Understanding Marikana Through The Mpondo Revolts

Sarah Bruchhuasen, 2014

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of the ways in which rural histories can enhance our understanding of both rural and urban resistance, both past and present, in contemporary South Africa. In order to do so, it explores two books in conversation with each other, Thembela Kepe and Lungisile Ntsebeza’s edited volume Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years as well as Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi’s Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer. These two books provide a useful platform from which to engage in a re-examination of rurally based protest and repression in order to locate some of the suggestive links, particularly in regard to the transmission of repertoires of struggle, between the Marikana strike and the Mpondo revolts, as well as the on-going struggles of the organised poor in some of South Africa’s urban centres.

The relevance of past rural resistance in contemporary South Africa: The Case of the Mpondo Revolts

The Faculty of Humanities invites you to attend the following seminar:

The relevance of past rural resistance in contemporary South Africa: The
Case of the Mpondo Revolts

Presented by: Prof Thembela Kepe, Geography Department, University of
Toronto

Lindela 'Mashumi' Figlan

Lindela 'Mashumi' Figlan, Abahlali baseMjondolo

Lindela Figlan was born on the 27th of December 1970 in J.B. Location in Flagstaff in Pondoland in what was then the Transkei bantustan.

His mother was from the Radebe family and she kept the home. His father was secretary of the congress that went into revolt on Ngquza Hill in 1960. More than 4 000 men occupied Ngquza Hill. They were determined to fight for their land and for their dignity. The apartheid state sent in the military and there was a massacre. The courage of the men on Ngquza Hill is always remembered in Pondoland today. The songs from that struggle, like 'Asiyifuni idompas', are still sung today. When Lindela was a young boy the police used to come to their home from time to time, kick in the door and kidnap his father. Sometimes they would take him to a place known as Betani where they would force him to dig potatoes with his hands saying that they did not want to risk damaging their tools. When he came home his fingernails would be red.

Govan Mbeki: The Peasants’ Revolt

South Africa: The Peasant's Revolt

Penguin Library, 1964 & by International Defence and Aid Fund, 1984.

Preface by Ruth First

Chapter 8. Chiefs in the Saddle

Chapter 9. Resistance and Rebellion