Voices of June 16: A day of violence and fury - and regrets

Memories of the day 40 years ago, on June 16, when students took the first tentative steps towards freedom, are etched in the minds of those who were there and who led the uprising that shook South Africa.

sub_head_start A day of violence and fury sub_head_end

Seth Mazibuko, a pupil at Phefeni Junior Secondary School, was one of the student leaders on June 16 and deputy to Tsietsi Mashinini on the committee that organised the protests.

I turned 16 on June 15 1976. My girlfriend brought me a cake. We were in the dark, running away from the police. So my birthday cake was cut with members of the action committee. That was the only decent meal we had that week.

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The marches were planned at a community centre right across the road from a police station in Orlando East. The next day, June 16, the first group of marchers, led by Tsietsi Mashinini from Morris Isaacson High, arrived on Vilakazi Street.

As they were coming, the police were behind them. The police started throwing teargas canisters. The gods of Africa were with us. You know what happened? The fumes of the teargas were blowing back to them.

They were so affected that they then decided to release the dog. The first violence of 1976 was us beating the dog to death. That agitated the police. It was the fumes that were catching them and it was their dog. After that was another miracle of God.

Just as the police were busy trying to organise themselves, behind them came the second lot of students. The police were caught in the middle. They had to force their way through this.

That ’s when they started shooting live bullets. They shot their way out. That’s when Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu were hit.

In the chaos that ensued, more violence took place, including the death of Dr Edelstein at the hands of students.

The day was not meant to be violent in any way — it only became that when students started dying at the hands of police.

block_quotes_start Why did I lead children of mothers and fathers out of the classroom to be killed by Boers?                        block_quotes_end

There are people we don’t honour around June 16, the women. The first people to disguise us that day when the police began looking for us, the first people to sacrifice their dresses, were women. They gave us their dresses.

The first people to bring us water as we were fighting the teargas were mothers. The people who shot us were fathers. But we never speak about that soft side of 1976. It brings tears to my eyes whenever that happens.

That evening of June 16 we started counting our misfortunes and all the things we did right and all the things we did wrong, and the biggest one was that we failed to think that the police would react in the extreme way that they did.

We were children, we still had that heart that says: “They will be coming there as parents, they won ’t just open big fire to the 13- year- old. ”

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I was identified by police as one of the student leaders and went into hiding.

Then, on the morning of July 3, I was missing my family terribly. My mother, my father and my brother were so much in my heart and mind. I hadn’t seen them for a long time. I asked the guy who was keeping us in hiding: “Please take me home, just to go and see my parents.”

I walked my parents halfway to work and then I came back home. And I just decided to take a nap on the couch, because when you are in hiding you never sleep. It was about 8 o’clock in the morning when soldiers and police knocked on the door. Because of my small body, the cops didn’t think I was the person they were looking for.

They said to me: “Where’s Seth Mazibuko?” and I said: “Seth Mazibuko’s got a temp job in town.”

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They went into the bedroom, where my little brother was, and asked him where I was. My poor little brother pointed at me. So I got arrested.

I went through one of the worst times of my life. I was arrested under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which kept me in solitary confinement for 18 months. I was tortured, interrogated in the middle of the night. A teenager. A 16-year-old. I was the youngest political prisoner at Robben Island. I hardly had a prison uniform size.

Why did I lead children of mothers and fathers out of the classroom to be killed by Boers? In front of my eyes is the picture of Hastings . . . is the picture of Hector Pieterson. It’s like I killed them.

It’s like I killed them. If I didn’t lead the struggle that took them out onto the street they would be husbands and wives, uncles... that’s where my pain is.

* After his time on Robben Island, Mazibuko became a teacher and school principal. He is the chief operating officer of the Moral Regeneration Movement, an NGO focused on nationbuilding and social cohesion.

- Interview by Pearl Boshomane

sub_head_start ‘I could never go home again' sub_head_end

Murphy Morobe was a student leader at Morris Isaacson High School and on the action committee. Forced into hiding after the march, he was later arrested and imprisoned on Robben Island at the same time as Nelson Mandela.

