Читать книгу Being Chris Hani's Daughter - Ferguson Hani - Страница 9

Selective memory has a way of whitewashing details. There were naturally less-idyllic experiences in my childhood, like those times when we had to steal out of our home in the middle of the night, cruelly woken out of deep sleep in the middle of a dream, and hastily bustled off to my aunt Sammy or Ntatemoholo Sekamane’s houses. Our exodus would usually start with Mama, having heard whispers that we were the target of a possible SADF raid, shaking us awake and telling us that we needed to pack our things quickly. Without fail, each time it happened, it was a huge disruption of our safe, cosy world.

These panicked pack-ups happened quite regularly until one day Khwezi simply put her foot down and refused to leave the house. There was no drama, no shouting; she just dug her heels in and said, “No.” There was nothing Mama could do to convince my sister otherwise. The rest of the night was spent lying in bed, eyes fixed to the ceiling in terror, waiting for an attack in the dark, until morning dawned only to discover we were all still alive. After Khwezi’s night of resistance, we didn’t leave as often as before, unless Mama really insisted.

Although I tried to erase them from my thoughts, preferring to live in the rose-tinted land of my fantasy world, in the back of my mind my mother’s fears played havoc, for I knew they were based on real evidence of how seriously the SADF wanted to see the destruction of Chris Hani’s family.

Only a few years earlier, we had survived a very real attack. I was too young to have known what sinister forces were really at play, but the incident had a traumatic effect on our mother. Although I have hardly any real memories of that night, it would become one of the strongest story threads in my life, told over and over throughout the years to come.

Two weeks before I turned two, on 9 December 1982, the Lesotho Raids took place between 00:30am and 05:30am in Maseru. At the time, we were staying in Letsei flats, in the centre of the capital. In the dead of night, while the rest of the world slept, special forces from the South African Defence Force used helicopters to drop off a load of guns, grenades and explosives in Maseru. They were on a deadly mission to look for ANC comrades, or so-called ‘terrorists’. Our family was one of the main targets.

At the time of the attack, we were all fast asleep, unaware of the bloodshed that was raging outside. When the SADF came for us they approached the old guard who was on night duty downstairs, demanding information on the whereabouts of the Hani family.

The guard had been an ANC cadre who had fallen ill and, when nobody would take him in, Mama had brought him into our home and nursed him back to health. That fateful night, terrified but steadfastly loyal to our family, he saved all our lives when he told the group of soldiers that we lived in number 303, instead of our actual flat, number 302. By this point the terrible sounds of the attack erupting had woken us all. Petrified, we huddled together, Mama, my two sisters and me, cowering under the bed. The chaos outside reverberated as though the killers were right there inside our flat. We lay in terror as they stormed flat 303, bashing down the neighbour’s door. Then we heard the desperate screams of the woman as she was shot dead. My little mind back then could not process the horror she must have gone through.

When I was older I was told how, the following night, Pik Botha went on South African national TV to state that the SADF had killed Chris Hani’s wife. It was clear that the South African government would have loved to have seen Mama and us, the wife and children of one of South Africa’s most hated terrorists, dead. Although I could hardly comprehend the complexities, my almost two-year-old self subconsciously understood something about the closeness of death that night.

The details of the attack soon spread throughout the usually vibrant streets of Maseru, which had now fallen deathly quiet, like a cemetery. During the raid the SADF had massacred 12 local civilians, killing 30 South Africans, and leaving hundreds of homes bombed and gutted. The massacre would also become known as Operation Blanket because, during the attack, some people were wrapped in blankets by SADF officials and set on fire. The idea of people burning to death, wrapped in the very thing that was normally used as protection and comfort, haunted me for years.

As soon as light broke, Mama, grey-faced and shaken, gathered us together and, along with a few suitcases containing some of our belongings, we took the first flight out of Lesotho to Zambia via Mozambique. Mama soon returned to Lesotho to be with Momo who was at school there and left Khwezi and me in Lusaka where we stayed with our Aunty Margaret, an ANC family friend. I remember crying a little as Mama said goodbye, but we were soon distracted by being loved and spoilt by Aunty Margaret. When our mother eventually returned a whole year later, apparently I did not recognise her! By that stage we were speaking fluent Nyanja.