As you know, the title of our project is Discovering the Rainbow Revolution. And for ourselves, as well as the students, they're going to be learning about South Africa with a clean slate in terms of knowledge that they've picked up outside of what the media has given them. So with that in mind, what would you say to the student? What should Canadian students discover about South Africa?
A country is many things. It is the flora and fauna, the environment — because that impacts development, that impacts the life activities of a society. Secondly, a country is the people — the various cultures that may be found within the political borders of a country. A Canadian student therefore has to have an understanding, have a feel of the various peoples and cultures of South Africa in order to ultimately feel the dynamism of this country.
I'd like to explore some of those points in a more personal way. Could you describe what it was like growing up in Bloemfontein under the apartheid system?
Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State. The Free State is one of the provinces that the Afrikaner, the Boer, had hoped would be the home of that group of South Africans called Afrikaners. It was therefore not surprising that that province became one of the important provinces in the conceptualisation of apartheid as a policy, as a philosophy, and in its implementation.
How quickly did it dawn on you that it was wrong and had to change?
It dawned by accident actually. When I was doing secondary education, I got involved in debates at school. For argument's sake, you take a topic, and then you have those who are against it and those who are for it. And obviously the social issues kept on cropping up. Why don't we have the same education as whites? Why don't we have good hospitals?
When I finished my secondary education, I didn't have money to go to university. Theoretically I said I'm going to work, and when I've made some money, I'll go back. In those four years of working, I met apartheid at the workplace.
I worked for a white doctor who was really a humanitarian person — yet his background was that of a Nazi, a racist. His father used to take pot shots at blacks. If you stole, if you did something wrong, he didn't hesitate to pick up his rifle and shoot, without realising he's shooting at a human being.
Third example. We were on the second floor. When you looked across, you saw a string of other white surgeries. And you would see patients going in. And when they came out — say it's a Monday — if that doctor decided that on Monday I give them red medicine, everybody who came out of his surgery would be having a bottle of red medicine. Then perhaps for colour, Tuesday, he changes it to blue medicine. Every bottle.
In this process, one was rubbing shoulders with the political structure called ANC. ANC was a collection of various social formations. Churches related to the ANC, welfare work related to the ANC, sports organisations, teachers' organisations, women's — all these things had a relationship with ANC, because they were suffering the way ANC members were suffering generally. You could not but be influenced by the thinking of the ANC even if you're not an active member.
I was very active as a student. I was in the student leadership — secretary of the Student Representative Council. Side by side, I was active in the ANC Youth League — in my last year, I was the secretary general of the ANC Youth League in that portion of the Cape called Victoria East.
When I finished at university in 1959, I couldn't get a job as a teacher because of my politics. It was clear that it was a matter of time before they picked me up. My family and the ANC in Bloemfontein said — it's a matter of time. They're going to pick you up. If you want to skip the country, you better skip.
The student union, of which I was treasurer, decided that I should be in the delegation going to Switzerland to attend the International Student Conference. They needed this black face, you know — tokenism. I turned the offer down — because what it meant in practice is that I would have to apply for a passport. And if you did, then you had to get security clearance. I said, "I am not going to make it that easy for them."
I didn't have a passport. It was the first time I lived in white apartments in Johannesburg. One night I'd be in this apartment, half the night they would ring and come and knock and fetch me and take me to another apartment. I danced like that until I was to leave.
I had disguised myself with dirty clothes. My hair was unkempt so that I don't draw attention. I just looked like dirty workers who were getting into the third-class coach. Now that I was in second class, I was out of place.
Now here's my break. If I assist them, they might assist me with a more serious problem of how to cross the border. I turned around. "Oh, baas — if they pay, won't you allow them?" He said, "I don't mind. They can sit here. But they must pay." He calculates how much. I turn around — "Hey, look — I've just been talking for you, pleading that if you have some money, can you pay a little more so that your ticket is made into second class. Otherwise you have to get off the next train."
When the train came to the border post, I was already positioning. I put my things at the end of the window — where if it gets hot, I can push my little baggage and jump through the window and run.
I had to change my alibi when I was in Bechuanaland. I said I was a businessman and I wanted to open a business. In our culture, if you come into a railway station and there are ten of you, it doesn't take ten minutes before each one is told his biography. "I'm a so-and-so child, I grew up this." We're free. We tell our biographies.
I learned that my contact was nowhere to be seen. The plane had come and gone — the plane that took out Mrs Tambo, Oliver Tambo.
