Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-23

MURPHY MOROBE: Now the, as far as the role that SASEM played.  The question of Afrikaans had been brewing in the township for a while.  I was doing matric, I was not personally affected by the Afrikaans question, you know, because the strategy of Government as far as that is concerned as we red it then, was to begin by introducing it in the lower standards.  That is in Form One, for example, and then in the Junior Secondaries.  It was clear that the strategy was that over time Afrikaans would become the language of instruction in all high schools.  We were just at the tail-end of high school life and we were going to miss it, but
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still we felt, given the fact that we believe in SASEM, that we had a role to play in terms of organising students that we should not allow that to happen because we had a broader picture that in the end it is not just about Afrikaans, in the end it is not just about Bantu education, in the end it is a question of white domination in South Africa.  It is something that we had a role to play to counteract and when the issue arose the school in Soweto that had been on strike against this was Orlando West Junior Secondary School.  I think to some extent the primary school Bellair Higher Primary School, if I remember, they had Form Ones that were housed there and there were also activities there.  
 Now, often history when it happens, it is a big blur, it is a lot of activity, but the important thing in history is that there are individuals at critical points that play certain important roles in terms of helping the process to move forward.  
 Here I would mention one person who was a teacher at that time at Orlando West Junior Secondary School who was a friend of mine and we were together members of the Black People's Convention and NAYA, the National Youth Organisation, who at some point met with me and raised the issue that at her school there is this problem.  The pupils there have been complaining about this.  What is SASEM doing about it, you know, and it was through that interaction, you know, that the matter of Afrikaans was then brought onto the SASEM agenda so that by the time we heard and we then asked her to put us in contact with one or two of the student leaders at the Orlando West Junior Secondary School.  The person she introduced us to happened to be Seth Mazibuka who eventually became my co-accused in the trial that we had to 
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go through.  She introduced us to Seth Mazibuka and who then, as a result of that introduction and subsequent relationship, he also eventually became a member of SASEM.  Such that when we had a SASEM General Council meeting in May of 1976.  
 We then placed the issue of Afrikaans as a medium for instruction on the SASEM conference agenda and this conference we held at the Welgespruit Fellowship Centre in Roodepoort.  We discussed this at length, we discussed other matters as well, but this preoccupied us and it was clear that from that conference that the only decision that came up was that SASEM had to take an active role to actually see what it can do to help the students at those Junior Secondary Schools.  Now, the point here is that when the decision was reached at SASEM the decision was that SASEM should consider establishing an Action Committee that would consist of some of the students from the effected schools which would then be charged with the task of looking at what to do and how to take the process forward.  
 This was May 1976 when we had this meeting and at that time there was brewing tension in the townships of Soweto.  I recall that, even well before June 16th, one of the incidences that happened that is related to the way in which the security police use to harass us.  I mean at Morris Isaacson High School thanks to our Principal who was able to allow us to have political meetings, even the debates that we use to have at Morris on Fridays, we were not debating about Daffodils and Lilies and animals and plants, they were able to allow us to debate, you know, about real social issues that affected us.  Morris Isaacson became a target of the security police.  At some point they would even raid us 
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when you are at school and it was through the Principal and the teachers like Fanyane Mazibuko who would us to escape in those periods.  Now, we then took the matter up.  Sorry.  Just to go back.  I was talking about an incident at Naledi High School before June 16th.  The police use to come into the schools, raid and harass students.  At one point the students at Naledi High School became terribly agitated by this fact and when the security police drove into the school yard and the whole school got out and the police were actually barricaded into the school.  They managed to escape, but the students actually burnt their police vehicle and it actually made the newspapers that the police escaped with their lives.  What I am saying is that it was a build up which even leading up to June 16th, newspapers like The World, at that time, actually were writing articles saying to Government that things are reaching an explosive state.  It is important that this issue is addressed.  
 At that time we in SASEM then, we were constantly working at strategies to how to intervene in that process.  We then establish SASEM and, I mean, the Action Committee.  The idea of the Action Committee then was championed by those of us in the SASEM branch in Johannesburg.  Amongst others there I would mention someone like Tsietsie Mashanini who was a classmate of mine at Morris Isaacson High School.  People like Dan Montsisi who was a student then at Sikanwatane High School.  We then established the Action Committee, but by then it was leading up to June 16th.  The only time we really got to have the date June 16th on our mind was on the 13th of June when the Action Committee held its first meeting at the DOCC Hall in Orlando East.  At that meeting we had representatives from different high schools 
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and we then decided that the form of action that we should take is a march.  It was the first time that we had to think of this kind of idea as a march because if one recalls, historically those kinds of events that happened many years ago in our history, I think the closest we came to mass action of some sort in the 1970's was with the Durban strikes in 1973, you know, that happened and the next time was when we had the pro-Frelimo rallies in 1974 after the collapse of the Portuguese regime.  So, a march by itself was a very novel idea to us and it did generate a lot of excitement and we then went about planning for that march.  It was on the 13th that those of us who came from different schools were then charged with the task of going back to their various schools to prepare and plan for this march.  Now, we also were to go to some of the schools that we identified were not represented at that meeting on the 13th of June.  
 Together with Tsietise we spent the two days of June the 14th and June the 15th travelling around Soweto.  Some of our friends had a car and we able to loan the vehicles to get us around the township because it is a major task.  We drove around to some of the schools and in some others you had problems with the Principals, in some others they were able to allow us to address the students.  We then announced the fact that we are planning this march on the 16th of June and the way in which we wanted that march to be conducted.  We then advised students about posters that they had to prepare to focus on Afrikaans and to focus on Bantu education.  We decided that we had to keep it very quiet and secret and not let our parents and teachers into the secret.  At lease we still respected our parents at that time and we 
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knew that certain things they might not approve of, but we were very convinced that that was the correct form of action for us to take, but it was important for security reasons as well to try to keep it to amongst the students.  I must say it was one of the more impressive things to see that even the police, given the fact that by Tuesday hundreds of students already knew, but the police were able to attest in our trial that they did not know about this march until the morning of the march itself.