johannesburg, belies a man who forged his career amid fury. He cheated death at the hands of police to capture the Soweto school uprising, surely, one of the saddest stories ever told in Africa.
On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima, a photojournalist at The World newspaper, in Johannesburg, took a picture of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying a 13-year-old dying Hector Pieterson from the Soweto massacre. He smuggled the film out in his sock and the picture hit the front pages of the world. The police wanted to destroy it – the image destroyed Nzima’s career.
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The picture changed the political landscape of South Africa; it made a fortune for the news agencies of the world, but he got nothing from it for 22 years.  The iconic image has been on everything from billboards to T-shirts.
“The picture of Hector Pieterson destroyed my future in journalism. I couldn’t continue as a journalist because of that picture and I would never put my life in danger, I was forced to leave everything behind,” says Nzima.
Harassment from police forced Nzima to become a small bottle store owner in the small village Lilydale, in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga. It took him 22 years of struggle to get his copyright back.
“The copyright of the Hector Pieterson Photo was given to me on the November 16, 1998 by Independent Newspapers Holdings Limited and was registered with Webber Wentzel Bowens Attorneys Notaries &amp; Conveyancers intellectual property lawyers in Johannesburg on July 20, 2000,” he says.
The day he risked his life for the picture is as clear as yesterday.
“As early as 6AM in the morning of June 16, I was covering a student march in Naledi High in Soweto with a colleague Sophie Tema. We found the students busy writing placards opposing new Bantu education laws. This followed a circular sent to the schools that Afrikaans will be the medium of instruction,” says Nzima.
When the march reached Morris Isaacson High, a student leader Tsietsi Mashinini addressed students from the top of a tree saying the march was to be a peaceful, says Nzima. Shortly after, armed police arrived in armoured vehicles and instructed all to disperse. The children sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in defiance.
Nzima says the singing agitated a police commander who instructed his officers to open fire. The students ran and Nzima hid in a house.
“I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima.
“I knew the police would come back for me, I wound the film and stashed it in my sock and then loaded another film. As I anticipated, the police came back and grabbed me after they ran away for some few minutes. They took my three cameras and exposed my films. When they thought they had destroyed the evidence, our driver Thomas Khoza rushed the film to The World office. The picture was published the next day.”
Nzima’s gallant work with his camera on that violent winter day in 1976 was to wreck his life. When police came knocking on his door, Nzima left his job in Johannesburg and ended up under house arrest in the remote town of Bushbuckridge, far from his family in Soweto.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as corpse.”
Qoboza told the commander to invite him, the editor, for tea instead. This led to a police instruction to shoot Nzima if they found him photographing, a police insider told him at the time.
In April 2011, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art.
“If popularity was cash, I was going to tell you I am a millionaire or billionaire. Many people know this picture but some don’t know the man behind it. I was shocked in 2010 when I was invited in Berlin at a school called Hector Pieterson Schule. The school was renamed in celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall. Germans compared their freedom to the South African independence.”
“Money was not that much, no rewards in cash but I had recognition from the state president. At the beginning I regretted [taking] this picture because this picture destroyed my journalistic career, I lost my job and my friends in Johannesburg. But now I am rejoicing because I am getting high publicity, I have become an icon in South Africa. Maybe one day I will reap a jackpot from some quarters.”
A Sam Nzima Foundation will be opened, including a school for photojournalists, in his hometown near Bushbuckridge. This is where Nzima has a makeshift darkroom that he uses to train school children in his village of Lilydale.
“After the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, I was brave enough to pick up my camera and continue where I left, but all these years I was afraid to do that. The original camera that captured Hector Pieterson is still intact; I have kept it safe in those years.”
When Hillary Clinton visited South Africa for the first time, in the 1990s, she wanted to see Nzima at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. She offered to buy the camera, but Winnie Mandela advised Nzima against selling. She said it was the property of the state. Nzima also refused to donate his Pantex camera, with 50mm lens, to the ANC Women’s League.
“I was happy not to sell it, but if it was good money she was offering, I would have been happier to sell. It’s because it’s better enjoying my life when I can than keeping the camera. One day, I will show people of South Africa that this is a camera that brought their freedom. But the person who struggled for freedom gets nothing.”
“South Africans do not value me but I do get recognition from other countries. I remember in 2011 I was invited to exhibit my work in Belgium and address the parliament in Brussels. Parliamentarians showed interest in our history and the role I played in those days.”
Despite Nzima receiving lucrative offers from overseas for the camera, he says his conscience disapproves. It lives in his museum in Bushbuckridge.
“Now I cannot sell the camera, it has become the property of the state, it is our heritage. I have to consult with the politicians for a go-ahead; otherwise I will be frustrated again. If the government officials could learn that I had sold the camera overseas, they will ask me why I did it.”
Hector Pieterson was buried at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and a museum in his memory was built near where he was shot, in 2002. His sister, Antoinette Sithole, the girl running alongside, is a curator at the museum and Makhubo was last traced in Nigeria. He went to exile after the photograph was published.
Every year on June 16, Nzima kneels and prays for the fallen schoolchildren of Soweto. He escaped with his life from the terrible day but his career didn’t.

