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

MURPHY MOROBE: I think the question of organisations like the ANC and their involvement has to be understood in, in fact, in its proper historical context.  The 1970's were a period that itself was not without activities by organisations like the ANC.  When we grew up in the early 1970's we use to listen a lot Radio Freedom which use to broadcast from Zambia, from Lusaka.  It was illegal for us to listen to Radio Freedom, but we use to listen to it anyway at night.  Our parents did not know this, we would find little quiet places to listen to the voice of Radio Freedom and that was the ANC reaching out to communities.  I think even the other organisations like the PAC, they had their publications smuggled into the country.  The ANC had its own publications like Sechaba that were being smuggled into the country.  Even in the 1970's there were ANC operatives like Mombarries and others who actually infiltrated into South Africa and they ended up getting arrested and ended up in prison.  For those of us who were young, in my case in Soweto, we happened to have very, you know, what we call underground connections with ANC operatives.
 Here one could mention at least two people.  We use to call them the Old Men, you know, and who had been on Robben Island in the 1960's, who came out and they settled in the township.  One I need to mention is someone like Joe Gqabi.  Joe Gqabi was staying in Mfula, he came out of Robben Island, he was confined to his house, he was banned.  He use to work for Jabula Foot at Westgate and we use to have contact with him in the evenings under cover of darkness 
SOWETO HEARING GAUTENG PROVINCE
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because through that contact we would get more information about political perspectives that helped us to understand more what we were involved in.  
 Another person to mention is someone like an old man called Elliot Shabangu who use to stay in Dube, who himself was an ANC operative, and through them we use to have those kinds of underground linkages with the ANC, but it is important to state here that even within the Black Consciousness Organisation there was a general understanding that our role, we use to use the term our role is to keep the home fires burning, because we understood that those liberation organisations that were banned, were going to eventually come back one day and we saw our role as continuing on where they left off and preparing the ground for their eventual return into the country.  So, within the Black Consciousness Organisation there was general acceptance that you could belong to either of the liberation organisations, it was a matter of your individual choice.  Even for those of us who later went on to form the South African, I mean the Students, the Soweto Students Representative Council, the SSRC, we knew that we had different persuasions within that organisation.  
 At one point at a meeting which we held, a secret meeting of the SSRC, at the AME Church in Orlando West.  One of the guys thought some of us were more militant than the others and at one of the meetings the issue of whether the SSRC should affiliate to either the ANC or the PAC was raised.  I was one of those in that meeting that argued very strongly that it was not a necessary debate for us to have.  There was a common point that brought us all together in terms of what we were to fight and the issue was education 
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and it was immaterial whether we had an affiliation to the ANC or to the PAC.  At that point it was important that we maintain a united front as the SSRC.  That is apart from the fact that it would have been very dangerous for us to have had those discussions in a forum like the SSRC because our total number in the SSRC, we were about 100, you know, which was composed of about two representatives from each high school and secondary school in Soweto.  That made up a number of 100 and for me, at that time, to discuss a matter of underground activities with 100 people in a mass meeting, that was a direct ticket to jail without a need for a visa for that matter.  So, but then I think that the argument held sway and we decided in the SSRC that it was not necessary.  As I say there were some of us who did have those underground connections with the ANC, but we did not want to expose them and even expose other people to it because we knew that it was dangerous.

YASMINE SOOKA: Could you also focus for us on the role that SASEM played in the uprising and the actual beginning of the uprising on the 16th of June?