FEATURES
Volume 5 Number 3
Through An Activist 'S Eyes
01 April 1992
Mpho Mashinini grew up amidst the tensions and Y' traumas of Soweto. He was a prominent activist in the United Democratic Front and the Mass Democratic Movement. Inevitably he found himself in conflict with the white authorities and was jailed several times. Today he is a deputy director of Operation Hunger, a relief and development organization. He is interviewed by Peter Hannon:
Hannon: Can you first tell me something of your background?
Mashinini: It's a typical story, not enough to eat, no clothes for school, the survival of the fittest. In 1976, just 76, I became politically involved. 1 was elected to the Soweto Students Representative Council. Then came the famous uprising of 16 June 1976 demanding better education, with people dying and many going into exile. I went to prison, with more experience of the system's abuse of power. From '76 to '87 I was in and out of gaol.
What led to your involvement with Operation Hunger?
In 1987 I was again arrested for another six months. This time I was together with others, not in solitary confinement. We had a lot of discussion, planning, thinking. I began to feel that we must move from shouting against injustices to something practical. This thought developed as I talked with others. I wanted to put all I believed in into action. So I ended up in this organization at present involved with 1.8 million people and 2,075 self-help projects.
How do you see things in South Africa now? Is CODESA (the Convention for a Democratic South Africa where 18 political groupings including the Government and the ANC met before Christmas and set up working parties to plan for the new constitution) a hopeful step?
The majority see hope. Black and white want to see violence and injustice ended. They are tired of war and instability. They say `It's been going on too long.' The Government and the ANC, who've been at war, say, `Let's talk.'
Others say, 'The coin must be reversed so that we take over on our terms.' That won't work. Look, I understand white fears and black expectations. I'm not writing off the people of the two extremes. We must try every means to bring them in. Without them it could be a recipe for disaster.
Aggrey Klaaste, Editor of `The Sowetan', writes of `one legacy of apartheid being the disintegration of black society'....
He is talking of the reality of black life in South Africa. We have been called on to live an abnormal life where we are thought for and told how to live. Whole generations have come under the `Ja, Baas' system.
I am not a person who says, `It will all happen on Freedom Day.' We must start now, where we are.
And the `crisis of black expectations'?
That is a worry. When the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela freed everybody thought that was Freedom Day. `If you lost your job 15 years ago Mandela will get it back.' `I will get back the house I lost.' Mandela has been out for two years and people stay where they were. There is more violence. People are frustrated. And it can be worse for a new government. What you see in South Africa now could be a school picnic. The thousands of homeless, the hopeless, the squatters....
What should the international community do now? Many were so involved in the high profile anti-apartheid movement but now seem to withdraw.
More than ever before we need their help now. If they don't continue what they fought for it will all be in vain. Just when the kettle is about to boil you switch off the fuel. The person who lost his job when some company pulled out because of sanctions and then doesn't get his job back, or something similar, will say, `It wasn't worth it. I sacrificed for nothing.' Was the intention to take us halfway and then dump us?
The fight against apartheid will mean nothing if the economy is left as it is now; if people outside do not get involved in what they called for - a democratic South Africa.
You mentioned about your own experience of the abuse of power. How can freedom and justice become a reality?
It's a major question. I myself have not been involved all these years to substitute white domination with black domination. I never thought that with so much experience of apartheid, of exile and suffering some people could still be fanatics for their own particular ideology saying, `My system is better than yours so I will kill you.,
CODESA is a first step to bring people to a common cause, a common commitment. Any system that is not big enough to include all is going to fail.
A young black said to me recently, `The one thing that must never go by majority rule is your conscience...'
I agree wholly with that. I wish it could be said to our leaders. Many are bound by old policies, by traditional ties, by fear - will I be taken as less radical than when I was in exile, talking guns? If I'm not in the Communist Party or the militant wing I'll be out of fashion, not the 1990s person. Some are still bound by old ideas of what makes a good Afrikaner, a good ANC man.
I myself have enjoyed being famous, making speeches, saying what people expect. The time came when I had to listen to my conscience before anything else. Breaking out of old patterns was not easy but we all have to do it if we are to serve the new South Africa.
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