'I Have Seen a Land'

Now that we are all welcomed, let's get down to serious business. The Minister [of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange] has ordered that I be charged under Section 27 of the Police Act. There are people who thought that I had been detained, because when you hear "section" in this country, then you know. He had also said that he has now ordered the police to open a dossier on me. I was a little disappointed, I must say. I had thought that they had dossiers from way back when. Now I know they only started two weeks ago.

The Police Act says any person who publicizes any untrue matter in relation to any member of the [defense] force—when that force member or the force itself is functioning—without having reasonable grounds that that statement is true, shall be guilty of an offense. Then they tell you that there is a fine of up to 10,000 Rand [$4,500], or five years in jail, or both.

Now, what angered the minister is apparently what I had said on a visit to Australia, where I had an interview with a person who had asked me what I thought about what is happening in South Africa. Among other things, we talked about the unrest of the last three months. We talked about the campaign of the United Democratic Front [UDF] and other organizations to get people to stay away from the polls [during the election of parliaments for Indians and people of mixed race]. We talked about the success of all of that and about the meaning of what we were seeing in South Africa.

"What does it mean," he asked me, "when 7,000 troops are asked to go into, or ordered to go into, the [black] townships?" And I said that that means we have an undeclared state of civil war. I thought it was clear and honest, and I thought I was simply saying what I saw was the truth. The minister is upset about that.

He is even more upset because I talked about the role of the military and of the South African Defense Force. I said that we know they are committing unbelievable atrocities in the townships. I mentioned only one example of that: the example of the little boy who was shot in both legs by a policeman. That was told to us by the people we visited as a delegation of the South African Council of Churches [SACC] in Sebokeng in September.

Now I do not know whether the minister knows what an atrocity is. I have looked it up. It is, it says, a repellent deed, an inhuman act, something that offends orderly human decency. An act that is inexcusable and ought not to be defended. Now when I hear, or when I read of a little boy of 3 years old, who was playing in the yard with his friends and was shot dead by the police while he was playing, then I think that that is an atrocity. And if it is true, I will say it.

When I hear that little Thabo Sibeko—who was 6 years old—was sitting on the front stoop of his home playing with other children and got shot, so that he actually died as he went into the home crying for his mother, I ask myself what kind of threat could he have been to any policeman? I think that that is an unbelievable atrocity. It should not have happened.

If the minister does not know that, then he must go into these townships and speak to those people. Or if he does not know it, I am almost tempted to say then may the day come that he will experience and know what it means. And he will never again say that this is not an atrocity.

IT IS VERY CLEAR that either he does not know or he does not want to know what his police are doing in the townships. And if he does not know and if he does not want to know, he should not be the minister, he should not be in the government. And in fact, not only should he not be the minister, the government should not be government at all.

I wonder what one expects when you let the police and the army move into the townships and then you order a blackout of all news. The press is not allowed to go in there, the press is not allowed to monitor the situation, to come and report what they see and what they have experienced. What do you think will happen when there is no possibility for public scrutiny on what the police and the military are doing in the townships?

For when you move against defenseless people, and you move in with full military preparedness, armed to the teeth, what do you think is going to happen when you let these people loose on defenseless civilians and on children? When the thing that they have been trained for in the army—the only thing that they have been trained for in the army—is to kill as efficiently as possible?

You know, we don't think about that. But when you take a person from civilian life and remake him into a soldier, the one thing that we train him for is to kill efficiently. That is what soldiers do, you know. And when they move into the townships and there is no control or no possibility of control, then of course you must prepare yourself that things will happen that you would not like to happen.

But when they happen, you must not try to make other people who speak about it out to be liars and slanderers of the country. You must rather try to find out whether it is true. This the minister has not been willing to do. I think that that is wrong.

I think that the South African public and our people have a right to know what is happening in the townships. You cannot say that because SABC-TV does not show it, it does not happen. You cannot say that because the press is prohibited from publishing everything, it does not happen.

