Sacrifices of a different kind
Government has let us down, it’s time to transform without violence
THE FIRST time I came across visuals of June 16, 1976 was when I was reading a True Love magazine of my sister’s. I don’t remember what year it was or who was on the cover, but I remember it was about five or six pages of images of youth; covered in blood, faces frozen with terror, running from the police.
I was too young to be reading True Love magazine then because some of the content was indelicate for a 7-yearold. My sister, 10 years my senior, always managed to sneak True Love in to the trolley when we did grocery shopping with my mom; other times she would buy it using her own money. I remember being grief-stricken at the images. I read that story over and over, in disbelief.
Last week I was sitting on Thabiso Bhengu’s couch, bonding over some wine, as he was helping me run lines for something. At some point we took a break and started reflecting on our #FeesMustFall journey. We spent a lot of time online creating a narrative for the movement, and there was a point where some of us were accused of treason. It all seems distant and laughable now but it was the most terrifying time of my life.
“You know, Thabiso. I thought people were going to die. If not that, I thought some of us would disappear after the protests without a trace (cite countries where this has happened.) I had no confidence in the state at all because the level of intimidation was beyond anything I ever could have imagined.”
He agreed. It was crazy that nothing like that happened. The day the Wits plenary concluded that we would march to Luthuli House was a fraught one.
There were tensions in the Progressive Youth Alliance camp, who were struggling with their identity being embroiled in the ruling party and that standing up for student issues meant they had to denounce the ANC to some degree. Fault lines began to appear in the movement.
I had joined protests and marches on campus, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the day when we walked down Jan Smuts Avenue and were met by a battalion of police dressed in riot gear and holding guns. This was a watershed moment for youth politics in post-apartheid South Africa. I had never experienced or seen, in real life, police in riot gear holding rifles before me. It was unclear to me whether the guns were real or not.
“Are those real guns?” I asked. It wasn’t only my life I was fearful for. It was also everyone else’s. The things about protest movements is that your collective rage, and discontent, creates a covenant with the next person.
We are all one body now, “injure one, injure all”. These were my comrades, even if they wore a T-shirt belonging to a political party I didn’t agree with. We came here together, and I feel partially responsible for what happens to them as much as for what happens to me.
“Are those real guns?” someone else asked, echoing what most of us were thinking. The possibility of death didn’t frighten us, but it did make things very fraught. You could cut the tension with a knife. It was a hot day, and #FeesMustFall was reverberating across the country. It was riveting. Everyone was watching. “Dude, what the hell, check those guns out… ” someone said, pointing.
There was a slight commotion, people unsure of whether we should charge on or turn back. We couldn’t cross Mandela Bridge to make it to Luthuli House because there were guns in our way.
If I go back to my high school years, I conclude that I was pro-establishment and probably worshipped authority. That was my way of life. That was the way of life. I had relaxed my Afro unquestioningly and, as a prefect, I sent people who had come to school with theirs out.
I was protesting from a place of anger not only at the establishment, but also my former self. I had been co-opted by the oppressive anti-black systems without my knowing and this was a chance for me to redeem myself, to absolutely, and unequivocally declare that I would no longer participate in systematic racism and oppression – in this instance, the exclusion of (black) students from an opportunity to potential radically transfor m their socio-economic conditions through obtaining an education.
This was an experiment. I had
A watershed moment for youth politics
only ever seen this type of thing as news coverage and in the Marikana documentary Miners Shot Down which I had seen during a campus screening that included a Q&A session. The leaders of #FeesMustFall of the time gathered themselves, in the front, and shot out commands for everyone to be calm and disciplined.
We were all angry – let down and disappointed by the government –and it was that shared rage that made us courageous in the face of the unknown. It was tense. But we didn’t care.
Mandela Bridge shook under the weight of Hector Pieterson, who has since become a symbol of youth resistance since his death. He was only 13 when he joined the student uprising in 1976. These were children, not even of voting age, none of them signing up to be heroes.
Just little children, tired of seeing their parents humiliated by the violence of the state and knowing that if they did nothing about it, that too would be their fate.
These were children who had to reintegrate into a society that remained violent and unchanged, just days after they had buried their peers. Those who remained behind must have turned to drugs, to alcohol, tentative to each other for a few days, hugs abridged, certain things lurking and unsaid.
You had to continue going to class, writing exams, sleeping in the same home and community, after that moment of rupture that had caused unspeakable devastation in the lives of everyone around you. Surely, friendships were broken. Relationships were tor n apart because these teenagers have lost parts of themselves, mutilated apart by grief and loss.
Trying to be there for each other, but not knowing how? Outbursts in the family because parents are unable to deal with the brokenness of the child and someone can’t stop themselves from saying “I told you. We told you so. It’s too dangerous.” Of course it was dangerous, and everyone knew, but everyone hoped that it would be – the optimism of the youth.
I won’t try in any way to compare #FeesMustFall protests to what the youth of 1976 had to endure. There is no comparison. But in many ways, we too were broken, and devastated, by the response of a government I once believed in as a child.
I was shocked at the brazen violence and securitisation exercised by the state on its people. And although violence is often quantified by the number of lives lost, there are many ways to kill a man.
I hope we can stop expecting the youth to sacrifice themselves in order to change the societies that they live in. It’s too much of a weight to bear.
We all know the work that needs to be done to transform our country, and we need leaders who will commit themselves to doing this work, with integrity and honesty with all stakeholders in society.