On the eve of June 16 there was some tension that I took to bed with me. We were about to embark on a quest that had not been attempted before as students.

We approached students on Monday and Tuesday before the march to plead for discipline and not do anything to cause the authorities to approximate what happened in Sharpeville.

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What was a heavy burden on our shoulders was keeping that quiet and out of earshot of our parents. I was having dinner with the family while constantly sneaking out into the quiet night to prepare my banner and poster for the following day...

That was the last time I was home as I could never go home again.

On the morning of June 16 I did not even need an alarm clock to wake up.

My school was some distance from Orlando East, so I had to take two sets of transport to get there. On the bus we normally travelled on there was a palpable silence among students, only betrayed by conspiratorial glances at each other as they got off at different points knowing that we all had one thing in common that day.

By the time I got to Morris Isaacson High School — the morning sessions usually started at 7am before assembly — there was excitement in the air and animated conversations. As we finished the morning period, the bell for assembly rang and we were all just waiting for Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika to take over the morning’s prayer, which would give us our clarion call to head off into the streets.

Having been an activist for a couple years, I was quite surprised at the take-up among the students when we organised the rally, the speed and ease and support for the idea that we had to leave class that day and pledge solidarity with the other students who had been boycotting classes against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

My school being Standards 9 and 10, we were not affected by Afrikaans, but the students saw the state initiative for what it was: to impose the oppressors’ language on us, which was another tool for our subjugation.

block_quotes_start The worst feeling for anyone leading a march is the feeling of helplessness and inability to control it             block_quotes_end

After singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, we started singing other political songs of the time, such as Senzenina.

I do not remember the looks on our teachers’ faces, but they must have been that of total surprise.

When we went out into the streets it was a beautiful day.

With the mist and smoke rising as the morning sun got warmer and warmer, we snaked our way through central Jabavu, White City, Rockville, Dube and all the way until we got to Orlando West, with the column just getting bigger and bigger.

We had been very clear that the primary school kids were not to be in the march, but as the commotion and the din of protest and struggle songs increased, even they were swept into the marchers’ slipstream.

By then there were thousands of students marching in from all the cardinal points of Soweto and they took the police completely by surprise.

What came out in our trial a couple of years later was that the police did not have the resources to act against a crowd. One of the majors said he had to send his men to police stations to collect spare teargas canisters.

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The police at Orlando West had only guns and batons.

From the initial shooting of Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu and the killing of a police dog, things changed dramatically and the worst feeling for anyone leading a march or group of people is the feeling of helplessness and inability to control it. We did not even have loudhailers to broadcast to the crowd to disperse.

We had to find somebody with a car to drive around to try to get the students to disperse — by then we had seen the columns of SADF troops marching into the township and driving in to set up camp at the sports field opposite the police station, with helicopters hovering around and throwing teargas in all directions.

The first government structure was going up in flames as the students were retreating back into the hinterland of Soweto and so it was that the day ended with smoke, fire and death.

* After his release from Robben Island, Morobe became a prominent leader in the United Democratic Front and democratic government.

- Interview by Claire Keeton

sub_head_start Share of trauma that would last a lifetime sub_head_end

Four decades on, retired Lenasia neurosurgeon Professor Rasik Gopal reflects on apartheid's young victims who deluged Baragwanath Hospital on that day and his enduring regret that not all could be saved.

It happened 40 years ago, but that morning still springs crisp in my mind. I was a young doctor then — a 27-year-old neurosurgeon starting out at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

I’d just completed my studies at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland two years before.

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It was a world away from apartheid South Africa, where the quota system had forced  me to study overseas because there was no place for another Indian South African in a medical institution at home.

In all my time in Ireland, I had never seen anyone die from trauma. But June 16 1976, here at home, would serve up a share of it that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. That morning offered no hint of the mayhem to follow. I arrived at the hospital early and made my ward rounds as usual.

But at about 10am, I began to realise something was amiss.

The blaring of speeding ambulances was the first sign.

