OBITUARY | Poet and activist Molefe Pheto had the final word

When the announcement was made that the plane had landed, ntate Molefe Pheto seemed to go into a trance. He started beating his drum more incessantly. The setting was OR Tambo International Airport, and it was July 30 2011, and the plane’s load included a special consignment, the ashes of Black Consciousness stalwart George Wauchope.

Wauchope had died in exile in England and had been cremated there. His instructions had been that his ashes should be brought back home and scattered into the Klip River in Soweto.

And so, on that wintry morning in the setting of modernity and its flying machines that can today almost fly themselves, Pheto sat on a stool in the welcoming lounge of international arrivals, drumming Wauchope home. He was to do this the whole day until he stood on the bridge linking Dlamini township with Kliptown, where he drummed as the ashes were scattered into the Klip River.

The drum has been a major part of Pheto’s life. His poetry is accompanied by drums, his orchestra lessons teach about the accompaniment of the drum to keep it real, to keep it Afrikan. At virtually all ceremonies of his organisation, the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), Pheto and his team would be found doing their thing.

On March 27 this year, well-known author Nape 'a Motana presided over an online meeting of local and foreign-based writers and artists to discuss ways of celebrating Pheto’s 90th birthday, which was coming in June.

What came of that gathering was a committee known as MolefePheto@90, which decided that though his birthday was in June, a fitting celebration would be held on July 18, which coincided with Mandela Day, but had been chosen because it was the nearest date after his actual birthday when the Soweto Theatre was available.

Pheto had indicated that though he now lived on Bangadile farm in Magalies in the North West, he wanted to celebrate in Soweto, where his major activist life as an artist and political freedom fighter happened.

A show that included an orchestra of 21 children, drummers and singers, visual artists, poets and writers was put together. Names such as Ntu Nokwe, Tharollo Seatlholo, Glenn Ujebe Masokoane, pianist Yonela Mnana and a video screening organised by internationally renowned artist Eugene Skeef, based in the UK, topped by a giant portrait of Pheto done by Chabani Manganyi, made for a show to remember.

There was, however, something odd about the occasion, the celebrant was nowhere to be seen. On the way from Bangadile to Soweto that morning, Pheto had suddenly fallen ill, was rushed to a doctor, who recommended that he be taken to a hospital. In the end, as a military veteran, he ended up at No 1 Military Hospital in Tshwane. He stayed there for 14 days until Saturday when he passed away.

And with that, the outpouring of grief, and some level of guilt that the celebration could have been done earlier, and maybe, just maybe, he would have enjoyed the exquisite performance and drumming that had been laid on for him.

He missed that last drumming, but another mega drumming is planned for the 16th at his family farm, Bangadile, when he will be laid to rest. In keeping with his wishes and his lived experience, there will be no church service when he goes, instead 90 drummers are being assembled to drum for each of his life’s years.

It will be a fitting tribute to this international poet, musician, music teacher, writer, political activist, freedom fighter and military veteran, who survived brutal torture by the apartheid security police at John Vorster Square, where he was kept in solitary confinement for 271 days, almost all of them without seeing any sun at all.

The torture was so intense that after spending three nights under non-stop interrogation, standing, and without sleep, when he was allowed to sit down for the first time in three days, he couldn’t.

He writes in his book, And Night Fell — Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa, that he believed his body was dying as his joints would not obey any of his commands. His body was rebelling. His ankles would not move, and as he was about to fall, a policeman rammed a chair behind him and he flopped into it, knees still straight. He says the pains all over his body, triggered by the sudden sit down, “were worse than when I had been standing”.

That was April 1975, on the notorious 10th floor at John Vorster Square, now Johannesburg Central police station, where a number of detainees had been killed during interrogation by the security police.

Pheto had been detained and was being held under the Terrorism Act, which allowed for indefinite detention without trial. It also prohibited visits by relatives, own doctor or lawyer.

