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The Backroom Boy. Mandla Mathebula
Читать онлайн.Название The Backroom Boy
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781776140893
Автор произведения Mandla Mathebula
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Ruth First was to play a major role in moulding Andrew into a committed communist, entrenching the ideology through which he would seek freedom for his people. He held several meetings with her and met many other communists of the time. One was Joe Slovo, a young man his own age. Unlike Ruth First (who was born in Johannesburg), Slovo had been born in the village of Obeliai, in Lithuania, to parents who had been forced out of their ancestral land by anti-semitism and had fled to South Africa when he was eight years old (at the same time as Andrew was seeing a town for the first time in his life). Although he was the same age as Andrew, Slovo was working at the time, having completed his studies. Slovo was close to Ruth First, whom he later married, but they were not dating at that time – it was politics rather than romance that took centre stage at their meetings. It appeared that the two were linked by the YCL and its ideology more than anything else.
It was interaction with Ruth First, more than with Slovo, that mattered most to Andrew. In his relationship with her, Andrew found the value of freedom and contrasted it with the evil of racial segregation and discrimination. In his own words, he proclaimed that from the moment he shared life with the young white communists associated with Ruth First he felt liberated. He recalled things that happened during the time which made him feel like a free man. The mere fact that he could call his white comrades by their first names was amazing – blacks wouldn’t dare call white people by their first names. ‘Baas’ or ‘missis’ were commonly used to refer to white males and females – even their young children could not be called by their names but, rather, as ‘klein baas’ or ‘klein missis’. The fact that when visiting Ruth First at her Wits University campus residence he was served tea by a white woman meant a lot to him. Black women like his mother, who were called ‘girls’, served their white ‘masters’ tea, while calling them ‘baas’ and ‘misses’. Hugging his white male and female comrades when exchanging greetings heartened him. ‘I saw that racial segregation, which I had experienced throughout my life, was a curse on the South African nation and I was more than motivated to fight it.’
As part of the activities of the YCL, Andrew frequented the offices of the organisation, which were manned by Elsa Watts as the administrative officer. She was the sister of Hilda Watts, who would later marry Rusty Bernstein, another communist who would be very close to Andrew. Not everything was rosy, though, between Andrew and Ruth First. As time went on, he observed, rightly or wrongly, that she favoured Simon Thomas over him and other comrades from Pimville, and began to think that it was because he was coloured. However, it did not dampen his liking for her, or create bad blood between him and Simon Thomas. He focused on the bigger picture, the political activism and driving the communist ideology.
Throughout his secondary school days, Andrew belonged to the YCL. Later, in 1944, Tambo established a branch of the ANCYL at St Peter’s by bringing together students such as Andrew, Joe Matthews, Nokwe, Fats Ngakane and Henry Makgothi. Joe Matthews served as its branch chairman and subsequently became chairman of the ANCYL in Rosettenville. Andrew became an ordinary member of the ANCYL St Peter’s branch while continuing his active membership of the YCL in the Pimville ‘cell’, as branches of the YCL were called. He opted not to join the Rosettenville branch as he didn’t stay there.
During 1944 Andrew carefully observed the activities of Mpanza and his Sofasonke Party and although he did not like Mpanza’s leadership style (Mpanza often pushed his own interests at the expense of the people he led), he admired his mass-based strategy. By the end of October 1945, Mpanza’s followers on the illegally occupied land called Masakeng had been resettled in new accommodation at Shelters, together with backroom dwellers from other areas. Masakeng had been demolished. Aletta, Andrew’s mother, was one of those who got accommodation at the new Shelters in Orlando West. She had moved there with Letjeta and Emma, his younger brother and twin sister, while he remained with Sekila in Pimville. With the resettlement of Mpanza’s squatters accomplished, Andrew observed and learned from another form of struggle. As the bruised Johannesburg City Council tried to redeem itself, it attempted action against Mpanza, and in January 1946 attempted to have him removed from Johannesburg under Section 5 of the Native Administration Act, a move which the central government supported after some prevarication. The resilient Mpanza stalled the proceedings by taking the matter to court. In addition, the Council warned two Orlando Advisory Board members, Lukas Kumalo and G Xolile, his main accomplices, that they too might be removed from Johannesburg. Observing these events from a distance, Andrew learned from the City Council’s response to the Sofasonke Party that if this leadership could be deported to far-flung rural areas he could suffer the same fate, as he too had rural roots. ‘I decided that to avoid deportation and banishment I would in future claim that I had been born in Prospect township – a defunct settlement in Johannesburg.’ His argument could easily be supported by the fact that Nyoko had briefly stayed at Prospect and at least some records were there to link it with his family. This fabrication, however, would be entrenched in his mind to the extent that he would use it even when there were no longer threats of banishment. It was a lie that he, as its inventor, would later come to believe.
By the time Andrew was in his last year of school, his relationship with Ruth First had shifted to a higher gear. He had been managing various campaigns for the YCL and assisted Ruth with some of her work to support the 1946 mineworkers’ strike which saw the African mineworkers of the Witwatersrand downing tools on 12 August 1946, demanding higher wages (ten shillings a day). The strike was conducted under the auspices of the CPSA-aligned African Mineworkers Union of which JB Marks was president and Dan Tloome secretary. ‘Both men were charismatic and as radical in their approach as the miners they led.’ They reminded him of Mpanza and the members of his Sofasonke party. ‘I’m convinced the miners continued the strike for a week in the face of the most savage police terror because of the quality of their leadership,’ he later said. By the end of the strike, officially 1 248 workers had been wounded and a large number (officially only nine) were killed. ‘Police and army violence eventually smashed the strike,’ recalled Andrew. The resources of the racist state were mobilised, almost on a war footing, against the unarmed workmen. But the miners’ strike had profound repercussions which were to be felt for many years to come. The intense persecution of workers’ organisations which began during the strike, when trade union and political offices and homes of officials were raided throughout the country, continued unabated. The most profound result of the strike, in Andrew’s view, was to be its impact on the political thinking within the ANC and CPSA. ‘Almost immediately the two organisations shifted significantly from a policy of concession to more dynamic and militant forms of struggle … this trend had been gaining momentum for some time.’
By the end of 1946 Andrew had been exposed to several forms of struggles that had shaped his mind. His rural background on the farms of the Orange Free State had exposed him to the plight of farm dwellers and the struggle for land of rural black people who woke up one day to discover that the land they had owned for years was no longer theirs and that the people who had seized it were their masters. His exposure to the poor urban life of black people in Bethlehem and Johannesburg had exposed him to the struggle for service delivery. The miners’ strike had exposed him to labour issues.
Andrew still regarded himself only as an ordinary member of the ANC and the ANCYL. The youth formation he was more actively involved in was the YCL, through which he claimed membership of the CPSA. But the YCL and the CPSA were increasingly facing a barrage of attacks from the state, with far reaching implications. Four years later, when the National Party (NP) had been in power for two years, it became clear that it was irritated by any mention of the word ‘communism’ and the influence the CPSA had over the lives of ordinary black people. The NP also hated the non-racialism that was preached and practised by the CPSA, which was contrary to the legislated ideology of segregation. Thus was passed the Suppression of Communism Act on 26 June 1950