WeeklySA_AdminPLIGHT: All they direly need is love and a future – no more apologies from government laid on the door of apartheid…
By Paul Njabulo Vilakazi
Lo, and behold, it beggars belief indeed , what TruLo, and behold, it beggars belief indeed! What trump card up his sleeve did President Cyril Ramaphosa have, indeed, in appointing Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma into a ministry that includes youth, sending all of us spinning in a chagrin tizz for the crying to high heavens’ plight of the youth; which is an obvious time bomb for our beloved country.
Was it to obfuscate his now pervasive fear of KwaZulu-Natal factional muscle and appease it with a personal politico- tribal ploy while caring less about us all and our national gobsmack?
Had he opted for Naledi Pandor for this gigantic task, some would have at least sheepishly nodded that, at least, she remains the only intellectual star in the zoo, coming with a Model-C English to her nasal ping and thus would be able to inter-generationally dialogue as some modern day Griottes/Jalimuso to successfully wipe off the youth’s now endemic woes away?
But then, bakithi, Nkosazana? Ramaphosa was not in exile, where she might have some resume of youth work. On the one hand were Winnie Madikizela Mandela still alive, Julius Malema would have been over the moon and drooling with glee, despite even her infamous “herstory” of over-trammeling youth in her charge to the extent that it cost the lives of Stompie Seipei and others.
Now coming to my point; despite my above diagnosis, Gogos have always had a major and noble cultural-educational place in our African “herstory”… even Afrikaner “herstory” for that matter.
It was mid-July 1988, I was headed to the USA as a delegate to my church’s general conference; while, on the one hand, my Sharpeville home boys and one girl were all in days to be hanged for a high-profile necklace murder under the doctrine of common Purpose. Needless to say, the murdered councillor was also my home boy and had rubbed shoulders with my Bishop who had earlier been a pastor at Sharpeville.
Bishop Desmond Tutu then, had written an impassioned plea calling for clemency on behalf of the Sharpeville Six; followed by Ntate Sam ‘Uncle Sam’ Kolisang, who had for years been known as “THE Sharpeville Mayor”.
I wondered then as a pastor at the Allen Temple AME Church at Meadowlands in Soweto, as to what if these appeals of seniors failed?
Then a brainwave struck me, that there was yet another way to enter the saga in ways never thought out before. Mrs Elize Botha then qualified to be called a Gogo and I had just discovered that another swifter way to die ou krokodil PW Botha’s heart would undoubtedly be through her motherly self.
I then got to penning a plea to herself, addressed to the Tuinhuis. First commending her for having recently visited the Baragwanath babies ward, where she had picked up and kissed black babies – a highly “herstorical” act and also very commendable and yet improbable in those halcyon days of apartheid, since Paul Kruger had first and last time in his life had shaken a black man’s hand in and around 1897. It was Bishop Henry McNeil Turner’s hand, partly because he was a Mulatto, and he had conveniently called him: ‘the first black man, whose hand I had ever shook.’ Also, for politico-religious acknowledgement reasons, as Turner had been a vice-President then of the American Colonial Society.
In the letter, I was on my knees to Mme Elize and touching the cockles of her heart by mentioning the baby kissing shindig (though, more than anything else, showcase her serving her husband’s then ‘Apartheid Reform Policies’)
I had written that, also as much as she dotted on her then celebrated singer-daughter Roxanne, most probably raised with caviar on her plate, as opposed to an impoverished mother out at Sharpeville who had given birth to the only girl among the Sharpeville Six, Theresa Ramashamola a young staunch Catholic lass, who needed her very badly at this her grimmest hour on earth to be equally embraced by her as the ‘First Lady’ of the nation and, of course , I did not then have the title in parenthesis…
I had shared with her the gargantuan post-traumatic distress the Sharpeville Massacre His/Herstory had visited upon myself, my younger brothers and sister, and turning our lives irreparably upside down. I was talking to Mama Botha at base mother-son level; no colour of skin issues, every word less political, nothing about her husband’s brand of politics, but just purely painting a poignant mother-daughter relationship picture from the human-to-human perspective without drifting much from the reality of being on two sides of the fence. It was time to talk – but, for me, all essentially about the Sharpeville kids, more than really about socio-political double kick in the teeth; and that they badly needed to be healed from, than just sent to hell.
It worked like magic as Gogo Botha’s own innate motherly and matronly instincts swung into action, and, after two weeks in America, I arrived home to the receipt of mama Botha’s reply that her husband was giving urgent attention to the matter and my letter…
Before leaving for the US, I had sent the copy of the letter to the then Editor of the Sowetan, Dr Aggrey Klaaste, who had also taken the matter so much to heart that I found out, that in my absence, he had used an extract of that long teary letter in the place of his personal column, which appeared then on Mondays. A week later the Sharpeville Six were reprieved from the hangman’s noose.
As I close my Sharpeville Month (March), my counsel is: grand and noble deeds that were done for Sharpeville and “herstory” are still for the taking and could be emulated now especially for our youth.
To gogo Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, not for the oncoming General Elections vote-fishing or President Ramaphosa ‘s perennial hanging of Kwa-Zulu Natal’s albatross on his neck, but for this country youths, present and future; in the times of their most agonising cry for their land and staring their own rampant lives wasting away in the eye.
I dream of Sharpeville leading in rising as a phoenix from the ashes of its apartheid days, including that of the present government continuously choking it to death ‘forever’ to pay for the sin of the Pan Africanist Congress eclipsing it in the foremost national claiming of Izwelethu in 1960.
As “herstory” and culture have proven that grandma’s have a most special and noble central role to play in the continued shaping of society, may Dr Dlamini-Zuma grab the nettle to emulate the rare empathy of Elize Botha to co-persuade her spouse, despite being one of the most heinous of apartheid leaders to save the lives of the Sharpeville Six.
After Sharpeville and subsequently the present political freedom in tandem, all our kids direly need is love and a future. No more apologies laid on the door of apartheid not even of the nine most wasteful years…Or dude will the newest Nkosazana unleashed shuffle, prove to be one of the sharpest aka southpaws all confounder that is in the Cyril’s second term ‘that’s now how we roll’ tactic?
And now with a humongous budget and consultants to save millions of our youth and posterity from certain utter destruction staring them in the eye. Just give yourself time to ponder, as you trudge your new ministry, Gogo Dlamini Zuma, about “Sharpeville Six’s Mission Impossible Rescue Operation” mindset, somewhat, if Total Strategy…
Dr Dlamini Zuma is challenged to reclaim “herstory” in the tradition of Mkabayi, Mmanthatisi, Mantsopa , Charlotte Maxeke and others, not to squander this opportunity in the name of Izwelethu, even though the ANC vision has just tragically lapsed.
*Paul Njabulo Vilakazi is a former pastor of the AME Church
Published on the 93rd Edition.