We managed to forge documents — met people working in home affairs and got new names. We agreed that each must have a copy of all the addresses (we had collected addresses from Serowe through Africa to London, New York, Washington, Moscow. It's fantastic how the underground works.)
Once you were in Sweden — what was your role?
Cut a short story through it. Went through Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika then, and flew to London. I was a month in London, then flew over into Sweden. In Sweden I registered as a student to do medicine. Because of my experience with that doctor, I promised myself I was going to be a doctor to do something for my people.
After about 12 years, SIDA of Sweden employed me to run a training centre — an orientation centre for their so-called expats who were being sent to third world countries for technical aid projects and to the United Nations system. We ran them through an orientation for two weeks, three weeks. I ran that centre from '72, '73, '74.
In '88, I decided I had done my bit with Namibia. ANC headquarters was now in Lusaka, and I was very active in things ANC. I was deputy head of the Education Department of the ANC. Future education in South Africa was a question; scholarships for our youth were now flooding out of South Africa; building of schools for South Africans outside South Africa.
What did that entail?
It's political. Mobilising pressure on South Africa against apartheid. Keeping, mobilising public opinion in Sweden. Lobbying internationally — the whole of Europe. You have to travel — attend conferences. Whatever conference, it didn't matter whether it was about plants or about drinks, about smoking, about youth. Any conference, you bring in the question of apartheid, lobby that conference to take a stand for South Africans.
Towards the end of my stay — the then president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, got a stroke. He went to London. He was in a neurological clinic. But London was the wrong place for him because it's the centre of the world. Wherever you come from in the world, you always find yourself going through London. So it meant the whole world wanted to express sympathy with him. They would go to him — and in the meantime he needed to rest. He was semi-paralysed and he needed to rest. But everybody — prime ministers, ministers, presidents — they wanted to say, "Oliver, we have our sympathies, we will continue supporting your struggle." And then engage him again in heavy discussions.
It was at that time that Mandela comes out of prison. The first trip he made overseas included Sweden — so that he sees his colleague. They grew together, they studied together, they married together, they helped each other to marry, they opened a law practice together, they were in politics together. They were very close.
Thank you very kindly for sitting with us.
- Bloemfontein — capital of the Free State province; centre of Afrikaner nationalism
- Ismail Mohamed — distinguished anti-apartheid advocate, later Chief Justice of South Africa (1996–2000); his being forced to eat sandwiches on the pavement in Bloemfontein because he was barred from white chambers is a well-known historical episode
- Fort Hare University College — founded by missionaries 1916, originally affiliated with the University of South Africa, then with Rhodes University; alma mater of Mandela, Tambo, Mugabe, Kaunda, Mbeki, and many other African liberation leaders
- Bantu Education Act 1953 — introduced at primary level 1952, restricted black education to inferior tribal-language streams
- Extension of University Education Act 1959 — formalised apartheid at tertiary level; created separate "tribal" universities; required special permission for blacks to study at historically white universities
- University of the Western Cape, Westville, University of Zululand, University of the North, etc. — the tribal-and-racial-category universities created under the 1959 Act
- NUSAS — National Union of South African Students; originally white liberal, became multi-racial in 1959–60 when Fort Hare and other black student groups rejoined
- Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960 — police killed 69 protesters demonstrating against pass laws
- ANC and PAC banned, April 1960 — direct consequence of Sharpeville
- MK (uMkhonto we Sizwe) — armed wing of the ANC, formed late 1961
- Oliver Tambo (1917–1993) — ANC president-in-exile 1967–1991; suffered a stroke in 1989
- Lund University — Swedish university where Modise did his sociology degree
- SIDA — Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
- UN Institute for Namibia, Lusaka, 1976–1988 — UN training programme for the administrative cadre of an independent Namibia; Modise worked there for 12 years; the institute trained the future leadership of independent Namibia
- Hage Geingob — Prime Minister of Namibia (and later President) who Modise refers to as "my boss at that institute"
- Park Station — Johannesburg's main railway terminus
- Serowe — second-largest village in Botswana, traditional capital of the Bangwato; the chief was Sir Seretse Khama (or his successor) at the time
- Plumtree — Zimbabwean border-post railway siding
- Bechuanaland — colonial name for Botswana, became independent 1966
- Bulawayo — Zimbabwe's second-largest city
- Mrs Tambo — Adelaide Tambo (1929–2007), wife of Oliver Tambo
- Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela — long-time ANC leaders who shared the early years Modise describes
This is the single richest interview in Mark's South African archive for Anabasis purposes, and one of the richest in the entire MicroChronicle archive. Compressed list:
- The Asian-people-cannot-stay-24-hours-in-the-Free-State rule (Section 2). The specific bureaucratic technique of apartheid that almost never appears in English-language reporting. The Ismail Mohamed sandwich-on-the-pavement detail is the cinematic centrepiece of this section.
