Read Oral History #211. Available in English.
In 1976, I was there, on the front line [of the Soweto uprisings during apartheid]. I was a student then…. So this day we were at this Roman Catholic church, the Regina Mundi. That Father, he used to help us a lot. We were having this meeting there, we were talking, talking, still talking. You know, we don’t know what happened, but tear gas was shot into the church. Oh, the tear gas—you can’t breathe. It’s horrible. We were crying, and we jumped high walls because they were shooting at us now. And, we were so bare-handed. We had nothing. But they came with guns and were shooting at us. If you run, you have to run for your life. If you are caught, that’s it for you. You are gone. You are dead.
If you are lucky, they will just detain you. There would be no trial. It would be infinite detention. It’s better if they would say, “Ok, we will detain you for two weeks.” No. You don’t know. You stay there, and you rot, and you die, and they dump you. And then some were dumped in the river…. I forgot the name of this river. They were dumped in the river somewhere. Some were dumped in lions’ dens. But funny enough, we were not scared. We continued with that struggle. We continued.