Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi
Johannesburg - On October 9, 1983 – only a few weeks after the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) – the Vaal Civic Association (VCA) was formed.
It was the injunctions of the then ANC President Oliver Tambo which set the scene for the 1984 mass resistance. In January 8 statement of that year, Tambo stated:
“We should direct our collective might to render the enemy`s instruments of authority unworkable.
“To march forward must mean that we advance against the regime`s organs of state-power, creating conditions in which the country becomes increasingly ungovernable… It is these institutions of apartheid power that we must attack and demolish, as part of the struggle to put an end to racist minority rule in our country.”
On September 3, 1984, a stay-away and peaceful protest march against rent hikes spearheaded by VCA in the Vaal turned into a bloody confrontation between residents and the police.
In the ensuing conflict four councillors were killed.
Conflict spreads throughout the Vaal triangle and 66 people were killed in the first week.
The Vaal Uprising heralded the beginning of the insurrectionary period of 1984–86, which, like no other period in South Africa’s history, came to signify the search for a new order and demands for full emancipation.
The revolt quickly spread to other parts of the country and by 1985, large parts of South Africa’s urban townships had become ungovernable.
South Africa’s political landscape had irrevocably changed and any plans to return to the status quo were shattered.
The formation of underground units of the ANC in 1982 and the establishment of the VCA in 1983 provided ideological guidance and organisational capacities. Organised politics began to mesh with localised processes of conflict.
With the intensification of popular protests in 1984, the beginning of the rent boycott and heavy-handed state repression, boundaries of community further solidified.
From then on our revolution caught alight with renewed intensity and our people have surged ahead in united mass action such as never before seen in the history of our struggle.
1984 has seen the apartheid regime shaken by mass popular action not witnessed since the banning of the liberation movement in the early 1960s.
The level of popular action has far exceeded the 1976 uprising.
Between the end of the first World War and 1979 , there was only one treason trial, which lasted from 1956 till 1961.
And in 1984 alone there were 44 people accused in different political trials.
In November 1984, Congress of South African Students (Cosas) initiated the largest stay-away in 35 years occurring in the Transvaal and supported by the UDF and Federation of South African Trade Union (Fosatu) – a precursor of Cosatu.
Their demands are centred around the education crisis, the presence of the police and army in the townships, increases in rent and taxes and detentions.
This was described as a resounding success because it was a victory scored in the face of a massive police and army in the townships.
The UDF backed a call by some unions to observe Christmas of 1984 as a “Black Christmas” to mourn for those killed, injured, or detained as a result of the township uprisings.
The Sharpeville Six – Reginald Sefatsa, Moses Diniso, Fracis Mokhesi, Reid Mokoena, Duma Khumalo and Theresa Ramashamola – were sentenced to death on the 13th December 1985 for the killing of a councillor in Sharpeville on a day of the Vaal Uprising.
The judge admitted that there was no direct evidence connecting the six with the actual murder, nevertheless he convicted them based on the doctrine of common purpose, and refused to find extenuating circumstances.
They were finally reprieved as the result of intense pressure from local and overseas lobbyists. Other two patriots, Daniel Maleka and Josiah Tsawane were also reprieved after being sentenced to death for killing a policeman in Sebokeng.
Activists like Chaka Radebe, Lekgotla “Ace” Motaung and Thabo Memela were convicted and served a long-term imprisonment at Robben Island. On 11 June 1985, 22 anti-apartheid activists, including leaders of the UDF and VCA were charged with treason, murder, terrorism and subversion in what became known as Delmas Treason Trial.
The Delmas Treason Trial was a clear indication that the battle-lines were more rightly drawn than ever. The mass democratic movement had no space left to struggle for change in a legal and peaceful way.
To put it bluntly, the working class and the unemployed were waging a battle for their very physical survival in the face of severe economic pressures.
Various institutions of political class rule – such as the local authorities, the tricameral parliaments, the homelands, the Bantu education system - as well as some of the administrative mechanisms of that rule, were no longer functioning effectively, and some not at all.
Whilst the challenges to the tricameral parliaments in particular and the education system have had little to do with economic forces, many of the struggles against institutions of apartheid domination drew their impetus from the economic woes which the working class had faced.
Despite heroic sacrifices by the countless martyrs, the problem with the transition epoch is that the end of white minority domination has left the ownership and control of virtually all means of production undisturbed – a control which is the real source of its power to exploit and to maintain its domination.
Looking back, 38 years in retrospect, we salute the generation of 1984 and vow to intensify the struggle for socio-economic emancipation in honour of their living memories.
They did not die in vain.
Dr Mahlatsi is an SACP Free State PEC member writing in his personal capacity.