WeeklySA_AdminREMEMBRANCE: Memorial lecture by ANC leader the Reverend Frank Chikane in honour of Francis Lebohang Ntebele, a primary school pupil shot dead by police days before the June 16 student uprisings in Soweto…
By Frank Chikane
May I start by thanking the principal of Mara Primary School, Mr Mmdamduleni Mukosi, and your team for the visionary outlook and holistic understanding of forms of learning that go beyond the traditional classroom work. Few, if any, schools have done what you have done and continue doing.
You have a sense of history and appreciation of its significance in life. You never took your eye away from the significance of the death of Francis Lebohang Ntebele to this school, community, and country as a whole.
You have gone out of your way to find the Ntebele family and shared your vision about commemorating the life of their brother, child, niece, who was a student at this school 47 years ago. You went further to reach out for help to erect the tombstone at the grave of Francis Lebohang Ntebele .
This is what it means to be a “school in community.” Your approach and involvement with the community and families of children in your school reminded me of Paul Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, especially where he deals with “The ‘banking’ concept of education as an instrument of oppression,” an its antithesis of the “problem solving-posing concept of education as an instrument for liberation.” Indeed, education should be an instrument for liberation. This is what South Africa needs today.
Secondly, your vision to commemorate the life of your late student, Francis Lebohang Ntebele, who passed away tragically during the student uprisings, is an indication of your consciousness about the costs of achieving our freedom and liberation.
We thank you for ensuring our people, including your students, never forget the price that many ordinary families, like Ntebele’s, paid for our liberation and freedom. They lost their children, brothers, sisters, their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts for our liberation and freedom.
Solomon Mahlangu’s last words before he was sent to the gallows on April 6 1979 are painful, but instructive in this regard. He said, “Tell my people that I love them and that they must continue to fight, my blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Aluta Continua!”
Thank you for reminding us not to forget the pain families like the Ntebele family went through, and the trauma they suffered.
In remembrance of Francis, and in his honour, I would like us to think or imagine what happened on that fateful day of June 8 1976, of his passing. Think about what this meant to the Ntebele family, school, and community. I would also like us to understand beyond what we understood about the impact of his death nationally and internationally.
To help your imagination I would like to start by providing a background to the events leading to June 16 1976 student uprisings and what followed.
Although the struggle for liberation was waged against the racist apartheid system, the students of 1976 decided to focus on a matter that affected them directly on a daily basis – the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction.
Afrikaans decree
The enforcement of the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instructions for some of the subjects in Black schools was in place during my time at secondary school. But in 1974 the apartheid government decreed that Afrikaans be the medium of instruction for half of the subjects in Black schools from the last year of primary school.
Black kids had to learn mathematics, arithmetic and social studies in Afrikaans and the rest of the other three subjects in English. This was part of the nationalist agenda of Afrikaners to rival the use of the English language. In a sense, Black kids were becoming victims of ideological battles between the English-speaking South Africans and Afrikaners coming from the Anglo-Boer War of early 1900s.
Two months or so before the 1976 student uprisings, a student at the Naledi Secondary School, known as Enos Ngutshane, penned a letter to the Minister of Bantu Education, MC Botha. His was simple and clear: pupils preferred English to Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in the townships.
Both Black students and teachers struggled to teach or learn in Afrikaans as they were ill-trained and ill-equipped with textbooks and other learning materials. According to historian Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, the Afrikaans medium policy “embodied everything that was wrong with Bantu-Education.”
As a result of Ngutshane’s letter, two police officers went to the Naledi Secondary School to pick him up “for questioning” on June 8 1976, the day Francis was killed by apartheid security police. Police asked him to fetch his school bag. According to Ngutshane, he quickly ran to the class they used to refer to as “the headquarters.”
This suggests that the students were organised and knew what they were doing. They were ready to take on the police.
The students came out and resisted Ngutshane’s arrest and, during the clash with the security police, they burned the police’s VW Beetle vehicle. Police called for reinforcements and the school became like a war zone. Students scaled fences to escape police gunfire.
As Mara Primary School shared a fence and street with Naledi Secondary School, the war spilled into the primary school. Kids at Mara had to flee from classes. During this pandemonium, Francis was gunned down while running away.
Children panicked
According to the Rand Daily Mail, the children jumped through the windows in a frenzy of fear and ran towards the sports field.
Police drove along chasing them. Terrified, the pupils tried to run away from the car. Police opened fire. Minutes later Francis Ntebele lay dead next to a shop over the road. His body lay there for four hours. Police left the scene with one person dead, and many students injured, but without Enos Ngutshane.
We knew if Ngutshane went to his home he would be detained. We arranged for him to be moved to a safe house. He returned home a few days before June 16, and police arrested him, assaulted and subjected him to torture.
He appeared in court twice before he was released. We arranged to take him away to another safe house in Polokwane. He later went into exile.
For Francis, leaving home on June 8 1976, like any other child to go to school, never returned. His parents got the chilling message that their child was dead, killed by apartheid security police in front of Jubees shop.
Repression
Can you imagine the shock and the deep sense of loss for the family? Think of the fear that would have embraced them that the same police would return and harass them? Think about the funeral and the way in which police used to disrupt them, limit the number of mourners, and attack the overflows of the school children and community members who came to the funeral in numbers?
During those days, every funeral left more dead than those who were being buried. We ended up with one mass funeral after another. Countrywide, about 600 people died and about 4 000 injured. Many of the injured were permanently disabled.
Unfortunately, many of the dead, the injured and those who left the country to train and come back to fight, are not reflected as “victims” of the apartheid system as they or their families did not appear at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This memorial event reminds us that we should never forget that the quality of life of the Ntebele family and millions of others could have been different if the lives of Francis Lebohang Ntebele and others was not brutally ended by apartheid police bullets.
On the other hand, we must appreciate that their blood nourished the tree of freedom as Solomon Mahlangu said. For this reason, we cannot forget the price the Ntebele family paid for this country to be free.
In honour of all those who sacrificed their lives for our liberation and freedom, those of us who are still alive, and today’ s generation have to ensure that we achieve the objectives they laid their lives for. We must radically change the quality of lives of all South Africans, especially the poor.
As you would know, a huge effort was made during the first half of the last 30 years of our freedom to achieve the objectives of what is called the national democratic revolution. By now we should have reached a stage where the face of poverty, if any, would not be expressed in the form of the colour of one’s skin.
But there was an intervention in our history of the “capture of the state” or some state entities to serve the interest of individuals and their families, friends, and factions, at the expense of the people. To facilitate the looting of state coffers, skilled public servants were flushed out and replaced by people with no skills or capacity to manage the state to serve the people.
Efforts have been made to interrupt this trend, but the damage was deep. More radical strategies are required to save this country.
Secondly, in honour of the students who laid their lives for a better education for Black children, we need a radical intervention to ensure that every child in South Africa can get the best education to serve the country effectively.
- Rev Chikane delivered the lecture at Naledi Hall, Soweto, on September 23
