A Short Biography and Profile of the Concept Designer for the

“21st Century : Youth Cooperatives Initiative – Direct to Market (D2M)”:

Lawrence Molatlhegi Ntlokoa

An extract from the book “Beyond Our Wildest Dreams”

by Prof. Ineke van Kessel (University Amsterdam)

Lawrence Ntlokoa grew up in Munsieville, , and he attended St Mary’s Primary School followed by Mosupatsela High School. He left Mosupatsela soon after the June 1976 riots, although he continued his political liaison at the school. Lawrence Ntlokoa was first introduced to the Young Christian Students (YCS) and then to Young Christian Workers (YCW) by the catholic nuns in his primary school in Munsieville, a small dilapidated bordering on the conservative white town of Krugersdorp, on the West Rand. In his life story, Ntlokoa relates how he eagerly grasped the new methods to make sense of his life in the overcrowded conditions of a township house where three generations had to live in a small 4-roomed house without electricity, running water or flush toilet.

Sister Rita, while teaching a history class in St Mary’s Higher Primary School, introduced her pupils to the Young Christian Students. Lawrence was fascinated by the method of “See, Judge and Act” to solve social problems. I had just gone through my share of social problems in the couple of years that had just gone by and I believed I had a few scores to settle. See, Judge and Act was the best thing to come my way at the time. After the initial introduction by Sister Rita I just made it my business to find out as much as I could about YCS so every free period I’ll remain behind in class to find out more. The teacher referred Lawrence to two of her colleagues, Sister Martin and Sister Mary Bernard (Ncube). As a fieldworker for the Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Sister Bernard would later become a leading personality in youth, women and community organisations. As Lawrence relates:

Sister Bernard started telling me about what she called ‘Black Consciousness’ and ‘Pan Africanism’ and the African National Congress. Very interesting stuff but I was really more interested in the See, Judge and Act stuff, I wanted to start taking action. Sister Martin gave him an YCS brochure with an office address of YCS. Lawrence went to the office, where he met the provincial organiser Alan Ralphs, who he found very helpful. Lawrence began recruiting in his school and was soon elected chairperson of the school branch. Using the See, Judge and Act method, the branch initiated a food garden at school, did chores for pensioners and visited sick people in hospital. Little boy-scout type of activities. The provincial activities were more interesting, we attended workshops on strategy, policy and more importantly for me, Apartheid. YCS was a multi-racial organisation and I met kids from other races, whites, Indians and so-called coloureds. I realised that there was not much difference between the races as the Apartheid regime would want us to believe.

For Lawrence, membership of a multi-racial organisation like YCS was a “revolutionary” experience. He became president of YCS. In YCS he enjoyed the singing of American civil rights protest songs, like “We shall overcome” and “Blowing in the Wind”, accompanied by acoustic guitars played by Alan Ralphs and Lawrence, he had taught himself how to play the guitar. Ntlokoa arranged for his YCS branch to attend the May Day celebration by the ‘senior movement’, the Young Christian Workers. Ostensibly, YCW celebrated the festivity listed on the church calendar for 1 May, St. Joseph the Worker. The contents were however rather different from the church rites for St. Joseph, for Ntlokoa heard for the first time the singing of The International, as well as talking about Marxism-Leninism. “At first it was just too much for me, all this talk about ‘the Bolshevic, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie’ but after this event I also made it my business to learn more.” One of the YCW organisers lent him an abridged version of “Das Kapital” but warned him to read it in secret as it was a banned book in Apartheid . That must have added greatly to the excitement of trying to read an otherwise rather inaccessible book. Even the use of a dictionary was not of much help to Lawrence: terms like ‘super-structure and under-structure’ were explained in the dictionary in reference to buildings and underground rail systems, rather than social systems.

Ntlokoa struggled with the YCW’s tenet of combining Marxism with Christianity. Marx was clearly an atheist, who had dismissed religion as “the opium of the poor”. However, when he met YCS national chaplain father Albert Nolan, who give him a copy of his book “Christ before Christianity”, everything fell into place. In Ntlokoa’s reading, Nolan portrays Jesus as “the first Socialist”. Rather than performing miracles with fish and bread to feed the multitudes attending the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in fact had given the first lesson in the concept of “The People Shall Share”. While still in high school, Ntlokoa began attending YCW meetings to learn more about socialism and Marxism-Leninism. The workers did not seem to mind a young boy sitting in their meetings, but got very irritated with his never-ending questions. YCW National Organiser Roddy Nunes had long sessions with him to discuss all these new concepts. After “Das Kapital”, young Ntlokoa read the “Communist Manifesto”.

