Women’s march today
First widowed by the apartheid police and then killed in front of her children, Struggle hero and women’s activist Victoria Mxenge was a martyr who paid the ultimate price for the liberation of her people. BG Mzolo pays tribute to her ahead of Women’s Day
WOMEN across the country will unite and take to the streets today in the fight against gender-based violence.
#TheTotalShutdown will see thousands of women march in eight of the country’s nine provinces, as well as in Lesotho and Namibia.
Official data released recently confirmed that femicide and sexual crimes against women in the country have increased by an alarming rate over the past two years.
Statistics SA revealed in its report, titled Crime against Women in South Africa, that the murder rate of women shot up by a shocking 117% between 2015 and 2016/17.
The number of women who experienced sexual offences also jumped from 31665 in 2015/16 to 70 813 in 2016/17 – an increase of 53%.
On Monday, Ndileka Mandela, who has been campaigning to get women to join the march, drew attention to the disappearance of Noma Kunene.
Kunene, the deputy director at NGO A Re Ageng Social Services, had played a key role in blowing the whistle in the apparent fraudulent behaviour by officials at the Gauteng Department of Social Development, involving R10 million.
She has been missing for months now.
The march has been backed by civil rights organisations opposed to women abuse and the SA Human Rights Commission. – Sibongile Mashaba
VICTORIA Nonyamezelo Mxenge was an inspiration to her community. She was a human rights lawyer and an activist who held leadership positions in the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW), Release Mandela Campaign, uMlazi Residents’ Association and the United Democratic Front (UDF). She was brutally murdered in front of her children in the driveway of her uMlazi home on August 1, 1985.
Multiple gunshots and an axe were used by her murderers to kill her.
Underlining Mxenge’s prominence, more than 10000 mourners attended her funeral where messages from Mandela, Tambo and Ronald Reagan were read out.
Mxenge was a martyr who paid the ultimate price for the liberation of her people.
Yet, in the vast corpus of literature on the anti-apartheid Struggle in South Africa, there has been no documented history of her life or her contributions to the liberation struggle in South Africa.
My interest in the study about Mxenge was sparked by, among other reasons, a desire to add a voice in the studies that have been conducted to acknowledge women such as Ruth First, Charlotte Maxeke, Lillian Ngoyi, Fatima Meer, Amina Cachalia, Winnie Mandela and others.
My study sought to ignite a debate among historians to uncover many untold stories of ordinary women whose roles have hitherto not been documented.
Mxenge (nee Ntebe) was born on January 1, 1942 in a small impoverished village called Tamara in King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape. She participated in herding livestock, fetching water from the river and the cultivation of crops.
Mxenge’s life as a child was simple and humble. She matriculated in Healdtown and qualified as a nurse at Victoria Hospital before proceeding to King Edward VIII Hospital, where she also qualified as a midwife.
It was in Durban where she met her husband, Griffiths Mlungisi Mxenge, who was an ANC activist, a brilliant human rights lawyer and a persuasive orator.
Griffiths was subsequently imprisoned in Robben Island, banned and continuously harassed by the special branch.
While working as a nurse, Victoria pursued a law degree and in 1981 she joined her husband’s law firm.
During that year, the state ordered her husband’s assassination, which was carried out by Dirk Coetzee and his operatives from the notorious Vlakplaas. The police tried to convince Mxenge that Griffiths had been killed by the ANC.
However, Mxenge believed that the government had carried out the assassination of her husband.
She issued a statement defiantly declaring: “When people have declared war on you, you cannot afford to be crying. You have to fight back. As long as I live, I will never rest until I see to it that justice is done, until Griffiths Mxenge’s killers are brought to book.” Following the assassination of Griffiths, Mxenge continued to represent political detainees. She was very active within NOW which was a UDF affiliate. NOW brought together young women from uMlazi, KwaMashu, Chatsworth and other parts of Durban.
NOW defined itself as an organisation that sought to participate in the national liberation Struggle in South Africa, to mobilise women, irrespective of race or class and to eradicate illiteracy.
NOW also addressed family planning and other health-care issues, housing, welfare of women detainees, established crèches and other child-minding programmes. Mxenge was committed to the ideals of women’s emancipation. She worked with young people representing them when they were detained or faced political charges. She also ran political classes for the youth from her home.
She always encouraged the youth to focus on their education and even assisted some of them financially to access tertiary education using the bursary fund, Griffiths Mxenge Education Memorial Trust, which she had established in her late husband’s honour.
This made Mxenge popular with the youth. She also worked closely with her fellow comrades from the Natal Indian Congress to collapse apartheid and replace it with non-racialism.
In July 1985, Mxenge was invited to deliver a speech at the funeral of the four slain UDF leaders from Cradock, known as the Cradock Four.
In her resounding speech, Mxenge ominously declared: “Go well, peacemakers. Tell your great-grandfathers we are coming because we are prepared to die for Africa.”
It is widely believed that the speech which she delivered at the funeral of the Cradock Four could have been the immediate cause which resulted in her becoming a target for assassination.
Mxenge was assassinated on the eve of the court appearance of the Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial involving 16 UDF trialists such as Albertina Sisulu, Mewa Ramgobin, Chanderdeo Sewpersadh, Mooroogiah Jay Naidoo, Essop Jassat, Frank Chikane, Ismail Mahomed and others.
Mxenge was the instructing attorney. When the family requested that there be an inquest, the magistrate turned down this request.
When the ANC made its submission to the TRC, the party identified Marvin Sefako (alias Bongani Raymond Malinga), as being the man who had confessed to killing Victoria. Jimmy Mbane, an askari, also testified before the TRC that Thabiso Sphamla, also an askari, had “confessed to him, while drunk, that he and three other askaris – Eric Maluleke, Peggy Hadebe and ‘Samuel’ – had killed Mxenge.
In its final report, the TRC came to the conclusion that Mxenge’s assassination was commissioned by the apartheid security forces, carried out by them or on the orders of unidentified members of the security forces.
Speaking at the commemoration of this year’s Human Rights Day in the Eastern Cape, the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Zweli Mkhize, summarised the extent of the violence which followed the assassination of Victoria as follows: “It spread through the province and the country throughout the 1980s to the 1990s.”
Following her assassination, a week-long school boycott was observed and many workers could not travel to work. Mourners were attacked during her memorial service and more people died during her funeral which took place in Rayi village, Eastern Cape.
These two incidents became known as uMlazi and Duncan Village massacres respectively.
Thousands of lives were lost and tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes following the violence which erupted.
The violent attacks also had ethnic and racial undertones whereby Amampondo, AmaXhosa and Indians were attacked for “misleading the Zulus and recruiting them into the UDF”.
Consequently, Amampondo were killed in the area around KwaMakhutha and Indians were attacked in Bhambayi and their businesses were burnt down.
The historic Gandhi settlement, including the school and the library, was also burnt down and irreplaceable historical artefacts lost. The displaced Indians received alternative housing in Phoenix.
Mxenge is arguably the only political figure whose assassination had so much impact that went on for so many years after her death.
Mxenge has been awarded the Order of Luthuli for paying the supreme price for the people of South Africa to live in peace, harmony and to have democratic rights.
However, it is worrying that no one has been prosecuted for her death. An inquest into her death should be held. This will also assist her family to have closure.
BG Mzolo is a Master’s student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
To commemorate and acknowledge the role of our heroines in the freedom Struggle to liberate South Africa from oppression, the 1860 Heritage Museum will host an exhibition that highlights the role of women in the Struggle during the 20th century, on August 9. For details, see below.