the forgotten people

30

Upload: jacana-media

Post on 30-Mar-2016

228 views

Category:

Documents


9 download

DESCRIPTION

Saleem Badat’s The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid answers many questions about banishment and shines a bright and welcome light on a largely hidden and unknown aspect of our indeed ‘brutal history’. It shows how apartheid’s political opponents from rural areas were condemned to the living hell of banishment: a weapon used to expel rural opponents to distant and often arid and desolate places for unlimited periods. These rural opponents were plucked from their families and communities and cast, in the late Helen Joseph’s words, ‘into the most abandoned parts of the country, there to live, perhaps to die, to suffer and starve, or to stretch out a survival by poorly paid labour, if and when they could get it’.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: The Forgotten People

The apartheid state employed many weaponsagainst its opponents: imprisonment, banning,detention, assassination – and banishment. Ina practice reminiscent of Tsarist and SovietRussia, a large number of ‘enemies of the state’were banished to remote and often areas, far

from their homes, communities and followers. Here their existence became ‘aslow torture of the soul’, a kind of social death.

This is the first study of an important but hitherto neglected group of opponentsof apartheid, set in a global, historical and comparative perspective. It looks atthe reasons why people were banished, their lives in banishment and the effortsof a remarkable group of activists, led by Helen Joseph, to assist them. Indeed,this book originated in a promise made by the author to Helen Joseph, who hadundertaken an epic journey in 1962 to visit all those banished across the lengthand breadth of South Africa. The work is illustrated with stunning photographsby Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane and others.

Saleem Badat is Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University. He is the author ofBlack Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid and Black Man, YouAre on Your Own, co-author of National Policy and a Regional Response inSouth African Higher Education, and co-editor of Apartheid Education andPopular Struggle in South Africa.

“For the long years of meticulous research and finally the superb telling of thestory of banishment under apartheid, we owe a great debt to the author” –George Bizos, from his Foreword

Th

e Forgotten Peop

le

FA FORGOTTEN PEOPLE COVER.:Layout 1 2012/09/13 11:42 AM Page 1

Page 2: The Forgotten People

TheForgotten

People

Political Banishmentunder Apartheid

SALEEM BADAT

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page iii

Page 3: The Forgotten People

First published in southern Africa by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2012

10 Orange StreetSunnysideAuckland Park 2092South Africa+2711 628 3200www.jacana.co.za

© Saleem Badat, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form and by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4314-0479-7Also available as an e-bookd-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-0480-3ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-0481-0mobi ISBN 978-1-4314-0521-3 Design by Jenny YoungCover photo by Ernest Cole, Courtesy of the Ernest Cole Family TrustSet in Sabon and Myriad ProJob no. 001873

See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page iv

Page 4: The Forgotten People

Contents

Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii

1 Banishment: an old and common practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Banishment and rural resistance in the early 1950s: GaMatlala and Witzieshoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Banishment and rural resistance in the late 1950s: Bahurutshe and Sekhukhuneland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 724 Banishment and rural resistance in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Mpondoland, Thembuland and Natal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1085 Urban political opposition and banishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1566 Banishments under the Suppression of Communism Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1947 Life in banishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2188 Responses to banishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Appendix 1: Copy of banishment order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Appendix 2: Release order from banishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305Appendix 3: Can Themba, ‘Banned to the bush.’ Drum, August 1956 . 306Appendix 4: Cosmas Desmond, ‘Vorster’s forgotten people.’ Guardian Weekly, 19 June 1971 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310Appendix 5: List of people banished . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page vi

Page 5: The Forgotten People

Preface

Thirty years ago, I came across a tantalising brief reference in the GoldenCity Post of 21 December 1958 to the banishment of African leaders. Mycuriosity and discovery of Helen Joseph’s epic 11,000-km 1962 journey tovisit banished people scattered around the country led me to her home inFanny Avenue, Norwood.

Joseph was thrilled at my interest in banishment, which was then largelya forgotten issue. On a subsequent visit to her, she provided me withdocuments and papers and extracted a promise to publish on banishment,of whose horrors she had considerable knowledge and experience. Thisbook answers my longstanding questions on banishment and also dischargesmy pledge to Joseph.

I dedicate this book to Helen Joseph, a courageous and indomitable anti-apartheid fighter, who did so much to expose banishments and the plightof the banished and also provide them and their families support.

A book that has been thirty years in the making and that has had to relyon richly diverse sources means that there are a large number of people towhom I owe debts of gratitude.

I owe a great debt to my wife, Shireen, and my two sons for theirforbearance. They have borne countless days of my being around but notpresent. I am certain they understand the need for this book.

Professor Yusuf Sayed of Sussex University has been a great friend formany years and a consistent fount of wisdom and support. Professor Robertvan Niekerk of Rhodes – scholar, intellectual and friend – provided enthu-siastic encouragement and inspiration with his wonderful birthday gifts ofErnest Cole’s House of Bondage and Helen Joseph’s Tomorrow’s Sun.

Omar Badsha, artist, photographer and friend, provided a bed on visitsto Cape Town, advice on photographs and enthusiastic support for the book.Professor Raymond Suttner provided, as usual, an outstanding example,sage advice and encouragement. Thanks also to all the many family, friendsand colleagues who over the years have indulged my obsession withbanishment.

x

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page x

Page 6: The Forgotten People

Archivists and librarians at various universities and institutions haveover many years provided wonderful assistance: Professor Jeff Peires, VelileVictor Gacula, Liz de Wet, Sally Schramm and Louisa Verwey at the CoryLibrary; Gibson Nombewu, Sue Rionda and Viv Botha at the RhodesUniversity Library; Jill Otto at the Rhodes Law Library; Michele Pickover,the superbly supportive Curator of Manuscripts at the University of theWitwatersrand William Cullen Library, and her colleagues Zofia Sulej anddigital technician Ryan Singh; Digital Innovation South Africa at theUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal has been a fantastic internet researchresource; Andre Mahommed and Geraldine Frieslaar at the MayibuyeCentre, the University of Western Cape (UWC); Ingrid Masondo, Photog-raphy Archivist at Mayibuye Centre; Mwelela Cele at Killie CampbellLibrary in Durban; Lesley Hart and Zweli Vellem at the African StudiesLibrary at the University of Cape Town, and Tamara Dimant at the SouthAfrican Institute of Race Relations.

