to get you out of that environment.”
“Did you find references to my mother?”
“I’ve discovered something, but I’m not sure exactly what it means. Let me show it to you as I found it,” she said, “so you can understand the sequence of events the same way I do, and come to your own conclusions. Okay?”
Dariya flipped quickly through her pile of newsprint. “Sharpeville changed the political climate,” she said. “The government was petrified, and they became even more restrictive than before. Then they put out a warrant for Nelson Mandela’s arrest. He went underground, and the next day they printed a transcript of his statement.”
Dariya pulled out the next article, featuring a picture of the young, bearded Nelson Mandela. It was an impassioned call urging the black population to mobilize their resources, and to withdraw all cooperation from the Nationalist government. It was a call, finally, to make the work of government impossible.
“They forced Mandela underground, and that was the beginning of violent opposition. Then look what happened.”
Dariya placed the articles in front of me one by one, and I read them in silence. Over the following months there was a surge in acts of sabotage. Most were conducted at night, against military and electrical installations, utilities, munitions factories, or police stations. It was clear by the nature of their targets that they were following Mandela’s instructions to make governing impossible.
But the government response was predictable. Minimum punishment for sabotage was raised to five years, and the death penalty was invoked. Some of those responsible were captured and tried; many were imprisoned without trial, executed or disappeared. When I was finished reading, Dariya held one last piece of paper in her hand. She said nothing, but removed all the pages from the desk, and placed this single sheet in front of me.
“This is a news clipping from early 1962,” she said quietly. “It’s the only reference to your mother I could find.”
It was from page five of the Johannesburg Star , and the date was March, 1962, when I was seven years old. I have no memory of the events surrounding it. The clipping fitted snugly onto a piece of white photocopy paper, and at the top, side by side, were two photographs, one of a young black man, and one of a young white woman. Neither photograph was clear, but the woman was identifiable as my mother, and beneath her picture was her name, Michaela Green. I knew before I saw it that the name beneath the picture of the young black man would be familiar, and it was. Mandla Mkhize.
I felt a sense of relief when I first glanced at the clipping because I assumed that the typescript below the pictures was a report of my mother’s death, and that, finally, I would discover evidence of how she was killed. Then I read the news report. The article was titled “TRIED AND CONVICTED”. Clearly, it was not a report on their deaths. They had both been charged with miscegenation and with sabotage.
According to the story, they blew up an electrical plant, and then made their way under cover of darkness to a farm known to be one of the ANC’s safe sites. Several hours after the explosion, members of the Special Branch observed them having sexual relations in the bedroom of a small house on the farm grounds. They were arrested and taken into custody. Mandla, a known member of terrorist organizations, had orchestrated the act of sabotage, and as the leader, he was given a life sentence. My mother had associations to banned organizations, but she was not known to be a member herself. She was identified as an accomplice, and they were more lenient on her. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.
If she served her full sentence, she would have been released in 1972, and I found myself calculating how old I would have been, had she survived. Seventeen. I was a junior in high school, about to lose—or having just lost—my virginity
“Did you find references to my mother?”
“I’ve discovered something, but I’m not sure exactly what it means. Let me show it to you as I found it,” she said, “so you can understand the sequence of events the same way I do, and come to your own conclusions. Okay?”
Dariya flipped quickly through her pile of newsprint. “Sharpeville changed the political climate,” she said. “The government was petrified, and they became even more restrictive than before. Then they put out a warrant for Nelson Mandela’s arrest. He went underground, and the next day they printed a transcript of his statement.”
Dariya pulled out the next article, featuring a picture of the young, bearded Nelson Mandela. It was an impassioned call urging the black population to mobilize their resources, and to withdraw all cooperation from the Nationalist government. It was a call, finally, to make the work of government impossible.
“They forced Mandela underground, and that was the beginning of violent opposition. Then look what happened.”
Dariya placed the articles in front of me one by one, and I read them in silence. Over the following months there was a surge in acts of sabotage. Most were conducted at night, against military and electrical installations, utilities, munitions factories, or police stations. It was clear by the nature of their targets that they were following Mandela’s instructions to make governing impossible.
But the government response was predictable. Minimum punishment for sabotage was raised to five years, and the death penalty was invoked. Some of those responsible were captured and tried; many were imprisoned without trial, executed or disappeared. When I was finished reading, Dariya held one last piece of paper in her hand. She said nothing, but removed all the pages from the desk, and placed this single sheet in front of me.
“This is a news clipping from early 1962,” she said quietly. “It’s the only reference to your mother I could find.”
It was from page five of the Johannesburg Star , and the date was March, 1962, when I was seven years old. I have no memory of the events surrounding it. The clipping fitted snugly onto a piece of white photocopy paper, and at the top, side by side, were two photographs, one of a young black man, and one of a young white woman. Neither photograph was clear, but the woman was identifiable as my mother, and beneath her picture was her name, Michaela Green. I knew before I saw it that the name beneath the picture of the young black man would be familiar, and it was. Mandla Mkhize.
I felt a sense of relief when I first glanced at the clipping because I assumed that the typescript below the pictures was a report of my mother’s death, and that, finally, I would discover evidence of how she was killed. Then I read the news report. The article was titled “TRIED AND CONVICTED”. Clearly, it was not a report on their deaths. They had both been charged with miscegenation and with sabotage.
According to the story, they blew up an electrical plant, and then made their way under cover of darkness to a farm known to be one of the ANC’s safe sites. Several hours after the explosion, members of the Special Branch observed them having sexual relations in the bedroom of a small house on the farm grounds. They were arrested and taken into custody. Mandla, a known member of terrorist organizations, had orchestrated the act of sabotage, and as the leader, he was given a life sentence. My mother had associations to banned organizations, but she was not known to be a member herself. She was identified as an accomplice, and they were more lenient on her. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.
If she served her full sentence, she would have been released in 1972, and I found myself calculating how old I would have been, had she survived. Seventeen. I was a junior in high school, about to lose—or having just lost—my virginity
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