Within minutes, uniformed policemen, white and black, began streaming in with bloodied children. Many were limp, their small bodies racked with serious injuries — gunshot wounds to the head, blunt force trauma from batons.

The news spread quickly that there was trouble in the township — children were being shot indiscriminately in the streets by the police.

The hospital had a fairly high wall but outside the theatre there was a roof you could climb onto. From there, I saw the children marching, fearless, in their numbers and the armed police blocking their way, trying to drive them back down the street now lined with Casspirs.

The police looked as though they ’d been caught by surprise.

block_quotes_start We didn’t turn a single one away but some left tragically, under the veil of a white sheet, quietly wheeled down to the morgue block_quotes_end

But why should they have been? They’d been trained to tackle protests of a much more violent nature. Here, their antagonists were schoolchildren armed only with their banners, slogans and a few stones.

Pandemonium had broken out inside the hospital — crying, screaming, the slamming of feet and grating of gurneys against the floors. In an emergency like this, everything else fell away so we could concentrate on saving as many lives as possible. We did all we could do for them but we knew some of it would amount to nothing — the injuries to their young bodies were too devastating.

We didn’t even know who these children were. We had no way of identifying them.

They ’d come in straight off the street. This was not the time to ask questions and in any case, none of them could even answer because they were so badly wounded.

But the nurses’ reaction told us so much more. Not only were their neighbours among these youths. Some of these children were their very own.

There was a surge in hostility and anger towards the police. Like the other black doctors and nurses, I refused to fully co-operate with the authorities because I knew why they ’d brought these children to Bara. They were looking for information on their identities and injuries with a view to pressing charges against them. I couldn’t be a part of that.

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But we all kept strict medical records of our young patients’ injuries in case they needed those to sue the police in the future. We gave no indication that they’d participated in the protest and been assaulted.

The police seemed oblivious, neither scared nor traumatised by the realisation of what they ’d done. Any protest was against the law and was dealt with accordingly.

By the end of that day, about 150 children had passed through our doors. And sadly, about 10 or 15 had succumbed to their injuries. Children like Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu had to have been among them, but we had no idea at that time, with the sheer volume of broken bodies splayed in those beds.

We didn’t turn a single one away but some left tragically, under the veil of a white sheet, quietly wheeled down to the morgue. Their remains were kept here only for a short time, then moved to government mortuaries because these were unnatural deaths and postmortems were not conducted at the hospital.

In the days that followed, we helped the community to find their children and identify them, while we comforted the grieving nurses around us.

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That day changed the atmosphere in our hospital. The nurses were furious with the white doctors. There were clear divisions between black and white staff. The nurses showed great sympathy and caring towards the survivors, seeing them as heroes.

As black doctors, we’d been politically active prior to this, but the Soweto uprising stirred something deeper in us. As we sat in our cramped tea room, away from the white doctors’ larger recreation room, our political activism sharpened. We talked a lot more, shared ideas and information and became far more organised. Our children had shown us that something more demonstrative needed to be done to defeat apartheid.

I’m now 67 years old and I recently retired from Bara. But I often think of that day — of how huge it was. No one had ever taken on the police on that scale until that moment. It left me with feelings of triumph, anger and sadness. I admired the children for challenging that unjust regime.

But June 16 will always be a sad day for me, because no matter the political gains we made, children had to suffer and die for that cause.

My colleague, Dr Malcolm Klein, who was with me on that day, now lives in Florida. When we visit, our discussion eventually strays to the Soweto uprising.

It’s upsetting to recall those bitter events, but it was a day that thrust us into the eye of history.

This place has never been the same again.

- Interview by Joanne Joseph

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sub_head_start 'We had no clue what had happened'  sub_head_end

Birthdays are bittersweet for Shana Rosenthal. On June 16, the day before she turned 11, her father, Dr Melville Leonard Edelstein, was killed in Soweto. As a consultant to the West Rand Administration Board, he was trying to mediate in the turmoil but got caught in the crossfire.

The last time I saw my dad was the morning of June 16 when he dropped me and my older sister at school.

