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How to cite this thesis

Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). Women, Gender and the Black Consciousness Movement (1968-1977)

by

Sibusisiwe Nxongo

201149111

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

MA (Historical Studies)

in the

Department of Historical Studies

of the

Faculty of Humanities

at the

University of Johannesburg

supervised by

Dr. Nafisa Essop Sheik

January 2019 ii Affidavit

This serves to confirm that I, Sibusisiwe Nxongo, Student number 201149111 enrolled for the Qualification MA (Historical Studies) in the Faculty of Humanities herewith declare that my academic work is in line with the Plagiarism Policy of the University of Johannesburg, with which I am familiar.

I further declare that the work presented in this dissertation is authentic and original unless clearly indicated otherwise, and in such instances full reference to the source is provided. I do not presume to receive any credit for such acknowledged quotations, and there is no copyright infringement in my work. I declare that no unethical research practices were used or material gained through dishonesty. I understand that plagiarism is a serious offence, and that should I contravene the Plagiarism Policy, notwithstanding signing this affidavit, I may be found guilty of a serious criminal offence (perjury). This would among other consequences compel the UJ to inform all other tertiary institutions of the offence and to issue a corresponding certificate of reprehensible academic conduct to whoever requests such a certificate from the institution.

Signed at ______on this ______day of ______20___.

Signature______

Print name______iii Acknowledgements

To my mother, Olga Khabonina Nxongo, and brother, Gift Nxongo, thank you for always believing in me and supporting me in my academic journey.

Thank you to my Supervisor, Dr Nafisa Essop Sheik, for agreeing to supervise me and for pushing me to reach heights I never imagined possible. Your constant guidance and feedback to my work has been invaluable. To my co-supervisor, Prof Natasha Erlank, for your encouragement and willingness to assist whenever I needed it. I thank both of you, and Stephen Sparks, for helping me secure funding for this project. And thanks to the Global Excellence Stature Scholarships for the much-needed funding.

I acknowledge the archivists at the William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, for helping me carry out my primary research. Special thanks to Zofia Sulej for the friendly and very efficient assistance you gave me.

And finally, to my peers, Phindi and Koena, thank you for the moral and emotional support. To Charmaine Hlongwane for being a source of inspiration. And to all my friends for reminding me to breathe when I needed it the most. You all made this journey enjoyable.

iv Abstract

This thesis explores the meaning and articulation of gender in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). This movement replaced the African National Congress (ANC) as the vanguard of the national liberation movement in 1968-1977. Studies of women’s roles in the national liberation movement have portrayed them mainly as auxiliary or significant ‘others.’ The ANC Women’s League and the Federation of South African Women have been used as a benchmark in analysing women’s resistance against Apartheid and have been regarded as the driving force behind the women’s liberation movement. However, the BCM provided an opportunity for women to participate in public politics as formal members. Women in the BCM not only redefined their identity as black people struggling against Apartheid, but also as black women living in oppressive patriarchal structures. This significantly challenged female domesticity and traditional gender norms in national politics. Women leaders in the BCM were given ‘honorary male’ status, which has undermined their agency in the formulation, implementation and practice of black consciousness philosophy. This thesis therefore investigates the articulations and meanings of gender in the BCM, how women struggled for gender equality within the movement and how this could have changed attitudes about masculinity and femininity within the BCM and the national liberation movement. The study explores the political experiences of women in the BCM using biographies and interviews, instead of focusing on organisational histories which tend to silence women’s voices. The study has found that women in the BCM asserted themselves as women in a seemingly masculinist environment, that the period between 1968-1977 was a crucial moment in which black women were empowered to actively oppose patriarchal norms which subordinated them in the national liberation movement.

v Table of Contents

Page number

CHAPTER 1...... 1 1.1. Introduction ...... 1 1.2. Literature Review ...... 4 1.2.1. Gender ‘struggles’ in the twentieth century...... 4 1.2.2. Women’s political resistance in the mid-20th century ...... 8 1.2.3. Gender and the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 10 1.3. The making of a Black Consciousness generation: Education and professionalism the 1950s and 1960s ...... 15 1.4. Chapter outline ...... 20

CHAPTER 2. BLACK WOMEN IN PROGRESSIVE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENTS IN THE 1970S...... 22 2.1. Black Consciousness ideas in ecumenical organisations ...... 22 2.1.1. White Liberalism and the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 27 2.2. Ecumenicalism and Black community development ...... 30 2.3. The Schlebusch investigation into the Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre ...... 34 2.3.1. Racial tensions at Wilgespruit ...... 36 2.3.2. The Domestic Worker’s Project Investigated ...... 37

CHAPTER 3. BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS WOMEN AND STUDENT ACTIVISM ...... 43 3.1. Politicisation in mission-schools ...... 43 3.2. Politicisation in Urban Secondary Schools ...... 47 3.2.1. FRELIMO & the Black Consciousness Movement...... 50 3.2.2. From Youth groups to a Political Movement in Soweto ...... 52 3.3. Political Activism in Higher Education Institutions ...... 56 3.3.1. From NUSAS to SASO; The birth of the Black Consciousness Movement in Natal ...... 57 3.3.2. Class consciousness among students in the BCM ...... 61

CHAPTER 4. GENDER IN THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT ...... 68 4.1. The discursive exclusion of women in Black Consciousness literature ...... 68 4.1.1. University Christian Movement and women’s liberation ...... 69 4.1.2. Gender and Black Theology ...... 71 4.1.3. The Women’s Group ...... 74 4.2. Gender equality in the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 77 4.2.1. Black Consciousness women and the making of a new black identity ...... 82 4.2.2. Romantic relationships in the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 86

CHAPTER 5. THE BLACK COMMUNITY PROGRAMMES (BCP’S) ...... 90 5.1. Zanempilo: Black Consciousness women leading community development programs ...... 92

vi 5.2. Black Review: Black Consciousness women producing BCP literature ...... 99

CHAPTER 6. TOWARDS A WOMEN’S BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS ORGANISATION . 102 6.1. The Black Women’s Federation (BWF) ...... 102 6.1.1. FEDSAW women in the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 102 6.1.2. Fatima Meer in the BCM: The Black Renaissance Convention ...... 104 6.1.3. Formation of the BWF ...... 105

CHAPTER 7. STATE REPRESSION OF THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT ...... 109 7.1. Arrest, Trial and Detention of Black Consciousness Movement women leaders ...... 109 7.1.1. The 1976 Soweto Student Uprising ...... 111 7.1.2. Young girls arrested in Soweto, 1976...... 113 7.1.3. The role of Winnie Mandela in the Soweto Uprising ...... 115 7.1.4. Black Consciousness women leaders in detention...... 117 7.1.5. Gendered torture in Apartheid prisons ...... 121 7.1.6. Banishment ...... 124 7.2. Martyrs and Widows in the Black Consciousness Movement ...... 127

CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION ...... 132

1 Chapter 1.

1.1. Introduction

The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) emerged in South Africa against the Apartheid state in the late 1960s. It was based on a psychologically liberating philosophy of Black Consciousness (BC) which was coined by Steve Bantu Biko. According to Biko, the black man had allowed the Apartheid system to strip his manhood away, therefore, he had to embark on an inward-looking journey where he is reminded of “his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”1 In this way he could begin to recognise his self-worth and develop self-reliance.2 The BCM was built on the ideal of black solidarity as race was identified to be the primary oppressive force. Therefore, gender, class and sexual oppression were not part of its discourse.3

The African National Congress (ANC), as the vanguard of the anti-Apartheid movement throughout the first half of the twentieth century, was masculinist.4 Its leadership was hostile to women’s formal membership and participation because it adopted a British model of patriarchy and female domesticity. Women became part of the ANC as auxiliary members until 1943 when the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) was formed. The Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) was formed in alliance with the ANCWL in 1954 and became an umbrella organisation that would mobilise and represent women against Apartheid. The ANCWL and FEDSAW operated within the framework of the ANC, an organisation which held on to patriarchal norms which subordinated women.5 Women used their maternal role to legitimize their public activism in this patriarchal context, but this did not constrain their political imagination, nor did it limit their struggles for equality. This was seen in the historic Women’s march to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest the extension of passes. When the ANC was banned by the Apartheid government in 1961, the ANCWL and FEDSAW suffered along with it. This created a leadership ‘vacuum’ in the national liberation movement which was filled by the BCM throughout the mid-twentieth century.

1 Steve Biko, “We Blacks,” SASO Newsletter, September 1970, 16, Digital Innovation South Africa. 2 C.D.T Sibisi, “The Psychology of Liberation,” in Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko & Black Consciousness, ed. Barney Piyana et al. (Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, n.d.), 134. 3 Pumla Dineo Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement,” Meridians 2, no. 1 (2001): 136. 4 Natasha Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” Feminist Studies, Inc. 29, no. 3, Women in Democratic South Africa (Autumn 2003): 655. 5 Shireen Hassim, The ANC Women’s League: A Jacana Pocket History (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2014), 36.

2 Women became formal members and leaders in BC organisations from its inception. Winifred Kgware was elected as the first president of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), Maphiri Daphne Masekela played a significant role in advancing BC ideals as a worker in the ecumenical Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre (WFC), Thenjiwe Mtintso, Thoko Mbanjwa and Asha Rambally were key producers of BC literature, Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Mamphela Ramphele, Deborah Matshoba and Oshadi Mangena were leaders of the South African Students Organisation (SASO) and Sibongile Mkhabela in the South African Students Movement (SASM) which led the Soweto student uprising in 1976. All these women participated in the movement not only as political leaders, but as professionals of high regard. They spent their time working alongside the male leaders in planning, implementing and writing about BCM projects which were mostly beneficial to black women in townships and rural areas.6

The life histories of the women in this study show that the BCM was not isolated from other political trends of the era. Instead, BC activists engaged extensively with, and used resources from various organisations to advance their political outlook. The various spaces in which these women formulated and exchanged political ideas highlights important dimensions to the liberation movement in South Africa. Women such as Winnie Madikizela Mandela of the ANC, Fatima Meer who was part of the ANC and FEDSAW and Ellen Kuzwayo of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) contributed to the BC era in meaningful ways. Their connections further lie in the friendships and political relationships they formed with each other and with BC women. BC women were involved with other liberal, multiracial organisations as professionals. Furthermore, some BCM women activists went on to join the ANC’s armed struggle immediately after the 1976 uprising. This thesis explores these spaces, the ways in which their lives intersected, and how their actions contributed to the BCM.

This dissertation therefore investigates the different articulations and meanings of gender in the BCM. It assesses how the BCM could be considered to have been an ideal platform for black women to challenge the ideals of modern domesticity. Furthermore, it attempts to account for how the specific political and social context of the time may have created complex gender relations that could not exist elsewhere. How attitudes of masculinity and femininity which were held by BCM activists (male and female) shaped gender relations. More importantly, it analyses the impact of the philosophy on how black women identified themselves as a gender and racial group in Apartheid South Africa. Therefore,

6 Leslie Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2016), 7–8.

3 the study narrates a gender history of the liberation movement in the mid-twentieth century through the lives and experiences of women leaders if the BCM.

This dissertation will seek to answer the following questions: What was the place of gender within student politics and the broader Liberation movement during the 1960’s and 1970’s? Did the political context of the time change traditional gender roles? And how was this articulated in the treatment of women leaders within the BCM? What did the philosophy of Black Consciousness mean to the men and women who were actively engaged in it? What influenced women’s manifestation of Black Consciousness? What were they reading, what social events did they go to? How did they distinguish themselves as men and women from others? How did the women act as agents in the definition of their identity in the movement?

There is a wide range of primary and secondary material on the BCM, however, little has been written about gender politics within the movement. Moreover, the voices of women remain absent from the narrative. Therefore, this study extensively uses the life histories of the women gathered through a range of material from the archives in the William Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as their memoirs and autobiographies. Most of the material used was part of the Karis-Gerhart collection, which was assembled in the 1980s and 1990s for the writing of From Protest to Challenge: A documentary History of African Politics in South Africa. Interviews from the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) Oral History Project, initiated in 2006 by the Southern Africa Legal Services Foundation (SALS) were also used. I am aware of the methodological limits of life narratives. Memoirs may be limiting in the presentation and accuracy of historical events, however, they are extremely important in providing new perspectives and revealing the meaning of these events to the women.7 Given their political and professional calibre, the oral accounts may be influenced by subsequent experiences and their collective memory.8 Therefore, in analysing these different sets of data, I apply both external and internal historical source criticism, paying careful attention to authenticity, reliability, possible ideological influences, the role of bias, unwitting evidence and the different contexts in which they are produced.9

7 John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 5th ed. (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2010), 95. 8 Tosh, 320. 9 Tosh, 122–38.

4 1.2. Literature Review

1.2.1. Gender ‘struggles’ in the twentieth century

In Women and Gender in South African to 1945, Cherryl Walker broadly categorised patriarchy in South Africa into two main forms, indigenous and settler sex-gender systems.10 Here she argued that some “ideological currents from the indigenous sex-gender system continued to flow through African society in complex ways” even as capitalism continued to transform the political and economic landscape of South Africa.11 Belinda Bozzoli expanded this idea by outlining the ‘patchwork quilt of patriarchies’, where different forms of patriarchy in South Africa have either remained the same, changed, or have been strengthened in various moments as they encountered capitalism.12 It is important to explore each of these sex-gender systems to understand how women have either been oppressed or liberated by them.

In Gender Oppression in Southern Africa’s Precapitalist Societies, Jeff Guy analysed sex-gender systems of pre-colonial African societies in Southern Africa. He has shown how the economic systems were driven by the accumulation of labour through marriage and biological reproduction.13 Cattle was the most valuable property and the means through which a wife could be acquired to fulfil domestic labour and reproductive needs. Marriage gave families access to kin networks and an opportunity to advance patrilineal lines.14 Women did not own land or cattle because they were the means of exchange through which men could obtain power, 15 albeit a few cases did exist in which a woman could possess cattle, assume the ‘male’ role of using it to ‘marry’ girls into her family and use her male kin to produce offspring.16 Furthermore, women enjoyed significant social authority as bearers of fertility; they controlled how produce was used and often worked within a community structure that offered great social security.17 In the event that a woman was abused, not well provide

10 Cherryl Walker, ed., Women and Gender in South Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, 1990), 1. 11 Walker, 2. 12 Belinda Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” Journal of Southern African Studies 9, no. 2 (April 1983): 149. 13 Jeff Guy, “Gender Oppression in Southern Africa’s Precapitalist Societies,” in Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, ed. Cherryl Walker (Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, 1990), 41. 14 Simons, African Women, Their Legal Status in South Africa, 89. 15 Jeff Guy, “Analysing Pre-Capitalist Societies in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1987): 40. 16 Simons, African Women, Their Legal Status in South Africa, 92. 17 Guy, “Gender Oppression in Southern Africa’s Precapitalist Societies,” 41.

5 for, or her husband committed adultery, she could return to her family and he would be penalised when claiming his lobola back.18

The gendered division of labour which essentially subordinated women was an area of convergence between indigenous and settler sex-gender systems. As Belinda Bozzoli argued in Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies, imperialists came from a world which was similarly ‘male centred’, and roles were separated between men (production/war) and women (reproduction/family). Thus, it was the African man who would ‘naturally’ become proletarianized as the capitalist economy took shape.19 The elite Africans referred to as Amarespectables achieved their status by successfully creating nuclear families with European domestic values and public displays of European demeanour.20 Women bore the responsibility of performing their maternal roles in the private sphere well enough to empower their husband’s ability to become respectable in the public sphere. Education ensured that she could sustain a home and compliment the husbands’ morality. Images of a fervent, chaste, well-mannered, disciplined, non-indulgent woman were thus created by Christian men in the media and in nationalist politics.21 Women were expected to be the most devoted of Christian converts which gave them a degree of authority in the spiritual realm of ‘public healing’.22

In Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912-1950, Natasha Erlank demonstrated how South African politics were male dominated during that time because of the shared notions of female domesticity by both British and African men. The British believed that politics were the responsibility of men because they were capable of reasoning. The loss of the franchise was a concern for African men because it implied that they could not reason as adults.23 It was important for the middle-class African man who aspired to western-style family life to maintain gender differences and re-establish political fraternity with white middle-class men.24 Women who were independent and engaged in the public sphere were a threat to modern family life.25 Charlotte Maxeke, who formed the Bantu Women’s League in 1913, was a modern African woman who

18 Hinson Shope, “’Lobola Is Here to Stay’: Rural Black Women and the Contradictory Meanings of Lobola in Post- Apartheid South Africa,” 68. 19 Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” 158. 20 Meghan Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (London: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 91. 21 Healy-Clancy, 95. 22 Meghan Healy-Clancy, “The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women’s Antiracist Activism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42, no. 4 (2017): 849. 23 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” 654. 24 Erlank, 661. 25 Erlank, 656.

6 embraced the virtues of a Christianity and European notions of domesticity.26 Women became auxiliary members of the elitist South African Natives National Congress (SANNC). They performed domestic duties such as catering and organising entertainment for meetings and conferences. Therefore, the SANNC perpetuated gendered norms which subordinated women.27

When African men ventured to the city as migrant labourers, the pre-capitalist economy became unsustainable. African women subsequently needed to migrate to the cities and become proletarianized. This was to the benefit of white middle-class women whom, although still subordinate to their men, could now monitor domestic labour instead of performing it. 28 According to Bozzoli, the ‘cushioning’ (not having to labour in the home or the outside market) subjected white middle-class women to the worst forms of nuclear domestic oppression. Their protests over this system of patriarchy had been bought off, leaving philanthropic work as their main outlet.29 Working class white women- mainly Afrikaner- dominated in industries outside mining, and did not have to compete with African women for jobs. Even if they did end up in the factories, African women went into the least paying sections.30 Traditional gender roles persisted in the urban areas even as women had to take on the additional role of working to supplement their husbands’ lower wages.31

Feminist scholars have explored how the migrant labour system continued to oppress or may have liberated women in the early twentieth century. Cherryl Walker argued that the migrant labour system may have offered women more autonomy as individuals but in turn undermined the security women enjoyed in precolonial societies. Furthermore, the absence of women as primary producers in rural homesteads severely destabilized rural autonomy which added to the labelling of urban women as immoral and irresponsible.32 In Women of Phokeng, Belinda Bozzoli stressed the importance of women’s agency in the migrant labour system. She argued that women chose to migrate to the city as a strategy to escape traditional patriarchal structures albeit they did so within the confines of patriarchal structures of capitalism and Christianity.33 Bozzoli has also argued that the proletarianization of women led to many urban families becoming matrifocal. This was a dimension

26 Healy-Clancy, “The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women’s Antiracist Activism,” 852. 27 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” 656. 28 Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” 159. 29 Bozzoli, 161. 30 Bozzoli, 162 & 164. 31 Bernstein, For Their Triumphs & for Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa, 9. 32 Cherryl Walker, “Gender and the Development of the Migrant Labour System c. 1850-1930: An Overview,” in Women and Gender in SOuthern Africa to 1945, ed. Cherryl Walker (Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, 1990), 179. 33 Belinda Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1991), 81.

7 of ‘domestic struggle’ and demonstrated women’s capacity to be independent in a capitalist system. Life strategy in the city was of paramount importance as they had to operate within both rural and colonial structures of patriarchy to carve out individual autonomy. Women became household managers by the 1930’s, while many who got married chose to be submissive to their husbands and to be seen to uphold ‘traditional’ female domesticity to secure economic gains from the marriage.34

As shown by Deborah Gaitskell, many black women carried the responsibly of rearing and caring for children in the urban household and society, displaying devout Christianity was one strategy they used to carry out this role effectively. Church groups such as Manyanos, where women met every week mainly for joint prayer sessions, to learn domestic skills and share in the challenge of raising their daughters were significant.35 Contrary to rural pre-capitalist societies where children were raised by a community, the Victorian household in the city assigned the responsibility to women. City women bore the burden of ensuring that they raise chaste adolescent girls.36 In the past, grandmothers and peer groups were solely responsible for sex education of adolescents and society accepted that this stage necessitated non-penetrative sexual practices.37 Christian ideals of chastity deemed traditional sexualisation practices in pre-colonial society’s heathen, leaving nothing else but complete abstinence until marriage. Christian mothers were thus unable to teach young daughters about sex, creating a generational silence. This silence left young girls aware of the conflict between their sexual desires and expectations from society to suppress it until marriage if they wished to retain their respectability.38

Women’s presence in the city raised concerns among both African patriarchs and colonial administrators. The primary role of women was home-maker and not worker, and their presence in the city defeated the purpose of keeping the urban migrant at the status of ‘temporary sojourner’.39 Women worked in the informal sector as domestic workers, beer brewers, and prostitutes.40 The state began training black women to work as teachers, nurses and social workers in the 1930s and 1940s as a way of removing the responsibility of providing core social services to the black urban

34 Mamphela Ramphele, A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town (Cape Town: David Phillip Publishers, 1993), 76. 35 Beverly Haddad, “The Manyano Movement in South Africa: Site of Struggle, Survival, and Resistance,” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, no. 61 (2004): 5. 36 Deborah Gaitskell, “Housewives, Maids or Mothers: Some Condtradictions of Domesticity for Christian Women in Johannesburg, 1903-39,” The Journal of African History 24, no. 2 (1983): 249. 37 Deborah Gaitskell, “‘Wailing for Purity’: Prayer Unions, African Mpthers and Adolescent Daughters 1912-1940,” in Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Ulture and Cosciousness 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), 340. 38 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 107. 39 Simons, African Women, Their Legal Status in South Africa, 281. 40 Delius and Glaser, “Sexual Socialisation in South Africa: A Historical Perspective,” 40.

8 population.41 Being a nurse or teacher elevated the social status of African women, 42 and male nationalist leaders saw these professions as an extension of women’s role in the home, which promoted racial uplift.43 However, some blamed the loss of morality among city women on education and were particularly scornful of single women who worked in these professions.44

The imposition of restrictive laws on women by the Apartheid state and the creation of Bantustans relegated women into extreme poverty and made it more difficult for them to change their subordination in the home.45 Before 1930, wives or daughters of men who resided in the city for two years or more could inhabit the city as the man could now claim a normal family life. By 1937 they were required to have approval certificates subject to availability of accommodation. Serious restriction to women’s entry to the city came with the passing of Section 10 of the Urban Areas Act which prohibited residence by an African considered ‘Idle or Undesirable’.46

The migrant labour system therefore made it possible for women to navigate their way out of rural domestication. Christianity and mission schooling provided an avenue for them to escape the rural patriarchal home but introduced them to a modern patriarchy in the urban areas. Mission-education was further steered towards female domesticity, while colonial laws ensured that women remain under male control in the city. As power was transferred from rural chief to colonial administrator, the subordination of women remained central to the exercise of power.

1.2.2. Women’s political resistance in the mid-20th century

Patriarchy in capitalist South Africa has varied, and so has women’s awareness of and resistance against it in various political, social and economic spaces. As Bozzoli has outlined, ‘female consciousness’ in South Africa has been characterised by three main forms of activism; philanthropy and liberalism by white middle-class women, socialism by white working women and populist nationalism by black women.47 This means that women’s experiences of patriarchy and the avenues they sought to empower themselves were different because their experience of oppression varied. The impact of gender oppression between black and white women has been the primary reason why a

41 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 88. 42 Healy-Clancy, 101. 43 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” 659. 44 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 96. 45 Bernstein, For Their Triumphs & for Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa, 11. 46 Simons, African Women, Their Legal Status in South Africa, 282. 47 Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” 167.

9 single women’s movement against one patriarchal form cannot exist.48 Therefore, instead of insisting on unchallengeable ‘structures’ in trying to account for women’s oppression, historians should base their analyses on ‘struggle’- first in the domestic sphere, and then between the domestic and capitalist sphere.49

The heterogenous nature of feminism and feminist organisation in South Africa is explained further by Shireen Hassim in Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority. Hassim explains how the meaning of being a woman varies according to social and cultural contexts and how women have mobilised as workers, students, Africans or whites.50 She adds that study of women’s mobilisation across racial and class lines cannot be concerned only with struggle against western models of patriarchy. In South Africa, western and indigenous forms can exist separately or together. How women perceive themselves to be oppressed, and how they struggle to change that oppression should be the point of analyses.51 Therefore, it is possible for a women’s movement to emerge as a loose network which may either be assimilative, confrontational or violent in its mobilisation.52 Hassim further shows how there can be ‘tipping’ points in these loose networks where a single women’s movement emerges, and the distinct groups can co-operative for a broader political goal. The women’s march against pass laws in 1956 is an example of a tipping point in the South African women’s movement.53

Cherryl Walker’s Women and Resistance in South Africa is a pioneering in-depth study of FEDSAW. This organisation represented the concerns of women of all races in South Africa under Apartheid. Important and rightly acknowledged by Walker is that FEDSAW was more of a liberation movement against Apartheid rather than a Feminist movement. She notes that women’s resistance against male domination was hardly considered political, instead it was ‘private and riddled with ambiguity’.54 Importantly, Walker highlights that the need for racial liberation was more pressing than gender equality.55

48 Walker, Women and Gender in South Africa to 1945, 2; Bernstein, For Their Triumphs & for Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa, 7. 49 Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” 144. 50 Shireen Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (London: The University of Wisconsin, 2006), 4. 51 Hassim, 5. 52 Hassim, 5. 53 Hassim, 8. 54 Cherryl Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, Second (Johannesburg: David Phillip, 1991), xiv. 55 Walker, 7.

10 The anti-pass campaign became a priority for FEDSAW because it concerned the majority of the women in South Africa. The campaign, Walker notes, led to the blurring of the boundaries set for women in the ANC.56 Even after the triumphant march she notes, the conservative notion that women should occupy subordinate positions in the national liberation movement were held by many in the ANC.57 Walker further challenged the assumption that women’s participation in the march was to defend their roles as mothers.58 She argued that it is a Eurocentric interpretation which assumes that all women involved in the march had taken on the western model of ‘the family’, and disregarded the class, marital, occupational, religious and contextual differences. She also mentioned the increasing female-headed households that emerged since the 1940s with the advent of urbanisation as an aspect which complicates this narrative.59 She argued that an analysis of the very concepts of ‘motherhood’ and ‘family’- particularly what it meant for women who participated in the march is necessary to fully grasp their contribution.60 Walker contended that patriarchal ideology not only limited women’s full participation, but also conditioned the women to defend their roles a ‘mother’ and ‘wife’. She added that the women’s preoccupation with the anti-pass campaign led to less mobilisation against their subordination as women. Nonetheless, their political actions in the 1950s had a radicalising effect for women, which made them rethink their position in society.61

1.2.3. Gender and the Black Consciousness Movement

Daniel Magaziner has provided a comprehensive history of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in his book, The Law and the Prophets. The book makes an important contribution to the scholarship because it removes the BCM from the broader national liberation movement narrative by providing an analysis of an important moment of intellectual production in African history.62 He asserted that the BCM was an intellectual project before it was a movement and that BCM activists were much more concerned with the restoration of black identity within the oppressive Apartheid context than they were about attaining democracy.63 This is important because it is with the specific moments in which BC philosophy was developed, debated and practiced that my study is concerned. A second aspect, being the vital role of the ecumenical Christian movement in the BCM is analysed

56 Walker, 190. 57 Walker, 196. 58 Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, xx. 59 Walker, xxi. 60 Cherryl Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, Second (Johannesburg: David Phillip, 1991), xxi. 61 Walker, 264–65. 62 Daniel Magaziner R, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 5, ProQuest Ebook Central. 63 Magaziner, 6.

11 by Magaziner. As he has shown in Pieces of (Wo)man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968-1977, Christian organisations prioritised the women’s question and exposed BCM activists to it. It is important, therefore, to investigate why and how both male and female BCM activists came to reject the women’s liberation movement even as they were directly exposed to it.

Ian Macqueen’s doctoral thesis, Re-imagining South Africa: Black Consciousness, Radical Christianity and the New Left, 1967-1977 placed the BCM within the context of progressive politics in South Africa. He showed how BCM activists were engaged in a wide range of ideological debates and discourses through the 1960s. He argued that the BCM won the favour of radical Christians but failed to appeal to feminists and New Left white activists. He also emphasised the importance of the ecumenical movement in the BCM. Macqueen argued that BCM activists chose to distance themselves from women’s liberation, and by so doing failed to transcend conventional gender discourse of the broader national liberation movement.64 He also made the important observation that BCM women leaders also rejected the women’s liberation movement. Moreover, they embraced domesticity albeit challenging traditional gender roles within the movement.65 In a chapter to his recent book, Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid, he argues that BCM women “adopted their own form of empowerment” and “laid claim to the same psychological liberation as the ‘black man’.”66 He further notes that women particularly benefitted from the BC rhetoric as they changed their dress and behaviour to reflect their ‘consciousness’ as black adults.67 The newly formed BC identity, according to Macqueen, cannot be confused with the Western feminism which was rejected in the BCM.68

The BCM had a masculinized discourse which silenced the participation of black women. However, a closer look into the role’s women played, and gender relations within the movement shows that women were neither silent nor passive. Some BCM activists have argued that the masculinized discourse was a result of the use the English language, where the ‘generic male’ included both male and female.69 Others have argued that Biko was “a product of his time” where women were

64 Ian Martin Macqueen, “Re-Imagining South Africa: Black Consciousness, Radical Christianity and the New Left, 1967 – 1977” (doctoral, University of Sussex, 2011), 76, http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/7348/. 65 Macqueen, 91. 66 Ian Macqueen, Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid (Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2018), 139. 67 Macqueen, 148. 68 Macqueen, 158. 69 Oshadi Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” in Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko, ed. Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C Gibson (USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 258.

12 acknowledged as secondary citizens.70 In Pieces of Women, Daniel Magaziner wrote against this narrative, arguing that women’s exclusion was not a historical incident. Rather, it demonstrated a careful choosing of words and concerns which revealed “conscious silences and stressed syllables of this past.”71 He cited an article which appeared in the SASO newsletter, The Chemical Analysis of a Woman, as a sexist satire against women. According to Magaziner, the article was ‘a momentary lapse into old tropes’ of gendered discrimination used in older nationalist organisations in South Africa.72 Pumla Gqola made a similar argument and added that BC discourse did not just silence women, it silenced the differences in class, age, geographical location and sexual orientation within the black community for the benefit of racial solidarity.73

Scholars have argued that the BCM adopted similar gender models to the ANC without analysing the practice of gender within the BCM. As Oshadi Mangena has argued, gender “was absent from the minds but not activities of the members” of the BCM.74 Being a BCM activist herself, she wrote that their conduct “manifested a tacit and, perhaps, inadvertent understanding of gender”.75 This observation is appropriate considering the intimate relationship the South African Students Organisation (SASO) had with the University Christian Movement (UCM). Magaziner has shown how the UCM exposed BCM activists to ideas of gender equality before SASO was formed. Steve Biko and Barney Pityana participated in the many seminars and conferences of the UCM, one of which being a day-long conference about gender and theology in 1971.76 The prioritizing of gender divided the two organisations as BCM activists chose to address racial oppression over all other forms within black society. This did not mean that women were excluded in the same way they had been excluded in the ANC. As argued by Macqueen, the ‘spaces’ in which the ANC and BCM operated were different. The BCM emerged within the context of Apartheid, and focused on “grassroots mobilisation, ‘conscientisation’ and community development” which then allowed for individuals to grow and have different ideas and opinions. Thus, the ‘micro-politics’ of the BCM should be analysed closely for us to understand how women contributed within the movement.77

The BCM did not exclude women from its activities because its philosophy was based on an internal redefinition of one’s identity as a black person. The period 1968-1972 involved critical self-

70 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 34. 71 Daniel Magaziner R, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 1 (2011): 48. 72 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 34. 73 Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement,” 136. 74 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 256. 75 Mangena, 259. 76 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 51. 77 Macqueen, “Re-Imagining South Africa,” 82.

13 exploration, identity formation and thinking by BCM activists about their existence as a racial group in the Apartheid context. The BC slogan ‘Black man, you are on your own’, captured an inward- looking process where a black man needed to recognise how he has allowed the Apartheid regime to make him feel inferior and emphasised accountability, self-respect and confidence to overcome this.78 This was more about the assertion of one’s maturity against a state which had rendered black men young boys. The term Black was redefined, to include all non-white racial groups discriminated against under Apartheid. It was no longer a question of skin pigmentation, but about common experiences and the need to unite and overcome an oppressive system.79 Identity formation within the BCM, which was to be proud of who you are as a black person, was seen in how women wore their natural hair and their rejection of skin lighteners.80 Gender, as a social construct, could therefore be changed and challenged through the daily power relations between men and women.81 Women participated in the BCM both as black people and as women who were redefining themselves in both respects.

Masculinity within the BCM was different to that of the urban non-schooling youth of the 1960s. The masculinity which emerged in the townships, as Robert Morrell has shown, was characterised by street violence and control. Non-schooling youth in the urban areas were likely to be part of gangs and were drawn to violent activities against one another, and against women. Urban gangs called Tsotsis drew inspiration from Hollywood gangs and engaged in criminal activities for material gain and extravagant displays of ‘wealth’ in the street. This was a form of resistance against the state, women and the elders. Women were strictly excluded from this culture as their domain was in the home.82 This was different to the masculinity displayed by BCM activists mainly because the BCM was a student’s movement which functioned within the confines of higher education institutions in its first couple of years. Therefore, they did not have to face the daily realities of the townships. Moreover, many grew up in Christian and relatively middle-class families as they qualified to enrol in the medical school.

BCM women chose not to join the broader women’s liberation movement but indirectly used their platform in the BCM to advance feminist ideals. Their enactment as strong, outspoken and articulate black women landed them the title of ‘honorary men’, both within the movement and in the

78 Daniel Magaziner R, “‘Black Man, You Are on Your Own!’: Making Race Consciousness in South African Thought, 1968-1972,” The International Journal Of African Historical Studies 42, no. 2 (2009): 223. 79 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 254. 80 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 47. 81 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 255. 82 Robert Morrell, “Of Boys and Men: Masculinity and Gender in South Southern African Studies,” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 4 (1998): 627.

14 scholarship.83 This label takes away from the fact they were women, who identified themselves as women during that time. Calling them ‘honorary men’ suggests that only men could be as assertive and articulate in mainstream politics. It further limits our understanding of a critical period (1968- 1977) wherein BCM women challenged and shaped feminist thinking as they struggled against racial domination in South Africa. As argued by Magaziner, because identity was continuously created, tested, contested and practiced within the BCM, “the pieces that made up man and that made up woman were tools, lying ready to be animated towards a desired political end.”84 It was women who manipulated their own identity within the movement to achieve the political ends which they envisaged, they participated in a ‘male struggle’ as women. BC women did not to disregard their womanhood, they defined and asserted themselves as women in the movement, and their specific experiences of the movement were because they were women. Their struggle for gender equality within the movement ran parallel to their struggle for black liberation against Apartheid.

