Hlongwane describes the incredible life of PAC1 leader Zephania Lekoame Mothopeng aka Uncle Zeph. His whole life he fought against the colonial Apartheid regime. That implied prison sentences e.g. two times Robben Island, solitary confinement and unprecedented torture. His friend, the writer Es’kia Mphahlele: ‘I know of no activist in this country whose body has been savaged for so long a period as was yours.’

The leading western Anti-Apartheid movements remained silent on Zeph Mothopeng and refused to support him and his movement2. This well-documented political biography illustrates how unjust and harsh that silence has been.

Dr. Ali Khangela Hlongwane is researcher at the History Research Group of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Zeph Mothopeng’s year of birth coincided with the proclamation of the Land Act in 1913. The Land Act was preceded in 1910 by the Union of South Africa confirming the political and economic power of the white minority. The Land Act was the prelude to a traumatic relocation policy and further expropriation of the land of the African majority. In this way land grabbing, started by Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, continued and was given permanence. It marked Zeph Mothopeng’s life, body and soul. Unflaggingly he would fight for the restitution of the stolen land, the liberation of Azania (South Africa) and Africa.

Zeph grew up with five brothers and sisters. Father was a police officer and mother produced and sold clay pots to earn some extra money. Zeph was their youngest child. He did domestic chores, so not until at the age of eleven could he attend school. He saw from nearby how his parents impoverished.

In 1951 Mothopeng was elected President of TATA  (Transvaal African Teachers’ Association). Under his leadership TATA organized campaigns against so-called Bantu education which the Apartheid regime wanted to introduce. They travelled all over the country to make teachers and parents aware of the dangers of the new educational system for the African child. Bantu education aimed at preparing children for unskilled and inferior jobs, suited for their ‘race’. After all, they were inferior to the white population. Hendrik Verwoerd5 headed the Native Affairs Department and introduced the Bantu Education Act in 1953. He declared that Bantu children did not have to learn maths for there would not be any jobs for them and they would never have equal rights. These schools were financed by tax money from the African communities. In reality that was a fraction of what white schools could spend. The impact of this policy is that these days black people are still trying to catch up on these educational disadvantages.

Mothopeng belonged together with Robert Sobukwe, A.P. Mda, Anton Lembede and some others to the Africanists, a radical group within the ANC who wanted to realize the Programme of Action6 without any compromise. Dissatisfied with the moderate ANC course, underlined with the adoption of the Freedom Charter and the moderating influence of white communists, Mothopeng together with them participated in founding the PAC in 1959.

In 1955 the ANC adopted the Freedom Charter together with the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the Congress of Democrats (COD) and the South African Coloured People’s Organization(SACPO). The latter organizations received in this Congress Alliance as much representation as the ANC that represented a much more extensive support base. The Africanists objected to this undemocratic course of events. They also rejected the content of the Freedom Charter. The Charter states that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. The Africanists considered it naive to think that the oppressed Africans were equal to their European ‘overlords’. For Zeph Mothopeng the population in South Africa  is made up of the oppressors and the oppressed and in this situation association with the oppressors was out of the question.

The Congress of Democrats was mainly made up of white communists from the banned South African Communist Party (SACP/CPSA). The Africanists criticized the party because it refused to acknowledge there was a colonial situation in South Africa and an anti-colonial liberation struggle. In 1922 this party supported a strike of white miners calling for unity with white workers for a white South Africa. Criticism of the SACP of the Africanists and later the PAC had nothing to do with anti-communism and anti-socialism. According to Hlongwane there is no evidence of anti-communism or anti-socialism in the PAC documents. Mothopeng saw the SACP as so-called communist, a party that hid behind the ANC, influenced its political process and barely able to organize people.

Service, Suffer, Sacrifice is at the heart of the PAC code of conduct. Mothopeng was living proof of this motto but paid a high price. This motto is originally from West Africa, Hlongwane says. In the 1940s Kwame Nkrumah led there The Circle, a centre for revolutionaries from all over Africa.

After the campaign against the Pass Laws the PAC was banned in 1960 and went underground. Hlongwane describes in his book the extent and activities of the underground network of the PAC. In 1963 Mothopeng’s arrest led to his first prison sentence on Robben Island. Mothopeng was arrested with many other PAC members all over the country. They were accused of armed resistance organized by POQO/PAC10. His son Loxley, also active in POQO, managed to flee the country in time.

During his pre-trial detention Mothopeng was in solitary confinement and was subjected to electroshock torture, caning and a canvas bag over his head pulled so tight till he nearly choked. A former fellow prisoner described how he saw Mothopeng, screaming in a straightjacket, rolling around in the courtyard.

In the 1970s Mothopeng maintained close contact with organizations of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). He spoke at some of their gatherings. In 1974 he was one of the speakers at a BPC conference (Black People’s Convention) in Durban. At the conference it was suggested to organize the Frelimo Rallies out of solidarity with the liberation struggle in Mozambique. In 1975 he spoke at the BPC congress. There he condemned the collaborating Urban Bantu Councils, the South African Indian Council and the Coloured Representative Council: ‘they are (all) a waste of time. We will never have anything to do with them’.

In 1979 he was once again sentenced to Robben Island. Mothopeng was the chief suspect in the lengthy (1977-1979) and largely secret Bethal Trial12 where with 17 co-defendants he was charged with organizing the Soweto uprising in 1976. Four of the defendants died by torture in police custody.

The Apartheid regime characterized Mothopeng as a ‘corrupter of youth’. The judge sentenced Mothopeng, by then 68 years old, to imprisonment on Robben Island for the second time. In previous trials convicted political leaders such as Sobukwe (PAC), Mandela (ANC) and Toivo ya Toivo (SWAPO) were offered the opportunity to make a closing statement. Zeph Mothopeng was denied that opportunity. He managed to smuggle out his handwritten defense. He concluded his statement with: ‘We approach prison with full certainty that freedom is at hand.’ He was sentenced to twice 15 years on Robben Island.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc was imminent. The policy of perestroika of the Soviet Union, aimed at disarmament, also had implications for the armed struggle of the ANC that heavily depended on the Soviet Union. It was the beginnings of negotiations with the Apartheid regime. Mothopeng, since 1986 President of the PAC, was very skeptical. He said: ‘The changed climate of rapprochement can easily fool you into believing that the struggle is now expected and possible to be resolved through rapprochement’. He pointed out that since the PAC was founded in 1959 it had always relied on the strength of the oppressed and dispossessed masses. The armed struggle would not be suspended until a position had been attained that the enemy was left no other option but to negotiate and a situation in which restitution of land and elections based upon one man, one vote would be the central points. In 1989 the OAU (Organization of African Unity) adopted the Harare Declaration resulting in negotiations with the Apartheid regime without conditions regarding restitution of land. Eventually the PAC agreed to join the negotiations on a constitutional assembly based on one man, one vote.

After his release Mothopeng travelled to Europe and the United States for medical treatment. Initially he was refused a passport. Later he got one after all. Despite his illness he spoke on behalf of the PAC at e.g. UN meetings, the Black Caucus in the American Congress in Washington and at the earlier mentioned big public event in London.

The death of Mothopeng in 1990 coincided with the official abolition of Apartheid but the stolen land he had fought for his entire life had not yet been redistributed. Walter Sisulu (ANC-veteran), comrade in the Youth League and fellow prisoner on Robben Island said: ‘The oppressed are poorer after Mothopeng’s death.’