Share of trauma that would last a lifetime
None of them could even answer because they were so badly wounded The Soweto uprising stirred something deeper in us. We talked a lot more
Four decades on, retired Lenasia neurosurgeon PROFESSOR RASIK GOPAL reflects on apartheid’s young victims who deluged Baragwanath Hospital on that day and his enduring regret that not all could be saved
IT happened 40 years ago, but that morning still springs crisp in my mind. I was a young doctor then — a 27-year-old neurosurgeon starting out at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
I’d just completed my studies at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland two years before. It was a world away from apartheid South Africa, where the quota system had forced me to study overseas because there was no place for another Indian South African in a medical institution at home.
In all my time in Ireland, I had never seen anyone die from trauma. But June 16 1976, here at home, would serve up a share of it that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
That morning offered no hint of the mayhem to follow. I arrived at the hospital early and made my ward rounds as usual.
But at about 10am, I began to realise something was amiss. The blaring of speeding ambulances was the first sign.
Within minutes, uniformed policemen, white and black, began streaming in with bloodied children. Many were limp, their small bodies racked with serious injuries — gunshot wounds to the head, blunt force trauma from batons.
The news spread quickly that there was trouble in the township — children were being shot indiscriminately in the streets by the police.
The hospital had a fairly high wall but outside the theatre there was a roof you could climb onto. From there, I saw the children marching, fearless, in their numbers and the armed police blocking their way, trying to drive them back down the street now lined with Casspirs.
The police looked as though they’d been caught by surprise. But why should they have been? They’d been trained to tackle protests of a much more violent nature. Here, their antagonists were schoolchildren armed only with their banners, slogans and a few stones.
Pandemonium had broken out inside the hospital — crying, screaming, the slamming of feet and grating of gurneys against the floors. In an emergency like this, everything else fell away so we could concentrate on saving as many lives as possible. We did all we could do for them but we knew some of it would amount to nothing — the injuries to their young bodies were too devastating.
We didn’t even know who these children were. We had no way of identifying them. They’d come in straight off the street. This was not the time to ask questions and in any case, none of them could even answer because they were so badly wounded.
But the nurses’ reaction told us so much more. Not only were their neighbours among these youths. Some of these children were their very own.
There was a surge in hostility and anger towards the police. Like the other black doctors and nurses, I refused to fully co-operate with the authorities because I knew why they’d brought these children to Bara. They were looking for information on their identities and injuries with a view to pressing charges against them. I couldn’t be a part of that.
But we all kept strict medical records of our young patients’ injuries in case they needed those to sue the police in the future. We gave no indication that they’d participated in the protest and been assaulted.
The police seemed oblivious, neither scared nor traumatised by the realisation of what they’d done. Any protest was against the law and was dealt with accordingly.
By the end of that day, about 150 children had passed through our doors. And sadly, about 10 or 15 had succumbed to their injuries. Children like Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu had to have been among them, but we had no idea at that time, with the sheer volume of broken bodies splayed in those beds.
We didn’t turn a single one away but some left tragically, under the veil of a white sheet, quietly wheeled down to the morgue. Their remains were kept here only for a short time, then moved to government mortuaries because these were unnatural deaths and postmortems were not conducted at the hospital.
In the days that followed, we helped the community to find their children and identify them, while we comforted the grieving nurses around us.
That day changed the atmosphere in our hospital. The nurses were furious with the white doctors. There were clear divisions between black and white staff. The nurses showed great sympathy and caring towards the survivors, seeing them as heroes.
As black doctors, we’d been politically active prior to this, but the Soweto uprising stirred something deeper in us. As we sat in our cramped tea room, away from the white doctors’ larger recreation room, our political activism sharpened. We talked a lot more, shared ideas and information and became far more organised. Our children had shown us that something more demonstrative needed to be done to defeat apartheid.
I’m now 67 years old and I recently retired from Bara. But I often think of that day — of how huge it was. No one had ever taken on the police on that scale until that moment. It left me with feelings of triumph, anger and sadness. I admired the children for challenging that unjust regime.
But June 16 will always be a sad day for me, because no matter the political gains we made, children had to suffer and die for that cause.
My colleague, Dr Malcolm Klein, who was with me on that day, now lives in Florida. When we visit, our discussion eventually strays to the Soweto uprising. It’s upsetting to recall those bitter events, but it was a day that thrust us into the eye of history.
This place has never been the same again.