The Sad Story Behind  The Picture That  Moved The World To Tears

Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
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“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.
Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post
flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.

Is It A Car? Is It A Plane?

Its economy, political arena and society are in crisis mode. Abuja, its capital city, and other sections of the country are increasingly making headlines for the wrong reasons.
Meanwhile, representatives of Nigeria’s youth, political, traditional, religious, civil and business society are currently in a national conference (Confab) in Abuja. Their task over their three-month tenure: discuss salient national issues and recommend the way forward.
The most critical issue has been the dearth of safety and security in the land. On this point, a member of the Confab and former inspector general of the Nigerian Police Force, Muhammadu Gambo Jimeta, laments the failure of previous administrations to provide altruistic leadership.
“The country is sick, otherwise how will people organize themselves and kill innocent students, how could people gather together and rob, how will people gather together to vandalize pipelines? It means the central system is sick and that is national security,” he says.
The country’s defense budget ballooned from $625 million in 2010 to $6.25 billion this year.
Military muscle has however failed to curb the increasingly sophisticated insurgent group. Anecdotal evidence even suggests that some of this cash has fueled the crisis. The class of the impoverished community continues to outnumber the elite factions of society. Poverty afflicts more than 60% of Nigerians &#8211; around 100 million Africans. Twenty four percent of Nigeria’s employable population is effectively unemployed; for those between the ages of 15 and 24, it surges close to 40%.
Africa’s most populous nation is currently engulfed by a lack of social values. Homegrown terror gangs and Islamist insurgents ravage parts of northern Nigeria and violent criminals now roam through southern states, mostly outside Lagos, at will.
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has declared that Nigeria is essentially at war. Many who find this statement alarming struggle to disagree with the famous poet, playwright and ex-political prisoner.
In March, suspected members of the militant group Boko Haram executed a commando style operation to rescue their cohorts held in the Abuja cells of the Department of State Security, which is located within view of Aso Villa, the Nigerian president’s residence.
In April, economic analysts and pundits pontificated on the effects of the country’s rebasing exercise when terror struck again. Within one week, more than 200 girls were abducted by faceless rogues from a school in Chibok, in the north-eastern Borno State. In Nyanya, a densely populated district on the outskirts of Abuja, an early morning rush hour blast in the motor park killed more than 100 people and maimed many more.
Interestingly, the horrific situation has not halted progress on the quest to diversify the domestic economy. Apparently positioning for the long term, companies like Huawei, General Electric and IBM continue to ramp up their commitments and workload with Nigeria’s business, public, academic and scientific communities. Jim O’Neill, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management has invested some of his cash in Paga, a leading mobile payments service provider which has more than 1.3 million individual and 1,350 business clients.
While the nation’s image abroad continues to take a daily bashing, the paradoxical positives also need highlighting. GDP growth for the period between 2013 and 2015 is expected to hover between 6% and 7%. Ongoing reforms in power and agriculture look set to boost productivity. The fortunes of the capital market should be boosted by long term bond financing. Some sectors – telecoms, e-commerce, hotels, retail, real estate and construction – will continue to boom thanks to Nigeria’s head count. With a population of 167 million; consumer spending well in excess of $100 billion each year, and a fast growing middle class, Nigeria is definitely a promising African destination for business. According to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, more than $1.3 billion in fresh investments has come into the formal retail space over the last three years.
No doubt, a state of insecurity will continue to stunt domestic economic growth and attenuate the much needed peace of mind required for deep rooted investments. Poor governance has bred this terror monster. A crazily expensive, parochial and unprogressive political culture will continue to breed a heated and ignoble socio-economic landscape.
Being the 26th largest economy in the world will mean little to the hundreds of families still searching for their daughters in the forests of northern Nigeria.