Verne Harris directed me to Gerrit Wagener, and Wagener and the assis-tants and photocopiers at the National Archives in Pretoria, colleagues atthe Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository and Sipho Rala at the Cape TownLibrary all facilitated many enjoyable hours in the archives. MichaelCoetzee, Deputy Secretary of the Parliament of South Africa, facilitatedaccess to Tom Schumann, Librarian at the Parliament of South Africa, whoprovided electronic copies of all the banishment orders that were tabled inparliament between the early 1950s and late 1970s.

Chimwewe Mitochi scanned various documents and created the firstelectronic index of banished people from ageing handwritten notesproduced in 1983 by Tessa Botha. Julie Sikelwa Nxadi superbly transcribedthe interview with Anderson Ganyile conducted by William Beinart andalso lent other assistance. Various other colleagues at the Rhodes Mediaand Journalism School – Alette Schoon, Paddy Donnelly, Brian Garman,Jenny Gordon, Paul Hills – at one or other time provided assistance.Shameez Joubert, a graduate of the School, scanned photos from books andmagazines. Tim Huisamen of Rhodes translated Appendix 2 fromAfrikaans. The secretary of the Wits History Department photocopiedhonours theses on GaMatlala, and Kabelo Jonathan at the Special Pensionsunit at the National Treasury helped me with enquiries related to banishedpeople and special pensions.

I am deeply grateful to Rhodes University scholars Distinguished ProfessorPaul Maylam and Professor Jeff Peires, and Ms Jaine Roberts, Director of

xi

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xi

Page 7: The Forgotten People

Research at Rhodes, for serving as critical readers of the final draft of thebook and for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Thanks also toJaine for her meticulous proofreading of the final draft of the book andproviding various kinds of research management support; Professor Peiresfor advice and information on various issues; Professor Henk van Rinsumof Utrecht University for putting me in touch with Professor Robert Rossof the Leiden University Institute for History, who alerted me to useful texts;Madeleine Fullard and Nicky Rousseau for sharing documents and infor-mation related to their time as researchers at the Truth and ReconciliationCommission; Professor Andrew Manson of the University of North Westfor providing materials related to Bahurutshe; Dr Lindsay Clowes of UWCfor pointing me to Drum magazines at the Cape Town Library; ProfessorWilliam Beinart of Oxford University for putting me in touch withAnderson Ganyile and kindly permitting me to use his 2008 interview withGanyile, and Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza of the University of Cape Townfor chats on different occasions on Thembuland and Mpondoland.

David Mmakgabo Champ Sepuru and Paul Kgobe provided informationon GaMatlala. Especial thanks are due to Sepuru for conducting oral inter-views as part of a report commissioned by me for the chapter on GaMatlala,and for diligently travelling around GaMatlala to find families of banishedpeople and photographs of the banished. Numerous people in GaMatlalagraciously accommodated Sepuru’s questions, and loaned photos of banishedpeople and provided permission for their use in this book. James Zugassisted with certain queries; Gwenda Thomas alerted me to certain holdingsat the UCT library. Anderson Ganyile, Amina Cachalia, Michael Gardinerand Phyllis Naidoo readily agreed to be interviewed. Wendy Curson andAdvocate George Bizos responded to some queries on banishments.

Thanks are also due to: the Ernest Cole Family Trust and in particularDr Otsile Ntsoane for the kind permission to use Cole’s magnificent photo-graphs on banishment; Gunilla Knape, Research Manager at the HasselbladFoundation, for providing contact sheets of Cole’s photographs; the Hassel-blad Foundation for scanned copies of Cole’s photos; Dr Peter Magubanefor the use of his photographs; African Media Online for providing photosfrom select issues of Drum magazines from the 1950s; Mayibuye Centrefor the use of photographs in their archives and for scanning photographsfrom various editions of New Age; Amina Cachalia for making availablephotographs that were taken on her 1962 journey with Helen Joseph tovisit banished people; Professor Peter Delius for the use of photographs of

xii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xii

Page 8: The Forgotten People

banished people from Sekhukhuneland; Dr Mamphela Ramphele for use ofphotos from her published books; Nazeema Mohamed for facilitating thescanning of these photos, and Professor Narend Baijnath and LindseyMorton of Unisa Press for helping with certain queries.

Gerald Kraak and Atlantic Philanthropy provided generous seed-fundingfor a TV documentary on banishment. Freedom Park CEO, Fana Jiyane,was most willing to explore ways of raising popular awareness ofbanishment, and honouring the banished. Freedom Park also co-funded theTV documentary. Coco Cachalia and her colleagues at Grounded Mediaand documentary director Lisa Keys were pivotal in ensuring that adocumentary inspired by the book would see the light of day and also kindlyprovided still photographs of Anderson Ganyile and Boy Seopa.

Rhodes University MA student Ulandi du Plessis was an outstandingresearch assistant. She read, checked, and cross-checked hundreds ofNational Archive and other documents and papers, many in Afrikaans, tohelp to compile the first comprehensive index of banished persons. A womanof great enterprise and versatility, she also produced the maps used in thisbook. Ulandi, I sought you out not to translate documents but for yourintelligence and commitment to scholarship and social justice, and yourinitiative and capacity for hard work. I could not have asked for more. Thankyou; you provided fantastic support and enriched this book in many ways.

My sincere thanks to the scholars who served as anonymous externalpeer reviewers for Jacana Media and Brill, and considered this book to havescholarly merit. Russell Martin of Jacana enthusiastically received the bookmanuscript, while Christopher Merrett undertook a skilful pruning andediting of the manuscript. It was a pleasure to work with you and all theJacana professionals.

