Had he not been flat broke in those difficult, angry years of the late 1950s, Philip Ate Kgosana would probably not have gravitated towards the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) – and would not have stepped into the pages of South African history as the leader of one of the most famous marches against the notorious Pass Laws.
Kgosana’s background was untypical of most rank-and-file members of the PAC. Not only that, he was also very much a political novice when the PAC began planning its campaign against the Pass Laws, prior to the massacre at Sharpeville and, later, the 10km march by 30000 people from Langa to the Cape Town city centre.
Born in 1936 in Makapanstad in what is now Limpopo, Kgosana, the son of a village pastor, proved to be a talented - and ambitious - high school pupil.
He attended Lady Selborne High School in Pretoria, and his matric results were good enough to earn him a bursary from the Institute of Race Relations to study for a commerce degree at the University of Cape Town.
But if getting a bursary and successfully applying for a permit to study at a “white” university was hard enough, finding a place to live and enough to eat proved even more difficult.
In terms of the National Party’s apartheid policies, Cape Town was a coloured labour preference area.
From 1954 onwards, the government refused to allow any houses to be built for African workers and their families. The NP believed that at some point – very soon – all African people in the Western Cape had to be “repatriated”, mainly to the Eastern Cape.
And yet, the influx of migrant workers continued unabated – even though the new arrivals quickly found themselves in a situation that could hardly be described as comfortable
The only places that offered them a roof over their heads were in the squalid “zones”, in the so-called bachelor hostels and flats.
And so the push and pull continued: as more workers arrived from the reserves, so did the state move with ever greater brutality to make things as difficult as possible for these new arrivals to stay.
“Endorsing out” and “influx control” were the buzzwords of the day. As far as the state was concerned, restrictions on workers had to be tightened all the time.
But the workers themselves had little choice but to take their chances on escaping detection by the authorities, and finding employment for meagre wages in Cape Town.
For decades, the conditions under which they were forced to live in the reserves were even more appalling than so-called “bachelor accommodation”.
Indeed, as far back as 1930, the noted historian WM MacMillan had written that rural Africans were “dragging along at the very lowest level of bare subsistence”; they lived in “poverty, congestion and chaos”; they were blighted by “ill-health and starvation, endemic typhus and almost chronic scurvy”; they suffered “an often appalling mortality rate among infants”; they lived in “heavily over-populated” and “grossly neglected” areas where they were “utterly dependent on wage-earning outside” to relieve a dead level of poverty” inside.
Kgosana lived in extreme poverty in one of the Langa Flats.
In this respect, apartheid policies proved to be a great leveller: it made no distinction between someone doing the most menial work and someone studying for a degree.
Both had to carry a pass. And both faced the possibility of being thrown into the back of a police van and from there into a jail cell if they were not in possession of a pass.
The common denominator was “black” - and a typical action was “punishment for those without passes”.
Kgosana tried everything he could to get money to survive, even going as far as approaching Liberal Party stalwart Patrick Duncan.
But it was his friendship with an Africanist in Langa that afforded him some measure of security: “When I needed money, I just told him like a child – and he gave it to me,” he said years later.
It was this friendship that pushed him into the ranks of the PAC.
The PAC was never strong in the Western Cape – even though it was often able to deliver strong, inspiring messages of rebellion to those feeling the yoke of apartheid.
It was given a boost in 1958 when three ANC branches, whose members described themselves as “Africanists” broke away and formally constituted themselves as PAC members.
Under the leadership of Christopher Mlohoti, a labourer from the single quarters in Langa, the PAC set up branches in Langa flats, Langa township, Nyanga West, Nyanga East, and in informal settlements in Windermere and Crawford.
Kgosana’s links with the PAC were cemented during discussions with Pan-Africanists in the bachelor zones of Langa.
As his ties with his new comrades deepened, UCT became less important: he failed his first year examinations - and then he decided to quit his studies.
By December 1959, a PAC recruitment drive had proved relatively successful, with 1000 men having been recruited.
After 24 January 1960, it kicked out its entire regional executive – and a new group, including Kgosana and Mlohoti took over.
It was this group that managed the anti-pass law protests – and the march to the Cape Town city centre
On the eve of the Sharpeville massacre, Kgosana addressed some 5000 “sons and daughters of the soil” in Langa and Nyanga, and called on them to join the anti-Pass law protests that were to run simultaneously with protests in Johannesburg.
“How long shall we starve amidst plenty in our fatherland?” he asked. “How long shall we be a rightless, voteless and voiceless majority in our fatherland?” This is the choice before us: we are either slaves or free men and women.”
On March 21, crowds numbering several thousand marched to numerous venues, to register their protest against the Pass laws. But on each occasion they were dispersed by police armed with sten guns, in Saracen vehicles.
Later, when news of the Sharpeville killings reached Cape Town, angry crowds stood firm against police threats to disperse. When the police tried to baton charge them, they responded by throwing stones.
Shots were fired and two people were killed, before the rest of the protesters were dispersed.
In the aftermath of Sharpeville, police conducted brutal search and arrest operations throughout Langa. But this did not deter the protesters - and for almost two weeks thousands of residents marched to police stations, offering themselves up for arrest.
After the government declared a state of emergency, security forces arrested 1500 people throughout the country.
The police were particularly brutal in Langa, kicking down doors, breaking into several houses, and shooting at those trying to escape.
This proved to be the last straw for many of the protesters.
What followed next was one of South Africa’s great protest marches
When the police chief at Caledon Square police station, Ignatius Terblanche, heard what was happening, he fell to his knees and prayed.
But the police and army adopted more practical means, surrounding parliament with barbed wire and personnel armed with machine guns.
Kgosana, who was credited with leading the march, almost missed it. He was in bed when he heard what was happening - and had to hurriedly seek a lift to take his place at the front of the marchers.
Kgosana was persuaded to meet with Terblanche, who promised to organise a meeting the next day with Justice Minister JM Erasmus. But when he arrived for the meeting, he was promptly arrested.
Several months after his arrest on March 30, 1960, Kgosana was allowed out on bail so that he could visit his family for Christmas. Instead, he fled the country, seeking exile first in Lesotho and then in Tanzania. By 1994, while working for the United Nations in Botswana, he returned to South Africa to cast his vote in the country’s first democratic elections.