SOUTH AFRICA: HISTORY OF OPPRESS ION AND STRUGGLE*

(Journey to Soweto)

By

Kyalo Mativo

It is early morning, June 16, 1976 . Sane African Schoo

children can be heard singing an African national anthem and
chanting anti-apartheid slogans. Soweto is still asleep1 sh
has been for years. As the School children continue to sing
and chant, a police force of machine-gun armed whites and cu
waving blacks appears on the scene and declares war on them.
One policeman throws a tear gas cannister at the children.
latter respond with rocks and debris. The white policemen ~
fire. Two children drop dead immediately. At the sound of ·
guns, little children come out into the streets out of mere
curiosity. They too are fired at with automatic weapons . ~
Soweto awakes. And now?

Now Zet it work. Misohief, thcu art atoof,

Take thcu what course thcu wilt.l
It is now 9.30 a.m. A wave of ten thousand fully un~
black School children have taken to the streets of Soweto, N
so has a countless number of fire-spitting policemen. The sl
ing is accelerated, but for every one black child that the OJ
pressors' bullets kill, one hundred adults spring up from tht
bowels of Soweto and take the place of the dead. And at the
end of the day the Johannesburg Star is pleased to announce
that at least 300 rounds of ammunition have been dumped into
the African crowd killing 8 and wounding 70 others , 19 of thE
with bullet wounds.

Two days after the outbreak of violence in Soweto, the

protests and demonstrations against the enemy have spread int
Johannesburg's other black African townships. Serious clashE
between the police and the people take place in Ale.x andria tc
the northeast of Johannesburg, in Daveytown, Tokosa, Natalsp
Voslloorys, Kattlelong, Tembisa, and Kagiso. At the end of t
week, the South African Minister of "Justice and Police," Ju
T. Kruger, tells the Sowetan residents that they have no choi
but to accept white racist regime's oppression. "This past~
has been a lesson that whatever you wish to achieve must be d
by peaceful means," he says. "You must accept the good faith
of the gove.r nment and of all whites." On June 21, 1976, the
black residents of Mabopane, a black township in the outskirt
*The name "South Africa" is used here only in geographical sen

74
 of Pretoria, reply to this empty arrogance by attacking buses
and government shops. Residents of two other townships, Attar-
ridgeville and Mamelodi , attack schools and other buildings.
Meanwhile the official casualty figures are given as 140 dead
and 1,112 wounded since the outbreak in Soweto . That ' s the
news; until next time, this is your reliable witness press saying
good night, good listeners.

The story of Soweto has been told in as many versions as

the colour of the eyes and hair of the story-tellers. The ques-
1 tions asked and the premises assumed about the incident have
been craftly designed to arrive at the conclusion that Soweto
was an isolated case, as insignificant and remote as the town-
ship itself and its inhabitants. Given time, it will wither
dgel away, leaving apartheid and the. forces behind it as intact as
ever. Actually, if anything, the "riots" have confirmed the
pte wisdom of the white government to create "independent homelands"
pen for each ethnic group among the 18 million blacks, so goes the
the argument from Western quarters. The Wall Street Journal for one
goes down as an unequivocal supporter of that policy. In a
en leading article appropriately stereotyped "Darkest Africa" we
read soon after the uprisings :

One po~icy that might offer a g~immer of hope

~~d be a sharp acce~eration of the South African
regime 's "home 'lands" po tiuy. Up t,o 1'1011) the •
ed ''Bantustans" have been Utt~e more than Indian
nd reservations, but it is possib~e to conceive
noot that they might evo~ve into rea~ nations steadily
?- gaining independence and territor-y unti~ the
white South Africans are reduced to "Boe!'stans. "
But the true meaning of Soweto lies in the annals of the
history of that country ' s bloody struggle against foreign rule.
The history of South Africa is written in the precious blood of
its black sons and daughters; and the end to the massacres of
men and women fighting for their dignity and national indepen-
dence is clearly nowhere in sight as long as the White fascist
:o regime exists . The events therefore that led to the uprisings
lS triggered by the Soweto incident must be traced ba~k to their
origin. But two points should be made beforehand. Firstly,
:uit, the Soweto eruption was a mere tip of the icebe.r g. That was
:he convincingly proved by the ease with which the demonstrations
tes spread to other townships . Secondly, to say, as some commenta-
.ce tors have done, that the cause of the outbreak was the regime's
eel< demand that Afrikaans be made the language of instruction in
fone schools, is a classical case of bourgeois ignorance . For the
language issue was a small spark that set a whole prairie on
fire, a necessary point of departure. The real cause of the
.s outbreak and the significance of that spark belong to the past
and the present of the oppressed black masses of South Africa.

75
First, the past.

1.

Since we are dealing with two main distinct peoples, name]