Finally, Rhodes University provided a stimulating intellectual andscholarly environment for reading, research and writing. John Butler-Adamand the Ford Foundation generously provided a fellowship for a sabbaticalat University of California: Berkeley, which together with Patricia Powell’sfantastic home in the Berkeley Hills overlooking the San Francisco bayprovided the ideal environment for completing this book.

xiii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xiii

Page 9: The Forgotten People

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xvi

Page 10: The Forgotten People

The Ernest Cole Family Trust

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xvii

Page 11: The Forgotten People

Introduction

A slow torture of the soul, a living death. (Helen Joseph, ‘The unending sentence’)

IT IS 1964. In a remote, desolate and arid rural camp, six people idle awaythe hours, day after day, month after month, year after year. Paulus Mopeli,a Basotho chief and grandson of Moshoeshoe, is from Witzieshoek in theFree State.1 So are his wife, Treaty Mopeli, and Piet Mokoena. Alex Tikana,Theophilus Tshangela and Anderson Ganyile are all from the Transkei –Tikana from Cala and the other two from Bizana. The six, ranging in agefrom their thirties to late sixties, are inmates of Frenchdale Trust Farm, abanishment camp 89 kilometres from Mafikeng in present-day North Westprovince.

A striking feature of the camp ‘is the quiet. There [are] no children’svoices, no yipping dogs, none of the murmuring sounds of daily living: there[is] not even the faraway background hum of passing cars. Nothing.’ Thesix people live in huts with dirt floors; there are ‘no lavatories or baths, andno electricity’. Water for drinking and washing has to be fetched from overa kilometre away and food is a constant problem: ‘there never [is] enough’.2

Once a month the six people walk 19 kilometres to a village ‘to receivetheir grants and to spend them at the one store there’. Each of the groupreceives R4 a month, ‘three in meal and one in cash which goes to purchaseextras … Then they hike home again. It is an ordeal for these aging people,but it is also the big event of their month.’3

The six inmates are almost entirely cut off from other people and society.Visitors are extremely rare and ‘precious letters from home are read overand over again. Letters are saved for years until they yellow and crumble’.Some of the six have ‘lost count of the days. Monday looks like Friday inFrenchdale. Nothing breaks the monotony. Nothing breaks the unvaryingroutine. There are no youngsters at home on Saturday, no church bells onSunday, no rush and hurry of shopping days and laundry days during theweek. What is Christmas like? Like every other day. Only sunrise and sunset[mark] the days. The passage from light to darkness [is] their calendar.’4

xviii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xviii

Page 12: The Forgotten People

Each of the six inmates has been expelled from her or his usual place ofresidence, summarily removed from their community. Each has been dumpedover 1,000 kilometres away in an inhospitable camp. Each had dared tocriticise or actively oppose the apartheid state. As a result, each has beenbanished under section 5(1)(b) of the Native Administration Act of 1927.

The period of banishment is indefinite. There was no judicial processinvolved. Those banished ‘had no trial in court. They were neither chargednor told of the nature of their crimes. They were given no opportunity todefend themselves, yet they were deprived of their liberty, of their homes.They were punished within the law, but outside justice.’5

No appeal to a court to challenge the banishment was possible. The‘brilliance of banishment is that it is indeterminate, a limbo which has noneof the legal and procedural trappings of prison, yet effectively removesleaders from circulation and breaks up the cohesiveness and forwardmomentum of the people they left behind’.6

ERNEST COLE, the intrepid and brilliant photographer, spent a few daysamong the banished in 1964.7 It was with an acute awareness of the realitiesof banishment that he wrote that it ‘is the cruellest and most effectiveweapon that the South African government has yet devised to punish itsfoes and to intimidate potential opposition’; and that Helen Joseph spokeof ‘that terrible catalogue of human misery, that list of people scattered allover this vast land, lonely and forgotten’.8

The great historian Eric Hobsbawm cautions that ‘political pressures onhistory … are greater than ever before … More history than ever is todaybeing revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but onlya past that suits their purpose.’9 This is a useful warning about sanitisedhistories and biographies of the kind that makes one wonder how it waspossible that colonialism and apartheid were able to survive so long, if priorto 1994 there were no supporters of apartheid opposing equality, justice,freedom and democracy. It is also a warning against selective recall andamnesia about the past and an invitation to ensure that South African histo-riography assiduously recovers and cultivates understanding of the past asthe only basis upon which a democratic South Africa can build its future.

A record of systemic violence and human rights abuse is vital both inthe struggle against amnesia about the crimes and injustices of apartheid,and in defending, asserting and promoting the human rights and socialjustice that democratic South Africa’s Constitution seeks to guarantee. The

INTRODUCTION

xix

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xix

Page 13: The Forgotten People

human rights abuses associated with state-sponsored violence and vigilanteactivities, murder and assassination, political detention and banning, aregenerally well known, even though memory of them is fading and a newgeneration appears largely ignorant that they happened. Generally unknownis the apartheid state’s legislated administrative practice of banishment, interms of which political opponents were plucked from their families andcommunities and cast, in the words of Helen Joseph, ‘into the mostabandoned parts of the country, there to live, perhaps to die, to suffer andstarve, or to stretch out a survival by poorly paid labour, if and when they[could] get it’.10

Twenty-eight years ago the eminent historian Bill Freund observed that ‘awhole category of expulsions that is difficult to explore but clearly deservesmention is the use of resettlement as a form of political punishment. Theexile of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to the Orange Free State town ofBrandfort where she is confined to living is a well-known example.’11 Freundconsiders banishment as an instance of the general phenomenon of ideo-logically, economically and politically motivated forced removal thatuprooted and relocated three million African people to the bantustans.12

Another way to conceive of banishment is as an important part of thearmoury of political control, punishment, reprisal and repression in theservice of colonial and apartheid rule. In any event, nothing has changedsince Freund made his observation in 1984. No scholarly monograph orarticle on banishment exists in South Africa.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) regrettably gave scantattention to political banishment: ‘the issue of banishment was raised at theTRC and some evidence was heard’; the TRC acknowledging that banish-ments were a gross violation of human rights and also holding that theapartheid government was accountable.13 However, ‘no further action wastaken’ and in general the stories of the banished ‘were not investigated by theTRC and there were no amnesty applications from those responsible’.14 Inpart this was a consequence of the restrictive mandate of the TRC, which waslimited to the perpetration of gross human rights violations from 1960 to1994; but only in part, as a number of people, as will be seen, were banishedduring the 1960s.15 More generally, the neglect of banishment had to dowith the ‘inadequate research and investigation capabilities’ of the TRC.16

Given that social memory is a terrain of contestation, the outcome wasan unfortunate, if unwitting, engineering of forgetting and a ‘skewing of