83 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 48. 84 Magaziner, 49.

15 1.3. The making of a Black Consciousness generation: Education and professionalism the 1950s and 1960s

The 1950s and 1960s saw important changes in the South African education system took place. These changes created opportunities for women to become professionals. They were coupled with increasing political repression, which ultimately led to the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960. The women in this study, as university students and professional workers, where directly affected by these changes, they were the product of the Apartheid system in its height. The unintended result of these changes was a more militant participation in politics by women and the youth, which gave rise to the BCM.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was an attempt by the National Party (NP) government to curb political activity and juvenile delinquency in the urban areas. In addition, the demand for semi-skilled labour required a higher level of education for black workers.85 Previously, mission schools were the primary source of education but we unable to exercise social control over the African youth. The mission schools experienced high dropout rates and saw increasing political unrest from students due to a lack of resources and growing nationalist militancy.86Bantu education further diminished the quality of mission education and almost completely wiped it out by the end of the 1960s.87 The number of African students in state schools doubled from one to two million between 1955-1965.88 Bantu Education further sought to ‘retribalize’ Africans in line with the Apartheid governments’ theory of separate development.89 The education of Africans could therefore be developed in order for them to advance in their homelands.90 Revised syllabi was thus aimed at teaching ‘African values’ which would make them good workers or servants, reconnect them to rural culture and make them accept their position as an inferior race.91

The NP’s insistence on a four-year schooling career for the urban youth created several limitations to the system. The government succeeded in placing most children in primary school, which was enough for them to join the labour market. However, industry’s need for technicians and clerical workers

85 Jonathan Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940-1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999), 5. 86 Hyslop, 11. 87 Willem Saaymaan, “‘Who owns the schools will own Africa’ Christian Mission, Education and Culture in Africa,” Journal for the Study of Religion 4, no. 2 (September 1991): 29. 88 Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940-1990, 54. 89 Saaymaan, 40. 90 Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940-1990, 59. 91 Rowena Martineau, “Women and Education in South Africa: Factors Influencing Women’s Educational Progress and Their Entry into Traditionally Male-Dominated Fields,” Journal of Negro Education 66, no. 4 (1997): 385.

16 increased, and the government fell short of secondary schools. The number of secondary school students was considerably low as compared to primary school, those who completed matric was even lower.92 Consequently, secondary schools were overcrowded and under-resourced. This created resentment from students and teachers, which further raised their political consciousness.93 The result of this was seen in the Soweto uprising in 1976, which was led by high school students who were mostly affiliated to the BCM.

Bantu Education was as much a gendered as it was a racially differentiated project. As the NP sought to increase the number of primary schools, it sought to gear young women towards the more ‘domestic’ occupation of teaching.94 The recruitment of women into teaching was also more financially viable for the NP, as women could be paid less than men. Moreover, more men were drawn into the industrial sector with the growth of monopoly capitalism after the Second World War. Teaching domestic subjects and skills to young girls is an important area of continuity from mission to Bantu education. The missionaries aimed to enhance women’s roles in the private household by teaching domestic skills, while Bantu education extended women’s domesticity into the public sphere.

The training of teachers was also gendered, following Christian principles and values. Mission schools which seemed to offer a higher quality education, such as Bethesda in the Northern Transvaal, were to be replaced by state-run teacher training institutions.95 Bantustan authorities were given some autonomy over the schools. However, many adopted European approaches to education and schooling which included patriarchal views on education for girls. The education received by teachers was inferior as most of the recruits came from poor socio-economic backgrounds. Gendered division of labour in schools was entrenched, furthermore, girls were socialised into choosing subjects such as home economics, which were related to their domestic responsibilities.96 This created a 'double handicap', as Hilda Bernstein called it; wherein women became subordinated the European ideas of

92 Jonathan Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940-1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999), 115. 93 Hyslop, 116. 94 Mahlase Shirley Motleke, The Careers of Women Teachers Under Apartheid (Harare: Sapes Books, 1997), 56. 95 Shirley Motleke, 57-58. 96 Robert Morrell and Relebohile Moletsane, “Inequality and Fear: Learning and Working Inside Bantu Education Schools,” in The History of Education Under Apartheid 1948-1994: The Doors Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened, ed. Peter Kallaway (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), 232.

17 domesticity brought by colonists and by the system of 'Bantu Education in which blacks were denied quality education. 97

The teaching and nursing professions elevated black women’s social status, however, they were largely absent from courses such as law, architecture and engineering which were much more lucrative and prestigious.98 The most viable option was to acquire a Junior Certificate (JC) - which is equivalent to Grade 11- and register for a nursing or teaching diploma. These professions were sanctioned by male nationalist leaders who saw them as an extension of women’s role in the home.99 However, there were some who blamed the lack of ‘morals’ city women displayed to their education and were particularly scornful of single women who worked in these professions.100

Despite the states intention to confine women into domestic jobs, the increasing demands from industry, and the political ethos growing in schools gave rise to a generation of professional black women who challenged patriarchal norms. In one of the few remaining mission schools, the Inanda Seminary for girls in Natal, black women were empowered to occupying ‘male professions.’101 Political leaders such as Barbara Masekela, cousin to Maphiri Masekela became Inanda Seminary’s first black Head Teacher in 1966. She used the platform as a way of advancing the political agenda of the ANC. She is one of the few who refused to attend Apartheid universities and instead joined political activism in exile.102 Masekela, who was trained as a social worker, used her role as a professional black worker to address racial issues in the work place. She was representative of the BCM and the role women played in the movement.

The number of Africans enrolled in higher education institutions was even lower with black women having least access to vocational education and training than men.103 Very few girls made it to tertiary level schooling, while the majority continued to the teaching, nursing and social working training courses.104 Black Universities were divided along ethnic lines- expected to supply the Bantustans and

97 Jenni Karlsson, “Looking at Apartheid School Spaces,” in The History of Education Under Apartheid 1948-1994: The Doors Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened, ed. Peter Kallaway (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), 344. 98 Martineau, “Women and Education in South Africa: Factors Influencing Women’s Educational Progress and Their Entry into Traditionally Male-Dominated Fields,” 388. 99 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” 659. 100 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 96. 101 Healy-Clancy, 151. 102 Healy-Clancy, 150. 103 Bernstein, For Their Triumphs & for Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa, 77. 104 Elaine Unterhalter, “The Impact of Apartheid on Women’s Education in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy, no. 48, The Politics of Education and Cultural Production (1990): 69.

18 townships with skilled professionals who would work to 'develop' and 'advance' their own ethnic groups.105

Economic growth of the 1960s contributed to the silencing of black political opposition against the Apartheid government because it created an illusion of racial upliftment.106 The silencing was also a result of the increasing political repression against resistance which was characterised by severe punishment by the state. The NP aimed serve Afrikaner social, political and economic interests through large-scale restructuring of the economy; which ultimately created the division of the races into separate nations. However, the Apartheid government could not afford to compromise white voter support by completely adhering to the needs of the industry.107 Therefore, the NP had to tighten the control of black people’s mobility into white economic, political and social spaces while still exploiting their labour for the benefit of the white minority.

Political activism in higher-education institutions was slowly brewing against the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. The Act gave the minister of Bantu Education authority, management and control of black Universities, this further entailed using his discretion in deciding the number of students to enrol for certain courses and whether to admit certain students.108 Despite opposition from the previously racially open University of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand in The Open Universities in South Africa document, the United Party and native representatives, the staff and students at the black University Fort Hare based on the principals of academic freedom, the Act was passed in 1959.109 The Open Universities continued to speak and act against the new legislation ten years into its implementation, by holding public lectures on academic freedom and mass protests which led to violence with the police.

The segregation of Universities took full effect by the end of the 1960s. English language Universities included Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Natal and Rhodes. Afrikaans Universities included Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Potchefstroom and Orange Free State. Fort Hare was declared a university for Xhosa- speaking blacks in what was called the University College of Fort Hare Transfer Act 64 of 1959. Turfloop was reserved for Sotho and Tsonga groups, as well as students from Namibia, Malawi and Zimbabwe while the University College of Zululand designated for Zulu speaking black students.

105 Saleem Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990 (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1999), 53. 106 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 22. 107 Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990, 63–66. 108 Abram L Mawasha, “Turfloop: Where an Idea Was Expressed, Hijacked and Redeemed,” ed. Mokubung Nkomo, Derrick Swartz, and Botshabelo Maja (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2006), 67, www.hsrcpress.ac.za. 109 Vorster and Bozzoli, “Academic Freedom in South Africa: The Open Universities in South Africa and Academic Freedom 1957-1974,” 435.

19 There was stronger emphasis on ethnic separation in the so called 'bush colleges'.110 As argued by Vanessa Noble argued, students had not witnessed the repression of the state in the 1950s as they had a decade later. They also became frustrated by the apparent acceptance by their parents of black oppression in South Africa. They did not fear the state enough not to oppose it. They did however believe that education was the only way to get them out of poverty. Therefore, black students gathered to read, think and discuss issues affecting their society, making universities "fertile breeding grounds for the expression of student opposition to apartheid inequalities."111

The state directly controlled all black universities except the Natal Medical School where the BCM developed.112 The Durban medical campus kept some of the country’s best black educated students. It was not state-controlled, albeit it was partially state-funded. It held on to a relatively more liberal approach and upper-level managers actively limited governments probing into daily operations- and made concerted efforts to keep police out the premises to protect their student’s environment. They also turned a blind eye on anti-Apartheid protests if no direct threat towards the University was posed. Medical students were 'high achievers' by nature, which gave them an extra confidence boost and endurance in their quest for equality.113

The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) played a significant role in student mobilisation and education for this cause.114 NUSAS was a national student organisation representing liberalism within South African Universities. It was launched in Bloemfontein 1924 as non-racial national student’s organisation; all Universities accept Fort Hare were represented (indicating that it was reserved for whites). In 1933, the Afrikaanse-Nasionale Studentebond was formed to represent only the Afrikaner students in line the ensuing trend of Afrikaner Nationalism in South Africa. 115 Non-white Universities were only accepted into NUSAS from 1945. NUSAS extended its mandate to becoming more active in defending democracy and promoting equal access to educational and economic opportunities to all during the 1950s. It expressed its opposition against segregated University education in South Africa in 1950 in a book called 'The African in the University'. With pressure from the SRC in Fort Hare, it established a formal policy against racial segregation and

110 Mawasha, “Turfloop: Where an Idea Was Expressed, Hijacked and Redeemed,” 66. 111 Vanessa Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa (Scottsville: University of Kwa-Zule Natal Press, 2013), 213. 112 Vorster and Bozzoli, “Academic Freedom in South Africa: The Open Universities in South Africa and Academic Freedom 1957-1974,” 436. 113 Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa, 216–17. 114 Vorster and Bozzoli, “ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN SOUTH AFRICA: THE OPEN UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM 1957-1974,” 439. 115 Benjamin Kline, “The National Union of South African Studies: A Case-Study of the Plight of Liberalism, 1924-1977,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 23, no. 1 (March 1985): 139–40.

20 inequality directed against the threat posed by separate education to the autonomy of the universities.116

The SRC representing black students at the University of Natal began opposing NUSAS during the 1960s. In some institutions, the authorities prevented blacks from being in the SRC or NUSAS affiliates. More significant to the dwindling membership was the increasing disillusionment with white liberal and reformist politics felt by black students. Furthermore, NUSAS did very little to challenge segregation within its own organisation.117 NUSAS attracted negative attention from the government because of its involvement with ecumenical organisations. This caused more splits within the organisation and alienated its apolitical members. Attempts to revert its policy back to academic issues created a backlash from its black members. Several NUSAS students were targeted, arrested detained in solitary confinement on suspicions of being against the government.118 As a result, SASO students rejected NUSAS to form their own black student organisation.

1.4. Chapter outline

Chapter two explores the way in which BCM women defined the role of women in the liberation movement. Rather than focusing on the writings of male BCM activists, which excluded women’s roles, it looks at literature produced by BCM women and how they included themselves in the discourse. I argue that BCM women were acutely aware of the subordination and exclusion of women in public politics and were determined to change this. I show how they engaged in the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s while simultaneously promoting BCM ideals. The chapter traces the life of Maphiri Masekela, who worked as a social worker for the ecumenical Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre (WFC) under the trusteeship of the South African Council of Churches (SACC). Masekela was also a leader of the Black People’s Convention (BPC). By analysing Masekela’s influence among the black staff at WFC, I explore the role and effectiveness of multi-racial ecumenical organisations on the BCM and liberal politics during the time. Masekela’s role shows how BCM activists successfully used ‘progressive’ political and Christian spaces to advance their movement even though it defined itself as racially exclusive.

Chapter three explores BCM women’s politicisation under the Bantu Education system. It shows how their experiences as students warranted their inclination towards black, rather than women’s liberation. Furthermore, that education was an important distinguishing factor between BCM activists

116 Kline, 140. 117 Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa, 210. 118 Gail Morlan, “The Student Revolt against Racism in South Africa,” Africa Today 17, no. 3 (1970): 10.

21 and non-schooling youth in the 1970s. This distinction, I argue, gave rise to specific gender power relations which could not exist elsewhere. It also explores student politics in the 1970s, and the influence of liberation movements in Mozambique and the American Black Power Movements (BPM) through the lens of BCM women’s lives. The role of the ecumenical Christian movement and student liberal politics in the BCM is a continuing theme in this chapter.

In chapter four I show the intimate way in which BCM activists were exposed to and aware of gender as an oppressive force. I argue that both men and women in the movement made a choice not to engage with women’s issues because of the need for black liberation. The University Christian Movement (UCM), which gave rise to the BCM, was concerned with women’s liberation and prioritised it over racial liberation. Women were empowered to formulate their own political framework and mobilise against their oppression. I argue that BCM women’s awareness of and brief involvement in women’s organisations empowered them to promote gender equality within the BCM. Furthermore, I show how women’s newly formed black identity became a key symbol of the BCM.

Chapter five explores the impact of the BCM on women through the Black Community Programmes (BPC). BPC’s were a practical way in which the BC philosophy of self-reliance was realised. It removes the BCM from a student politics to community development. I show how women were at the centre of the programmes as leaders and beneficiaries. I use the experiences of Mamphela Ramphele to show how BC activists transitioned from being students to being fully-fledged working adults in the context of Apartheid South Africa.

Chapter six analyses the formation and activities of the Black Women’s Federation as formed by Fatima Meer. The organisation targeted working-class women was aligned to BCM politics. Both the BCP’s and BWF show the impact of state repression on the liberation movement in mid-1970 and the unrelenting determination by BCM activists (particularly women) to achieve their political goals.

Chapter seven explores various experiences of BCM women activists during the intense period of state banning, arrest and political death in the late 1970s. It is centred on the 1976 Soweto students uprising and traces the impact of the uprising on BCM women across the country. The influence of the BCM on the South African Students Movement (SASM) is explored through the recollections of its woman leader, Sibongile Mkhabela. Furthermore, it investigates the torture female political activists endured as a result. I argue that BCM women posed as much of a threat to the state as men because they were subjected to similar acts of violence from the Apartheid security police.

22 Chapter 2. Black Women in progressive anti-Apartheid movements in the 1970s

2.1. Black Consciousness ideas in ecumenical organisations

Maphiri Masekela was a twenty-one-year-old black woman leader in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in 1971 when she wrote an article which distinguished Black Consciousness (BC) women from those in the multiracial women’s liberation movement of the time. The article was entitled, ‘Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman’ and it provided a glimpse into the meaning of the BC philosophy and the specific role that women ought to play in the movement.119 At this stage, Masekela was also in the ad-hoc committee of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) - the umbrella organisation of the BCM- which was tasked with the drafting of the organisations constitution.120 She was a social worker by profession, employed the ecumenical Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre (WFC).

Masekela outlined the impact of colonisation and Apartheid on the social, political, economic and moral lives of black South Africans. She argued that the black population was made to feel inferior because of these structures. In a quest to remove feelings of inferiority within black society, according to BC philosophy, she wrote that black people needed to “rally together with each other around the cause of their oppression and injury- the blackness and the uniqueness of their skins- and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.”121 This was just one of the many aspects of the BC philosophy, endorsed by many of its writers, who were mostly men. According to Masekela, the ‘closing of ranks’ within black society took precedence if any form of black or women’s liberation were to take place. Black solidarity in fighting white racism and removing black racial inferiority was crucial.122 BCM activists adopted a new definition of the word Black: to reject the negative connotations which had been attached to blackness as a race and to make clear that Black included all racial groups which became victims of the racial policy of Apartheid.

119 Maphiri Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 1971, 1–6. 120 “BPC National Organisation Conference Minutes,” December 17, 1971, 3, A2177 Black People’s Convention (BPC), Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 121 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 3. 122 Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement,” 132.

23 This idea of blackness was a prominent feature of BC philosophy. As argued by Oshadi Mangena, also a woman leader in the BCM, “neither ANC nor the PAC had at this time arrived at such a precise and strategic definition that embraced all the oppressed and sought to unite them within a single ideological discourse.”123 124 It is in this context Masekela outlined:

We [black women] must appreciate that we are Black first and then woman. Thus, Black Women must play a meaningful role in the struggle of the Black Community.

Although there were glaring racial, class, generational and gender divisions within the black community, proponents of the BCM did not prioritise them in its discourse because they did not want to compromise black solidarity. In the constitution of SASO, it clearly states in its interpretation clauses that:

1. “Unless inconsistent with the context, BLACK shall be interpreted as meaning Africans, Indians and Coloureds.” 2. “Unless inconsistent with the context, words importing masculine gender shall also denote feminine gender.” 3. “Unless inconsistent with the context, CONVENTION shall mean the BLACK PEOPLE’S CONVENTION.”125 The above indicates that BCM activists acknowledged existing racial, class and gender divisions within the black community and were sensitive to not perpetuating them beyond the discourse they used. Mangena has argued that SASO recognised women to be on an ‘equal footing’ with the male leaders of the movement and was “ahead of its time with regard to the problematic of ‘gender’.126 She highlighted the linguistic limitations BC writers had to subscribe to in their use of the English language as it related to ‘gender’ discourse. She analysed the Black Students Manifesto written by SASO and noted:

The manifesto is written in English, a language in which it is not a grammatical necessity to write substantive in capital letters wherever they may occur in a sentence. It is therefore necessary to question why “Black Man”, “White world” and “Being” are written in capital letters when they do not occur in a sentence.

123 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 254. 124 Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement,” 132. 125 “Constitution” (B.P.C, 1972), 8, AD2198 SASO 1969-1973, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 126 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 254.

24 As they understood the English language therefore, BC writers used the capital lettered Man to refer to both men and women. Mangena was aware, as was Biko that the English language presented limitations when it came to translating the meaning of certain words. She made an example using African languages, where the words ‘umuntu or ‘motho’ directly refers to both male and female and notes that there is no social or sexual differentiation in its use.127 Mamphela Ramphele has also noted that BCM used “a language borrowed from a culture, English Culture, which never fully accepted women really as full citizens.”128 Granted, the famous BC slogan “Black man, you are on your own” could have been made more inclusive by saying “Black person you are on your own”, however, as Ramphele highlighted in an interview with Pumla Gqola and Kimberly Yates in 2008, the absence of grammatical gender bias in Bantu languages meant that ‘Man’ could not be translated to exclude women in African languages. The “generic state” in which Man symbolises both male and female was in line with the English language, although the choice to use the word man to substitute woman or people raises concerns of whether all women are entitled to inclusion.129 Meaning may have varied in different contexts, however, as indicated above, the BCM included both sexes in their use of Man, in the same way they included all oppressed racial groups in their use of the term Black.

BC women did not define their participation in the BCM in terms of the feminist or women’s movements of the time. The 1970’s Women’s Liberation movement, inspired by the ‘libbers’ of the United States, were just beginning to mobilise against sexism in the workplace and in politics, their sexual exploitation and their sexual rights.130 There had not been explicit naming of ‘gender’ experience or clear efforts made to problematize gender albeit ‘gender’ was understood as a social construct. She argued that it was this subtle understanding of ‘gender’ by BCM leaders which made them full participants in the movement.131 Masekela clearly distinguished the black women’s cause in saying that “This liberation of the Black Women must however not be confused with the current “Women’s Liberation” movement that is taking place in the white world.”132 This is a point that should be emphasised, however, it should also be highlighted that BC women’s rejection of the multiracial women’s movement did not mean that they endorsed sexism or gender inequality within

127 Mangena, 258. 128 Mamphela Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, interview by Pumla Dineo Gqola and Kimberly Yates, 1998, www.jstor.org/stable/4066182. 129 Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement,” 141. 130 Marshall Lee, “Image of Women’s Lib Is Changing, but Most Females Have Been Left Unmoved,” The Star, October 16, 1971, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 131 Mangena, “The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970-1980,” 259. 132 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 4.

25 the BCM. Masekela was clear in explaining the important role women had to play as equal members of the movement to achieve racial liberation. She wrote:

But now, more than ever before in the history of the Black people, the Black Community can no longer afford, if it ever could- the luxury of ignoring and neglecting the role Black Women could and must play in the moulding and building up of a society in which Black People would be able to translate their ideals, ambitions and dreams into reality. The struggle therefore calls for the liberation of Black Women from their feeling of inadequacies.

The ‘inadequacies’ Masekela alluded to were rooted in women’s exclusion from politics by black men who conformed to gender stereotypes imported from pre-capitalist patriarchal structures and European ideals of domesticity. As proponents of African nationalistic desires, the ANC was responsible for this exclusion of women in public politics.133 Masekela’s paper is useful in determining the profoundly intricate ways in which patriarchy had been woven into the fabric of South African gender systems. So much so that in the emerging BCM of the 1970s, when women began playing a much more significant leadership role in black nationalistic politics, they were referred to as ‘honorary men’.134

Masekela had participated in multiracial women’s liberation events. One of which was a multiracial symposium on women’s liberation held by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) in Johannesburg in June 1971. In the symposium, she highlighted the need for women to become actively involved in politics and not just moral supporters. She was quoted in the Rand Daily Mail as follows:

Women’s Liberation does not mean a clamour by women to be freed from the bondage imposed on them by men. It is a clamour for emancipation from self-imposed slavery, which has induced men to believe they are genetically superior to women. This kind of attitude has led women to accept a position of subservience, a position of utter, archaic, slavish dependence on men for all decision making. Women must realise and actualize their latent and inherent freedom and exploit it practically in spite of frustrations brought on by men who are trying to discourage us.”135

133 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950.” 134 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977.” 135 “Women ‘must Be Free’ Call,” Rand Daily Mail, September 6, 1971, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

26 At this stage, women’s liberation featured more prominently in Masekela’s address than black liberation. This was just six months before her address at a SASO symposium wherein she advocated for a racially exclusive women’s movement in line with the broader black liberation movement. Her association with BCM leaders- who were mostly men- may have influenced her political outlook. However, the decision to participate more in the black liberation movement was not because she could not become a prominent leader in the black women’s movement. The decision was because she considered the black liberation movement to be a priority to her.

Masekela was part of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) ad-hoc committee elected to draft the organisation’s constitution and structure. The very first meeting took place in Masekela’s house in Dube, Soweto in January 1972. The term ‘Black Communalism’- a philosophy of economic egalitarianism- was coined by the committee and was the ideology through which the organization performed its role.136 The constitution was formally adopted in a conference of over a hundred people held in Pietermaritzburg 8-10 July 1972. The liberation of the black community, regardless of gender, race or class was again emphasised in this ideology. Masekela was a black woman who formed an equal part of the formulation of this ideology, which was explicit in prioritising black liberation and economic advancement.

Masekela further argued that women, as primary caregivers in the black urban household, were responsible for inculcating BC philosophy and principles in the children of the Black Community. Masekela therefore added to the newly defined roles women were expected to play. She called for black women to empower themselves even more by participating in the traditionally ‘male’ sphere of politics.

Thus Black Women must stop considering themselves as flower-pots for decoration in the Black Community. In times of political stress and strain they must be prepared to share the difficulties with their menfolk. They must also participate in the decision making process.137

The extent to which Masekela remained loyal to the liberation of black women can be seen in her organising of the Black Women’s Rally in Dube, Soweto in 1974. She was the director of the SACC’s Women’s Division at this stage and remained an influencer of the BCM. The rally took place at the Zenzele YWCA on the 10th- 12th October 1974. The theme of the rally was ‘The Role of the Black Woman in the Changing Africa’. All black women were invited, and children and husbands were invited for a separate Black Culture presentation. The Rand Daily Mail published an article about this

136 B.P.C. “Constitution” 2. 137 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 5.

27 event, describing it as ‘explosive’ and exciting, with an attendance of two hundred women. The then secretary of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) spoke about what women were doing in Africa and how South African women could learn from that. She argued that although the law was no longer restricting women from participating in the public sphere of the economy and politics, the longstanding restrictive attitudes have prevented women from doing so. She said that a few had been able to break through the attitudes and be heard individually, but that this was not enough.138

Masekela delivered a talk about black women and Industry, in which she pointed out that migrant labour left women in the Bantustans responsible for the unattractive farming industry. She went on to present statistics of women’s employment, highlighting the dire working conditions faced by domestic workers. Masekela pointed out that “these women, in whose hands and care is vested the White family’s health and lives, suffer with bad working conditions. Their wages for this lot is so miserable that Black domestic workers are almost leading a subhuman economy life in this country of plenty.”139 Masekela’s work in the WFC focused on improving the literacy, skills and conditions domestic workers faced.

Masekela therefore did not join the BCM with the intention of being a passive supporter. She used the platform to mobilise black women- as she had done in the 1974 rally- as equal role players in the struggle for racial freedom and gender equality. Her experience of the women’s liberation movement was not resonant enough for her to prioritise it over black liberation. Being black however, was not the only reason she rejected the multiracial approach. As I will show in the rest of this chapter, Masekela’s experience as a black woman working in a multi-racial ecumenical organisation was as significant in the formulation and spread of her BC principles and her political outlook.

2.1.1. White Liberalism and the Black Consciousness Movement

In a SASO symposium held at WFC in 1971, Masekela spoke about what she deemed to be the attitudes of Europeans, whom she called ‘the self-appointed decision makers’, towards the natives of South Africa, saying:

Whites believed, as they still do, that Blacks are incapable of taking decisions which concern their way of life. This belief is based on false assumption that whites represented a race that

138 “Women Lash at ‘Castrated Men,’” Rand Daily Mail, October 14, 1974, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 139 “Women Lash at ‘Castrated Men.’”

28 is endowed with the acute sense of moral responsibility, precise intelligence, racial purity and a divine right of guardianship over blacks…a philosophy that postulates that Blacks can never evolve beyond the level of a modern lizard.140

She further argued that:

Because of their belief in the purity and sanctity of their culture and value system, whites have systematically destroyed our [black] cultural heritage with impunity and arrogance. They believe that ours is a culture that embodies primitiveness and evil. They imposed and are still imposing their cultural value systems that are foreign to and incompatible with the cultural norms of the Black Community.141

Regarding the role of White liberalism as a viable route to ending Apartheid in a way that catered for the needs of the Black population, Masekela had the following to say:

Despite all the injustices the so called “liberal establishment” if it does exist, still wants us to believe the lie that they are not part of the White community that is responsible for the sufferings of Blacks. They want us to believe that they are prepared to suffer the brutalities of the system that they and their follow Whites have created at the expense of Blacks. They do not appreciate that Whites in South Africa form up in two words-: White Racism.

Liberals do not realize that they are a major stumbling block towards the liberation of Blacks in South Africa. For more than three hundred years they have been involved in designing strategies that are meant to confuse the Black World and thus make it impossible for Black to identify and isolate their enemy.142

Alan Paton was a white liberal anti-Apartheid activist and author of several books including the famous, Cry, the Beloved Country. Paton was also the co-founder of the Liberal Party (LP) which was dissolved in 1968 following state laws prohibiting multi-racial parties.143 Writing in Reality, Paton responded to Masekela’s rejection of white liberals. He wrote:

Indeed, as I asked Miss Masekela of the December symposium, who said that white liberals are a major stumbling block in the way of black liberation, what should white liberals do?

140 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 1. 141 Masekela, 1. 142 Masekela, 2. 143 “Alan Stewart Paton,” South African History Online, August 24, 2011, www.sahistory.org.za/people/alan-stewart- paton.

29 Should they leave the country? Should they keep silent for ever more? Should they go north to be trained as guerrilla fighters? Or should they just lie down and die?144

He further commented in the article:

An intelligent young woman like Miss Masekela should understand that there are some people who call themselves liberals who do not wish to leave their country, who would think it a crime to be silent, who are not by belief and temperament fitted to become revolutionaries, and who do not wish to die. They are there. They are just as real as Miss Masekela. Some of them — perhaps all of them — are just as honest as she. Some of them have paid a high price for their beliefs. Miss Masekela must do her thing. They must do theirs. It is as simple as that. They have just as much right as she to speak, write and work for their country, which is hers too.145

According to Masekela and BC philosophy, black people needed to “reject integration as advocated by the so called “liberal establishment” because to these people [white liberals] integration means acceptance by Blacks of the values of white Society.” She then argued that the BC philosophy would enable Black people to see value in themselves without having to aspire to ‘White personhood’, that BC was “a means to an end as well as an end in itself.”146

Masekela, and other BCM leaders needed Christian multiracial organisations such as WFC, UCM and the Christian Institute to fund their organisations and endeavours in spreading the BCM to the black community. They could not at this stage source this kind of funding from exclusively black organisations, if any existed at the time. However, Masekela maintained that black people needed to work independent of white liberals in their political mobilisation. Masekela developed this conviction as an employee working with white liberals at WFC. That white liberals such as Alan Paton engaged her opinions in public forums is an indication of Masekela’s influence in the formulation of BC ideals. What is follow is an exploration of the racial tensions within the WFC through the lens of Masekela’s work. Furthermore, I explore the extent to which the presence of black employees and BCM-linked organisations such as the UCM caused the backlash from right-wing Afrikaners and the NP, which ultimately led to the investigation into WFC.

144 Alan Paton, “Black Consciousness,” Reality Publications 4, no. 1 (March 1973): 9. 145 Paton, 9. 146 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 4.

30 2.2. Ecumenicalism and Black community development

The Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre (WFC) was established in 1949 as a multi-denominational and multi-racial centre which promoted ecumenicalism- “a belief in the spiritual unity that opposed the Nationalist belief in racial segregation and the idea that only the Afrikaners had inherited the kingdom of God.”147 WFC was to become a meeting place for church groups of various Christian denominations and people of different racial groups. It aimed at furthering ecumenical Christianity through provision of facilities for religious gatherings, retreats, promoting centre programmes, collaborating with other organisations in ecumenical work, encouraging education and training, providing financial aid to ecumenical organisations, publication of ecumenical papers and affiliation to ecumenical organisations and churches.148 The centre provided overnight accommodation for these groups to conduct various activities. State action however, stopped black participants from using overnight facilities. It was mainly because of this that the WFC designed day programmes that would be as intensive and effective.149 The programmes included the Youth Ecumenical Services (YES), the Urban Industrial Mission (UIM), the Domestic Worker’s Project (DWP) and the Personal Relations Organisational and Developmental (PROD) programmes.150 The DWP and YES were established with the sole purpose of catering to the needs of the black communities ‘as interpreted by their directors’.151

Maphiri Masekela was the director of the DWP. It provided skills training to domestic workers to enhance their performance, get the church to provide for their needs, build networks among them and improve the relationship with their employers. This was done through literacy classes, conferences, training sessions, talks and picnics. Masekela was responsible for securing training centres, which were mainly church buildings, in which the various programmes of the project could be carried-out. In addition, she sourced and liaised with various clergy and teaching experts to participate in the trainings. She also addressed the meetings and delegated tasks to the employees of the DWP and other organisations of interest.152

147 Monique Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” in From National Liberation to Democratic Renaissance in Southern Africa, ed. Cheryl Hendricks and Lwazi Lushaba (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2005), 152, www.condesria.org/IMG/pdf/8-vanek.pdf?2320/. 148 “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Annual Report for the Period June 1971 to June 1972,” June 1972, 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 149 Foster, 22. 150 Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 153. 151 “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Annual Report for the Period June 1971 to June 1972,” 22. 152 Maphiri Masekela, “The Domestic Worker’s Project: Report to the Wilgespruit Executive and Management Committees - October/November, 1971” (Dunwell House, 1971), AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

31 Masekela led a SASO leadership training seminar to be held at the centre in December 1971. The seminar was aimed at demonstrating the interrelatedness of black consciousness and community development. Masekela also led the third phase of the seminar which was on the dynamics of student leadership. The students were divided into groups and taken into the local community of Edendale to become acquainted with the atmosphere and problems of the community. They were to assess how community members aimed to solve the problems they faced. The purpose of the exercise was to highlight to the students the importance of establishing links with the communities they aimed to serve.153 The WFC executive supported Masekela’s work and praised her for her vision and innovations.154

Sensitivity training was used by WFC and other Christian institutions such as the Christian Leadership Centre and the Christian Institute in the PROD programmes. This discipline was initiated by Kurt Lewin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It could be applied to group psychotherapy and in the study of human interactions and behavioural systems in labour groups, race relations, politics, committee functioning and behaviour. The main aim was to build authentic relationships through thorough self-disclosure and engagement of feelings. Church organisations used it to make participants aware of their political realities and confront them within the dynamic groups.155 The WFC applied the ‘T-group’ method to its training; wherein participants would work in unstructured groups of eight to fourteen, with no agenda or chairperson. The WFC staff previously trained over a twenty-five-week residential programme participated as consultants. The aim was full participation and continuous self-reflection and evaluation.156

The University Christian Movement (UCM) and National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) had attended sensitivity training at the centre since 1967 to enhance their effectiveness as multi-racial student organisations.157 These were through the Christian Education and Leadership Training (CELT). CELT was dissolved in 1970 when many of its’ members argued that it was not useful for skill training. PROD took over from CELT initially as a response to develop skills in student

153 Abridged SASO leadership training seminar report in Thomas G Karis and Gail M Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, vol. 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964– 1979 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 1997), 488. 154 Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, “Minutes of the Wilgespruit Executive Meeting,” November 10, 1971, 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 155 Carmel T.M Chetty, “Young, Gifted and Black*: Oral Histories of Young Activists in Cape Town and Durban In” (2005), 48, https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20uploads%20/young%2C%20gifted%20and%20black.pdf; Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 154. 156 “Prod Programmes,” n.d., A2355 Clive Nettleton, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 157 Chetty, “Young, Gifted and Black*: Oral Histories of Young Activists in Cape Town and Durban In,” 47.

