clarion
Brevard College, Brevard, N.C.
Monday, February 12,1990
Volume 57, Number 7
Are South African blacks...
Free at Last...?
not by a long shot, says one
black South African reporter
by Rob Cowles
Clarion Reporter
Visiting South African journalist
Sipho Ngcobo was a guest lecturer at
Brevard College's journalism 101 class
last week. Although Ngcobo smiled
often as he told of his imprisonment and
torturing, the class could see beyond
the brave grin of the short yet defiant
reporter from Soweto. This is his story.
Christmas was over, stories were
hard to come by, and the newsroom was
less than bustling. Sitting in his chair
pondering on ideas, Sipho Ngcobo,
Business Day's South African
political reporter decided to take a break
and visit some journalists on the other
side of the building.
Upon return, Ngcobo turned the
comer into the hallway looking up just
in time to see two large, suspicious-
looking white men standing outside the
newsroom. Composed, yet wary of
trouble, he instinctively cleared out of
the hallway and hid until they left.
Immediately, he ran to his
supervisor to find out who they were
and what they wanted. Sure enough,
they were cops from the South African
government secret police.
Suddenly, a phone rang. Among all
the confusion, Ngcobo picked it up not
realizing what he had just done. It was
a woman from the secret police posing
unimportant questions verifying that
Ngcobo was indeed there. Overcome by
fear and shock, Ngcobo scampered off to
a hiding place as quickly as possible.
Within two minutes the policemen were
searching for him, making a shambles
of his desk, although managing to take
most of his important notebooks first.
The two men urged Ngcobo's supervisor
to turn him over to the authorities
simply for questioning; he would not be
arrested. As Ngcobo came through the
doorway his mind went haywire as the
cops grabbed him, arrested him, and
dragged him off to prison.
As the policemen rotated shifts,
Ngcobo slumped over in lethargic
desperation. Questioned for hours and
hours, sometimes whole days, faces
blurred, his head spun, his voice ached,
and his tliroat was dry. Ngcobo became
so exhausted he couldn't speak.
Reminiscing back on that month of
solitary confinement, he remembers
thinking, "I was just sitting in that cell,
praying I wouldn’t be killed."
Ngcobo got lucky, he says, when he
was released after spending two months
%
Speaking tea BC journalism class on Feb. 1, South African journalist
Sipho Ngcobo tells the young reporters how he was tortured and beaten
for writing the truth. (Clarion photo by Jock
Lauterer)
in jail. Pressure had been brought to
bear on the government by the
international press associations.
This was the most recent term he
spent in jail, but it definitely was not
the scariest
In 1977, Ngcobo was eagerly
waiting for a passport that would get
him safely to America. One day, as he
peeked out the shades, he bore witness
to a frightening sight: dozens of barrels
of guns targeting him at the window.
Threatening to storm the house, the
cops rel.nquished when Ngcobo sadly
left his family with the possibility of
his never returning home. Would they
ever see him again?
After two years of utter hell, having
survived electric shock to his genitals,
being nearly crippled and bleeding from
his ears, he was given a trial. As soon
as he was proven innocent, a new law,
which had been passed during his tenure
in jail, almost condemned him to a
period of more torture. Fortunately he
was released, frantically disappearing
into the underground tor a while to
regain his composure.
The once-fearless youth, who had
once slept in burned out cars and
constanUy been running from the secret
police, was tired out. THe gram^ of a
Zulu chief, he felt the cruelty of racism
noating, suppressing the air in South
Africa.
He could not quit now. His living
knowledge and experience gained writing
for publications as the secretary of the
outlawed Pan Africanism Congress
(PAC) helped him land a job with the
Rand Daily Mail. With a possible
punishment of a $20,000 fine or 10
years in jail for writing "subversive
literature", Ngcobo had learned that
"You cannot write a lot of what you see
without permission of the Commisioner
of Police."
Apartheid thrives in South Africa,
where the blacks, which comprise 75
percent of total population, are reduced
to existing in grinding poverty. Even
in this day and age, racism Huorishes
throughout the heart of this aristocrati
cally ruled country.
In South Africa, where Ngcobo lived
illegally in a white neighborhood,
blacks are forced to commute 20 miles
into the city to sweat in the hot sun
"working for peanuts" just to meander
back to the ghettos exhausted. This
daily ritual is common all over South
Africa where welfare is never heard of,
minimum wage is nonexistent and
prejudice is guaranteed to ignite riots for
years to come.
Apartheid can be described as
"separation in all spheres of life,"
Ngcobo says. Whites cannot live in
black townsliips and blacks found living
in white townships are persecuted. No
blacks can own houses; they can only
rent. In Soweto alone there are 40,000
homeless. At one time it was legal for
cops to follow people around to ensure
no races would mix. This "Immorality
Act" has since been scrapped, but
Ngcobo points out that the laws are
constructed in such a way as to always
be in favor of the whites.
Describing the history of South
Africa, Ngcobo told how Indians were
brought by the Dutch to South Africa
and put to work on sugarcane
plantations. Ngcobo laughs at the
thought that the Dutch "discovered"
South Africa in 1652, replying, "We've
been there all along."
He points out, "in South Africa
you’re either with the oppressed, or the
oppressor, even as a journalist... Indians
and mixed races (called 'colored people’
in South Africa) live in only slightly
beuer ghettos."
One day, as he was following the
police for a story, a skirmish broke out
with demonstrators, forcing him to take
a dive to the ground. He says, "1 was
lying on the ground without moving for
45 minutes because if I'd moved I'd have
been shot. The police would have
thought I was a demonstrator and the
demonstrators would have thought I was
with the police."
Another time he said, "A friend of
mine was shot. A camera man with
Reuters. The police were firing just
like cowboys; he was standing right
beside me. The police shot him and
they could see he was a journalist!"
Safe and sound in a Brevard College
classroom, the students sat entranced for
two hours learning about reality in
South Africa.
Ngcobo is learning from us too. He
is spending a year with the Henderson
ville Times-News learning American
journalism and attempting to erase
many myths about South Africa.
Approached by a student's question
concerning jailed black leader Nelson
Mandela's possible release in the near
future, Ngcobo said, "So what? Mandela
is more effective in a jailhouse than the
would be out. When they let Mandela
go, 3,000 more still will be in prison.
Will that mean Apartheid is over?"
As the bell rang, bags zipped and
notebooks closed. In the rush for class,
one more question emerged: "Will you
ever go back? To South Africa?
Ngcobo calmly replied, "1 must
return, it is in m” soul."