Place of Thorns: Black political protest in Kroonstad since 1976

Place of Thorns

Black Political Protest in Kroonstad since 1976

Place of Thorns

Black Political Protest in Kroonstad since 1976

Tshepo Moloi

Published in South Africa by:

Wits University Press

1 Jan Smuts Avenue

Johannesburg

www.witspress.co.za

First published 2015

Copyright © Tshepo Moloi 2015

Published edition © Wits University Press

Photographs © Individual copyright holders 2015

978–1–86814–687–1 (print)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.

Cover photograph © Tshepo Moloi

Edited by Monica Seeber and Pat Tucker

Proofread by Lisa Compton

Index by Margaret Ramsay

Cover design by Hybrid Design

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and acronyms

Introduction

1 Protests before 1976

2 ‘Kroonstad was now aware’: The Black Consciousness Movement and student demonstrations, 1972–1976

3 The YCW, labour protest and government reforms, 1977–1984

4 Town council politics, student protest and community mobilisation, 1985–1989

5 The unbanning of the ANC, political violence and civic politics, 1990–1995

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

This is the first of an anticipated series on Local Histories and Present Realities, which has been mounted at the University of the Witwatersrand for the past seven years. Neither the history nor the present reality of South Africa’s smaller towns have attracted much attention over the past decades, even though a substantial section of the black population lives there or nearby. Yet as recent history tells us, they leave an imprint on South African history which is dangerous to ignore. Kroonstad is one of a group of towns which has been hugely significant in South African history. Its name crops up again and again in the background to more celebrated events. The centrality, which is even easier to ignore in their current depressed condition, was largely due to Kroonstad’s role as a crossroads of South Africa. It is located on the Vaal River, and has been a major crossing point for years-its Sesotho name—Bodibeng ba Likubu, where the hippopotami lie, is a Sotho recognition of its salience for travel somewhat later at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. It was also the infrastructural bridge where the railways south to north and from Natal passed each other by. It was to an unusual extent a melting pot in the Free State as elsewhere and was home to a prosperous range of businesses, hotels and shops. Among other things, it was home to a bustling Jewish population part of whose records lie in the Jewish Centre in Cape Town. It was also at the centre of a huge farming district, which made it a site of permanent residence to a black population and a staging post to the Witwatersrand.

Not surprisingly Kroonstad was a centre of black political activity, not least centering on its educational facilities. Its name crops up in a host of activities from the time of the ICU in the late 1920s and early 1930s, through student revolt of 1976 to the malignant role of the 3 million gang in the 1990s. Tshepo Moloi has chronicled all of this with careful balanced and meticulous detail. His is a classic example of the riches that local histories yield. He has consulted a vast range of primary material stretching from the African (and other) newspapers of the 1930s, through municipal and many other sources to provide a rich and provocative picture. Perhaps the crowning glory of this study is its massive reliance on oral testimonies, (85 in all) much of which were difficult to access, which provide a mass of human detail and human sensitivities to this book. This is a must read book and the beginning we hope of a new historical perspective.

JSM Setiloane

Principal of Bodibeng High School, 1962–1976

Acknowledgements

The completion of this book would not have been possible without the assistance, support, encouragement, constructive criticism and intellectual guidance of numerous individuals. I would like to thank all the people who generously supported me during the course of my field work and writing of this book.

First, I would particularly like to express my deepest gratitude to Professors Noor Nieftagodien and Phil Bonner for persuading me to agree to convert my PhD thesis to a book and for their continuous encouragement. I would also like thank Prof. Nieftagodien for his insightful understanding of the ‘local’ politics; it changed my narrow view.

I am deeply grateful to Profs. Clive Glaser, Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, Mucha Musemwa and Dr. Maanda Mulaudzi for their intuitive comments at the seminars organized under the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ programme. Thanks also to Dr Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu and Prof. Linda Chisholm for their significant contribution, particularly to chapter three of my thesis, which part of it was published in the Southern African Historical Journal, Volume 63, Number 1, March 2011.

Many thanks also to all the staff and post-graduate students in the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ programme for their support and encouragement. Zahn Gowar, administrator in the programme did a splendid work in assisting me through the course of research and writing up. I also appreciate the constant encouragement I received from Drs Arianna Lissoni and Franziska Rueedi.

I am deeply indebted to Ntate Mpopetsi Jonas Dhlamini and Ntate Michael Baba Jordan for their interest in my study and unfailing support. Ntate Dhlamini, in particular, greatly assisted me in identifying and making contacts with potential interviewees, and later conducting some of the interviews for me. I am also grateful to my friend Dr. Chitja Twala, whose support never flagged.

