Remember Chris Hani, Steve Biko and others as you blithely enjoy the freedom they died for, writes Don Makatile.
If, beyond the title of the book by Benjamin Pogrund on the life of Struggle stalwart Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, you’ve also paraphrased it and wondered How Can A Man Die Better, you’re in fine company.
That has always been my preoccupation too.
Allow me to hold you by the hand to leave you at the door of the most sanguine answer to this lifelong poser.
Keep at the back of your mind the death of the man gunned down in cold blood in the driveway of his Dawn Park, Boksburg, home on Saturday April 10, 1993.
His young daughter Nomakhwezi Hani, who had run outside after the rat-tat-tat of gunfire only to be confronted by the gore of death where her dad once stood, took to her own grave the knowledge that her father did not die better.
Pretend, even for a moment, that the man was nameless. Ponder the spot of bother this other man found himself in on September 6, 1977. One of the men says a scuffle broke out between this lone man and a policeman. Around Daniel Siebert were Harold Snyman, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Rubin Marx and Johan Beneke.
“Amidst the physical struggle, the policemen punched Biko, beat him with a hosepipe and ran him into a wall, after which he collapsed. The policemen then shackled Biko upright to a security gate with his arms spread out and his feet chained to the gate, in a crucifixion position. They left Biko chained to the gate, later laying him on the floor, and did not call for a doctor for 24 hours.”
That day as the normal world went about its business, this lone man “sustained a massive brain haemorrhage”. Medical doctors - Dr Ivor Lang, Dr Benjamin Tucker and Dr Colin Hersch - saw this lone fragile man’s deteriorating condition but insisted he “be driven 700km to the prison hospital in Pretoria”.
President Jacob Zuma laying a wreath on a tomb of the Black Consciousness leader Bantu Steve Biko on Human Rights Day. Picture: GCIS
Five days later, the man was put “in the back of a Land Rover and driven for more than 12 hours from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria - naked, manacled and unconscious”. A day later, he succumbed to his injuries. Cause of death: complications resulting from a brain injury.
This man, Stephen Bantu Biko, did not die better. Consider this excerpt from the book Askari by Jacob Dlamini, which, it is hoped, is easier to digest as we decipher how a man can die better: “On February 15, 1982 [Tlhomedi Ephraim] Mfalapitsa, accompanied by the askari Joe Mamasela, posing as a fellow MK operative, fetched [Zandisile] Musi and his friends Eustice Bimbo Madikela, Fanyana Nhlapo and Ntshingo Mataboge from outside Leratong Hospital in Kagiso.
“Mfalapitsa and Mamasela drove the four boys to a disused mine shaft near Krugersdorp to begin their ‘training’. Unbeknown to the boys, the Security Branch had booby-trapped the mine shaft with explosives. With Mamasela standing sentry outside, Mfalapitsa led the four boys inside. He showed them a firearm and a hand grenade and told them to wait while he went back to fetch more weapons. No sooner had Mfalapitsa stepped outside than Musi, the only survivor of the incident, heard an explosion.
“His three friends died instantly. Musi was taken to hospital and later detained by the police. Mfalapitsa received a R1 000 ‘bonus’ from his bosses at Vlakplaas for the mission.”
If anything, these boys - young men really - died like dogs; not better.
The favourite pastime at Vlakplaas at the time was for the white bosses to drink copious amounts of brandy and Coke before, during or after a man had died.
Here’s how another man died: they tied explosives to his injured person and exploded it. Then they gathered the remains and exploded them for the second time.
The Bible does not say what becomes of a man who met his death in this manner - certainly not better, after resurrection. All the above did not die better. They died in their quest for freedom, as marked last Thursday.
Those whose experience of the barbarity of apartheid extends only to what they have read took to social media on Thursday and asked: Freedom, what freedom? Thursday was a free-for-all for these peacetime revolutionaries who claim Nelson Mandela did not bring about their freedom. These are the same people who cannot go 27 minutes without posting their lunch on social media with so-called friends from across the colour line in places their forebears could once only access as allowed by the confines of the Influx Control Act or its ugly twin, the Group Areas Act.
The Steve Biko Foundation tweeted on Thursday: #TodayIn
History - 1950: The SA Government passed the Group Areas Act.
As Born-Frees and older denialists smooch across race groups, their arrogance and ignorance permit them no thought for the pioneering spirits of Bubbles Mpondo and Jannie Beetge, who could not even fall in love because apartheid laws could not permit a Zulu woman to consort with her white Afrikaner inamorato.
These men, who did not die better, gave their lives for this freedom we now have the chutzpah to take for granted as South Africa turned 23.