IGHT With Margaret Thatcher, James Street writers all dissociating * ly meant to sleep sounder in their beds.
But Enoch Powell has pyre.' such sentiments. Even Tory conference, Powellism:
relatives here. Demonstrators met Powell as he arrived in Croydon to deliver his 'repatriate them' speech.
ENOCH POWELL was condemned from all sides last week for his advocacy of a forceful repatriation policy.
Callaghan, and Fleet Unionist MP, black people in this country are supposedbeen condemned before by such worthies. In 1968 he was condemned when he said: *We must be mad, literally mad to be permitting the annual inflow of 50,000 dependents... it is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral In 1968 it was not considered proper to make public Tory politicians, not to say Labour MPs, considered these words outlandish. That was 1968. In 1976 things have changed. At last week's Margaret Thatcher combined opposition to 1976 Powellism with an echo of 1968 'There could be as many as half a million immigrants entitled to come into this country, because they have We just couldn't take them. We should have to change the law or have them in in a very small
liberation' INTERVIEW WITH TSIETSI MASHININI LEADER OF THE SOWETO STUDENT DEMONSTRATIONS. NOW IN EXILE IN BRITAIN.
Could you tell us what life is like in Soweto?
I don't know in what way I can portray the picture. But Soweto is the biggest black township in South Africa. It has about 80,000 houses, in which more than a million people have to live.
Very few houses have electricity. Of those with electricity, most of them belong to the "bourgeoisie' in Soweto. It is ghetto life all the way. Very few gas stoves around. There are lots of basic needs people cannot afford because of very low wages. In fact, when a survey was done in 1974 it was found that for 60 percent of the people in Soweto their wages are just enough to keep them alive, without satisfying any other needs a human being has.
You don't own any property except your furniture. The house is not yours — it belongs to the Bantu Administration Board. You are in the urban areas for the purpose of either schooling or working. If you are not doing either of the two, you are sent to the homelands.
Soweto has got very few recreation facilities; it has two cinemas, about six municipal halls and a few scattered playgrounds here and there. It has almost 300 schools, but there is no university in Soweto. If you want to go to university, you go to one of the ribal universities.
mentioned bourgeois layers in can you explain that further? They a very small percentage. In fact they ve a special township called Dubi. It's bit like Hampstead her. That is where you find most of the big houses and mansions - most of the people who stay there are doctors, lawyers and people who have got the best jobs in town. The rest of the people are labourers and drivers.
Could you describe the conditions in the schools and the education system for blacks in South Africa?
Besides having to buy everything you need at school, you pay high school fees. Most of the students from rich families are the ones who get scholarships. The classes have almost pupils in them, and there are two or three on a desk even at high school level. At primary school level you sit down on benches in rows with no desks at all.
Our schools don't have heaters. The Everything else in the classroom is provided by the pupils.
The school I come from, you enter at 7 and school goes out at 5.30 with two breaks in between, one at 10 for 20 minutes and a lunch break between 1 and 2 o'clock. You get punished for not having shoelaces, belts, ties and buttons, and if you are a girl and you are wearing a tunic you get punished if your buttons do not correspond with your tunic.
Can you describe how the recent student protest developed around the Afrikaans language?
A South African high school student — because the eruption started at high school level, around the South African Students Organisation (SASO) — cannot articulate in very good terms what are the elements of the operation. He cannot tell you that Transkei is another aspect of oppression because of this and this and this, but in one way or another the student understands and identifies with all elements of oppression like this Afrikaans thing -that this, our education, is simply to domesticate you to be a better tool for the white man when you go and join the working community.
WHO KILLED THE SOWETO SERVANT 16 june, memorable day. black youth revolting down in soweto, in the ghetto.
White servant, white man working in te gretto for waitisin.
"kill everything white' the black youth shouted dr melvile edleston or some such name a soweto servant died who killed him? who struck the blow that killed him who must be charged who spilled white blood white valuable blood white vulnerable blood white like black blood white blood that killed BLACK BLOOD????
and murdered white blood that white soweto servant blackness killed him So this Afrikaans issue it only compels you to qualify in South Africa and work for the racist regime, because that is the only way you can communicate with your boss. You are on different levels.