the oppressors and the oppressed, who unfortunately happen to
be white and black respectively, we are forced to ask a rather
simple but uncOmfortable question: In fact whose land is South
Africa? Put that way, the question acquires an acrimonious
posture vis-a-vis academic liberals and their African sucklings
and leads to a motley of variegated answers which are so con-
flicting that a shoal of neo-colonialist ideologues has taken
to the academic pulpits to preach the second coming of their
redeemer, their saviour, the one who came not to destroy, but
to create the law of racial harmony, the Almighty Racial Plurall
ism. According to the advocates· of this myth, the canons of
social cohesion are firmly grounded in political evolution .
All the elements which constitute a political structure, must
somehow find their own level, like flowing water, until they·
settle peacefully in a "non-violent" revolutionary pond. The
idea of Pluralism is an updated outgrowth of one Emile Durkheim
whose rabbinical family background led to his immaeulate con-
ception and begetting of the speculative notion that human
thought consists of projections on to the external world, of
the structure of human society. With this doctrine the French
sociologist formulated a social recipe: Take all the antagonis-
tic interests of the different classes and groups in a society,
add to this mixture a cup of a conunon value system, hea.t it up
to the evolutionary boiling point. The final result is intern
social peace dressed in "collective representation." That was
done back in 1900s. But in these United States of America, it
was not until 1970s that Pluralism made the startling discovery
that it could speak English, and moved closer to its world.
Translated into everyday language, Pluralism attempts to create
the impression that class differentiations are not inevitable
where the interests of all the members of the society are iden-
tical and reflected in "collective representation. " Marvelous ,
perfect! But just one moment; let us now transfer this concept
as it stands to the contemporary Sputh African scene. !Here we
are confronted with a "collective representation," which is
visible only to those who wear academic magnifying sunglasses.
Soweto then ·takes her pluralistic seat beside Johannes Balthaz~
Vorster, and the latter offers the former a truly pluralistic
diamond ring. The two are now joined together in a nuptial bon
!
of Pluralism. This pl uralistic couple exchanges a few pluralis·
tic smiles at one another and shares a pluralistic giggle. It
is quite clear to the high priests of Pluralism that the only
difference between these two pluralistic "collective representa·
tives" is the colour of their skin, or to put it more pluralis-
tically, their racial or ethnic origins. There is an aura of
peace in this pluralistic wedding , which is why Johannes turns

76
 to his bride and darts a few pluralistic questions : "If class
conflict is the driving force in revolutionary change, then why
do struggles in (our society) take on a racial or ethnic form?
Why is racial identity the basis of organization, and why are
the targets of revolutionary violence people of different race
IY
regardless of class situation?"2 Soweto is supposed to nod her
head in pluralistic accord and say, "there, Johannes, you are
right. The culprit is our racial identity. And since we can-
not abolish racial origins, 'justice' in this country can only
be achieved through 'peaceful ' means. I can see now why Jimmy
told me the other day that I must accept the good faith of the
government and of all the whites. It is the only way out."

But the reality of the matter is different. Soweto has

dramatically demonstrated that she would rather die than break
bread with Vorster . It is not the canons of Pluralism but the
cannons of the armed forces of South African racist regime that
are prolonging the life of that regime by containing African
opposition to it . That is the inescapable fact .

Because of its directness and refusal to be hidden in

academic verbosity, the question whose land South Africa is, is
asked by no apologist of the white supremacy in South Africa,
but every one of these white liberals never misses the opportun-
ity to give an indirect answer to the question . There are two
alternatives to tackle the problem. Alternative one consists
in the confines of the concept of Western democracy, whereby,
given a set of conflicting interests, the one that receives
1
majority patronage determines the form (nominal in this case)
of the political setup. In tnis case, those whose "wishes" are
represented in the political structure in that society- -who,
by provision of the principle must be in the majority--are in
actual fact the real "owners" of the country in question. When
this concept is applied to South Africa specifically, the pur-
veyors of this kind of thinking are amazed at its incompatibility
with South Africa' s political reality . So they undergo a
Caesarean operation and are born again as pluralists. Alterna-
tive two constitutes historical evidence. This method aims at
two conclusions: 1) That those parts of South Africa which were
settled by white foreigners were not entirely and effectively
populated by anybody else when the settlers moved in. 2) That
in some cases actually the whites were the first to occupy an
"empty" land, and only later did black people begin to arrive.
Looked at this way, the black people who arrived at an area later
than the whites were regarded as foreigners . Natal is a classi-
cal example of this situation where, after the defeat of _King
Dingane by the Boers in 1840, many blacks began to return to
their homes only to find themselves branded "native foreigners"
by the Boer invaders.

We are now standing at the crossroads of history, and

77
history must take sides here and now. Long before the Dutch
pirate Jan van Riebeeck of the United Netherlands Chartered
East India Company landed at what subsequently became Table B
in 1652, that land had been populated by the sana and the Kho
people.* The Khoina led a pastoral life occupying such habit
regions as the "Orange River," the Atlantic and the Indian
coastal areas, and all the land stretching inland along rive~
banks up to and including the Keiskama River. The Eastern
regions of what later became "cape Province,"' the so-called
Transkei, was occupied by the Xhosa and the Thembu in the 14t
century. Historical evidence also shows that the Nguni peopl
of whom the Xhosa are an offshoot, had been living in this a~
as early as A.D. 1300; and in the 1620s we find the Xhosa gra
ing their cattle on the banks of Bashee River . The northeast
Table Bay Peninsula and the west of the Xhosa land were accon
modating a people of the Khoi-San extraction, the Ubiqua and
Gonaqua . Furthermore, Archaeology, biased as any "seience" i
the service of reaction and oppression must be, has neverthel
this to say: some black cultures classified as Uitkomst, Buie
poort, Natal Coastal Pottery (NC2 and NC3) flourished in dif
ent parts in South Africa as early as A. D. 1055. The Uitk~
culture, for example, shows evidence of stone-built villages
the central part of Southern Transvaal, while a similar case
provided by the Buispoort culture at Steynsrus in the Orange
Free state. And in the Bth century iron~smelting was alread}
social activity at Palabora in the Limpopo valley . Bourgeoi$
archaeological scholarship admits, with characteristic reluct
that these cultures are black in origin. The Uitkomst cultui
for example, relates directly to the ancestors of the Sotho,
judging by the similarity between extant Sotho artifacts and
tinct Uitkomst cultural elements such as potsherds and stone
architectural remains. The hesitancy with which this fact i•
accommodated in archaeological literature is not surprising;
some observers o.f the "pre-history" of South Africa have fo~
it imperative to state "in general terms" that the stone stn
tures found in different parts of the country are linked to t
Sotho peoples. And since science must not take exeeption of
speculation especially when social history is the subject ma
we must submit to an ultimate archaeological apple pie: "The
ultimate origins of the stone structures lie in the earlier J
Age and may be associated with early Sotho chiefdoms. n) (Em~
sis in the original.) Obviously the "ultimate origins" of tl
history of the black peoples of South Africa lie in the presE
chambers of academic commerce.

