WeeklySA_AdminMATRIArCH: A fierce PAC loyalist who will be remembered for her heroic underground work in assisting scores of youth to skip the country during apartheid times and for her sterling work in her community till the end
By Ali Mphaki
A huge pencil drawn portrait of her late husband Moffat Zungu greets you as enter the living room of her home in Meadowlands, Soweto.
On the side wall as if jostling for attention among an array of black and white family album photographs is one of the late Pan Africanist Congress, PAC, leader Zephania Mothopeng.
Unlike Zungu (Bra Moff, as we called him) his affable and cordial demeanour brilliantly captured by the artist’s pen, Ntate Mothopeng’s ice white eyes seem to follow our every move, an eerie reminder of the “high discipline and high moral’’ of the former-teacher-turned-politician who earned the auspicious nom de guerre “The Lion of Azania”.
Our bubbly hostess Victoria Motlalepula Zungu, nee Kgotleng, or Aus Vicky to many, is spotting a black and green baseball cap with a PAC logo in the front. She manages a chuckle at the Mona Lisa jibe re the Mothopeng pic, but without any hesitation explains that both Mothopeng and hubby Bra Moff were co-accused in the Bethal Trial, the longest ever treason trial in the history of South Africa.
Fundamentally what Aus Vicky would want all and sundry to internalize is that judge David J. Curlewis in his summation of the marathon Bethal Trial had found Mothopeng to be “the mastermind behind June 16 Soweto Uprising”.
“’The Bethal trial holds the record as the only secret trial held in South Africa and there were no spectators allowed,” she adds, her voice reaching a crescendo.
For his sins, Mothopeng would earn two 15-year jail terms, seven years for Zungu, while the 16 other co-accused received different hefty sentences.
Zungu and Mothopeng, among other comrades, would do their time on the dreaded island of Makhanda kaNXele, otherwise known as Robben Island.
It was a double whammy for Aus Vicky to lose a ‘’Partner”, which is how she and Bra Moff endearingly referred to each other, and to be subjected to a life of a “single” mother left alone to raise her two young girls, Mangaka and Keke.
Far from allowing tears of self-pity to drown her, Aus Vicky would show a resilience typical of her Setswana upbringing leaning on the saying Mmangwana O Tshwara Thipa kafa bogaleng, loosely translated to mean a mother holds the knife on its sharpest edge to protect her children.
And instead of being cowed by the brutal apartheid machinery, the incarceration of her husband would only serve to sharpen her revolutionary zeal and to continue the Struggle with more grit under the PAC mantra of “to serve, suffer and sacrifice”.
Born in February 23, 1943, in Zeerust, North West, Aus Vicky’s never die spirit could be traced back to when her mother died in 1949, when she was a mere six-year-old.
She moved to Killarney (Orlando West) in Soweto to be raised by her staunch Seventh Day Adventist uncle Moagi instrumental in nurturing her Christian upbringing and cementing her faith in God and love for her people.
It was after completing her matric at the Meadowlands High and briefly back in Zeerust-Lehurutshe near the Botswana border when she was 17 years of age that she met her Damascus, her political awareness sparked by conversations she kept on overhearing from elders and other conscious members of the community.
It is debatable if Aus Vicky had followed her Seventh Day Adventism to the core we would have the kind of activist Vicky we had, for she would go against the grain and secretly turn her uncle’s house into a transit camp for young activists wishing to skip the country to swell the ranks of the liberation movement via the Botswana border.
Her underground work would get into full gear post the June 16, Uprising, where as a scout or courier she facilitated border crossings of youth activists to Botswana and Swaziland to join MK of the ANC, and Apla of the PAC.
Her activism would not unnoticed by the hawk-eyed apartheid Security Branch police who ultimately nabbed her in 1977 and she was held in solitary confinement for 12 months disrupting her motherhood to her two girls then aged 9 and 11 years old. She went through three more cycles of detention for periods of six to 9 months being moved from prison to prison.
Fast forward to the early 80s she founded an NPO named We Take Care of the Aged, which provided food, clothing, psychological support for the elderly, which earned her recognition as the Sowetan Nation Builder. In her later years she continued to open her home as sanctuary for the vulnerable, offering her time and resources to create opportunities for those without means.
Aus Vicky passed away on March 29 after a short illness at the Tshepo Themba hospital. Her remains were interred mid last week.
To the liberation movement – she was a fearless Mo-Afrika. You have always been in others and you will remain in others. Give our regards to Bra Moff and Ntate Mothopeng.