The Economics Of Painful Politics

They call it the Ring of Fire and in the last few years it has been getting hotter. This is the ring of sporadic protests around Johannesburg. The howl of the poor on the doorstep of one of the richest cities in Africa.
Most of these protestors vote and their dissatisfaction could signal a drop in support for the ruling ANC, which has guided South Africa through its 20 years of democracy.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-2610" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0000206762-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The protests happen on different days, but follow the same pattern. Burning tires, rocks on the road and fighting between protestors and police. In many weeks, they are as frequent on radio as the traffic news.
The police struggle to control the unrest. Schools close their doors as demonstrators pelt police with stones and petrol bombs.
Protesters burned down two of the Independent Electoral Commission’s voter registration stations in February.
In Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, acting commissioner Lieutenant General Lesetja Mothiba says police saw 569 protest marches since November, of which 122 were violent.
“The South African public must realize what is confronting the members [police] on a daily situation while dealing with these issues of protest marches and demonstrations. These are not petty things, these are not issues that you can say &#8216;go read a book&#8230; and it will tell you how to deal with these issues&#8217;,&#8221; he says.
Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane says the slow response to service delivery protests was leading to violence. She claims that opportunists, who lost out on government tenders, fueled some of the protests.
“Protests would not have happened if government responded quicker. Where violence happens we must act,” she says.
Research on service delivery protests by the Centre for Sociological Research, at the University of Johannesburg, suggests that, despite overwhelming support for the ANC, communities are frustrated with their ward councillors and local government.
Peter Alexander, the director of the center and South African research chair for social change at the university, says 60% of South African youth are unemployed, leading to discontent.
“The protests that swept across the country are not a novel occurrence on the social and political landscape. Impoverished residents of neglected townships have been voicing their dissatisfaction with ineffective and inadequate service delivery since the ANC rise to power in 1994,” says Alexander.
The communities involved in the cluster of service delivery protests share problems and frustrations. Poverty and unemployment are high. There’s a lack of water, sewage systems, street lighting, paved roads and housing.
“Many people don’t have the full range of service delivery, and they are continuously used as voting fodder in elections. Protests are about a range of issues, dominant to them is the youth unemployment. Their frustrations cannot be interpreted merely as a sign of displeasure with service delivery. Deeper discontent with available channels for participatory democracy underlies the protesters’ anger.”
The majority of protesters support the ANC. They are unhappy with their party because they believe the promises for a better life have not been fulfilled. To make the matters worse the government doesn’t understand, says Alexander.
In November, as Bekkersdal residents, west of Johannesburg, took to the streets to demand better government services, ANC veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela acknowledged that conditions in the area had not changed since 1994.
ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, campaigning for elections in Kagiso township in February, denied that service delivery protests were a sign people have abandoned the ANC.
President Jacob Zuma, in the state of the nation address in February, also downplayed the gravity of the recurring service delivery protests.
“The dominant narrative in the case of the protests in South Africa has been to attribute them to alleged failures of government. However, the protests are not simply the result of failures of government, but also of the success in delivering basic services. When 95% of households have access to water, the 5% who still need to be provided for feel they cannot wait a moment longer.”
Africa Check, a non-profit organization that promotes accuracy in public debate and the South African media, found that the figure differs between provinces. The president does not clearly define what he means by access to water, the most recent census claims that access is defined as either being inside a household, garden, or a communal tap in the street. Zuma’s claim does not speak of the quality of water—2.4% of Gauteng households said their water smelled bad in a 2012 household survey by Statistics South Africa. Nationally, 60% of households rated the quality of their water-related services as good.
Proof, that it all depends on which side of the protest you are shouting from.