32 leadership.158 Participants and staff were trained to become aware of and account for their actions and responsibilities, and to encourage non-hierarchical structures in their organisations. The SACC was not against sensitivity training, as they observed that the technique was also used in commerce and industry in South Africa.159

Masekela was part of a PROD programme of thirty-nine women from various institutions and religions on the 13th-15th August 1971. The event was concerned with looking at and working on issues affecting women’s identity and aimed at examining their personhood and other factors which prevented them from achieving their goals as women. The event was hosted by UCM and the Institute of Race Relations. Masekela participated as one of three consultants of the event, who had drafted a tentative purpose for the event with personal and group concerns which could be changed according to the participants’ experience and resources. The four groups established were the single, married, black and militant women’s groups. Each group wrote and presented a manifesto which outlined their stance on issues concerning them.160 According to Joan O’Leary, the director of PROD programmes, “it was the black group’s report that probably had the most impact on those present.”161 There were only three black women, including Masekela, in the group. O’Leary described the presentation as ‘forceful’ and quoted them saying:

We black women feel that we cannot at the moment involve ourselves in the liberation of women. We give priority to the liberation of the black people.

They also addressed employment issues face by black women, which O’leary also quoted as thus:

The white employer should treat her black servant as a human being and not just a labour unit. Servants should be given a living wage- cast-off clothing is not substitute for wages. We abhor being nannied, girled and boyed.162

The question of the effectiveness of multi-racialism within the WFC was a cause for concern from the 1970’s. Reverend Clive McBride of the Anglican Church and black theology pioneer evaluated black staff experience at the WFC. 163 He raised questions about how black employees experienced

158 Dale White, “Summary of the Report of the Joint Committee,” n.d., 4, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 159 John C Rees, “South African Council of Churches Statement on Wilgespruit,” Ecunews, April 26, 1973, 1, A2355 Clive Nettleton, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 160 Joan O’Leary, “On Being a Person,” Pro Veritate, October 1971, 8, Digital Innovation South Africa. 161 O’Leary, 8. 162 O’Leary, 9. 163 Chetty, “Young, Gifted and Black*: Oral Histories of Young Activists in Cape Town and Durban In,” 100.

33 WFC as a minority group, and whether their needs were prioritised enough in the organisation. He further highlighted disparities in standards of equality among the staff and academic programmes. He noted that the centre was unable to relate its programmes to black lives as it could not extend its reach into the black communities. He highlighted that WFC was ‘not merely an outlet for occasional multi- racial contact’ but had to ‘play a role in South Africa’s future’. 164 He recommended that the needs of the black staff be met by WFC as a ‘pioneering frontier role player in ecumenicalism.’ To achieve this the WFC executive would have to provide equal housing and salaries, recognise English language barriers and the need to adjust accommodation and transport costs for black employees. He further suggested skills training based on needs identified by black people which could be used in the black communities.165 The failure of the WFC to address imbalances between black and white staff created extreme racial tensions which seriously hindered its’ potential of building strong progressive anti- Apartheid networks in the 1970s.

The effectiveness of Personal Relations Organisational and Developmental (PROD) courses to blacks was also questioned. PROD had an overall black constituency of 36 per cent and 25 per cent of female members. In one of PROD’s reports it read:

Our black constituency will diminish further if we are unable to develop more black consultants. This development we see as having high priority but feel pessimistic in the face of the rapidly growing black power withdrawal movement. The question we have to face maybe is how do we respond to this movement. 166

PROD indicated that although one third of the people they worked with were black, it seemed that the training did not have much value for them with regards to personal growth and actualisation, instead there needed more practical skills training necessary for the development of the black community. Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, PROD noted the incapacity of black participants to meet their self- actualisation needs- which was largely the aim of PROD- when they were still concerned about the development of their community’s material needs. The ineffectiveness of PROD for black staff and the WFC’s inability to fix internal fractures became more pronounced after the government’s investigation into the WFC.

164 Clive McBride, “Black Evaluation of Wilgespruit as an Influencing Unit” (Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, February 25, 1971), 2. 165 McBride, 8. 166 “Response of PROD to Suggestions and Criticisms from the Evaluation Programme,” February 1971, 2, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

34 2.3. The Schlebusch investigation into the Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre

The South African Council of churches (SACC) was the trustee of the WFC and its constitution. It owned the property and improvements of the centre and had executive authority over its programmes and activities.167 Tensions between the SACC and WFC developed in the 1970’s due to the increasing links and involvement of non-church individuals and groups at WFC. The SACC was further concerned because leisure and social lives of those individuals operated outside of church’s guidance.168 The WFC faced a backlash from Afrikaner right-wing publications accusing the organisation of instigating a socialist revolution and breaking marriages through its sensitivity training programme. This prompted the SACC to begin investigating the WFC. Two issues were identified; firstly, that WFC was becoming more humanistic than intended and that this was alienating the churches and secondly, that WFC black employees were disadvantaged in terms of education, salary, accommodation and conditions of employment.169 The SACC specifically objected to the University Christian Movement (UCM) ‘Encounter’ in 1971 which ultimately led to the SACC’s vote of no confidence against the centre.170 In 1972, the WFC management committee changed its constitution to enhance their relationship to the SACC and the churches. A public relations operation was also launched to make the WFC widely known to the churches.171

The negative media attention received by the WFC led the National Party to appoint the Schlebusch commission to conduct an enquiry into the centre.172 The commission identified the UCM’s sexual liturgy programme and the T-Group trainings as the primary areas of concern. As a result, the commissions third interim report accused the WFC of several ‘crimes’ of sexual indecency, blasphemy, brainwashing, causing mental dysfunction in its participants and condoning inhibited behaviour. Furthermore, they charged the WFC for “having politically active employees, like Maphiri Masekela in other organisations like SASO, in which she made use of hate speech against whites.”173 This was referring to the address Masekela had delivered at the SASO symposium of 1971.

167 Rees, “South African Council of Churches Statement on Wilgespruit,” 1. 168 Dale White, “Report to the Trustees: The South African Council of Churches” (Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, 1971), 2. 169 Foster, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Annual Report for the Period June 1971 to June 1972,” 22. 170 Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 155. 171 Foster, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Annual Report for the Period June 1971 to June 1972,” 2. 172 Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 153. 173 Vanek, 157.

35 Following the Schlebusch investigation, the government demanded that the SACC ‘clean up’ the WFC. This led the SACC to forming their internal commission to investigate the centre. This was called the Joint Commission- made up of six representatives from the SACC and six from the WFC. It was tasked with evaluating the role of the WFC to the churches, investigating the allegations made by Schlebusch in relation to PROD and making recommendations to the SACC Executive and WFC management. With regards to the ‘Sex liturgy’ session held by the UCM, the SACC reported that it did not endorse the programme. Instead, the SACC withdrew its support of the UCM as soon as they knew about the conference. This withdrawal of support was a major contributing factor to the demise of the UCM.174 The WFC took a similar position and stated that it provided nothing more than a venue for the UCM course.175 The SACC also argued that the ‘lurid details about sexual laxity’ contained in the report did not characterise the work of the centre.176 To the allegations relating to Masekela, the WFC declared that she was at that time operating in her private capacity and not as a representative of the WFC. They argued that they could not control the actions of the employees outside of the centre, and that they did not believe her language in the speech was totally inadmissible given the conditions blacks faced under Apartheid.177

Most allegations regarding brainwashing and unchristian practices were thus cleared by the Joint Committee. It showed how the methods used in the T-groups, the duration of the courses and specific theories used could not lead to brainwashing. Making statements such as, “What someone has learned for 20-50 years of his life will not be taught out of him, even by those who intend to do so, in months, let alone five days.”178 The committee further pointed out that no evidence had been presented by the Schlebusch commission to prove that sensitivity training led to mental and spiritual violations. The Schlebusch report had also referred to Masekela as one of the T-group trainers, which the WFC declared to be incorrect. The WFC further stated that Masekela had participated as a consultant and that this did not require academic qualifications. According to the WFC, staff members such as Masekela had respect and empathy for others, had come to terms with themselves and could impart humanity on to others- which made them able to run a T-group.179 The Joint Committee recommended that PROD limit its services to Christian, educational and social service groups and set up an

174 Rees, “South African Council of Churches Statement on Wilgespruit,” 1. 175 White, “Summary of the Report of the Joint Committee,” 9. 176 “Wilgespruit and the Churches,” Ecunews, May 1, 1973, 2. 177 “Statement of the Wilgespruit Executive Committee,” Ecunews, May 1, 1973, 2, A2355 Clive Nettleton, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 178 White, “Summary of the Report of the Joint Committee,” 5. 179 “Statement of the Wilgespruit Executive Committee,” 4.

36 association of trainers which will be fully equipped to undertake training, follow a strict code of ethics, and arrange training events and visits by expert overseers.

2.3.1. Racial tensions at Wilgespruit

The internal conflict between the black and white staff at the centre resurfaced when the black staff refused to testify in the Joint committee hearings. The black staff had instead told Drum Magazine of their dissatisfaction with WFC as a multiracial centre and declared that the ‘multi-racial dream at Wilgespruit had failed.’180 Their main concern was the limited opportunities for growth and the lack of empowerment to run their programmes independently. This made them feel inferior to the white staff. According to the black staff, the internal meetings which were dedicated to resolving black/white issues at WFC were ‘fruitless’ and ‘frustrating’ and therefore speaking to Drum became the most viable option to express their dissatisfaction.181

Dale White, then director of the WFC committed to resolving the issues through a series of staff meetings in which they could discuss and find solutions to the issues.182 The issue of the Drum magazine article was discussed in a staff meeting held on 5 Dec 1973, where black employees stated that the article was enough in explaining their position. White however requested a written report on the matter from the black staff. The black staff drafted the report and sent Masekela and Rakgobane Mohlathe to discuss it with White. To the question of not consulting with the executive before speaking to Drum, the black staff believed they were conducting themselves within their right to freedom of expression as ‘free agents’. They further pointed out that they were excluded by the media during the Schlebusch inquiry which was only interested in the opinions of the white employees as if they spoke for all employees. They further stated that the Joint Committee equally disregarded their opinions in their report as they were called at the last minute to give their accounts, which is the reason why they refused to appear before the committee. The one employee who ended up testifying faced intimidation from the white staff. They felt that the report submitted by the committee did not reflect the true opinions of the black staff. They wrote, “our conscience tells us that we owe the Black community a clearly articulated explanation as to where we stand, because we should forever strive diligently to be relevant in our outlook towards serving them.”183 They recommended that an independent Black centre which would be operated by a Black Committee be established with funding

180 Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 159. 181 “Black Staff Report” (Dube Village, November 3, 1973), 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 182 Dale White, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre Management Committee: Director’s Report,” April 29, 1974, 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 183 “Black Staff Report,” 1.

37 from the WFC. This black staff was therefore unable to commit to a totally independent black centre because they needed funding from structures such as the WFC. The WFC management committee resolved to increase the number of black staff in the management committee instead, and have more programmes directed by blacks at a community level.

2.3.2. The Domestic Worker’s Project Investigated

A detailed investigation into the DWP was conducted by Dale White in late November 1973 following allegations that Masekela and Letlabika were not fulfilling their duties and that certain tensions needed to be resolved. The black staff appointed James Madiba to assist White in his investigation and it was agreed that Masekela would give White specific times in which his evaluations can be conducted. White visited the DWP centres, conducting spot investigations, and interviews when necessary. DWP staff and affiliated organisations were required to submit to him written evaluations of the work done at the centres.184

The role of the DWP staff was to help churches establish themselves as centres- formally called ‘Centres of Concern’ and empower them to run independently. People interviewed were questioned on the worthiness of the centres, the regularity of attendance and punctuality of Masekela, Letlabika and Basia Ledochowski. White questioned the specific role of each DWP women in establishing the centres. He reported that it was a result of the teamwork of the three women and the affiliated Domestic Worker’s Employment Project (DWEP), of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), directed by Sue Gordon. Although the Centres of Concern were established independent of the DWP, the presence of the three women was much needed and appreciated by centre leaders. All three women were regarded as instrumental in establishing the centres on the principals of teamwork wrote White. Letlabika initiated the centres at Forrest Town and Berea, Masekela at Rosebank and Ledochowski at Linden.185

According to White’s findings, a serious breakdown in communication and collaboration between the DWP and DWEP was the main cause for concern. He noted that the lack of formal meetings to clear out whatever quarrels existing between the staff aggravated tension and caused their work as a group to falter. White noted that Ledochowski maintained close personal contact with Gordon throughout. This reveals that the breakdown in relationship between the DWEP and DWP may have

184 Dale White, “Memorandum on Enquiry into Allegations about the Domestic Workers’ Project” (Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, December 1973), AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 185 White, 4.

38 been due to racial tensions. Junior employees found Masekela’s occasional absence to be a big influence on their poor performance in the centres. The junior staff further told White that the directors paid too little attention to their operational challenges in the centres. White recommended that mediated meetings should to take place with DWP and DWEP staff. He further requested the DWP staff to submit detailed plans for the first six months of 1974 for activation in the centres; outlining the roles, responsibilities and procedures of communication, a combined policy of the DWP and DWEP collaboration was also requested and finally, remedial discipline of DWP staff was suggested wherein there could be a reduction of status, payments or benefits for the employees.186

Basia Ledochowski reported on her experience in the DWP in January-June 1974. The response written by Masekela and Letlabika to this report reveals the nature and extent of racial tensions at Wilgespruit. These two documents are significant in providing an indication of how Masekela’s experience in the WFC and her relationship with white staff members influenced her attitude towards liberalism and her support of BC ideas.

Ledochowski was born in Poland in 1921, her family fled the country during WWII when she was 18 and eventually landed in London. Her father was the Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Government-in-exile. Her father then worked in Algeria as Ambassador of the French National Liberation Committee. She studied Economics in Cambridge, married in Paris to engineer Wladimir Ledochowski in 1948. They lived in Rhodesia and owned a tea plantation in Congo. She was then involved in the creation of the Catholic Association for Racial Equality dedicated to education of black domestic servants. In South Africa, she co-founded ‘Learn and Teach’ and Using Spoken and Written English (USWE), organizations dedicated to adult literacy (The Star, Feb 1984). In a tribute written to her as Life Trustee of USWE in April 1993, Chairperson Sidney Weil praised her for her contribution in the development of learner-centred methodology in teaching in South Africa, setting- up co-operation between literacy organisations in the Transvaal and Western Cape which led to the formation of the National Literacy Cooperation in 1988.187 She was particularly involved in English Literacy programmes in the WFC which she considered a prerequisite of any learning and skills training, self-reliance or critical awareness of the world.188

186 White, 6. 187 “Maria Barbara Ledochowski 1921-2007,” Rod Ledochowski, n.d., www.ledochowski.eu/rodzina/mariabarbaraen.html. 188 M.B Ledochowski, “Final Report, Domestic Workers Project, Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre” (Johannesburg, June 29, 1974), 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

39 Ledochowski was looking for an occupation which would enable her to study ‘African thought’ closely. She came to work in the DWP as a part-time assistant after having obtained her degree in African Studies and further enrolled in Organisational development, Personal development and Action Training courses offered by the WFC. She then started teaching cookery with Ms Letlabika at the Bryanston Ecumenical Church. She wrote, “Perhaps owing to the presence in the class of my colleague Ms. Letlabika. I became thoroughly interested in domestic workers as people of two worlds, belonging by their beliefs, family ties, up-bringing and world outlook to a traditional rural environment, and surviving economically and emotionally in an urban environment to be governed by a Western European world outlook.”189 According to Masekela and Letlabika, “Basia [Ledochowski] would have never got through to the Domestic workers if Pusetso [Letlabika] was not there.190

Ledochowski met Sue Gordon in one of her series lectures for the DWEP and later Gordon came to one of her classes. It was there, according to Ledochowski, that Gordon became interested in the idea of Centres of Concern. She stated that she had also gotten a friend of hers, Mrs A. Waterkeyn involved in sewing lessons in Rivonia. According to Ledochowski, she and Masekela were working tirelessly in conducting research into the lives and needs of domestic workers. This work led to an article published in Star newspaper about Domestic workers in Sandton which received an award for most interesting article of the month. She said it was then that people took an interest in the ‘Centres of Concern,’ which multiplied as the result of efforts by Sue Gordon, and ‘interested groups’ like Letlabika. Ledochowski reported that her specific role in the centres was to observe the activities in the centre, while taking part and frequently sharing insights with her black colleagues. Ledochowski stated that they all – herself, Masekela, Gordon- observed that the teaching of domestic workers in these centres “tended to perpetuate a dependent and passive stance.” According to Ledochowski, it was herself, Sue Gordon and Helen Perold of the Bureau of Literacy who had the idea of training domestic workers as teachers of skills. They drew up an appeal for funds for that project which Ledochowski presented in July 1973 to MISEREOR at Achen and to the Bishops Lenten Campaign in Zeist.191

189 Ledochowski, 1. 190 Pusetso Letlabika and Maphiri Masekela, “Basia’s Report: Impressions,” 1974, 1, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 191 M.B Ledochowski, “Final Report, Domestic Workers Project, Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre” (Johannesburg, June 29, 1974), 2, AC623 South African Council of Churches, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

40 Masekela claimed it was she who came up with the idea of getting domestic workers to teach. She stated that Sue Gordon had dismissed the idea saying that this would be unfair to the many white helpers dedicated to teaching. Although Ledochowski acknowledges the role played by her black colleagues in bringing forth the ideas on domestic workers training, she does not explicitly identify these women as the main catalysts of the ideas. Masekela and Letlabika were therefore convinced that their white colleagues had nicked their ideas and claimed a leading role in the project. Masekela told The World newspaper that not only were literacy classes being conducted by the DWP since 1970, but that some had received training as teachers as well.192 The first church centres of the DWP opened in October 1970 in St Mary’s Cathedral and St Francis Anglican Church in Parkview were the leading centres in this regard. First Aid courses, sewing lessons and literacy classes were run there. She explained how the centres were increasing and were instrumental in bringing together domestic workers to share their problems. The women received assistance from an expert advisor of the Black Sash, Sheena Duncan on legal matters concerning domestics in the workplace and for their children’s boarding school and bursary applications. Letlabika was in charge of Forest Town centre and is shown helping a beginner in literacy class in one of the pictures in the article. Forest Town branch was described as ‘a hive of activity’ in the article. Thirty-two-year-old Catherine Matabane, who worked as a cook for a family in Forest Town and was the secretary-treasurer at the centre. She was from the Brits district and supported her widowed mother and eight-year old daughter. She was one of the first to enrol in the typing lessons at the centre. She started teaching English and studying sewing and typing in 1974. She told the newspaper that she aimed to ensure that her daughter has ‘as much education as she likes’.193

Ledochowski found that the back/white relationship in the Domestic Worker’s education field was in a seriously deteriorating state in August 1973. She wrote of a total break-down in the relationship between teachers, helpers and coordinators in the DWP centres. She wrote that “while in the South African situation where educated blacks feel permanently angry and frustrated, racial friction is only too easy.194 Masekela and Letlabika were offended by this comment, saying that white people tended to think this way of ‘educated’ blacks who expressed themselves.195 They further argued that there had been no breakdown of communication between the staff at the centres, except that Ledochowski did not acknowledge Masekela as director.”196 At this stage Dale White and James Madiba had begun

192 “It’s Never Too Late to Learn,” The World, October 8, 1974, 8, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 193 “It’s Never Too Late to Learn,” 8. 194 Ledochowski, 2. 195 Letlabika and Masekela, “Basia’s Report: Impressions,” 1. 196 Letlabika and Masekela, 2.

41 working to resolving the issues. Perhaps it was the personal relationship between Ledochowski and Sue Gordon- observed by White as well- which led to the perception that Ledochowski was acting insubordinately. Ledochowski may have been able to achieve more than Masekela because of her academic history and her connection to Sue Gordon. This could explain why Masekela stopped attending or addressing some of the meetings with the DWEP.

In the various staff meetings which took place in the beginning of 1974, Masekela, Letlabika and Ledochowski had to report on the work done in the DWP. Forrest Town, Berea Methodist Church’s and Rosebank Immaculata Hall became the main centres for literacy classes. Ledochowski assisted with typing up reports and was mainly taking lessons in Tswana while Letlabika prepared for literacy classes Berea. Ledochowski discovered that the biggest cause for dependency on white teachers was the lack of English literacy by black domestic workers. She then enrolled in a Bureau of Literacy Instructure course so she could teach future black teachers.197 The claim that she had since July 1974 started working with a small group in Berea was dismissed by Masekela et al, who stated that the domestic workers in Berea were not happy with Ledochowski’s English teaching. They further wrote:

Basia discovers a need that is being met. All she wants to do is to establish a new power base- where she can be director. She has never regarded our team at all, let alone Maphiri [Masekela] being director.198

Amidst all the efforts by the executive to recover from the negative attention from the Schlebusch commission and racial tensions, the WFC was unable to fully recover. Eoin O’Leary resigned from WFC in November 1973 and was deported to Ireland months later. The centre lost its reach and energy following O’Leary’s departure. WFC could not sustain its employees any longer and began disbanding most programmes.199 The DWP was transferred to the SACC in June 1974 and several other WFC programmes were either discontinued or made independent of the WFC. PROD gradually dwindled down, leaving the WFC with only five permanent and four part-time members by August 1974.200 The WFC accepted the resignations of Masekela and Letlabika but retained Ledochowski to start an independent English literacy project for domestic workers. The WFC was willing to continue to collaborate with the SACC or any organization involved with the DWP.201

197 Ledochowski, “Final Report, Domestic Workers Project, Wilgespruit Fellowship Cnetre,” 2. 198 Letlabika and Masekela, “Basia’s Report: Impressions,” 2. 199 Vanek, “Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre: Part of Our Struggle for Freedom,” 161. 200 Vanek, 161. 201 Dale White to John C Rees, June 26, 1974, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

42 The SACC had been looking to set up a functional Division of Women’s work. The DWP therefore became the first sub-division and Masekela remained the Director and Letlabika a leader of the project. A budget was allocated until further applications for funding can be made.202 Bishops Lenten Campaign in Holland continued to fund the DWP while Misereor declined the SACC’s application because of information received from Sue Gordon of the DWEP. Gordon had visited the agency and was asked about her knowledge of the DWP. She said the DWP had serious limitations because of its dependence on one person [Masekela] and its lack of an integrated organisational structure. Misereor urged the SACC to resolve this issue before it can request funding.203

BCM women leaders such as Masekela developed their ideas through personal experiences gained in the various political and social spaces they occupied. They were not drawn into the BCM by mere association with male leaders, or to become idling supporters. They joined the BCM with a clear political vision. Masekela’s vision was to empower black women through skills and grassroots development while also ‘çonscientising’ them about the important role they could play in the black liberation movement. She found the BCM rhetoric to be most resonant to her political goals. She challenged black discrimination in the workplace and in the public political space. Her role in the WFC was significant because it advanced both the women’s and black liberation movement through grassroots development, a basic tenet of the BC philosophy.

202 John C Rees, “Secretary Report” (South African Council of Churches, 1974), 2, AC623 South African Council of Churches. 203 Misereor to Dale White, “Domestic Workers’ Project,” October 7, 1974, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

43 Chapter 3. Black Consciousness women and student activism

3.1. Politicisation in mission-schools

Thenjiwe Ethel Mtintso’s awareness of her inferiority as a black, Xhosa and poor woman informed her political thinking. She was born in a poverty-stricken shantytown in Soweto, Johannesburg. They were seventeen children and her single mother living in one small shack and later, a one-roomed house in Soweto. She and her sister then moved to a rural area in the Transkei to live with her aunt. She enrolled at Clarkebury Secondary School in 1965-1968 which was one of the highly regarded mission schools which contributed to the growth of the African middle-class and produced an elite of Xhosa intellectuals in South Africa.204

Mtintso became aware of her lower-class status within the Xhosa group in Clarkebury. As were many mission schools, Clarkebury was a boarding school. Learners were immersed in an English culture which contrasted sharply with what was outside the school boarders. The regiments, rules, routines, etiquette, dress aimed at producing respectable natives.205 She recalled stealing her sister’s clothes to wear to school and being embarrassed to bring her friends over to her house to try and fit the middle- class status. She described vividly how her sister reprimanded her for this, which became one of the lessons she said informed her political activism and the need to try and change her situation. A she described it:

There was always this inferiority complex that came out the environment in comparing. I’d come to town, compare myself with all these people. And even at school, I would always compare myself with the cleverest of the lot and find that I’m not that clever. So I had this heavy inferiority complex.206

Mtintso’s experience of the rural Transkei also sheds light into conservative patriarchal practices which were still prevalent in this area during the 1960s. When her uncle died of Tuberculosis after returning home from the Johannesburg mines, the villagers accused her aunt of using witchcraft to kill him. Her aunt also refused to marry the brother of her late husband. Consequently, the villagers

204 Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, interview by Danny Massey, 1999, 1, KARIS-GERHART Collection of South African political materials, 1964-1990,A2675-4, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 205 Colin Bundy, “Lessons on the Frontier: Aspects of Eastern Cape History,” Kronos, no. 30 (November 2004): 15. 206 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 4.

44 burnt down their hut and forced them out of the village. This had an impact on Mtintso’s political experience, as she described it:

I wondered if she had been a man...because one thing that happened is that the headman of that village was also a relative. And it was then said that my aunt would be pardoned if she married one of my uncles. Not that she was in love with this uncle. This uncle lost a wife at some stage…And that made some impact on me. Because she’s a woman, she’s got to get married and then she’ll be pardoned. Suddenly she won’t be a witch if she agrees to this demand by society.207

Mtintso became most aware of gendered discrimination in this incident; that her aunt faced this isolation because she was a woman. The victimisation of widows was not an uncommon occurrence in African communities. Widows were often blamed for the death of their husbands and marginalised by the community. They were further stigmatised because of the traditional mourning and cleansing rituals which they are made to undertake. The widow was forced to remarry into the same family to maintain kinship ties, for widowers however, the death of the wife terminated the marriage.208

As Mtintso stated, the headman in her village was a relative of her family, but he let the community remove her aunt because of her refusal re-marry. Headmen were responsible for administration and allocation of land and reported to the Department of Native Affairs. They often promoted Christianity and capitalism but were met with resistance from the traditionalists.209 Mtintso’s aunt was a victim of patriarchal practices of the family which the headman apparently endorsed. In the same instance, her being accused of witchcraft shows that traditional belief systems were still prevailing in the community and there was a rejection of Christian beliefs by the community. Mtintso was aware of this injustice at a young age.

Mtintso’s political activism was therefore heavily influenced by her gender and class consciousness. This awareness of inferiority as a woman and as a poor Xhosa person has influenced her in student activism. This created a gulf between two worlds where the schooled elites often felt dislocated and distanced from home. Acquiring mission education improved the financial status of some, and it created opportunities to become ‘civilised’ for others. One could attain work with higher social status earn a relatively higher wage with a mission education. The traditional Xhosa’s were particularly

207 Mtintso, 2. 208 M.J Manala, “African Traditional Widowhood Rites and Their Benefits and/or Detrimental Effects on Widows in a Context of African Christianity,” HTS Theologiese Studies/Theological Studies 71, no. 3 (2015): 5. 209 Leslie Bank, “Beyond Red and School: Gender, Tradition and Identity in the Rural Eastern Cape,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 634.

45 against white ‘civilisation’ because of white superiority imposed over blacks. While the Christian’s found that the main oppression was in being denied by the whites an equal opportunity to civilise. Many schools who later migrate to the cities do so to attain this civilisation.210 This was a source of tensions among the Xhosa groups, as the traditionalist’s regarded Christians as traitors of the 'race' for abandoning their traditions while the latter found the uncompromising attitude of the traditionalists a deterrent to the advancement of the African people.211

Mission schooling heightened the students’ awareness of their social and political realities as black people living in Apartheid. This often drove them into political activism.212 For example, Mtintso was expelled from Clarkebury because of her participation in the food and accommodation strikes in the school. As she stated, the school had kept to a silent rule of not asking questions about what was happening in the country. She recalled the silence around the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd for instance, where teachers refused to explain to them why he had been killed. She says such incidents led them to understanding their oppression whilst in the school, which grew stronger once she got expelled. At this time Mtintso has dedicated her life to political activism, “It looked like there was only once choice, to be in some kind of struggle, to change not only my life but the lives of those around me,” she said.213

Mission schooling remained relatively more attractive than state schools even as the living conditions in the schools were deteriorating. Mamphela Ramphele described extremely poor conditions in Bethesda Teacher Training College, Polokwane in 1962. She described the “appalling state of disrepair” of the dormitories, the poor quality of food which gave them severe pellagra (vitamin B complex deficiency) and social divide between students and teachers (who were predominantly Afrikaans speaking). Ramphele went through the many traumatic and humiliating ‘initiation’ traditions of the school and had to join ‘home girl’ and boy groups for protection. The networks were also there for them to help each through the poor living conditions at the school.214 The ‘home girl’ groups required each one to contribute the resources received from home so that they could all have an equal share. This became a source of tension because some would consume more than they could contribute to the group to the disadvantage of others. This further highlighted the differences in class between mission-school students. She removed herself from these home girl groups after having

210 Phillip Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, Second Edition (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971), 33. 211 Mayer, 34. 212 Bundy, “Lessons on the Frontier: Aspects of Eastern Cape History,” 17. 213 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 3. 214 Mamphela Ramphele, A Passion for Freedom (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2013), 61.

46 realised that, “Survival is a stronger force than the fear of offending others,” which made her health condition much better because she was able to use the allowance from home on herself.215

Ramphele’s awareness of herself as an inferior race developed in the mission school. Her school had a system of ‘huiswerk’ (meaning housework) were each student was to labour for their allocated teacher for two hours a week. This system was meant to foster good relations between teachers and students, but to Ramphele, it was “a form of forced labour intended to remind students that education was not an escape route from the inferior position blacks were ‘destined’ to occupy.” 216 Although this school was one of the few remaining ‘quality’ boarding schools set up by the Dutch Reformed church, a denomination her parents wanted her to stick to, it kept to the conditions set by the Bantu Education Act of operating within the limits set for black people in society. “They took very seriously Dr Verwoerd’s words which he used in motivating the introduction of Bantu Education Act of 1953: ‘Bantu’ children should not be shown green pastures where they would never be allowed to graze’,” she wrote.217

Ramphele enrolled for teacher training at the age of fourteen because her parents, who were also teachers, instructed her to do so.218 Her unpleasant experience in school made her choose to leave the teacher training college and enrol to become a doctor instead. Her family did not approve of her decision, especially as her father was terminally ill and could not afford her training.219 She nonetheless went to Setotolwane High School for her matriculation, where she was one of the two girls among the male students in her class. She recalls vividly how the Dominee dismissed her ambitions as a ‘pipe dream’ when she finished school in 1965. The dominee told her that as a black girl, with a father dying of cancer, it was impossible for her to achieve her goals. She remembered crying on her way home that day even more determined to prove him wrong.220Ramphele was one of the few women who opted for a ‘male’ career when the government had been vigorously steering women towards domestic jobs.221

215 Ramphele, 63. 216 Ramphele, 59. 217 Ramphele, 67. 218 Ramphele, 59. 219 Ramphele, 67. 220 Ramphele, 68. 221 Martineau, “Women and Education in South Africa: Factors Influencing Women’s Educational Progress and Their Entry into Traditionally Male-Dominated Fields,” 386.

47 Ramphele further recalled how traditional Christian notions of morality were strictly enforced in the rules and regulations of mission schools, specifically as it related to gender differences and roles. Boys and girls were closely monitored by the boarding matrons and masters. In Bethesda the male students herded the cattle within the school, which they would also slaughter, skin, cut and store for the week’s food supply. The girls could visit nearing shopping centres with the permission of the head prefect, who would also accompany them as a group. Sundays were reserved for worship, with sermons delivered in Afrikaans with Sotho interpretation. The church was segregated according to gender to restrict ‘temptation’ and according to race because “after all, it was God’s law to keep blacks and whites apart, and one had to be even stricter in His house in this regard,” she wrote222

3.2. Politicisation in Urban Secondary Schools

In her memoir, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, Sibongile Mkhabela revealed that although Bantu Education was inferior compared to mission and white schools, black students in the Soweto Township held their education in high regard. Students in the township regarded an education as pivotal to the advancement of the African community regardless.223 She attended Naledi High School, which she described as one of the best alongside Orlando, Musi, Sekano Ntoane and Morris Isaacson high schools (these would later lead students in the 1976 student uprising). Opened in 1964, she says the school took pride in its academic, athletic and musical excellence, especially given that the students came from poor families. She recalls the profound influence of the school principal, Mr Mthimkhulu in insisting that they strive against the odds of Bantu Education to prove themselves more capable.224 Sibongile also cited the financial constraints and pressure exerted on black youth to finish school and earn an income to assist younger siblings.225

Mkhabela had a gendered experience of township schooling. She recalled very few young girls who chose commerce subjects andhow she worked tirelessly to recruit more girls in her school to join her in the ‘male’ course. She was the only girl in a class of forty boys and the rest of the girls enrolled in the biology and domestic Science classes. She wrote:

I hated Domestic Science with a passion. I did not want to be taught things I was already doing better than my own teachers. Homemaking was part of my daily life. I wanted the school to

222 Ramphele, A Passion for Freedom, 64. 223 Sibongile Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976 (Skotaville Press, 2001). 224 Mkhabela, 29. 225 Mkhabela, 30.

48 be a place where I could develop and exercise my intellectual capabilities. I did not want, under any pretext of learning, to cook another meal, sweep another floor or bake another cake.226

Mkhabela therefore used education and schooling as a strategy against female domesticity. She encouraged her female peers to leave the ‘female’ subjects and join her in her course to change the status quo. She pleaded with her friend not to continue with a subject “intended to keep Black women in White women’s kitchens.”227 By the end of the year she manged to recruit eight girls to join the class, something she wrote gave a great gratification.

Mkhabela was highly influenced by the culture of discipline instilled in students at Naledi High School. Mr Mthimkhulu, the principal at Naledi High inspired Mkhabela and her peers to persevere through the odds to achieve their dreams. According to Mkhabela, Mr Mthimkhulu did not tolerate ill-discipline, however, he did not use physical means to discipline learners. He used motivational talks and success stories instead. She recalled her own experience of Mr Mthimkhulu’s methods as follows:

If ever he were to meet any of his students outside the schoolyard, he would stop his car and drive them personally to school. These were uncomfortable rides; I should know, I had the misfortune of being part of them.228

The schools were spaces in which children were instilled with morals and discipline even in the context of Apartheid. Mkhabela placed great value in the role of the principal and some teachers in her school, arguing that it was because of them that her school became one of the best in Soweto. As Jacob Dlamini argued in Native Nostalgia, the idea that black life under Apartheid was one of a “moral desert” where blacks did not produce “morally upstanding children” was wrong, even if some of those children grew up to make behave immorally is facile.229 Dlamini argued that the working class understood the importance of education, not because their ‘social betters’ told them, but because they knew it was important.230 That many parents, including Mkhabela’s father, spoke strongly

226 Mkhabela, 33. 227 Mkhabela, 35. 228 Mkhabela, 30. 229 Jacob Dlamini, Native Nostalgia (Jacana Media, 2009), 19. 230 Dlamini, 93.