I have said so before, and I will say it again. The whole world saw, on their television screens, how South African policemen beat men and women and children who had done nothing. They saw what happened on August 27 in Lenasia, and in other townships. They saw since then what has happened, especially during the first months of the unrest in the townships in the Vaal Triangle and on the East Rand.

NOW THIS GOVERNMENT has made laws which make it well-nigh impossible for the press to report these things. They made laws which protect the military, which protect the police, like this act, numbered 27. They have indemnity laws, so that it is almost impossible for us, as ordinary people, to get to the truth and to say, "This is actually what happened." There is an all-pervading atmosphere of violence and of threats and of intimidation, so that even these people who have suffered under the violence of the police sometimes are too afraid to come out and testify to it.

Apartheid is a violent system. We have said so often before. It is a system that can only be maintained by ongoing violence, by wanton violence. It is a system that would not survive for one single moment if there were no police force, or if there were no army, or if there were no violent reaction from the government every single time the people protest.

In every police state, the police and the army are not really instruments at the service of all of the people, but they become instruments of the most vicious kind of oppression to maintain the position of power of those who see themselves as the powerful group. And this police state is no exception. This is what we have seen over the last three months.

Again when we read these things that have happened to our people, and when you read what happens to people like little Thabo Sibeko, the question for me is not only what kind of mentality does that policeman have, but the question is ultimately and finally, "What kind of climate has been created in a country where such a thing is actually possible, where a policeman can do it and get away with it?" That is the question that we have to ask.

So the responsibility for the violence that we have to live with every day, the responsibility for the violence that is systemic, both enter the system of apartheid. The responsibility for the impossibility of people to really work for peace without getting a threat of death, that responsibility I lay squarely at the door of the South African government. They are responsible; and they must be told this. And I will tell them as long as God gives me breath in my body.

I recognize that it is the responsibility of the minister to protect his police force, but I must also say that it is my responsibility to protect my people. I will not allow these things to happen. And I know about them. I am being told about them by the very mothers and fathers who have seen their children die and kept quiet about it. If I hear it, the world will know it as long as I can speak.

I want you to remember that it is your responsibility as well. The responsibility to defend those who are defenseless, to speak for those who are voiceless, to make sure that the world understands what is happening, and to make sure that we in this country are aware of what is happening is not only the responsibility of one or two people. It is our joint responsibility. The minister, because I have done this, has called me a liar and a slanderer. He must take responsibility for those words.

I HAVE IN MY possession affidavits, and I will read simply a few examples of what has happened to people during the last few months since the police and the military invaded the townships, and since we have had this unrest. There was a little boy called Walter Pule Makhata, a schoolboy aged 14 from Naledi, Soweto. He went to the shop to buy a loaf of bread, was hit by birdshot, and found dead.

In Katlehong, three children, one of them mentally retarded, were allegedly assaulted by police on the 13th of September 1984. The police fired tear smoke into the house and walked in, asking where the children were. And when they found them, they started to kick and hit them all over their bodies. This happened to children. This is taken from a SACC affidavit. Who is the liar, Mr. Le Grange?

On Friday, September 28, the horrendous example of the young boy who was shot in the police van by the policeman. His name is Jacob Moleleke.

On August 15 an unnamed boy, who called himself A.B., aged 15, was on the roof of his house in Watville Benoni, with two other people, doing repairs. There were no apparent disturbances in the area at that time. Then the police came through shooting tear gas cylinders. Some people ran out from the streets into A.B.'s house for shelter. The other two men on the roof fled, but he lay down on the roof. A policeman mounted the ladder to the roof, came up to him, and discharged a tear gas cylinder into his face. He has lost his left eye as a result.

If this is not an atrocity, what is? And if the minister does not know it, he must make it his business to know it.

Nicholas Mldulwa, 10 years old, was sent out by his father one evening to fetch firewood. The area was so quiet that his father actually thought that this was safe to do. A combi [station wagon] came by; a shot was fired. The father ran out and found his boy hit on the left side of his forehead with a rubber bullet. The police came and told him to keep the matter quiet. He refused, went to the lawyers, and signed an affidavit. He even gave the registration number of the vehicle.