A number of junior secondary schools went on strike and then some went back, but there was one it particular, Phuti, which went on strike for six weeks and they would not go back until Afrikaans was scrapped as a medium of instruction. During that period a number of incidents happened. Any school which was involved in any incident of some sort, the press built that up as another protest against Afrikaans language.
I realised that people were fed up with this sort of thing, but nobody had the guts to start anything. I decided that if we were to demonstrate it would have an effect because there has never been a demonstration before in Soweto. There were demonstrations some time before we were born or when we were little kids, like the Sharpeville demonstration, of which we know very little because any material, written material, about Sharpeville was banned.
We heard that the students of the University of Witwatersrand had demonstrated. So I thought that if we could demonstrate it would be something out of the way. I was the President of the South African Student Movement (SASM) at my school, Morris Isaacson; I called the students together, and on the Wednesday a week before 16 June we talked about this thing. I delivered a speech on the South African situation and got the students in a mood to do anything.
On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I gave them the briefing for the demonstration. On Saturday we put a placard at the school gates, saying: *Notice — no Security Branch allowed. Enter at risk of your skin.' Now the press put that up again as another protest against the Afrikaans issue. On the Sunday there was a SASM meeting of all the students in Soweto. I went to the meeting and got a few chaps from the other schools to help me, and we decided to mobilise all the high schools and junior secondary schools.
We did that on Monday and Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we went on the streets demonstrating. We were very peaceful all the time and there The idea was to converge on this junior secondary school and there myself and a number of other students had drawn up a memorandum to the effect that we Soweto students totally rejected Afrikaans as a medium of instruction and we were not going back until this was scrapped. We were converged already and I was still trying to tell the students to settle down so that we could address them properly when the cops started shooting.
How were the workers strikes organised after the student protests? After 16 June we realised that there were too many killings, so we tried to get a method whereby we could hit the system and reduce the casualties. As we did not have guns, our only weapon was to cripple the economy of country which lies in black hands. So the idea was to stop workers going. to work.
We distributed pamphlets and students were circulating, that is how they were organised. the time they wanted to be involved in the struggle, but there were no concrete organisations which could announce: don't go to work. It could only be done through the students.
What was the Student Representative Council?
The SRC was formed after 16 June when we were planning the second demonstration for the release of detainees. I requested each school to send two representatives and these representatives formed the SRC. We could not have SASM representatives we did not want this thing to appear as if it had been organised by SASM otherwise SASM would be declared restricted organisation. But even so, all the members of SASM were detained and I am the only one left of the national and regional executive coun cils.
Do you have any connections with the ANC [African National Congress] or PAC (Pan African Congress]?
As far as the students in South Africa are concerned, the AN and PAC are extinct internally. Externally we are aware they exist. Internally they are doing no work, there may be some are Going Do you think there is a diff political outlook between movements, the ANC and PAC the Black Consciousness Moyen Yes there is. There were a numb clashes between ANC and BCM ers because the ANC leaders dic want to recognise the BCM liberation movement.
Why didn't they want to reco BCM?
They do not want to understand •BCM was formed when ANC wa liberation movement. But ANC banned inside the country, so a liberation front had to come.
The BCM was formed in There were student councils in N Orange Free State, all over Africa, and they came together formed SASO - that's the body of SASM. SASO and S belong to the students - SASO a university level, and SASM at school to lower primary level.
Then there's the Black People's Convention (BPC) with the black community, the Black Allied Workers Union with the workers, and also the Black Federation and the Union of Black Women's Federations which concern themselves with different sectors of the community.
The ideology is the same: to make the black man more conscious of the evil of the white man, elements of oppression and so on. The ideology concerned is to peacefully bring about a change into the South African social BLACK POWER IS ME Black power!!!!!
THAT'S ME!!!!!!
