‘Children looked at death in the face in the streets... and decided enough was enough’

Jeanette grew up in Soweto, an all black racially segregated neighbourhood with iconic neighbours including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

As a child she wasn’t privy to the racial atrocities going on around her thanks to the solid structure of African families – the majority of her childhood was confined to the black townships due to the Group Areas Act stipulating that black Africans could only be in ‘white areas’ as servants.

Ndhlovu joined ‘the Spear of the Nation’ after the June 16 1976 tragedy that heralded a new era not only for South Africa as a nation but for Jeanette’s family – her youngest sibling Hastings was shot and later died from injuries suffered.

“This was the last born child in the family and we had never heard him utter a communist word,” Jeanette, who was later recruited as a driver for the ANC’s military wing MK (Umkhonto we Siswe) smuggling students across the border into Swaziland to strengthen the resistance. told The Journal.

“The doctor who saw him on arrival at Baragwanath Hospital told a journalist that, ‘This boy in school uniform with a gurgle of death in his throat was brought to my attention’. He died a horrible death with his brains shattered,” she said, still jarred by details of his horrific suffering.

Hastings Ndhlovu was the first recorded victim of the Soweto Riots – peaceful student protests that culminated in clashes between black youths and government authorities after Apartheid police opened fire on innocent demonstrators.

“Children looked at death in the face in the streets of Soweto and decided enough was enough. Some were shot at point-blank range and others carried dead and dying friends.

“The children assumed adult roles and they stopped fearing death. The defiance against unjust laws became a battle cry for many of them.”

Jeanette remembers the army coming into the townships, shooting at mourners if the deceased were perceived to have contributed to the anti-Apartheid struggle.

A colleague of Ndhlovu’s, Jackie Mashabane, had been killed in police custody. At his funeral students and other mourners raised their hands to make peace signs and the army opened fire as the coffin was lowered, leading to a young women having her foot shattered by a bullet during the pandemonium.

Meanwhile, Jeanette’s family was relentlessly harassed by Apartheid agents demanding they admit that Hastings – their brother, their son – was a communist.

“I am proud that he stood up for the protection of the rights of South African blacks that ushered in a period where the rights of all South Africans can be respected,” Jeanette said.

“He played his part in this even though he had to pay such a heavy price. We look back and say it was not necessary for so many to die but because of their deaths they ushered in a new era of racial harmony.”

The first contact Ndhlovu had with the ANC was through some party literature left anonymously at the family home after her brother’s burial, resulting in her later being approached and asked to be a driver for the party. “I was a new driver and since all universities were shut down after June 1976 I had nothing to do so I was more than happy to keep myself occupied,” she said.

The job quickly became dangerous – the MK was classified as a terrorist organisation, making life unsafe for its members whose deaths were often covered up by the ruling government and their bodies frequently fed into crocodile infested waters.

“I saw the body of a man in the papers who was also doing what I was, mutilated and dead because he worked for the ANC. I got scared and wanted to stop,” Jeanette added.

However, she felt an obligation to help as many as she could to safety. “More and more children came to me to beg that they needed to leave the country as some of their colleagues were disappearing and some had been found dead in remote areas of the country.

“There generally was a feeling of ‘victory or death’ among those who were leaving. There was uncertainty but also fear of the unknown. However, many felt that the unknown will be better than what they had experienced at home’.

Ousted as a member of MK, she fled to the US with two of her sisters and fought alongside Joshua Nkomo and Sam Nujoma, giants of the Southern African Liberation Movement, isolating the Apartheid government from the international community through trade and cultural boycotts, leaving her unable to return home until the fall of the regime.

“My mother died during our years in exile and we could not come back to bury her because the police state that our country had become was killing all those who opposed apartheid,” she said. “I will forever regret not having been able to bury my mother and being with her during her last days on this planet.

“But I will forever be grateful that she brought into this world children who could not stand by and witness such a great injustice without doing something about it.”

Jeanette also joined the ANC’s Observer Mission to the UN in a bid to sensitise the world to the brutality of apartheid and the special needs of women under the regime. Black women under apartheid were termed “perpetual minors” who had to be represented by a male relative and were unable to own property themselves or engage in any legal agreements with very few able to pursue further education.

In 1994 she finally returned home to South Africa and worked for the Independent Electoral Commission in charge of administering the first democratic elections in the country.

Ms Ndhlovu went on to become Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) and consequently South African Ambassador to LA before taking on her current role of Ambassador to Ghana.

Nonetheless, the memories from that fateful June day still linger more than 35 years on. “This is all still very difficult to talk about but I feel we have to face our past and hope that future generations never put through fellow human beings through this again.”