*The Sana and the Khoina were the original names for the San
the Khoikhoi. "Bushmen" and "Hottentots" are the conternptoue
European verisons of the same people respectively, that we fj
in Anthropological textbooks today. (See for example, G.P.
Murdock and J. L. Gibbs, Jr.)

78
 2.

The arrival of Europeans in South Africa had been precipi-

tated by the development of mercantile- marine in Europe. The
fifteenth century Europe was characterizea by the spread of the
Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Spanish, and the French
trade on the high seas. This economic development was necessar-
ily accompanied by military struggle for political supremacy,
not only in Europe but also elsewhere in the world. All Europe
was up in arms in search and rob missions all over the face of
the known and the unknown world . Competition was as ever always
the specific feature of this economic activity. Competition
therefore led to the grabbing of African lands by these ancient
green berets in pursuit of profits and vain glory.

It was a foregone conclusion therefore that when on 7 April

1652 Jan van Riebeeck led an expedition of ninety men ashore at
Table Bay the ultimate result would be to set up a colony. It
all started in a half- hearted manner . The subjective initial
intention of the Dutch East India Company being to establish a
settlement for the procurement of fresh water, vegetables, meat,
etc. for the ship crews on their trade errands . But the objec-
tive consequence of that establishment was as follows : In 1655
some Dutch and German married men were encouraged to settle and
colonise the country provided that they agreed to stay at least
for twenty years. In 1657 the Company "freed" nine of its ser-
vants and gave them thirteen and one-third acres free from tax-
ation. In 1688 a group of about two-hundred Huguenots arrived
from the Netherlands where they had fled from France after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. * Through marriage the Hugue-
nots were assimilated into the predominantly Dutch community.
This biological graft produced the first generation of the Boers,
which was even then already tainted with the political graft of
which the present generation is world renown . To cater for their
needs the Boers began to expand inland, occupying African land
by force of arms and establishing themselves as permanent resi-
dents. They engaged in stock raising, hunting, and cattle trad-
ing. In 1795 the Boers proclaimed two republics near the cape,
Graaff Reinet and SWellendam.

Meanwhile the struggle for economic supremacy had plunged

the European countries into the Napoleonic wars. Between 1793

*The Edict of Nantes was a law promulgated in April 1598 by

Henry IV of France giving the French Protestants known as the
Huguenots freedom of conscience and other civil rights . This
was recanted by Roman catholic clergy and the Parliament in Paris
for religious, political, and private property reasons. A strug-
gle ensued therefrom and ended in the revocation of the Edict on
October 18, 1685, depriving that religious body of its religious
and other liberties. Hence the flight.

79
and 1815 England and France were involved in a war of self-
assertion before they discovered that actually their diverse
interests could be better served by fighting it out in Africa.
As a result, on September 1795 Britain captured the cape, osten-
sibly on behalf of the Dutch prince of Orange who had fled to
England from his hostile subjects. And when in 1803 the cape
was handed back to the Dutch government, the Dutch East India
Company had passed away . But then in 1806 the British remember-
ed that the Dutch were allies of the troublesome Napoleon. So
they recaptured the cape once more and decided to stay. This
second coming of the British was an ill-omen for the Boers, for
it set in motion a systematic British occupation of the country,
which went counter to the interests of the Dutch descendants.
With the arrival of more and more British subjects, the Boers
cast off the chrysalis of stagnant settlements and acquired the
more mature and mobile stage of voortrekkers. Between 18oo· and
1870 the Boers penetrated further inland robbing Africans of
their land and enslaving those they could.

The "interference" of the British government in the inter-

nal affairs of the Boers led to the so-called Great Trek. One
of the reasons for the "Trek" was candidly given by the Boer
leader Piet Retief as being "to preserve proper relations be-
tween master and servant," because the British, according to
another of the Boer representatives, Anna Steenkamp, had com-
mitted the sacred sin of placing slaves "on an equal footing with
Christians, contrary to the laws of God and the natural distinc-
tions of race and religion, so that it was intolerable for any
decent Christians to bow down beneath such a yoke . " Armed with
these Christian sentiments, 1,200 voortrekkers left the cape
Colony between 1835 and 1843. Some succeeded in establishing
themselves in Natal after bloody wars between them and the
African peoples, in which the Boers emerged victorious . But
fate was not on the Boers' side. On 8 AUgust 1843 the British
arrived and annexed Natal, triggering another trek to the "high
veld. " Once there, far away from the British authority, the
Boers proceeded to create new republics for themselves . On
10 April 1854, for example, a constitution for a "volksraad" was
promulgated.* It was the year the Orange Free State (so-called
after the Dutch royal family) and the Transvaal joined into
"South African Republic" which Britain recognized in the same
year and then annexed in 1877. The struggle which followed
thereafter between the Boer and the Briton led to acquisition
of Self-Government of the Orange Free State in 1907 and even-
tually to the "Union of South Africa" on 31 May 1910, comprising
Natal, Orange Free State, the Transvaal, and the cape Colony .

*This constitution was appropriately based on the constitution

of the USA, a copy of which was provided by a Boer by the name
of J.G. Groenendaal. (Incidentally, in 1965 Ian Smith of Rhodes-
ia was to use the US Declaration of Independence as a model for
his UDI.)

so
 In the years following this union the British authority slowly
waned until it was permanently crippled by the calling into
political power of the Boers in 1948. But here we must break
'o ff and begin once again at the beqinning. We must follow the
Boer closely as he advances upcountry rampaging, killing , raping,
and enslaving African people in search for his prodigal son,
racial superiority. ·

3.
When the Boers began to expand inland fran the cape I they
met little resistance fran the San and the IChoikhoi. Their quns
exterminated most of these African people, and the rest were
claimed by such European bioloqical weapons as venereal diseases
and smallpox. 4 But as the Boers moved further inland they met
more serious resistance by the better organizeii Xhosa, the Zulu,
and the Ndebele people. The cup ~f the African reSistance, which
was thus filled with foreiqn invasion, overflowed and trickled
all the way down to the present . For we are dealing here not
with a record of dead facts of an accanplished past or with a
history of a conquered people , but rather with a process of
permanent struggle against oppression, a struggle bcund to con-
tinue until the African people have freed themselves from im-
perialist and other forms of enslavement. But before that story
can be told, and in order to appreciate its historical relevance
to t he present African stru99le in South Africa, there is yet
another story to be told first . The story of Shaka can only be
sketched here in frustrating brevity.

In about 1787 a Lanqeni girl called Nandi gave birth to a

baby boy. Senzangaltona, the father of the bt>y, was the ehief
of the Zulu at the time. (Western historians , drawing from their
iqnorance of the moral values of other peoples, were later to
describe Shalta as an "illeqitimate" child, by virtue of the fact
that Nandi and Senzangakona were not "married" in the European
Christian sense of the word. The specific relationship between
the chief and the girl can only be judged by the moral values
of these Afl'ican people at that time, and should therefore not
delay us any further . ) Shaka grew up among the Langeni, and
later joined relatives among the Mthethwa (Mtetwa). In 1810,
when he was twenty-two, he was enrolled in the Mthethwa army
under Chief Dingiswayo. These people, a branch of the Nquni,
were later to prove troublesome to the Boers in the northeastern
Natal, as will be shown below. At any rate, Shaka distinguished
himself as a military genius and soon replaced Dingiswayo after
that chief's death in action which was followed by the disin-
tegration of the Mthethwa kingdom. Later Shaka became chief of
the Zulu, after he had had his father ' s successor assassinated.
He then proceeded to conquer other kingdoms and absorbed them
in his fast growing empire. COnscripted into his army were men
and women under the age of forty, all of whom lived under strict

81
military discipline in barracks. Here he subjected them to
vigorous military training and taught them the newest military
tactics such as surprise attack, high mobility, reconnaissance,
and hand-to-hand fighting instead of the conventional spear-
throwing. He is credited with inventing the short assegai which
was very effective in close combat. It is written in the scrolls
of classroan history that ShaJta acknowledged no children of his
own for fear of being ousted by them. The same sources also add
a sensational grain of salt: apart from political considerations,
they say, Shaka was either impotent or "a latent homosexual. •5

Shaka was able to conquer and rule other kingdans trresistabl~

until September 24, 1828 , when Dingane and Mhlangana , two of his
half-brothers, assassinated him. Dingane became the new chief
of the Zulu at a time when the voortrekkers were arriving fran
the Cape Colony. At first he accommodated them in his kingdom
and even tried to make use of them. But later he became sus-
picious of their intentions and decided to do away with them.
So, early Tuesday morning, February 6, 1838, the Boer l eader
Piet Retief and seventy other Boers, together with thirty of
their African servants, visited Dingane in his kraal to "nego-
tiate" for a cession of land. There Dingane staged what at first
appeared to be a harmless war dance for the entertainment of the
"guests." But as Retief and his followers watched the dance,
obviously enjoying every minute of it, the dancers suddenly turned
on thom :md maul.ed them to death .in such a lightning speed that
some of the victims' heads were still applauding after they had
been chopped off I

There followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks in-

volving the Boers and the Zulus, which proved inconclusive until
16 December 1838 when a Boer commando, answering to the name
Andries Pretorius, led an army reported to have been 500 men
strong and fifty-seven wagons, against a Zulu army of 10,000
strong--according to Western historical accounts . The battle
took place on the banks of Ncome River, and cannQn fire dictated
the final outcome of it. Western historians were there: "In
the entire engagement no white "people were killed and only three,
including Pretorius, were wounded, whereas sane 3,000 Zulu died."6
Then the Boers baptized Ncome River "Blood River" in a pool of
the African blood .

Dingane's downfall was assured when in October 1839 Mpande,

his half-brother, led a regiment of 17,000 Zulu into Natal bring-
ing to the Boers 25,000 head of cattle and an offer to join forces
against Dingane. Therefore, in January 1840, two forces advanced
north against the Zulu kingdom. A combined oampa.ign of the Boers
and the traitors under the carmand of Pretorius himself, managed
to finish off Dingane on 30 January 1840. Pretorius then made
Mpande, the opportunistic Judas, king of the Zulu, a toothless
and tim.id running dog of the Natal Republic. It was a dangerous

82
precedent as events ·were to prove later. Anyway, Pretorius
helped himself to 36,000 head of cattle and made off to Natal
to a thunderous triumphal entry, only this time not· on a slow
and worthless donkey's, but on a potent bull' s back. The success
of this raid encouraged further campaigns on other African chiefs
in the area . In December 1840, for example, Pretorius attacked
Ncaphayi, the chief o_f the Bhaca, allegedly for being respon-
sible for the theft of white people's cattle. At this attack
thirty African people were killed and once again Pretorius took
off with three-thousand head of cattle and seventeen children
to be distributed as "apprentices" (slaves) among the Boers.
After the "Blood River" battle the Boers established them-
selves in Natal where they proclaimed a republic in 1939 and
instituted a political structure they called "volksraad." A
community of "super" human beings sprang up and availed itself
to the free labour of the black people who, to the Boers, com-
prised a subspecies stratum they designated "skepsels" (creatures
other than human) as opJ?osed to "mense" (human beings). This
God-ordained super race had the Bible to prove it was indeed
super, and the Calvinist religion as embodied later by the Dutch
Reformed Church was the sanctity of it . In the last half of the
nineteenth century the white community lived, as they still do
today in South Africa, practically like ticks sucking the blood
of the black man, woman , and child, paying no direct taxes at
all, where Atricans paid a hut tax amounting to !>5,000 a year,
plus other indirect taxes such as those on blankets and other
"consumer" goods, as the law required of them. The white govern-
ment made good use of African chi'efs too. It made them admin-
istrative instruments over their own people without pay, and it
was the chiefs who, as demanded of them, provided Africans for
manual labour for the white community an farms , villages, and
in homes. Since slave trade and slavery had nominally been
abolished, free African labour could only be procured through
"apprenticeship," a euphemism for post-slavery. This method
was applied to the ll:hoikhoi and the San children in the Cape
Colony between 1812 and 1828, and in the Natal Republic to the
former slaves between 1834 and 1838. When the Boers invaded
and routed an African kingdom the victims' children were kid-
naped and "apprenticed" to the Boers until the age of twenty-one
for girls, and twenty-five for boys. The same system was prac-
tised by the same Boers later in the high veld, where they went
hunting for African children solely for the procurement of "ap-
prentices. " This was done by capturing children and forcing
parents to part with their yo~g ones at gunpoint.

Mpande died in 1872 and was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo.

Then events took a sharp turn.

Britain annexed Natal in 1843 from the Boers and introduced

Dutch-Roman civil law, whose effect was to subject the African

83
community to the capitalist laws of private property. This l ed
to further alienation of the African land, and with, and corres-
ponding to it, a growing discontent on the part of the African
population. Most of the Boers had trekked away to the high veld
and created their "South African Republic," which Britain annexec
in 1877, as already pointed out. Like the camel and the Arab in
the old adage, once they had placed their first colonial hoof
in the African tent--which was by no means empty- -both the Briti1
and the Boer invaders were determined to squeeze themselves in,
hump, tail, and all. The two robber barons were not only contene
ing among themselves for supremacy, they sought to co-operate
for the purpose of fighting a far more formidable enemy, the
African people. This is one aspect of the history of South Afric
that bourgeois historians suppress, and must be stressed here .
The Boers refused to co-operate with the Britons as long as the
former felt threatened by the African kingdoms; the Britons on
their part would offer no protection for the Boers as long as
the latter refused to co-operate. The vicious circle turned
into vicious fury which was vented on the Africans. Therefore ,
on 11 January 1879 three British columns under Lord Chelmsford
invaded the Zulu kingdom of Chief Cetshwayo and camped at
Isandhlawana. Eleven days later, on January 22, 1879, the Zulu
impis staged a classical surprise attack on the British force,
wiping out, in one afternoon, 1,400 of the 1,800 British invaders
It was a serious psychological knockout on the British, and as
expected they refused to take it. They unleashed a fragrant war
of aggression against the Zulu, and in February 1887 Britain
annexed the Zulu kingdom "to ma.k e South Africa safe for feder-
ation under the British flag . "? Voila.

The Zulu kingdom was split up into thirteen small k~gdoms

with no military organization, to be adm.i nistered by chiefs
nominated by the British government. Chief Cetshwayo was to be
exiled forever and his royal family rendered ordinary commoners.
With the destruction of the Zulu kingdom, the military power
created by Shaka seventy years earlier also came to an end.
Having thus fragmented the African kingdom of the Zulu, and
propelled by the necessity to enlist the co-operation of the
Boers for the establishment of its empire on the African soil,
the British authority created laws and regulations which gave
the white people all the advantages of being white. They drank
of the myrrh of colonial power, were intoxicated by it , dozed
off, and took a political nap. "Peace and quietness" prevailed.
And then, in 1906, they received a rude awakening. The road to
Soweto begins here.

In the beginning of 1906 two policemen who had been trying

to arrest a group of Africans at Trewirgie (a farm near the
village of Byrnetown) were shot and killed. On 15 February two
people were killed by the police in connection with the police
killing incident. On 2 April another twelve Africans were

84
 murdered by the qovernment for the same reason, after a court-
martial at Richmond. But on 3 April a certain chief named
Bambatha enqaqed in a series of shootinq with the police, fol-
lowinq end involvinq a case in which the qcwernment had deposed
i him and appointed a regent to replace him. At the shootinq
Balllbatha killed three policemen and took to the IDOWitains of
Nltandla to raise an army. Be was subsequently hWited down and
;h killed on 10 JUne alonq with countless other Africans at the
battle of Mome Gorqe. The qovernment believed that it had
1- quenched this African bush fire only to be disproved by another
flare at Tuqela and Mapumulo, followed by another shootinq. It
was not until September 1906 that martial law, imposed on 9
:a February, finally c - to an end. But 1n searchinq for the
reasons behind the "disturbances , • the British suddenly realized
that one of the chiefs of the subdivisions of the former ZUlu
kinqdom was actually the son of the late Chief Oetshwayo whom
the British had deposed and exiled in disqrace . Martial law was
once aqain declared and Dimuzulu was arrested early September
1907 and charqed with twenty-three cOWits of hiqh treason. They
tried him in 1908 and found him quilty of hidinq Bambatha's
f amily , shelterinq rebels, and possessing unreqistered firearms.
They sentenced him to four-years' imprisonment plus a fine, and
eventually exiled him from Natal until 1910 when the "union"
qranted him amnesty.

Apart from costinq 3 , 000 African lives, the 1906 Natal-

Zululand uprisinqs proved to be economically very advantaqeous
f or the mininq business. When the uprisinqs beqan in February
there were 17,900 Africans workinq in the mines . In 1910 when
all was quiet on the froots this number had risen to 34,200.
I t was then announced from qovernment quarters that the •rebellion"
was "the last tribal revolt on SOUth African soil."

We are still thousands of miles away from Soweto, but let

us pause here and consult the oracles on the questions posed in
relation to both the 1906 uprisinqs in Zululand and those of
Soweto. What are the causes of the uprisinqs and what could
have been done to avoid them? The identity and the political
equality of these questions surely presuppose an identity and
a political equality of the causes of the outbreaks. In Soweto
the palpable cause was the imposition of the Afrikaans lanquaqe
on the African SChool children. In Zululand it was the imposition
in September 1905 of a Poll Tax on the African populatioo, so
t hat when the uprisinqs erupted early the followinq year they
were illmediately christened "Poll Tax Rebellion ." It is very
much in keepinq with bourqeois scholarship to substitute a mere
i llusion for the reality behind it . The wider aspect of a problem
i s qiven a metaphysical shove behind hiqh soundinq academic
phrases, which in USA always end with the sacred suffix •-oLOGY."
To an unpolluted eye there is only one root cause for the ZUluland
and Soweto uprisinqs, and indeed for any other that has taken

85
 place and may take place in South Africa in future, namely, the
political and economic oppression of the majority black natives
of that country by the white foreign fascists. The specific
character of this root cause of course differs with the place
and time of the outbreak, so that it can be said with certainty
that in time future uprisings will be more and more effective
in smashing the racist regime. We shall return to this point
when we consider the historical significance of Soweto proper.

4.

With the colonial conquest of South Africa complete and

petrified into a political unity known as the Union of South
Africa, it became necessary to consolidate this achievement by
ensuring white supremacy over the blacks. In 1910, the year of
the metamorphosis into the "Union of South Africa," there were
about 6 million inhabitants in the country composed of 21~%
whites, 67% Africans, and 9% people of mixed blood. The 21~%
whites, comprising the Boers and the Britons, possessed 93% of
' the votes, and had dedicated their lives to "the maintenance of
white supremacy." The disturbing problem was, however, how a
numerically inferior race could preserve supremacy over a turbu-
lent sea of black masses who were then no less unwilling to play
the underdog than they were three centuries previously. The
search for a solution to this problem led to the development of
apartheid.

The word "apartheid" means literally "apart-ness" and was

used for the first time in an article in Die Burger on 26 March
1943, and then again on 9 September the same year. On January
25, 1944, Dr. Malan, the then prime minister, speaking in the
Parliament gave the political meaning of the word and its ap-
plication in South Africa. The point, he said, was "to ensure
the safety of the white race and of the Christian civilization
by the honest maintenance of the principles of apartheid and
guardianship." This would be done by "separate development"
best suited to each race in South Africa according to "its own
nature and abilities." By so doing, friction between the races
would be eliminated. This point .was further stressed by Verwoerd,
another Boer prime minister, in London in March 1961 : "We want
each of our population groups to control and govern itself as
is the case with other nations"; and again by Vorster, the next
prime minister, on 14 September 1966, after he had been elected
prime minister following the assassination of Verwoerd: "I
believe in the policy of separate development, not only as a
philosophy but also as the only practical solution in the inter-
ests of everyone (bravo, precisely the girth of Pluralism with
its "collective representation"), to eliminate frictions and to
do justice to every population group as well as every individual
• • • • It (apartheid) is not a denial of the human dignity of
anyone (of course not, because those against whom it is directed

86
are not human, let alone dignified) nor is it so intended (I). "
But what of the obvious contradictory fact that your economic
survival depends entirely on the black peQple ' s labour whom you
have decided to keep away from "white areas"? Wouldn't this
frustrate your intention of maintaining white supremacy? Not
at a ll, says Vorster in Parliament on April 24, 1968 . ":It is
true that there are Blacks working for us . They will continue
to work for us for generations, in spite of the ideal, we have
to separate them completely • • • • But the fact that they work
for us can never entitle them to claim political rights. Not
now nor in the future • • • (and) under no circumstances can we
grant them those political rights in our own territory, neither
now nor ever. "

There were no angels singing, therefore, and no guiding

star when the holy mother apartheid gave birth to a doll: "Bantu-
stans." The doleful policy of Bantustans is the practical ap-
plication of apartheid. Bantustans equals apartheid incarnate
and has as its ultimate aims, 1) to designate 87' of the beat
land as "White areas," leaving 13' of poor and inferior land to
the blacks who constitute 70' of the population, 2) to grant
"self-government" to the Africans in their own "Homelands," not
a s one people, but in separate groups, 3) to drive all Africans
to these Bantustans, even those born in "white areas."

The policy grew from an earlier version, "Native" or "Bantu

Reserves," very much reminiscent of, and in keeping with such
terms as "Game and Native Reserves , " thus putting the Africans
on the same level as animals, which can be brought out of the
reserves occasionally for human entertainment, and then sent
back, by force if necessary, when no longer required. The word
"Bantu" itself, which like the words "Kaffir" and "Native" carries
a derogatory meaning as regards Africans, stands in opposition
to the word "Afrikaner" (African) by which the Boers know them-
s elves . It goes without saying that in this sense the black
people are regarded as non-African, they are "Bantu," "Kaffir,"
etc .

Through apartheid and its sequel, the Bantustans, the white

fascist regime in South Africa wants to create the illusion that
t here are many distinct "nations" in that country, each occupying
a distinct area, possessing a distinct social structure true to
a distinct way of life. In the same token therefore, the whites
can appear to constitute a "nation." The minister of "Bantu
Administration and Development" continues the story more authen-
t ically: In 1966 he said, " • • • As regards all the various
na tions we have here, the White Nation, the COloured Nation, the
Indian Nation, the vanous Bantu Nations something to which we
have given little regard, is the fact that num~caZZy the White
Nation is supsl"icr to all othw nations in South Africa . " (BIII-
phasis added.) To be able to see the deformed absurdity in this

87
assertion we must turn to the minister of Statistics and Planning
for help. J.J. Loots tells us that in 1970 the white racist
regime held these truths to be self-evident: South Africa's other
"nations" constitute:

Zulu 3,'970,000
Xhosa 3 .907,000
Tswana 1,702,000
Northern Sotho 1,596,000
Southern Sotho 1,416,000
Shanga an 731,000
Swazi 487 ,ooo·
Venda 360,000
Southern Ndebele 230,000
Northern Ndebele 180,000
other 314,000*

And with the whites amounting to 3,800,000, the "numerical supe-

riority" of the white "nation" becomes clear! But to challenge
the regime this way is to accept its basic premise . One cannot
fight a fascist bull by banging onto its racist tail , but by
grabbing its decadent horns and giving it a revolutionary wrench.

The policy of Bantustans has undergone several stages. Once

the racist egg had been laid it was quickly incubated and hatch-
ed. In 1913 there was the enactment of the Native Land Act bring-
ing into effect territorial segregation between the whites and
the Africans . The aot limited the areas within which Africans
could buy land, so as to reserve the best parts for the whites .
The 1922 Apprenticeship Act imposed wage rates and educational
qualifications on industrial workers, thus securing a privileged
position for the white workers. The Native Urban Areas Act of
1923 had the desirable effect of controlling black people in
urban areas. The regime took a giant leap forward in 1926 when
it passed the Hines and Works Act (an Amendment to its 1911 pre-
decessor), which shut Africans out from skilled jobs altogether,
thereby establishing practical racism. The Native Administration
Act of 1927, and the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1930 gave the
government complete power over Africans and other non-whites.
The Franchise Acts, 1930-31, restricted voting to white men and
women.

With the foundation stone for the construction of apartheid

all but laid, we have now crossed the bridge joining Soweto
directly to the past, and now we are in the last leg of our jour-
ney. Soweto lies just around the corner .

*Quoted from R. Gibson, African Liberation Movements , p . 23 .

88
 s.
Before we place Soweto in its historical context, one or
two preliminary remarks concerning empl oyment of African labour
in South Africa seems to be quite in order here. This is done
through 1 ) regul ar monthly wages and payment in kind, 2) labour
tenancy involving no cash payment. Here the African works for
a given amount of time per year in exchange for the right to
live and cultivate the l and, i.e., classical serfdom of the
thirteenth century Europe. In the mining industry Africans are
herded in barracks known as "compounds, " away from their families
for the entire duration of their contracts--which run from nine
to eighteen months . Those African workers employed in commerce
and industry are also pil ed up in "compounds" in Bantu townships.
The workers rent the "compounds " from the government or Urban
Councils, and occupation of these "compaunds" ends with the loss
of employment or death of the family supporter. This then is
Soweto. Bow did we arrive here? Let us quickly glance over our
shoulders and survey once more the r oad we have been following.

In October 1920 the South African police shot and killed

24 Africans and wounded SO others at Port Elizabeth. The inci-
dent had been provoked by a gathering of Africans at the Baakens
Street police station to protest the arrest of Samuel Masabala,
the local leader of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union
(ICU) . Masabala had been jailed for calling a strike in support
for a demand of a minimum wage of 10 shillings a day for Africans .
In 1925 a group of whites and their police killed 5 Africans
and wounded 25 in a terror campaign in Bloemfontein against ICU.
To tighten their oppressive grip on Africans the racists passed
the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951 . The aim was to establish
"Bantu tribal, regional,and territorial authorities." That is
how the Transkei, the regime's first "Bantu Homeland, " came into
being. There followed a series of protests and uprisings against
the act. In the Orange Free State the peasants of the Witzieshoek
"homeland" clashed with the pol ice over the Bantu Authorities.
In the course of the c l ash 14 Africans were shot dead at the loss
of two policemen. Chief Paulus Mopeli and other leaders of the
people were deported. In 1957, in the Transvaal, the people of
Sekhukhuniland rose up against the same hateful act. Many people,
including the chief and relatives , were expelled to Natal and
the Transkei. More and more riots broke out when the regime
deposed the chief for his opposition to the Bantu Authorities .
This resulted in some government supporters' death. Many arrests
were made, in one incident as many as 200, and in the trial which
followed 11 people were sentenced to death. Mindful of the pos-
sibility of more uprisings , the regime reduced the sentence to
life imprisonment. In Zululand the Boers tried and failed to
win the support of Paramount Chief King Cyprian Bhekuzulu ka
Solomon and the subchiefs. The minister of Native Affairs called
a meeting in 1957 at Nougama and attempted to sell the idea of

89
Bantustans to the people. He received in return a demand by the
Zulu people that the Boers return King Cetshwayo's crown which
had been taken away when the Zulu were defeated in 1879. The
message was clear. And even when the paramount chief then de-
cided to accept the Bantu Authorities in his capacity as the
chief of the Osutu tribe of the Zulus, he met a resounding op-
position from the people. Clashes took place in the dist~ict
of Tokazi between those who accepted and those who rejected Bantu
Authorities. As a result two people were killed. The police
arrested 29 people and charged them with murder, 14 of whom were
found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

In 1960 the peasants of Pondoland rose up. In response,

the regime created the Emergency Proclamation 400, giving the
police authority to detain anybody indefinitely. As the revolt
of the peasants grew popular the regime picked up 4,769 men,
women, and children and poured them into prisons. The movement
had been started by a committee known as the Mountain Committee
in the district of Bizana. Eventually, it spread to other dis-
tricts in Pondoland. Homes of government servants and chiefs
were burned down and some government errand-boys had their necks
wrung up. At one point the peasants held a meeting at Ngquza
Hill between Bizana and Lusikisiki. There, two aircrafts and a
helicopter appeared and dropped tear gas and smoke bombs on the
peasants. At the same time the police emerged and surrounded
the meeting. In spite of the white flag which the peasants raised
to show that the"meeting was peaceful , the police opened fire and
killed eleven people on the spot. That was also the year of the
infamous Sharpeville massacre in which, by official reports ,
67 people were officia~ly murdered while demonstrating against
pass laws. This was followed by more legal killings of the
Africans. Between JUly 1963 and June 1965, 194 black people were
handed to the hangman's noose. This canes to 8 executions every
month of the year.

That is how we have arrived in Soweto. We need not ask ,

therefore, the "why" and the "wherefore" and the "whence" of
Soweto, do we? For Soweto is one of the many cases in which
Africans have risen up against oppression in the long tortuous
path of their torture. And the Boers can rest assured that it
is not the last.

Soweto, the place, is like any other black African township

in South Africa, a dung house for African workers and their fam-
ilies in the outskirts of white Johannesburg . The artificiality
of it is embodied in the name itself, which is nothing but a
political misnomer standing for "Southwestern Township." Like
the apartheid system of which it is a direct product, it has
absolutely no roots in the African people, no matter how much
"African" it may try to sound. The third largest city in South
Africa, 35 square miles and with a population approaching one

90
million , it has no street lights and no sewerage, to say the
least.

Clearly then, one of ' the immediate causes of the uprisings

in Soweto was Soweto itself . It was a revolt against the system
which created Soweto. · It was an open rejection ·onoe again of
the "Homelands . " Thirteen years ago, on the 25th of ' that same
fateful month of JUne 1963, the assassinated fascist leader
Hendrik Verwoerd stood in the "House of Assembly" and said:
"Reduced to its simplest form, the problem is nothing else than
(sic) this: we want to keep south Africa white, • • • 'keeping
it white ' can only mean one thing, namely white domination; not
' leadership, ' not 'guidance ' but ' control, ' ' supremacy. ' " In
Soweto, and in other such cases, the African masses gave their
reply to that arrogant boorish utterance of the ill- fated Boer .
In Soweto the African people reminded the white South African
racists yet again that even though Shaka, Dingane, and Cetshwayo
are dead, their fighting spirit lives in the new black South
African man, woman, and child . There is no power on earth which
can extinguish that flame .

But the Soweto uprising has a specific meaning. A new

generation, courageous and ready for action, is beginning to
assert its power and drive the political nail home . The· Soweto
mother said it better: "Our children have wanted to know why we
haven't done anything about the unjust society in which we have
lived and why we have allowed things to drag on and on. It is
te=ible to know that your children hate and blame you . ..a The
uprising was yet another demonstration that apartheid is neces-
sarily doomed to ignominous failure. The elements of its des-
truction are now rife after almost 300 years of fermentation.
Under the present political conditions in South Africa the final
explosion is not far off. It will follow as inevitably and
naturally as the orderly succession of the seasons of the year .

And to those who want to tell us that the explanation to

Soweto and parallel cases lies only in the apartheid system or
in the "evil of man , " the South African black poet A. C. Jordan
has this to say:

TeZZ the winteP not to give birth to epPing.

Tell the epPing not to fiObJeP into sunrner.
TeZZ the summer not to meZZow into autumn.
Tell the morning star not to herald the day.
Tell the darkness
Never to flee
when smitten at dawn
by the shafts of the sun. 9
The regime gave 176 as the final figure of those who died
in that June week of uprisings. By the slip of the tongue , the

91
American NBC news broadcast gave 476. But we now know, as the
United Nations Commission on Apartheid revealed, that as many as
1,000 sons and daughters of Africa had fallen by the sword of the
bloody dinosaur. On their graves, posterity has inscribed the
eternal words of the countryman Socwetshata, as it did on those
of the other African people who lost their lives in the defence
of Africa: "Happy are those who fought and are dead." For they
died so that Africa may live--free .

1
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 4, scene 1.
2
Leo Kuper, Race, Class and Power (Gerald Duksworth & Co .
Ltd.) I p. 213.
3
Brain Fagan in African Societies in Southern Africa, ed.
Leonard Thompson (Praeger Publishers) , p . 60 .
4
see Gerrit Harinck in African Societies in Southern" Africa,
ed. Leonard Thompson.
5
Leonard Thompson in The Oxford History of South Africa,
ed. Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, v. 1, p. 344.
6
Ibid . I p. 362 .
7
Colin Webb in African Societies in Southern Africa, ed.
Leonard Thompson, p. 305.
8
Quoted from African Confidential 17, 113 (25 June 1976).
9
Quoted from The Guardian (USA), 30 June 1976.

92