WeeklySA_AdminUNHEALED: As South Africa marks 50 years since the Soweto Uprising, former student activist Oupa Ngwenya reflects on the life and loss of Francis Lebohang Ntebele, a Mara Primary learner killed eight days by a police bullet before June 16. His story becomes a powerful lens through which to examine memory, justice, betrayal and the unfinished promise of liberation…
By Oupa Ngwenya
This Annual Francis Lebohang Ntebele Memorial Lecture falls on the 50th anniversary of 16 June 1976. When invited to deliver this lecture, curiosity spurred me to ask: what does “Mara” mean?
So I searched the word itself. In South African street slang, mara means “but”. In Sesotho, empa. In isiZulu, kodwa.
To the Maasai in Kenya, mara means “spotted”. The word denotes the patchy, leopard-like savannah that gave the Maasai Mara its name.
In Hebrew, Mara means “bitter”. In the bible the book of Ruth 1:20 uses it for grief that empties you.
And in the primary school’s records, Mara is named after one of King Moshoeshoe’s most trusted warriors.
Mara Primary, then, counts among the fighters for the dignity, honour, and memory of the warrior generation of June 16 1976.
On June 8 1976, eight days before Soweto rose, Mara was robbed of one of its own. The name Francis Lebohang Ntebele the country never knelt. The emptiness was replaced by this annual remembrance, so the loss is not forgotten by students, school, community, or nation.
Eight days before June 16, a bullet stole Francis Ntebele’s future. Fifty years
later, his killer remains unknown, but his memory refuses to die…
On the 47th anniversary in 2023, the school and memory-keepers went to commiserate with the Ntebele family. From that grief, this Annual Lecture was born. It ranks among the commemorative chapters of June 16 with the specific loss of one student. The Ntebele family no longer grieves alone. The community has lent its shoulder.
That makes Mara more than bricks, desks, and results. It is the collective dream of parents that their children reach their fullest potential.
Mara has distinguished itself through teaching and learning. Corporates now associate their brands with its success. But above all, it is ground where students plant their feet and reach for their stars.
In the inaugural lecture, Rev Frank Chikane, followed by my late alma mater Enos Ngutshane, called Mara a “community school” in the true Paulo Freire tradition. Drawing from “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Chikane praised Mara for rejecting the “banking” concept of education as oppression, for the “problem-posing” concept of education for liberation.
Mara shares three things with Naledi High across the fence: location, a boundary, and a date of upheaval — June 8 1976.
Naledi High would have been Francis’ next school, but a bullet stole that future. Eight days before June 16, police came to arrest Enos Ngutshane in a white Volkswagen. Students intercepted them, barricaded them in Principal NJK Molope’s office, cut the phone line, overturned the VW, and burned it. The World reported the incident the next day: “Rioting pupils burn car”, June 9 1976, by Nomsa Msibi.
Police reinforcements came with dogs and teargas. The canisters filled Naledi and spilled into Mara. The fence collapsed. Children fled. Police shot to kill.
We celebrated resisting Ngutshane’s arrest. Little did we know childhood was claimed by the grave. The World newspaper missed it too. Francis’ death went unreported to escape public attention. The blow landed hardest on the Ntebele family.
Do not think killing schoolchildren is rare, or that “civilisers” do not do it. It is regular. Frantz Fanon said it plain: “Civilisation was not peacefully gifted; it was violently injected into the veins of the world through the smoking of a mercenary’s rifle.”
In Francis’ case, the mercenary remains at large 50 years later. We do and accept mortality. But the pain cuts deeper to breaking bone when parents bury children.
Bob Marley captured it in April 1976, two months before Soweto:
“Woman hold her head and cry
As her son had been shot down in the street and died
Just because of the system…”
Steve Biko spoke directly to this pain: “If you do run fast enough… you see their streets, their cars, their houses and you begin to feel that there is something not right with yourself. Something to do with your blackness, because no matter how dumb or smart a white child is, he is born into their world, but you, the black child, smart or dumb you are born into this and smart or dumb you will die in it.”
The pain was not first or last. Forget not the Sharpeville massacre of March 21 1960. It took 16 years for the UN to formally adopt the resolution. The resolution took effect on 18 July 1976, a month after Soweto. Black lives waited that long.
It took 18 more years for blacks to vote on April 27 1994. The flag is new. The coat of arms is new. The Constitution is praised by a world that loves it for us, but not for itself. Our anthem fuses opposing histories.
Those loosening belts with full bellies now tell the starving hungry to tighten theirs. Black corruption learned from white corruption and graduates with distinction. White corruptors sit pretty on uninterrupted privileges to hand US President Donald Trump a hit list of which black politicians to sanction. They now blow the moral whistle on the corruptees they created. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” is the survival formula.
The goal is achieved: use corruption to argue black unfitness to govern. Offer hand-picked blacks to team up with whites and pour money on the preferred as “rescuers” of South Africa.
The sacrifices of June 16 now look like pearls before swine. The spectacle is sordid picture of insults depicting children painted as broken wounded, hurting and betrayed lives. Is there a chance? There is, only if we look in the mirror and love or hate what we see, then change it.
If we don’t, mara remains “bitter” with the bitterness of the book of Ruth in the Bible. The bitterness is that of salt endlessly pouring in the wound of 1976 that refuses to heal.
In memory of Francis Lebohang Ntebele, this country can do better. It must do better. It will do better. It must do better.
The writer, Oupa Ngwenya, is a former 1976 student activist, political commentator and independent journalist
