THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN SOUTH AFRICAN Perspectives on Southern Africa, r THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN SOUTH AFRICAN by NABOTH MOKGATLE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles @ '97'> by Naboth Mokgatle ISBN: o-52o-ox845-i LC: 79-138285 First printing, 1971 Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS /11I. /Iv. V. VI. /VII. /VIII. Ax. iX. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV, XXV. xXXVI. VXXVll. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. DEDICATION Family Tribal Origins Split Emigration Doctors Phokeng Paternal Grandmother Second Marriage Mother's Background Mother's Parents Other Churches New Method in Religion My Birth After Sickness Return to Phokeng My Arrival in Kroondal The Langes' Second Child My Departure Progress End of Friendship with Laki Confirmation Class Journey to Pretoria Second Employment Turning Point Father's Death Experiment Marriage Pretoria Non-European Distributive Workers' Union Party National School Native Representative Council vii I 4 12 '9 25 29 37 44 52 58 66 73 85 9' 100 I10 119 127 136 150 162 171 182 I88 200 216 225 232 239 251 XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. African General Workers' Union Suppression of Conumunism Pretoria Market Meetings Arrests Banning Orders Departure Vienna Zurich London 264 !275 287 295 312 326 334 339 347 DEDICATION This book is dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandmother, Mahlodi Paulina Kekana Mokgatle. She was a slave. She grew up alone, far away from her people and birthplace. She never owned property of her own except her children. As her story in the book will show, she was married off by someone who was not her father but who kept her as a slave. She never knew her parents; only late, by mere chance, her people discovered her, already a mother of children. Perhaps for me, her capture during the conflict between her people and the early Dutch settlers in South Africa was a blessing in disguise. Had she not been a slave, had she not been married to a Mosotho Chief by her slave master, I would not have come into the world in the form I did. I might not have come at all. It was because of the two episodes, her enslavement and marriage, that preparation for my coming life in the world started. I am a part of her and she is a part of me. I believe firmly that as long as I live, she lives. N.M. London 1970 .... ø .s - \ .-. tie I Family My name is Monyadioe Moreleba Naboth Mokgatle. I was born in a tribal village called Phokeng in the district of Rustenburg, Transvaal Province, South Africa, on the first of April nineteen-hundred and eleven. I was one of the three sons of Setihare Hebron and Salome Mokgatle, and the last-born in the family. My parents had eight children, three boys and five girls. I do not know when they married, but my mother told me that in eighteen-ninety-six, at the time when the Bafokeng tribe lost most of their cattle through cattle sickness which swept the tribe and the surrounding tribal lands, their first child, a daughter called Nkatlholeng, was a baby of about nine or twelve months. My mother was a Christian and my father was not. Because of that, their marriage was performed in both Christian and nonChristian traditions. The ceremony, according to my mother, was held in a Lutheran church at Hermannsburg Mission and at my father's home in the traditional way. My father's parents, like all African parents, paid bogadi (dowry) for their son's bride. Without the payment of bogadi, African law and tradition would not have recognised their union as a legal one. Nkatlholeng, my parents' first-born, was followed by twin sons who, like her, died before they reached the age of three or four years old. My mother and father did not tell me why they died so early, but I am sure that they did not die because of lack of medicine but that those who claimed to know how to cure the sick tried to cure them. My twin brothers were followed in nineteen-hundred by twin sisters who looked so much alike that many people in our village close relatives, my parents' brothers and sisters as well as their children - could not tell which was which. Their names were Molebopi and Madira, but they were known by their Christian names Maria and Martha. They grew up healthy and by the time Martha died in nineteentwenty-four she was engaged to be married. Maria remained alone and was very lonely, but in nineteen-thirty-three, nine years after Martha's death, she got married. In nineteen-hundred and four my mother gave birth to another daughter, named Majoni (soldiers), and her Christian name was Eva. She was born at the time when there were still movements of A* I British soldiers from the Anglo-Boer war in the country. She acquired the name of Soldiers because, according to my parents, on the day of her birth a large company of British soldiers passed through our village, from the north towards Rustenburg in the south, and some of them stopped to ask for water to drink. Majoni married before her sister Maria in nineteen-twenty-seven, and became the mother of six children. She died in nineteen-fifty-one, in Johannesburg, visiting her husband who was working there. She fell sick three days after her arrival, was taken to hospital, and five days later in hospital she died. I was living in Pretoria with my wife and two children, and one Thursday afternoon I received a telephone call from a friend informing me of my sister's death, which came to me as a surprise and a deep shock. I was at the time the general secretary of the African General Workers' Union in Pretoria. I left my office immediately and went first to an African location, called at the time Bantule or New Clare, on the south-west side of Pretoria, to tell my mother's cousin who lived there with her children, who were caring for her after her husband's death. From Bantule I hurried to where I lived, eight miles from the centre of Pretoria, at Atteridgeville, which the Africans called Phelindaba (the End of Worries), to tell my wife and to make preparations for both of us to leave for Johannesburg. We left our daughter and son, Keitumetse and Matshediso, with my wife's mother and left for Johannesburg. I was deeply worried, wondering why I did not know of my sister's sickness, only her death. In nineteen-hundred and eight, my parents welcomed the birth of their fifth daughter and named her Phelloe; when she was christened she was named Sannie. At that time my parents' children were all girls, and the chance of ever having a male child was beginning to fade away. The most worried person was my father, because he knew that if there was to be no male child born into the family his name would eventually disappear. Nevertheless, as time went on, my sister Phelloe became my father's favourite and that earned her jealousy and hatred from her sisters and myself when I joined them later. We suspected her as being father's spy and that she was at all times watching us, preparing a report for him. Our suspicion of her was strengthened by father's treatment of her, because on many occasions when we had all done something wrong, which demanded father's strong action, he would scold us firmly, and if our actions demanded punishment we would be punished, but Phelloe would be warned not to join in again in doing wrong with the wicked children, who were on purpose disobeying father and mother's orders. On many occasions when that happened, Phelloe would be taken away from us as we were accused, and would be standing at father's side or even leaning 2 against him. My father was a very strict disciplinarian and hated his orders being disobeyed. My sister Phelloe was not as healthy as most of us were. She was slim and delicate and occasionally complained of being unwell. She was the first in my family to learn the English language at school, and during her school days she turned out to be very gifted in her studies. Each time they had competitions at school she never failed to bring a prize home with her. I remember the time when the headmaster of her school came to see my father to suggest that he should try his utmost to send my sister to college, but my father turned it down on the grounds that she was a woman; back from college she would get married and forget everything she had learned. My sisters were brought up in the old African tradition that the parents knew best and had a duty to marry their children into the families of the people they knew well and trusted, and where they were sure that their daughters would be well cared for and respected. My three sisters who eventually married all had their marriages arranged for them by father and mother. Equally, the men who married them were brought up in a similar way. They were from the Molefe, Petlele and Rakhudu families. The Molefes were not of our tribe, but were members of another tribe called Bamaake, living in a tribal village called Siga, far away to the extreme west of our tribe and lands.