49 against their children’s participation in politics proves how important education was.231. For Mkhabela:

[Naledi High] was a school that prided itself on its sanity, its determination to succeed against all odds and its valued clear thinking. It was a school of students who saw themselves as people who would one day play a key role in uplifting black people…We desired to change the conditions under which Black people as a nation lived.232

Some teachers used the classroom as a space to promote political consciousness of the students. Such was Mkhabela’s history teacher, who was a political activist dedicated to teaching them African history and challenged them to engage critically with Africanist thinking. She recalled how a typical lesson would be split between the prescribed syllabi, which portrayed the Europeans positively, and ‘the truth’ about African civilisation. She wrote:

Our genuine history ventured to explain the relationship between African people and their natural life, water mountains, animals and faith in a God whom they earnestly worshipped. This style of teaching helped us believe in ourselves, and made us even more attracted to the sayings and the writings of African leaders...233

The extent of political education given to the students at Naledi high was unique given the Apartheid governments silencing of political activism during this time. The history teacher organised a trip to Mozambique to meet the first African President of the country, Samora Machel in 1975. He was the leader of the Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) party. FRELIMO was a militant political party formed in Dar-es-Salaam in 1962 which led the Mozambican liberation struggle and won Mozambique its independence in 1974.234 The FRELIMO struggle and its relevance to South African politics was part of many history lessons at Naledi High. According to Mkhabela, it was motivation to the students to educate themselves about the politics in their country. Machel addressed the students briefly with a profound message which gave the students hope to change their political conditions. One of the buses they travelled by unfortunately overturned, killing five pupils and the history teacher. The tragedy devastated the school and community members, leading to Mr Mthimkhulu’s extended leave of absence. The students drew strength from the lessons they had been

231 Dlamini, 91. 232 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 45. 233 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 37. 234 Edward A Hawley, “A Salute to FRELIMO and Mozambique,” Africa Today 22, no. 2 (June 1975): 5–6.

50 taught by of these two men.235 Mkhabela does not account for how the school evaded state repression in this instance, nonetheless, greatly motivated students to engage in politics.

3.2.1. FRELIMO & the Black Consciousness Movement

The FRELIMO struggles were significant in grooming the political awareness of BCM activists. South African Students Organisation (SASO) students organised a pro- FRELIMO rally in Durban in support of Mozambique gaining its’ independence from the Portuguese. This led to the arrest and detaining of nine SASO and BPC members under the Terrorism Act, including Aubrey Mokoape, Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley. The convicts became known as the SASO nine and were sent to Robben Island.236 The banning came after the NP’s Schlebusch Commission investigation of certain organisations – including NUSAS and the Christian Institute. The Commission found radical Christian and student organisations including SASO to be a serious threat to the state, albeit initially, the state had welcomed black consciousness philosophy as it was in line with its policy of separate development. Steve Biko was banished to the King Williams Town District in the Eastern Cape. Barney Pityana, Harry Nengwekhul and Bokwe Mafuna were also among those banned to their various homelands. This was a failed attempt by the state to immobilise SASO leadership ‘at a stroke of a pen’ as Ramphele wrote.237

BC women’s political actions during this time demonstrated their dedication the ideals of black solidarity in the movement. Matshoba appealed to all black women to show solidarity and become more active in the liberation movement. 238 Eight women, including Masekela, delivered a petition of 700 signatures to Prime Minister Vorster requesting the release of the detainees.239 Sam Moodley, wife to one of the detainees, Strini Moodley delivered a paper in a student meeting in March 1973 in which she addressed the repression of BC activists by the state. She was working as a research assistant for the Black Community Programmes (BPC). She was also dismissed from teaching because of her involvement in the BCM. She argued that the state resorted to banning the activists because it was threatened by them, that this was a sign that they were achieving their goals as a movement. She called for solidarity and the adoption of the BC philosophy by black people as the

235 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 32. 236 Vanessa Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa (Scottsville: University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2013), 254. 237 Ramphele, A Passion for Freedom, 116. 238 Deborah Matshoba, “Woman: Wither Thou?” SASO Newsletter, April 1973, A2176 South African Students Organisation (SASO) 1969-1977, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 239 “Outcry over Detainees: Appeals to Black Leaders and Govt.,” The World, November 20, 1974, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

51 only strategy to liberation.240 She stood in this forum both as an activist and as a wife, showing the extent to which women participated in the struggle with their husbands, brothers and sons. Her outcry as a woman must have elicited sympathy from those present and motivated them to participate in the movement.

Mkhabela had personal experience of the impact of Portuguese rule in Mozambique. Her parents escaped from Mozambique and settled in South African before Apartheid. She said her father refused to talk about what happened back in their country. One of the few occasions in which he said anything about Portuguese rule in Mozambique, he mentioned that the brutality and cruelty of the Portuguese towards black Mozambicans was no different from the Boers in South Africa. The Portuguese system of rule was designed to fulfil Portuguese nationalism while Africans were a source of labour for the economic benefit of Portugal.241

Her mother was illiterate, and her father was working as a painter for a white man and earning very little wages. She described her father as a ‘border jumper’ who was reluctant to involve himself in the South African political space and disapproved of her political activism because of the fear of having their identity revealed. Her parents changed their names when they arrived in South Africa. She and her siblings were the first generation born in South Africa in the family.242 Through the exposure she had in reading and debating in school, she developed a keen interest in African politics. She learnt about the oppression of black people in Mozambique by the Portuguese, which came in ‘little bits of stories’ from her father and inspired her to read more about it.243

Mkhabela’s experience of white people was through the harassment her father went through during police raids. She argued that her father had the right to live in South Africa because he was an African. She further resented the treatment her father received from her employer, who was a white man from Orange Grove. She wrote that her father was treated like a ‘boy’ because he was supervised without any need and paid a low wage that couldn’t take care of a family of six. She wrote:

It was natural to be angry. I felt anger towards white people, all White people. Were they not actively exploiting us? Had they not turned our fathers and mothers into ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, and treated them like commodities for sale?244

240 Moodley Sam, “An Address by Mrs Sam Moodley at UNB,” SASO 3, no. 1 (Mar./April 73): 8–10. 241 Basil Davidson, “The Struggle for Independence of ‘Portuguese’ Africa,” Reality 6, no. 1 (March 1974): 13. 242 Sibongile Mkhabela, Sibongile Mkhabela LRC Oral History Project, 2008, 2, AG3298 LEGAL RESOURCES CENTRE Oral History Project, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 243 Mkhabela, 5. 244 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 41.

52 Mkhabela’s settled in South Africa as an illegal migrant labourer.245 The apartheid government did not legally recognise Mozambican immigrants or refugees in South Africa until the 1970s. Many ‘self-settled’ in Bushbuckridge in the north-eastern border of South Africa. The area was one of the poorest parts of South Africa made up of mostly barren land. By the 1980s, when many fled the civil war in Mozambique, Bushbuckridge had a population of about fifty thousand Mozambican refugees. The apartheid government turned a blind eye to the settlement of Mozambicans because of the supply of cheap labour but denied them full citizenship.246 This made Mkhabela’s father vulnerable to abuse by the security police. He was not the only one as Mkhabela wrote, furthermore, even South Africans who happened not to have correct documentation during such raids experienced harassment from the police.

Mkhabela argued that being a female student activist gave her a certain advantage compared to her male peers. The low expectation for girls to participate in student activism lifted the pressure of having to attend all the meetings. This gave her “sacrosanct space for reflection, and for strengthening my [her] individual commitment to the cause,” she wrote. She saw her gender as a strength; allowing her to cultivate and act decisively on her political ideas.247 This was in sharp contrast to BC male activists who sought to restore his manhood through his determination and diligence in the struggle.248

3.2.2. From Youth groups to a Political Movement in Soweto

Sibongile Mkhabela’s life history shows the influence of other women, who were not part of the BCM on the political consciousness of BC women. In her case, we see the influence of Ellen Kuzwayo, social worker and then the general secretary of the YWCA.249 As Kuzwayo outlined, the YWCA was aimed at developing young girls and women into well-rounded christian leaders. It further sought to develop the community and improve its surroundings. The fellowship conducted leadership and personal growth training programmes which ran over the weekends, and workshops which were held twice yearly. The young girls were taught craft and domestic skills, as well as social and political studies.250 Mkhabela met Kuzwayo when she was ten. As young girls they would go to her house where she’d teach them domestic skills. They would be taken to the omni Library in Dube were they

245 Tara Polzer, “‘We Are All South Africans Now:’ The Integration of Mozambican Refugees in Rural South Africa.",” The Graduate School For the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Forced Migration Studies Working Paper Series, May 2004, 1–10. 246 Ramos Cardoso Muanamoha, “The Dynamics of Undocumented Mozambican Labour Migration to South Africa” (PHD, University of KwaZulu Natal, 2008), 4. 247 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 40. 248 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 38. 249 Ellen Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman (Northlands: Picador Africa, 2004), 4. 250 Kuzwayo, 192.

53 were exposed to books and reading. They would also have discussion sessions about the books or issues affecting them, which “in a way helped you engage your mind and open your mind to a number of possibilities out there” she said.251

Another BC women leader who was affiliated to the YWCA and shared a close bond to Kuzwayo was Deborah Matshoba. She had represented the YWCA of South African in Ghana in 1971. Her role as chairperson of the Youth Department in the YWCA had exposed her to other women leaders and international political affairs. The authorities took her passport away upon her return because of the way she spoke against Apartheid in the conference.252 Kuzwayo’s recollection of Matshoba was of “an active and committed member,” she added that “in these early years, although a cheerful person and asset to the Association in many ways, Debra did not display any special courage or strength.”253 This background however, according to Matshoba, made many students intimidated by her when she joined SASO.254

Mkhabela’s political activism began when she joined the Student Christian Movement (SCM) in the early 1970s. It was formed in Britain, 1889 and broadly aimed at spreading ecumenism among students of different denominations.255 It exposed students to ideas of black theology and political activism before BCM organisations were formed. The ‘golden age’ of the SCM was in the 1950s where young ‘secretaries’ travelled abroad to universities and churches to form a community of students centred around the critical analysis of the Bible.256 According to Mkhabela, the SCM “looked at Christianity differently, looking at what scriptures say to me [her] as an oppressed person at the time.”257

The World’s Student Christian Federation was the driving force behind the formation of the SCM in 1896. The SCM initially aimed to bring together English and Dutch students.258 The SCM played a significant role in the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, which has been referred to as ‘the SCM in long trousers’ and was affiliated with other Christian bodies such the YWCA.259 The movement was reaching near collapse in western countries in the late 1960s due to

251 Mkhabela, Sibongile Mkhabela LRC Oral History Project, 5. 252 Deborah Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, interview by Amanda Alexander and Andile Mngxitama, January 2008, 280. 253 Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman, 5. 254 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 280. 255 Denis Cahalane, “SCM Conference,” The Furrow 17, no. 12 (December 1966): 801–2. 256 Robin Boyd, “The Witness of the Student Christian Movement,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 3. 257 Mkhabela, Sibongile Mkhabela LRC Oral History Project, 3. 258 Macqueen, “Re-Imagining South Africa,” 26. 259 Boyd, “The Witness of the Student Christian Movement,” 4.

54 brewing conflict between the liberal evangelists and those who called for religious orthodoxy. The Civil Rights Movement in the USA paralleled with student unrest in South Africa and Northern Ireland led to a bigger rift between the movement and the churches. The SCM, as part of the World’s Student Christian Federation (WSCF) was seen to be leaning towards a justification of the oppression ensuing in 1968- a critical year in which Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, the ‘Prague Spring’ in Czechoslovakia and ‘May Revolution’ in France took place.260

The South African Students Christian Association (SCA) was a quasi-segregated organisation affiliated to the WSCF; split into four autonomous groups which would represent the four racial groups, including the SCM for African students.261 Although it was strongly against the Apartheid policy, the SCA in 1964 could not be disassociated from its practice despite the WSCF’s call for sanctions against it. The SCA wanted to maintain cooperation and dialogue between two incompatible national ideals, a stance which led to its demise in a country which was centred on the Apartheid ideology.262 The SCA further adopted a ‘Basis of faith’ stance in 1966 as part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) which would exclude non-evangelists and lead to its isolation from the other three groups.263

The SCM was not a political movement therefore Mkhabela needed another outlet to fully sensitize her political ideas. Students began mobilising into political activism as members of the African Students’ Movement (ASM). The ASM campaigned for the creation of an SRC, extra lessons and study sessions. The ASM was restricted to three Soweto high schools, Orlando West High, Orlando High and Diepkloof high. It did not do well as its leaders were victimised by the authorities and had difficulties mobilising students of other organisations. Leaders faced threats of expulsion from principals who did not want to lose authority. Gang members were opposed to the ASM, and often used violence against its members. Furthermore, many students were members of the SCM which was less threatening and more financially stable.264 The organisation lost momentum in the late 1960s as BC ideas infiltrated the high schools. The South African Students Movement (SASM) was then formed in 1971 as a student body representing high schools across the country. The SASM expressed concern over Bantu Education as a system designed to ‘domesticate rather than educate’ black people.

260 Boyd, 6. 261 “Report on the National Council Meeting of the Students Christian Association” (Cape Town, July 9, 1966), 3, AD1126 University Christian Movement, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 262 Macqueen, “Re-Imagining South Africa,” 30. 263 “Report on the National Council Meeting of the Students Christian Association,” 1. 264 Nozipho J Diseko, “The Origins and Development of the South African Student’s Movement (SASM) : 1968-1976,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 1 (March 1992): 52.

55 Students were becoming aware of the oppressive nature of Bantu Education and began mobilising against it.265

Mkhabela then joined the South African Students Movement (SASM) and knew immediately that she would be part of the BCM. Reading the writings of African Nationalist leaders such as Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe influenced her commitment to the struggle for freedom.266 The University Christian Movement (UCM) provided some reading material to the urban youth. Secondary school teachers such as Thomas Manthata made these available. The students were exposed to ideas of Africanism, which in turn contributed to their disenchantment with the existing ‘white liberal’ organisations- mainly Christian- of which they were part.267 Her personal experience and such explicit exposure to African politics made her reject liberalism.

SASM was formed independently from SASO and its membership comprised of ANC and BCM supporters. However, SASM leaders adopted the BC ideology and discourse to sensitise those students who were not politically conscious.268 Mkhabela described her good friend Zwelinzima Sizane as an ‘ideologue’ and stern supporter of the ANC while her convictions led her to the more ‘militant’ BC philosophy. Nonetheless, the SASM was registered in the national liberation movement as an extension of SASO.269 It was not directly influenced by neither the ANC, PAC nor SASO. Rather, SASM was a product of a convergence of various political ideas and aimed at catering for the needs of urban secondary school youth.270 SASM activists drew inspiration from BCM leaders such as Steve Biko and Onkgopotse Tiro. When asked if she knew of Tiro, Mkhabela recalled said:

He was known to me as someone who fired us, inspired us. Whose writings, history, and death affected us. The main thing that struck and shocked us was his death…He was a hero, but he wasn’t visible, he wasn’t there. He was like Mandela… His writings helped shape our own thinking, as the writings of Steve Biko.271

Tiro had also been a student at Naledi High a few years earlier and matriculated in Barolong High School in Mafikeng. He was the catalyst of student boycotts in the University of the North (Turfloop)

265 Tebello Motapanyane, How June 16 Demo was planned, January 1977, 51, Digital Innovation South Africa, www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/int19770100032009741. 266 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 41. 267 Diseko, “The Origins and Development of the South African Student’s Movement (SASM) : 1968-1976,” 43. 268 Motapanyane, How June 16 Demo was planned, 51. 269 Nozipho J Diseko, “The Origins and Development of the South African Student’s Movement (SASM) : 1968-1976,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 1 (March 1992): 41. 270 Diseko, 42. 271 Sibongile Mkhabela, Sibongile Mthembu Mkhabela, August 18, 1994, 8, Digital Innovation South Africa, disa.ukzn.ac.za/ora199408180000009000.

56 which spread across university campuses in 1972 after he was expelled for openly challenging the Apartheid government. He played a significant role in the BCM as permanent organiser for SASO and as the president of the Black People's Convention (BPC) in 1973. He taught at Morris Isaacson, Soweto, but was fired in 1973 because of his role in politics. His continued political activism led him to exile in Botswana where he continued to teach until he was killed by a parcel bomb planted by apartheid hit squad "Z squad."272 Mkhabela’s account highlights the influence of SASO activists in the townships in the development of secondary school student politics.

3.3. Political Activism in Higher Education Institutions

Ramphele’s autobiography is telling of context in which students politics developed in tertiary institutions. She enrolled at Turfloop in 1967 when anti-Apartheid student activism had not gained momentum. The Student Representative Council mainly organised entertainment activities which did not challenge the authority in any way. She described the campus as “a fine preparation for life as a petit bourgeois on the margins of society and power.”273 This description of the University is fitting given its history. It started with a modest enrolment of eighty-seven students, three of which being female. The first rector was Professor EF Potgieter, who had a white executive and a separate Advisory Council comprised of only blacks. The council was made up of handpicked community leaders and priests. There was also an all-white senate, followed by an all-black Advisory Senate. Therefore, it was a black University controlled by white authority.

Ramphele added that Turfloop authorities worked with the Apartheid government to train blacks for subservience to whites. She recalled how the then Registrar of the university would remark “My vel is my graad (My skin is my degree)”.274 This shows the ways in which skin colour symbolised privilege in the Universities.. Black students ran the risk of being perceived as 'sell-outs' by some activists of the time.275 Black lecturers were largely under-qualified and were paid very little. 276 The University became a hub of political activism by the early 1970s as more students from urban areas enrolled and the influence of SASO increased.277

272 Arianna Lissoni, “Student Organisation in Lehurutshe and the Impact of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro,” in Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ’76 (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 34–44. 273 Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader (New York: The Feminist Press, 1995), 57. 274 Ramphele, 57. 275 Mawasha, “Turfloop: Where an Idea Was Expressed, Hijacked and Redeemed,” 67. 276 Mawasha, 68. 277 Anne Heffernan, “The University of the North: A Regional and National Centre of Activism,” in Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ’76 (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 45.

57 Turfloop’s SRC could support SASO politically and financially in its formation because the Apartheid government did not perceive BC philosophy as a threat at first. For instance, SASO's first national conference was held and sponsored by university in July 1969. It would continue to host an array of SASO meetings and activities with attracted membership, strong student networks and further sponsorship. The formation of an all-black student’s organisation was welcomed as it fell in line with the Apartheid government's policy of separate development.278

3.3.1. From NUSAS to SASO; The birth of the Black Consciousness Movement in Natal

The conditions at the University of Natal Non-European Section (UNB) were completely different, as Ramphele recalled. The UNB provided ample opportunity for black students to engage in politics. SRC bodies were created for each racial group in the newly segregated University of Natal; white students at Howard College and Pietermaritzburg were represented respectively, while the University of Natal’s 'Non-European' SRC (UNNE SRC) was created for non-white students. Furthermore, the UNNE SRC medical students formed their own SRC body to cater for them in Umbilo Road. Graduation ceremonies were boycotted annually by black students to highlight issues of segregation and inequality within the University. These boycotts involved picketing by graduates themselves and were a source of embarrassment for the authorities. The black SRC’s diminished by 1959 when the non-European section of the University was closed. The medical school was left as the only institution which trained black doctors, leaving the UNNE’s black SRC dominated by medical students.279

UNB was the home of SASO, and the Alan Taylor Residence (ATR) became the fulcrum of student anti-Apartheid politics.280 Ramphele argued that the principal of the UNB, Professor Owen Horwood, unknowingly instigated the vibrant political student activism in the school. He had approved the financing of a seminar held at Mariannhill which led to the formation of SASO.281 The location of SASO’s head office at UNB she added, made political sense as the University was the most liberal. This was in sharp contrast to other Universities which ironically had an exclusive black population while UNB was multiracial. She further argued that as medical students they were of a higher calibre than ‘less fortunate’ students from the ‘bush colleges’ where political activities were restricted.282

278 Heffernan, 47–48. 279 Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa, 208. 280 Noble, 211. 281 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 56. 282 Ramphele, 61.

58 Ramphele started attending student body meetings with her friend Vuyelwa Mashalaba in the middle of 1968. Ramphele clearly held Mashalaba in high regard, as she wrote:

Vuyelwa was a strikingly beautiful woman with sharp features, a smooth olive complexion, and a strong, well-proportioned body. She exuded self-confidence and spoke with a distinctive, polished English accent. She came from a family of strong, high-achieving sisters, headed by a widowed mother, who lived in Maclear, in the Eastern Cape.283

It was also Mashalaba who introduced Ramphele to the SASO ‘circle’ of leaders. Ramphele observed several debates in the student body meetings which she wrote were dominated by criticism of the liberal politics of NUSAS.

Steve Biko was the main critic of NUSAS and liberalism she wrote, arguing that liberalism would ineffective in bringing any fundamental change because it failed to address racism and the economic conditions faced by blacks. Biko spoke out against the paternalistic attitude of white NUSAS leaders towards blacks. He argued that liberal students imposed a western culture and expected blacks to assimilate to it. He was equally opposed to the tendency of blacks to rely on the white students to lead in the student body because of their own inferiority complex. He called on students to see themselves as blacks first, before they can achieve the total liberation of their people.284

As Ramphele recalled, there were students who argued valiantly against the creation of an exclusive black student’s organisation. As Ramphele recalled, “Ben [Ngubane] was an eloquent speaker, but was not match for the younger and more passionate Biko.”285 Ngubane was outvoted and the black students created SASO to run parallel to NUSAS. The decision to officially reject NUSAS was made in the July 1971 SASO conference SASO argued that white liberal students were not qualified to speak on behalf of or fight against the oppression of black students and that the organisation itself was beneficial to certain individuals.286 SASO's formation was met with equal amounts of outrage and fascination by NUSAS leadership. Strong liberal leaders such Alan Paton accused SASO of reverse racism for its exclusion of the whites.287 Ngubane grew more disillusioned by SASO and eventually became non-active in student politics. He re-emerged in the 1980s as an Inkatha Freedom

283 Ramphele, 54. 284 Ramphele, 55. 285 Ramphele, 56. 286 {Citation} 287 Saul Dubow, Apartheid 1948-1994 (Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 2014), 161.

59 Party (IFP) official which formed in 1975 in KZN mainly to advance interests of the Zulu ethnic group in anti-Apartheid movement.

Deborah Matshoba was part of the General Student Council (GSC) that saw the departure of Keith Mokoane into exile following his rejected motion to shut down the Universities in light of the increasing violence that continued at Fort Hare. She describes a heated moment in the meeting where the journalist and observers were all asked to leave the delegates on their own. Biko and Mokoane disagreed on this motion of shutting down Universities and going to exile. Biko argued against it as he could risk expulsion after having already failed twice. He encouraged delegates to vote on whatever feels morally correct for them. In hearing Biko speak on the matter Matshoba remarked, “Eh! I could see that this man was making sense. So unselfish, that was the first picture I captured of Steve.”288 Mokoane and his entourage walked out the GSC after many voted against their motion. They went to exile in Botswana where Mokoane finally joined the ANC.

Ramphele also recalled heated debates between PAC sympathiser, Aubrey Mokoape and Steve Biko wherein the former argued that according to Pan Africanism, coloureds and Indians should not be part of the BCM. In the occasions where he became intoxicated, Ramphele recalled Mokoape making explicit anti-Indian remarks. Mokoape had supporters who argued vigorously against the inclusion of these groups. Indian SASO leaders would laugh at the remarks but understood the anger Blacks had towards them and encouraged Indian students to dedicate themselves to the liberation of all.289 Racial divisions between Indian, Coloured and Black students hindered membership to SASO. Some Indian and Coloured students stayed away to keep the few privileges they enjoyed as intermediate racial groups.290 Some Indian students also did not identify with SASO's definition of 'black'- as they felt it required a rejection of their Indian heritage and culture.291

Ramphele was drawn into activism through her friendship with Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Steve Biko and Barney Pityana. Together they organised discussion sessions, canvassed for membership and became involved in community projects.292 SASO offered ample space for intellectual and political discussion and debates by students, intellectuals, professionals and activists alike. In the many conferences, meetings and events, new ideas were introduced, probed and challenged to form part of SASO publications and projects. Leaders took into serious consideration the opinion, views and ideas of all

288 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 277. 289 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 60. 290 Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa, 223. 291 Noble, 224. 292 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 61.

60 interested and relevant individuals for any action to be taken. Individual initiatives were encouraged and leadership skills of all were cultivated. 293 There was general lack of involvement in politics by medical students however, this is because they were not big in numbers, they came from a variety of political backgrounds, and enrolling at a medical was considered a privilege for many who were bursary and scholarship holders, the academic demands of medical school coupled with high expectations to succeed from their families, and that students aspired to gaining this prestige in their communities contributed to this.294

SASO students engaged in several academic boycotts- which involved not attending lectures, mass meetings and rallies, and they held commemorative services for those killed by the state.295 The increasing opposition against Apartheid policies revealed to the state that SASO was not an organisation which supported Policy of Separate Development. The government began targeting SASO leaders from 1972 with arrests, interrogations and banning orders. Due to the efficiency of SASO’s formation Schools, new leaders quickly and effectively filled the roles of those who had been banned. In 1975-1976, SASO’s national executive was banned in its entirety. Many were ordered to return to their ‘Homelands’ and others fled to exile.296 Furthermore, the administrations in various institutions banned SASO from 1972, including Fort Hare in 1973 and Turfloop in 1975.297

A significant part of the BC philosophy was the aspect of self-reliance and community upliftment. Ramphele became aware of the need for medical doctors in poor black communities as a student at the medical school. As students they started the Happy Valley Clinic at the Alan Taylor Residence. They provided medical services every weekend to the surrounding district of the medical school. She remarked:

Happy Valley Clinic was a shoestring affair which was enthusiastically used by the local people- more a commentary on their desperate circumstances than a reflection on the quality of the service it offered.298

Ramphele revealed that not only was there a lack of adequate healthcare in black communities, but that the quality of medical training given to black students was inferior compared to whites.

293 Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990, 111. 294 Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the Education of Black Doctors in South Africa, 206. 295 Noble, 253. 296 Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 1968-1990, 133. 297 Badat, 133. 298 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 62.

61 Ramphele shows that BCM students understood the crippling effect of the NP’s separate development policy to black political mobilisation. The Happy Valley clinic may have been unsuccessful, however, it provided important lessons which Ramphele and her peers would later use in the implementation of Black Community Programmes (BCP). The BCP replaced SASO following government arrests and banning of SASO leaders. The activists focused their attention on self-reliance without overtly challenging the government. Ecumenical organisations also shied away from overt political engagement because of a fear of government repression.299

3.3.2. Class consciousness among students in the BCM

Getting rid of one’s ‘inferiority complex’ was at the core black consciousness (BC) philosophy. As Mtintso stated:

Later on it was to make sense when I was at FH [Fort Hare]. These were little bits of life. There was the poverty in the rural areas and the gender oppression. There was that poverty in the urban areas and the race and class oppression. And its much later that I made sense of them.300

Living in the rural Eastern Cape made Mtintso aware of strong divisions in class status among Xhosa groups, which played out at home, in school and in student politics. Social differentiation between Christian mission-educated Africans, conservative and urban Africans has been widely explored by scholars.301 In the Xhosa groups more specifically, Phillip Mayer distinguished these as Abantu Babomvu (reds) who were conservative, Abantu Basesikolweni (schools) who were mission-educated and Amakhumsha (townspeople) who may or may have not abandoned their rural ties.302 The school Xhosas steadily increased throughout the first half of the 20th century.303 Mission schooling was highly regarded and necessary if one wanted to become a part of the educated elite.304 The reds successfully resisted aspects of Christian and capitalist ‘civilisation’, albeit economic pressures called for gradual renegotiation and assimilation into western capitalism.305 Conversion into Christianity for

299 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 27. 300 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 2. 301 David Coplan, “The Emergence of an African Working-Class Culture,” in Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), 358. 302 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, 4. 303 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 91. 304 Bundy, “Lessons on the Frontier: Aspects of Eastern Cape History,” 9. 305 Jacques P de Wet, “Passive Resistance to Western Capitalism in Rural South Africa: From ‘Abantu Babomvu’ to ‘AmaZiyoni,’” Journal for the Study of Religion 21, no. 2 (2008): 34.

62 the African proletariat meant access to greater social and economic mobility. Africans who joined the mission stations did not always completely abandon their traditions, thus, African independent churches emerged as an alternative form of Christianity which held on to aspects of traditional and ancestral ritual which embracing western Christianity.306

Mtintso identified herself as a Amakarenga, which she defined as “children that came from the urban areas, mainly from Johannesburg, Cape town, sometimes referred to as Amakwerekwere, meaning foreigners.”307 This group is part of what Mayer called Amakhumsha – fully urbanised but still strongly linked to their rural kin.308 Mtintso, like many of the Amakhumsha, went to the rural areas to acquire an education and returned to the urban areas to find work. Amakhumsha have been blamed for the immoral behaviour in the city and the loss of African culture.309 As Mtintso’s political activities during her schooling career will show, they were especially instrumental in creating new strategies of adaptation and resistance to Apartheid.310 Mtintso further outlines the differences between themselves as Amakarenga and the middle-class rural children called AmaThembu:

These were children from families around the Eastern Cape. And comparatively speaking, they were richer than us. But we thought we were richer because we came from the urban areas. But you find that some of them …came in big cars and they’d be brought by their parents. Their parents are likely to be teachers or principals or nurses. They’re likely to be more educated than the parents of the children form urban areas.311

As a beacon of Africa Higher Education and having produced leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe, Mtintso regarded Fort Hare students as of a higher calibre than those of the ‘bush colleges. She argued that the politics at Fort Hare were different because “it not only was an institution for South Africans, it was for the whole of Africa. So you were in an institution of higher learning with an integrity.” In her view, the students at Fort Hare carried out much more effective strikes than Ngoye and Turfloop.

Mtintso political experience reveals the existence of glaring class and ethnic tensions among student activists in Fort Hare and within SASO. The differences between the Red and School Xhosas have been extensively analysed by scholars, however, an analysis of the impact of this division is absent

306 Coplan, “The Emergence of an African Working-Class Culture,” 367. 307 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 5. 308 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, 6. 309 Coplan, “The Emergence of an African Working-Class Culture,” 364. 310 Coplan, 365. 311 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 5.

63 in the scholarship on the BCM. Mtintso’s account sheds some light into how student activism was influenced by the awareness of one’s class status and respectability. As she explains, The Amakarenga (which she identified herself as) came from the city and were regarded as unruly outsiders while the Amathembu were from middle-class families. She stated that the “Amathembu were reactionary, and as far as they were concerned Amakarenga were irresponsible because Amakarenga on the slightest provocations would go on strike.”312 She further explained that SASO leaders who were identified as Amathembu had a strong following of students.

The lack of unity between the Amakarenga and Amathembu within SASO may have weakened the impact of student action in Fort Hare. Amakarenga were regarded as rebellious in their political conduct while the Amathembu were preoccupied with upholding their respectability. According to Mtintso, the parents of Amathembu were former Fort Hare students and valued education. Mtintso had planned to complete her studies so that she can return to the city and support her family financially. She carefully considered the consequence of striking on her education. While middle- class Xhosa groups saw education as a determinant of one’s respectability, education was a way of acquiring material wealth for many town people. Town people did not abandon their rural ties, but they adopted social norms of the town which may have been considered immoral by those in the rural areas.313

The Apartheid police did not treat the Amathembu students any differently when enforcing the law. As Mtintso shows, they saw all the students as a threat because if their race. Mtintso stated:

But when de Wet began to bring in police, that hardened the attitude of students. That hardened all of us, even the abathembus, because when the police came, they didn’t say who was makarenga, who was abathembu. They were hitting all of us.314

Mtintso’s experience shows the extent to which the BCM prioritised racial solidarity without analysing the impact of class within black society on black oppression. This was a significant deterrent in student activism. A significant part of Mtintso’s inferiority complex was derived from her Amakarenga identification. European missionaries introduced ideas of respectability which the Amathembu where aspiring towards, however, as already shown, African societies exercised some agency in how these ideas were absorbed. According to Biko, Europeans imposed their Christianity and capitalism in the African society, they further relegated African systems as barbaric, making the

312 Mtintso, 5. 313 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, 6. 314 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 6.

64 African child “find solace only in close identification with the white society.”315 Biko highlighted that material want was a source of the black man’s oppression, but “coupled with spiritual poverty it kills.”316 Therefore, BC activists were aware of the depth of class consciousness but chose to ignore its significance.

The involvement of white students under the leadership of Dr Rick Turner in BC community projects was another lost opportunity to engage analytically with class division in the BCM. Turner was a political science lecturer at the University of Natal and was known for his socialist views. As Ramphele recalled, Turner advocated for a class rather than race analyses of capitalism. Biko’s argument, however, was that there was no solidarity between white and black workers because of their racial divide, and therefore insisted that the issue of race become the central analysis poor communities. According to Ramphele, both were valid arguments, however, they would have had to be combined with the consideration of the ‘multi-dimensionality’ of the problems faced by poor black workers. She wrote:

So too, Marxists in South Africa, as elsewhere, needed to recognise the importance of racial categories as a determinant of a person’s place in a racist society, as well as developing a better-integrated analysis of gender, age and geographic place.317

The failure of SASO activists to recognise class as a legitimate analytical base limited its effectiveness in the communities. In agreeing with Lesley Hadfield’s observation, “SASO students recognized and experienced the economic plight of their people, but education also promised to help them cross into a black middle class.”318 One could argue that education was more about attaining middle-class status than it was about uplifting the entire black race. Ramphele observed how some professionals would exploit people in their own community for money. She recalled how a certain doctor Mohlala ran a private clinic without any academic qualifications and paid medical professionals in the area for their silence.319 Ramphele blamed this exploitation on racial oppression, arguing that black people could not resist black money-makers because of their ‘sense of powerlessness’ against their oppressors. The students therefore ignored class divisions and chose to address the mental state of black people.320

315 Biko, “We Blacks,” 17. 316 Biko, 15. 317 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 62. 318 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 31. 319 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 64. 320 Leslie Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” Journal for the Study of Religion 23, no. 1/2 (2010): 31.