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

xx

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xx

Page 14: The Forgotten People

social memory’.17 Still, the obscurity of banishment may not be dissimilarto ‘the amnesias resulting from a construction of Robben Island as the pre-dominant signifier of liberation struggle histories, most notably the lack ofattention directed at women’s experiences as anti-apartheid activists ‘boundup with a general marginalisation of women’s role in struggle histories’.18 If‘the archive becomes the official repository of memory … it is simultaneouslya crucial site in the process of forgetting’.19 To the extent that the TRCrecords become the ‘official repository’ of information on the horrors ofapartheid, this has the danger of obscuring practices such as banishment.However, more is at stake. If legitimacy or legitimating relies on the act offorgetting it also, simultaneously, relies on the act of remembering.20 It mustbe a matter of concern how very few of the banished or their families wereawarded reparations or provided with special pensions.21

Ariel Dorfman introduces another interesting thought when he writes:‘It is members of the new government, often the very people who led theresistance against the dictatorship, who are all too often the ones whopreach a selective amnesia, asking their citizens to focus on the future andnot on what happened yesterday. Investigating the horror, they say, draggingup old crimes, putting former officials on trial, only diverts attention fromthe most urgent task at hand, the primary goals of national reconciliation.’22

They fail ‘to realize that this mythic coming together of a fractured nationcould not possibly be attained by ignoring the pain of the past’ and theyalso do ‘not realize that the cost of allowing the former ruler and hisfollowers utter impunity [leads] to the erosion of the rule of law and themortgaging of our ethical future’.23 From the vantage point of hindsightthese are telling insights that could help decipher the ongoing fissures ofcontemporary South African society and the culture of impunity that hasseemingly taken root. Be that as it may, any comprehensive documentationof apartheid tyranny must include banishment, a little known yet extremelypernicious form of reprisal and repression that was directed against Africanpolitical opponents, particularly from the rural areas of South Africa, duringthe 1950s and 1960s.

The South African national liberation movement and its key organisa-tions and institutions were primarily based in urban areas. The iconic andcelebrated figures of the national liberation struggle have tended to bepolitical activists who had cities as their theatres of action and struggle.Narratives on apartheid and the anti-apartheid struggle have similarly

INTRODUCTION

xxi

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xxi

Page 15: The Forgotten People

prioritised the urban drama and theatre. Those who were banished werelargely rebellious political figures immersed in contesting and holding atbay the apartheid state in the rural areas. It is not so much that rural militants,and their activities and courageous struggles against oppression, exploitationand injustice, have been by and large forgotten. In large part, they are stillto be fully written about and to enter popular consciousness. It is importantthat in the story of the struggle against apartheid and the creation of demo-cracy, gallant men and women such as Paulus Mopeli, Makwena Matlala,Kenneth Mosenyi, Godfrey Sekhukhune, Anderson Ganyile, Ben Baartmanand many others who were banished should also be recognised andhonoured.

Thirty years ago, in the course of conducting research on the forced massremoval and relocation of black South Africans, my curiosity was stronglyaroused by tantalising brief references to banishment. Robert Resha madereference to the banishment of African leaders.24 So did others, without anyelaboration, however, on the nature or the scale of banishments. I soughtanswers to numerous questions: how many people were banished; who wasbanished and why; for how long were people banished; what were theorigins of this repressive measure; why was it utilised given the availabilityof other repressive measures; from which localities and to which areas werepeople banished; what were the effects on the communities from which peoplewere banished; what were the responses of communities, and banishedindividuals themselves, to banishment; what were the life experiences ofthose who were banished; what were conditions like in banishment? Thisbook is the culmination, 30 years later, of the search for answers to thosequestions.

In enquiring into banishment, it has become clear how much the chron-icling of black political resistance in South Africa has suffered from anurban-centrism in its concentration on struggles in the cities and towns, onpopular urban leaders and on the ‘formal, organized political movementsand their campaigns’ that by their nature ‘tended to represent and to be ledby urbanized and educated men and women’. Simultaneously, it has becomeequally clear how little attention has been given to dynamics in rural areas,especially in the reserves (later bantustans). It is, however, critical that thesedynamics ‘be revealed, understood and integrated into a wider analysis ofthe processes that have formed modern South Africa’.25

The intensely repressive character of the apartheid state is well known.Less well known, however, is its operation in the rural areas, especially

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

xxii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xxii

Page 16: The Forgotten People

during the period beginning with the electoral triumph of the National Party(NP) in 1948 and ending soon after the banning in 1960 of the AfricanNational Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Sincepolitical banishment was a measure that was largely applied against Africanrural political activists, the book necessarily focuses on social dynamics inthe rural areas and reserves in the 1950s. In the process, it hopefullycontributes to claiming ‘a larger weight or place for the history of the ruralpeople in South Africa’.26

Between 1948 and the mid-1960s, the urban political opponents ofapartheid were largely incapacitated by the state through the serving ofbanning orders, though in the late 1950s and early 1960s some urbanopponents were also banished. In the rural areas and reserves, however, theprincipal form of administrative repression utilised by the apartheid state wasbanishment. This attempted to emasculate the activities of rural politicalfigures by removing them to distant areas and isolating them from thepopular struggles of the day.

The primary aim of this book is to document political banishment underapartheid and, by illuminating a much neglected and largely unknowndimension of apartheid repression, to create an awareness of banishment aspart of ‘the struggle of memory against forgetting’.27 In the pursuit of theseaims the book also seeks to contribute to a greater awareness of the ruralpopular struggles of the 1950s and 1960s that constituted the immediatecontexts of banishment; to highlight the activities of courageous individualswho were banished for refusing to submit to racial oppression and apartheidtyranny; and to reinsert ‘peasants and migrants as actors and shapers along-side the black proletariat [and] the heroes of the African nationalist struggle’.28

This is part of a process of interrogating ‘whose history gets told … in whosename … and for what purpose’; about ‘histories not told’ but that need tobe ‘retold, untold’; and ‘histories forgotten, hidden, invisible, consideredunimportant, changed, eradicated’.29

Apart from occasional journalistic pieces in contemporary newspapers,the magazine Drum and journals connected to the liberation movement suchas Fighting Talk and New Age, writing on banishment in South Africa isextremely sparse. All of it dates from the early 1960s and is largely pennedby people who were connected to the Human Rights Welfare Committee(HRWC), which conducted educational and welfare work around banish-ment. Four specific articles can be mentioned. In 1960, the HRWCpublished a brief booklet entitled The Forgotten Men.30 This focused on the

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xxiii

Page 17: The Forgotten People

laws under which banishment occurred and the hardships experienced bybanished people. Tribute was paid to banished persons for their courage inopposing apartheid policies. The second article was published in the RaceRelations News of April 1961 and it provided statistics on banishment andbrief descriptions of some of the banished people.31 A somewhat moredetailed overview of banishment was provided by Helen Joseph’s article inAfrica South, which strongly challenged various statements uttered in thenational parliament by NP leaders in defence of banishment.32 It linked thebanishment of individuals to opposition to apartheid policies and alsobriefly drew attention to the existence of banishment camps. The finalarticle was by Muriel Horrell.33 Writing in Black Sash magazine, Horrelllinked the banishment of individuals to resistance to state policies in certainareas of the country.

A more extensive account of banishment was penned by anti-apartheidstalwart Helen Joseph in Tomorrow’s Sun, the result of her involvement inthe HRWC and of an extraordinary car journey undertaken in May 1962by her and various anti-apartheid figures, including Joe Morolong, AminaCachalia, Nan Burger, Mildred Lesea and Mitta Gooieman.34 Departinghours after her banning order expired on 30 April 1962 and covering over11,000 kilometres, Joseph visited a number of banished people in their far-flung places of banishment across South Africa.35 Later, Joseph’s 1986 auto-biography, Side by Side, also recounted her 1962 journey to meet banishedpeople.36 She was to pay a dear price for attempting to bring to publicawareness the practice of banishment and the plight of the banished. In late1962, she ‘became the first person to suffer house arrest, to be restricted toher home for 12 hours a day during week days and day and night duringweekends and holidays. Even the 12 hours of relative freedom were hedgedwith restrictions and with the demand that she report − on pain of prison− to the central police station in Johannesburg between noon and 2 pm eachweek day.’37

The chapters that follow focus on various aspects of political banishmentunder apartheid. Chapter 1 provides an historical and comparative analysisof banishment, drawing attention to its use during past centuries, in othersocieties, and by the Dutch East India Company to deal with rebelliousIndonesian political notables some of whom were banished to the Cape inthe late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This chapter also focuses onthe historical development of the South African laws that provided forbanishment, noting that this was a long-standing repressive practice that

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

xxiv

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:11 PM Page xxiv

Page 18: The Forgotten People

had its roots in the colony of Natal but came to prominence after 1948when the NP took power on an apartheid platform. The chapter comparesand distinguishes between different kinds of political reprisal and repression,clarifying that political banishment was a distinctive form of bureaucraticexpulsion of individuals.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 focus on the banishment of political opponents fromrural areas and reserves: GaMatlala and Witzieshoek in the early 1950s;Bahurutshe and Sekhukhuneland during the late 1950s; and Mpondoland,Thembuland and the south coast of Natal during the late 1950s and early1960s. It locates banishment within popular resistance to state interventionsdesigned to impose greater political and social control over rural people. Inchapter 5 attention turns to the banishment of urban-based political opponentsof apartheid. There are case studies of Ben Baartman, Elizabeth Mafekengand Louis Mtshizana. The banishment of political activists under the provi-sions of the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act (later the Internal SecurityAct) is considered in chapter 6. Short case studies focus on Frances Baard,Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Mamphela Ramphele.

Chapter 7 describes life in banishment, the impact on the banished andtheir families, and conditions in two banishment camps, Frenchdale andDriefontein. Finally, in chapter 8 different responses to banishment on thepart of the banished themselves, their communities, political organisationsand civil society institutions are analysed. There is also an examination ofthe activities of the HRWC in which Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi, AminaCachalia and others were involved.

Where possible, statistics, tables, maps and photographs are used tocomplement description and analysis. The remarkable photographs ofErnest Cole, Peter Magubane, Bob Gosani and others are a potent reminderthat behind the statistics are men and women, mothers and fathers, husbandsand wives, and daughters and sons afflicted with the horrendous experienceof banishment under apartheid. Some of Cole’s photographs, whose use hasbeen generously permitted by the Ernest Cole Family Trust, have never beenpublished before. Others are drawn from Cole’s fabulous House of Bondage,which was published in 1967 when he was in exile in the United States andbanned in South Africa.38 His book ‘concludes with a series of dark, reflective,melancholic images documenting the plight of African leaders banished bythe government to distant camps … As before it presents a depressing viewof black political opposition to apartheid, reflecting the reality of the mid-1960s, when few believed the situation in South Africa could end other than

INTRODUCTION

xxv

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page xxv

Page 19: The Forgotten People

badly’. And yet, ‘it is hard not to read the images too as a metaphor forCole’s own condition, separated from the world that gave his life meaningand contemplating the “frightful nothingness” of exile’.39

Hundreds of articles from newspapers, memoirs, books, journals andmagazines, reports of government departments, numerous volumes of theSurvey of Race Relations, decades of House of Assembly debates, documentsand indexes compiled by the HRWC and other organisations, reports anddocuments of the TRC, and scores of documents in English and Afrikaansin the National Archives in Pretoria have been drawn upon to write thisbook. The most significant are recorded in the endnotes. The TRC reported that ‘in its deliberations over what constituted severeill treatment, the Commission has included … banishment orders. It is thusthe finding of the Commission that all those upon whom such orders wereimposed suffered a gross violation of human rights, for which the formergovernment and in particular the Ministers of Justice and Law and Order areheld accountable.’40 Recognising the injustices of our past entails, on theone hand, knowledge and understanding of the horror and brutality ofapartheid in all its myriad and diverse forms: systemic, structural, economic,social, political, psychological, collective and individual. On the other hand,it requires the persistent and assiduous unveiling of little-known perniciousfeatures of our colonial and apartheid past and drawing these to theattention of the wider public. It is indeed the case that ‘to hide the horrorsof the past in a collective amnesia would leave posterity with a legacy offestering guilt and unrelieved pain’.41 The Uruguayan journalist and writerEduardo Galeano, who is ‘obsessed with remembering, with rememberingthe past … above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned toamnesia’, has observed that ‘if the past has nothing to say to the present,history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keepsits old disguises’.42

