“I shivered, we were part of history” Local resident on being in Soweto on 16 June 1976

POLOKWANE – Feizal Kimmie has just passed matric and joined the South African Newspaper Association, but his father took him by the scruff of his cuff and told him to study to become a teacher.

“You will teach!” he said, “so that you will always have a job.”

Feizal’s blue eyes betray his Scottish ancestorship – his great grandparents were Scottish and his grandmother, a girl from Colesberg.

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In June 1976, the then 21-year-old Feizal was busy with practicals for his teaching career. He had to be in Eldorado Park, but lived some 28-30 kilometres away. He had to take a taxi at 06:00 to be on time, but a neighbour by the name of ‘Mr Baker’ was a principal in Eldorado Park, and he offered him a lift to the school, should Feizal pay for the transport.

That fateful Wednesday of 16 June 1976, Baker, Feizal and a Pastor who was also a teacher, Pinn, were on the way. Travelling through Bosmont, Noordgezicht, Orlando East and Nancefield, was their usual route, a shortcut to Eldorado Park.

“The Group Areas Act also kept us apart, Indians, Coloureds, and Black people. We did not live together, but each in a delegated area. The school system was also entrenching the same apartheid, as each group had its own, separate schools.” Eldorado Park was for the Coloureds, Orlando East was inhabited by Blacks.

“That day pastor Pinn said we should not drive the same route that we always do. We drove through Orlando West. He commented on the hordes of children and parents along the streets. Mr Baker was driving a black Mercedes. Behind Orlando Stadium, there were rocks littering the sides of the roads. The children were dancing and jeering along and in the streets. They could see we were coloured people and knocked on the car.

“We thought they were expecting some dignitaries, maybe the Prime Minister or President, and that was the reason for them all out on the streets. At one place, I held out my arm and yelled ‘Amandla’. They must have seen my blue eyes and thought I was an informer for the police and they slapped my arm away. Mr Baker yelled at me, saying I must not do it, and sped away. We did not think it was an uprising.

“That evening, we saw on the news, in the edited version of what happened, that it was protests. Huge protests. I shivered – we were part of history, and we did not even know it at the time. On Thursday and Friday, we deliberately travelled through Soweto, to see what was going on. We saw tyres burning, people singing in the streets. Two, three days later, when more information came to light about what had really happened, we were glad that we were alive.The uprising was about Afrikaans as a school language. At first, in the Coloured schools, there were no problems. Afrikaans was a popular home language. I did my practicals at a primary school. The principals curbed any uprisings at primary schools and it stopped. It never really took off. But in the early eighties, protests about separate schooling started. Protests flared up starting at Coronationville High School and spread to Westbury Secondary and CJ Botha Secondary. The cops would come, firing randomly, even at primary schools, and teargassed the learners. They used dogs and rubber bullets, arrested truckloads full of high schoolers, and when their parents came to look for them at police stations, emotions ran high, and they would be dispersed with teargas and rubber bullets and dogs.”

In 1984, when Feizal was playing cricket for Transvaal in the Cape, the team went to a drive-in restaurant in Athlone, running smack bang into riots curbed with teargas, dogs, rubber bullets, casspers and water bullets again. “We did not eat that evening.”

“The youth should never forget what pain and tremendous sacrifices the young ones at that time had to go through to ensure they have a better and free future ahead, where they can make their own choices. Never!

nelie@nmgroup.co.za