In 1975, Ntlokoa was delegated by YCS and YCW to the Catholic Youth Commission Conference in Pretoria. At the meeting he was puzzled by the clerical greeting rituals: a hierarchical order of the kissing of rings. On making inquiries, he learned that these rings were very expensive. When his turn came to present his speech, Ntlokoa departed from his prepared text and said that if the bishops, arch-bishops and cardinal would sell their rings, they would generate enough income to feed all the poor people in South Africa for ten years. This remark caused some consternation in the conference, but endeared him to father Smangaliso Mkatshwa, who was then the General Secretary of the Bishop’s Conference, who was later to become his mentor in liberation theology. At the age of 19, Ntlokoa was appointed YCW national organiser in November 1976, after a thorough grounding in the class struggle and liberation theology. He dropped out of school in Standard Eight, but remained an avid reader, continuing his education by correspondence courses. In the wake of the Soweto revolt, Ntlokoa was arrested on 2 September 1977. He remained in detention till 12 January 1978. On 9 May 1978 he was sentenced to two years on charges of public violence, suspended for five years. He went back to work but was again detained under Section Six on 12 June 1978. After his release in November of that year, he was served with a restriction order

In a statement to the police, Ntlokoa claimed that he attended a two month training course in late 1976, where Father Gerald de Fleuriot told him that the YCW in South Africa strove to bring about change by means of revolution, “but under the condition that the proposed change in South Africa must be obtained by the working class and not by a so-called bourgeois system”. To this end, YCW sought to cooperate with trade unions and to promote the formation of a strong independent trade union movement. The job of YCW organiser was to bring this message to young people. The YCW instructors also made clear that YCW stood sympathetic towards the banned liberation movement, as both were fighting for the same liberation. As Ntlokoa saw it in 1978:

Once the black workers are united they will demand an economical change in the present system. Should the government do not allow this economical change, the united workers class will make use of a national strike, as well as demonstrations and protests based on some of the principles of the 1976 riots to obtain this aim. Once this has been achieved the united workers class will enforce its power to bring about a political change to obtain a classless society based on the principles of a socialist state. To achieve this political aim under Black Majority rule and to retaliate against military action by the government, the YCW, the trade unions and the Roman Catholic Church, to a certain extend, will accept the support of armed forces irrespective of their origin and ideologies, from outside South Africa.

At YCW seminars he learned about the history of the ANC and the PAC, trade unions and the Unity Movement. He was told that the ANC and the YCW share the vision of a classless society, for which Tanzania stood as a model. While on a visit to the YCW office in Springs, Father Emil Blazer, an YCW chaplain, showed him how to tune in to Radio Freedom. The chaplain told the four young men in the room to listen to these programmes, and he provided them with the time schedule and the meter band. After his conviction for public violence on charges of stoning a bus and setting a delivery van of the Afrikaans newspaper Rapport on fire, Ntlokoa became thoroughly disillusioned with YCW. During his spell in detention he received no salary and no other support, as YCW’s policy did not condone the use of violence. The Roman Catholic hierarchy most likely fostered a different vision of the Kingdom of God and of the road leading towards this destination. Detention was followed by a banning order, which gave Ntlokoa the distinction of being the youngest banned person in South Africa. Due to his banning order, Ntlokoa could not openly participate in civic activities. But he was in touch with several leading activists and pastor Frank Chikane of the Apostolic Faith Mission allowed him the use of the facilities of his interdenominational youth club.

During most of 1981 and 1982 Ntlokoa was in prison on various convictions for contravening his banning order by attending a gathering, being in a school and leaving the district of Krugersdorp. He was stopped by police when on his way to Swaziland with his girlfriend and his new-born son, Tongogara Ntlokoa. Planning to join to liberation movement in exile, he told police that he was taking his son to a traditional healer. His girl-friend and little 9 days old son were detained for three days and locked up in a police cell. Poor little Tongogara, who was named by Lawrence by the first the name of the first revolutionary leader from Zimbabwe, Josia Tongogara, who was killed by reactionary forces of Mugabe. Tongo became the youngest child to be arrested and put in jail by the Apartheid Security Forces.

From his YCW experience, Lawrence Ntlokoa kept an analytical approach, an interest in revolutionary theory and an awareness of socio-political struggles in other parts of the world. Among the publications confiscated by police in 1983, when he was charged with the possession of banned literature, were many articles on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Ntlokoa was bitter about the YCW ‘oligarchy’ and very sceptical about church institutions, which he thought unable or unwilling to follow up their noble words with deeds. But he did not discard what he had learned in YCW. His political ideals remained inspired by a mix of Christianity and socialism, as is evident from his diary and from a letter written in 1980. He explained that he read the Bible during the ten months he spent in solitary confinement. But then he had nothing else to do. Now, living as an unemployed, banned person in , he had read the scriptures all over again. “My realisation and discoveries was that Salvation history is totally on the side, objectively and subjectively, of the poor, the oppressed (…) Faith then, brings with it new dimensions of the liberation struggle.”