65 In Fort Hare, students had dissolved its SRC due to increasing harassment of student leaders by the university authorities. Students would elect deputations to speak on their behalf, these elected individuals would also face victimization from authorities. When students boycotted the inauguration ceremony of newly appointed rector Professor de Wet in 1968 and painted offensive remarks on the university walls, seventeen of them were summoned to meet with the rector. These students were identified as the ones responsible for the boycott, they were then interrogated by the police and searched. In response to this, the students conducted a sit-in near the administration offices. They made a list of their grievances and demanded the rector to address them. The rector responded by threatening to ‘deal’ with the students accordingly. The sit-in went on until a few days later the students were faced with a brigade of policemen and dogs and were arrested for trespassing. The students were then made to pack their belongings and leave the University and required to sign an admission of guilt if they wished to return. Among those suspended were Barney Pityana- who became SASO’s president and some members of the UCM, which was also suspended during this time.321

Vuyelwa Mashalaba served as secretary and Regional Representative for Natal in 1969. She was sent to Fort Hare in 1971 to mobilise students in celebration of SASO Day.322 She delivered an address on ‘Communication as a facet of SASO Policy’. The SASO leadership had apparently lost influence over the students; furthermore, a fraction of the student leadership had also been agitating for representation of Fort Hare in an upcoming conference at Wits. The SASO newsletter stated that Mashalaba’s address “inspired the women-folk (who have always felt neglected at Fort Hare) more than anybody else.”323 As Ian Macqueen argued, the reference to Mashalaba’s influence on women in Fort Hare was dismissive to women’s concerns. BCM leaders had an opportunity to analyse the concerns of black women as they had ‘the plight of black manhood.’324 They deliberately rejected the women’s liberation movement, which was accessible to them, in place of spreading BCM ideals.

Asserting one’s maturity as a black man was an essential aspect of BC philosophy. The Apartheid state had turned men into boys, adults into children and black people needed to recognise their complicity in this if they were to restore their dignity. For Mtintso, the need to restore the dignity of students who were suspended for breaking petty campus laws was enough for her to participate in

321 Morlan, “The Student Revolt against Racism in South Africa,” 18. 322 South African Students Organisation, “Minutes of the 1969 SASO Conference” (University College of the North, 1969), disa.ukzn.ac.za/min19690700032009743. 323 “Campus News,” SASO Newsletter, June 1971, Digital Innovation South Africa. 324 Macqueen, Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid, 143.

66 student politics. The main concerns at Fort Hare in 1972 were of not having an SRC, unfair dismissal of students and petty residence rules. Mtintso recalled:

It was this big debate as to whether we should go on strike or we should not go on strike. To me these matters where simple. We should go on strike because there were students who were kicked out of FH [Fort Hare] because they were found in the male residence. And there were adult students as far as I was concerned.325

She added:

In the discussion, as much as I was shy, there’s one thing I can’t resist, my mouth is a big one. So before I knew what was happening, I was talking. I was asking questions and talking. And for some reason, people were clapping. People were asking, who is she? And many of the women were quiet of course.326

Mtintso begin speaking in the student meetings and strongly advocating for strike action against the authorities. She was part of the delegation responsible for drafting and submitting a memo to the rector listing all student concerns. When he did not respond, they began embarking on strikes. She became part of the SASO ‘inner circle’ with Jeff and Selby Baqwa, Jerry Modisane, Mpumzile Mjeke. As she recalled, there were only three women who were part of this exclusive group. They would frequent de Wet’s office for a response to their concerns, which proved a futile exercise. Mtintso said they then came to the realisation that it is the system of Bantu Education which they had to direct their efforts against. She recalled that walkouts had already taken place in other universities including Turfloop. According to her, the Fort Hare SASO group consulted Steve Biko and Malusi Mpumlwana in King Williams Town, which led them to mobilising Fort Hare students against Bantu Education more broadly in 1973 and ultimately led to their expulsion.327

The police attacked the students with batons and dogs during a peaceful mass meeting in the football stadium. The students were discussing the issue of walking out of Fort Hare because de Wet was unresponsive for two weeks. Mtintso and several others of the leadership were taken and expelled that day. They had not anticipated their axing from Fort Hare, they had not planned for what they would do if it did happen as the politics took place ‘from day to day’. Thus, for them, the very first

325 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 4. 326 Mtintso, 4. 327 Mtintso, 4.

67 step as the leaders was to go around the country to inform parents about what occurred. They eventually decided to meet in Durban where they were to report in a SASO conference what transpired in Fort Hare.

The need to maintain student status to remain a member of SASO and the BCM was important. Since Mtintso and the SASO leadership at Fort Hare were no longer students, they had to become members of the Black People’s Convention (BPC).328 She subsequently joined Biko in the Black Community Programmes (BPC). Biko was suspended in 1971 after failing his supplementary examination for a course he was repeating and thus needed a new base on which he would continue his activism. Mtintso was one of many other BCM activists who made the transition from student to community activism during this time. The political influence she had was clearly a threat to the authorities in the school. She lost the opportunity of completing her studies to rid her family of poverty because of her dedication to the black liberation struggle.

328 Mtintso, 9.

68 Chapter 4. Gender in the Black Consciousness Movement

4.1. The discursive exclusion of women in Black Consciousness literature

Black Consciousness (BC) discourse was gendered and largely excluded women as leaders in the movement.329 One can assume, from reading articles in South African Students Organisation (SASO) publications that women were either not deemed to be as important or were mere supporters of the BCM. SASO activists did not challenge women’s exclusion from the literature, instead, it appears they may have endorsed the gendered discrimination of women. Moreover, as Ramphele has highlighted:

It’s important to realise that the BC movement came into a cultural and political environment in which women, whether they were black or white, didn’t matter as leaders.330

One particular article published in August 1970, Modern Chemistry: Chemical Analysis of a Woman (Woo), revealed the extent to which student politics were not just gender insensitive, but even misogynistic. The author provided an in-depth description of the physical, chemical properties and uses and distribution of a woman. Some descriptions included:

Seldom found in the pure state… very dense upstairs but rather loose below…Exhibit magnetic properties, especially in the presence of noble metals.

Highly explosive (watch out! Rather dangerous except in experienced hands…Many explode spontaneously when left alone with men.

Chiefly ornamental’, probably the most powerful reducing (bank a/c) agent known.

Found in especially great numbers at bioscope, cinemas, night clubs, beaches, etc. Seldom found in places requiring mental exertion like lecture theatres, parliamentary buildings etc. Never found in places requiring physical exertion like the army, rugby field, etc.331

329 Gqola, “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement.” 330 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 90. 331 Anon, “Modern Chemistry: Chemical Analysis of a Woman (Woo),” SASO Newsletter, August 1970.

69 The article reads as an amusement piece intended for male readers but reveals the gendered discourse which existed in student politics. A woman who was sexually chaste was perceived as ‘pure’ and more respectable even in the supposedly relatively progressive context of a medical university. Women were assumed to be emotionally unstable and irrational, suggesting that only men could keep them sane. The idea that a man’s ability to provide materially for a woman determined his masculinity was further implied in some of the statements in the article. As the author observed, a few women participated in politics or in science related fields. This was not linked to an inherent sex trait but was because women tended to be socialised into domestic careers such as teaching or nursing.

The content of the article may have offended women leaders in the BCM who had chosen to prioritise black over women’s liberation. The few women who were part of the BCM were scattered across the universities and other BCM organisations and could not formulate a clear feminist course against such gendered discrimination within the movement. A disclaimer appeared in the contents page of the newsletter declaring that “the views expressed in [the] article do not reflect the views of SASO or the Publications Committee of SASO but strictly those of the contributor thereof.”332 This shows that SASO was aware of the negative connotations attached to the article and the possible implications on male/female relations within the organisation.

The article certainly was inappropriate given the fact many BC leaders were members of the University Christian Movement (UCM). The UCM actively engaged women’s liberation as a prerequisite to black liberation movement. Furthermore, BC women leaders were also exposed to feminist discourses in the UCM and the broader women’s movement of the 1970s. BC women could have chosen either of these movements rather than having to defend their capabilities within the male dominated BCM. However, as I will show, BC women were deliberate in the decision to participate actively in the BCM while simultaneously challenging the gender norms which subordinated them.

4.1.1. University Christian Movement and women’s liberation

Maphiri Masekela was one of four regional council representatives in UCM’s executive in the year 1970/71 and one of the trainers in UCM’s Encounter ‘70 conference. Here, the participants were divided into groups of twelve under the theme ‘interpersonal communication’; which looked at the influence of perceptions about individuals and how this affected communication and how each group

332 Anon.

70 facilitates communication.333 The views of the delegates about the encounter were included in the report- many found it useful while some felt it did not meet their expectations in dealing more intricately with social and political issues. Significantly, black delegates felt that the encounter only served the whites, that the style of training was western and made the few black trainers seem incompetent. This is important because it was one of the reasons why BC activists such as Masekela abandoned multi-racial organisations and adopted the racially exclusive BCM. As has been explored earlier, Masekela’s experience at the WFC led her to taking a leading role in speaking up against racial biasness in the workplace. As noted in the report on black opinion of the encounter, blacks stated:

What relevance it had for them, however pleasant the intellectual engagement, when they were faced not with the primary problem of deepening inter-personal relations but of rehumanising and liberating their oppressed people.334

They argued that black people needed to see themselves firstly as human if they were to engage effectively in the wider interracial humanisation process promoted by organisations such as the WFC and UCM. This was essentially the aim of the BCM; to bring black people back to themselves to remove feelings of inferiority and begin to fight for their freedom. Biko argued that the African culture was ‘dehumanised’ by Christian missionaries and capitalism. He called for a restoration of those elements of African culture which would instill racial pride and propel Africans to fight for their liberation.335 The inferiority complex was more pronounced in women, as Masekela wrote:

It is therefore essential that Black Women must shed that built-in feeling of inferiority that dogs even the most courageous black woman. This feeling of inferiority feeds on the false assumption that only men are capable of having and withstanding the difficulties that exist in our society.336

The assumption Masekela referred to is one of the main reasons why women have been excluded from participating in the black liberation movement. Even as they have played a significant role in nationalist organisations, women have been side-lined by men who regard their own experience of racial oppression as more important. As Natasha Erlank has argued, African nationalist discourse

333 “Ucm Encounter ’70 Report: Conference Resolutions, Reports, Assessments” (Wilgespruit, July 10, 1970), 15, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 334 “Ucm Encounter ’70 Report: Conference Resolutions, Reports, Assessments,” 16. 335 “Black Consciousness and the Quest for True Humanity,” (March 9, 1971), 6. 336 Maphiri Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 1971, 5.

71 within the ANC employed a gendered rhetoric to justify the exclusive right of men to participate in politics. The states’ denial of 'manhood' to African men by way of removing the franchise was an overarching concern in the resistance politics of the ANC. Erlank argues that it is in this discourse and rhetoric that we can account for the exclusion of African women in political activities.337 Women who chose to affiliate with the BCM challenged this notion, albeit BCM male leaders did not formally exclude women as active members in the movement. As Masekela observed, women were still excluded from the liberation movement by men who regarded Apartheid to be a policy which took away their masculinity.

4.1.2. Gender and Black Theology

Fatima Meer, who was then a lecturer in the Department of Sociology in the University of Natal was asked to present a paper tentatively titled, Has Christianity a future among and relevance for blacks in South Africa at the University Christian Movement’s (UCM) first National Seminar on Black Theology in February 1971. The seminar was by invitation and limited to fifty participants who would then conduct discussions of the papers presented. Participants included theological leaders, counsellors, priests and pastors and organisations concerned with black liberation.338 Several conferences and formation schools of this nature were held by the UCM to spread ecumenicalism and black theology among university students. BC ideas were transmitted between varying denominations through networks of seminarians.

Ideas on black theology emerged within and were pioneered by affiliates of the UCM. The UCM replaced the SCA as an ecumenical movement in the late 1960s. It was based on the ideals of multiracialism across all denominations.339 It was led by Basil Moore (Methodist minister and scholar at Rhodes University) and Colin Collins (Catholic priest). It was more radical and attuned to the political reality of students which helped attract black youth membership. The organisation was inaugurated in Grahamstown in 1967 and all interested from white and non-white institutions attended. The second conference held in July 1968 at Stutterheim was significant in that many who attended were non-whites, which gave a sense of what it would be like to have organisations which were not dominated by whites. Furthermore, the idea of formations schools- where members would be trained in leadership skills- emerged from the organisation.340

337 Erlank, “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912 -1950,” 653. 338 Basil Moore, “Freedom Is More” (University Christian Movement, July 1971), AD1126 University Christian Movement, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 339 Macqueen, “Re-Imagining South Africa,” 35. 340 Morlan, “The Student Revolt against Racism in South Africa,” 19.

72 The BCM was strongly linked to the UCM as an organisation which endorsed black theology. Prominent leaders of the BCM such as Steve Biko, Barney Pityana and Justice Moloto were active members of the multi-racial, ecumenical UCM before they formed SASO in 1968. Both these organisations remained connected through the early ‘70s.341 Biko attended the Lovedale College near Alice in the Eastern Cape and St Francis College near Pinetown in Natal. He also corresponded with Aelred Stubbs, an Anglican monk of the Community of the Resurrection) who also compiled Biko's writings following his death. Barney Pityana was president of the Anglican Students Federation in 1968 when SASO was formed. His religious views were thus strongly influential to Biko.342

The UCM promoted women’s liberation in a day-long conference held in July 1971. The conference involved discussions of emergent global trends in thinking about gender and theatre pieces showcasing women’s oppression.343 Basil Moore published a paper entitled Towards a Theology of Sexual Politics which explored the role of Christian theology in providing religious justification for the oppression and exploitation of woman by men. He observed that although Black theology guaranteed a study of racially oppressive structures in church and society, men involved in the Black Theology project were not concerned with the structures of the church which ‘dehumanised’ black women. The course towards ‘black liberation’ through Black Theology therefore did not guarantee women’s liberation. It further highlighted women’s oppression as a socio-political problem based on Christian beliefs, citing the ‘myth of Adam and Eve’ as the most significant case which led to the justification of women’s subjection. The tale is rendered in detail and several gender bias points are highlighted and debunked and a detailed analysis given. This was an analysis of the “character of God and his relations with humans, the character of the man and his relations with his environment including woman and the character of the woman and her role assignments follows.” The paper then sought to create new symbols for God and his relations with humans and, as well as sex morality and marriage.344

Ellen Kuzwayo presented a paper entitled Black Women and Black Theology in the conference. The paper called on theologians to look at the role of the church and theology in ‘re-enforcing the status quo’ of women’s oppression and begin to ask theological questions concerned with their

341 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 50. 342 Ian Macqueen, “The Role of Religion and Theology in the Organisation of Student Activists,” in Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ’76 (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 31. 343 Moore, “Freedom Is More.” 344 Basil Moore, “Towards a Theology of Sexual Politics” (University Christian Movement, 1971), AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

73 experience.345 It argued that black women in the church were experiencing discrimination as they hardly held decision making positions in the church. They were expected to perform domestic duties in the home although many were working for a wage like men. She too used the story of Adam and Eve as an example of how this oppression was rooted in Christian theology- in which God gave the “Divine punishment placing women in psychological dependence on men.”346 She spoke on the ‘maleness’ of God which had given rise to the idea that to be male is to have authority over all other creations, including women which she juxtaposed to the ‘whiteness’ of God which reinforced the idea that whites were more superior to blacks. These ideas led to the exclusion of women in the churches as ordained priests and limited them to leadership roles only in women’s auxiliaries which were also directed by men. She further argued that the conceptual understanding of God as male had to be removed for women to be liberated and that they needed “an image of God which includes both men and women such that neither is held in some way to share the special nature of God.347

Women were actively involved in the UCM’s formation schools. These were aimed at theological, theoretical and skills training of UCM affiliates who went on to become leaders in BCM organisations. These included Winifred Kgware who was elected first female president of the BPC and her daughters Manana Kgware and Pinky Kgware were actively involved in SASO. Bob Kgware was the UCM’s regional director of the Transvaal and facilitated formation schools there. Prof William Kgware, husband to Winifred Kgware was first black rector of the University College of the North and provided financial support to students attending formation schools. The Kgwares worked closely with UCM’s executive in organising students in the Lesotho/Orange Free-State and Northern Transvaal regions.

Formation schools were training and integration sessions held over weekends in various regions aimed at bridging the gap between institutionalized religion and the reality of the university community. The sessions were held over a weekend to create a relaxed environment in which people’s leadership skills could be cultivated. Participants would be divided into groups to hold discussions to enable deeper understandings of themselves in relation to others and society. They also held worship sessions and teacher-tell sessions. The formation schools were held in high regard, described as ‘the

345 “Black Women and Black Theology,” 1971, 1, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 346 “Black Women and Black Theology,” 3. 347 “Black Women and Black Theology,” 8.

74 soul of any UCM’ and ‘absolutely essential for any student movement.’348 Formation schools were equally essential in the training of SASO leaders as adapted from the UCM.

Some BCM activists benefitted from theological institutions as they offered protection from the state.349 As Thenjiwe Mtintso recalled, they would run to the Federal Theological Seminary in Alice when being chased by the police during student strikes. The police would not go inside as they respected its status as a theological institution. The priests would council for them with the police as they hid inside. They also assisted with accommodation after the expulsion and were escorted by the priests to the train station to avoid arrests. They also provided counselling Mtintso said, because the experience was traumatic for many students who were much younger than she was. She spoke of the significance of this institution for their psychological recovery from the incident. They also could get food and clothing from the churches when in need.350

4.1.3. The Women’s Group

Maphiri Masekela delivered an address at the first seminar of the UCM’s Women’s Group in November 1971 on the position of women in South Africa. She was the director of the WFC’s Domestic Workers Project (DWP) and a leader in the BCM.351 She was among those addressing economic discrimination against black women focusing on the plight of domestic workers as an oppressed group. Over a hundred women from various organisations attended and ten other speeches were delivered. Glanys Lobban spoke about white patriarchy and how it controls all power and argued that black women were in the worst position because of both sex and race. Winky Direko and Lorraine Palmer addressed spoke of tribal attitudes to black women and how these perpetuated black women’s subordination.

The UCM created a platform for black women who later denounced multiracial women’s organisations such as the Women’s Group. The Women’s Group aimed to be the central co-ordinating body for all women’s liberation groups in Southern Africa. It included all interested individuals and organisations, operated as a resource centre and published a monthly newsletter aimed at ‘keeping

348 Colin Collins, “Formation Schools” (University Christian Movement, n.d.), 3, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 349 Dubow, Apartheid 1948-1994, 156. 350 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 9. 351 “National Seminar on the Position of Women in South Africa,” Women’s Group Newsletter, November 1971, 3 edition, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

75 sisters in touch with what is happening around Southern Africa’.352 The “Charter for Women” listed all rights of women, which included the right to choosing a marriage partner, living with their family, owning property and being employed in favourable conditions.353 Consequently, this group prioritised western feminist over black racial issues. This trend tended dominated the women’s liberation movement in the 1970’s.354 And was the reason BCM women rejected the women’s liberation movement and sought avenues in which their racial oppression to precedence.

The Women’s Group sought to fill a vacuum left by the banned FEDSAW. The ‘Charter for Women’ aimed at addressing women’s issues across racial lines, similar to FEDSAW’s “Women’s Charter”, which was drafted in 1954. These documents duly highlighted the economic and social oppression of women under Apartheid. The ANC recognised the “Women’s Charter” by including a section called “What Women Demand” in its Freedom Charter. However, discriminatory laws based on sex where not directly prioritised in the Freedom Charter because racial discrimination was prioritised.355 This shows that the national liberation movement had not made much progress in addressing women’s issues. Furthermore, it shows that there had not been a unifying women’s organisation since the 1950s which could transcend racial divides and address the specific issues faced by women in South Africa.

An article titled You men can relax!, which appeared in The Star newspaper argued that the Women’s Group was not as effective as was expected. The beginning of the article read, “Men of the world, relax. Well, South Africans at least. I see no danger of Women’s Lib [liberation] taking over in the foreseeable future.” The article continued to mock the organisation, commenting on the late arrival and the physical appearance of many of the speakers. The author identified the differences between black and white attendees at the event as follows:

The White women were all dressed very informally in slacks and had loose hair and those floppy jackets young women wear now. There were a couple of older women, among them than me. Most of the Coloured and African women looked as if they were wearing their best clothes, dark suits or dresses with plenty make-up.356

352 “Women’s Group Newsletter,” August 1971, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 353 “Charter for Women” (Women’s Group, n.d.), AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 354 Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority, 29. 355 Christina Murray and Catherine O’Regan, “Putting Women into the Constitution,” ed. Susan Bazilli, n.d., 38. 356 Jean Le May, “You Men Can Relax!,” The Star, October 16, 1971, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

76 The article explained the mood of the conference using Miss Direko’s address. The author wrote that after her address, Miss Direko asked if there were any questions but was met with a strong silence. Miss Direko then preceded to ask the first question herself, ‘How does Women’s Lib tie in with Black lib generally?’ which sparked the debate. Interestingly according to the article, it was a white woman who advised black women to be part of the black liberation movement, which was led by the BCM, lest they be left out of the decision-making positions once freedom is achieved.357

The Women’s Group responded to the article and expressed its disappointment with receiving criticism from another woman. One response to the criticism of their dress code read: “Our priorities of necessity transcend make-up, dress, coiffure and superficial symbols of identity. We are concerned with identity itself,”358 while another questioned whether a man would have written ‘a fashion critique’ of an all-men seminar or been so ‘shallow or discourteous’ towards another male organisation.359 The women justified the exclusion of men from the seminar by stating that some women could not voice their opinion in front of men and were ‘terrified of making fools of themselves in front of the men’360 , to this statement Le May replied:

No woman who has anything to say that is worth saying need worry about making a fool of herself in front of men. But if she has nothing to say, she will make a fool of herself whether her audience consists of men, women or Barbie dolls.361

This incident shows that the women’s liberation movement in the early 1970s faced public scrutiny and criticism. It could further be argued that the women’s liberation movement required a prominent multi-racial women’s organisation- such as the earlier FEDSAW to succeed.362 Women’s organisations which emerged in the early 1970’s lacked a unifying ideology which could reach all women groups in South Africa. Certainly, gender equally was not enough to motivate BCM supporters to remain in the women’s or ecumenical organisations. Furthermore, multi-racial organisations were largely dominated by white women who lacked the lived experiences of black women under Apartheid.363 It was white women of the Women’s Group who responded to the article, which further indicates their dominance in multi-racial women’s organisations of the time. SASO

357 Le May. 358 Madi Grey in “They’re up in Arms over Women’s Lib,” The Star, October 27, 1971, AD1126 University Christian Movement, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 359 G.A Norman in “They’re up in Arms over Women’s Lib.” 360 “They’re up in Arms over Women’s Lib.” 361 Le May in “They’re up in Arms over Women’s Lib.” 362 Hassim, The ANC Women’s League: A Jacana Pocket History. 363 Shireen Hassim, Women’s Organisations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (London: The University of Wisconsin, 2006), 29.

77 was formed primarily because black activists lacked autonomy within multiracial organisations, for women, this need superseded that of achieving gender equality.

With the vast experience she had as a member of the WFC and the UCM’s women group, Masekela believed more in the liberating philosophy of the BCM. The UCM aimed at making women’s liberation a much more central concern within the liberation movement in 1971. However, many black activists did not see this as a pressing concern as black liberation was. The BCM took over from the UCM as more blacks became disillusioned with the multiracial ideal. Furthermore, the government increased its repression of the UCM, which affected the impact of the women’s group.364 BCM women divorced themselves from not only white liberal, but western feminist organisations which they deemed to be part of the problem of Apartheid. As Masekela remarked, white women were ‘parading in costumes of Women’s’ liberation’, urging black women to ‘refuse to be part of the conspiracy’ against themselves.365

4.2. Gender equality in the Black Consciousness Movement

Thenjiwe Mtintso highlighted an important barrier which prevented many women from joining the BCM. She argued that many girls came from conservative homes which kept to traditional gender roles.366 This conservatism did not involve the kind of assertiveness BCM women leaders had. Nkosazana Dlamini agreed and argued that their upbringing created within women a sense that they should apply domestic gender roles learnt from home within the political organisations. African families, she noted, tended to invest more into the education of the boy children at the expense of the girls. This limited women to domestic or very low paying jobs and the men to decision-making superior status within the home. By the time women got into political spaces, they thought it to be correct for men to have the last word. She added that some women would feel that this was wrong but would not know how to articulate it in the meetings because “at home once the father or elder brother has said “it’s like this” you don’t question it.” Her father had different ideas she said, believing that it should be the girls who received the education so as to avoid being financially dependent on and vulnerable to their husbands.367

364 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 51. 365 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the Role of the Black Woman,” 6. 366 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 10. 367 Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, interview by Gail Gerhart, July 3, 1988, 15, A2675 Karis-Gerhart Collection of South African political materials, 1964-1990, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

78 SASO activists were perceived to be rebellious, this was truer for women because they needed to prove themselves equally capable to their male peers. Mtintso revealed how she would reprimand passive female students who did not attend the protest actions. As the leader of the women’s attachment during strikes, she said she would look for and ‘sjambok’ those who were not participating. She added that “those who would not go on strike would get hosepipe treatment. There were few of us who would climb to their windows and, and then we’d just hosepipe them until they got out of their rooms.368

Male leaders promoted conservative gender norms which subordinated women in the movement while the women rejected these roles and challenged the gender discrimination. BC women may have lacked an explicitly feminist agenda, but their behaviour was significant in changing gender dynamics in African political spaces during that time. Ramphele further outlined:

I became one of the few women who became a pain in the side of a lot of men who used to really think that we were there as decorations. They got shocked each time you challenged them in debates, and they’d try and silence you by making all sorts of insinuations that, “Oh, it’s very surprising that not only are you beautiful but you also have brains.”369

Dlamini contended when she told of how determined women had to be to have their views heard, that women’s participation was encouraged ‘once they thought you had some ideas which were worth listening to’.370 Initially, there was an expectation within SASO that the women would carry out traditionally female duties of cooking and cleaning up during or after meetings. The women obliged for a while Ramphele said, until they ‘were conscious of it’ and started refusing. This made the men resentful of them to an extent.371 As Ramphele argued, “it doesn’t matter how much people understand intellectually what’s going on. The problem is to translate the intellectual understanding into a transformative behavioural change, which is very, very painful, for both sides, incidentally.”372 Ramphele argued that BC women leaders lacked a theoretical understanding of gender equity373, however, as Deborah Matshoba wrote, BC women were, “in a way feminists” through action.374

BCM male leaders were actively engaged in the ‘conscientisation’ of young black girls such as Deborah Matshoba and Thoko Mpumlwana in the Inanda Seminary. Mpumlwana was a student in

368 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 10. 369 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 91. 370 Dlamini Zuma, interview, 14. 371 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 91. 372 Ramphele, 91. 373 Ramphele, 92. 374 Interview with Deborah Matshoba, interview by Amanda Alexander and Andile Mngxitama, January 2008, 281.

79 the seminary when Strini Moodley, Saths Cooper and Barney Pityana would visit the campus and help them with their poetry and theatre. Matshoba was also introduced to politics at the Inanda Seminary through the BCM’s association with the UCM. As the UCM remained connected to SASO politics, she came to know of SASO and its breakaway from NUSAS. Steve Biko was also her senior at the St Francis College in Marianhill, she did not however interact with him because relations between girls and boys in the school were restricted. She described Biko at this time as a good debater and recalled how “the girls in matric really hero-worshipped him.”375

Matshoba enrolled at the UNB in 1972 where she met Biko and other SASO members. She soon became part of the ‘SASO circle’ and was a delegate in the General Students Council (GSC) held in Hammaskraal that year. She continued working for the YMCA in Durban while also working with SASO. Her SASO friends would call her bourgeois, saying she was used to eating biscuits and sipping coffee as opposed to eating bunny chow.376 She described these times very pleasantly, “I knew they were just saying it jokingly. So I was always the YWCA woman.”377Being a YWCA woman afforded Matshoba a social and political status in a newly found male-dominated organisation. She could use political networks formed in the YWCA to contribute effectively in SASO. When Matshoba brought up the idea of starting a women’s wing within the BCM, Biko rejected it in saying, “if you are WSO [Women’s’ Student Organisation] – you are not South African students- so now you are going to have two roles.”378 This shows that BC women were aware of their ‘dual struggle’379 as women in the movement and sought ways of engaging it simultaneously in their politics. However, BC ideology created limitations for women such as Matshoba who sought to prioritise women’s issues in the movement.

BCM women therefore subscribed to the slogan ‘Black Man, you are on your own’, as Mtintso stated:

We translated it later on to black women you are on your own. And they began to say that we are WOSO [WSO], women’s student organisation, within SASO. But there were fewer women in all the institutions…I think that FH had a smaller group than other institutions. 380

They understood the importance of ‘black solidarity’ regardless gender, class or ethnicity as the basic principal of the movement. This is not to deny that the masculinist language limited BCM engagement

375 Matshoba, 276. 376 An Indian meal originating from Durban constisting of a quarter loaf of bread with a meat curry. 377 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 281. 378 Matshoba, 279. 379 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 55. 380 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 10.

80 with women’s struggles, even as they had been exposed to them in forums created by the UCM. The urgency of racial equality in the era created a general tendency to ignore gender inequality. Debates surrounding gender in politics only became prominent in the late 1970’s. Ramphele, for instance became exposed to feminist literature in the late 70s which was long after her prominence in SASO.381 Gender and the influence of the Black Power Movement in the BCM

BCM women leaders were also exposed to feminist trends in the American Black Power Movement (BPM). As Matshoba stated:

We believed in Angela Davis. We believed in her and we admired the way she was going on with the Jacksons and what have you. And active in the Black Panther movement. And I think because this concept was sort of drawn from the Black Panthers, their behaviour, hence their walking in the streets and what have you.382

Women played a significant role as leaders in the BPM while fighting against sexism within the movement, Angela Y Davis, Grace Lee Boggs and the South African musician, Miriam Makeba standout.383 Davis was involved in the US Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later in the radical Black Panther Party (BPP). She was fired from the University of Carlifornia for her radical role in the BPM. Her activism was strongest in the freeing of BPM activists from unfair imprisonment. She started the free “The Soledad Brothers” campaign to free three BPP brothers who were arrested in the 1960s for allegedly murdering a white prison guard. She made the F.B. I’s list of “10 most-wanted fugitives” after fleeing the USA to avoid being arrested for her involvement in the campaign.384 In an interview, Davis argued that race, gender and class were interrelated struggles which could not be overcome in isolation. She added that the idea that women needed to choose between the black and feminist movement was incorrect. Instead, scholars should try to understand how the two movements relate to one another.385

According to BPM leader, Stokely Carmichael, “before a group can enter the open society it must first close its ranks.” The first aspect was rejected by Biko, who argued that ‘entering a society’ meant that blacks would have to assimilate into existing norms of another society. Biko however, called for

381 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 94. 382 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 281. 383 “Women in Black Power,” accessed November 12, 2018, http://www.archives.gov/reserach/african- americans/black-power/women. 384 “Black Power in American Memory: Angela Yvonne Davis,” accessed November 12, 2018, blackpower.web.unc.edu/2017/04/angela-yvonne-davis/. 385 Frank Barat, The Q&A with Angela Davis on Black Power, Feminism and the Prison-Industrial Complex, August 27, 2014, http://www.thenation.com/article/qa-angela-davis-black-power-feminism-and-prison-industrial-complex/.

81 black solidarity instead of the BPM’s ‘unity’ to highlight the need to bridge the tribal, class, ethnic, racial and gender divisions among blacks.386 The BPM emphasized the Negro’s connection to African soil and roots whereas BC definition linked it to the existential experience of those oppressed by Apartheid.387 This distinction would be removed once a perfect non-racial system emerged, a ‘true humanity’ as he called it.Biko believed that an African country should exhibit African culture, however, as Magaziner has shown, this did not mean living a pre-capitalist life. Biko called for a modern African culture in which black people begin to appreciate positive aspects of their history and culture which were rendered ‘barbaric’ by Europeans.388 Simply translated by Mtintso, this meant:

First starting with myself and giving myself an identity and recognizing my identity as a black person. And saying that I am black and this is what I am and if I pronounce English wrongly, though, this is who I am. And if when I speak I speak loudly and I gesticulate, that’s the African that I am. It’s the mountains that have made me make noise because I’ve got these rivers, these vast lands and I can shout.389

Mtintso was aware of the link between her ‘modern’ self, living in a new urban and capitalist environment and the ‘African soil’ which she was born into. It was important for her to recognise herself as a product of the contemporary times, so she could formulate a clear political agenda. She added that BC philosophy acknowledged the existence of black economic systems, which were promoted through black communalism. Black communalism propelled them into self-help and community projects. 390 This was the BCM’s philosophy; that blacks needed to redefine their history and culture, recognise the feelings of racial inferiority created by the Apartheid system and perpetuated by their obedience to the system and to start finding ways to remove the oppression by themselves.

386 Themba Sono, Reflections on the Origins of Black Consciousness in South Africa (Pretoria: HRCS Publishers, 1993), 43. 387 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 46. 388 Magaziner, 44. 389 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 7. 390 Mtintso, 7.

82 4.2.1. Black Consciousness women and the making of a new black identity

A new identity formation emerged within the BCM and was intimately influenced by the USA’s Black Power slogan, Black is Beautiful. Women were carriers of this identity, as Deborah Matshoba narrated:

The hair had to be a natty afro, you know. The dashiki shirts- with those prints, shweshwe and so on. There was a marked difference. Take the masses for instance, the student masses. They straightened their hair, using Ambi skin lighteners. Lots of lipsticks. And we were not really supposed to use that. We could have but we didn’t want to use that because we wanted to look real black.391

These aesthetic changes were important in creating a new black identity which rejected European beauty standards which had been adapted by blacks since the 1930’s. The Bantu World newspaper endorsed the concept of the ‘modern girl’ in the 1930’s through it’s’ women’s pages. Advertisements of cosmetics dominated; promoting the use of skin-lighteners and lipsticks to appear ‘fairer’ Articles, letter’s and the Bantu World beauty contest promoted this type of black woman. As Lynn Thomas has shown, this became entrenched in women’s external assertion of racial respectability.392

Whiteness symbolized material, scientific and literary achievement. It determined the economic and political opportunities one had during Apartheid. Therefore, appearing to be light skinned gave blacks the promise of higher social status. Although black women knew that skin-lighteners would not make them white, having ‘whiter’ skin afforded them more opportunities for work and more social inclusion. As BC ideology was concerned about the awareness and assertion of one’s identity, women’s aesthetic representation of themselves was central.393 They began embraced the concept of ‘Black is Beautiful’ by shedding their wigs, skin-lighteners and using their African names.394 They therefore rejected prevailing notions of respectability and social status in the African society.

