That afternoon the 16-year-old girl was on her way to visit her aunt when she was shot in the spine. Thirteen years later, Buthelezi, confined to a wheelchair, is a member of the restricted Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and was secretary and a founding member of its women’s wing, Black Women Unite. She is also a community worker involved in counselling other disabled people and the sole supporter of her younger brother and sister. This year, like the past 12 years, she will spend her ”death day” in church, praying. There is a shadow of pain in her eyes as she recalls that fateful day: ”I was young and unaware. After that day I started asking questions.”
During June 1976 they were writing exams and boycotting the Afrikaans papers, Buthelezi said. That morning she arrived late at Senaoane Junior School and found pupils sitting down to write examinations. Up to this point she did not know of the impending doom but remembers the tense silence en route to school. But some students were obviously in the know -”when the question papers were handed out these students just stared at them and did not start to write”. Suddenly, pupils from Sekano/ntoane High School entered the classroom.
Buthelezi recounted how they tore up question papers and then joined the march to Ibhongo High and Morris Isaacson High, their numbers increasing as they descended on schools. Pupils carrying placards which read ”Away with Bantu education” and ”We don’t want Afrikaans”, led the singing and chanting students. It was at Morris Isaacson that they heard that Hector Petersen was shot Buthelezi shudders as she recalls their rage and the consequences: ”When we heard the news we decid¬ed that everything that belonged to the government must be destroyed. We began throwing stones at bottle stores, cars, offices … everything that belonged to the white man. And the police were ready to start shooting teargas and setting the dogs on us.” June 16 changed her life.
Her mother died in 1981 heartbroken to see her eldest daughter paralysed from the waist down. Her eyes fill with tears and her head is bent low when she talks about her mother. ”My mother pretended to be brave but she was very hurt,” whispers Buthelezi. Shortly before her mother’s death her father abandoned them. Buthelezi, the eldest, was forced to work to support the family. Gone were her dreams of becoming a lawyer. Slumped awkwardly in her wheel with pride: ”They were brave. It was as if they knew what was going to happen to them – they were either going to be alive or dead. ”I took courage from these people,” she says modestly. ”I was not afraid.”
But Buthelezi’s most bitter memories are of later that afternoon when she was shot from behind. She awoke two days later in Baragwanath Hospital and she could not move her legs – ”I’ll never forgive them”. At first, unable to reconcile herself to her physical affliction, she wanted to commit suicide. But realising her paralysis is a result of the struggle against the apartheid system has given her strength. Eight months later she was discharged. She tried to pick up the pieces of her life by finishing school. ”But life will never be the same after June 1976. Yet I would live that lay again. I would stand up for what is right, if I had the chance.”
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
