Читать книгу Mamphela Ramphele: A Passion for Freedom - Mamphela Ramphele - Страница 12

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP OFTEN SHAPES YOUR LIFE IN significant ways. My friendship with Vuyelwa Mashalaba, a classmate who I met in the first few days at medical school in January 1968, played a major role in shaping my future interests. Vuyelwa was a strikingly beautiful woman with sharp features, a smooth olive complexion, and a strong, well-proportioned body. She exuded self-confidence and spoke with a distinctive, polished English accent. She came from a family of strong, high-achieving sisters, headed by their widowed mother, who lived in Maclear, in the Eastern Cape.

Vuyelwa played tennis and loved classical music. She also had a large record collection of Miriam Makeba’s music. She rekindled my love for classical music and tried to teach me tennis. Her enthusiasm failed to compensate for my lack of talent in sports, and we agreed to abandon what was clearly a road to nowhere.

Vuyelwa soon introduced me to her circle of friends, which included Steve Biko, Charles Sibisi, Chapman Palweni and Goolam Abram and, later, to Ben Mgulwa, Aubrey Mokoape, Ben Ngubane and many others who were student leaders at the time. We all attended student body meetings regularly from the middle of 1968. It was a completely new world for me. I listened quietly but with great interest to the debates on student politics of the day, which were dominated by criticism of the white liberal politics of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). I had to strain to follow the quick exchanges peppered as they were with acronyms, which were like Greek to me. I also marvelled at the self-confidence of student activists and the facility most of them had in using English to communicate.

Steve Biko was the main critic of white liberal politics, having been active as a NUSAS official and a member of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) at Natal. The thrust of his criticism was that white liberals’ opposition to racial discrimination was ineffectual and unlikely to lead to any fundamental change in South Africa because it lacked a coherent critique of racism and its socioeconomic manifestations. He contended that few white liberals were themselves committed to non-­racialism and social justice to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice their privileged position in society in the quest for greater equity. He cited the ease with which former NUSAS leaders and other activists settled into privileged positions once they graduated from university as evidence that white liberal politics was viewed as a pastime that one pursued so long as it did not interfere with the ‘real’ world of white privilege.

Steve also spoke out against the paternalism of white liberals who tended to dominate opposition politics in the 1960s. He felt that their paternalism in part stemmed from their deep-seated feelings of superiority towards black people. He criticised their definition of multi-­racialism, which assumed the superiority of Western culture and the automatic assimilation of blacks into its fold. He was critical of the reliance blacks placed on white leadership. He charged blacks with lack of faith in themselves and of having internalised an inferiority complex: such self-inflicted psychological oppression ensured their continued physical and political oppression. He urged black students to see themselves as black first and foremost, and to commit themselves to the total liberation of all black people in South Africa.

Steve’s conclusion was that the only way to effect fundamental change in South Africa would be for the oppressed people themselves to take the initiative and to work for their own liberation. He drew on the experiences and the approaches of the Black Power movement in the United States for inspiration, as well as on the Négritude writers such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire who he quoted extensively in his speeches and later in his writings.

Ben Ngubane was Steve Biko’s main opponent in the debates. Ben’s view was that the forces of apartheid were powerful and evil and should be denied the pleasure of seeing disunity among the anti-apartheid ranks. He conceded the points Steve was making in his critique, but disagreed with the suggestion that black politics be consolidated away from the white liberal fold.

Ben defended NUSAS on the medical school campus to the very last, when the student body finally voted narrowly in favour of Steve’s motion of central disaffiliation from NUSAS. This paved the way for the black South African Students’ Organisation (SASO)10 to operate on a par with NUSAS, using a campus branch affiliation system. Ben argued that NUSAS had stood firm in the face of harassment by the apartheid state and thus deserved the loyalty of all freedom-loving students. He was an eloquent speaker, but was no match for the younger and more passionate Biko. Ben often lost his temper, and became more cynical and disillusioned, finally fading out of the political arena, only to re-emerge in the 1980s as an Inkatha official – a not insignificant political move, crowned with a cabinet post in the first Government of National Unity in 1994.

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The tentacles of apartheid spread everywhere in South Africa in the 1960s. The section of Natal University which catered for black students was known as the University of Natal Non-European Section. (This became known as the University of Natal Black Section (UNB) after SASO requested that the name be officially changed in 1970.) Professor Owen Horwood was principal of the university at the time. He later became Minister of Finance, and was revealed to have been party to the Information Scandal which rocked the National Party government of John Vorster, and finally forced Vorster to resign. Horwood shamelessly asserted that he had taken particular care, as Minister of Finance charged with responsibility for government expenditure, not to read the documents he had signed to authorise the expenditure of vast sums of public money to promote apartheid. The irony of history lies in the fact that the same man unknowingly promoted the emergence of radical black student politics in South Africa. For it was Horwood who authorised the financing of a seminar at Mariannhill which led to the formation of SASO. Perhaps he would also have pleaded not guilty had he been confronted. How could anyone have expected him to care about black student politics at the time? After all, he was only a vice-chancellor, not a keeper of his students.