I am most thankful to the financial support from the National Research Foundation Chair in History, the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the Ford Foundation. Many thanks also to the staff of the University of the Witwatersrand Libraries, especially the Historical and Literary Papers and the South African History Archive, for their help in all my enquiries.

I am deeply grateful for permission to use the South African Democracy Education Trust’s interviews. Thanks also to Dr. Twala for allowing me to use some of his interviews. The late Pule Yster Moino, Dr. Anthony Bouwer and Ntate Dhlamini, I thank you for unselfishingly making available your reading materials on Kroonstad. I would also like to thank all the residents of Kroonstad who gave me permission to use their phoographs, and in helping to locate them.

Tshegofatso Leeuw, Plantinah Dire and Molefe Mahautsa helped with transcribing and translating the interviews; and Esmeralda Dicks and Malebone Rapoo did a splendid job in translating some of the Afrikaans materials to English. Without your assistance this book would not have come to completion.

Much of the success of this book is the result of the people who read and commented on the manuscript, especially the anonymous readers; and the editors Pat Tucker and Monica Seeber. I am grateful to the Wits University Press for undertaking to publish this book. Roshan Cader and Andrew Joseph helped in steering the process of the publication.

I take this opportunity to thank my family, especially my parents, Stoffel and Edith, for their understanding and unwavering support under trying times. To my brothers, Thabo, Tebogo and Kagiso, thank you for your constant enquiries about the progress of the book. My special thanks are also due to Asania Aphane and our daughter Thato.

Lastly, but not least, I owe a great deal of gratitude to the residents of Kroonstad’s black townships, who this study is about. Their patience, openness, friendship and trust spurred me on. I owe particular thanks to Ntate Ngope Motaung, Andre Kotze at the Moqhaka Municipality Archives, and Ntate Mokete Victor Duma, the former municipal manager of Moqhaka municipality, for granting me permission to use the municipality’s archives. I am particularly grateful to Ntate Motaung for his relentless assistance in accessing these archives. A great deal of gratitude is owing to all my interviewees (their names are listed below). Without your support and cooperation this work would not have been possible. Thank you very much.

Abbreviations and acronyms

Introduction

What is it about an undistinguished, if picturesque, northern Free State town called Kroonstad – or, more accurately, its black residential areas – that makes it a fertile field of study for a social historian?

For one thing, its history. Seventy-five years after it was established in 1855, Kroonstad was recognised as the second-largest town in the then Orange Free State (OFS). The town has two black townships: Maokeng¹ (‘place of thorns’ in Sesotho), whose black residents initially came from all over South Africa and from neighbouring countries; and Brentpark, established in the latter half of the 1950s to accommodate the town’s coloured community in line with the requirements of the Group Areas Act.

This book demonstrates that in the 1980s Kroonstad’s black residential areas lagged behind other black residential areas across the country when it came to protest politics. This was mainly because in Maokeng and Brentpark, at least until 1989, there were no pressing socioeconomic grievances – these areas were led by, respectively, the town council and management committee which made every effort to meet the residents’ basic service needs without increasing rent (or, at least, by keeping it at an affordable level).

The study that led to this book concentrates on a politically significant area which has received scant scholarly attention. In fact, in their chapter on activists’ networks and political protest in the Free State, historians Chitja Twala and Jeremy Seekings make an important observation: ‘... overall, political struggles in the Free State did not compare with those in many other parts of the country’.² Perhaps this has discouraged researchers and scholars from undertaking studies in this region. The observation does not, however, imply that there is an absolute absence of work on the Free State, or parts of it. In 1985 the city council commissioned a book to celebrate Kroonstad’s 130 years of existence. The book, a massive 645-page volume, provides useful information about the establishment of Kroonstad, the development of the town and its white residents, and the role of the white city council.³ Until recently it was the only authoritative history of Kroonstad. Apart from alluding to a few incidents such as the role played by the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) and the boycotts against increased rent in the late 1920s, the book is silent on political activism in the black townships.

