Back to Soweto in the new South Africa

By Rosita Johnson

This is the third and final installment by the author who lives in Philadelphia and recently returned from a visit to South Africa.

It is impossible to visit South Africa and understand what you are seeing without first understanding what living under apartheid was like.

To accomplish this, one can read books, view videos and films or talk to people who lived it. There are places throughout the country you can visit that stand as preserved memories of a violent, oppressive and brutal system. We visited three of these places.

Soweto, Southwest Township, is a group of townships where two to four million people live. Soweto is a 15 to 20 minute ride from Johannesburg.

On the fifth day of our trip, our hosts, the Sithole family, pick us up in the late morning. The staff at our hotel are so curious about how and why we have friends in South Africa. My sister, Jeanne, and I are amused.

I visited Soweto in February 1993. Six years later it looks better to me, cleaner, many new houses and the spirit of the people is more positive.

Our first visit is to Regina Mundi Catholic Church. During the 1976 Soweto Uprising, peacefully protesting students were shot down by the police. Many students ran into this church.

The police chased them, surrounded the church, threw tear gas inside and then entered the church shooting. Miraculously not one student was shot.

Our guide, Danny Dube, shows us the bullet holes in the walls of the church. The edge of the altar was broken by the butt of a policeman's gun. I realize that Jeanne is very upset by this information; she has left us and is sitting quietly in a pew.

We look at the painting of the Black Madonna and the murals on the wall remind me of the murals on the walls of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. The choir is rehearsing for Sunday's service. The South African sound is so beautiful.

Regina Mundi has long been a church dedicated to the anti-apartheid struggle, hosting speakers and meetings. Father Rev. V.A. Mazidriko is the priest here. We go outside to see a marker in the yard. It says, "May Peace Prevail On Earth" in 10 languages.

Then our guide invites us to sign the visitors book in the Parish House. I notice the names of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton are two pages before the page we sign.

We are now on our way to Orlando West, another township that is part of Soweto.

We visit the "Mandela House" where Nelson and Winnie Mandela lived after they married and where Winnie lived with her two daughters while her husband was in prison. This house is now a tourist attraction. The neighbors seem used to it and pay little attention to us.

Our guide is Ngugi. He tells us there were many attempts to kill Winnie Mandela. The house was set on fire twice and also bombed. Four of Winnie's guard dogs were killed.

The police would drive by and shoot inside at night, so a thick cement brick wall was built around the entire house. Several men broke into the house and tried to strangle her while she slept.

Then at dawn one morning Winnie was dragged away by the police as her two little children screamed and tried to hold on to her skirt. She was arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement.

Her cell had a mat, a couple of dirty blankets and a pail of water for a toilet. Being forced to strip naked for a daily search only added to her humiliation and despair. At 34, Winnie Mandela suffered a stroke.

The clothing, furniture and personal belongings of both Winnie and Nelson Mandela are exhibited. Each item evokes a story from our guide.

Outside the house is a small gift shop, where we buy a large poster of Nomzamo Winnifred Madikizela Mandela. Before the trip to South Africa, Jeanne had said, "There is only one thing I want to do in South Africa, meet Winnie Mandela or at least see her."

This visit was as close as Jeanne got to Winnie Mandela. No one in South Africa wanted to discuss Winnie Mandela with us, her divorce from Nelson Mandela, the attacks on her character, her future in politics.

I can understand why. We are all disappointed. We idealized this couple. We wanted to see them triumph over all the obstacles the apartheid system threw at them for over 30 years.

But it wasn't to be. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela will always be a hero for me. Nomzamo Winnifred Madikizela Mandela will always be my heroine also.

Ngugi tells us the houses in Soweto were intentionally built very close together so that the inhabitants could not hide or run away from the police.

The roads in Soweto were measured to accommodate the invasion of South African Defense Force tanks, which passed through from time to time in its efforts to control and intimidate the people who lived here.

We stop at a corner store for refreshments. I have lost my appetite and buy only bottled water. Godfrey Sithole recalls the time in 1962 when he and other students were sent into exile by the ANC to study abroad.

