Listening to the silent majority

[81]

I had realized for some time how important it was to listen carefully to black youths. So, I drove one weekend to Jeppe Reef in KaNgwane homeland near the Swaziland border to attend a youth rally of the

[p. 103]

Inyandza National Movement.^59. It was founded on February 12, 1978. Chief Minister (also called Comrade), Enos Mabuza paraphrased John F Kennedy, when he told the gathering that he asked members not what Inyandza had done for them but what they were doing for Inyandza and KaNgwane. The constitution of the organisation read that the Movement was engaged in fighting for total liberation of the black masses of South Africa. ‘Being citizens of this land, we are entitled to have a say in the decision-making machinery in our country. The coloureds, Indians and whites are represented in the legislature, whereas we blacks, who form the highest percentage of the peoples of South Africa, are rendered voiceless when it comes to issues which affect us. It is high time we speak against this malpractive in our country. Let us join hands and be vocal. All the other structures to which we are subjected are not the answer.’ I wondered how many South African whites ever bothered to read the constitution of Inyandza in KaNgwane. And vocal they were. At a Jeppe Reef school complex several thousands of KaNgwanians had assembled. They told me the homeland government had never paid much attention to their region, but this day the ministers and authorities were honouring them with a visit during the mass rally. And, there they arrived, a long cortége of cars bringing the KaNgwane decision-makers to the meeting. I talked to Philip Ngwenya (36), who was connected with the homeland administration, to Robson Gamede (30) and Kenneth Mosupye (29), both of whom worked for Inyandza. They were still studying to improve their skills and knowledge of public relations and communications. I watched the people, especially the thousands of youths for a while but then I left, because I was the sole white man on the spot, and I felt out of place, and in a way intruding.

On the way to Jeppe Reef I passed a Teachers' College near Kanyamazane. A tall black youth stood alongside the highway lifting up his hand. I hesitated, but decided to stop. He immediately showed me his identification card from the college. He confirmed that sometimes comrades of the ANC hitchhiked with whites to rob them of their cars, so the transportation could be used for the revolution. I said, ‘I am on my way to the Kruger Park, just for five hours or so. Why don't you come along and then I will drive you to your father's house on the Swazi border.’

59. ‘Inyandza’ means ‘bundle of wood’.

[p. 104]

He had never been into the ‘wildtuin.’ Blacks generally are not interested in watching animals.

We talked all day, and in the late afternoon, we reached his township atop a hill near the frontier. His father slept in the shade under a tree. The sight reminded me of Rembrandt's magnificent painting The Parable of the Lost Son, with the son kneeling before the forgiving father. We sat in the garden. I could very well understand how this father, unlike the fathers of Strijdom and McBride, had steered his 22-year-old son towards the teacher's college in Kanyamazane. The son was a patriot, no doubt, but he harboured neither hatred nor unmitigated disgust for whites in his psyche. The young black student from KaNgwane obviously had an intelligent mind. I encouraged him to continue his studies when he leaves the college in December 1990.^60.

60. It was meetings like these that made me decide to write a second volume later this year concentrating on what young black people have to say about their lives and expectations for the future