Place of Thorns makes a significant contribution to trying to understand black people’s experiences and responses to apartheid from a local perspective. For the historian Noor Nieftagodien, local history is crucial because it elevates black people from being seen only as peripheral actors and it also gives attention to ‘... local leaders of popular movements, teachers, home-owners, former gangsters, and young people, who ... invariably would appear as no more than footnotes in conventional narratives’.⁴

Patricia Kay’s Notre Dame and Phyllis Ntantala’s A Life’s Mosaic have each dedicated a chapter to the history of Kroonstad. Kay describes the important role played by the Roman Catholic Church in introducing education in the black locations in 1907, and Ntantala sheds light on the daily living conditions of the residents in the old locations in the 1930s and early 1940s, and alludes to the presence of the ICU and African National Congress (ANC).⁵

Books by Antjie Krog, poet, author and long-time resident of Kroonstad, on the other hand, deal – in some considerable detail – with political events which took place in Maokeng and Brentpark, mainly towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. In A Change of Tongue, she recounts the ‘first and only truly inclusive’ march organised from Brentpark to the centre of town to say ‘this is our town too and we demand equal rights here’. For her, even though this march was ruthlessly suppressed by the police it bridged the gap between the residents of Maokeng and Brentpark.⁶ And in Begging to be Black, Krog narrates a story about the murder of the leader of the Three Million Gang in 1992. The book also provides glimpses of politics in Maokeng in the mid-1980s – for example, Krog alludes to the competing political factions in the township, the Maokeng Democratic Crisis Committee and the Activists’ Forum, and describes how these divided the ‘community’.⁷

In spite of the valuable contribution these authors and scholars have made through their work, none has attempted to explore protest politics (or lack thereof) in Kroonstad’s black areas in the 1980s. This partially explains the obvious omission in the literature of the crucial role played by the Town Council of Maokeng, especially its chairman Michael Koekoe, in restraining protest politics in Kroonstad.

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Literature on political mobilisation and protest in South Africa is relatively abundant. Some scholars specifically focus on youth, students, labour or the underground. With the notable exception of Jeremy Seekings, scholars have avoided researching the reasons some townships lagged behind in terms of political mobilisation and protest. In his study of Kagiso township on the West Rand, Seekings demonstrated that this township experienced political mobilisation and protest belatedly because ‘political organisation was very weak in Kagiso in 1984–85, and there were no pressing local issues around which mobilisation occurred’.⁸ In this volume I make the same point, but go further and emphasise the centrality of the role played by the town council and its chairperson (and, to a lesser extent, the management committee in Brentpark).

Post-apartheid South Africa ushered in a resurgence of the study of black politics and protest. Currently scholars’ and authors’ interests have seemingly shifted to autobiographies and biographies – mainly of the leaders of the liberation movements; the role of the ANC’s and Pan Africanist Congress’s (PAC) military wings, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) respectively, in the struggle for liberation; and, recently, the service delivery protests. In contrast, little attention has been given to the contentious and uneasy relationship between the leadership of the ANC and community-based structures caused by the transition from apartheid to the democratic dispensation.

This book contributes to an understanding of the relationship between the ANC, at both provincial and national levels, and civic associations (or civics) at the local level. It demonstrates that lack of consultation by ANC leaders, who sometimes had little or no understanding of Kroonstad’s local politics, backfired and cost the ANC vital votes during the first democratic local government elections.

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Several considerations motivated the choice of Kroonstad as a case study. Firstly, Kroonstad’s black townships, particularly Maokeng, have a distinctive feature: a relatively permanent African population, and a comparatively small one. In 1988 the population of Maokeng was estimated at about 70 000.⁹ Eight years later the transitional local council for the Greater Kroonstad Department of Community Services placed the population of this township at 99 585.¹⁰

Kroonstad town, unlike other towns, particularly to the east of Johannesburg (known as the East Rand), has never been a mass industrial area agglomerated by diverse ‘manufacturing clusters: metal industry, chemicals and food’. Although Twala and Seekings note that ‘both population and industry are concentrated in the north-west corner, which includes the goldfields around Welkom as well as Sasolburg, Parys and Kroonstad’,¹¹ Kroonstad had far fewer industries, particularly manufacturing industries, than the other towns in that locality. Its economy is largely based on service industries and these, unlike the mining and manufacturing industries, did not attract large numbers of labourers. This partially explains why Kroonstad’s black residential areas did not experience the problem of squatter settlements. Nor did it have hostels accommodating migrant labourers (the hostels which were established in the black old locations to house employees of companies based in Kroonstad were closed after many of those companies left Kroonstad following economic recession in the 1970s). Because of this, and because Maokeng, unlike other townships, was not divided along ethnic lines, it did not experience the ethnically driven political violence that erupted at the beginning of the 1990s.

And finally, because education played a key role in the development of Kroonstad’s black townships, especially the area which later came to be known formally as Maokeng, community matters were always led (or influenced) by the ‘respectables’ or the educated elites – at least until the late 1970s. This helps to explain the constraint on mass political mobilisation, especially violent protests, which became the norm in the township only from the mid-1980s. The ‘respectables’ believed in resolving issues through dialogue.

