Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-22

FANYANA MAZIBUKO: During all this there were various people and organisations that got involved.  However, I must shamefully say the teaching profession took long to get involved.  I remember that the very same year I went to a conference of the Transvaal African Teachers Association and at this conference I tried to get the crisis discussed. It was
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relegated to a commission which was never given an opportunity to report back.  And after that the organised teaching profession said nothing about the crisis.  This went on right into 1977.  In fact parents' organisations and other organisations were much more active than teachers.  Church organisations, priests, were much more active than the teaching profession.  However, I must give credit to certain individual teachers, specifically to Legoa Matabata and Mr Curtis Nkondo, who was introduced to me by Mr Matabata.  At the time I thought it was by coincidence but hindsight tells me that it was deliberate so that when Mr Matabata was detained he assisted to give me political direction and assisted in interacting with the students.  In my interaction with the students Mr Nkondo was always available for assistance.  
 As the harassment by police moved from students to teachers it became clear that teachers could not just shut up for ever.  On one occasion I came into the school after I had been on an errand, I found one of the teachers at Morris Isaacson bleeding, a teacher called Jeff Leghetu. He had been assaulted by police in my absence and I decided that this was a time to take action by teachers.  As I was considering the matter Mr Nkondo came in and we phoned Mr Matabata who was lying in bed ill at the time.  He had been released from detention and was very ill because of the tension.  However, we thought this was serious enough for us to contact him and he agreed that we should have a meeting among the three of us.  In the meeting which took place at about ten in the morning we took a resolution that we need to organise the teachers outside the existing organised teaching profession.  So we decided that we will call a 
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meeting the very same day.  It had been our practice that we should move very fast when we call meetings to avoid the police knowing about these meetings.  So by 12 o'clock all notices had gone out to all the schools in Soweto because we teachers on standby whom we had briefed before we started with the meeting to help workers to deliver the notices.  At 2 o'clock the meeting took place at the Methodist Youth Centre.  At this meeting we were to discuss what action teachers should take to support the students to stop the harassment of students and teachers.  
 At the meeting there was general agreement that some action had to be taken.  Various actions were suggested but we ultimately came with one decision, and the decision was that in order to shake the Black community into confronting government we had to resign en bloc. And we also had to give warning to the Department that if the Department and the government in general did not give an undertaking that Bantu Education would be scrapped we would resign in 14 days. 
 We wrote a letter which we submitted to the Department and we called a meeting at this place where we were explaining to the community what our intentions were.  At this meeting the community decided to back us up.  In fact a fund was set up that should teachers resign the teachers should at least get something to live on.  The 14 days past.  There was no reply to our memorandum directly but we got the idea that the Department was not going to do what we were suggesting, instead the Department called a meeting of all teachers in the region, where it cynically told the teachers that Bantu Education has been scrapped.  There was no more Bantu Education, there was Education and Training.  We regarded this as arrogance.  Shortly thereafter we went 
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round taking letters of resignation to teachers, and the teachers signed these letters.  Of the 750 teachers who were at the original meeting 503 teachers signed letters of resignation which were taken by me and Mr Nkondo to the Department and we submitted them to Mr Jaap Strydom, who I think in an attempt to discourage us he made us sign every letter we submitted that it was submitted by us.  And we almost walked out but we decided we will call his bluff and we signed the letters.  We signed all 503 letters.  By the next day we got from our informers within the Department, by the way we had already set a network of informers within the Department, that certain teachers had actually withdrawn their resignations, and we got copies of some of these letters.  And some of these letters suggested that Mr Nkondo and I went around toting guns and forcing teachers to resign.  If some of you remember Mr Jimmy Kruger jumping up and down on TV, waving guns that there are some teachers who were threatening teachers to resign.  This was totally untrue.  I never waived a gun at anybody.  I never forced anybody to resign, and we persuaded people to resign.  
 We also saw on television, which many of you may remember, three of our colleagues who appeared on TV stating that they had been forced to resign.  They had their backs to the cameras of course.  However we got to know who they were.  
 Soon after we had handed our resignations in these incidences we realised that we were about to be detained and we got this impression because at several points where we went to we got messages that the police had been there looking for us.  At the time we had a kind of informal office where we met and unfortunately Mr Nkondo made one 
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mistake of scheduling an interview with an overseas TV programme.  I think it was the BBC if I am not mistaken and they were traced by the police to this place which was a kind of underground office we had.  When they came to this place they questioned us what the meeting was about.  We said well we are teachers meeting about teachers things and they radioed their back-up and luckily we told them that we will continue with our meeting whilst they wait for their colleagues.  We had a back exit and we left. We met the police coming to the place on the way.  I must say that Mr Nkondo was an expert at escape and evasion of police.
 The first stop was a police station where we parked so that the heat got off.  Then the next stop was Mr Strydom's office where we knew no one would look for us there.  Unfortunately a few days passed, I had this burning feeling that I had to go and see my family, I had not been sleeping home for a number of days, and that was the evening of the 18th of October.  I went home, waited at a neighbour's house until it was dark.  I was persuaded that I should stay a little longer, so at about ten to four a.m. I went home.  At 4 o'clock they knocked and they took me away.  When I came to Protea Police Station I found Mr Manthata relaxed there together with Dr Motlana and others.  And then I realised it was a very big round-up of people.
 People stayed various times in detention.  Coming back from detention we found that various organisations had been carrying on the struggle.  An unfortunate thing I think happened that Curtis Nkondo who had been elected as Chairman of AZAPO had his brother, who had been travelling from Maputo to Lesotho, had the plane brought down by the South African Airforce and Curtis and I had to do everything to
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 try and get him released.  In our attempt to get him released we contacted all people we knew, Helen Suzman, other people and people in (break in recording) .... disciplinary hearing by AZAPO, I was made to Chair part of that hearing.  So Curtis and I decided we would recuse ourselves from that activities of that organisation at that time. 
 From that time on we concentrated with Curtis on the publication of articles in newspapers.  A conscience decision was made that we publish articles which would keep in the minds of the people a focus on what the problem was.  Fortunately some newspapers were cooperative and I think that strategy did not go far because sooner than we had started that both of us were banned and then thereafter we could neither work nor publish nor do anything.  
 By the way I had not mentioned that this before our detention we had got letters from the Department of Education and Training which said we should never, ever enter any premises of the Department, which meant for life we were banned from teaching.  So even when we came back from detention we knew that we would not be able to enter any school.