He records this in his book , published in 1983. He states that after his body collapsed and he couldn’t move on his own, he was half carried to the lift to take him down to the cells.

The tormentors were giving him a break. As the lift door opened, his wife Deborah, stepped out, saw him in that condition and screamed his name rushing towards him. There was confusion as the assault team had not anticipated that Pheto’s wife would be bringing him clothes and food on that day, at that time.

He was quickly whisked away, but she had seen him and more importantly for Pheto, he had seen her. He was to remain in custody for 285 days, 271 of them in solitary confinement. He was charged with aiding people to skip the country to go for military training. The charge didn’t stick and he was discharged in court.

Born in Alexandra Township, north of Johannesburg, in 1935, he was schooled at Alexandra Swiss Mission Primary and then Orlando High School in Soweto.

He studied music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London from 1966 to 1968, then became an associate member of the school. In 1969 he took extra studies at the school, learning voice, the double bass and orchestra conducting, which he completed in 1970.

He returned to South Africa in 1971 and was instrumental in the formation of the Mihloti Black Theatre group that year. Mihloti’s programme was to perform theatrical pieces and poetry relevant to the liberation struggle against colonialism. It shunned collaboration with white artists, arguing for a pure black arts movement that was unashamedly political.

“We in Mihloti knew the risks we were taking, but we were still determined to contribute our bit and some of us suffered the consequences. Prior to my detention in 1975, Mihloti Black Theatre had joined hands with other theatre groups, individual artists, painters, sculptors, writers and poets to form Music, Drama, Arts and Literature Institute (MDALI).

“The major project of MDALI was an annual black arts festival, starting on the 1st of April each year, and went on for four or five days, Besides performances by different theatre companies, and individual poets, there was also an arts exhibition by artists and sculptors including works from Mozambique. This had never happened in the townships before,” Pheto said in a recent interview.

MDALI organised three of these arts festivals in Soweto, and Pheto had just closed the 1975 festival the night he was detained.

He was the founding president of the Soweto-based Medupe Writers’ Association until he went into exile. Medupe grew to become South Africa’s biggest poetry and writers’ group, with poets such as Boitumelo Mofokeng, Matsemela Manaka, Ingoapele Madingoane, Chabane Manganye, Duma Ndlovu and Maishe Maponya among its prominent members.

Medupe was banned on October 19 1977, together with other Black Consciousness Organisations, including two newspapers and an ecumenical periodical that had been severely critical of the colonial regime. 

On his release from the detention in 1976, and following on the June 16 student uprisings that started in Soweto that year, Pheto left for the US in 1977 with the manuscript of what became And Night Fell, detailing the torture and abuse he underwent at the hands of the police.

The title comes from a chapter of that name, detailing his desire and hope for the sun's rays to touch him in a Hillbrow police cell on his first morning there after more than 200 days without seeing or feeling the sun at John Vorster. The chapter chronicles a detainee’s attempt to deal with the boredom of solitary confinement as he watches the sun move throughout the day, with hopes for a sun ray touch that never came.

He also wrote of the elaborate “funerals” he conducted of insects that fell and died into that Hillbrow cell, whiling time away, keeping himself sane. He lived in exile in the UK , where he immersed himself in advancing the struggle for freedom and was a founding member of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania , where he served on the Central Committee. He was a trained soldier of the Azanian National Liberation Army .

On his return he joined the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), where he was also a member of its Central Committee and still an active member until he died. At Azapo’s last congress held in Mangaung last month, Pheto was awarded the inaugural Steve Biko Award for long service to the BCM.

Pheto’s other book is The Bull from Moruleng, Vistas of Home and Exile. His writings have also featured in other compilations such as Gathering Seaweed, African Prison Writing, which features Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Ken Saro Wiwa, Agostinho Neto and Ingoapele Madingoane, among many other prominent African leaders who have tasted prison.

Pheto leaves his wife Deborah and four children.

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