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Research process

The information for this book was obtained using the life history interview technique through which social historians focus on the interviewee’s life holistically. The interview covers early childhood, family history (the backgrounds of grandparents, parents and siblings), education, employment, social life, religion and political activities. The idea is to have a deeper understanding of the individual’s life. Through the life histories of my interviewees I was able to gain an understanding of the circumstances – from an individual’s perspective – that caused them to be involved in the political processes in Kroonstad’s black residential areas. This technique also helps to explain their actions.

Life history interviews, as will be seen in the book, have their limitations. Sometimes interviewees tend to confuse events or the date when events happened – or participants in the same event recall it differently. For example, in an interview Tsepo Oliphant, who was born in 1958 and in 1976 was doing Junior Certificate (JC, today’s Grade 10), confused the date when the students at Bodibeng High School demonstrated in 1976. He claimed that the demonstration took place on 15 June, a day before the Soweto uprisings. The demonstration was actually on 24 August. Again, when I interviewed former students at Bodibeng about the morning they took to the streets in 1985 demanding that the prefect system be replaced with a student representative council (SRC), they could not remember who among the teaching staff had announced the prefects.

It is for this reason that the celebrated oral historian John Tosh cautions that life histories should be ‘heard alongside the careful marshalling of social facts in the written record’.¹² One of the ways to overcome the limitations of life history interviews is to interview more than one person. This helps when verifying information. Although oral history has its limitations, it is nonetheless a capable methodology to discover ‘hidden histories’ or undocumented histories of ordinary people. Hence, Tosh asserts that ‘problems in [oral history] should not be grounds for having nothing to do with oral history’. And the sociologist Monique Marks asserts that notwithstanding the limitations, oral history ‘is a satisfactory source’.¹³

My first contact with Kroonstad was in 2006, when I was employed as an oral historian for the South Africa History Archives and Sunday Times Oral History Project. Part of the project was to introduce oral history in schools, with the objective of training high school and secondary school students to research the history of their local communities, write a report and present it. Two schools were identified in each of the four provincial towns in which the project was to take place. Among them were Bodibeng and Brentpark Secondary in Kroonstad. After contacting the schools and presenting the project, I began my preliminary research. I interviewed a substantial number of people in each town, including former teachers, religious leaders, members of youth and student congresses, adult political activists, ‘ordinary’ members of the communities, and many more. From these interviews (and archival research) it became clear to me that Kroonstad, particularly its black townships, has an interesting history which, surprisingly, has not been adequately documented.

Towards the end of 2007 I registered for my doctoral studies in the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ programme, headed by Professor Philip Bonner at the University of the Witwatersrand, and I chose Kroonstad as my case study. Conducting research in a township that is not your birthplace, or a place where you have spent most of your life, has its challenges. But it also has its advantages. To my interviewees in Maokeng I was an ‘outsider’ and I was constantly reminded of this – although not maliciously. According to Marlize Rabe, ‘... the insider versus outsider debate is ... not new in social research’.¹⁴ Kikumura, cited by Rabe, sums it up as follows:

On the one hand, advocates for the outsider perspective generally argue that access to authentic knowledge is more obtainable because of the objectivity and scientific detachment with which one can approach one’s investigation as a non-member of the group. On the other hand, proponents of the insider perspective claim that group membership provides special insight into matters (otherwise obscure to others) based on one’s knowledge of the language and one’s intuitive sensitivity and empathy and understanding of the culture and its people.

With the help of Mr Mpopetsi Dhlamini, a former teacher, inspector and long-time resident of Kroonstad, I identified people for interviews. After retiring, Dhlamini founded Rebirth of Kroonstad, a non-profit organisation focused on capturing the history of Kroonstad, and particularly of Maokeng. Dhlamini was born in and had lived all his life in Kroonstad, and his vast knowledge of the area and of people from different backgrounds helped me to understand the political nuances of the town, and to gain access to the ‘relevant’ people (as he put it) and learn who to contact for other sources such as archival materials, especially in the municipality. He introduced me to people as the ‘young man from Wits [University], who is doing a very important job: writing the history of Kroonstad, something that is long overdue’. He always emphasised to the residents of Maokeng that it was imperative for them to participate in the research by granting me interviews, because one day they would be ‘gone’ (dead) and their history would be forgotten or, worse, distorted.

This seemed to work. People made time for me. They welcomed me into their homes and offices. Some, like Hennie Ludik, a former employee of the Town Council of Maokeng, even entrusted me with their personal photographs and a few pamphlets.

