39 years later: how MaChina's sacrifice shaped South Africa's struggle for freedom

There was once an African officer in the feared South African Police (SAP) Special Branch, stationed at the present-day Alexandra Road police station in Pietermaritzburg, a Victorian-era building still standing.

His name was ubaba uMjwara, from Imbali Township. I am sure he is late now. He was also a fellow Presbyterian congregant.

He worked alongside men from Sobantu who also served in the dreaded Special Branch (SB). Our parents called them Amaphoyisa ezoMoya, “airwaves surveillance police”, which was some bogey reference to instill fear that these SB officers could “eavesdrop” on political conversations about banned liberation movements through the airwaves even if you tried to whisper.

So, one time during detention at the very same cop shop in 1987, Baba Mjwara, who knew my father as they were fellow deacons, had this to say to me and my fellow detainees. Knowing my father through church:

“Baloyi’s son, if we don’t stop you now when you sing, ‘Our MaChina, we will follow him; even if we get arrested, we will follow him,’ it’s clear you will one day go on a rampage and burn down the (Pietermaritzburg) Town Hall of the whites. We must stop you from becoming terrorists.”

Mjwara worked with fellow Sobantu SB officers. And boy, oh, boy, we produced them in numbers in Pietermaritzburg in the 1970s, the likes of Teni Zondi, Baba Sithole, Baba Masihlakulusane, and Lwani Zimu. All of them are now departed.

The institution that replaced them, the Crime Intelligence, is essentially the renamed Special Branch, notorious for its role in killing anti-apartheid activists until it was formally reconstituted in 1995.

Today marks exactly 39 years since Sipho “MaChina” Xulu and fellow uMkhonto weSizwe combatants Lucky Payi and Andrew Zondo went to the gallows at Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru Prison in 1986.

On this day, night fell during the day in Sobantu, and we were only teenagers.

“Hang me, but the revolution will continue. There are many more where I come from who are ready to pick up the spear and wage on.”

These were Xulu’s defiant words in court during the mitigation and aggravating phase.

Xulu and Payi were executed for the killing of Ben Langa, brother of the late Chief Justice Pius Langa, author Mandla Langa, and diplomat Bheki Langa.

In a strange twist of fate and unprecedented demonstration of irony, the slain Ben Langa's older brother, Advocate Pius Langa, offered to legally represent the duo of Xulu and Payi as they stood trial at the then infamous College Road Supreme Court.

Then ANC President Oliver Tambo was so moved by this unprecedented gesture by the bereaved and victimised Langa family.

Zondo was executed for the Amanzimtoti bombing of December 23, 1985, when a limpet mine exploded at the Sanlam Centre, where South African Airways (SAA) had its offices. Nine months later, Zondo faced the noose at the tender age of 19.

He claimed in court that he had intended to warn the SAA office to avoid casualties, but he couldn't find any functioning public phone to phone in his attempted bomb warning.

As for Xulu and Payi, they had assassinated Langa at his Georgetown, Edendale, home. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) later revealed that Langa was never an agent of the regime. The order to assassinate Langa had come from Xulu and Payi's commander, who was a mole within the ANC, in a Pretoria operation known as the false flag operation. The apartheid state thus achieved what the TRC called “a triple murder … without firing a single shot themselves.”

Not only was MaChina, or Chigom, as we fondly referred to him as youngsters of Sobantu, imbued by his revolutionary courage during the 1982 rent increase boycotts and our political idol of the time, but he was also a younger brother to a close friend of mine, the late Schoeman Xulu (may his soul continue to rest in peace).

So, when some of us bemoan the state that the organisation has degenerated into, it is not because we are publicity seekers but because we think of the covenant we made to people like MaChina, Payi and Zondo, as they went down to the gallows singing that South Africa shall be free, that we shall indeed pursue the struggle to the hilt until what they laid their lives for is achieved.

It has been 39 years since one of our own, a valiant son of Sobantu, courageously and unflinchingly met his demise at the hands of the noose of the apartheid hangman.

I guess having walked in the shadows of the great cadres like MaChina had a profound influence on how one conducts oneself politically.

We have never been the 2nd February 1990 Detachment of the Struggle but got hurled into the deep end as early as September 1982.

As Lindani Mzotho would often ask, "Where were these people during the struggle?"

Those who are familiar with the township of Sobantu would know that the administration building at the entrance of the township is named after MaChina.

It was in 1986, and I was already doing Standard Nine (now Grade 11) when I first heard of the word "night vigil", as members of the Sobantu Youth Organisation (SOYO) held one for MaChina at his Khwezi Street home.

It was also on the morning of September 9, 1986, when I first heard the song "Hamba Kahle Mkhonto" being sung, and as youngsters we immediately learnt the song and its chorus, and in no time we were singing it in the morning exactly at the hour we had been told they would have been led to the hangman's noose.

So, some of us, as much as we deplore the current political shenanigans that have engulfed our glorious movement by some of these characters that have infiltrated it, shall never on any given instance betray what MaChina, Payi and Zondo sacrificed that is most precious – their lives.

It is not a case of blindly supporting the ANC or being sentimental about it, but it would be a sheer selfish betrayal of this trio and many others like Ni Radebe, Harry Gwala, Graham Radebe, Mubi Khumalo, Donono "Teddybear" Mzimela, Santiago, Thandi Matiwane, Sikhumbuzo Ngwenya, DCO Matiwane, Rev. Victor Africander, Muzi Thusi, Comrade Bhampetsheni and many others.

(Baloyi is a former journalist who has worked for many publications in various roles. He has also worked as a government communications specialist. He writes in his personal capacity)

SUNDAY TRIBUNE