It’s still not over
NyaPmReka Goniwe’s battle continues
In July 1985 — after the body of anti-apartheid activist Matthew Goniwe was found — New York Times foreign correspondent Alan Cowell asked his widow, Nyameka Goniwe, if she would be taking her three-year-old son Nyaniso to the funeral. Nyameka wasn’t sure. She told Cowell she had gone to the funeral of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko eight years earlier and when she heard infants wailing she wondered if children should be protected from these tragedies or if they should be exposed to the harshness of this land.
Nyaniso did go — everyone in the Eastern Cape town of Cradock attended the funeral — and now he and his sister Nobuzwe will be burying their mother.
Nyameka, who had presented with Covid-like symptoms, died last Saturday after going into isolation. She was 69 years old.
Described by friends and colleagues as a naturalborn social worker, a woman who was gentle, warm, wise and well loved, Nyameka devoted her life to serving the community and waging a decades-long campaign to bring the killers of her husband to justice.
It ultimately left her exhausted and dejected. Matthew Goniwe was the charismatic Cradock teacher with the easy grin who inspired matric pupils to get As and Bs in science and maths, and led one of the most potent resistance campaigns against apartheid.
When Matthew was killed, Nyameka lost the love of her life.
“It was a time of terrible sorrow for Nyami. She loved Matthew very much,” says David Forbes, the director of The Cradock Four, a documentary about the four young men murdered by the security police in June 1985. “Sadly, they never got to spend much time with each other because they were constantly harassed by the security police.”
Nyameka, whose parents were farmworkers, was born in Cradock on June 3 1951. She was one of Matthew’s pupils before leaving Cradock for Port Elizabeth, where she matriculated in 1971. On her first holiday back she and Matthew met up again and fell in love. They were apart for a number of years when Matthew left Cradock to set up a school in the Transkei. He returned and the couple married in 1975 and had a daughter, Nobuzwe.
Matthew was arrested in 1976 and convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Nyameka was training to become a social worker at the University of Fort Hare and, in moving testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1996, recalled the hardship she endured trying to be available to eight-month-old Nobuzwe, study and support her jailed husband.
“I remember that year being one of the toughest years I have faced in my life,” she said.
Matthew came out of prison in 1981 and was at the forefront of the resistance in Cradock and its township, Lingelihle. He and Nyameka had been instrumental in forming the Cradock Residents’ Association in 1983, a powerful United Democratic Front (UDF)-aligned civic organisation that spearheaded protests that led to the dissolution of the puppet council, effectively liberating the “ungovernable” township.
The government wanted Matthew out of Cradock and the department of education & training told him he was being transferred to Graaff-Reinet. He refused and was fired. The community embarked on a 15month school boycott, demanding his reinstatement.
Matthew was regarded as an enemy of the state; the security police monitored his movements, bugged his phone, raided his home, and detained him. He and fellow teacher, activist and friend Fort Calata had become sharp thorns in the government’s side. On June 6 1985, security forces in the Eastern Cape sent a signal to the State Security Council recommending that the two activists be “permanently removed from society”.
Three weeks after the death signal was sent, the charred and mutilated bodies of Matthew, Fort and fellow community leaders Sicelo Mhlauli and
Sparrow Mkonto were discovered in dense bush near Port Elizabeth. The men had been tortured and killed. They were placed on their backs. Petrol was poured on their faces and they were set alight.
The slaying of the Cradock Four became emblematic in SA’s struggle for liberation. Four young men — teachers and community activists in the prime of their lives with so much to offer, people who would have gone on to play leading roles in a democratic SA — had been lured, ambushed, trapped, tortured and executed. The murdersPlaRid bare the hatred and callousness of apartheid, and the cruelty of those who issued the orders and those who enforced them.
The funeral was addressed by prominent UDF patrons and a message from ANC president Oliver Tambo was read to the 60,000 mourners, who came from all over the country in defiance of a travel ban.
They unfurled ANC and South African Communist Party flags — the first time the colours of the liberation movement had flown at a public gathering in years.
“It was a turning point,” says Lukhanyo Calata, Fort’s son. “The people sent a strong message that they had had enough.”
President PW Botha wasn’t listening. He responded with a crackdown and declared a state of emergency.
The murders left a void in the community and residents looked to the widows — Nyameka Goniwe, Nomonde Calata, Sindiswa Mkonto and Nombuyiselo Mhlauli — for guidance.
Nyameka had meant so much to the Calata family and was a source of support to Lukhanyo’s mother, Nomonde Calata.
“Mrs Goniwe was the person my mother turned to after news broke that the bodies had been found. Their relationship was one of sisterhood; their relationship was one of love,” says Lukhanyo.
The murders robbed children of their fathers and turned four young women into four young widows.
The security forces continued to persecute the women, raiding their homes, and getting them fired from jobs.
