Jimmy Matyu About Town

Bloodbath averted at Sobukwe funeral

THE funeral of Pan Africanist Congress founder Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe in Graaff-Reinet on March 11, 1978 is deeply etched in my memory because it was the day I managed to avert a bloodbath. And I nearly got a bullet in my chest for trying to keep the peace.

This was the era when peoples’ organisations were outlawed, leaders were sent to languish on Robben Island and hundreds were in exile. Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla) were engaging the SA Defence Force outside and inside the country.

There was a marked political vacuum, but it helped in a way to bring all activists from different parties together with one set goal – freedom in our life time. But the ANC influence still reigned supreme among the youth.

On the morning of the funeral, Sobukwe’s home was teeming with mourners from all over the country. Others en route in buses had been stopped by police and forcibly either turned back or kept at a roadblock until the next morning.

There was also a large contingent of media.

It was clear as daylight that the conservative Graaff-Reinet had never experienced such an invasion, and storekeepers closed their businesses and watched the proceedings from a koppie overlooking the town.

While I was in the Sobukwe house, Lennox Mlonzi, a PAC executive member from Johannesburg, called me to settle a dispute outside. ANC-aligned youths – Mkhuseli Jack among them – were demanding the Afrikaans media, which they saw as pro-government, leave.

After talking to the group of chanting youths and threatening them that all media members would leave with the Afrikaans reporters, the demand was dropped at the request of Jack, photographer Elijah Jokazi and others.

Another request was also granted that the PAC veterans, led by PAC and ANCYL co-founder Dennis Siwisa, pay homage with a song to their fallen leader.

At the stadium just as the funeral proceedings, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, assisted by Archdeacon Mcebisi Xundu, were about to begin, two youths and a woman approached me. I was standing just behind where Mrs Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe and IFP leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi were already seated.

Suddenly I was now confronted by one of the three who had approached me. They wanted me to tell Buthelezi to leave.

I was stunned and asked myself “Why me” when I was simply a mourner coming to pay my last respects to this great son of Africa whom I had once interviewed when he established his PAC branch in Port Elizabeth in the late ‘50s.

They made it clear to me that either Buthelezi left the funeral or it would come to a standstill. I told Buthelezi, but he refused to budge, claiming he was invited by Mrs Sobukwe and mandated by the PAC in exile to deliver the funeral oration.

He and Sobukwe had been at Fort Hare together.

I took back this information to the group of activists. Then I decided to go to Tutu and Xundu, who were both surprised by the turn of events.

Tutu also approached the youths who refused to move from their stance. Tensions were by now running high and the activists started chanting ugly terms and singing war-like songs as they moved towards the platform from two directions.

Sensing trouble, I again approached Tutu, who rushed back to plead with Buthelezi. He eventually, most unwillingly, agreed to go.

With Tutu and Xundu we escorted Buthelezi through a hostile guard of honour and in the process I managed to block a karate kick aimed at the chief. The two men of the cloth suddenly returned to conduct the proceedings, leaving me with the chief and his bodyguard to continue through the guard of honour.

As we were making our way towards the chief’s car, stones were hurled from behind and I decided to fall back. I saw his bodyguard turning to look back, wielding a firearm and he fired a shot.

I was saved from being hit when I noticed the late Evening Post photographer, Evert Smith, had been felled by a stone which hit him on the back of his head. Without thinking I also went down.

The bullet hit a young boy who was directly behind me. He was taken to hospital, but survived.

After that homeland leaders or their representatives, including members of the House of Representatives, were targeted.

I met the bodyguard, still escorting Buthelezi, at a function honouring black choral music composers in the Feather Market Centre in 2000, and he still remembered me and the incident.

Twenty years later Buthelezi got his chance to deliver that oration when he, as Home Affairs Minister, was invited by the Sobukwe family to attend a commemoration service in Graaff- Reinet on February 28, 1998. He mentioned the ugly attack on him by ”misguided youth”.

Mrs Sobukwe finally got her opportunity to comment on the incident when she testified before the TRC chaired by Tutu in King William’s Town on May 12, 1997.

Replying to a question by commissioner Xundu, she said: “It is no good to chase anybody away from a funeral. It is not a good thing. There is no dignity in that, no honour.”

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