I Was There...

The body of both autobiographical and biographical writings continues to grow in the Azanian literary and historical landscape. It manifests in various trends, including biographies written by scholars on Azanian writers, musicians, visual artists, and political activists from the diverse schools of thought represented by the Azanian liberation movements.

There is also a substantial body of autobiographies, several of which are self-published, suggesting a quest to democratize the histories of the liberation movement. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania, which has often been framed as either a misrepresented or marginalized voice in the history of 20th-century liberation struggles, has made extensive use of this medium—and this development is welcome.

The latest addition is the memoirs of PAC veteran Hezekiel Mothupi, who shares with us his family history, early childhood, and education. Some of the defining experiences of his early adulthood include the historical injustice of forced removals and the settler-colonial illegal use of the Group Areas Act to continue colonial conquest, dispossession, and displacement.

M'Afrika Mothupi represents the early generation of PAC activists who responded to the call to armed struggle after the killings at Sharpeville and the mass arrests of PAC/Poqo operatives following the mass police swoops of 1963, a year designated for a mass uprising by the PAC. His journey to exile takes us to the early days of PAC life in exile in the then city of Francistown in Botswana, from where many found their way to Zambia, Lesotho, Congo, Ghana, Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. In the 1980s, the journeys included a liberated Zimbabwe.

Today’s generation may think that exile was fun, but it was a struggle to survive being away from home. I recall during M’Afrika Mothupi’s 70th birthday, which I had the opportunity to attend at his ancestral home, friends and relatives revealed—at times with tears in their eyes—that they thought they would never see him again. He made it back home. However, the fault lines we witness today, looking with hindsight at the post-1994 transition, remain.

M’Afrika Mothupi’s recollections will share with the reader the fraught processes of integration and the making of the ‘new’ South African National Defence Force, his role in the special pension office, and life back home in a country he still calls Azania.

 

 

Dr Ali Khangela Hlongwane