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Essay

Layers of Meaning—Testimonies in Time

Introduction

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Differences, changes, and variations—individual or collective—are inscribed in the discourse by the passage of time and by the changing contexts in which the discourse was created. There are changes inscribed in the discourse by the particular context of the public but sinister courtroom. In the following pages I will address, in addition, those changes that were the consequence of the passage of time.

I will consider how, as time passed, meanings have changed as a result of hindsight and cumulative experience and knowledge. More than twenty years have passed since June 16, 1976, and voices, by whatever means they were recorded or documented, were different in the historical present of 1976-77. Individual memories of these events then were constructed and manipulated in the context of radically repressive state practices and the vulnerability of civil society. During this time, violence in the broadest sense was central to the lived experiences of historical actors not only as a result of its centrality to the practices of the authoritarian state but also because of the ideological discourses that accompanied them. The stories of Soweto were therefore almost immediately drawn into an official discourse that sought to discredit and silence them and that imparted and manipulated meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence—silence—further violated those who had experienced the events.

The voices were different again when they were recorded later, either as time went by or at the time of my research, in 1993-95. Finally, since 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has endeavored to establish an ethical relationship to the past and has yet again created a different historical context, one characterized by a new imperative to remember. These changes in the historical context raised new issues for the remembering of the Soweto uprising, moving this inquiry beyond the richness of the stories of Soweto and their historical analysis to a consideration of how the passage of time and all the changes—political, social, psychological—that have accompanied it shaped the way stories were remembered into history (i.e., by historians), in collective memory, and in the individual memory of those who were part of these events. Changes in meaning in the personal histories of Soweto need to be understood not only through the ideological lenses of the established narratives, whether of the government or the dominant resistance movements, but primarily through the lived experiences and memories of those who were there.

With the passage of time, events of a specific historical moment turn into "history." The differences forged by that interval1 are impressed on the stories of those who remember the events and narrate them during an interview or oral testimony. Such differences are best explored in those exceptional cases where there are two or even several document-discourses—one produced by a participant/actor in the event (Guha's "primary discourse") at the time, the other(s) composed much later, when that same participant/actor reflected back upon those events, producing a particular kind of "secondary source." The "objectivity" of such a secondary discourse, created by the time that has intervened, is constantly challenged by "the subjectivity of the protagonist as narrator."

Two documents/texts may thus "be read together as a record of his perception" at the time, "when events were still within vivid recall as a very recent past," and later, when the time that has intervened has allowed the author to don the historian's hat. Such a comparison allows the historian some insights into those aspects that the passage of time has brought to bear on memories and meaning.2

Murphy Morobe

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Related chapters:
Chapter 2, "The Narrative"
Chapter 3, "Official Stories"

Related essay:
"Winnie Mandela—Youth Leader?" One such set of testimonies is that of Murphy Morobe. We have his police statement from 1976 (undated and unsigned), his testimony before the Cillié Commission in 1977, and a series of interviews ending with his testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996.3

As time passed, those who took part in the uprising—especially when they were leaders or were seen as leaders—were often asked to reflect back and comment on the events of those days. When Murphy Morobe considered the past, he reflected on the authenticity and completeness of his own account now and in the past. Because of the speed with which the uprising spread and the multiple trajectories of action during those days, each eyewitness could see only a part of what happened. Direct physical and emotional experiences and their description were therefore limited by the space a single person could inhabit at any given time. How much easier, then, to describe organizational and other structures that might have been complicated and secretive but that did not disappear in a moment:

I think by its very nature, history is not something that any one person can claim to have total, you know, control of in terms of facts because even though we might be going through the same thing, but the perspectives from which this thing impacts on us will be different. So it will be difficult for me to say this is the most authentic account because even as I was centrally involved in those events I, for example, did not see how Hector Petersen was shot and killed you know. I, for example, did not see how Dr Melville Edelstein was killed, you know. So, those are things that happened at different points, but from the point of view of the organisation I think the account that I have given and I think what Dan Montsisi would have given, takes you more or less into the heart of some of the main players that were planning some of the things.4

During his testimony before the Cillié Commission, Morobe, almost as if he knew he had failed the expectations of those who ask about these events, tried to give a concrete explanation for why he had not seen certain things. When the group that he and Mashinini had been leading arrived at Orlando West High School and joined the students there who were waiting for their arrival, Morobe went onto the premises of Orlando West High School to inform the students there that the others were waiting for them.

