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A moment of faith and clarity while Alex is burning

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Faith and Courage, by Thabo Makgoba.
Faith and Courage, by Thabo Makgoba.

A schoolboy hides under a car weeping and terrified while armed troops look for “the terrorist”.

That schoolboy was Thabo Makgoba, now the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.

Here is an extract from Faith and Courage – about his experience of the Soweto uprising as a boy going to school in Alex – and a pivotal moment in the book, when he learns the value of “faith and courage”.

Faith and Courage

Thabo Makgoba

224 pages

R280 at takealot.com

It was Friday, June 18, when the uprising really spread to Alex. I know now that while I was at home in Pimville the previous evening, about 100 older students had met that night in a dark spot behind the Alex stadium and planned a protest march.

When I alighted from the bus that morning, it was unusually quiet but, unaware of what was about to happen, I went, as I had the previous two days, and changed into my uniform in the toilets at the bus rank.

Beginning the walk to school, I met a group of about 20 children from different schools who were clearly not heading to class. I joined them because one of the leaders was a friend from a well-respected business family, also the son of a former principal of Ezenzeleni.

The leaders split us into smaller groups and told us to take off our school ties to make it difficult to identify us. I was in a group sent to a Chinese-run shop near the stadium.

The shopkeepers must have decided to steer clear of Alex because of what was happening in Soweto because the shop was closed. But they rented the premises from the respected business family, so we fetched the keys, opened the shop and proceeded to loot it.

What I remember in particular is me and a tiny fellow dragging a five-kilogram bag of mealie meal away, and me wondering what I was going to do with it because I could hardly take it home on the train that night.

When the police arrived we scattered, regrouping as previously planned at the stadium, but the police followed us. They lined us up and said: “Now you, you and you – you were involved in the looting.”

We vehemently denied this but since we were covered in mealie meal of course they didn’t believe us. We were made to stand aside and told to wait to be picked up by “thisa-abantwana”, the truant van.

By then, however, Alex was burning and the van was working overtime. They had to let us go. Police later told a commission of inquiry that looting was going on all over the township that day.

They admitted shooting dead 29 people, four of them youths between the ages of 16 and 25 who were looting a bottle-store and one a man who had attacked a fish-and-chips shop.

I can’t recall how my parents got to know I was all right, but it was decided that because it was becoming dangerous to travel back and forth to Soweto I would stay with relatives in Alex for a while.

I don’t recall feeling on that first day that we were engaged in an overtly political act. It was more as if, acting as a group, we felt we could go out, break the mould and have some real, real fun. We justified what we did by saying, “Well, after all, these Chinese sell us rotten bread and they would never take it back.”

Historians say the first few days of the uprising were characterised by “the almost spontaneous involvement” of hundreds of students. (They also describe our looting of Indian- and Chinese-owned shops as “a more sinister side of the youthful demonstrators”.)

A day or two after June 18, one of our school’s soccer stars addressed us and denounced the teaching of Afrikaans. Apart from the fact that we hadn’t rejected its introduction earlier, our Afrikaans teacher was a much loved person who had the ability to make the language come alive for his students – especially after taking a slug from the “tot” he kept in his side pocket – so we were somewhat conflicted over the issue.

Still, the rebellion left our strict principal suddenly unable to tell us what to think and do and amidst the anarchy we could have fun. This was reinforced by the views of student leaders from Soweto who told us that the issue went beyond Afrikaans. At its heart, they said, the revolt was about justice.

Despite joining those early protests, I still felt that my vocation was to continue my schooling and so I returned to class. In the weeks that followed Alex was occupied by a force of brown army “Hippos” and police “Mellow Yellows”, armoured personnel carriers filled with white conscripts as well as regular policemen.

In both Soweto and Alex, the atmosphere was one in which the police and soldiers roamed the townships, shooting at young people, often indiscriminately, whether they were arsonists, protesters or teenagers throwing clenched-fist salutes and shouting “Amandla!”

One morning, after getting off the bus, I was walking on my own to school when I heard the roar of an open-topped Hippo approaching behind me. Looking over my shoulder and seeing armed troops standing up in the Hippo and looking towards me, I fled. As the vehicle came alongside me, I dashed into the yard of a local mechanic, Mr Shongwe, who was fixing a car. Terrified, I asked him to hide me.

Leaving me under a car, he went out to the Hippo, which was now parked outside his gate.

“Where’s the terrorist?” a soldier shouted.

By God’s grace, Mr Shongwe stood up to them. In what I saw then, and still see now, as an immense act of faith and courage, he told them off in language that I can’t repeat here, accusing them of wanting to kill schoolchildren because they couldn’t catch “terrorists”. He must have pricked their consciences because they responded by leaving. I lay there under the car weeping, feeling useless, scared, dirty with oil, not sure whether to go to school or back home. I came out from under the car and asked Mr Shongwe what he thought I should do.

“I think go to school,” he said.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“Then go home.”

“I’m scared.”

“Then I will take you to school,” he said, “and explain to the teacher. And then you can go home and clean up because you are covered in oil.”

As I write, recalling the incident, the panic and tears surge up inside me again.

Looking back, it marked a point in my life at which I first understood the harsh reality of South Africa, and what it said about the spirituality of those in power.

Through the prayers I offered while under the car, I think I subconsciously decided that that was not what I wanted to be, that what that Hippo and those soldiers epitomised was not what I wanted to become in life.

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