uMkhonto weSizwe operative #Solomon Mahlangu was executed by the apartheid government on this day 39 years ago.
If we don't know and appreciate the young freedom fighter's story then we cannot understand our country, writes Shannon Ebrahim in this piece from March last year.
These days we seem to know more about what US President Donald Trump is doing daily than we do about our own history. If you ask many South Africans why two major roads have been renamed Solomon Mahlangu, you are met with a blank stare. But if you ask what happened in the White House this week, many will have an answer.
There might even be more people in Tanzania who know about Mahlangu than some of our own people. In 1977 the Tanzanian government donated an old sisal farm near Morogoro to the ANC. A school, named the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, was built there. Many Tanzanians became familiar with the name and were keenly aware of the apartheid government’s hanging of the 21-year-old freedom fighter in 1979.
Today a major road in our nation’s capital has been renamed Solomon Mahlangu from the former name Hans Strijdom - the South African prime minister from 1954 to 1958. I happen to live just off Solomon Mahlangu Road in Tshwane, and have grown to realise that few people living in the vicinity have any idea who Mahlangu was, or why he was honoured in such a way.
The common refrain among white South Africans is that the city is wasting taxpayers’ money changing street names for no reason. The same has been said in eThekwini, now that the major arterial road, Edwin Swales Drive, has been renamed Solomon Mahlangu Drive.
Who was Mahlangu and why does he matter? The answer can be found in the recently released movie Kalushi, which took a decade to make by a local movie producer. On going to watch the film on Human Rights Day this week, it perhaps shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did that 95% of the audience were black South Africans, with few white residents caring to learn more about the relevance of this figure in our history.
The tragic story of Mahlangu is key to understanding who we are and where we have come from. His story helps us understand what motivated the ranks of the freedom fighters who gave up everything for the Struggle for freedom and democracy in our country.
What happened to Mahlangu as a young man that compelled him to take the decision to join the armed resistance outside the country happened to many black South Africans under apartheid, to the point that it almost became the norm.
Just as Mahatma Gandhi had been thrown off a whites-only section of a train in Pietermaritzburg in 1893, so was Mahlangu thrown off a whites-only train near Mamelodi in 1976. But it was the brutality with which black South Africans were treated by white policemen that turned a normal high school pupil into a freedom fighter.
Mahlangu hadn’t belonged to the ANC, but learnt about the Struggle for freedom only when out of the country as part of the ranks of the freedom fighters. It was the sheer viciousness of the apartheid system that had swelled the ranks of the armed resistance, with hundreds leaving the country after 1976.
But why his story became so famous was that he was hanged by the apartheid regime in 1979 for a crime he never committed shortly after re-entering the country in 1977. Three days before the first anniversary of the Soweto uprising, Mahlangu and two of his comrades were en route to Soweto to join the impending protests when they were stopped by a black policeman who demanded to see what they were carrying in their suitcases. Having been trained in sabotage, they were carrying guns, grenades and pamphlets.
The three scattered, with Mahlangu and Mondy Motloung running for cover in a John Orr’s warehouse. Desperately seeking Mahlangu, a panicked Motloung entered the warehouse firing shots, killing two employees. When Motloung’s gun jammed, he was brutally beaten by onlookers and then the police.
Motloung and Mahlangu were detained in John Vorster Square and severely tortured, with Motloung so badly beaten that he had brain damage and was deemed unfit to stand trial.
Mahlangu was charged with sabotage and two counts of murder even though he hadn’t fired the shots. The prosecution had argued under the law of common purpose that Mahlangu had shared intent with Motloung, making him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death, and ultimately hanged on April 6, 1979.
At the time, various governments around the world and the UN pleaded for his release.
Mahlangu’s famous statement prior to his death was: “My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight.”
This became a rallying cry for the youth, who proceeded to leave the country in droves to fight for freedom.
If we don’t know and appreciate the story of Solomon Mahlangu then we can’t understand our country.
* Ebrahim is Independent Media's Group Foreign Editor.