The new aesthetic trend introduced by BCM women was debated in The World (previously called Bantu World) by its readers. One argued that “Black-awareness should come from the heart” and be portrayed in the behaviour of black people, particularly towards white people around them. Behaviour that brought the dignity of Africans down, such as prostitution, “woman drunkards” and reckless

391 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 275. 392 Lynn M Thomas, “The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in the 1930s South Africa,” Journal of African History 47 (2006): 465. 393 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)Man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977,” 47. 394 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 57.

83 driving should be done away with.395 While others denounced the use of skin lighteners and wigs by black women, arguing that:

Buying these skin lighteners, our women are not only degrading the Black man’s pride, but are also boosting the economy of the country as such, which in turn tends to be a force against blacks.

Another writer criticised women’s wearing of mini dresses and hots pants and argued that they were not appropriate for the modern African culture. He wrote of the pre-colonial African culture where men could admire young women’s thighs “without sexualising them, this form of dress was welcome. However, this culture was reduced to barbarism by western standards of morality. The author further stated nostalgically, “At this stage where sex and promiscuity is rife among our people and where women’s attire bluntly tells us they are sex-crazy, one cannot help recalling those olden days.”396 Here, black women’s embrace of their ‘natural beauty’ was reduced to a betrayal of black manhood and the black race even as the women meant it to be an expression of pride in themselves. The new identity women portrayed seemed to threaten men’s masculinity, which they believed threatened racial pride.

The embodiment of BC philosophy by black women was significant considering increased urbanisation in the 1960s. Laura Longman has shown that beauty standards were largely measured by European standards. Black women who were considered to be beautiful had a slim figure, plump lips and beautiful teeth, dresses to cover her thighs and breasts. However, Longman added, it was women who were flirty and inviting, known to have ‘dated’ a few young men, who were more attractive to men.397 Some men reported that the use of skin-lighteners, contraception and cosmetics was a way of hiding ‘bad behaviour’ and drinking habits which made them immoral.398

As I argued earlier in this chapter, the BCM sought to redefine African culture by incorporating positive aspects of the pre-colonial to the modern. The newly formed identity displayed by BC women was an aspect some men would rather have done away with. For others, a woman who looked as natural as possible was seen to restore black pride and identity. In Modern Chemistry, the author rejected the ‘European’ looking woman because they could ‘lure a man into immoral behaviour just

395 EDC Peazzali, “‘Black Awareness’ Is in the Heart,” The World, February 6, 1973, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 396 Muzi Nkwanyaza, “Wigs and Creams Degrade Blacks,” The World, n.d., William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 397 Laura Longmore, The Dispossessed: A Study of the Sex-Life of Bantu Women in Urban Areas in and around Johannesburg (London: Jonathan Cape, 1959), 23. 398 Longmore, 31.

84 to empty his pockets’.399 In the same SASO newsletter, a poem by Senegalese Leopald Senghor praised the BC women’s ‘natural beauty’. It read:

Naked woman, black woman

Covered with your colour which is life, with

your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up: the gentleness

Of your hands was laid over my eyes… 400

Senghor was the president of independent Senegal and one of the leaders in African socialist thought during the 1960s. African socialist thinkers sought to develop a distinctly African ideology which would be based on pre-colonial African culture. Senghor’s poetry was rooted in ideas of ‘mother Africa’ which were embodied by black women to symbolise of African rootedness. The gendering of the African continent formed an integral part of BCM discourse. Woman became the bearers of African tradition and values. These values included family hood, kinship, communalism, which were all dependent on women’s ability to bear and rear children. The poem refers to the ‘nakedness’ of black women, which alludes to their ‘natural beauty’, not covered by skin-lighteners or capitalism.

The distinction between BCM and ‘conservative’ women was seen in the student’s social life. According to Mtintso, the ‘other’ women- whom they’d refer to as gumba [party] material were seen to be more attractive than them. She recalled:

The young men would not associate with us, they would go and take the nurses from Victoria and bring them to the gumba. There was this BC thing, natural hair and everything. Then they would bring these people with the wigs and lipstick and everything and we’d be angry because there’s the BC and we are all saying we are black and we are proud, but then when they look for girlfriends, its like that.401

Deborah Matshoba added that BCM women hardly behaved like ‘ladies’ on campus. They would move around with the boys to buy food from the street and cause trouble for the white people of the town, Bokwe Mafuna and Harry Nengwekhulu were especially available to them for such escapades.

399 Anon, “Modern Chemistry: Chemical Analysis of a Woman (Woo).” 400 Leopald Senghor, SASO Newsletter, August 1970, 21. 401 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 11.

85 They would go on intimidating white people in town, which she said gave them much satisfaction.402 They wore high heels to complete the look, which the boys found bizarre and often made fun of them about- they’d call their stilettos ‘dangerous weapons’ to be used in the event that they get attacked by the police.403 Male leaders endorsed their new appearance and behaviour, but maintained a level of chivalry. Matshoba recalled that although Biko had confidence in them, he never let her travel in a train alone because he was protective of her.404

Although she thought she would never be one to take up smoking, Ramphele would on occasion take a puff or two off Mashalaba’s cigarettes until she bought a pack for herself. This new habit challenged traditional gender norms taught to many students from home. Ramphele remembered how she became the centre of village gossip because of her smoking, especially because her grandmother would let her, even though she had never smoked or seen a woman smoke before. Ramphele recalled that this was one of the things which brought her closer to her grandmother.405

The smoking was also an act of defiance against the University authorities. The Alan Taylor Residence was in an old army barracks situated next to the Mobil Oil Refinery not far from the Durban Airport and about five kilometres from campus. They endured extreme air pollution, and so justified their smoking habits by pointing to the inevitability of inhaling the cancer-inducing substances from the refinery.406 Throwing parties was another way in which students tried to relieve themselves of their frustrations. As Mtintso recalled:

SASO students were known for their parties, gumbas. If there was going to be a live party, it was going to be a SASO party. Others were not going to be live parties. It was the SASO gang that had live parties. Again, that spirit of collectivism. We’d collect money and say we deserve this party and throw a gumba.407

The gumbas were a huge hit on campus and became an integral part of SASO activities. Student weekends would be filled with parties or heavy drinking and smoking sessions as Ramphele recalled, talking about politics or listening to Malcolm X’s speeches, discussing some banned book or just singing and dancing. Matshoba also recalled a time when Biko had slaughtered a sheep at Ginsberg, Zanemphilo. The men wanted to save the head for themselves, which was tradition for many African

402 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 277. 403 Matshoba, 280. 404 Matshoba, 281. 405 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 94. 406 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 58. 407 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 11.

86 societies, but they insisted on eating the head as well. They did this not because they would have enjoyed the meat, but ‘to show them that we [they] were also part of this’.408 BCM women were therefore challenging gender normative behaviour within the movement even with the threat of other women who seemed to be more ‘lady-like’ and attractive.

Regardless of the reactions and opinions of their menfolk, BCM women embraced their new identity. Their aesthetic appearance came to symbolise black consciousness ideals, of what it looked like to be proud of oneself as a black person existing under Apartheid. That they were able to do this reveals that they were in an empowering space. It was an important way in which black women sought to instil pride in the black race and advance a modern African culture as envisaged by Biko and the BC philosophy.

4.2.2. Romantic relationships in the Black Consciousness Movement

Many SASO activists eventually engaged in long term romantic relationships with each other. One of the most well-known among them being that of Ramphele and Biko. From late 1969, she spent most of her nights in Biko’s room at the Alan Taylor Residence (ATR) chasing deadlines. They conducted a “semi-platonic friendship which frequently ‘degenerated’ into passion” as she described it. She was at this time still in a long-distance relationship with Dick Mmabane. He was studying at the University of the North and they would see each other during school recess in Soweto.409 She however fell ‘hopelessly’ in love with Biko and ‘lived in a daze’ enjoying each day as it happened. Some of her homeboys would complain about the amount of time she spent with Biko and how detrimental this would be to her relationship. She tried to deny what was happening with Biko, but as she said, “the intoxication of the love affair was self-evident.”410

Mmabane’s family knew of their relationship and expected that they get married during the summer of 1969/70. She had hoped that her smoking would lead Mmabane into calling those plans off, but he was prepared to accept it. After seeing a telegram sent by Biko, asking her not to him, Mmabane proceeded with haste to finalise their marriage. According to Ramphele, Biko was deeply hurt by her marriage but respected the new boundaries. Mmabane was aware of how much he had triumphed in this regard, but “there was no real remedy for the insecurity which my husband felt in relation to the new me,” she wrote. He had married an ideal which he hoped he could salvage from the past.”411

408 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 281. 409 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 75. 410 Ramphele, 77. 411 Ramphele, 81.

87 Mmabane went into an uncharacteristic drinking spree and was regularly unfaithful and quarrelsome about her political activities, she recalled.

The end of Ramphele’s marriage in 1971 left her ‘emotionally exhausted and bewildered at the turn of events.’ Biko had in the meantime married Ntsiki Mashalaba who was cousin to Vuyelwa Mashalaba. Mashalaba had fallen pregnant with her and Biko’s first child during Ramphele’s short marriage. Ramphele and Biko inevitably rekindled their love after her divorce and both ‘naively vowed to not hurt the innocent party’, who was Biko’s wife.412 She avoided confrontation with the wife at all costs. Ntsiki Mashalaba was a nurse at McCord Hospital, stayed in their Durban home and fulfilled the domestic roles in the household. Ramphele conducted her love affair with Biko in King Williams Town. She wrote that their relationship made her feel validated among her peers because her determination in challenging popular traditional notions made her unpopular. She described herself as “very lucky in that I [she] was loved by one of the most powerful men in that movement.”413 She wrote that their relationship encouraged her to continue playing an active role in the movement.

The way Ramphele conducted her romantic relationships certainly went against the expected traditional gender norms. A woman was expected to have and keep one partner, and hope that he eventually married her. She was criticised by her homeboys for not remaining faithful to Mmabane mainly because she was a woman. She was further pressurised to marry him because their relationship was known by their families. Ramphele was well on her way to becoming a ‘respectable’ middle- class woman, well educated, married, devoted to her husband and ready to fulfil her domestic duties. However, her new identity and behaviour made it difficult for a conservative husband to continue with the marriage. She decided to resume her relationship with Steve Biko with little promise of a modern family life which she could have had with Mmabane.

According to Mtintso, promiscuity proved to be political suicide for male activists. She recalled how Jeff Baqwa lost the SASO presidency by one vote in 1972- a vote which belonged to his girlfriend, Sesana. Sesana did not vote for him because he came to the conference with another girlfriend. She recalled Sesane coming out of the election saying, ‘I didn’t vote for that Jeff of yours’. She further told that:

When Jeff lost, we were laughing at him, this thing of having many girlfriends, you wouldn’t have lost this presidency except for your womanizing. You wouldn’t have lost because Sesana

412 Ramphele, 81. 413 Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, 92.

88 would have voted for you. And Sesana was in tears because she didn’t think Jeff was going to lose by her vote.414

Ellen Kuzwayo’s son, Justice Bakone married Vuyelwa Mashalaba in 1972 while serving his banning order in Mafikeng. Bakone pleaded with her mother to arrange the wedding since he was restricted to do so. As Kuzwayo wrote, “the banning order placed responsibilities on me which, under normal circumstances, fell outside the sphere of the would-be groom’s mother.”415 Kuzwayo travelled to Durban to deliver her son’s proposal to Mashalaba, which she could not accept without a representative from her family. Mashalaba wrote to Kuzwayo a few weeks later accepting the proposal. Kuzwayo saw this as a breakthrough and was glad that she would not have to go through lengthy negotiations with the family, which she wrote, “because of drawn-out deliberations, often leave underlying tensions which in some cases have serious effects on the relationship between the two families!”416 The family gave their blessings for the marriage and Mashalaba was prepared to get it done as soon as possible. Unfortunately, because of the banning order, they could not have anyone but the couple, their parents and the priest present at the wedding. On the day, policemen were sent to guard over the proceedings, which Kuzwayo resented. She was however impressed by how the women in the neighbourhood insisted on entertaining their guests in their houses, despite the harassment they received from the police.417 She wrote:

Her were women who had offered assistance to a neighbour being threatened with arrest for doing so; they took a very firm and resolute stand, unmindful of the cost they could pay for what they did. I have never been able to express adequately my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation, to those gallant women.418

Two marriages were conducted within the ‘circle’ in December 1976, one of which was between Malusi Mpumlwana and Thoko Mbanjwa who worked together in one of the BCM’s publications.419 Mbanjwa played a significant role, along with Ben Khaopa, M. Pascal Gwala, in the writing and publishing of the Black Review. This was a newsletter publication of the Black Community Programmes (BCP’s) to which Mbanjwa was an editor in 1974/1975. The issue covered all activities of the BCP’s during June 1974-June 1975; including analysis of government created Political bodies,

414 Mtintso, Mtintso, Thenjiwe Edith, 13. 415 Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman, 223. 416 Kuzwayo, 224. 417 Kuzwayo, 225. 418 Kuzwayo, 226. 419 Ramphele, A Passion for Freedom, 159.

89 arrests and detention of political activists, black organisations and black consciousness.420 Thoko and Malusi worked together in the BCP’s and as BCM leaders King-Williams Town.

BC women were in these relationships while also participating actively in the movement. When the ‘party girls’ were gone, they were involved in the planning and implementation of SASO programmes. They conducted their romantic relationships with men in the movement in unconventional ways, deviating from and even defying patriarchal norms and expectations placed on them. This is not to suggest that these women became women simply because they had intimate relationships with BC men, however, it does complicate the narrative which has accepted the ‘honorary male’ given to them.

420 Thoko Mbanjwa, ed., Black Review (Black Community Programmes, 1974), www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/Br1974037643540000001974.

90 Chapter 5. The Black Community Programmes (BCP’s)

An important aspect of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in which women’s roles became central was in the Black Community Programmes (BCP). Female BC activists used their education and skills in the initiation and implementation of BCP, furthermore, the projects were especially empowering to women in the rural communities.421 BC activists who finished their studies or had been banned by the state joined the BCP in the Eastern Cape. A community of BCM activists soon formed in King Williams Town in 1973 after Steve Biko was banned and restricted there. The newly formed community represented a transition from student activism to professional development.422 Mamphela Ramphele worked as a medical doctor at the Zanempilo clinic, Nohle Mohapi as the Eastern Cape branch administrator of the BCP’s, while Thoko Mbanjwa and Asha Rambally became the editors of the Black Review publication. Many employees in the clinic were women, and the two other BCP projects were directed at empowering women living in the poverty-stricken areas.423 This presence of women as leaders and worker’s in the BCP therefore complicates the narrative of women participating in the BCM only in a supportive capacity. As I will show, women’s education and training become central in running the BCP. Furthermore, BCP prove that the BCM was not entirely masculinist, but at times also endorsed women’s empowerment for racial upliftment.

The BCP were initiated in the second phase of the Special Project for Christian Action in Society (Spro-cas 2) and were sponsored by the Christian Institute and South African Council of Churches (SACC). They were initiated to work towards meeting the needs of the black community independent of whites.424 The BCP sought to address the psychological aspects of black community development, build self-reliance and unity in solving problems. Bennie Khoapa and Steve Biko were recruited by Spro-cas in 1971 for the position of director and fieldworker respectively. Khoapa submitted tentative suggestions which, among other things, explicitly requested that the programmes be predominantly black-staffed.425 With increasing state repression, the BCPs became independent of the Christian Institute and could only operate effectively in specific local black communities, albeit Spro-cas 2 remained the primary financial supporter of the initiatives.426

421 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 8–9. 422 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 94. 423 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 10. 424 Peter Randall, “SPRO-CAS: Motivations and Assumptions,” Reality Publications, March 1973, 2. 425 B.A Khoapa, “SPRO-CAS 2: Black Community Programmes. Tentative Suggestions for Action,” September 30, 1971. 426 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 113.

91 The BCPs three major projects included the Zanempilo Community Health Centre in Zinyoka, Black Review and the Njwaxa Leather Home Industry factory. Black Review was set up as the annual research publication which would provide black communities with in-depth information about happenings in legislation, politics and the community. Other research and publication initiatives included the Black viewpoint, Black perspectives, Handbook of Black Organisations and Resource Centres.427 The Black Theology Agency aimed at the co-ordination of research, courses and seminars on black theology.428 It conducted youth conferences for leadership training and setting up of self- help organisations. The Black Worker’s Projects was initiated for research into labour and economic development in black societies. Thus, the BCP became one of the significant moments in which students could begin implementing their philosophy of self-reliance at a grassroots level.

According to Ramphele, BC activists were successful in organising BCPs because of the state’s ambiguity with regards to BCM threat to its policy of separate development. Another important factor was the intellectual and political resources BC activists accumulated as students. Biko’s charismatic leadership personality made it easier to maintain fruitful political and financial relationships. That he was determined and resourceful made it difficult for the security police to stop the projects. Biko was also supported by the local community he grew up in. This made it possible for BCM activists to create a quality life outside student activism.429 The state banning of several SASO leaders in 1973 therefore did little to destabilise the BCM. Instead, as Khoapa recalled, it expanded the geographical reach of the BCP and gave BCM leaders a greater sense of purpose and reach over local communities.430The BCP further created opportunity for women to participate as leaders. As Nkosazana Dlamini recalled, because there were no planned strategies of dealing with government repression if it came, leadership constantly changed. Thoko Mbanjwa made the same remark, recalling how they needed to ‘learn fast’ because leaders were continuously getting banned.431

Ramphele’s growing relationship with Biko brought her closer to King Williams Town. She spent the early months of 1973 commuting to and from the King Edward Hospital in Durban where she worked as an intern. She then transferred to Livingstone hospital in Port Elizabeth to be closer to Biko. As she recalled, Durban had become unfamiliar as most BCM activists had been restricted to their homelands. King Edward was also not the best hospital to train as a doctor she added. She was

427 “Black Community Programmes: Year Report” (Durban, 1972), Digital Innovation South Africa, www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/rep1972000032009270. 428 Pascal Mafika Gwala, ed., “Black Community Programmes,” Black Review 1, no. 16 (1974): 167. 429 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 93. 430 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 115. 431 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 80.

92 however pleasantly surprised by the state of the hospital in PE, describing it as ‘modern, clean and well-run’. The living quarters and food were an improvement compared to where she came from, she added. The new environment came with more demands as they worked longer working hours and through the night during weekends fulfilling the many duties they had as interns.432 The severity and influx of cases she had to deal with made it difficult to keep up. Black staff members received less pay than whites while women were paid less than men, placing her ‘at the bottom of the pile’. She had to use the little money she made to feed, clothe herself and fund her brother’s education.433 Ramphele was in close contact with former secretary general of SASO, Barney Pityana, who was restricted to Port Elizabeth. She frequently visited him and his brother Dimza Pityana in their home where the local security police constantly harassed them.434 Ramphele had not become directly involved in the BCP at this stage, however, the experience and resilience she built as an intern enabled her to make significant strides as a medical superintendent of the BCP a few months later.

5.1. Zanempilo: Black Consciousness women leading community development programs

Implementing self-help programs in the local community was not an easy task for students who had financial limitations. Help was required from external political and Christian institutions and persons. Ramphele and Biko worked together in drafting a proposal for a black-run community health care centre. Ben Khaopa shelved the project at the end of 1972 because they could not secure financial sponsors.435 Ramphele recalled one the earliest sponsors of the project, Angela Mai, who was a German citizen from South Africa. She provided much needed financial aid to start the Zanempilo Health Care Centre which Ramphele would soon head.436 She was recruited by Dr Beyers Naude of the Christian Institute. She donated a sum of R30 000 from her inheritance to fund the start-up costs of the project.437 The project could then be set up in a village called Zinyoka, a few kilometres away from King Williams Town. As Ramphele recalled:

I was asked to help set up and head this centre, which was to be built in Zinyoka, ten kilometres outside King. I was absolutely thrilled. Here was an opportunity to work formally

432 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 85. 433 Ramphele, 86. 434 Ramphele, 87. 435 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 98. 436 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 95. 437 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 99.

93 in an environment where I could live out my commitment to the process of liberation, and also work with Steve. But I did not bargain for the difficulties ahead of me.438

Ramphele’s frustrations were mainly because of the lack of experience in running a project of that magnitude and a lack of trust from the local community. As former students they also lacked enough first-hand experience on the challenges faced by the poor rural communities. As Mosibudi Mangena, who was involved in BCM literacy programmes stated, “There is a difference between knowing about oppression of our people on a theoretical level and actually getting involved with the community.”439 The students soon learnt the importance of thorough planning and working with, and not for, the local community. The students needed local headmen to act as intermediaries between themselves and locals who were sceptical of their intentions. The romanticised ideal of black unity and egalitarianism carried by BC philosophy was challenged. They also learnt that people were not always ready and willing to move past class, ethnic or geographical differences for the advancement of the African community.440 To add salt to the injury, students who volunteered to assist in the projects were generally unreliable and disorganised, creating more pressure on the leaders to exert themselves for the success of the programs. For Ramphele, her peers in the leadership also expected her to carry most of workload for the centre.441 She came to rely on female health care givers whom she had recruited form Mt Coke. Nontobeko Moletsane and Beauty Nongauza were part of the first group of nurses to work in the centre. Fellow SASO members, Solombela and Sydney Moletsane were brought in as doctors. More doctors were recruited over time through Dr. Lawrence Menzeleli Msauli who served on the BCP board.442

The focus on setting up the project reduced Ramphele’s commitment at the Mt Coke Hospital where she he worked as a medical officer in charge of the paediatric ward. Added to this was the unfortunate loss of her baby in mid-1974. This was her first child with Biko after a complicated pregnancy. She had left the child in her mother’s care and returned to the Eastern Cape to resume her career. Her new born daughter passed away two months later. Ramphele had to conduct the burial without Biko because of his banning order.443 The news of her activities in Zinyoka reached the security police who reported her to the hospital superintendent. She was frequently absent from work at Mt Coke, and unavailable for social activities which she had grown to enjoy with her co-workers. These

438 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 95. 439 Mosibudi Mangena (1989) quoted in Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 39. 440 Hadfield, 42. 441 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 95. 442 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 101. 443 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 91.

94 challenges strained her romantic relationship with Biko, who was ‘unavailable’ and ‘inattentive’ she wrote.444

The Zanempilo health centre was built on land owned by the Anglican Church near some freehold black farms in Zinyoka. Ramphele recalled how Mr Flask, a local coloured builder and “a gentle person who was obliging in every sense” had worked tirelessly to complete the building. Malusi Mpumlwana suggested the name Zanempilo (meaning bringer of health). The clinic was opened in January 1975, with Ramphele as the head doctor, two senior and two junior nurses. The centre included an outpatients and maternity section, and a panel van which served as an ambulance and mobile clinic.445 The frequent use of the mobile clinic highlighted the dire need for medical care in rural villages. The Zanempilo mobile clinic saw about 3000 patients annually by 1976, which shows that the need was not being met by the government.446 Similar subsidiary projects such the Empilweni mobile clinic which worked outside Soweto and in the Winterveld squatter camp during the weekends and the Solempilo Clinic in Natal were significant in extending the BCPs reach over black communities.447

Funding continued to be challenge after they had used most of the money setting the clinic up. Ramphele made R600 per month which was not always paid in time and was not enough to cover all her financial responsibilities. The situation was far worse for the nurses who were paid less and had more financial responsibilities she wrote. The SACC was vital because they mediated between them and potential sponsors.448 White priests such as David Russell of the Anglican Church were central in providing material resources in other BCP projects in the Eastern Cape. Russell lived in the unused Anglican Church building which became the BCP office and the political hub of the BCM which became known as 15 Leopold Street.449 The BCP’s head office in Beatrice Street, Durban, set up in 1972 was provided by the United Congregational Church of South Africa.450 This became a centre for a range of activities in Natal including youth tutoring, professional and self-help groups and conferences. Zanempilo and Solempilo clinics also received funds from the Anglo-American Corporation in 1975 and 1976.

444 Ramphele, 96. 445 Ramphele, 97. 446 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 111. 447 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 118. 448 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 98. 449 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 117. 450 Hadfield, 115.

95 Ramphele’s struggle to build rapport with the local women of Zinyoka was mainly because of ethnic and language differences. She was a Sotho woman, qualified as a doctor and could not speak the local Xhosa language. She hadn’t learnt from her fellow Xhosa activists who used to communicate with her in English. She therefore had to start learning the language to build deeper relationships with her patients. Older women of the village were her primary teachers and were “delighted that their Mosothokazi (Sotho woman) was going to learn the local language.”451 This strategy proved to be successful, as she wrote:

We developed respect for each other as they were put in a position of authority over me, being experts in something which I was incompetent. The medical expertise I brought into the relationships could be seen in a less mystified light: doctors do not know everything. I was also drawn into closer human relationship with the women of Zinyoka. They referred to me as Iramram (the delicate one, a reference to my small physical frame).

This is one of the ways in which women’s leadership roles in the BCM were enhanced. Ramphele could continue exercising authority in the clinic, which challenged gender norms while gaining the support and respect of other women for her profession. Once they had earned the community’s trust, Zanempilo was a preferred health centre by the locals and by middle-class professionals around Zinyoka.452 The clinic was clean, well-resourced and most importantly, it restored the dignity of the patients and the community. Many of the children born in the centre were named after it. The healthcare practitioners were respectful and compassionate towards the often old and illiterate patients. Patients grew fond of Zanempilo staff members because of the sheer humanity they displayed to all patients. Ramphele and her co-workers would take the time to enquire on the overall well-being of the patients. Patients could not get this kind of interaction from other clinics and hospitals in the area.453

Women were the primary drivers and beneficiaries of BCP in Zinyoka. The most successful of these was the leatherwork Njwaxa Project which was taken over from a group of Anglican priests of the ‘The Community of the Resurrection’. The project employed women to make leather ware. It created a significant source of income for the community, which was populated mainly by women and children.454 It converged with one of Zanempilo’s pilot projects where women gathered daily at the clinic to make sisal baskets, mats and beadwork. Pumla Sangotsha, who was a social worker and

451 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 99. 452 Ramphele, 103. 453 Ramphele, 115. 454 Hadfield, “Christian Action and the Black Community Programmes in South Africa,” 119.

96 marketing director of the BCPs helped source raw materials for the products. The projects were lucrative for the women, and for many of the families, provided much needed relief from poverty.455 The Women’s Division was set up to concentrate on leadership and training for women and was involved in self-help programmes.456 Indeed, this was “an example of how the BCP [and BCM], although it did not make women’s issues political, catered to and empowered women simply because women bore the brunt of rural homeland poverty.”457

A social life was created among activists working in the BCP. Ramphele recalled the many gumbas [parties] they continued to have in their newly formed close-knit community. These involved playing cards, drinking beer, having barbeques and dancing well into the night. Their parties attracted people from surrounding townships. Steve Biko’s home soon became home to many of them. People would come and go at any time she added, expecting a plate of food and at times a place to sleep. For Ramphele, it was Biko’s mother’s cooking everyone enjoyed the most. However, Ramphele recognised the impact of the gumbas on their health and performance at work the next day, she wrote, “I used to resent the inconsiderate noise from the late-night parties which disturbed my sleep. In some cases, I would simply have to join in because my complaints went unheeded.”458 She recalled many times when she had to plead with Biko to wake up the next morning for an important meeting. Ramphele landed the reputation of being the ‘difficult person’ in the group, ‘spoiling the fun’ for everyone.

The pressure to fulfil the social and professional aspects of life in Zinyoka took its toll on Ramphele, so much so that she needed an additional medical officer in 1976. Dr Dubs Msauli – a former student at Durban medical school was recruited in this regard, which was extremely helpful to her.459 Msauli became a board member of the BCP in Eastern Cape and was overseer of the fundraising and health projects. Msauli was instrumental in recruiting other doctors in the area to work voluntarily in weekends. Medical students also came to learn from Zanempilo programs. Another addition to the medical staff was Dr Solombela. Solombela had just completed his internship at Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth when he joined Zanempilo. He was mostly working in the satellite clinics while Ramphele worked mainly in Zinyoka and as director of the BCP branch office.460

455 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 109. 456 “Black Community Programmes Limited: 1976 Report,” n.d., 10, Digital Innovation South Africa. 457 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 120. 458 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 105. 459 Ramphele, 105. 460 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 110.

97 Ramphele described Solombela as rather traditional in his views about women in society, she wrote:

[He] had a hard time coming to terms with my position in the community, both as his boss and in terms of my participation in what he regarded as manly activities. For example, he took a dim view of my joining in the eating of the sheep heads after braais [barbeque]. I made it clear he had a choice between sharing with me or distancing himself from this violation of tradition by abstaining and preserving his honour as a man. He followed his best interests.461

It was incidents such as these were BC women challenged gender norms. Their strong role in the movement allowed them to assert themselves as women and engage in activities otherwise deemed as ‘manly’. It is significant that some traditional men who came into this space still recognised Ramphele as a woman, and not an ‘honorary man’. Moreover, the connection she had developed with the women in the community, her relationship with Biko shows that she was recognised as a woman. Her role was a welcome anomaly in the community because she could negotiate space for herself and while also commanding respect from those around her.

BCM activists such as Ramphele soon settled comfortably in their new community. Selby Baqwa, who had left Fort Hare along with Thenjiwe Mtintso in the late 1960s was then a full-time lawyer based in Durban. He too told of the frequent trips he and many others made to meetings in King Williams Town. He described his engagements with Ramphele, Mtintso, Mpumlwana and Biko as ‘fruitful’ and ‘fantastic’. 462 BC activists also embraced traditional clothing, medicines and culture, which made the older members of the community more appreciative of them. Their ability to show respect and compassion for the local and BCM community resonated deeply with many.463

Even as the BCP were effective in restoring some dignity of the black community and offering practical ways to liberate the minds of the oppressed, there was a fraction of BC activists which believed in a more radical approach to overcoming Apartheid. Ramphele recalled Mapetla Mohapi as a strong advocate of such an approach. Ramphele observed as his views grew even stronger in late 1975 when he became the executive director of the Zimele Trust. This project was directed at funding self-help projects and initiatives for and by ex-political prisoners. Mohapi was observed the lack of solidarity between ex-political prisoners more than their political circumstances. As Ramphele wrote, Mohapi would engage them in heated debates about the need for radical strategies other than the

461 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 105. 462 Selby Baqwa, interview by Danny Massey, 1999, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 463 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 118.

98 ‘conscientising’ of people. The rest of them were not willing to risk going that route considering the extreme government repression they were under at the time.464 However, they agreed that every black person had the moral obligation to resist Apartheid in some way.

As Ramphele observed, most BCM activists grew up in Christian homes and were drawn into political activism mainly because of their religious ideas. However, many lost faith and commitment to Christianity because of the unchanging circumstances under which black people were living. She wrote that they distanced themselves from the church because they “saw it as having failed to proclaim the good news to the poor and to fight for the liberation of the oppressed.”465 They were against those who just accepted the status quo, those who committed to the church without participating in any form to the struggle against Apartheid.

The BCP not only attracted professionals and township residents, it attracted white theological activists. A relationship between the BCP and the Border Council of Churches emerged to strengthen their projects. Friendships between BCM activists, white priests and theological students were formed. Ramphele wrote that these links “kept us [BC activists] alive to the importance of valuing different strategies to address the problems of development in our country.”466 They welcomed contributions they made for their cause but insisted on directing their projects without interference.

BCM activists had always analysed and engaged with the views of white liberals such as Richard Turner for instance. Turner wrote a doctoral thesis titled The Eye of the Needle which was published by Spro-cas. It was an in-depth analysis of Marxism in South Africa, which influenced new left radicalism among white students. Turner was appointed as a politics lecturer in the University of Natal in 1972 where he and Biko become close friends. Turner argued for a multi-racial radicalism, contrary to BC racial exclusivity in order to do away with Apartheid. Turner and Biko disagreed on the importance of race as the oppressive force in capitalist exploitation in South Africa. Both were however in agreement regarding the 'True Humanity' which they believed would surpass race and class divisions. This drew them closer to one another and made them lasting friends until Turner was assassinated in January 1978.467 Class struggle, as argued I argue earlier, did not feature as an oppressive factor in BC philosophy in the same way that race did, as BCM activists chose to ignore it to achieve racial solidarity.

464 Ramphele, 108. 465 Ramphele, 107. 466 Ramphele, 108. 467 Saul Dubow, Apartheid 1948-1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 169–70.

99 Thenjiwe Mtintso got the opportunity to work for the newspaper Daily Dispatch alongside its editor, Donald Woods. Woods was also an honorary president of NUSAS. He was drawn to the BCM’s newly found political space, albeit being an ardent opposer of its separatist politics. According to Ramphele, it was her visit to Woods which prompted him to let Biko write a column in the newspaper. She challenged the tendency of the newspaper to give more publicity to homeland leaders instead of liberation organisations such as SASO. Ramphele described her encounter with Woods to have been pleasant, however, Woods gave a completely different view to hers in his book Asking for Trouble, she wrote:

His account of a petite and cheeky young woman who burst into his office demanding to see him, and firing questions about his neglect of leaders such as Steve in favour of the Buthelezi’s of the day. I can only surmise that he must have been disorientated by the shock of meeting for the first time an African woman doctor who was young and self-confident. He must have anticipated the worst.468

Ramphele therefore still had to deal with male sexist attitudes within and outside the BCP as a professional doctor. Both black and white men did not seem to easily accept her as an equal at first glance. Woods invited Biko to identify young activists whom he could train as journalists, which led to the employment of Mtintso as a journalist. Mtintso worked closely with Biko in writing articles for the newspaper. As Baqwa observed, Biko’s influence accelerated her political growth in a way that Fort Hare couldn’t. As Baqwa stated, “Sometimes I wondered how much of what came out in Dispatch was Thenjiwe Mtintso’s and how much of it was Steve’s,” suggesting that Mtintso’s work may have been more prominent in the articles. 469

5.2. Black Review: Black Consciousness women producing BCP literature

BCM women activists were directly involved in the publication of the BCP year book, Black Review. The yearbook was dedicated to the publishing of the BCP vision and achievements in their community projects. It aimed at engaging the black community into analysis of developmental trends in relation to the social conditions under which they exist to come up with interventions for change in the future. Therefore, it was a yearly report intended to inform black business owners, developers, political organisations and the public about where they were as black people in terms of development in South

468 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 100. 469 Baqwa, interview.