I told the students who were outside the classes to come and join and they did join others. Outside the school premises I was unable to leave through the gate as the teargas had been fired by police before I could get out. The alternative route I could get was to scale the school fence and then join the other students, which I did.5

Zweli Sizane

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Related links:
Chapter 3, section 2 "Student Participants"
Chapter 4, section 3 "The Participants"

Related essay:
"Winnie Mandela—Youth Leader?" As time passed, the multiple stories and accumulated testimonies often completed each other and the picture of the uprising. In the interplay between different testimonies by different people at different times, the narrators reinforced each other and corroborated "evidence" that may have been previously tarnished, tarred as it was with the same brush of skepticism produced by knowledge of police efforts to force detainees to incriminate each other and falsify testimony.

Despite the fact that there are a few places where his testimony is inconsistent with Morobe's, Zweli Sizane's statement to the police on August 12, 1976, provided additional clarification for Murphy Morobe's story. Zweli was traveling with two journalists, Nat Serache and Jan Tugwana. Immediately after the first shooting,

as we were moving towards the Orlando bridge, the one next to the swimming pool, I saw Mefi [Murphy] Morobe, student at Morris. I stopped the car and called Mefi Morobe and asked where has he been. He then told me that he was unconscious because of teargas and has been lying in a classroom in Phefeni Junior Secondary and it was only then that he was fully recovered but still has a headache. We then drove back to Makhethla Stores with Mefi Morobe, where I bought him kurra powders. Mefi Morobe then said he wished to accompany us to the [Baragwanath] hospital and we… drove towards the hospital.6

Morobe's testimony and Sizane's statement were made under coercive circumstances, but twenty years later Morobe, in his account before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he no longer needed to fear police reprisal, in turn sufficiently supported Zweli Sizane's story. It was particularly poignant, as Sizane himself, a leader in the South African Students' Movement, could no longer speak, having suffered such severe trauma while in detention that he no longer appeared publicly as a witness to that time—in fact, his testimony in 1976, before the Cillié Commission, seemed curiously abrupt and ineloquent for one so active and experienced in politics: (See: Chapter 3)

After that volley there were a number of students injured and together with a colleague of mine we decided to ask one of the journalists who was in the area, you know, to help us because there was general pandemonium now, you know. We tried to bring back the students, it just did not help. There was fear, there was crying, all of the students were lying, you know, really immortalised [immobilised] on the floor, on the road, etc. So we decided, perhaps, let us try, you know, myself and a colleague, Swele Sizanie [Zweli Sizane] from Orlando East, to use one of the journalists cars to drive to Baragwanath Hospital to try and go and see any of the students who might have been injured because at least we knew that the likely response of the police was to go to the hospital afterwards and detain or arrest some of those who were arrested. We then made our way to Baragwanath to try and see what we could do there, but on the way to Baragwanath we came across an additional convoy of police cars and in armoured cars that were driving down Potchefstroom Road towards Orlando. At that point we decided we have to turn back and go back to Orlando West so that we can warn the other student that we think there is a bigger problem coming. We did our best to try and disperse the students at that time. It did not matter now about meetings or anything, we just were concerned to get students off the road.7

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In later testimonies, narrators had to negotiate the difficult terrain of memories located in the past and of meanings sometimes situated in the present of the telling. In the following statement Morobe clearly brought concerns of the present into his memories of 1976:

We decided that we had to keep it very quiet and secret and not let our parents and teachers into the secret. At least we still respected our parents at that time and we 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.8

The sense of history, of the historical importance and continuity with other events that had gone before, has grown with the passage of time, although there is some evidence, even in documents frorm the time, that people saw themselves certainly as part of a larger struggle, if not necessarily as part of a glorious tradition of struggle:

I must say, coming from a situation where one had read a bit of history and one knew about events like Sharpeville at that time and it is something that weighed very heavily on my mind, especially the possibility that that could happen. I had a very strong inclination to fight against that because in my understanding and recollection, it was precisely those kinds of things that the Government did in the past that it wanted to use to intimidate uis into not wanting to decide or consider any kind of action whatsoever. It was an idea, that once it came to your mind, you tried to push it out before it could prevent you from deciding to do anything about your life and we did that. Of course as the events of that morning unfolded, you know, in a way we were proven wrong. It was still the same police, it was still the same regime and they still reacted to us in the same way they did in Sharpeville in 1960.9

