A day of violence and fury -- and regrets
ITURNED 16 on June 15 1976. My girlfriend brought me a cake. We were in the dark, running away from the police. So my birthday cake was cut with members of the action committee. That was the only decent meal we had that week.
The marches were planned at a community centre right across the road from a police station in Orlando East.
The next day, June 16, the first group of marchers, led by Tsietsi Mashinini from Morris Isaacson High, arrived on Vilakazi Street.
As they were coming, the police were behind them. The police started throwing teargas canisters. The gods of Africa were with us. You know what happened? The fumes of the teargas were blowing back to them.
They were so affected that they then decided to release the dog.
The first violence of 1976 was us beating the dog to death. That agitated the police. It was the fumes that were catching them and it was their dog. After that was another miracle of God. Just as the police were busy trying to organise themselves, behind them came the second lot of students.
The police were caught in the middle. They had to force their way through this.
That’s when they started shooting live bullets. They shot their way out. That’s when Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu were hit.
In the chaos that ensued, more violence took place, including the death of Dr Edelstein at the hands of students.
The day was not meant to be violent in any way — it only became that when students started dying at the hands of police.
There are people we don’t honour around June 16, the women. The first people to disguise us that day when the police began looking for us, the first people to sacrifice their dresses, were women. They gave us their dresses.
The first people to bring us water as we were fighting the teargas were mothers. The people who shot us were fathers. But we never speak about that soft side of 1976. It brings tears to my eyes REVOLUTION: The first day of the Soweto uprising, June 16 1976. Smiling children begin their peaceful march unaware of what lay ahead. The pupils did not want to be photographed, but Peter Magubane told them: ‘A struggle without documentation is no struggle’ whenever that happens.
That evening of June 16 we started counting our misfortunes and all the things we did right and all the things we did wrong, and the biggest one was that we failed to think that the police would react in the extreme way that they did.
We were children, we still had that heart that says: “They will be coming there as parents, they won’t just open big fire to the 13-year-old.”
I was identified by police as one of the student leaders and went into hiding.
Then, on the morning of July 3, I was missing my family terribly. My mother, my father and my brother were so much in my heart and mind. I hadn’t seen them for a long time. I asked the guy who was keeping us in hiding: “Please take me home, just to go and see my parents.”
I walked my parents halfway to work and then I came back home. And I just decided to take a nap on the couch, because when you are in hiding you never sleep. It was about 8 o’clock in the morning when soldiers and police knocked on the door. Because of my small body, the cops didn’t think I was the person they were looking for.
They said to me: “Where’s Seth Mazibuko?” and I said: “Seth Mazibuko’s got a temp job in town.”
They went into the bedroom, where my little brother was, and asked him where I was. My poor little brother pointed at me. So I got arrested.
I went through one of the worst times of my life. I was arrested under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which kept me in solitary confinement for 18 months. I was tortured, interrogated in the middle of the night. A teenager. A 16-year-old. I was the youngest political prisoner at Robben Island. I hardly had a prison uniform size.
Why did I lead children of mothers and fathers out of the classroom to be killed by Boers? In front of my eyes is the picture of Hastings . . . is the picture of Hector Pieterson. It’s like I killed them.
It’s like I killed them. If I didn’t lead the struggle that took them out onto the street they would be husbands and wives, uncles . . . that’s where my pain is.
After his time on Robben Island, Mazibuko became a teacher and school principal. He is the chief operating officer of the Moral Regeneration Movement, an NGO focused on nationbuilding and social cohesion
There are people we don’t honour on June 16; the women, the first people to disguise us The police, caught in the middle, started shooting live bullets . . . shot their way out
CLASS OF ’76: Seth Mazibuko at his old high school, Phefeni Junior Secondary, in Soweto this week