Burning Ire In  The Ring Of Fire

When tourists walk through Liliesleaf; big, small, young, old, they all want to see the tiny brick room at the back. This is the room where thinker, revolutionary and idealist, Nelson Mandela, laid his head on a hard bed in the zenith of his political activism. His body sheltering, amid drudgery; his mind in the stars.
“He stayed for so long in such a tiny room? He must have been a hero!” a few of them say.
Liliesleaf is now an historical site, managed by a trust, dedicated to the memory of the activists who hid out, talked, worked and debated as they dreamed of a new South Africa. These were the dark days of apartheid, where political dissent met with brutal opposition; where secret police tailed and tormented anyone who dared to be different.
<div id="attachment_859" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-859" class="size-large wp-image-859" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_6076-1024x609.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="282" />Nelson Mandela&#8217;s living quarters</div>
In the early 1960s, Liliesleaf was a poke in the eye for the apartheid authorities. The farm, bought by the South African Communist Party, was set up in the so called ‘white’ suburb of Rivonia in Johannesburg, as a front for the underground movement. The idea was that white activists, Arthur and Hazel Goldreich, would play the role of flamboyant, horse-riding, landed gentry. Behind the front, disguised as workers in blue overalls, were the leaders of the underground including: Govan Mbeki; Ray Mhlaba; Walter Sisulu and Andew Mlangeni.
Among them was qualified lawyer and son of a chief, Mandela, who pretended to be a domestic servant called David Motsamayi—a name he had borrowed from one of his legal clients. Translated, from Setswana, it means a person who comes and goes. Mandela’s wry wit rarely failed him.
It was a humble existence for a leader on the run from the police. Mandela had to serve tea to his fellow workers and look after the Goldreich children to keep up the pretence and protect his identity.
Paul Goldreich, who was six years old, when Mandela worked at Liliesleaf, said: “I remember walks with him; going down to the river to shoot snakes with him&#8230; We did a lot of shooting. You think about it, what is this guy who is not supposed to be Madiba doing walking around with these kids shooting things—it is a bizarre idea!”
The farm sold vegetables as part of the pretence. Their biggest customer was the nearby Rivonia Police Station.
Every Monday, in the tiny thatched cottage behind the main house, the finest minds of the liberation movement debated policy and drew up plans for guerrilla warfare. In this room was born Operation Mayibuye: a grandiose, but unworkable, plan to overthrow South Africa by parachuting in small groups of guerrilla fighters. The leadership also planned the armed struggle here, which began with a string of explosions across the country on December 16, 1961. The attacks were planned to disrupt what was then known as Dingaan’s Day—a celebration of the Afrikaner victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River.
<div id="attachment_860" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-860" class="size-large wp-image-860" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Room-1-The-Thatched-Cottage-1024x675.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="312" />The Thatched Cottage</div>
Mandela, who was no soldier, ran from Liliesleaf, Umkhonto We Sizwe—the spear of the nation—the military wing of the ANC. His days on the run ended when police caught him at a roadblock in Howick, in KwaZulu-Natal, at the end of 1962; after which he was sentenced to five years in prison for inciting strikes and leaving the country illegally.
His comrades continued with the Monday meetings, which, along with lax security and a twist of fate, was to prove the downfall of the underground movement of the 1960s.
For months many of the activists at Liliesleaf were concerned about the casual comings-and-goings by family and friends. The informers had taken note. Because of these security concerns, the underground movement had secured a new farm called Trevallyn, in nearby Krugersdorp. They agreed on a final meeting at Liliesleaf and that proved fatal.
The swoop came on a cold winter’s afternoon on July 11, 1963—a week before Mandela spent his 45th birthday doing hard labor on Robben Island—as the meeting was in full swing. Activist Ahmed Kathrada looked out of the window and saw a white delivery van pull up outside. This was not unusual, but Kathrada’s eyes widened in horror as uniformed policemen with dogs jumped out with batons drawn.
“It was a feeling of shock in one word,” he says.
“Sisulu and I, instinctively, without thinking much—we didn’t have time to think—jumped out of the window and we couldn’t go a few meters and the police were there armed with dogs, there was no point in our running forward and we were arrested.”
The high command of the underground movement was shackled in a circle outside the thatched cottage where the police taunted them by encouraging their dogs to snap at them. They were then loaded into the back of a police van on their way to the prison in the Johannesburg Fort.
“It is high treason chaps!” quipped Mbeki as the van doors closed.
In 1964, the activists were sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in one of the trials of the century. The judge decided the accused were merely planning to overthrow the country, not engaged in it.
It saw Mandela and his co-accused painted by the world’s press as the freedom fighting Benjamin Franklins of Africa. Mandela made a six hour speech in which he uttered the immortal line that he was prepared to die for his ideals of freedom.
Denis Goldberg, now nearly 80, who was arrested at Liliesleaf on the fateful day, happened to be there by accident. He was supposed to be out procuring equipment to make hand grenades.
“If I had gone maybe I wouldn’t have been arrested. I know with my luck I would have come back with all of the equipment and the judge would have said you weren’t just planning you were doing and so off with your head,” he chuckles nearly half a century on.
“It is true that history turned at Liliesleaf. Before the raid Nelson phoned Arthur to hide away a huge pile of his papers. Arthur hid them in the coal bunker and that is the first place the police looked. If it hadn’t been for that evidence, Nelson may not have made that speech in court and been imprisoned for life&#8230; history could have been very different.”