Inasmuch as Dhlamini’s knowledge of the area and its people was helpful, it proved, at times, also to be detrimental. He referred me only to the people he knew – the people who, according to him, would ‘give you the best and honest interviews’. He tended to dismiss other people as ‘irrelevant’. In my observation these were mainly people he did not take ‘seriously’ (that is, people outside his circle). Moreover, he seemed mostly acquainted with the older residents, people of his generation. However, he also introduced me to some of the key members of the student and youth organisations in the township, although his knowledge of this generation was limited. To gain access to them I had to rely on referrals by other former members of student and youth organisations I had interviewed.

This book is based on interviews with eighty respondents from different social, economic and political backgrounds conducted over a period of six years, between 2006 and 2012. Among them are former teachers, local councillors, civic leaders, gangsters, religious leaders, former trade unionists and former cadres of MK and APLA, and former student and youth activists – representing a diversity of backgrounds and voices that have helped to bring to life the rich and complex history of Kroonstad’s black townships.

Endnotes

1 The name Maokeng was used long before the Anglo-Boer War to refer to Kroonstad as a whole, but was not used formally until 1984, when the Town Council of Maokeng took over the administration of the African townships.

2 Twala, C and Seekings, J (2010) ‘Activist Networks and Political Protest in the Free State, 1983–1990’, in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds) The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 4, 1980–1990. Pretoria: Unisa Press, pp. 766–7.

3 Serfontein, D (1990) Keurskrif vir Kroonstad: ’n kroniek van die ontstaan, groei en vooruitsigte van ’n Vrystaatse plattelandse dorp. Johannesburg: Perskor-Boekdrukkery.

4 Nieftagodien, N (2010) ‘The Past of The Local in History Workshop’s Local History’, in African Studies 69, 1 (April), pp. 41–2.

5 Kay, P (1984) Notre Dame: Under the Southern Cross. Johannesburg: Ravan; Ntantala, P (1992) A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala, University of the Western Cape Mayibuye History Series No. 6. Cape Town: David Philip.

6 Krog, A (2003) A Change of Tongue. Johannesburg: Random House, p. 113.

7 Krog, A (2009) Begging to be Black. Cape Town: Random House Struik, p. 172; see also Krog, A (1995) Account of a Murder. Johannesburg: Heinemann.

8 Seekings, J (1992) ‘From Quiescence to People’s Power: Township Politics in Kagiso, 1985–1986’, in Social Dynamics 18, 1, pp. 20–41.

9 Die Noordelike Stem – The Northern Times, 21 October 1988.

10 Samuel Tanya et al. (eds) (1996) ‘ Bringing Houses to Maokeng: A Community-Based Approach’, Research Report for Community Agency for Social Enquiry and Maokeng Community Development Trust, July, p. 3.

11 Twala C. and Seekings J (2010) ‘Activist networks and political protest in the Free State, 1983–1990’, in South African Democracy Education Trust (eds) The road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 4, 1980–1990, Pretoria: Unisa Press, p.767.

12 Tosh, J (1991) The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. Harrow: Longman, p. 210.

13 Marks, M (2001) Young Warriors: Youth Politics, Identity and Violence in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, p.15.

14 Rabe, M (2003) ‘Research Reports: Revisiting Insiders and Outsiders as Social Researchers’, in African Sociological Review 7, 2, pp. 149–61.

CHAPTER ONE

Protests before 1976

The time from the early 1950s up to 1963 was one of protest politics in Kroonstad. First, women protested against the extension of passes to include African women. Towards the end of the 1950s, the black residents – seemingly influenced by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – protested against the municipality’s oppressive laws.

Before this time (apart from the period when the residents rallied, first behind the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union [ICU] and later, in the mid-1930s, the Registered and Ratepayers Association), black people in the locations avoided engaging in protests and confrontational politics. The reason for this, and for the intermittent existence of black radical and confrontational politics in Kroonstad, was the restrained approach adopted by the branch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC, in 1923 renamed the African National Congress) in Kroonstad. The role played by moderate bodies such as the Native Advisory Board (NAB) and the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives (JCEN) helped to contain radical politics in the locations. Most of the residents in the old locations sincerely believed that their continued support for these bodies would yield positive results for them. But it was not to be.

The situation was made worse by the Orange Free State African Teachers Association (OFSATA) and the Society of Young Africa (SOYA). Although these bodies did not shy away from challenging the government and expressing their radical views, they nevertheless were overly cautious about not involving themselves in protest action. It did not help that their memberships, especially OFSATA’s, were composed of teachers, the educated elite, who would rather discuss and negotiate