Messages of victimhood as represented in the Hector Pieterson narrative undermine the heroic exploits of those who led the defiance, writes Malesela Lebelo.
Johannesburg - Hector Pieterson is not an ideal ambassador for the Soweto revolt. His lifeless body, carried in Mbuyiseni Makhubo’s outstretched arms, invokes sentiments of compassion for Soweto students and outrage for a brutal apartheid police force.
It reinforces the misguided view that the revolt was about cold-blooded police brutality on peaceful, unarmed “children”. Inspirational ambassadors of the Soweto revolt, who project the face of defiance, are airbrushed out of the historical narrative of the event.
Tsietsi Mashinini, Khotso Seatlholo and Trofomo Sono were presidents of the Soweto Students’ Representative Council (SSRC).
Each led a stage of the year-and-a-half revolt that changed the face of South Africa’s politics. Unlike Pieterson, who is remembered as a victim, each should be remembered and celebrated for their heroic and inspirational role in the revolt.
The Soweto revolt provoked curious responses from the exiled ANC and the PAC. It provoked unprecedented levels of outrage from the international community not seen since the Sharpeville massacre, including from ardent supporters of the apartheid regime.
Also read: Something died when Tsietsi left SA
The revolt also changed the international community’s perceptions about the authenticity of the apartheid government’s homeland policies as an equivalent of decolonisation on the continent. But it is in respect of the role, or lack thereof, of the ANC and PAC in the organisation and execution of the revolt that contending narratives were constructed.
The exiled formations’ propaganda machinery went into full throttle, each constructing a contrived, self-serving and distorted narrative of the revolt. The ANC and PAC claimed to have had their stalwarts of the 1950s and 1960s, Joe Qgabi and Zephania Mothopeng respectively, organising the revolt.
In the past 40 years, this narrative has dominated public intellectual discourse about the significance of the Soweto revolt in the liberation struggle. It is a narrative that has been reinforced by historians sympathetic to the exiled movement, particularly to the ANC. In the ensuing contestation over ownership, the SSRC’s violent engagement with the apartheid state is deliberately, and with malicious intent, left out.
Facts about Mashinini, Seatlholo and Sono are forced into abeyance.
Each of the SSRC presidents organised a campaign that had a resounding impact on the apartheid state, the exiled movement and black society across South Africa.
Appointed president of the SSRC on August 2, 1976, Mashinini organised a student march to John Vorster Square police station to demand the release of political detainees. The march on August 4 was to coincide with a stayaway from work by Soweto residents.
The march was aborted when hundreds of students were prevented by a large contingent of the army and police from leaving Soweto. The stayaway on the other hand was a resounding success with 80 percent to 85 percent of Soweto residents reported to have been absent from work. So, when clashes broke out between police and the army on the one hand and stone-throwing students across Soweto, parents and out-of-school adults were sucked into the violence that lasted until the end of August.
Read more: Tsietsi Mashinini: student warrior
What started as the protest over Afrikaans had become a political and historical moment of mass mobilisation with significant ramifications for the apartheid state and the exiled movement. Attacks on police patrols with stones and Molotov cocktails and cases of arson directed at government properties became widespread.
Beer halls, post offices, municipal offices and delivery vehicles of white businesses were torched. In reaction, police used live ammunition, killing scores, probably a few hundred residents, taking part in the revolt. This was followed by regular pre-dawn raids on homes of those suspected of having taken part in the protest.
Police were also hunting for Mashinini, who they blamed for all the mayhem that Soweto had descended into. For nearly a month Mashinini evaded arrest. It was during the mass detentions that deaths in police custody increased.
With the growing number of funerals, police exacerbated the situation by shooting randomly at mourners. Police claimed that many were killed by stray bullets. One such victim was Kaizer Chiefs’ midfielder, Ariel “Pro” Khongoane.
These developments had the effect of radicalising Soweto residents, stiffening their resolve to confront apartheid’s security agencies with a new determination.
The hunt for Mashinini was intensified, with police offering a reward of R1 000 for information that would lead to his arrest. This forced Mashinini to flee to Botswana at the end of August where he threw the spotlight on the ANC and PAC. Mashinini urged Soweto students intending to flee South Africa never to join the ANC or PAC in exile.
According to Mashinini, the ANC was defunct and the PAC was dead. This assessment of the exiled movements has proved to be fairly accurate, even though it has taken nearly 40 years for it to be appreciated. It is for this reason Mashinini proposed a youth formation in exile independent of the ANC and PAC. Such a youth formation was established in April 1979 in Lusaka, Zambia. Mashinini was succeeded as president of the SSRC by Seatlholo, who proved to be even more astute in his approach to political activism. He soon showed his mettle when he took risks by addressing mass meetings in high schools in and around Soweto.
In all these meetings Seatlholo repeated Mashinini’s exhortations to students never to join the ANC and/or PAC in exile. Seatlholo led the reconstituted SSRC in a renewed engagement of the apartheid state.
On September 22, 1976 hundreds of students marched into the centre of Joburg and headed to John Vorster Square, where they demanded the release of political prisoners. As with Mashinini, police went on the hunt for Seatlholo following the march. He was on the run from October until November when he was shot and wounded. Seatlholo called for a consumer boycott and a “black Christmas” before escaping to Swaziland early in November. Soweto residents responded with great enthusiasm to Seatlholo’s call. The impact of the revolt was yet to spread across South Africa, casting a shadow on the upheavals of the 1980s and early 1990s. The revolt also transformed the exiled movement, rousing them from the slumber that had afflicted them for a decade and a half.
The impact of the Soweto revolt on black society was more significant than existing historical narrative suggests. It provoked intense rage from black people that polarised Joburg along racial lines.
Messages of victimhood inscribed on the dead bodies of the casualties of the revolt as represented in the Hector Pieterson narrative undermine the heroic exploits of those who led the defiance of a brutal system.
* Lebelo is an author and historian.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent