How I got to know Tata Mandela

The Maloti mountains is what separates Qwaqwa from Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal to form united cousins of sprawling Drakensberg. There is only one serious exit into the bigger world. Much of the political news came from radio Sesotho. There used to be relative peace until the young boys and girls were brought by their concerned parents from places like Soweto and Sebokeng. The parents wanted their children to get education without the lingering distractions of the 1976 uprising. So they came to live with the relatives. Somehow, Metsimatso high school was suddenly a hive of political unrest.

One day the unrest was so serious that my cousin and her schoolmates arrived home with red faces and teary eyes. Their torn dungarees and shirts bore the proof that they had been jumping through barbed wire running away from police teargas. Even their arrival did not bring sudden relief because the some policemen were combing the area on foot, closing in on them. You ran about 8 kilometers from school, up the hill, to get home, thinking that you finally have a chance to deal with the wrath of teargas assaulting your lungs, only to be flushed out by the men in brown uniform. I remember how some of the learners were saved by brave Mothers who either hid them under their beds or blocked the police from entering the gates.

The bell would ring rather furiously. Our teacher at Miri primary school would leap into panic, ‘Go home, ma-Black Power are coming!’ We’d grab our school bags and clear out in a huff. I avoided the main gate in the north side near the main road. I'd creep below barbed wire and, with my sister Mamothibi at least in my sights, run in the eastern direction towards home as fast as we could. The likes of my cousin and classmate, Ramofubedu Makubo, and his wife today, Mamorena Makubo, who was classmate of my sister, had to literally run home in the direction where mayhem was coming from. Their visibly young age must have saved them from the clutches of the oncoming police.

The little that I heard of politics came from Ntatemoholo Rakgale (my father’s brother.) We were staying together. We had been warned not to upset him. One moment he’d be sitting quietly on his small wooden bench, slowly rolling koerant around a daub of Boxer to make himself a zol. His home-made moqombothi would be inside that Babaton snuff container, between his feet. The next moment he’d be speaking to himself loudly, or laughing, or prancing around the yard, saying things we did not quite comprehend. I used to pay attention. From him I heard for the first time names like Biko, Sobukwe, Mandela, Russia, Amerika, Nyerere, Kaunda and Gaddafi.

Three other moments thrust me into politics. Inkatha-controlled mob were coming to kill all the boys around Qwaqwa! It was a rumour. Nobody took it lightly. We had been hearing through radio the massacres they’d unleashed in Boipatong, Phola Park and Thokoza. I have never been scared like that in my whole life. Word had spread like wildfire.

Those parents who commuted to places of work like Setsing, Difemeng and Harrismith seemed to alight off the Setsokotsane buses before they had stopped dead still. They ran home to make sure that their sons were safe. I was also relieved when my mother arrived. My father was in Messina. How I wished he was there to protect me. A tall neighbour whose right hand was missing two fingers, perhaps wanting to show off his intellectual prowess of unfolding politics, assured everyone, ‘Comrades from APLA and MK will come to defend us.’ The ANC and PAC were mentioned somewhere in the midst of the noisy chatter and gripping fear.

When the night fell in Thaba-bosiu (our section), which had neither Apollo light nor electricity, nobody seemed willing, or able, to sleep. Mothers were ordering their sons to hide, on top of the roof, in the toilet, in the cupboards, behind the thick shrubs, up the trees… anywhere, to evade the impending bloodshed. I anticipated my mother to send me into dark wilderness to be on the run with older boys when I heard her say to a hysterical crowd of neighbours, ‘My son is going nowhere! He is sleeping next to me.’ I felt my stomach starting to run. They pleaded. She did not budge. I wished my father would appear. But he was far away. I did not know if I would ever get to see him.

Brave men went away to conduct night patrol at the bridge connecting Thaba-Bosiu to Ha-Sethunya. ‘What if ma-Inkatha will appear through these mountains?’ another visibly distressed woman asked. ‘De Klerk will not give Gatsha (Buthelezi) the helicopters to do that!’ shouted Mr Two Finger across barbed wire fence. Inside our house, Mma Motaung had placed “botlolo ya sprits” le “metjhisi” beside her pillow. She was to set the mob alight before they could get to me. Mme o tshwara thipa ka bohaleng e le kannete.

The second moment: We were kicking the ball in the street after school when the village went crazy. Cars were hooting. People were running in all directions. Ausi Melita (niece of Two Finger) ran past with hands on her head, ‘Jonna weeee, Mandela o tswile tronkong, joooo!’ Now it was clear to me that there was political consciousness in that house. Up on the graveled main road, the people were on top of cars and buses, and falling, some injuring themselves. They were celebrating. Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. Life would no longer be the same.

In 1990 my family moved to live near Ha-Sethunya. My two sisters and I enrolled at Tebang Junior Secondary School, near Charles Mopeli stadium. A government school bus would pick up my class every Wednesday morning to attend technical training at Makabelane technical college. Whilst some remained seated through the journey to and fro, most of us remained standing, chanting struggle songs. The political winds were blowing. The name of Nelson Mandela was a prominent feature in many discussions. We’d look at our history teacher and wander when he will stop teaching us about the covered-in-glory Jan van Riebeck and the decapitated Piet Retief and start teaching us about Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe.

Much later some of us forced our way to technikons. We were initiated into student politics by the likes of Moloantoa Makhunga, Thandile Sunduza, Owen Ndlovu, Malesela Maleka, Moliehi Letuka and Tumelo Mlangeni who, to this day, never forgets to mention how the marauding Inkatha mob, wielding blood-dripping blades and knobkerries, forced him to spend the chilling night on the roof at his house in the East Rand. We stumbled upon the Long Walk to Freedom and other books which opened our minds to who our struggle heroes were.

We also mingled with those SASCO and PASMA t-shirt wearing brigade, many of whom lent credence to the name - academic ancestor. They introduced us to the liberation struggle culture. One of them would quote Mandela or Sobukwe while making a point to senior management of the institution. You would see some manager with a big academic title before his name yield to the request. We were all under the spell of black political leadership. And that is how I got to know who Nelson Mandela was in my early years.
Robala ka kgotso, ntate wa rona.