Strangely enough, he turned around and I thought he had forgotten something, then he waved again and left.

He also phoned my mom that day and had a long conversation with her, not a usual thing for him to do at work. Equally strange was him giving me my birthday present of earrings a couple of days before my birthday.

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I think he was close enough to the people to know the temperature in Soweto and understand that something was imminent. But he felt he was safe, that the community knew him and relied on him to be a conduit for them and a peacemaker.

The afternoon of June 16 we were at home and my aunt, my mother’s late sister, was there. There was a lot of noise and commotion in my mother’s room and she said to my aunt: “Take the children.”

My aunt came and took us to Mavis’s house (coincidentally my husband’s aunt) and would not let us near the TV. We did not know anything but we were eating chocolate, and nobody eats chocolate during the week.

Auntie Mavis took us to our house. On the way she stopped the car and said to us: “Whatever happens, you have to be brave for your mother.”

We drove to our house and thousands of people were there and we had no clue what had happened. My father was not a rabbi but he was a spiritual leader in the community and a very motivated human being, a giver.

I feel so robbed. His death was such a loss for my family and I would have loved my children to have known him. I feel so robbed.

This Thursday, on June 16, is my son’s bar mitzvah and a plaque has been erected for my dad in Soweto.

My son, Levi, will be reading from the Torah there, which for me is a very fitting and poignant tribute to the man, because of its mergence of his greatest loves: his family, his religion and his work.

- Interview by Claire Keeton

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sub_head_start 'There was remarkable urgency and everything was different' sub_head_end

Soccer boss Irvin Khoza was involved with Pirates and was a part-time cashier for the NPSL in 1976. At Morris Isaacson High School in the last '60s, his principal Legau Mathabathe and English teacher arranged, through the lare Rev Beyers Naude, that he attend political education classes at Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre and obtain a scholarship. On June 16 Mathabathe was still the principal of Morris Isaacson High School.

On June 16 I got up at home in Diepkloof Zone 6 to go to the house in Orlando West to meet people at Ma Setlogelo’s house. This house, on the side of a koppie separating Orlando West High School and Phuti Primary School, was a house of political activity and also football activity .

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I picked up a teacher in Meadowlands who said “the students are marching” and I dropped him at Phuti Primary School.

When I got near to Orlando West High School there was a big fracas and it was mayhem. It was turning into a no-go zone with students pelting the vans and cars of companies with stones.

The students were stopping the cars of people in the community to get all of us into the streets to express solidarity. They told us that two kids had already been killed. We were all part of the crowd.

The students said they wanted to get the bottle stores, beer halls and municipal offices out of the community and they were attacking them.

Football is a big family and powerful network —every street has a football supporter —and the news of what was happening spread by word of mouth.

I went home late that night and the action went on into the night and the following day started again.

The church of Regina Mundi was a meeting point for spiritual support, political speeches and briefing students. The police would throw teargas to scatter the people.

Families would share what they had and I would go to Kliptown to get food and bread to share since the lorries could not come in. There was remarkable urgency in the students and in my mind everything was different.

Most members of the “Committee of 10”, together with Bishop Tutu, were working to get Soweto back to normality. The culture was still there of respecting elders...

Legau Mathabathe, the principal of Morris Isaacson High School, was forever being terrorised by the police and at one point, after he was arrested, he indicated to the boys, through the township network, that if they hold meetings they must be careful or they too will be arrested.

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He was a very elegant dresser.

His dress sense was unbelievable for a school teacher, what we would call today a fashionista. His immaculate dress sense was an embodiment of his value system.

Mathabathe taught us values like being punctual, wearing our school uniforms, finishing homework, attending morning classes, afternoon classes, participating in school sport and choir.

It was his desire to give students an anti-colonial education, for them to know the world’s complex problems and be educated and well read.

We had well focused teachers at Morris Isaacson who imbued confidence and taught us pride. They had something special about them.

We used to like to emulate how our teachers walked, how they wrote —we modelled ourselves on them. They created a consciousness in us to become leaders and to have pride.

- Interview by Claire Keeton