‘There was remarkable urgency and everything was different’

ON June 16 I got up at home in Diepkloof Zone 6 to go to the house in Orlando West to meet people at Ma Setlogelo’s house. This house, on the side of a koppie separating Orlando West High School and Phuti Primary School, was a house of political activity and also football activity.

I picked up a teacher in Meadowlands who said “the students are marching” and I dropped him at Phuti Primary School.

When I got near to Orlando West High School there was a big fracas and it was mayhem. It was turning into a no-go zone with students pelting the vans and cars of companies with stones.

The students were stopping the cars of people in the community to get all of us into the streets to express solidarity. They told us that two kids had already been killed. We were all part of the crowd.

The students said they wanted to get the bottle stores, beer halls and municipal offices out of the community and they were attacking them.

Football is a big family and powerful network — every street has a football supporter — and the news of what was happening spread by word of mouth.

I went home late that night and the action went on into the night and the following day started again.

The church of Regina Mundi was a meeting point for spiritual support, political speeches and briefing students. The police would throw teargas to scatter the people.

Families would share what they had and I would go to Kliptown to get food and bread to share since the lorries could not come in. There was remarkable urgency in the students and in my mind everything was different.

Most members of the “Committee of 10”, together with Bishop Tutu, were working to get Soweto back to normality. The culture was still there of respecting elders . . .

Legau Mathabathe, the principal of Morris Isaacson High School, was forever being terrorised by the police and at one point, after he was arrested, he indicated to the boys, through the township network, that if they hold meetings they must be careful or they too will be arrested.

He was a very elegant dresser. His dress sense was unbelievable for a school teacher, what we would call today a fashionista. His immaculate dress sense was an embodiment of his value system.

Mathabathe taught us values like being punctual, wearing our school uniforms, finishing homework, attending morning classes, afternoon classes, participating in school sport and choir.

It was his desire to give students an anti-colonial education, for them to know the world’s complex problems and be educated and well read.

We had well focused teachers at Morris Isaacson who imbued confidence and taught us pride. They had something special about them.

We used to like to emulate how our teachers walked, how they wrote — we modelled ourselves on them. They created a consciousness in us to become leaders and to have pride.