It was a thought similarly articulated by Sibongile M. Mkhabela, who also connected the events of 1976 directly to the present context of the narration, implying that with increasing violence the respect for life that had been a common thing of the past, has disappeared:

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I must say there was an awareness that things may go wrong. So one kind of anticipated violence. But because we anticipated it, and because at that time respect for human life was so paramount, we actually resolved, I remember at the meeting on June the 13th, at the DOCC, at the student body, we resolved that we would be as peaceful as possible. That's why I am saying in our naivité and in giving credit to a system that deserved no credit, we had underestimated how brutal and how unreasonable the whole system was.[Emphasis added.]10

Antoinette Musi

Antoinette Musi (now Antoinette Sithole) is Hector Pieterson's sister. Of the three people in Sam Nzima's famous picture of the uprising, she is the only one whose voice has remained with us. Related chapter:
Chapter 2 "The Narrative" The memories of the Soweto uprising have become part of the fabric of her life, assigned simultaneously to the deeply personal (private) life story and to the intensely public discourse. Her multiple narratives, testimonies, and statements are another example of how one person's story traveled through time and historical change.

Antoinette Musi was frightened on the morning of June 16, 1976. This was the impression left by her statement to the police (1976) and her testimony before the Cillié Commission in July 1976. She was alarmed by the boys and girls from Morris Isaacson School who, disrupting morning-prayer assembly at her school, demanded, in tumultuous voices as loud as the roar of an airplane, that the students of Thesele Secondary School join their march. She was afraid of the police vehicles that stood waiting for them in front of Orlando West High School. For a time, she hid herself in a house not 200 meters from the school, but then she came to stand on the stoep [porch] to watch. She was fearful for her little brother, Hector Pieterson, whom she had seen running with the other children. She called him and ordered him to stay with her.11 He remained at her side for only a few minutes and then disappeared again:

He was there for a short while. Thereafter I could not see him any more… I did search for him… I did not [find him]… I stood there amazed. Thereafter I saw a group of young boys coming along. It was then that I realised that Hector was being carried by these boys.12

The 17-year-old schoolgirl from Thesele Secondary School, White City, Jabavu, whom I first introduce in Chapter 2, has carried the story of June 16, 1976, with her through the years and has spoken of the day many times. She had been so frightened that she did not even remember there had been a photographer present but, the morning after the uprising began, her terrified face was everywhere on the front pages of the newspaper, in the photograph of the body of her brother in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubu:

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I got scared thinking the police would come after me—which they did. They came and my grandmother said: "Is Antoinette the one who killed her brother? You should be giving statements, not her." But they took five statements from me all the same.13

The police did come after her, although not before they had intimidated someone else, whom they had mistaken for Antoinette. Christina Buthelezi was shot by the police the afternoon of June 16, 1976, and was hospitalized with several others at Baragwanath hospital. She has been paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair ever since.

What hurts me most is at the hospital they would come with firearms. They would actually point guns at us lying on the beds asking us do you know power. Were you a leader at school in any way? There was actually a time when they brought a picture where Petersen was lying down after he was shot. The girl that was next to Hector on the picture, they were thinking I am the one. They actually insisted that I must say yes, I am the one.

[…]

I was so angry at the time and when they asked me about power I just told them that they only know the power which is in the power foam plus, the Omo soap. This angered them very much. That is why they started bringing guns. They started believing that I was the leader, I know everything.

[…]

Since the police have mistaken me of being Antoinette Sithole I told them they must check my uniform. I was not dressed like Antoinette Sithole. I was not in [uniform?] when I have got injured. They must just go to my school and check the uniform and see the design. They will see the difference.14

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One of Antoinette Musi's statements to the police was taken by Sergeant Augustyn on July 2, 1976, at Protea police station and was translated from Sotho to Afrikaans by Jarius Sekotlong. In the police statement and also in the line of questioning that the state's advocate, Percy Yutar, pursued during her testimony before the Cillié Commission, there was evidence of the kind of story the police—and the state—were after. They were eager to identify the leaders and, to their thinking, instigators of the uprising. Antoinette Musi could not single out any one child who had given orders alone.15 Her statement to the police furnished the picture of intimidation and fear that the police wanted and at the same time raised the possibility that, for some of the students, these were indeed frightening moments.