Ariel Dorfman, who like Galeano had to escape military dictatorship inChile, is insistent that ‘a fragile democracy is strengthened by expressingfor all to see the deep dramas and sorrows and hopes that underlie itsexistence and that it is not by hiding the damage we have inflicted onourselves that we will avoid its repetition’.43 In our own context, NevilleAlexander puts our challenge pithily: ‘the strategic-political and ultimatelymoral-historical question is how to move towards understanding withoutever forgetting, but to remember without constantly rekindling the divisivepassions of the past. Such an approach is the only one which would allow

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

xxvi

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page xxvi

Page 20: The Forgotten People

us to look down into the darkness of the well of the atrocities of the pastand to speculate on their causes at the same time as we haul up the watersof hope for a future of dignity and equality.’44

It is the constitutional imperative of acknowledging ‘the injustices of thepast’ that has been the leitmotif for the research and publication of thisbook on political banishment under apartheid. Simultaneously, in illumi-nating the extraordinary courage of and sacrifices made by the banished intheir refusal to submit to apartheid oppression and the incursions of a statedetermined to limit their autonomy and freedoms and that of their commu-nities and subject them to greater social and political control, the book also‘honour[s] those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land’.

The realisation of social justice in South Africa requires the cultivationof a prophetic memory: remembrance of the brutal and traumatic past andthe sacrifices made to achieve democracy; critique of amnesia about theinjustices of the past that threatens to undermine the achievement of ourconstitutional ideals; consciousness that in the light of past history, SouthAfrica needs fundamental, bold and determined transformation; imaginationto conceive of new, creative, just and humane ways of being and acting; andthe desire, both individually and collectively, to reshape and remake SouthAfrica.45 Hopefully, this book contributes to the cultivation of a propheticmemory.

INTRODUCTION

xxvii

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page xxvii

Page 21: The Forgotten People

xxviii

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page xxviii

Page 22: The Forgotten People

1

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

Courtesy of Dr Peter M

agubane

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 1

Page 23: The Forgotten People

1

Banishment: An old and common practice

Men in shadows had other plans for me, banishmentsplanned for me, men who were desperate not to fall,desperate to rise, rise to power.

(Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North)

It’s always in the interests of the powers that be forpunishment to be excessive, unforgettable. Above all,to act as a warning.

(G. Martinez, The Book of Murder)

BANISHMENT HAS LONG EXISTED in human history and continues insome contemporary societies. It ‘has been practiced in a variety of differentcultures and societies … and … is one of the oldest known forms of criminalpunishment’.1 The Old Testament narrates that Adam and Eve werebanished as a form of divine punishment ‘from the Garden of Eden for theirdisobedience to God’.2 Cain was ‘doomed to be a wanderer, hidden fromthe presence of God’ for killing his brother Abel.3 Banishment dates backto at least 2285 BC to the code of laws of the Babylon king Hammurabi.

It can also be found in ancient India, China under various feudal dynastiesprior to 1911, the Roman and Greek worlds and in Jewish communitiesbetween the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. In early societies banish-ment would have been a significant and effective instrument of punishmentas individuals were strongly dependent on families and clans for protectionand survival.4 Outlaws feature prominently in popular culture and inmedieval England outlawry was the ‘equivalent of banishment’ and ‘a formof punishment for serious crime’.5

Banishment was a theme to which Shakespeare devoted considerableattention. His recourse to the topics of banishment and exile was a conse-

2

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 2

Page 24: The Forgotten People

3

THE PRACTICE OF BANISHMENT

quence of their ‘historical reality,’ a ‘common practice in English politics inhis own time of religious dissension’ and ‘an equally common theme inclassical biography’. Shakespeare’s own concern is reasoned to lie ‘in thegreat pathos inherent in the condition of banishment and exile, in thewrenching pain of separation that accompanies it, in the loss of ties to theland of one’s birth and to one’s friends and relations, and in the anger,despondency, bitterness, and hatred it often engenders’.6

There are four situations in Shakespeare’s plays that give rise tobanishment. One concerns the banished as victims of ‘unjust usurpations’.Another is where the banished are loyal subjects at the receiving end ofwrathful sovereigns. A third implicates the banished in one way or anotherin civil war ‘together with the related phenomena of court intrigues andpower struggles’. Finally, there is banishment as a consequence of ‘decisionsby legally constituted authorities acting within their rights’. The latter arecases of ‘legitimate (though not always just) exercises of legal authority,either to punish a wrongdoing or to preserve the security of the state’.7

The scramble for Africa led to unsolicited European offers of treaties ofprotection and free trade. Refusal to accommodate such treaties providedexcuses for war and colonial conquest. Treaties were also ‘legal rationali-zations for dispossessing African rulers of their land if they refused toconduct commerce on European terms’ while some of the ‘African rulerswho refused to submit to the exigencies of British imperialism were arrestedor treacherously trapped’ and banished.8 In 1887 King Jaja of Opobo wasbanished to St Vincent in the West Indies. Jaja was slandered by the Britishvice-consul in Cameroon, Harry Johnston, as ‘the champion of reactionaries’and as an opponent of ‘the spread of Christianity and clean living’.9 He wasinduced by Johnston to ‘board a gunboat, ostensibly to negotiate a peacefulend to hostilities. Once on board, however, Jaja was arrested, taken to Accraand then transported to St Vincent’. He died in 1891 on his way back toNigeria and was buried in Tenerife.10 King Prempeh I of Asante, ‘membersof his immediate family, and several important chiefs were detained by theBritish at Elmina Castle (in Ghana), then moved to Freetown, Sierra Leone,and finally banished to the Seychelles Islands’ in 1900. He was allowed toreturn to Kumasi, together with 54 other banished people only in 1924when old and broken.11 The political vacuum created by the banishment ofsuch leaders was used by the British to implant ‘their own authority’.12

In 1896 opposition was aroused to the imposition of a tax on huts andhouses when ‘a protectorate was unilaterally and fraudulently proclaimed

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 3

Page 25: The Forgotten People

over the hinterland of the colony of Sierra Leone’. A key figure in thisopposition was Bai Bureh, described as ‘the resilient general and militarystrategist who led the Temne in the war against the British in 1898’.13