The Leafy Shadows Where Mandela Hid

June 12, 1964 was a cold and miserable day for Denis Goldberg and his comrades. They shuffled out of the cells and up the wooden steps to the courtroom at the Palace of Justice, in Pretoria, expecting to be told they were going to die.
Goldberg had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other activists facing charges of sabotage. Mandela and his comrades spent months in the cells contemplating how large the death penalty loomed.
<div id="attachment_855" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855" class="size-large wp-image-855" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par3053826-1024x685.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="317" />Former South African president and Nobel peace prize laureate Nelson Mandela (L) greets former political prisoner Dennis Goldberg (R) during a Lunch for Apartherid former political prisoners at Genadendal, the official residence of the president, in Cape Town, South Africa on February 12, 2010. AFP PHOTO/GCIS/HO/Elmond Jiyane &#8211;RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE&#8212;</div>
“One day he says to me ‘Denis, I want you to know that when you teach poor people about Marxism, don’t talk about slavery and feudalism and mercantile capitalism, that’s European stuff our people don’t know or understand it, it’s meaningless. You have to talk about Southern African society, how we get to be where we are, the working class and this and that.’ And I said to him, ‘I understand that but why are you telling me?’ He said ‘Oh, I just want you to know what I think’, we didn’t take it further but I was quite sure he was confident, no, certain, that he was going to be hanged,” says Goldberg at Liliesleaf, in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, where he was arrested nearly half a century ago ahead of the trial of the century.
Tension was high in the packed courtroom on that fateful June day, where the judge surprised many by handing down life imprisonment, instead of the death penalty.
“And it dawned on us that we weren’t going to die, not then anyway, and we laughed, my memory is we laughed. Two great moments in that trial, the other one is Nelson daring the judge to hang him, hang Walter, hang Dennis, hang them all and then, that not happening. What a moment,” says Goldberg.
“About a year ago, I asked him why they didn’t hang us, he said: ‘I dared them to and they didn’t dare.’” He has always had this simple psychology; you stand up to people and dare them to the limit. I think it’s more complex, than he’s saying, but that challenge was a very important challenge. Here, were thoughtful leaders.”
Imprisonment, on that cold June day, was the end of a short but memorable association with Mandela. Goldberg was incarcerated in a whites-only prison in Pretoria, while Mandela was sent back to Robben Island and the two didn’t meet again for nearly 30 years.
The two met through activism. Goldberg grew up in a family of activists in Cape Town and was drawn to the underground movement. Because he was a road engineer, everyone assumed he could make bombs and it became his job. Mandela had worked his way up to be a lawyer and head of the ANC Youth League. The two men, who were like chalk and cheese, stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the dock in Pretoria.
“They brought Nelson to the court in leg-irons and handcuffs and this humiliating prison house-boy’s uniform. When I bought my first suit I paid 12 guineas for it. Nelson wore tailored suites that cost 75 guineas—I’m trying to say, that this is a very elegant dresser. And he stood there in his prison uniform. Legally, he should not be handcuffed and in leg-irons before the judge because it’s prejudicial, but he was looking so elegant and very hungry. He’d been in prison on Robben Island and this very strongly built man of 45 had sunken cheeks, eyes staring a bit, but holding himself… he was not going to be brow-beaten. Impressive, very impressive. I had a slab of chocolate with me, I showed it to him… I was standing right next to him and indicating if he wanted some. I broke off a square and gave it to him, he took it in his handcuffed hands, right over his face, and there was a little sharp corner near his sunken cheeks and he sucked it, as only a prisoner who has no sweet things can enjoy. As soon as it was gone, then he asked for a bit more,” says Goldberg.
Goldberg served 22 years in prison and was escorted by police out of his own country to spend even more years in exile in London. He returned to South Africa, around 10 years ago , to advise the new government and now lives in tranquil retirement in Hout Bay, near Cape Town. Goldberg believes this retirement would not have been so peaceful if it had not been for the great man himself.
“There’s enough bitterness, there’s enough anger and resentment, had there been a real civil war in the streets we wouldn’t be where we are today, we wouldn’t be sitting at Liliesleaf. We’d be sitting in the smoking ruins of destroyed country, so Nelson Mandela with this whole background, he, Nelson Mandela taking office with this whole background of four years of negotiation and putting out the fires of the violence of the apartheid,” he says.

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