100 Africa.470 The first publication was edited by Ben Khoapa (Director of the BCP) in 1972, followed by Mafika Pascal Gwala in 1973, then Thoko Mbanjwa 1974/75 and Asha Rambally in 1976. It covered issues and activities by, for, or which affected black people in the political, religious, governmental, work, education, sports and recreation, arts and entertainment sectors. As Thoko Mbanjwa quoted Rev S.M Mogoba of the Federal Theological Seminary in the introduction to the 1974/75 issue, “Black Review is like the Bible.” She added, “we record these events, hoping that Black people will not just them in their libraries but use to improve the future.”471

Black Review followed a long-established tradition of BCM literature and resistance publication. Steve Biko began his earliest writing for Black Viewpoint, wherein he argued against the publication of black stories by white writers. BC writers concurred, arguing that this tradition led to a distorted understanding of black culture and history, which contributed further to the oppression of black people. Ramphele agreed, arguing that the scholarship of the 1960’s and 1970’s portrayed black people as victims and hardly included black perspectives.472 The SASO newsletter was the first publication of the BCM. It was responsible for the spreading of BC philosophy across the universities. It included articles on current affairs affecting black people both in the country and in the broader African continent, it also featured black poetry. If the SASO Newsletter had been effective in ‘conscientising’ black people, then Black Review would provide them with practical tools in addressing their inferiority and liberating themselves psychologically.

Little has been written in scholarship about the central role women played in the production and dissemination of key ideas and information about black community development during this time. These women undertook these roles to curve out careers in publication. They replaced previous editors who had been banned because they already held important skills in the writing and publication field. Thoko Mbanjwa begin writing for the Black Review in 1972 after her expulsion from Turfloop and was later appointed as its researcher. It was during this time that she became much more politically aware and developed writing and analytical skills through the mentorship of Biko.473 The research process she told, involved gathering of any information from newspapers, secondary literature and interviews that related to black people. Research was done by any activist who had an interest in writing and literature, every editor therefore had a team of writers who would focus on certain aspects in the yearbook.474 Mbanjwa was banned in 1976 and was replaced by Asha Rambally,

470 B.A Khoapa, “Introduction,” Black Review 1 (1972): 2. 471 Mbanjwa, Black Review. 472 Hadfield, Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa, 68. 473 Hadfield, 79. 474 Hadfield, 77.

101 who had been involved in BCM activism mainly through theatre. She was also an English teacher in Durban and influenced young black writers such Oswald Mtshali.475

Women roles as leaders in the BCP cannot be emphasised enough. They were able to apply their education and skills in the implementation of the programs while continuing to advance BCM ideals of self-reliance. The BCP became the lifeline of the BCM at a time when the state had arrested, banned and restricted many SASO activists. SASO activists could apply BC philosophy by engaging the community in their own development to ‘conscientise’ the black society. Women such as Ramphele, Mbanjwa and Rambally were left to direct important programs in the BCP which proved successful.

475 Hadfield, 81.

102 Chapter 6. Towards a women’s Black Consciousness organisation

6.1. The Black Women’s Federation (BWF)

The Black Women’s Federation (BWF) appealed to many black women organisations because it was able to merge black consciousness ideals of self-reliance and black power with gender equality in the public sphere. It was formed on the 7th December 1975 by Professor Fatima Meer who became its first president. Meer had played significant roles in the politics of the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) and the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) which led the historic women march against passbooks in 1956. In the scholarship, the BWF is presented as a failed attempt by BC women to have their own organisation within the BCM. This analysis, I argue, belittles the political experience and knowledge that Meer possessed and makes it difficult to view the BWF as a significant historical moment both in the broader liberation and women’s liberation movement. Therefore, to understand the significance of the BWF, it is important for one to understand the role she played in the liberation struggle.

6.1.1. FEDSAW women in the Black Consciousness Movement

Meer began her political career during the 1940s in Natal. In an interview, she recalled the moment she was introduced to public politics by her uncle, who was the secretary of the Passive Resistance Council.

Well, I think I was in my Matric year, which made me about 17 when the first Law Land Act was passed, against the Asiatic people but the Asiatic people meant the Indian people. There were no other Asiatic in the country at the time. That was in 1946 and here in Natal, the Natal Indian Congress, organised a Passive Resistance Campaign against the law and that was when I made my first public speech… After that, I was a regular, I was invited regularly by all sorts of organisations, both welfare and political to come and speak from their platforms. Then, when the Group Areas Act was passed, I was already a regular speaker on the Anti-Group Areas platform. Then I came into close contact, with women from the African Women’s, ANC Women’s League.476

476 Fatima Meer, Fatima Meer, September 11, 2008, 1, AG3298 Legal Resources Centre Oral History Project, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

103 .

Meer played a significant role in mobilising women in Natal against passbooks. She recalled:

Passes were required from African men only who left the rural area to seek work in the urban areas, but 1950 was a year, when the Nationalist government became very, very active and passed a number of laws, a whole lot of laws, apartheid laws, so they now, extended the pass laws onto the African women. And the women were not having any part of it.477

In October 1960, Meer led a multiracial group of women in an anti-pass demonstration outside the Durban Native Commissioners’ offices. The women stood peacefully outside the building carrying placards written “Chesterville says…Reject Passes” among others and faced a group of armed policemen. Meer was part of the delegation which met and spoke to the Commissioner on this day.478 She appeared again in May 1961 at the Durban city Hall at the National Convention’s symposium, as part of the Durban Branch of the United Nations Association. She was one of the speakers who addressed the symposium where a pledge was taken “to plan a new South Africa which all our people can accept as their own.” In the article it says, “Tremendous applause greeted Mrs Fatima Meer, former member of the Natal Indian Congress Executive”, whom in her speech said that “she was convinced that the pattern of democracy which was being fashioned by the Non-whites was one which nobody had any reason to fear. It is one which opens its doors to all South Africans.”479

Meer continued her political activism in the Natal Indian Congress throughout the 1960s. She published a series of stories and photographs in the New Age newspaper as part of the week-long centenary celebrations on the arrival of the South African Indian community as indentured labourers in Natal. In one of the stories, she wrote about the arrival of Indians as indentured labourers in Natal, and the initial working conditions they faced. She further highlighted that:

Women were also indentured, for this system of ‘emigration’ required that there should be a “representative slice” emigrating to the new country. Thus, it was compulsory that each “shipment” included 35 to 40 per cent women. Women received half the wage of men.480

477 Meer, 2. 478 New Age, October 13, 1960, 8, AG2887 Publications, New Age, 1954-1962, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 479 “2,000 Back Call For Convention: S.A. Belongs to All, White and Non-White,” New Age, May 25, 1961, 4–5, AG2887 Publications, New Age, 1954-1962, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 480 Fatima Meer, “The First Ship Arrives,” New Age, November 17, 1960, 4, AG2887 Publications, New Age, 1954-1962, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

104 Other stories addressed the inferior working conditions the labourers faced working in the cane fields, the naturalisation of Indians as South Africans, their entry into Commerce after attaining freedom and the formation of the Natal Indian Congress by Mahatma Ghandi. The history of Indian people and their oppression under British rule together with the inequalities faced by Indian women formed part of Meer’s political consciousness before she joined the BCM. She continued to address women’s oppression within the Indian Congress and in international platforms as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Natal. Meer remained actively engaged in the politics of the Indian people of Natal while also identifying with other non-European groups who were oppressed under the Apartheid government.

6.1.2. Fatima Meer in the BCM: The Black Renaissance Convention

The ‘Black Renaissance Convention’ which took place on the 13th-16th December 1974 was a significant moment in which BC women demonstrated their importance in the movement beyond SASO and BCP. The event brought together black organisations or individuals, including Bantustan leaders - who were the black beneficiaries of the Apartheid system of separate development and labelled as ‘sell-outs’. Meer delivered an address on the role of black women in society wherein she presented a brief history of black women and highlighted women icons in the precolonial era. She further outlined the significant role black women played in the modern liberation struggle and concluded her paper in saying, “When South Africa is finally liberated, a great debt will be due to them and it will be paid, if the future society guarantees both racial and sexual equality.”481

BC activists were identified as responsible for disruptions caused in the conference because of the presence of Bantustan leaders.482 SASO/BPC members and sympathizers continued to interrupt the convention with motions and questions about the aims of the convention, mainly to challenge the presence of homeland leaders. Meer suggested that resolutions and objectives of the convention be discussed in groups instead, so that the declaration of the Black Renaissance Convention could be drafted.483 Furthermore, she defended SASO from allegations of ‘black racism’ and the question of seeking help from some homeland leaders in getting SASO detainees released.

Meer’s role and contributions in the convention were significant because a declaration could be finalised in the end. Meer highlighted the importance of the declaration and agreed with many that a

481 Fatima Meer, “The Black Woman in South Africa” (December 1974), 11. 482 “Report on the ‘Black Renaissance Convention’” (Hammanskraal, 13th-16th December), 2, A1985, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 483 “Report on the ‘Black Renaissance Convention,’” 3.

105 weekend was not enough to iron out differences between various black organisations. By the last day, the ‘expulsion’ of the homeland leaders from the convention was celebrated with song and black power fists.484 Meer described this moment as ‘a symbolic ritual’, which proved that blacks disapproved of the system of separate development and homelands.485 The media accused SASO students of being the primary cause of chaos in the convention. The convention’s secretary however, stated that they were ‘the most hard working’ group and that such accusations would not ‘quench the thirst of the Blacks for their manhood and freedom.’486 Meer was described as “one of the most powerful, fearless and feared political voices in Natal, raised always on behalf of the Black underdog in this country.”487

6.1.3. Formation of the BWF

The BWF is another example of how black women, despite their political background and affiliations, formed strong political bonds in this era. Fatima Meer developed a close relationship with Winnie Madikizela Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela in the 1950s. Mandela was the president of the ANC Youth League as she recalled. He stayed with the Meer’s each time he went to Durban. Meer recalled other ANC leaders frequenting her home during this time. The first time Meer met Madikizela was when Mandela asked that she spend a few days with them. Meer was much older than Madikizela, and recalled how ‘struck’ she was by her beauty and how she was an ‘avid reader’.488 When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in 1962, Meer and her husband Ismail Meer promised to take care of Madikizela. Meer visited her frequently and supported her financially for a while. Nelson Mandela also entrusted her to write his biography- Higher Than Hope. Meer wrote that they grew closer in both their personal and political relationship.489 In a foreword to Meer’s recent biography, Madikizela described Meer as her “dearest friend, sister and advisor whom I worshipped and treasured like my own possession.”490

The Black Women’s Federation (BWF) was formed in December 1975 in Durban. It was a sequel to the Natal Federation of Black Women which was formed by Meer in 1973. BWF was formed following the International Women’s Year Natal Teach-In (IWYN) held in Durban which focused on

484 “Report on the ‘Black Renaissance Convention,’” 5. 485 Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, “Putting the Black Renaissance Convention into Correct Perspective,” n.d., 3, A1985, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 486 Mkhatshwa, 4. 487 “She’s No Domestic Pigeon, She’s a Bird of Prey,” Rand Daily Mail, August 28, 1975, A1985, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 488 Fatima Meer, Memories of Love and Struggle (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2017), 219. 489 Meer, 220. 490 Nomzamo Winnie Mandela, “Foreword,” in Memories of Love and Struggle (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2016).

106 the position of women under Apartheid and in the liberation movement. Meer was elected president and Winnie Mandela to the national leadership, Ellen Kuzwayo was among those present in the inauguration.491 The constitution of the BWF was adopted by two hundred black women across fifty- eight black townships throughout South Africa. In their preamble, the women recognised their responsibility for “the survival and maintenance of their families” and the “socialisation of the youth for the transmission of Black Cultural Heritage.” They further set out to “redirect the status of motherhood” for the fulfilment of black people’s aspirations. These aims were rather compliant with the gender roles in the liberation movement, that women’s role was to participate alongside their men as mothers. Some of its aims were to define common problems and affect community action, heighten the social, economic and cultural awareness of the Black Community for self-reliance, unite and co- ordinate women’s organisations throughout South Africa and co-operating with Black organisations.492 These were in line with black consciousness ideals of black communalism and self- reliance. The resolutions included the “equality of Black Women with the women of the world” and “attaining full and equal participation in all decision-making in the country,” which were more aligned to the international women’s liberation movement.493

The formation of the BWF was significant because it was the first to combine two political aims which had been running parallel throughout the 20th century. BC women rejected multi-racial women’s liberation movement because they believed more in the liberation of the black race. However, they challenged gendered discrimination within the movement. The focus article in SASO’s newsletter in July/August 1975, titled Building a Nation: Black Women Power addressed the issue of black women’s disillusionment with the women’s liberation movement. The article argued that the contemporary women’s movement was only relevant to middle class Black women who did not have to grapple with fundamental economic problems faced by the average ‘lower-income-group woman’. Thus, it did not resonate with the black community in general- let alone the needs of the black women who had political and economic aspirations for the entire Black Nation. It stated:

The South Africa women libbers, no matter how sympathetic their general attitude is towards Blacks in our political deprivation, are physically and spiritually far removed from the Black women to be able to forge meaningful means of communication.

491 Meer, Memories of Love and Struggle, 206. 492 “The Black Women’s’ Federation: Preliminary Report,” December 1975, 3, A1985, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 493 “The Black Women’s’ Federation: Preliminary Report,” 8.

107 It further argued that the collaboration of middle-class black women with white liberal women was a futile exercise in that no meaningful exchanges of political views and experiences could take place which absorbed black women deeper into white values. The article revealed that the women’s liberation movement added to the disconnection within the black community based on class, which created a ‘snobbish Black woman’ who failed to identify with the masses but had become a ‘mouthpiece of the people.’494

The Sunday Times reported that, ‘at long last, they [black women] have come together on a common platform of understanding and concern’ following its two-day conference in Sydenham. The reporter complimented the organisation for its prioritisation of racial discrimination over sex discrimination, for openly excluding the few white women who chose to attend from any significant contributions. This is an indication that the BWF aimed at promoting BCM ideals of black solidarity and exclusivism more than any other struggle.495 One speaker in the conference stated, “if men want us to know their views they should put them through their mothers, daughters, wives or girl-friends,” which was reverse of traditional gender roles.496 The women made their grievances known; of the denial of the franchise to black women, the imposition of Coloured/Indian representative councils and homeland leaders on the disenfranchised, inferior education given to blacks and called for the scrapping of repressive Apartheid laws.497

Meer’s political influence in the BCM led to her being banned by the Apartheid government. Her attempts at starting a black women’s liberation organisation thus ended abruptly when she was banned in July 1976. She was given a five-year banning order restricting her to the Indian sections of Durban. Meer had been recently awarded the Morris Ginsberg Research Fellowship which she could not receive in London due to her restrictions. She was also set to deliver a keynote address in the inaugural conference of the Institute of Black Studies. Her colleague and close friend Nadine Gordimer told the Rand Daily Mail, that the reason she was banned was because of her “vision of Black Unity.”498 This shows that her activities within the BCM became a serious threat to the Apartheid government. Her banning order made it difficult for her to continue her political activism, which then crippled the BWF.

494 “Building A Nation: Black Women Power,” SASO, August 1975, 7, Digital Innovation South Africa. 495 “Women’s Conference A Huge Hit,” Sunday Times, December 21, 1975, A1985 Helen Joseph Papers, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 496 “Witness Viewpoint,” The Natal Witness, December 10, 1975, 12. 497 “Federation of Black Women [SA],” n.d., A1985, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 498 Patrick Laurence, “Banning Order for Mrs Meer,” Rand Daily Mail, July 23, 1976, A1985 Helen Joseph Papers, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand.

108

109 Chapter 7. State repression of the Black Consciousness Movement

7.1. Arrest, Trial and Detention of Black Consciousness Movement women leaders

He told me to sit on the floor. He stood behind me and put a big towel over my head and round my neck. He then pulled the two ends of the towel tight, which made me feel I couldn’t breathe. All the time I was struggling and using my hands to try to get the towel off my face. When he took the towel away he said “Now you see how Mapetla died” …After the third time they removed the towel and left me lying on the floor. Thenjiwe Mtintso499

Thenjiwe Mtintso spoke these words at an inquest into the death of SASO’s permanent organiser and regional secretary for the Eastern Cape, Mapetla Mohapi. Mohapi was detained under the infamous Terrorism Act of 1967 on 15 July 1976. The Act was to prohibit terrorist activities, change criminal procedures and provide for incidental matters. Section Six of the Terrorism Act allowed any officer of or above Lieutenant-colonel ranking to arrest or order the arrest and detention of any person he suspects to be a terrorist without a warrant. It also allowed the State to detain any person without trial.500 Interrogation by the security police involved torture for however long they chose. Torture involved infliction of physical and emotional pain; beatings, solitary confinement, electrification and humiliation.

Mohapi was one of the many BC activists who was arrested following the 1976 Soweto Uprising. He was detained for seven months with no one knowing his whereabouts. His wife – Nohle Mohapi- was only allowed to see him for two minutes during the eight months of his detention. Mohapi died in Kei Road police station on 5 August 1976 from what the police alleged to be suicide.501 The alleged suicide letter was also made available by the police at the inquest. The Grahamstown civil courts and Supreme Court did not charge the police with murder despite evidence presented by fellow activists

499 “You Have Struck a Rock,” International Defence and Aid Fund, 1980, A2675 Karis-Gerhart Collection of South African political materials, 1964-1990, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 500 “Terrorism Act,” Pub. L. No. 83, 1236 (1967), 1244, www.sahistory.org.za/archive/terrorism-act-1967%2C-act-no- 83-of-1967. 501 “TRC Final Report” 3, no. 2, accessed September 22, 2018, sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume3/chapter2/subsection11.htm.

110 such as Mtintso. Mamphela Ramphele was especially devasted by Mohapi’s death. As a qualified doctor and fellow activist, his family asked her to attend Mohapi’s post-mortem examination, which she described as a traumatic experience.502 Nohle Mohapi was the secretary to Steve Biko when she was detained a few months after her husband’s death. She was in solitary confinement and was tortured by the police who wanted information regarding Biko’s political activities. Mrs Mohapi was released under a banning order which prevented her from seeing her children for a year.503

BCM activists became a target of the security police since the Mozambican FRELIMO movement gained victory over Portuguese rule in 1974. Large crowds- mainly University students- gathered in Durban and Turfloop to celebrate the victory. The police invaded the gathering with dogs, batons and teargas. They subsequently raided SASO offices, confiscated their documents and several BCM activists. Nine activists were charged with violating the Terrorism and General Law Amendment Act (No 56 of 1955) between 1968 and 1974. The SASO-BPC trial was the longest under the Terrorism Act. All nine accused were detained in solitary confinement for sixteen months and were finally sentenced to six and some five years imprisonment.504 Mohapi was released in 1975 without charge before the trial.

Steve Biko was the main threat to the Apartheid government as a leader of the BCM. He symbolised the culmination of BCM ideas with the protest action of the 1976. His ideas emphasised the liberation of black people’s minds before any action against the state could take place. The police knew that detaining Biko was not enough to silence his influence, that it would create an idealised image of Biko by his followers- much like Nelson Mandela’s detention on Robben Island. Therefore, they opted for restricting Biko to King Williams Town to curb his influence over the movement.505 This attempt proved unsuccessful as BC ideas had already spread to the Soweto Township and inspired Soweto students to build a stronger liberation movement.

BCM leaders such as Biko and Ramphele were not directly involved in the planning and implementation of the student protests. SASO and BPC were still pre-occupied with the ‘conscientising’ of and promoting self-reliance in black communities. It was the students in the South African Students Movement (SASM) who sparked the Soweto uprising. The use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools became the tipping point in the already volatile socio-economic

502 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 112. 503 Nohle Mohapi, “Human Rights Violations,” § Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996), www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans%5Chrvel1/mohape.htm. 504 Hilda Bernstein, No.46- Steve Biko (London: International Defence and Aid Fund, 1978), 16. 505 Bernstein, 17.

111 conditions of black people in the township, a ‘time-bomb’ which exploitation and oppression [had] manufactured.”506 As Sechaba Montsitsi- member of the SASM and president of the SSRC:

We were not in the mood to bargain or negotiate; we were impatient and militant, and rebellious of the black consciousness leadership. With puffed lips and closed eyes straight from the cells of John Vorster Square, we did not feel like talking, we wanted to fight but did not know how.507

There was a subtle disconnection therefore, between the older SASO/BPC and the younger SASM activists regarding the implementation of BCM ideals. Many of the leaders in SASO were either arrested or restricted to their homelands by 1976. Furthermore, younger Soweto students were not fully aware of the BC ideologies; their initial exposure to the BCM was through the revolutionary vigour of activists such as Montsitsi without much of the philosophical background. The fractions within SASM became more apparent by 1974. The SASM traced its origins on the African Students Movement (ASM) which was part of the ANC movement. The banning of the ANC required the name change and students embraced the new BC ideology. Within SASM and SASO there were students who still believed in the multi-racial philosophy of the ANC and while others were inclined to PAC and BC ideas. Others became impatient with the slow pace of the BCM in taking vigorous action against the state. Some students have therefore argued that it was the ANC underground which directed uprising. Many of the students had not fully grasped the ideas of SASO and SASM.508

7.1.1. The 1976 Soweto Student Uprising

Sibongile Mkhabela was in the South African Student’s Movement (SASM) executive in June 1976 and was one the strategists for the march against poor conditions in township schools. As part of the elected member of the Action Committee, later named the Soweto Students’ Representative Council (SSRC), 509 under the leadership of Tsietsi Mashinini and Seth Mazibuko, they planned the routes to be used, how they would lead the crowds and react when provoked by the police. Their inexperience in mass protest restricted their planning, they expected the government to police would use teargas, hose pipes or detain them for a day or two, but not real bullets.510

506 Sechaba Montsitsi, “Lessons from 1976” (July 1983), 40, www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/spe19830700032009742. 507 Montsitsi, 40. 508 Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-Memories of June 2976 (Randburg: Ravan Press, 1998), 46. 509 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979:171. 510 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 51.

112 The boycott began from Orlando West Junior Secondary School and was led by Mazibuko. The SSRC was in the meanwhile mobilizing students to converge with the group. Mkhabela recalled the march as disciplined and dignified. They had the routes carefully planned and each student was accounted for. Some members of the SSRC rod in cars to monitor the march. She recalled the chanting of freedom songs as they marched, led by ‘a beautiful singer’ called Sindile. As they were approaching Mofolo North, the first teargas canister landed between Mkhabela and Sindile. It was at this point that the entire march broke into chaos. They ran to the nearest houses for water to soak their faces and took some more in containers. The residents welcomed them in a way they had not anticipated, offered them refreshments while they recuperated, and they soon reconvened with the march. The police continued dispersing the teargas, but the students were unrelenting.511 The police then shot into the crowd and killed the twelve-year-old Zolile Hector Pieterson at Orlando West. The announcement was made where they were, which sent ‘shockwaves’ through the crowd. They had been marching for three hours by this time, and although they were in total dismay at the killing, they were still determined to reach Orlando stadium.512 For Mkhabela, the shooting strengthened her, she said:

The minute they shot Hector, I knew I’d be in the struggle for the rest of my life…that is what held us together. You lost a lot of people, and gained a better consolidated group of people, more dedicated, more committed, knowing that they are putting their lives on the line and consciously so.513

The students started a rampage and vandalised buildings and vehicles across the country, it was there that they earned their name as ‘stone throwers’. The violence continued on the 17th in the Krugersdorp and West Rand areas. The protest affected more than a hundred areas through the course of a year- students, Urban Bantu Councils and homeland governments all collaborated in the efforts.514 As Mkhabela explained, they had connections with the Black Parents Association which was led by Dr. Motlana and Winnie Mandela. They called meetings with the parents in the townships to make the parents understand that the protest was about the whole black community.515 The students also directed their attention to alcohol consumption in the black community, which they saw as the one of the governments vices used to make them forget their struggle. Students were appalled by the fact that black communities lacked so many facilities, but there was never a shortage of a bottle store

511 Mkhabela, 54. 512 Mkhabela, 54. 513 Mkhabela, Sibongile Mthembu Mkhabela, 8. 514 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979:168. 515 Mkhabela, Sibongile Mthembu Mkhabela, 7.

113 ‘strategically positioned at the train station’. They were concerned about the destabilisation of black families as the men would stop at the bottle store after a hard day at work and spend almost every penny they had. This ensured that black communities remain poor and promoted violence and abuse in the families.516 The SSRC ordered the shutdown of township bars and bottle stores and in CapeTown, many which refused were burnt down and destroyed.517

7.1.2. Young girls arrested in Soweto, 1976.

Sibongile Mkhabela was arrested on 24 August 1976 while she was planning a stay away by parents and workers in Soweto set to be on 13-15 September. The students published pamphlets calling for parents’ co-operation, for the workers to stay away from work and hostel dwellers to halt the violence. They aimed to show their objection to mass killings, detention without trial and the cutting of the wages of affected parents.518 The purpose of this was to slow down the economy of the country which would lead to removal of the repressive laws. In describing her arrest, Mkhabela wrote:

I remember the sounds of rude, heavy knocks that woke me up. I shudder as I recall the fear that gripped me that morning when armed men kicked the doors…I was then firmly grabbed by the collar of my dress and thrown against the door. I felt like a rag doll, but I was determined to maintain some dignity in all this. As I lifted my face, one of them slapped or punched me and blood spurted out of my mouth. I could hear my sister sobbing in the background. I wished to die.519

She had met her fate that night, the same fate which many students and BCM activists met in 1976. They knew of what might happen if the police found out about their activities. The high morale of resistance among students was dwindling due to the surge of arrests, killings and brutality of the security police. Many would either be released without charges after torture or be on the run to avoid arrest. Sechaba Montsitsi’s girlfriend fled the country after having been tortured; where the security police removed her top, placed electrodes on her breasts and electrocuted her. She was one of many

516 Mkhabela, 8; Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979:168. 517 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979:176. 518 “Azi Khwelwa!” (Soweto Student Representative Council, 1976), Digital Innovation South Africa, www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/cir19760913032009795. 519 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 61–62.

114 who fled the country out of the trauma and fear of the police.520 The police would deliberately release some students with bruises to intimidate the others.

Mkhabela was taken to Protea police station, Soweto where the police began interrogating her. The interrogation involved more beatings by six policemen who failed to extract any information. They then sent her to John Vorster Square prison in Johannesburg which was a notorious hub for gross human rights violations by the Apartheid police. The ninth and tenth floors gained popularity as the dreaded quarters of the security police where extreme torture, inhumane detention and even death was imminent.521 Mkhabela was detained there for three months under Section Six of the Terrorism Act and released without charges. She could have fled the country after her release but refused because of her strong sense of family.522 She made this decision even as she experience the torture from the police and did not know whether or when she would be released.523

Mkhabela’s detention was not enough to deter her from the Soweto Students’ Representative Council (SSRC). They continued to organise students in secret through closed ‘think-tanks’.524 This increased tension with her family because they stopped sleeping in their own homes. The students became the authority figures in the township; they went against their parents’ wishes for ‘education before liberation’ and commanded further strike-action, stay ways and boycotts, to which the parents had to abide.525 Mkhabela was taken in by the family of Tebogo Mngomezulu, whom she described as a brother to her. She described fond memories of him and his family.526

Mkhabela was one of the eleven students arrested and charged with sedition between May and October 1977 in the trial known as the Soweto 11. They were convicted in May 1979; Mkhabela was given a six-year sentence with a four-year suspended sentence. She recalled how being the only woman among the eleven accused drew the attention of the prosecutor, Mr Von Lierens who seemed not to comprehend how a woman could be as determined to defy the law. Mkhabela argued that their arrest was unlawful, and that even the judge did not understand what they were being charged for.

520 Sechaba Montsitsi, “Lessons from 1976” (July 1983), 4, www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/spe19830700032009742. 521 “Remembering a Darker Time: John Vorster Square,” SAHA Archive for Justice, August 23, 2010, www.saha.org.za/news/2010/August/remembering_a_darker_time_when_john_vorster_square_was_opened.htm. 522 Sibongile Mkhabela LRC Oral History Project, 2008, 11, AG3298 LEGAL RESOURCES CENTRE Oral History Project, Willian Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 523 Mkhabela, 12. 524 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 85. 525 Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrop, Winnie Mandela: A Life (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2003), 176. 526 Mkhabela, Open Earth and Black Roses: Remembering 16 June 1976, 68.

115 Nonetheless, the judge delivered his long judgement which for Mkhabela, criminalised their ‘ability to lead’ the student’s movement.527 She described the moment after her sentence:

I felt numb inside. I had to raise my fist higher in defiance of my own sense of loss and fear of the unknown…I felt the loneliness of being the only women amongst men and getting convicted. I thought of Ma [mother] and Gogo [grandmother]; her scream would not leave me, I heard it loud and clear.528

The cries from her grandmother highlight the great pain and rupture to the families of activists in the struggle against Apartheid. Mkhabela was in that moment separated from her family and her friends for the second time. Her family pleaded with her many times to stop what she was doing because they feared losing her. Being the only woman in the group created a deeper sense of isolation, the males would be together in the male prison while she would be sent to the Women’s Jail.

7.1.3. The role of Winnie Mandela in the Soweto Uprising

Winnie Mandela was responsible for the training and absorption of ANC underground activists during the 1970’s. Many students were able to escape arrests because of her efforts. Tsietsi Mashinini was among them and was known as ‘the little Mandela’ owing to his physical resemblance to him. Joyce Sikakane, Samson Ndou, Elliot Shabangu, Rita and Lawrence Ndzanga were in the network initiated by Mandela for recruiting and training for armed struggle.529 Among the six-hundred youths who were reported to be in Botswana there were those who chose not to join the armed struggle and continued to affiliate with SASO and SASM instead.530 Mandela and her network of activists were detained in 1969 and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their role in continuing the aims and objectives of an unlawful organisation ANC. She was detained for four-hundred and ninety-one days, most of which were in solitary confinement. She was subsequently served with a five-year banning order after her release and was placed under house arrest in Orlando West. The state kept close watch on her and her property, and at times attacked her in her home over the years.531

527 Mkhabela, 85. 528 Mkhabela, 89. 529 Gregory Houston and Bernard Magubane, “The ANC Political Underground in the 1970s,” The Road to Democracy in South Africa 2 (2004): 373. 530 “ANC-PAC Enlist Exiled Students,” The World, December 30, 1976 in, Ndlovu, The Soweto Uprisings: Counter- Memories of June 2976, 47. 531 Anne Benjamin, ed., Winnie Mandela: Part of My Soul Went With Him (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), 98.

116 The intimidation did not reduce her important role in the ANC’s underground struggle and as in the growing BCM movement.532

Biko and many young activists in Soweto related and were supported by Mandela. They knew of her passion and dedication to the liberation of black people. Barney Pityana recalled the first meeting they had with her in 1971 regarding their political outlook as youth, he told how Mandela recognised the BC as an important contributor to the liberation movement. Her loyalty to the ANC and her husband Nelson Mandela did not waver albeit she began embracing BCM ideas.533 According to Pityana, the young people who joined the armed or went to Robben Island from 1972 were already influenced by BC ideas and they challenged ANC ideologies.534 Sikakane for instance interacted with BCM women such as Ramphele and Nkosazana Dlamini in the ‘women cells’ in Soweto before she left the country in 1972. She was sent to Botswana in 1974 as part of a SASO delegation which met with ANC leaders. The meeting was however abandoned when they heard news of the killing of Turfloop’s Abraham Tiro by petrol bomb.535 Many students were sent to Botswana to meet Isaac Makopo and Keith Makoape who left SASO to join the ANC armed struggle in 1972.536

Fatima Meer recalled receiving and urgent call from Mandela on the day saying, “Soweto is burning; they are killing the children.”537 She started the Soweto Parents Association in May 1976 to bring together the parents of students to find ways to assist their children. Many parents rushed back from work after hearing about the shooting to find dead bodies of children lying on the floor. They began recovering the bodies of children dying in riots which engulfed the country throughout 1976, arranging funerals and fundraising. She estimated more than one thousand children to have died and four thousand injured by the end of that year.538 The expanded the Black Parents’ Association (BPA) to include parents across the country in the same effort. Winnie Mandela was blamed by the security police for inciting the students of the 1976 uprising. She was aware of the brewing frustrations of the high school students over the Bantu Education Act because she was living with some of the students and had warned the authorities as early as 1975 to take heed of their fuelling rage.539

532 Houston and Magubane, “The ANC Political Underground in the 1970s,” 374. 533 du Preez Bezdrop, Winnie Mandela: A Life, 171. 534 Pityana Barney, Listen: Madikizela-Mandela Represented Black Consciousness Movement, Interview, n.d., www.power987.co.za/news/listen-madikizela-mandela-represented-black-consciousness-movement-barney-pityana/. 535 Houston and Magubane, “The ANC Political Underground in the 1970s,” 373. 536 Houston and Magubane, 374. 537 Fatima Meer, Prison Diary: One Hundred and Thirteen Days. 1976 (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2001), 23. 538 du Preez Bezdrop, Winnie Mandela: A Life, 177. 539 du Preez Bezdrop, 173.

117 Those such Dr Nthato Motlana who saw her in action against the police officials were scared for her at times. As the only female in the BPA executive, Dr Motlana described Winnie as ‘more than a man: powerful, faithful and honest.’ She demonstrated her bravery in several occasions where she fearlessly delivered speeches in front of the police. He recalled one incident in the Protea police station when Major Visser accused her of starting the riots:

She threw a book at him, her shoe, anything and everything she could lay her hands on- ‘You bloody murderer, killer of our children, and you tell us we started the riots. You go and stop those bastards killing our children in the street.540

Winnie Mandela symbolised the outcry of mother in Soweto who felt helpless to the states torture of their children. There were those who joined the BPA and exposed themselves to victimisation and arrests. Other women offered their homes for the protection of children who were not their own Church women graced the funerals with song and offered the Holy Scriptures to grieving mothers, lest they be the next to have to bury their children. The children surpassed the stage of listening obediently to their mother’s cry for ‘education before liberation’, as Montsitsi said, they were too angry. The church and BPA were thus vital avenues for comfort and hope for motherhood in Soweto.