Eventually arrested, he was taken to Freetown and then banished on 30July 1899 to the Gold Coast (Ghana), along with Bai Sherbro (GbannaLewis) and ‘the powerful Mende chief Nyagua’.14 Both of Bai Bureh’scomrades died in banishment, but he was permitted to return in 1905 andwas reinstated as a chief in 1906.15

At the close of the nineteenth century, ‘the Kingdom of Benin hadmanaged to retain its independence and the Oba exercised a monopoly overtrade which the British found irksome. The territory was coveted by aninfluential group of investors for its rich natural resources such as palm-oil,rubber and ivory.’16 In a brutal military expedition, Benin City was plunderedand burnt in 1897 though the Oba of Benin, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi,escaped. He later surrendered and was banished to Calabar, where he diedin 1914.17 There are also more recent references to banishment in Africa:the Alafin (king) of Oyo banished and deposed in 1955; an Oba banishedfor political reasons; and ‘a labour militant, Imoudu, detained in 1943 andbanished from Lagos to Auchi for 2 years by the colonial state’.18

Many prominent Russian revolutionaries experienced banishment andexile. After his arrest in December 1895 and time spent in prison, Leninwas on his release ‘banished for three years to the village of Shushenskoe ineastern Siberia’, arriving there in May 1897.19 Leon Trotsky was alsobanished. After spending almost two years in different prisons being inves-tigated for revolutionary activities at the end of 1899, Trotsky and threeassociates ‘received their administrative verdict, that is, a verdict withouttrial’ – banishment to Siberia for four years. He first settled in Ust-Kut, ‘agod-forsaken place with about a hundred peasant huts, dirty and plaguedby vermin and mosquitoes’, and then in Verkholensk in the mountainousareas of Lake Baikal. This was the place to which ‘thirty five years earlierPolish insurgents had been deported’. Trotsky escaped from Siberia in 1902.However, following his arrest for playing a leading role in the St PetersburgSoviet during the 1905 revolution, in November 1906 ‘Trotsky and fourteenothers were sentenced to deportation to Siberia for life and loss of all civilrights’. He escaped on the way into banishment.20

Stalin spent over 18 months in Caucasian jails until late 1903 withoutbeing charged. Then, ‘like most suspects on whom no offence could bepinned’, he was ‘“administratively” condemned to deportation for a term

4

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 4

Page 26: The Forgotten People

5

THE PRACTICE OF BANISHMENT

of three years. He was to be exiled to the village Nvaya Uda in the Irkutskprovince of eastern Siberia. The prisoner could invoke no habeas corpus;no law whatsoever protected him against the arbitrary exercise of powerby authority.’ Banished with numerous other activists, he escaped in early1904. He was arrested again in Baku and banished in 1908 to Solvy-chegodsk, a ‘little settlement … in the northern part of the Vologda provincein European Russia’ for two years. He escaped after four months. Arrestedyet again in 1910, an administrative order was imposed obliging him ‘tocomplete his banishment in Solvychegodsk’. He remained in banishmentuntil June 1911 and was then prohibited from residing in large cities.Arrested for a final time in February 1913 in St Petersburg, he was banishedfor four years to the northern Siberian province of Turukhansk, which wascharacterised by harsh weather. He returned to active political life only withthe outbreak of the revolution in 1917.21

After the revolution, article 20 of the 1926 Criminal Code of the SovietUnion permitted judges to impose the penalty of banishment.22 During thefactional political struggles that followed the death of Lenin and saw Stalintriumphant in the late 1920s, numerous political opponents of the Stalinistregime were banished. The most tragic figure, who had played a pivotal rolein the Russian revolution, was Trotsky. Following his expulsion, and that ofother ‘oppositionists’, by Stalin from the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky was banishedto Alma-Ata in present-day Kazakhstan on 17 January 1928.23 AlongsideTrotsky, his secretaries and family members were also banished to variousplaces, as were numerous other opponents of Stalin. Another Russian revolu-tionary similarly banished was Karl Radek, who had served as an internationalrepresentative of the Bolshevik Party, was active in the Communist Inter-national and had been ‘rector of the Sun Yat-Sen University for Chinese studentsin Moscow’.24 Radek was banished to the Ural Mountains. Deutscher writesthat as ‘the conditions in which they found themselves, though painful andhumiliating, were not yet crushingly oppressive, the Oppositionists revertedto a manner of existence which had been familiar to them before therevolution. The job of the political prisoners and exiles was to use theenforced idleness in order to clear their thoughts, learn, and prepare for theday when they would once again have to shoulder the burdens of directstruggle or the responsibilities of government.’25

Communication was forged among the dispersed exile colonies and ‘asecret postal service operated between Alma-Ata and Moscow’. Trotsky con-tinued to be a thorn in Stalin’s flesh through the ‘influence which [he] exercised

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 5

Page 27: The Forgotten People

from Alma-Ata and which had so far prevented the Opposition in exile fromdisintegrating. Stalin was determined to remove this obstacle from his path.But how was he to do it? He still shrank from sending the killer.’26

On 20 January 1929, following a decision of the Politburo, Trotsky waspresented with a ‘new order of deportation, this time “from the entireterritory of the USSR”’. This order he denounced as ‘criminal in substanceand illegal in form’. However, on 10 February 1929 Trotsky saw Russia forthe last time as he was forced to board at Odessa, with his wife, Natalya,and son Lyova, a ship that ‘as if to mock him bore Lenin’s patronymic –Ilyich!’27 Trotsky was to reside for four years from March 1930 onwardson the deserted Prinkipo Islands, which ‘had once been a place of exile towhich Byzantine Emperors confined their rivals and rebels of royal blood’.28

After spending periods of exile in France and Norway, he was assassinatedon 20 August 1940 in Mexico.