He remembers coming to Soweto with a few of his possessions, staying overnight in a "safe house." The student organizer for this operation was Thabo Mbeki, the new president of the Republic of South Africa.

Five days later we went to Robben Island, seven miles from Cape Town out in the Atlantic Ocean. Boats leave from the waterfront marina several times a day.

We took the trip out on a boat, "Mafgna." About 100 passengers, mostly white, travel with us. Few South Africans are in the group. We meet people from Australia, New Zealand, England and France. There are people in the group from several African countries. The trip is fast and at times rough.

Fearing the people would storm the prisons within the country, Robben Island became the prison for political prisoners only in 1964. Robben Island is now a museum. Our tour guide is an ex-prisoner, a former member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) the ANC's military wing, who was captured in Angola by UNITA and South African army forces. He was sentenced to 48 years in prison on Robben Island.

First we see the cells, Mandela's cell in particular. Prisoners had no beds until the 1980s, only a mattress, a pail for a toilet, a tin cup and dish. Africans wore short pants no matter how cold it got. White, Asian and Colored prisoners wore long pants. Prisoners were separated by race.

The diet was cereal, tea and bread, with meat once a week. Mandela asked the warden for permission for the prisoners to have a garden. It was granted so they grew vegetables, which were added to a soup.

Prisoners got up at 4 a.m. and worked until 4 p.m. They worked on the roads and in the lime quarry.

Several prisoners were crowded into each cell. Leaders like Mandela and Sisulu had a private cell. Punishment was dispensed for the slightest infraction of a rule - speaking a language other than Afrikaans, looking a guard in the eye, complaining, etc.

A prisoner could lose a meal, lose a visit from family, have mail censored or even be put in solitary confinement. While together, prisoners used the time to teach each other. Many learned to read and write in prison.

A bus takes us around the island. A town with a school and post office exists here now. Our tour took three hours. On the way back to the Cape Town waterfront the passengers are quiet, rather pensive.

I connect every experience to the U.S. I am thinking about U.S. prisons - 54 percent of the prison population is African American. Yet African Americans comprise only 14 percent of the U.S. population. I feel depressed. As Jeanne and I walk past shops and restaurants in the waterfront complex, I hear a group of people speaking Afrikaans. A chill comes over me.

Five days later I attended a hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Durban. The day before, Major Petrus Botha and General Johannes Steyn testified to killing Charles Ndaba and Mbaso Tshabalala. Ndaba headed a secret MK camp within Swaziland. In their testimony, Botha and Steyn accused both men of being double agents and government informers.

On the day I attended, Mac Maharaj, transport minister from 1994-99 and an MK commander during the apartheid years, testified and cross examined Botha and Steyn's lawyxer. Maharaj went over the former security policemen's statements showing them to be lies.

"There were no informers in Operation Vula," said Maharaj. "Ndaba was never a spy." There was loud applause throughout the room.

During a break I was able to meet Maharaj in the press room. The two men who testified the day before are serving time in prison now on other charges.

They commanded the death and torture of countless people from 1980-1992. Their reason? "To stop the onslaught of Communism in southern Africa ... and the establishment of a black dictatorial Marxist state ..." Similar statements are given by every SADF and security police applicant for amnesty.

No one is satisfied with the TRC because it is not doing enough, not holding people accountable for their actions. But the TRC is accomplishing one very important task - a legal, historical record of atrocities committed by a white supremacist state.

Hundreds of thousands of people disappeared or were killed under apartheid. Their families want to know what happened to them. The TRC is bringing closure for them.

Each day the media exposes the apartheid system for what it was. Many white South Africans feel deep shame, claiming they didn't know.

Others defend apartheid, because they believe in their own superiority and privilege. Both points of view are openly discussed in the media. I try to listen, to understand, but I can't tolerate it.

Every Black South African I've ever met has lost relatives and friends under apartheid. South Africa is not what it should be, but it is surely not what it was. The struggle must continue.