Kruger if you ban black power You ban me If you ban consciousness You ban AFRICA Kruger 1 am BLACK POWER 1 am AFRICA I am BLACKNESS I am 2 years old 1am black 1 am 107 years old I am power I am a girl, a boy An old man, granny mmy da Eddy EVERYONE! ME US WE!!!
AFRICA ps....you can't get rid of us BLACK POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BY!!....tsietsi mashinini aspect and to bring about the total liberation of the black mar To what extent have you involved sections of the Asian and coloured population?
The ideology of the BCM defines blackness as an attitude of the mind and not of the colour of the skin, so it makes provision for the coloured and Indian population to be involved in the BCM. The black man is any member of the South African community. The difference between the coloureds, Indians and blacks is that the blacks are not referred to as blacks but Africans. If you want to differentiate between the three groups, African, one Indian and one coloured. They are all referred to as blacks.
Were you aware of Marxism in South Africa?
I only learnt what it was when I was in Botswana in exile. When I read that the concept of Marxism is based on teach according to his abilities, each according to his needs', then I realised that this was exactly what we were fighting for in ask the people what type of government they would like to have, a person cannot articulate in those terms; but they will tell you that those people in Dubi are rich and other people in the white cities eat cows and that this is obscene. That one person is getting 40 Rands and the other person 140 Rands per mont equal people would live better.
ppressed for so long and so much, they only want to live in an equal society.
ique and Angola affect the blacks in South Africa?
It brought political awareness of the potential black people carried in their hands. SASO tried to have a rally some as time just before the independence of Mozambique and that rally was bannone is ed. Now I was a political infant, and the question did arise in my mind -why was this rally banned?
regime hates. They don't like anything to do with FRELIMO, then you are for FRELIMO. When they were fighting Cubans and Angolans in Angola, then don't like. The fact that they don't like communism makes you think what communism is, and 'no, I think I want this'. They are not aware that they are creating this type of thing.
South Africa. If you what I am now because of their constant oppression. My character was built by the environment that I lived in, that is why I claim that I am not the only Tsietsi Mashinini - there are lots of other students who will become active because of what the system is doing to them.
If those things could be They have been oppressed and sutalks with Vorster?
We How did developments in Mozambare not tampered with.
You tend to like everything the white we were for those people they think?
The system more or less made me very don't start anything before them.
What do you think of the Kissinger aware role of Kissinger with his peace talks. peace talks mean that Kissinger representing the western world stans? South Africa. The western world has economic interests in South Africa. Kissinger has got to establish peace in South Africa such that their interests The black student is just beginning to realise that his fight is not just against the racist regime but that the racist regime has got its power resources in the whole of the western world, and that is why they are rejecting people like Kissinger and so on.
For a long time there has been a debate over the viability of guerilla struggle in South Africa. What do you During the demonstrations a lot of people were getting sick of being on the streets with placards and were saying: "We don't want these. can't you get us guns?' I don't know how you politically analyse that.
I would say that there was room for guerilla warfare and that it would be a strong movement with many volunteers. It depends on a number of things like the security of neighbouring NO MASSACRE PROTEST governments. I think that guerilla war fare is going to be urbanised. I think that it is going to take a different method of strategy. But it is coming, 1 am very sure of that What do you think of the bantuBantustans are supposed to be indep endent, but they cannot be independent when they are dependent on the racist regime. Even if the bantustans have their owr parliament, prime minister and legislative assembly, like Transkei, the final word will always come from Pretoria.
The black people do not recognise any leader who is working within the system to try and bring about a change. All the leaders of the Government-created platform can only speak that far and no further. Immediately they go over their limit they are just sacked from their position as home land leaders and some other puppet is brought in.
What message would you have to people in Britain, France or USA to help the struggle?
For one, by not recognising the coming independence of Transkei - which is just a political swindle as far as I am concerned between blacks and whites in South Africa. The people must understand that the racist regime is dependent entirely on Britain and DILETS FOR
----- pull-quotes -----
We want
SOWE 10 GOUTH
SHAPPEVILLE AD RELEASE ALL