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CHAPTER TWO

‘Kroonstad was now aware’: The Black Consciousness Movement and student demonstrations, 1972–1976

The back of black political resistance was broken – albeit temporarily – after the banning of the ANC and PAC, and those political activists who managed to evade the police net were forced to operate underground. Many more fled the country and joined MK or Poqo in exile. This turn of events caused the National Party government to believe that it had normalised the political situation, a sense enhanced by the economic boom of the 1960s, when foreign investment flooded into the country and the annual rate of economic growth rose to 9.3 per cent.¹ Job opportunities opened up, and as many black people found employment their focus shifted from politics to making a living.

The black residents of Kroonstad also benefitted from this economic boom. At the close of the 1960s, a significant number were employed. By then, Setiloane writes: ‘Kroonstad town had grown tremendously. There were more shops, more garages, more restaurants, more hotels and more suburbs. Factories which were non-existent in the 1930s and 1940s had now sprung up. Job opportunities were numerous. People could also find employment in the police force, the prison department and at the municipal offices.’²

In spite of the barrage of suppressive laws passed by the government during this period to intimidate black people, and the economic boom which deflected the political momentum of the late 1950s, a few people, operating clandestinely, attempted to resuscitate opposition politics and to conscientise the younger generation. These attempts, however, were disrupted. First, many of the adult activists who were part of the secret meetings fled into exile. Second, some of the young people left Kroonstad to further their studies at tertiary institutions.

In the 1960s the government created ethnically divided university colleges to take the edge off black opposition politics, but this had unintended consequences. Instead of producing docile and apolitical university graduates who would go on to develop their different homelands, the atmosphere at these universities helped to develop the students’ political awareness. In the early 1970s these students played a pivotal role in politicising secondary and high school students who, in 1976, took to the streets to challenge the government. In Kroonstad, students and graduates from the University of the North (also known as Turfloop), using the black consciousness (BC) philosophy, played an instrumental role in reviving protest politics after the ‘lull’ decade of the 1960s. As in other places, in Kroonstad it was the high school students who were receptive to this philosophy. It caused them to be assertive, and amenable to confrontational politics.

The ‘lull’

The National Party’s landslide victory in the 1953 elections convinced it that it had the support of the majority of the white population and it intended to do whatever it could to protect white supremacy, passing a variety of laws. This was carried through to the 1960s. What followed after the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 was a continuation of the process that had started in the early 1950s, but what distinguished the government’s laws in the 1960s was that they were meant to crush all forms of black political opposition – and this it achieved, though for a short time. Some of the oppressive laws passed between 1960 and 1967 arguably intimidated blacks into refraining from overt political opposition.³

For example, in 1961 the government enacted the General Law Amendment Act No. 39, which prohibited certain gatherings. After few acts of sabotage by MK the government responded by passing the General Law Amendment Act No. 76 (known as the ‘Sabotage Act’) of 1962. Penalties for sabotage were the same as for treason and included the death penalty. In 1963 the government enacted the General Law Amendment Act No. 37, commonly termed the ‘ninety day law’ as it authorised the detention of any person suspected of a political crime for a period of ninety days without access to a lawyer. Within the first eight months of its passage, 682 persons were detained.

These laws intimidated many. Michael Dingake, who in the 1960s was a member of the ANC in Alexandra township, writes that one of his comrades and friends, JM, confided in him his (JM’s) inability to continue in the struggle because of fear. According to Dingake, JM said: ‘Mike, things are bad. I have cold feet. Please excuse me. From now on I shall not be involved in the struggle. I do not think I can withstand detention.’⁴

In spite of the fear that had paralysed the majority of black people, underground cells sprang up in some places, especially Soweto. Perhaps the best-known underground cell during this period included ANC figures such as Winnie Mandela, Elliot Tshabangu, Samson Ndou, Rita and Lawrence Ndzanga, Wally Serote and Snuki Zikalala. The cell’s activities included imparting political education to the younger members ‘on a wide range of aspects of ANC history and Marxism’.⁵ In an interview, Wally Serote, who was recruited by Joyce Sekhakhane into the ANC and this cell, recalled that the unit also sourced banned literature as far as Botswana. The cell was finally cracked when the police arrested some of its members in 1969. But another underground cell was established in 1969, and this cell created links with members of the ANC across the country, including the OFS. It was formed by Albertina Sisulu, a member of the ANC and wife of Walter Sisulu, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island for high treason, and John Nkadimeng, a member of the communist-initiated Sebatakgomo in the then Northern Transvaal and the general secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu). The main objective of this cell was to facilitate the formation of other cells in a number of places, which would be involved in ‘a range of activities such as distributing ANC and SACP (South African Communist Party) leaflets, [recruiting] people to carry out this task and maintain underground structures’.⁶ From the late 1970s ‘Commandant’ Caleb Motshabi, who had joined the ANC in 1949 and in 1961 became the OFS commander of MK, together with Ike More, a young journalist for The Friend and an ANC underground operative in Bloemfontein, recruited a series of young activists, mostly from the Bloemfontein area, and facilitated their travel to Lesotho, where the ANC had a substantial presence.⁷

Oral evidence reveals that an attempt was made by an underground operative from Bloemfontein to establish an underground cell in Kroonstad. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this operative was connected with the underground cell under Motshabi and More. Mpopetsi Dhlamini, a resident of Kroonstad and whose friendship with Makoba Moleme dates back to 1952, takes up the story of how they attempted to form an underground cell in Kroonstad: