OBITUARY | Enoch Duma’s pen was mightier than apartheid’s sword

A detainee who spends time in solitary confinement devises ways of surviving. Some ensure they have painkillers they swallow before they enter the den of torture. Some create communication means among themselves to share information about the torture and what the police already knew.

The latter lets those still facing torture know what to not deny because the sole purpose of refusing to give information is to defend the gains of struggle. If they already know, what is the point of suffering? Still others go the dangerous route of befriending some of the cops. One has to be sharp to do this because if you miscalculate, you can fall into a dangerous trap.

Enoch Duma, former journalist, academic and boxing fanatic, used both during his detention in 1977 after he was detained under the Terrorism Act and kept in jail for nine months, ending in a trial and an acquittal.

He had been detained with, among others, Aitken Ramudzuli and Aifheli John Thabo, who were not so lucky and spent years on Robben Island.

Duma, 89, died peacefully last Wednesday at his home in Roodepoort, surrounded by his daughters and grandchildren. He had been unwell for some time. He will be buried on Friday at the Fourways Memorial Park after a service at the St Michael’s Anglican Church in Bryanston.

Duma started freelancing in 1962 while still in Durban where he was born and raised. He later trekked to Johannesburg to follow his dream and, just like all black journalists of that time, navigated between the then Bantu World (later just The World), Rand Daily Mail, Drum, Sunday Times and Golden City Post.

The quiet, soft-spoken but very deep thinker was subjected to the pass laws of the time and the migratory laws that prohibited blacks from moving out of the ethnic rural reserves to any city without permission. That permission was difficult to obtain and entailed visits to the commissioner’s office to make the case why one should be allowed to stay in an urban area. If granted such permission, one had to be subjected to demeaning health inspection where adult men would queue naked, each holding their clothes, and be scrutinised by a white doctor who feigned a medical inspection.

Duma went through all this to be allowed to stay in Johannesburg. It marked his attitude to white rule and turned him into an underground operative of the then banned ANC. Duma used his journalism to highlight both the plight and resistance of black people under minority racist rule. His stories included the daily pass raids during which hundreds of so-called illegal migrants from the rural areas, who did not have permits, were arrested.

He documented the raids in townships, where municipal police would arrest black men and women and sometimes just tie them to poles to wait for police trucks to load them and take them to prison. The crimes ranged from permits to brewing African beer. It was about these arrests that Miriam Makeba was to sing in her song Khawuleza Mama.

Duma documented these but also realised that while this served to raise the consciousness of the people, the “real” struggle needed to be prosecuted to overthrow the brutal settler regime that had made black people foreigners in their own land. 

The emergence of Black Consciousness in 1968 and the militant organisations it spawned touched Duma. By 1973 the Union of Black Journalists was formed. He was elected to lead the biggest region, Southern Transvaal and served in the national executive. The arrival of the UBJ, later banned in 1977, was to change the character of black journalism with more coverage of political developments by papers such as The World and spilt into the white-orientated Sunday Times, where Duma was then working for its Extra edition aimed at blacks.

He also joined the ANC and was as part of a cell of Umkhonto we Sizwe operating in Soweto when he was arrested and tortured horribly at the notorious John Vorster Square, now Johannesburg Central.

He told the story of his detention to his family, that the police had wanted names and addresses of friends and where they were hiding. He had refused to give this information and was tortured for nine months at John Vorster Square. As part of the torture, he was denied sleep for days on end and said the police would try to get information from him while he was tired.

Through an ingenious underground system, he made contact with friends and family on the outside. Having failed to break him or turn him into a state witness, he was charged with subversion under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. He was represented by the late George Bizos and was found not guilty and discharged at the end of nine months of incarceration.

The special branch or security police were unhappy with his release and he got word from a white police woman that he should leave because he was about to be rearrested. The befriending of a police officer paid off.

Thus began the life of a wandering soul as he bundled his few belongings, left his wife and children in Dobsonville, Soweto, and fled to Lesotho, where he survived an attempt to capture him and return him to SA. It was the late MK commander Chris Hani who arranged his departure from Lesotho and flew him to Botswana, where he again only stayed for three days before flying to London without a passport.

It was in London, with the assistance of the ANC, he was given travel documents quickly and he immediately left for New York, where the Lutheran Church looked after him.

By 1979, he had moved to St Paul in Minnesota and his family to joined him in 1980. He studied history at the University of Minnesota from 1981 and graduated in 1983 with a BA. Two years later he received his MA in journalism and mass communication, cum laude.

The family moved to Oakland, California, in 1986 and with his family continued to work in the liberation movement, mobilising international people and Americans in particular, about the atrocities being committed in South Africa against black people. They called for sanctions and boycotts against SA, and a number of international companies such as Coca-Cola, IBM and Kodak became targets for disinvestment.

From 1986 to 1992 he was involved with student groups. He served as the president of Perspectives on South Africa (POSA), which conducted public awareness engagements, advocated for the freedom of South Africa and strengthening of the anti-apartheid movement.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, marking a new dawn for South Africans in exile, Duma chose to stay behind and initially pushed for sanctions to be retained until a new democratic government was in place. He enrolled for a doctorate in philosophy at the Western Institute for Social Research and graduated in 1997.

After receiving his PhD, he worked in various community colleges across northern California and received the top award of “Teacher of the Year” while teaching journalism, English, mass media, communication and politics. He taught until 2001 when the family returned to South Africa.

Back home he also served as a volunteer teacher to ready matriculants for their exams.

This second born child of Baptist preacher Mfana William Duma and Grace Duma (Ma Mkhize) was born on May 29 1934 in Durban. He was raised in Durban until his family was forcibly moved to Lamontville township in 1939 under the segregationist colonial laws.

He matriculated in 1952 from Sastri College in Durban. After matric, he started writing as a freelancer for Golden City Post, a nationwide paper, from 1960 to 1962. In 1962, he moved to Johannesburg and married Kitty Maureen née Gwele who died in 2019. They were blessed with four daughters: Clarry (late), Babs, Ndu and Ntsumi. He died on May 10.

— Additional information by Ntsumi Duma