Die kinders van die Morris Isaacs skool het ons toe beveel om saam met hulle te gaan… Die leerlinge van Morris Isaacs skool het 'n dreigende houding teenoor hom [die skoolhoof] ingeneem, met die gevolg dat hy toe weggehardloop het. Ek en my mede leerlinge het toe maar by hierdie kinders aangesluit, omrede ons bang was.

The children of Morris Isaacs[on] school then ordered us to go with them… The students from Morris Isaacs[on] school took a threatening attitude towards him [the principal], with the result that he then ran away. I and my fellow students then just joined these children, because we were scared. [Emphasis added.]16

What's this?

Musi, like so many others, had her own story to tell and, in an interview in 1994, the intimidation and anxiety she had felt initially were absent. The choice to join the march seemed much more that of the students themselves:

The first sound I remember from 16 June is a big flying machine. We were at school assembly and we were praying, our eyes closed, and we heard a big noise above us. You know how curious children can be, so we dashed out. The noise came from students who were rushing past. My younger brother Hector was in another school, and when we joined up with the other students I wondered if he was there. [Emphasis added.]17

In 1996 she spoke before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

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It was on the 16th of June as we were marching against the Afrikaans. When we arrived at Pafeneng there was confusion. There were police. They threw us with tear gas. We ran away and we hid ourselves. While we were hiding we found the police, they were on the other side Andy Thomas Hall and then we went out. While we were still standing outside there was someone coming in front of the school, and who is this person? And I thought this is Hector. I called Hector. I said to Hector he should not, and we go back home.

There was a gun sound. There was teargas and there was confusion. I saw people hiding themselves and then I hid myself too. While we were standing there I then—I was afraid because I didn't know where Hector has gone to and people were holding something. And then I moved forward and I could not see properly, and I saw Hector's shoe.

Mr Makubu said… and ran. While he was running I asked where are you going. He said there's a clinic just nearby. While we were running someone stopped in front of us, this car, my mother came out from the car and she said put him inside the car, I will assist you. Mr Makubu was carrying Hector and said Hector is dead.

When we arrived at the clinic we found a doctor there. When the doctor went on he said there is nothing I can do. He asked me the names, who I am. After that I stayed there in the clinic without knowing what to do. There came two women who were teachers and they went home with me.18

Despite the distance in years, it is this testimony that somehow rings true with the personal pain, fear, and confusion of that day. To her, Hector "was just a little boy who liked jokes … a shy little boy" who had made her laugh. In 1976, she and Hector "were just kids" who "never spoke about politics."19

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Because Hector Pieterson did not belong to a political organization, he must probably be considered among those whose political coming of age began and ended on that day. Drawn into the march by the force of the moment, he was caught in the crossfire, an unsuspecting, innocent victim of the police, who, terrified and callous at once, resorted to bullets to control the march. The possibility was left open by his sister:

I think now that we were marching, most of the schoolchildren, we only went to the secondary schools and high schools, so maybe because of curiosity kids from all these lower primary schools they all followed us. So something like that really.20

When Antoinette Sithole spoke before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, twenty years had passed since the day that had seen the death of her brother. And so the weight of these memories, and their importance, both symbolically and materially, to the ongoing battle against the apartheid system, have been with her a long time. It was a question that the Commission directly addressed:

Mr. Lewin:

Antoinette could I ask, you must have re-lived this whole experience many, many times since—well in the last 20 years, thinking back on it now do you feel any—what are your feelings about that, looking back on it now?

Ms. Sithole:

At first I was very, very angry, but later I realised that no Hector didn't die in vain really, because all what we wanted was the language must be changed and the later generations would enjoy their school, because we couldn't enjoy school because of this Afrikaans. So I am very happy now because things have changed.

Her answer was revealing, reflecting her negotiation of the difficult terrain between the past and the present. Does her anger belong with the moment of Hector Pieterson's death in 1976 "at first," or is it a thing of the many years since, replaced "later" and softened by the realization that his death had not been in vain?

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Ms. Sooka:

How do you feel about the fact that so many years after June '76 we now have a new government, do you feel that Hector's death in any way contributed to what we have today?

