Participantes e Instrumentos

The 1970s was crucial in politicising most of the youth as the stories above demonstrate. As it will be shown in the following discussion, the spirit of defiance and resistance to the apartheid regime, its racist and segregationist policies, continued through to the 1980s. As with their counterparts in the earlier periods, the youth growing up during the 1980s was mobilised into political activism. Many of them were also angered by the injustices they experienced in their surroundings.

The pass laws for women came into effect in the early 1960s after many years of women’s opposition.113 As mentioned in the previous chapter, pass laws restricted the movements of Africans. Violet Seboni was born in 1965, a few years after the pass laws were extended to African women. Like her counterparts in the earlier years who detested the pass laws and fought the government’s plans to impose the laws on women, Violet Seboni felt “angered” by the imposition of these laws. Violet Seboni grew up in Benoni, a township in the East Rand. Explaining her route into political activism, she describes her difficulties in obtaining a permit to enter the white suburbs to visit her aunt, who was employed as a domestic worker:

I was very angry like any other youth at that time [in the 1980s]. What made me angrier was the introduction of the Bantustans. One time my grandmother sent me to go and ask for money from my aunt in the white suburbs (she worked as a domestic worker). I was required by law to have a permit to enter the white suburbs. So I had to go and apply for a pass, but when I got there I was told that because I was MoTswana (an ethnic group), I did not belong in the Transvaal and was therefore supposed to go to the former Bophuthatswana Bantustan and obtain my pass from there. So I was refused a pass and instead given a travelling document since I was not a ‘citizen’ of the Transvaal (now Gauteng Province) ... I was very angry and … furious. You became angry

113

Savage (1986: 181) argues that the long struggle women waged against the extension of influx control measures shows how seriously affected they were when forced to carry passes in 1963, and when in 1984 an embargo was placed on their entry into urban areas unless they were in possession of a 72 hour visitor’s permit or a labour contract.

against the system, and supported any calls to boycott or challenge the regime (Violet Seboni, Interview 2005).

Seboni describes her anger as a youth growing up in the early 1980s. This was a context that differed from the other generations growing up in the earlier periods (1940s-1970s). The 1980s as already stated, was a period of mass organisation and mass community protests in South Africa. Since the 1976 student protest, the youth were heavily involved in the campaigns against the apartheid regime and boycotts of institutions or businesses that undermined Africans or the fight against apartheid.

Selina Tyikwe, who was born in 1968 in Katlehong, was one of the youth who were “very active in the Katlehong Youth League” which was a community organisation. She points out that her awareness of trade union politics was highlighted during her activism in community politics during the mid 1980s.

That is when I got exposed to labour politics. Remember then we had the mass democratic movement? We had structures that met with COSATU. I was then exposed to labour politics during that period (Selina Tyikwe, Interview 2004).

This was a period of intense political struggle when African communities and the youth were engaged in massive protests concerning poor services in the communities, shortage of houses and overcrowding, high rents and so many other issues, including poor African education system and unaffordable fees. COSATU, as the only organisation with legal state recognition, played a prominent role in community politics by collaborating with communities in protests and boycotts of certain institutions or companies. As it was one of the most respected organisations in African communities, COSATU also assisted in providing political direction in some of the campaigns or political protests. According to Tyikwe:

COSATU played an important role by creating a forum for engagement. They used to have local offices in Katlehong, we had the youth league, the civic organisation and we met at the community level, and then on Thursdays we all met at the COSATU level. We also used to have structures for campaigns, we would identify campaigns and that would be discussed at the COSATU meetings and tasks would be delegated. And then if you had campaigns, you would need the involvement of workers (Selina Tyikwe, Interview 2004).

Mirriam Khumalo, who hails from Dube, in Soweto Township,114 is one of those young people who were also influenced by the political uprisings during the 1980s. Born in 1963, Khumalo was still in high school when the major political uprising in the 1980s took place. She explained her experience and observation of the political context in the following:

You understand that experiencing all these things, it motivated me to challenge the system … You understand growing up in that environment that was surrounded by activism? At that time, the liberation struggle was heating up [in 1986] and lots of people were getting arrested. My brother was one of those who were arrested. The police would come to our house to harass us, looking for incriminating documents. So we grew up in that surrounding and we wanted to do something also, maybe go into exile (Miriam Khumalo, Interview 2005).

Unlike her counterparts who grew up listening to conversations about the political situation in the country, Hilda Matjee was raised in a very protective family that wanted to keep her away from the political activities in the country during that time. She points out that even though her father, who was a priest, often helped political activists to hide from the police in her home, “my parents did not want us to know much about what was going on, so they kept information from us and never talked to us about what was going on” (Interview 2004). To further protect her from the political climate in the townships during the mid- 1980s, her parents sent her to a boarding school in Polokwane, then known as Pietersburg, in the northern Transvaal (now Limpopo).115 In spite of all these attempts by her parents to keep her from being involved in the politics, Matjee became involved in student politics and became part of the Student Representative Council (SRC). Away from her parents’ supervision, Matjee was eager to become part of the political action and to understand more about the political struggles in South Africa (Interview 2004).

In 1989 when she was doing standard nine [grade eleven] and her school protested against the arrest of fellow students, Matjee and her fellow student leaders were arrested for about two weeks. They were tortured and beaten by the police during this period and then released without any court hearing. This was the point of no return for Matjee. “So automatically I felt that there was no turning back after that whole experience, forward we go” (Hilda Matjee, Interview 2004).

114 _{SOWETO is an abbreviation of South Western Township. It was created in the early 1940s with}

the urbanisation of Africans, and further expanded in the 1950s with the introduction of segregation policies that removed Africans from areas designated for whites only. As one of the largest townships in the country with the largest urban African population, it took the leading role in the challenge against apartheid repression.

115

Her parents believed that political activity in this region was not as volatile as in the Johannesburg region during this period.

The interviews in this research show that the youth that grew up in the 1980s definitely had a different political context compared to that of the previous generation. Their context of massive political protests and organisation exposed them to unlimited information about the political system in their country. Unlike their counterparts in the earlier periods, involvement in organised politics, for some of them, begins with the community and student organisations. These are developments that took place largely in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, which means that for most of the earlier generation it would have been impossible to have this kind of opportunities.

In contrast to the generation that went into the workplace in the period before the 1980s, most of this generation (the majority started working in the late 1980s and 1990s) was therefore more informed about political organisation and trade unions. Their late entrance into the workplace also meant that trade unions were already well established and well entrenched in the workplace culture. The earlier generation however, has the advantage of having the opportunity of participating in the building and mobilisation of the trade union movement in the early 1970s and the 1980s. Thus while they went into the workplace without much political organisation experience, they gained valuable experience in mobilising and organising trade unions in the workplace.