Elsie Nana, 19 years old, was arrested while attending a prayer vigil. She was assaulted on the third of October, was told to write a statement and give details about whatever she knew about the activities of other people. She was two months pregnant. When she told them this during the assault, she was kicked and hit with a rubber baton repeatedly on her stomach.

All of this the minister can ask from the people who have made these affidavits. All I want to ask him is, "Who is the liar? Who is the slanderer? Who is the one who is trying to cover up deeds like this?"

AS LONG AS these things happen, and as long as we hear about it, it will be our responsibility to testify against the evil that is gripping this country. We will not refuse. We will not stop doing this.

We will refuse to be intimidated. It seems to me that the South African government thinks that these things that happen, these atrocities—yes, atrocities, Mr. Minister—will stop us from demanding our freedom. But the South African government must learn that the time that they can avert a change—a fundamental change in South Africa—by merely reaching for a gun is over. We will no longer be silenced by fear, or by intimidation, or even by the wanton killing of our people.

The demands are there and are clear: release the political prisoners; unban the organizations; scrap all these laws that have made South Africa a hell for so many people to live in; stop killing our children and our people on the street. Let us participate in an open, democratic society. Then there will be peace in this country.

The state threatens to ban the organizations, and they threaten to ban the United Democratic Front. It will be a little difficult because, I have often said, the UDF is the people of South Africa. They cannot ban the people. The UDF embodies the dreams of the people of South Africa, and they cannot ban that dream. The UDF embodies the aspiration of the people toward a free and just society. They cannot ban that.

They can do whatever they want; but the determination of our people to be free will remain and will become the real reality that even Mr. Le Grange and his government will have to face. So it seems to me that all of the threats that we see will not really, in the end, help the South African government.

There are threats against individuals. I do not know what the minister has in mind for me. I have just heard that I will be charged, and over the last week the threats have come in more frequently than before.

Someone has called me up and said that the system has many ways to get at you. And they will do that. I do not know what he means. I do not understand. But it does not matter now. That is no longer the most important thing in my life.

THE MOST IMPORTANT thing is what I want you to remember tonight: what we are fighting for, what we are struggling for, what our people are suffering for, what our people are dying for. That is worthwhile. Let us not give that up.

Let us remember that no threats and no form of intimidation and no trick that the system can play on any one of us, including myself, can bring us to the point where we will be silent, where we will accept the situation as it is. Because if we do that, we might as well give up and die.

We sometimes die a thousand times before we die. Because when we are afraid, we die every day a little bit. We die in our humanity, and we die in our determination, and we die in our self-respect. Let us not come to that point.

For me it is clear. I have experienced in this last year something within the community of the UDF that will remain with me as long as I live. I have experienced support, and I have experienced a determination, and I have experienced a love for freedom that is a precious gift that we have. We must not give that up. This is what we have to continue to work for.

I have seen a new South Africa. I have seen a land, not of apartheid, not of death, not of chains, but a land of joy and a land of freedom and a land of peace. Let us fight for that land. I have seen a new land where our children will no longer be bound down by the yoke of racism. Let us fight for that land. I have seen a land where our people shall work and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Let us fight for that land.

I have seen a land where families will no longer be broken up, and where mothers and fathers will enjoy the love and the respect of their children. Let us fight for that land. I have seen a land where the misery of relocation is no more, and where the graves dug for little children who will tomorrow die of hunger remain empty. Let us fight for that land.

I have seen a land where those of us who fight for freedom and for justice and for the self-respect of this country will no longer be sent to prison, will no longer be tortured, will no longer be threatened, will no longer be shot on the streets of our nation, but will be rewarded with honor and with the presence of justice. Let us fight for that land. And I have seen a land where we together will build something that is worthwhile, that is faithful to what we believe.

Let us not give that up, but make tonight a new dedication for that moment. Because I believe it does not matter what happens now. I believe that the freedom that we have struggled for and the freedom that we have died for will become a reality. You can make it happen. God bless you.

Allan Boesak was president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, chaplain at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and a Sojourners contributing editor at the time this article appeared.