Ms. Sithole:

Of course it did, it did contribute very, very much.21

Clearly her statement that "all what we wanted was the language must be changed" was an expression of political hindsight. Again, it is not easily placed in time. It is not clear whether the realization or understanding of the reasons for the march became familiar to her on the actual day of the march or immediately thereafter. It was Winnie Mandela's repeated presence that gave Antoinette Musi's experience a larger political meaning:

The days after Hector was killed were so terrible. Many people came to visit us. Winnie Mandela came every day. At first we didn't take this as a political thing. But when she came we knew it was more than kids demonstrating against the teaching of Afrikaans. I began to see that more would happen after Hector's death, and that it would go on until apartheid was abolished.22

As "many people" rallied around the family, pain, frustration, and anger were given historical perspective and meaning. In this interview conducted by Mark Gevisser before the democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, a time that was marked by unceasing, largely political violence and mounting tension as the elections approached, Antoinette Sithole tried to emphasize her own understanding of Hector Pieterson's death as embedded in a larger historical narrative.

Before all this our family was not political, but now my uncle said to us: "There are things you must die for." And I came to see that maybe it is better, even if you are dead, if it brings about changes. This made me strong. Suddenly Hector was a famous person… He became a symbol that we had achieved something.23

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This interview also resonated with a darker mood, undoubtedly a consequence of the present in which it was embedded. Change after Nelson Mandela's release in 1990 came slowly, and the period of transition to the first democratic elections in 1994 was fraught with violence, especially in the townships:

But now I must tell you that I have lost hope. I have become so very depressed. When Mandela came out of jail in 1990, I thought: "It's our turn now!" I thought things were going to change so much that we would forget there ever was apartheid. But all those dreams are now so shattered that I can hardly believe I had them. Now our people are killing one another and I don't understand it. I will vote, but maybe for the Christians, not for a political party like the ANC. Once in my life I tasted true freedom. I was invited to Berlin, by this school named after Hector. Related chapter:
Chapter 6, Section 5 "The Wounded"

Related interview:
Patience Tshetlo Oh, the atmosphere! We used to go out at night until 3 am sometimes. Of course I was scared—in Soweto you don't roam the streets at night unless you have a death wish. I asked my host if it was safe and he said: "Here you die only when you are ill." I was so thrilled. This was in December 1989 when the Wall came down. I saw men and women crying and hugging people they did not know and I wished South Africa could be like that. We have a wall because we don't trust one another. I can't even go over to my mother's place and talk to the neighbours about what is happening, because it's not safe to talk about anything. I just don't understand it.24

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, challenged to justify yet another inquiry into the uprising,25 (See: Chapter 3 Part 4) seemed not only aware of the gaps that historical and other narratives have left but was also sensitive to the historical importance of these events and to the authenticity of the voices of those who were there, who were part of the events:

Ms. Mkhize:

[…]

[W]e hope from people like yourselves we will be able to get the details that have not been depicted anywhere. I will ask you just to share with the Commission and the audience as to what kind of information emerged at that time around Hector's funeral, whatever you can think of if you look back. The people who came to visit your family, the speeches that were made, whatever you think might be significant which you can recollect. I know it's a difficult thing but it might be of use for this Commission to get a clearer picture.

Ms. Sithole:

Ja there were people that were coming at my grandmother's place and they all talked about that one day we will be free of which it was really encouraging, because I think most of the people didn't think that June 16th really gave us freedom you know because we were kids. So I think most of the people were talking about freedom and that we will one day win this battle of apartheid.
(See: www.doj.gov.za)

Again, her testimony spoke to the importance of the community that closed around her and her family after her brother's death, providing the solace of historical importance and continuity. The testimony revealed also that there remained important questions about the political and historical significance of a movement led by "kids." These were questions that undoubtedly were relevant at the time to parents (as well as to the government, which, we will see in chapter 3, used the very youth of the participants as an indicator of the irrelevance of the movement) and indicative of the changing perceptions held by the participants as they grew into adults. Here, Antoinette Sithole spoke with the voice of the adult she had become, distancing herself from the children around Hector. In both of her answers (above and below), the shifts between layers of memory, time, meaning, and identity were fast—sometimes they occurred within one sentence—and it becomes near impossible to distinguish a past consciousness from a more present one:

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Ms. Mkhize:

Did young people who were with him at school at that time, you said he was 12, did they also have a similar perspective, what was their reaction, were they also hopeful at that time as early as the age of 12?

Ms. Sithole:

I think they were confused actually because most of the kids by that age they were not really in politics so maybe they heard elderly people talking about that but you know how kids are. I think they were confused, they couldn't understand. [Emphasis added.]26

In a private gesture that once again linked the present to the past, Antoinette Sithole named her firstborn son Hector.

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Notes:

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