When his banning order was lifted in 1983, he became secretary of Krugersdorp Residents Organisation (KRO). In his work for the civic, he used the See-Judge-Act methodology to evaluate the problems in the organisational ups and downs of the civic. His YCW experience had been an effective training ground for his later work in the civic. Among civic activists in Kagiso with an YCW background were Lawrence Ntlokoa, Bafana Seripe, the brothers George, Tizza and Busang Moiloa and Serge Mokonyane, a trade union activist from Munsieville. The house-to-house survey was very much in line with the YCW’s method of ‘inquiry’ as the best way to build an YCW that indeed expressed the interests of young workers. As the handbooks advised: “Start at the base with the immediate concerns of the young workers. Get the youth themselves to formulate their demands and to take action together. Work with them and not for them…

Leading youth activists in Kagiso were older and more mature than their counterparts in Sekhukhuneland. Establishing the civic association was the work of the 1976 Soweto generation, who had gone through a deeply politicising experience which had taught them the importance of effective Organisation and linkages with adults. Moreover, the most pressing civic issues in Kagiso - as in many other townships - were rents, electricity and transport, all eminently suitable to interest a broad range of not very politically motivated residents. Young activists had gained previous organisational experience in Chikane' s Interdenominational Youth Christian Club, the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and in the Young Christian Workers (YCW). YCW activists, combining a militant Christianity with Marxism and social action, were particularly prominent in both civic and trade union Organisation in Kagiso. This socio-religious inspiration is well captured in the diary of Lawrence Ntlokoa, a leading young activist who had become an avid reader during his years of banning orders. He made a close study of the scriptures: 'My realisation and discoveries was that Salvation history is totally on the side, objectively and subjectively, of the poor, the oppressed (...). Faith then, brings with it new dimensions of the liberation struggle.' YCW had taught young activists the strategy of building confidence in collective action by tackling concrete local issues. They shared this result-oriented approach with the trade union leadership.

In Kagiso, activists in the 1980s organised in a civic association (Krugersdorp Residents‟ Organisation- KRO) that was affiliated to the UDF: most township activists perceived themselves as KRO activists. The Africanist tendency in Kagiso organised a rival civic association. These tensions still simmer, but seem less significant than the divisions caused by the ruthless power struggle that erupted post 1990 among the UDF and ANC activists themselves. Laurence Ntlokoa, a key civic activist during the 1980s, was reluctant to discuss his experiences in this period, as he harbours bitter memories. In 1994 when he was the coordinator for the RDP (the ANC‟s Reconstruction and Development Programme), he went to talk to Afrikaner businessmen in Krugersdorp about input in the RDP and reported back to the ANC branch. He was branded a traitor, and became a persona non grata. “It was all about power, everybody jostled for positions. They wanted to destroy me, I was too articulate, I could think! They wanted to get ahead, and I was in their way. But I never envisaged a political career, I was interested in development. Now I am no longer active in politics. At that time Lawrence was employed as the National Programme Coordinator in the Education for Democracy Programme of the Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT) with Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa as the Executive Director, this was from Sept 1992 to Nov 1995. His specific responsibilities was designing and production of training material on elections and voting; Organising and conducting workshops and conferences; maximizing the participation of ordinary citizens in the first democratic elections in South Africa; Office administration and project evaluation.

He worked with Smangaliso Mkhatshwa and Sister Bernard to establish the Khululekani Institute for Democracy (KID) and was subsequently employed as a Researcher / Programme Coordinator responsible for Strategic Planning, Programme Implementation, maintaining links with local and international partner organisations as well as fund-raising and report writing.

He was re-deployed to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, USA, based African-American NGO. He was sent to Washington DC for two weeks for his orientation and when he came back to South Africa, he was appointed as Programme Associate, his responsibilities were to plan and implement project on strengthening the research capacity of Historically Disadvantaged Universities, maximizing the participation of ordinary citizens in government decisions that affect their lives and developing a programme to encouraging effective governance at local level for Transitional Local Councils (TLCs) in the Northern and Free State provinces. He wrote a booklet titled “Bringing Government Closer to the People” and “Community News on Tape magazine”. He worked with with his son Tongogara, a.k.a “Battlekat”, who was by then a qualified sound-engineer and music producer, to produce several Information Dissemination Audio Tapes for local governments in the Free State and Limpopo provinces and a music album promoting: Democracy, Voter Education and Civil Rights titled “The Hour for Democracy” with Mdu Masilela as producer and Lebo Mathosa as lead singer, this was Lebo’s first professional recording. Lawrence played acoustic guitar, which he had learned to play during his YCS days, during the recording of this album, he also wrote three of the songs. Lebo Mathosa submitted a copy of this CD to Kalawa Jazmee, they contracted her as their artist, and the rest is history.

In February 2002, the Joint Center decided to move its operations to where their services were needed most and recommended Lawrence to the newly established Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF), now called the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA). He started as Communications Officer and later was promoted to National Outreach Manager (UYF), he is currently the NYDA’s Market Linkage Specialist in the Johannesburg Branch.