In 1953, following his release from prison, the Russian novelist andwinner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn ‘was exiledto the barrens of southern Kazakhstan’. In the early 1800s his great-great-grandfather had also been banished. He had ‘joined in an act of rebellion,and the rebels suffered banishment to the virgin lands of the Caucasus. Suchpunishments were a traditional way of opening up new territory; like thepioneers moving west across America, the migrants could take what landthey wanted.’29

In more recent times, in January 1980 another Russian, the Nobel PeacePrize winner Andrei Sakharov, and his wife, Yelena Bonner, ‘were seized byofficers of the Soviet secret service … while walking in a Moscow street …given two hours to pack’ and were banished ‘to Gorky, an industrial city 250miles east of Moscow and off limits to foreign reporters’.30 The propiska systemof curtailment of the movement and residence of Soviet citizens was put togood effect in 1980: ‘one of the last great purges to the 101st kilometeraccompanied the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, as the Soviet Unionsought to project a positive image of its capital city to the world community.The practice gave rise to the expression, “Taken to the 101st kilometer.”’31

Among a number of relatively recent instances of individual banishmentis the case of the Greek composer and left-wing political activist MikisTheodorakis. When the Regime of the Colonels, a fascist cabal, took powerin a coup in 1967, Theodorakis went underground and played a key role inopposition to the military regime. The Colonels banned his music and songs

6

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 6

Page 28: The Forgotten People

7

THE PRACTICE OF BANISHMENT

under martial law.32 Arrested in August 1967 and held for five monthswithout trial, he was released in January 1968 and kept under permanentsurveillance. Then, in August 1968 the security police effectively banishedTheodorakis and his family to the tiny mountain village of Zatouna.

This choice was vindictive: a colonel had instructed that Theodorakis‘likes the sea too much. He must be deprived of it. Find a place in thePeloponnese which is farthest from the sea and we’ll put him there’. It was,however, also chosen because it is a natural fortress. Theodorakis wrote, ‘Iam living in an iron collar which is choking me … My nerves are at breakingpoint. My spirit is afflicted.’ Fourteen months of banishment at highaltitude, with long periods of snow, rain and fog, under constant guard,reporting twice daily at the police station and, later, being restricted to thehome for 22 hours a day, all took a considerable toll on the physical andmental health of Theodorakis, his wife and their children. In late 1969,Theodorakis was transferred to a camp for political detainees at Oroposand eventually permitted to go into exile in 1970.33

Banishment has also been used as a repressive measure against Pales-tinians in Israel. In June 2010, the Israeli Supreme Court ‘upheld a moveby Israeli police ordering three members of the Palestinian LegislativeCouncil, which functions as the Palestinian Authority’s parliament, and aformer member of the Palestinian Cabinet to leave the city within a monthof the order’.34 The four men, who were East Jerusalem residents andrecently released after spending a few years in political detention, were firstissued the orders in 2006 on the grounds of their political activity. TheirIsraeli identity cards had already been confiscated, which meant that theycould no longer move about freely. One of the men under threat of banish-ment noted that ‘we have been living like prisoners in our own homes; wecannot move or leave our homes because without our identification papers,we could be arrested or harassed at any checkpoint or by any policemanon the street’. However, this was relatively tolerable: being told ‘to leaveour homes, our families and our city where we have lived all our lives iscruel and inhuman’.35

The court decision paved the way for the banishment of other Palestinianactivists from Jerusalem. According to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rightsorganisation, ‘in 2008 alone, Israel revoked residency rights of over 4,500Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem for various reasons’, thus effectivelybanishing them from Israel.36 Following the Aqsa intifada of 2000, 79 Pales-

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 7

Page 29: The Forgotten People

tinian prisoners released from Israeli jails were banished to the Gaza Strip,Jordan and European countries.37 In 2010 there were Israeli threats tobanish 14 more prisoners.

The use of banishment as a mechanism of reprisal against politicalopponents has not been confined to states. In February 2000 in the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo, the rebel group the Congolese Rally for Democracybanished the Bishop of Bukavu, Emmanuel Kataliko, ‘to his home town,Butembo, in North Kivu because of his critical attitude towards the author-ities, and only allowed him to return to Bukavu in mid-September’.38

There are numerous other historical and comparative instances ofbanishment and certain generalisations may be made:

• The term banishment tends to be used interchangeably with deportation, penal transportation and exile.

• Banishment is the expulsion of people from one location to another, which also involves the severing of ties with and dislocation from family and community.39

• Banishment is usually ‘to a non-institutional setting’ and also commonly entails ‘neither institutional control nor support for the banished’. Thatis to say, banished people generally have ‘the responsibility to care forthemselves and … substantially more freedom than an average prisoner’.40

• Banishment is associated with power and authority and is usually deployed by the state (national and local), but also other institutionsand, in rare instances, rebel political movements.

• Banishment is a practice that has existed for thousands of years and continues to exist today. Various societies across the world at one orother time and for one or other reason have resorted to banishment.

• Banishment is punishment for breaches of social custom, for criminal offences, a form of reprisal against and repression of political dissidentsand opponents, and a means of political and social control. Whendeployed as a repressive political weapon, banishment tends to beassociated with authoritarian regimes.

• Those subject to banishment may be individuals, social groups or communities.

• There is a gender dimension to banishment: men rather than women are banished.

• Banishment is employed against both citizens and non-citizens. In the case of citizens, it may entail denial of citizenship for varying periods,or even its loss.

8

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

FA Forgotten Peoplex:Layout 1 2012/09/13 7:12 PM Page 8

Page 30: The Forgotten People

The apartheid state employed many weaponsagainst its opponents: imprisonment, banning,detention, assassination – and banishment. Ina practice reminiscent of Tsarist and SovietRussia, a large number of ‘enemies of the state’were banished to remote and often areas, far

from their homes, communities and followers. Here their existence became ‘aslow torture of the soul’, a kind of social death.

This is the first study of an important but hitherto neglected group of opponentsof apartheid, set in a global, historical and comparative perspective. It looks atthe reasons why people were banished, their lives in banishment and the effortsof a remarkable group of activists, led by Helen Joseph, to assist them. Indeed,this book originated in a promise made by the author to Helen Joseph, who hadundertaken an epic journey in 1962 to visit all those banished across the lengthand breadth of South Africa. The work is illustrated with stunning photographsby Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane and others.

Saleem Badat is Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University. He is the author ofBlack Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid and Black Man, YouAre on Your Own, co-author of National Policy and a Regional Response inSouth African Higher Education, and co-editor of Apartheid Education andPopular Struggle in South Africa.

“For the long years of meticulous research and finally the superb telling of thestory of banishment under apartheid, we owe a great debt to the author” –George Bizos, from his Foreword

Th

e Forgotten Peop

leFA FORGOTTEN PEOPLE COVER.:Layout 1 2012/09/13 11:42 AM Page 1