7.1.4. Black Consciousness women leaders in detention.

Winnie Mandela’s role in 1976 led to her detention in the Johannesburg Fort on 12 August 1976 with Sally Motlana, who was Dr Motlana’s wife. 541 She and Mrs Motlana were detained in the Johannesburg Fort Women’s Jail. It was built by the Boer government in 1893 to monitor, control and imprison illegal migrants during the gold rush. The British government added a women’s jail by 1910 and detained black and white women prisoners in segregated sections.542 Deborah Matshoba was also arrested and detained in the Women’s Jail under section ten of the Terrorism Act. Matshoba felt fortunate to be among ‘veterans’ of the struggle such as Fatima Meer and Winnie Mandela. They could interact with other inmates and bargain with the wardresses on prison rules and conduct. Mandela led much of the women’s protests in the prison. She stood up for some inmates who were denied their rights to wearing panties.543 As Motlana recalled, as the most outspoken among them against such regulations, it took a week after Winnie Mandela lashed at the lieutenant for the women

540 Benjamin, Winnie Mandela: Part of My Soul Went with Him, 116. 541 du Preez Bezdrop, Winnie Mandela: A Life, 178. 542 Stephanie Bonnes and Janet Jacobs, “Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill,” Museum and Society 15, no. 2 (2017): 154. 543 Deborah Matshoba, “Women’s Hearing,” § Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Human Rights Violations (1997), 2, www.justice.gov.za/trc/special/women/matshoba.htm.

118 to be given stockings, shoes and panties.544 Mandela stood up for Motlana after she complained several times about a broken window in her cell. She gathered all inmates in the block and told the wardress that they would not go back to their cells until the window is fixed. The window was attended to early the next morning.545

White prisoners and middle-class women generally received better facilities than the rest. White women received more food rations, bigger cells, sanitary towels, shoes and panties. The prison officials deliberately withheld these basic amenities from black prisoners- which had a humiliating and dehumanizing effect. This is was particularly effective when the women were menstruating, they would have to perform prison duties while trying to keep the sanitary towel in place, failing to do so would lead to them being beaten.546

Winnie Mandela had worked with fellow detainee Fatima Meer in the Black Women’s Federation (BWF) and were both banned for its activities. Meer was however allowed to continue teaching at the University of Natal because it was a white campus and could do little to influence them against the government, “I was an anomaly teaching there,” she wrote.547 Meer organised protests against the killings in Soweto as soon as she heard what took place from Mandela. She worked closely with Diliza Mji of the medical school to mobilise students in Durban. At this time, the state had made an urgent proclamation which banned open-air meetings, so they used church cathedrals to hold secret meetings with the help of Archbishop Hurley. Meer recalled her conflict with Mji and other activists such as Govan Reddy over allowing Hurley to speak in their protests because he was white. However, because the BCM used Christian organisations and persons where needed, Fatima Meer stood by the decision.548 The rally was cancelled after the police informed them that they would arrest anyone walking in groups to any illegal gathering. The police were also on standby with police dogs outside the university to ensure that this did not occur.

Meer and other BCM activists in Natal were arrested shortly after June 1976. She was arrested on 20 August 1976, nine days after her son, Rashid was detained. She had planned to travel to Johannesburg to give evidence on the SASO-BPC trial but learnt that the police had tapped her telephone and were thus aware of her plans. They were waiting for her to go there and incriminate herself in the court. The counsel on the case, Advocate Soggot informed Meer that she would no longer be required to

544 Benjamin, Winnie Mandela: Part of My Soul Went with Him, 116. 545 du Preez Bezdrop, Winnie Mandela: A Life, 179. 546 Bonnes and Jacobs, “Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill,” 161. 547 Meer, Prison Diary: One Hundred and Thirteen Days. 1976, 25. 548 Meer, 23.

119 provide evidence. The police therefore lost the chance to arrest Meer based on the Terrorism Act. She was arrested under Section ten of the General Laws Amendment Act. Fortunately, the violence during her arrest was limited to distant intimation by the largest of the eight policemen, Captain Du Toit. The police also gave her an opportunity to call her husband and children and gather her belongings; she took some clothing, money and her holy scriptures. One of the policemen escorting her was making conversation with her mainly to questioning her choice of having a domestic worker in her home. They stopped over at the police headquarters in Fisher street, where she and her husband could embrace and say their goodbyes before captain Tu Doit interrupted them and told him to leave.

Meer was initially taken to Wentworth police station where her son was detained and subsequently taken to the Women’s Jail in Johannesburg. The Wentworth police station cells were large and had enough mats and blankets for her to sleep. She could spend her time before lights out writing. Her family managed to get concessions from the special police branch to go and see her the same evening. They bid their final farewell to her and left, “as if the sun had shone momentarily into my [her] cell and had been dispelled by dark, threatening clouds.”549 She was taken to the Women’s Jail in Johannesburg on 21 August 1976. She learnt along the way that her fellow comrade Diliza Mji was also in the same convoy going to Johannesburg. The police casually questioned her relations with other popular activists and sympathisers- such as Govan Reddy, Rick Turner and Saths Cooper- with whom she had previously worked. She remained vague about her knowledge and relationship with them. She arrived at the prison in the evening and was taken through the admissions procedures. She knew Winnie Mandela and Jeanie Noel, former secretary of the BWF were in the prison. In Meer’s view, the BWF was the single factor which led to her detention, and it was not coincidence that she Mandela and Noel were arrested too.

Albeit all three of these women were part of the BCM and had participated in similar political activities, Meer’s racial and class status afforded her some leniency from the security police and the wardresses. Race and class played a role in the kind of treatment received. Fatima Meer recalled that she was from this humiliation when she first arrived at the prison, she wrote:

Later we compared notes about our stripping. Jeanie [Noel] and Sibongile [Kubeka] detailed their humiliations. They had arrived late at night and had been made to strip to their skin freezing in the cold on the veranda. They had been forced to crouch naked while the wardress looked for contraband in their vaginas. I was horrified. I told them I had no such experience.550

549 Meer, 21. 550 Meer, 32.

120 Meer recalled the resentment Noel felt when she remarked about Meer receiving better treatment because of her class.551 Meer partially agreed and added that her age may have been another factor. Meer was served ‘European’ food after the lieutenant had informed her that they don’t have an Asiatic menu. Her special cuisine was mostly inedible, and Meer wonder how much worse the ‘Native’ food was. At times, she asked the wardress to send some of her ‘treats’ to Noel who was a few cells away.552

Racial tensions existed not only between black and white prisoners, but black and white wardresses too. In one of Meer’s paintings entitled ‘prison walls’, she shows an apparent unity among black prisoners and the wardresses. The black prisoner and wardress appear to be playing a game together even when prison rules prevented this. This creates the notion that the wardresses shared in the pain and suffering of the prisoners, however, black wardresses were often tasked with the control and punishment of black prisoners.553 Meer’s painting represented the few wardresses who empathised with and silently supported black prisoners and it highlights the racial hierarchy between all women in the prison. That Meer could paint and use her notepad and pen in her cell shows that certain privileges were given to her as a middle-class Indian woman over working class black women.554 Winnie Mandela and Sally Motlana are examples of black women who could resist abuse from wardresses because of their class and political influence.

After five days of Meer’s detention, she, Noel and Mandela were joyfully re-united when all three of them had a visit from their new legal representatives. She recalled seeing her friends again after having been kept from each other by the wardresses; “I see Jeanie. We run into each other’s arms and embrace. We hold hands and walk together like two young children…Winnie is with them. She lifts me up and sweeps me into her arms.”555 Their visitors were Ismail Mohamed, a distinguished advocate and close friend to Meer, Ismail Ayob, an attorney and his junior Clifford Mailer. Her daughter Shamim visited her a day later, and her husband a day after that. Albeit the isolation and longing to see her loved ones had subsided, Meer was served with a banning order restricting her to the prison until 31 December shortly after this.

BCM activists who had gathered around Steve Biko in King Williams Town, Eastern Cape, were not spared from the wave of arrests in 1976. Shortly after she attended Mohapi’s post-mortem, Mamphela

551 Meer, 32. 552 Meer, 39. 553 Bonnes and Jacobs, “Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill,” 163. 554 Meer, Prison Diary: One Hundred and Thirteen Days. 1976, 33. 555 Meer, 43.

121 Ramphele was arrested on the 6th August 1976 as they prepared to leave for Mohapi’s funeral which was held in Sterkspruit, Aliwal North district. The fact that she could not attend Mohapi’s funeral angered her, “I remember the fury as I heard the convoy of buses drive past on their way to Sterkspruit,” she wrote.556 Ramphele was detained in a newly built prison in King Williamstown and was the first to occupy the women’s section. She and male activist Malusi Mpumlwna were among the first to be detained under section ten of the Terrorism Act. More detainees joined over a few weeks and they were all moved to a communal cell. She recalled the wardresses vividly, some who expressed disdain towards them, and others who seemed sympathetic. They were granted basic needs, albeit not of the highest standards. They could also bargain for certain privileges, such as weekly visits which at times could begin with a hug as they were shown to the glass cubicles. The conditions in the prison were significantly improved with the help of the International Red Cross by the time she was released in December 1976. Thenjiwe Mtintso had joined them a week before- traumatized physically and emotionally as Ramphele observed.557

7.1.5. Gendered torture in Apartheid prisons

Mtintso- who gave evidence in the inquest to Mohapi’s death- argued that women received the worst form of torture by the police because of the intersection of patriarchy and Apartheid. For women, she added, “lurking behind every encounter with the security, there was a real possibility of rape or sexual abuse, which in many instances was translated, it materialised.”558 She further stated:

Women have been made to sit in those imaginary chairs. Women have been made to stand the whole day, whether menstruating or not. As your blood flows down your legs, security police have gained strength from looking at your blood and asking you to drink your own blood. Men have suffered their torture, the physical one, but to stand in front of men for days on end with menstruation drying up on your legs, is not torture that has been experienced by men.559

Thus, women were not only subjected to the same torture as male prisoners- in the form of beatings, but also faced a gendered form of torture- through the exposure of their menstrual blood. What was meant to be private and personal was used to control the female body in the prison. Mtintso was speaking in a women’s hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) held on 28 and 29 July 1997 dedicated to the stories of women with first-hand experience of the torture and abuse.

556 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 112. 557 Ramphele, 116. 558 Thenjiwe Mtintso, “Women’s Hearings,” Pub. L. No. JB04279/01 GTSOW, § Truth and Reconciliation Commission Human Rights Violations (1997). 559 Mtintso.

122 Mtintso delivered the opening address as the chairperson of the Commission on Gender Equality. Testimonies were delivered in a performative way during the hearings; using religious symbolism meant to evoke a feeling of healing. The few women who gained enough courage to tell their stories in the hearing did so mainly to restore their dignity by disassociating themselves from the act of being raped.560 Mtintso stated in her speech however, that she was not ready to give testimony of her own experience of the torture because it is what has defined her as a strong woman. The secrecy and silence displayed by Mtintso and other women victims was a discursive signal of a strength that she needed to protect.561

Six weeks after her release from the Women’s prison, Matshoba was arrested under Section Six. She spent a year in solitary confinement in a women’s prison in Pietermaritzburg. She was subjected to torture by the security police who wanted to know her involvement in SASO activities, she recalled one of the interrogation sessions as follows:

They came one Saturday afternoon, two of them, drunk… [they] took me away, left my clothes there and that is when the interrogation began… They hand- cuffed me and manacled my ankle on a big iron ball…They made me stand the whole night… The third night I started becoming delirious and my legs were swelling. By Tuesday I was counting nights this man started beating me up. He held a towel, strangled me with a towel and started bashing my head against the wall. 562

Matshoba further recalled that she had just started menstruating when she eventually passed out. When she woke up she found a packet of wet sanitary pads thrown on the floor. She was then taken to a dilapidated police station to recuperate and receive some medical treatment for her asthma and was returned to the prison after three months. A process which was meant to be kept private and personal became a potent avenue of humiliation by the police.

Matshoba remained isolated from the rest of the prisoners throughout her detention. The female wardresses ensured that she stayed in her cell though all the day’s meals. After she had resorted to physically assaulting one of the wardresses, the prison surprisingly did not lay criminal charges against her but began to provide whatever she requested. The police allowed her to write a letter to her family to request for a bible. They also gave her access to some of the prison facilities and took

560 Annalisa Oboe, “The TRC Women’s Hearings as Performance and Protest in the New South Africa,” Research in African Literatures 38, no. 3 (2007): 66. 561 Oboe, 68. 562 Matshoba, Women’s Hearing, 3.

123 her to Bethel prison where she received improved treatment. Matshoba was cautious of this sudden change in the treatment she received from the police. In the political sessions she attended before her arrest she said, leaders such as Harry Gwala and Zeph Motupie had warned them of security police start becoming friendly- as this was the time, they prepared to torture their prisoners the most. The security police wanted to turn Matshoba into a state witness. After she declined the request, she was sent back to solitary confinement in Middleburg prison and taken back to Johannesburg fort under Section ten of the Act six months later.563 She found comfort and courage in being with other political women prisoners such as Joyce Seroke and Ellen Kuzwayo, albeit being released earlier than her. They sent her cosmetics to restore her damaged skin and hair. Matshoba’s conditions improved when her detention moved from section 6 to 10, which gave her contact to the outside world. In a letter she thanked Kuzwayo for her support and reported on how she was coping. She wrote:

Its good to read papers again and be able to catch up with many issues. Among others, I have since learnt I’m now a Plural. I’ve had to catch up fashion-wise too, so don’t you worry, I’ve got a pair of tight-fitting pants too. They call it Potsotso I hear. I hear everything has gone so crazy: they wear flared dresses/skirts with petticoats longer than dresses, pencil heels with ankle socks, onderbaaitjies (waistcoats) on top of jackets. Everything seems so reversed.564

Thus, the friendships formed by these women in prison and before, became an important source of strength and coping mechanism. This highlights the care for their physical well-being and sense of femininity they maintained through the harsh conditions which were created to defy their dignity. They remained loyal to the liberation movement even as she was severely tortured and humiliated at the hands of the security police. They were on the receiving end of the final, most brutal strategy- after repressive laws- used by the state to breakdown the liberation movement. Many of activists found solace in the hope that freedom would eventually be attained, as Matshoba stated, “I always tried to draw a lot of courage and tell myself I am in the struggle and we are in the struggle, because we are assured of victory…”565 Solitary confinement gave them spiritual strength and tenacity to continue fighting for the liberation of black people.566 Matshoba recalled how even in solitary confinement, she knew that other activists such as Mtintso were facing the same treatment, and this gave her more strength. Both Mtintso and Mashoba were ardent women leaders in the BCM who shared a political experience with male BC leaders such as Steve Biko and endured gendered torture

563 Matshoba, 5. 564 Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman, 4. 565 Matshoba, Women’s Hearing, 4. 566 Mechthild Nagel, “‘I Write What I like’: African Prison Intellectuals and the Struggle for Freedom,” The Journal of Pan African Studies 2, no. 3 (March 2008): 72.

124 as women in the prisons. The common penal experiences are an indication that they were effective in their leadership role in the movement. This distinguished them from those women who acted as supporters of husbands and sons who were imprisoned due to political activities.

7.1.6. Banishment

Apart from detention and torture, the Apartheid state used banishment, deportation, endorsement and removal from familiar areas to punish political activists. This was an extreme isolation of the individual from their family, friends and political resources without having to go through any judicial process. The Riotous Act Amendment of 1930 empowered the minister to order the removal of a certain individual from a certain district to another within seven days if they occupied land illegally.567 Furthermore, the removal of political offenders could be ordered under the Natives Administration Amendment Act of 1956 and applications for interdicts to the court could be stopped by the minster through the Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act of 1956.568 Under the Terrorism Act and Internal Security Act (1982) a person suspected to be threatening the security of the state could be restricting to an unknown district for a period of time and be arrested if they left that area.569

Ramphele’s banishment order restricted her to the Naphuno district of Tzaneen, Transvaal. She was driven there without being allowed to gather her belongings or say goodbye to anyone. She was ill- treated and hidden by the security police as they travelled to her place of banishment. She was taken to Meetse-a-Bophelo (meaning water of life) hospital- where a small nurses’ flat was to be her new home. Sister Thubakgale, whom Mamphele knew from Bethesda Normal College became her first contact and lent her some toiletries and a clean dress.570 Ramphele sought assistance from the Sacred Heart Mission in Ofcolaco where she found two African nuns- sisters Mary-Theresa and Emily, and Father Mooney. She immediately called Steve Biko to inform him of where she was and of the errors in her banning orders which Biko promised to resolve. Meanwhile, she was to stay in this unfamiliar area, she described how she felt about her new prospects:

There is something frightening about being in ‘non-space’- unknown and amongst people with whom one has no real contact. I experienced the frightening emptiness of it all during the two days whilst being transported to my place of banishment.571

567 Saleem Badat, The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012), 25. 568 Badat, 31. 569 Badat, 194. 570 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 121. 571 Ramphele, 123.

125 She soon got relief when Mtintso, who was at the time restricted to Johannesburg came to visit her. She travelled with Baba Jordan to bring her a car, so she could have mobility again. Raymond Tucker- who was an attorney- arrived the next day to resolve her unlawful banning. Ramphele was to learn that this was in fact a banishment order, aimed at keeping the restricted person in a foreign area. Tucker told her that this measure was usually used against homeland chiefs who refused to co-operate with the government and police. Her flawed documentation and the haste at which she was taken from her home was however enough for her to return to King Williams Town. She immediately contacted Father Stubbs of the Community of the Resurrection Priory to assist her in her return home. She disguised herself until she got out Tzaneen and made her way to him, “Fr Stubbs stopped being just another priest to me; he became a human being, a friend and counsellor” she wrote.572 The police read about Ramphele’s return in the Daily Dispatch after four days of her arrival in King Williams Town. Captain Schoeman told her that the errors in her documents would soon be rectified and she would be taken back to her banishment area. This was not before she and Biko conceived their first son, Hlumelo. She was to spend the next eight years in the area, in a house in Lenyenye Township. Her phone calls with Steve Biko every three days helped her settle into her new community with ease.573

Winnie Mandela was banished to Brandfort, Free State in 16 May 1977. She was taken by a brigade of army and Security Branch men. She had been used to being arrested by then and always kept a suitcase of clothing and toiletries ready. She was initially taken to Protea Police station where the police began interrogating her. Her experience with detention made this a futile exercise for the police. She realised that she was in for something more than an arrest when the police brought her daughter, Zindzi into her cell along with her house keys. Her interrogators informed her of her banishment at that point. The police took them into an army truck which was filled with their belongings and drove them to the Free State. They were taken to their ‘new’ house, which was too small for their furniture to fit and filled with heaps of soil and rubbish. They were left there with some of their belongings on the floor, the furniture was stored in a police station nearby. Without having washed or eaten any food, Winnie Mandela and her daughter cuddled up on a cold night and attempted to fall asleep. Mandela was especially worried about her sixteen-year-old daughter who must have been traumatised, “it was the hardest thing for me to take as a mother…That shattering experience inflicted a wound that will never heal,” she said.574

572 Ramphele, 127. 573 Ramphele, 132. 574 Benjamin, Winnie Mandela: Part of My Soul Went with Him, 25.

126 The community members of Brandfort had been forewarned by the police not to associate with Winnie Mandela. They were told of the communist who will be coming and that if they tried to go to her house they would be arrested. This had the opposite effect however as people soon learnt why they were there; “little children started spontaneously giving the Black Power sign” she recalled, they would bring food parcels and visit in the night to express their solidarity.575 They knew of her husband, Nelson Mandela and his imprisonment. One of the residents in Brandfort recalled how her presence made them more politically aware and active. The community also saw her initiating a feeding scheme programme and opening a clinic and creche in her yard.576

Ramphele’s and Winnie Mandela’s banishments did not serve the purpose of silencing political activism. Instead, it sparked a new wave of activism and political awareness in the communities they moved to. Mandela’s banishment sparked protests in Durban where movement leaders openly spoke out against this treatment.577 The people in their new communities also risked being arrested because of their association with the women. Self-help schemes and community projects which Ramphele started were exactly the kind of activism she had been engaged in back in King Williams Town. Winnie Mandela also came to apply this activism in her new community while still inspiring protests in the urban areas.

The torture and hardships were a symbol of their tenacity in upholding the political ideals of black people against Apartheid. Winnie Mandela made the point that her detention, like that of her husbands, was not enough to kill the political ideals of the people. By the time she was banished, she had stopped existing as an individual she said, because she had embodied the ideals and goals of the black people. According to her, the banishment was not about her as an individual, but about what she stood for, “I couldn’t think of a greater honour,” she said.578 In prison, Meer wrote, other black prisoners were proud of political detainees as their presence confirmed their role in the struggle for democracy. In retrospect Meer wrote, that even if they missed their families and were physically abused in detention, they knew that it was a necessary phase, “an experience which was not just personal, it was historical, part of the people’s memory.”579 The other significant historical moment was that the BWF was the only women’s organisation to be banned in South Africa. The banning

575 Benjamin, 26. 576 Rea Khoabane, “Exiled in Dust: Madikizela-Mandela Left Her Mark on Brandfort,” Sunday Times, April 8, 2018, www.timeslive.co.za/amp/sunday-times/news/2018-04-07. 577 Badat, The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid, 198. 578 Benjamin, Winnie Mandela: Part of My Soul Went with Him, 26. 579 Meer, Prison Diary: One Hundred and Thirteen Days. 1976, 210.

127 came in October 1977 albeit no attempts were made by the women to revive the organisation as many had been banned.580

7.2. Martyrs and Widows in the Black Consciousness Movement

Maphiri Masekela was taken by the Apartheid Security police on the 27th January 1975 at the age of 23 during the SASO/BPC arrests. She had led a group of 700 women who petitioned the release of pro-FRELIMO detainees in November 1974. She was arrested along with Vesta Smith, Joyce Seroke and Ellen Kuzwayo. Masekela was beaten over three days while in police custody. She was at this time pregnant and miscarried, her eyes were permanently damaged as well.581 Masekela fled to Botswana following her release and was too upset to respond to the reporters who tried to engage her.582 From Botswana, she lived in Tanzania as a refugee and then went to Boston University in 1985 on a scholarship. She battled to get political asylum in the States since, only getting her permanent resident status in June 1993. Masekela was the board member at Cambridge and Sommerville Legal Services.583

Masekela died in October 1993 of tuberculosis and pneumonia. Her sister Mokgadi, who had not seen her for 17 years described her as stronger than any among them, “This is how I will remember her: as a hero, as an unsung hero.” Her friends described her as a private person, reluctant to speak about herself in interviews, a characteristic she clearly developed in her new country- she had taken up carving as a hobby, “I am trying to heal my soul” as she told a neighbour. The Boston Globe recognised her as a leader of the BCM and her significant work with domestic workers was acknowledged in the memorial service held for her in Cambridge. Her ashes were returned home with her family.584

Some BCM women who lost their spouses due to imprisonment or death in the liberation movement also lost the private capacity to mourn their spouses and had to embody the grief of the ‘political family.’ According to Ramphele, a political widow must prove worthy of embodying the nobility of the ‘fallen hero’. This creates limitations as what is considered profane according to society has generally been associated with the women’s body. The widow finds herself having to go through

580 Meer, 211. 581 Phillip Bennett, “A Woman of Strength Succumbs Antiapartheid Activist Battled S.Africa’s Ills,” The Boston Globe, October 14, 1993, www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8249380.html. 582 “Maphiri in Botswana,” Rand Daily Mail, February 10, 1975, AC623 South African Council of Churches, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Collection, University of Witwatersrand. 583 Bennett, “A Woman of Strength Succumbs Antiapartheid Activist Battled S.Africa’s Ills.” 584 Bennett.

128 ‘cleansing’ rituals during and after the period of mourning, specific type of clothing signals her impurity during this time. This renders the female body incapable of embodying nobility, heroism and public office.585

The death of Steve Biko was both unexpected and devastating to Ramphele and other BCM activists. He was arrested on 18 August and reported dead on 14 September 1977. The Minister of Justice, Mr James Kruger, released a statement claiming that Biko died from a hunger strike while in detention. The statement left many questions unanswered in the movement circles, as Biko was known for defending himself from the intimidation of the security police and had told them that he wouldn’t commit suicide in detention. Ramphele had started a clinic in her new district with the help of the BCP’s under Ben Khoapa. In what she believed was a telepathic occurrence, she began experiencing discomfort around her lower abdomen a in the same month Biko was arrested. The doctor ordered her bed-rest to ensure that she carries her baby full-term. This is when she found out about Biko’s detention. When her pains worsened to the point of a possible abortion, Biko had begun going through the interrogation which led to his death. Thenjiwe Mtintso called her while in recovery to break the news about Biko’s death. She recalled the moment when she heard:

Steve is dead. It was as if some-one had put a high voltage current through me. A searing fire burned inside me. ‘No, it can’t be true’ was all I remember saying. I went through a state of profound emotional shock. ‘it can’t be true’ was my refrain. I fell in and out of a state of nightmarish sleep and wished that I could die.586

Many other activists who were mourning Biko’s death were unable to attend the funeral due to government restrictions. Several roadblocks were conducted by the police to stop buses coming from other cities for searches and permits. Deborah Matshoba was detained at the Johannesburg fort with Winnie Mandela and Oshadi Mangena- who were also BCM activists. She was able to fake physical pain from her intrauterine device (IUD) to get to her friend Zola Jongwe in Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg. The doctor confirmed that she did have an IUD and she was taken to the hospital to have it removed. When her friend came to see her, she broke the news of Biko’s death. “I was very angry. I was very bitter. Because he was my leader.” She further described how she had intended to report to Biko all the torture she faced in detention- and how she overcame it- something they looked

585 Mamphela Ramphele, “Political Widowhood in South Africa: The Embodiment of Ambiguity,” Daedalus 125, no. 1, Social Suffering (1996): 103. 586 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 135.

129 up to Biko for.587 Thus, BCM women were eager to prove to Biko that they could withstand the physical pain they were made to endure by the security police, much like their male peers.

Nonetheless, the funeral was used as a site of protest by the anti-apartheid activists. Biko became another martyr of the struggle against the oppressive regime. Posters showing Biko breaking free from the chains of oppression where the highlight of the funeral. The speakers used the opportunity to encourage further protests and warn the government of a stronger resistance to come.588 Mtintso, who was detained again shortly after Biko’s funeral described how even when she had been ‘broken down’ by his death, Biko’s leadership became her source of strength; “I saw him as a messiah, our liberator,” she said. She knew she had to continue in the struggle and come up with better strategies to use against the Apartheid government.589 This was perhaps the reason why she joined the ANC’s armed struggle two years later.

Ramphele’s mourning of Biko was painfully private as she could not attend Biko’s funeral due to her illness and could not be his official widow. She was further offended by portrayal of Biko as a monogamous Christian man who remained faithful to his wife even as he was in an extramarital relationship with her and had promised to end his marriage. Biko’s family called on his wife to partake in the traditional mourning rituals, something which, according to Ramphele, brought Ntsiki Biko and the family into conflict. The family and liberation movement took control of the funeral’s arrangements; they determined the location, speakers, at times even the dressing of the coffin. The widow has to, almost in a theatrical manner, keep her emotions at bay through the proceedings and find space privately to completely grieve her spouse.590

Ramphele was labelled a “political widow who could never be” in the media, a bearer of Biko’s son. In the patriarchal society in which she existed, Ramphele argued, this was necessary to maintain Biko’s honour. 591 Ramphele’s grief had more to do with the life she and Biko were planning to have. According to Ramphele, Biko and his wife had already separated a few weeks earlier. The dream of finally formalising her relationship with Biko was shattered by the security police. The moment she realised the finality of his death was when she saw the pictures of the funeral in the newspapers.592 The birth of her son after a long and painful pregnancy and labour was a beacon of hope to Ramphele.

587 Matshoba, Interview with Deborah Matshoba, 282. 588 Bernstein, No.46- Steve Biko, 25. 589 June Goodwin, ed., Cry Amandla! South African Women and the Question of Power (New York: Africana Publishing Co, 1984), 16. 590 Ramphele, “Political Widowhood in South Africa: The Embodiment of Ambiguity,” 108. 591 Ramphele, 112. 592 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 135.

130 The name Hlumelo- meaning ‘the shoot that grew from a dead tree trunk- was given by fellow activist and friend Malusi Mpumlwana. Her son, and the realisation that many others had lost their loved ones to the struggle consoled her. She focused her attention to helping her poor community with various projects.593 For Ramphele, “political widows are the ultimate embodiment of this honorary male status” which BC women had been given.594

Ramphele also had reservations regarding the representation of herself and Biko in the film Cry Freedom, released in 1987. The film was about Steve Biko’s life and death through the eyes of Donald Woods of the Daily Dispatch newspaper. The film – starring Denzel Washington- received international attention albeit censored by the Apartheid government. The film adapted the story Donal Woods narrated in his memoirs Biko and Asking for Trouble, thus it was based on a white man’s perspective.595 As Ramphele wrote, Woods had not known Biko long enough to understand Biko. Ramphele further wrote that she was also falsely portrayed in the film as a ‘peripheral role’ and Biko as “a Ghandi-type person respectably married to a dedicated wife who shared his political commitment.”596 The film received criticism from American reviewers for its portrayal of Biko as a supportive figure in the story of a white journalist living in Apartheid South Africa.597 Ramphele tried to stop the release of the movie in Zimbabwe but was met with an eager ANC leadership who wanted the movie published to advance their anti-apartheid agenda.598

Mtintso suffered the same fate as Ramphele because of her relationship with her lover, Skenjana Isaac Roji. The choice to co-habit with him led to her being isolated by his family and the ANC- leadership during his funeral. The decision not to marry was considered a taboo by African and Christian moral standards. In a pamphlet issued by the ANC-SACP-COSATU, Mtintso was not mentioned among those survived by Roji. The life Mtintso lived with her spouse was silenced in the family and liberation movement circles. Like Ramphele, Mtintso was determined to challenge this notion when she delivered an address in his memorial service. She told the audience of the life she lived with Roji and defended the decision they, and other couples, made to co-habit. She spoke of how society had rendered such arrangements unrespectable and how couples have the right not to marry. Mtintso’s speech had a significant impact in the feminist circles, the women present were particularly

593 Ramphele, 138. 594 Mamphela Ramphele, The little bit of madness: Mamphela Ramphele on being black and transgressive, interview by Pumla Dineo Gqola and Kimberly Yates, 1998, 91, www.jstor.org/stable/4066182 . 595 Marian Eide, “Stephen Biko and the Torture Aesthetic,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 38, no. 1 (2014): 21. 596 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 136. 597 Eide, “Stephen Biko and the Torture Aesthetic,” 23. 598 Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader, 136.

131 empowered by the moment. Articles were written in various feminist newspapers praising her bravery. One journalist wrote:

As a soldier she turned that hall into a battlefield. As a political educator she educated us. We listened. Shocked at first and tense for her…We cried and empathised with her.599

Mtintso and Ramphele provide examples of how gender expectations within the anti-Apartheid movement have placed limits on women’s commemoration. They have greatly undermined the intimate and affective roles that they played in the lives of men in the struggle because these did not adhere to traditional gender roles. Similarly, Masekela’s significant role in the BCM was not commemorated in her death whereas many other male activists became martyrs of the struggle. BCM women were tortured in the same way as male activists, moreover, their female ‘bodies’ subjected them to worse forms of abuse. Their ‘bodies’ were exploited by male authority figures who went beyond the ‘punishment’ of political activists into humiliating women for participating in a male sphere. BCM women were also not recognised as legitimate widows because they challenged traditional gender norms and patriarchy in their personal relationships.

599 “Tribute to Thenjiwe Mthintso,” The African Communist, no. Fourth Quarter (1993): 44–47.

132 Chapter 8. Conclusion

The Black Consciousness Movement aimed at psychologically liberating black people from their feelings of inferiority during Apartheid. It was concerned with the creation of a new black identity and culture in which black dignity would be restored. Women became formal members of the organisation in its inception. They played important roles in the formulation of BC ideas as seen in the work of Maphiri Masekela at the WFC, in the embodiment of BC philosophy with black women wearing their natural hair and rejecting skin-lighteners, and in the implementation of self-reliance schemes in the Black Community Programmes.

Black women were not supporters of this male dominated liberation movement, but they embraced the BC ideology to crystalize their political outlook. Masekela used her platform to mobilise fellow black employees to challenge white superiority in the workplace. It was here that she grew to reject white liberalism and call for exclusive black liberation organisations as SASO had rejected liberalism in NUSAS and the UCM. The intimate relationship between the BCM and these progressive movements is further revealed in her experiences. She also sought to promote black women’s liberation in her work with black domestic workers.

Mamphela Ramphele, Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Deborah Matshoba- who were still students- may have not been as exposed to the Women’s liberation Movement as was Masekela. However, because SASO formation was mainly inspired by the UCM, BCM activists could have paid more attention to the growing concern for women’s liberation. Mtintso’s experience certainly proves that class difference among SASO activists contributed to its ineffectiveness, as was the case with women’s subordination.

Mkhabela’s role in mobilising students during the 1976 students uprising shows the influence of the BC philosophy on the SASM. The FRELIMO victory, which had a personal impact on Mkhabela’s political experience, was celebrated by SASO activists and was seen an example of what could be achieved through black solidarity. Furthermore, the role played by Winnie Mandela saw the ANC and BCM collaborating against Apartheid, albeit having different ideologies. Mandela also influenced the BCM as an executive member of the BWF which was founded by Fatima Meer. Both Mandela and Meer used their immense political experience to mobilise black women in the struggle for gender and racial liberation. The role of Mamphela Ramphele in the BCP’s cannot be over emphasised. She led a project which saw the practical application of BC ideals as a professional doctor and political activist. Furthermore, the BCP’s empowered black women in poverty-stricken communities.

133 The Apartheid authorities did not see gender when it came to the arrest and punishment of BCM activists. Nonetheless, women endured gendered forms of torture from the security police. Black women mobilised against the gendered torture in the prisons to protect their dignity and femininity. Ramphele and Mandela were part of the very few anti-Apartheid activists to be banished because of the threat they posed to the state. BC women were not commemorated as widows and martyrs in the liberation movement because it still held on to patriarchal norms. However, these women significantly challenged gendered discrimination within the movement, not to become ‘honorary men’, but to demonstrate that women were capable of leading in a traditionally ‘male’ public sphere.

134 References

Archives

Historical Papers Collection, William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand

AD1126 University Christian Movement

A2675 Karis-Gerhart Collection of South African political materials, 1964-1990

A1985 Helen Joseph Papers

AC623 South African Council of Churches

AD2198 South African Students Organisation 1969-1973

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AG2887 Publications, New Age, 1954-1962

A2355 Clive Nettleton

AG3298 LEGAL RESOURCES CENTRE Oral History Project

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