Eastern Cape author opens the book on ‘Bloody Sunday’
● Mignonne Breier delves deep into SA’s ‘secret massacre’ which left up to 200 dead
The new book Bloody Sunday may have started with the grisly murder of a nun in East London in 1952, but it developed into so much more, unearthing details of up to 200 deaths in a day of shame for the city.
Author Mignonne Breier spent years unravelling the facts for Bloody Sunday: The Nun, The Defiance Campaign and SAs ’ Secret Massacre, published in March.
Initially her book was all about Irish nun Sister Aidan Quinlan at the height of the ANC’s defiance campaign of the 1950s “and then it became much more”, Breier said.
That “much more” was a mass tragedy on Sunday November 9 in East London’s Duncan Village, where police killed up to 200 people after an ANC Youth League meeting, more than in the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 where 69 died.
At the time, however, the official death toll was eight black people (seven African and one coloured) killed by police gunfire or bayonets, and two white people stabbed and then burnt — one of whom was Quinlan.
As Breier started to dig, it became clear there had been many more fatalities.
“My research has been trying to find out what happened and I found out how much had been hidden.
“It was written about but not taken up in the national discourse,” Breier said at the online book launch last month.
“It was in the interest of both the ANC and whites to bury the story.
“Both sides had behaved badly, to put it mildly, and there was strong interest in suppressing the story.”
The book starts with the memories of 15-year-old Mxolisi Mhlekiswa, now in his 80s and one of few who remember the events of November 9 1952 — or are willing to discuss them.
The gruesome way Quinlan was killed overshadowed all the other deaths, including a second white fatality who — unlike the black victims — was given a name.
“The press called it cannibalism at the time as her body was violated and desecrated.
“It was enormously difficult to talk about, from all sides,” Breier said.
The attack took place during the ongoing national defiance campaign when black civic organisations were targeted by the police.
“The meeting took place without leadership as the leaders had been banned, and youths and others went on the rampage after the police closed it down.
“It was a horrific experience to deal with.”
And Bloody Sunday was not only an East London story, Breier said, as there were several Gqeberha connections.
Gqeberha doctor James Njongwe, for example, who studied medicine with Quinlan, was acting leader of the Cape ANC at the time.
He had launched the Defiance Campaign in East London and there had been a riot in New Brighton a month before.
The book highlights that there are large chunks of SA history which have not been told.
Even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission only started with events from 1960, long after the Bloody Sunday carnage.
The 1950s were the days of cardboard boxes full of folders tied with string and it took Breier years to get to the bottom of the mystery, eventually finding answers in the National Archives in Pretoria.
Her research showed that most victims were buried by their families in secret as they feared arrest if they took them to hospitals.
She learnt that “the old people in the area still speak about where the bodies are buried”, and, according to a source, “eight bodies at a time were carried across the Kei River” for disposal.
Breier also interviewed former East London policeman Donald Card, who confirmed the high numbers.
Breier took early retirement in 2019 to complete the book and has meticulously recorded the timeline leading up to, during and after the killings, and backed it up with footnotes, a bibliography, acknowledgments and an index — signs of her research background as an academic and writer.
It will be the 70th anniversary of the killings in 2022, and 10 years since Quinlan’s rosary, with the imprint of her finger bones burnt into it, was returned to the convent in Duncan Village.
There is now a monument to her in her homeland of Ireland, as well as in East London. “The material is harrowing. “I wanted to shove away all my files but it kept coming back to me that I needed to complete the story,” the author said.
“I always felt uplifted by my visits to the people I met in Duncan Village so there were positives. There has been a wonderful acknowledgment of Sister Aidan in the community and a desire to pick up the work that she undertook, and to see all sides.”
And of those who died in the massacre — Quinlan among them — Breier said: “I hope that in some way my book will commemorate them.”