Historical accidents do give rise to major tides which sweep the unwary aside or redirect them into paths that they could not have anticipated. The formation of SASO and the subsequent maturation of the Black Consciousness Movement into a political force to be reckoned with became the main focus of Steve Biko’s life. One could not help admiring this tall, handsome, eloquent and totally dedicated activist.

Natal Medical School did not only provide me with medical training, but it offered an environment for the transformation of my life from an innocent rural girl to a person who became alive to the vast possibilities which life has to offer. I took time to absorb the vibrancy around me. I was keenly interested in the discussions, which were a political education for me. I learned about the true history of my country, the struggle to resist conquest, and later the struggle for equal rights with those who had conquered us, the stories of the heroes of the struggle (no women were included in these narratives at the time), and the role students could and should play to take the struggle forward. I began to understand and to interpret my own personal experiences of racism and oppression in the light of the discussions going on around me. Given my rural background and lack of access to news media and political discussions till then, I had not fully grasped the relation between the personal and the political.

The University of the North had not presented me with any opportunities for exposure to student activism during 1967. The university authorities were rigidly part of the apartheid system and ensured that the university fulfilled its mission of training blacks for subservient roles in society, discouraging any public debate on political issues. The then registrar used to boast, ‘My vel is my graad’ (My skin is my degree), an acknowledgement that he held this senior position simply because of the colour of his skin. The SRC at the University of the North was no more than an efficient organiser of entertainment activities, posing no challenge to authority at the institution. I did not once attend a student meeting or hold a political discussion at the University of the North. Social life revolved around entertainment events such as ballroom dancing, sports, picnics and parties. A fine preparation for life as a petit bourgeois on the margins of society and power.

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At the University of Natal the circle of friends centred on Steve Biko coalesced into a tight-knit community as the activism intensified. I was drawn closer into this circle and began to adopt some of the behaviour of the group. I shed the wig I used to wear whenever I felt I needed to look more ‘respectable’ than my short boyish hair suggested. The ‘black is beautiful’ slogan of the time had its desired impact on all of us. Some of us switched over to the use of our African names instead of the ‘slave names’ we had hitherto used. I also became more daring in my outfits, taking advantage of my figure and the fashion trends of the time, which were affordable even to me with my shoestring budget: hot pants became my speciality. Hot pants were exceedingly short pants which fitted snugly around one’s body, hovering tantalisingly around the limits of modesty.

Once tested, the boundaries of conventional behaviour began to fall. I started experimenting with smoking cigarettes by offering to light for those needing a smoke. I would comment that it was unlikely I could smoke, but continued to take a puff or two until I got hooked and started buying cigarettes myself. I chose the mild blend Vuyelwa smoked. I also started drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages shared by the group. I slowly but surely embraced the student culture of the 1960s.

We lived at the Alan Taylor Residence, which was a segregated residence for black students at Natal University. An old army barrack situated next to the Mobil Oil Refinery in Austerville, not far from Durban Airport, it had been used during the Second World War to house troops and was then renovated to serve as a student residence when the medical school was established in 1951. We commuted daily by bus to and from medical school in Umbilo Road, some five kilometres away, to attend classes and participate in university activities. Only preliminary11 and first-year students attended classes at the Alan Taylor premises. The level of pollution from the oil refinery was such that you could see traces of soot when you blew your nose, and the bed linen would be covered with a black layer of dust if you left a window open on a windy day. We justified our cigarette smoking by pointing to the inevitability of inhaling carcinogens in the environment in which we were forced to live. A lame excuse for engaging in risk-taking behaviour, but it sounded very smart at the time.

We used to have parties on weekends at which we drank beer and sat around in the smoke-filled room of one of the members of the group, talking politics, listening to Malcolm X’s speeches on tape, as well as those of Martin Luther King Jr, discussing banned books which were secretly circulated among friends, sharing jokes, and also singing and dancing. Our weekends were carefree and full of fun. We became welded together into a sharing and caring community. At the beginning of each year younger people who were new students joined the community – Malusi Mpumlwana, Keith Mokoape and Seolo Solombela were the most notable additions to our group.

10 SASO was founded in July 1969, with Steve Biko as its first president.

11 Preliminary year (popularly called Prelim) was used as an academic support year for those students who did not have satisfactory matriculation mathematics and science grades to be admitted directly into first year.