Their grief brought them together.
“The women had been a source of comfort to one another,” says Lukhanyo. “Mrs Goniwe was a second mother to me. She was gentle and softly spoken but her words were powerful.”
Nyameka was more than just “Matthew Goniwe’s widow”; she was an activist in her own right.
Di Oliver, a member of the Black Sash, forged a strong friendship with Nyameka. The women were both recently widowed and both social workers.
“Nyami had a tough life and suffered bouts of sadness, but she hid her pain and worked hard for the community,” says Oliver.
Nyameka worked for the Institute of Social Development for four years in Cradock, then moved to the Cape Town-based Social Change Assistance Trust, supporting rural community initiatives before being called back to Cradock by the ANC to work in the municipality. She was appointed mayor of the town in 2011.
According to Mzimkhulu Zenzile, a former mayor of the Inxuba Yethemba municipality (previously Cradock municipality), from the 1980s Nyameka worked to improve the lives of township residents, establishing its first crèche, which grew into the Masizame Community Centre that housed a library and offered skills training. She also helped students go to university and brought social welfare services to the community.
Wise and empathic is how Lulamile Jojiyasi, director for economic development and planning at the municipality when Nyameka was mayor, described her.
“Sis Nyami brought into the role her humanity and concern for the poor. She had no experience in local government, but quickly learnt the legislation and was able to mobilise the broader community.”
As mayor, Nyameka boosted tourism and ensured there was efficient service delivery. She had no time for sloppy and lazy officials who didn’t treat the public with respect.
One of her projects was restoring the Garden of Remembrance, the monument built in honour of her husband and his three comrades, which had been vandalised.
“When she left the municipality in 2016 the monument had been refurbished and a new wall of remembrance built to memorialise those who died in Cradock from the early ’60s,” says Jojiyasi.
Nyameka was determined to see her husband’s killers pay for their crimes and, despite setback after setback, including the investigation docket going missing, she had remained hopeful.
However, in the past year she became increasingly despondent about her chances of seeing justice done.
The Cradock Four families have waged a campaign to put pressure on the authorities to charge the perpetrators.
Yasmin Sooka, the director of the Foundation for Human Rights, which has been working with law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr on behalf of the families, says that after fighting for so long, Nyameka had become dejected.
“Mrs Goniwe felt she had spent her life trying to get answers: why was Matthew, a teacher who was committed to nonviolence, assassinated? Why did the state feel the need to send a death squad to eliminate him?” asks Sooka.
“Her quest for justice was a painful journey — she couldn’t understand why there was a blockage from the new democratic government; a government for which her husband had died to ensure that it could come to power. She had tried to seek answers from her comrades, but got nowhere. It consumed her.”
Lukhanyo Calata says getting justice has been the driving force for his mother — and it was the driving force for Nyameka.
“The lack of justice ate away at Mrs Goniwe. When the ANC came to power in 1994 we were convinced we would see justice; when Nelson Mandela came to the Cradock Four’s graves in 1995 and described them as ‘heroes of the struggle’ we were convinced we would see justice; when the TRC denied the murderers amnesty we were convinced we would see justice … we are still waiting. Mrs Goniwe is dead! The sense of betrayal she must have felt … It’s utterly despicable.”
Nyameka confided in Oliver that repeatedly telling and retelling the harrowing details of how her husband died was taking its toll. “She was suffering from fatigue,” says Oliver.
Nyameka told Sooka that she didn’t want her children to be burdened with the ongoing trauma of taking on the quest for justice.
“Mrs Goniwe was entitled to answers, she was entitled to closure,” says Sooka. “It’s been 35 years and the families haven’t been able to get to grips with this assassination and who was responsible — the operatives and their superiors who gave the commands and the high-level politicians who ordered the killings. As time marches on we are losing people on both sides: victims, witnesses and perpetrators. We don’t have that much time.”
Retired judge Chris Nicholson, author of Permanent Removal: Who killed the Cradock Four?, says Nyameka was a warm woman who radiated integrity. “She was softly spoken, but she was made of steel,” he says.
“She would have died a very unhappy woman because she had done so much and couldn’t even get justice. It was the apartheid government who was responsible for her husband’s death, but it was the ANC government who let her down.”
Nyameka, who had been drafted back into council as the speaker at the time of her death, had bought a house in Cradock, where she was looking forward to retiring.
Oliver recalls driving Matthew back after a spell in detention. When they arrived PR in Cradock she referred to it as a dusty little town.
“Matthew replied: ‘It’s a dusty little town, but it’s home.’ I’m devastated that Nyami died before she could retire and enjoy a quiet life in her small home in the dusty little town that meant so much to her. I just loved her. So many people did.”
‘We were convinced we would see justice … Mrs Goniwe is dead! The sense of betrayal she must have felt … It’s utterly despicable’