- "Discovering apartheid through high-school debates" (Section 3). The mechanism of political awakening through researching for an argument. Pairs editorially with the Czech math teacher's account of her parents giving her access to forbidden books that flipped her views at age 15–16 (Interview 01) — and with the Brno gymnasium teacher's account of laughing during the Lenin lecture (Interview 03). The exact same psychological moment captured in three different settings.
- The doctor who specialised with African patients and was systematically discredited by the hospital system (Section 5). Pairs editorially with the Karoo lawyer's account of the white Chamber of Commerce boycotting his rural law clinic (Interview 01). The exact same regime technique — punishing white actors who serve black populations — applied in 1950s and in 1990s, in city hospitals and in small-town legal services.
- The bottle-of-red-medicine doctors (Section 6). Stand-alone short-form candidate; the specific mechanism of substandard medical care for black patients under apartheid, told as comedy that turns to horror.
- The morning the NUSAS students arrived with the Sweden scholarship (Section 10). Editorially extraordinary — the compressed account of how international solidarity networks actually rescued individual ANC activists in 1960. Worth a 90-second short on its own.
- The Park Station third-class-ticket scene (Section 11). One of the most cinematic passages in any of Mark's interviews. The 23-year-old fugitive negotiating a ticket conversion with a hostile white booking clerk while NUSAS students wait at a distance not to be seen with him. The compressed mechanics of life under apartheid surveillance.
- The two black professionals on the train (Sections 12–13). A perfect compressed parable about class, race, and the costs of pretending — three black people in a second-class compartment, two who refuse to play the deferential role, one who plays it strategically to save the others, and a regime functionary who punishes pride. Editorially extraordinary as a piece of human observation.
- The chief in Serowe and the four-week alibi search for his father's people (Section 15). The narrative power of an alibi that was partly true — Modise really was looking for his Tswana father's people — and his guilt at being assisted with such genuine warmth by people he was deceiving. One of the most morally complex passages in the archive.
- The South African couple who escaped while she was pregnant (Section 16). The specific bureaucratic mechanism of state cruelty — refusing passports to a couple with employment in Nigeria for two years — and the desperate strategy of escaping while she was visibly pregnant so the regime wouldn't expect it. Vivid, specific, devastating, partly tragic (the miscarriage at Serowe), and almost entirely absent from English-language reporting on apartheid-era exile.
- The Plumtree siding (Section 17). The forged travel documents, the failed alibi at the border (going to a hospital at a station with hardly any houses), the Greek shopkeeper with the telephone, the contact who interrogated them by phone to make sure they weren't security plants, the five-hour wait for the dust to appear across the wilderness. A single compressed paragraph that contains an entire genre of apartheid-era escape narrative.
- "I felt guilty that I should put my career ahead of my struggle" (Section 18). The moment Modise chose sociology over medicine, and the framing — that medicine would have required attendance that his political work made impossible, but that sociology could be read on planes and written into exams. The structural fact of how exile activism shaped the academic careers of an entire generation.
- The UN Institute for Namibia, 1976–1988 (Section 19). Modise teaching the cadre that became the post-independence Namibian government. "The Prime Minister of Namibia was my boss at that institute." The mechanism of how trained civic capacity travels into a successor state when the predecessor regime collapses — directly applicable to current democracy-defence questions about preparing successor cadres in CEE for a possible democratic restoration after authoritarian backsliding.
- The Tambo move from London to Stockholm (Section 21). The operational logistics of caring for a sick leader of a liberation movement when his location is itself politically sensitive. A specific historical episode of the late 1980s that is documented from few inside sources; Modise was the organising figure for it.
- First meeting Mandela in Sweden (Section 22). "He came to see his colleague. That's when I met him for the first time." The compressed account of how Mandela's first foreign trip after release was to visit a stroke-recovering Tambo in Stockholm. Among the most historically valuable single moments in the archive.