Struggle veteran on mission to set the record straight
On the eve of the 41st anniversary of the June 16, 1976 student uprisings, Loyiso Sidimba speaks to three veterans who witnessed the death and destruction
‘This is not what we fought for’
Role played in 1976:
Shinners, who spent more than two decades on Robben Island had been a “free man” for three years after completing his first 10-year prison term, which he began as a 17year-old.
He was a revenue clerk at the Federated Insurance Company in downtown Johannesburg.
When the June 16 uprisings started, Shinners had just bought his first VW Beetle. He went to Soweto to visit PAC stalwart Zeph Mothopeng at his Orlando home after receiving a frantic call from his sisterin-law, who was a clerk at Baragwanath Hospital.
“Approaching Soweto was a nightmare. Everywhere cars were burning, [there was] gunfire and heavily armed police.”
Shinners said a decision was taken after consultation with “Uncle Zeph”, as Mothopeng was known, to plead with the students to stop confronting police as rubbish-bin lids, bricks and stones were no match for apartheid police weapons.
Shinners later drove to Alexandra, where he went to the local clinic. “I have horrific memories of the clinic. It was terrible. You couldn’t tell who was injured or dead.”
The uprisings led to the rounding up of PAC leaders such as Mothopeng and Shinners, who were tried in the Bethal Trial. Shinners was sentenced to 12 years on Robben Island and started serving in 1979, while Mothopeng got 30 years.
Current role:
Shinners said he was focusing on telling the truth about the Struggle against apartheid and its history. For example, he said, the distorted the claim that former president Nelson Mandela was the longest-serving political prisoner on Robben Island, when in fact it was the late PAC stalwart Jafta Masemola.
He said many do not know that political prisoners who, like him, were jailed in 1963 built Mandela’s infamous cell before the Rivonia trialists arrived the following year.
On state of leadership in the country today:
Shinners said the current state of the country is sad and painful. Africans, he explained, were facing conditions of increasing poverty, while the white elite is much better off post-1994.
Shinners said South Africans were warned about the effects of corruption and that once it catches on it’s almost impossible to reverse. But he is optimistic that the people’s ingenuity will turn the tide and he is starting to see signs of this.
Shinners, now in his 70s, is also grateful for the assistance the Bethal trialists received from human rights lawyers such as late Griffiths Mxenge.
“I respected that man,” said Shinners of Mxenge.