For the larger part of May, South Africa’s television channels, radio stations and newspapers were hammering on their story line-ups, an incident in which a white school boy at Stellenbosch University urinated on the black student’s belongings in what is a clear case of racism. The incident and the outrage that followed reminded me of a discussion we had with a South African man called Elias Ntloedibe. He was in exile in Botswana. He was the former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) director of communications. Ntloedibe fled to Botswana at the end of 1979 or early in 1980. He was a conspirator in the trial of the 18 PAC leaders charged with treason for furthering the aims of a banned organization or something related to such a charge. While in Botswana he stayed among the residents of Go-Ntloedibe Ward in Molepolole. My former colleague at BOPA, Marshal Tladi thinks the man was a Mokwena of South Africa hence the choice of Molepolole as his adopted home.
He had previously worked together with Marshal’s father, Simon Tladi in the PAC. About 1982/83, South Africa still led by P.W. Botha, went to the whites only polls in a referendum exercise. Botha made a major policy statement thereafter. I was genuinely impressed by the speech’s content and the powerful voice that read it despite it being of the evil policy of apartheid. He started by acknowledging that those who rejected the referendum exercised their democratic right and called on them to join the rest of the society to decide their destiny. These were his exact words, “South Africa has appointment with the future. We are about to cross the Rubicon”. These words made me conclude that although Botha was a racist and a product of apartheid, nevertheless he could be counted among the most powerful public speakers in Africa. There were very powerful public speakers this continent had. I knew Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings. They too could be counted among the best among those still living African leaders by that time. Had Sir Seretse been alive at that time, he would have made it to the list of the best. Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki would also have made it to the list had they been around. Following Botha’s speech, Ntloedibe arrived at the offices of the Botswana Guardian newspaper where he was a stringer.
Under the editorship of Kgosinkwe Moesi, the newspaper gave a few South African exiled journalists space to show their writing skills. There was Ntloedibe himself, author of the book, “Are you with us”, Mxolisi Mglashe, Mateu Nonyane and somebody known only as Majakathata. All of them were good writers. I started the conversation about the speech P.W. Botha had just delivered. None of them was impressed and Ntloedibe did the talking more than the rest. His comments were full of his prejudices against the man adding, that there was nothing new in what Botha had said. The implication was that Botha had been saying that all the time. Ntloedibe said racism would not end immediately even if South Africa was to be under black majority rule soon. He specifically mentioned institutions such as Stellenbosch University saying as the architects of apartheid, it would take fifty years or more for racism to be eradicated at Stellenbosch as a town and at its university. He predicted that the yet to be born Afrikaner children, they would still be racists. What struck me was when he said “knock at my grave to contradict me” should the opposite of his prediction happen. Unfortunately he did not live to see the fruits of a democratic South Africa which he so fought for. He returned to his country soon after the unbanning of liberation movements and died in a road accident after the elections. Before he returned home he donated two pamphlets to me.
One is about the Bethal 18 secret trial of the 18 PAC leaders who included the organization’s leader, Zeph Mohlopheng and Ntloedibe himself. Another pamphlet was about speeches of Mangaliso Sobukwe who led the PAC from 1949 to 1959. I still have these pamphlets to date. One speech which is relevant to this article is the one he delivered at the graduation ceremony at fort hare in 1949. He said Fort Hare must be to Africans what Stellenbosch is to the Afrikaners. “It must be the barometer of African thought. It is interesting to note that the theory of Apartheid which is today the dominating ideology of the State was worked out at Stellenbosch.” He added that Stellenbosch was not only “the expression of Afrikaner thought and feeling but is also the embodiment of their aspiration. So also must Fort Hare express and lead African thought.” I used to cheer Stellenbosch wineries for their popular product (wine). But ever since I read that speech by Mangaliso Sobukwe my attitude towards Stellenbosch as a town and university has changed. It became worse in 2018 when I got a tip from sources in South Africa to the effect that some Batswana had been holding meetings which planned the downfall of the Masisi administration in the elections due the following year. One of the meetings was held on Christimas Day by that click with their foreign supporters. It was said those whites and two or three black South Africans were promised a stake in the economy of Botswana if the BDP had been defeated in that election.
I then supported the view that Botswana was not and should not be for sale. I came to the conclusion that Stellenbosch was the architects of evil things. My dislike of Stellenbosch increased when I read a book sent to me by a relative in South Africa. If one needs to know more about the notoriety of Stellenbosch he or she must read the book, “Stellenbosch Mafia” by Pieter du Toit. He takes the reader through what he calls the “billionaire Club.” Stellenbosch had always occupied a unique place in Afrikaner lore he says. The author continues, “Stellenbosch was a town where the identity of Afrikaner was first recorded and the place that gave birth to the university that would deliver much of the intellectual and statutory scaffolding on which racial segregation was constructed. The university produced a succession of apartheid prime ministers including its chief architect, Hendrick Verwoed. Stellenbosch has always been at the centre of Afrikaner’s political and cultural life, incubator for apartheid as an ideology and the embodiment of Afrikaners’ desire for Afrikaans mother-tongue education.
In the book that I have quoted extensively in this article, the author states that “Stellenbosch still exhibits stark spatial divisions of apartheid”. The town, founded in 1679, is still very much divided along colour demarcation, the result of forced removals, with white residents living in the old town and luxurious new developments, coloured people in Cloetesville and Jamestown and the Blacks in Kayamandi. Being with Elias Ntloedibe was always educative and entertaining. When OK 1 flight carrying President OKJ Masire to a SADC summit meeting of heads of state and government was shot down over Cuito Cuanavale in the mid-eighties, he shouted “who on earth can fly the president over a troubled area like that”? After a short pause he continued, “ I am telling you guys heads are going to roll, somebody must be an accused person”, he said. Southern Angola was a no fly zone at that time but officials flew OK 1 over that nevertheless. Explaining how it happened that time, Minister Ponatshego Kedikilwe who was one of those in the presidential entourage said the plane was shot while they were having lunch. They felt and heard that it had been hit. Plates they were using scattered all over the plane.
The next thing they saw was when the pilot controlled it and landed on a bumpy ground. They were lucky UNITA which controlled the area was the one which shot OK 1 down, decided not to slaughter all of them. Apparently UNITA realized that at some stage Botswana supported them and felt bound to help the delegation reach Luanda from where they returned to Gaborone in the Angolan presidential jet. President Masire and a few officials were taken to London for thorough medical check-up because the government did not want to take things for granted. Following internal investigations which covered the reasons for flying over a troubled area such as Southern Angola’s cuito Cuanavale, several senior officers including the chief of protocol were transferred to other ministries “in the interest of the service”. So in the words of Elias Ntloedibe, indeed heads rolled. The battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987/88 and the Cuban intervention in Angola and the entire Southern African history was a turning point in the civil war in Angola. The war ended as South African troops who had been fighting alongside UNITA withdrew under pressure from Cubans, MPLA and Soviet pressure. That paved the way to the Namibia independence in 1990 and the democratization of South Africa four years later.
