Sjambokked
The deep, dark (but not forgotten) history of the Xolobeni mining conflict
While the Xolobeni mining conflict continues to rage in the media today, a deep historical memory exists among the Amadiba coastal residents of a shocking abuse of the fundamental human rights of children who were schooling at the Xolobeni Junior Secondary School in 2008, eleven years ago.
This chapter from my book The Promise of Justice is republished in the hope that at the cabinet of President Ramphosa will take more heed of what happened than did the cabinets of President Thabo Mbeki, President Kgalema Motlanthe and President Jacob Zuma.
At the very least I hope that the Minister of Minerals Mr Gwede Mantashe will read it and realise that the whirlwind of resistance he is now reaping originated in a very ill wind sown very many years ago. It led to the brutal sjambokking of the entire student body of the Xolobeni Junior Secondary School in September 2008.
It is republished on the eve of the commencement of another intervention by the South African Human Rights Commission to defuse the conflict after another chaotic end to a visit by Minister Mantashe to the Xolobeni school on 16 January 2019
‘Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world… Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.’
Eleanor Roosevelt 1948
A sjambok is a whip traditionally made from the skin of a hippopotamus, and was used to punish slaves and offenders from the earliest days of European settlement in South Africa. Today the whip is made of synthetic plastic polymer, but its effect is no less painful.
While the attention of the country was focused on what was happening to President Thabo Mbeki as a result of his recall by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African Nationalist Congress (ANC), an upset of an entirely different nature was unfolding at Xolobeni Junior Secondary School.
This school had been the venue for Minister Sonjica’s visit on 15 August 2008.
‘Police in Transkei are being investigated for allegedly beating up school children opposed to the planned titanium mining on the Wild Coast’ wrote Malungelo Booi, of the Daily Dispatch on 7 October 2008:
The incident allegedly happened early last month just before Minerals and Energy minister Buyelwa Sonjica put the proposed mining permit for an Australian company on hold and prior to her admission that the consultation process was flawed.
The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), a body, which investigates claims of wrongdoing against police officers, has confirmed their probe.
The South African Human Rights Commission and the provincial police commissioner’s office have also been dragged into the latest feud over the controversial mining issue at Xolobeni after they, too, were informed.
Behind the assault complaint is social worker John Clarke who acted on behalf of the parents of the alleged victims from Xolobeni Junior Secondary School.
Clarke said several pupils, including girls and boys from Grades 7, 8 and 9 at the school were allegedly slapped and even sjambokked by police last month on instruction from school principal, Mdumiseni Mpange. This was allegedly after pupils became involved in an anti-mining campaign and refused to wear school uniforms or sing as a school choir when Sonjica went to the village last month.
Clarke said some of the pupils claimed they were forced to ‘kneel down as if they were praying’ while being sjambokked on their backs by police. ‘The beatings were so bad that some of the pupils were unable to sit properly as a result of this and the parents decided that this matter should be reported to authorities,’ he said.
Mpange yesterday denied that the incident took place and promptly terminated the call.
But Ma-Anyina Mthwa, whose 18 year-old daughter, Sikisiwe, was among those allegedly assaulted, said she still wanted an explanation as to why her child was beaten. ‘She could not go to school for three days because she was swollen from the beatings.’ Her daughter told her that at the time the police shouted at them: ‘We want to remove the mentality you have.’
On behalf of parents and affected children I wrote a report, dated 25 September 2008, for the attention of the Superintendent General of the Eastern Cape Education Department (at the time Ms Nyameka Tokwe), the Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS, the Independent Complaints Directorate of the South African Police and the South African Human Rights Commission.
It pinpointed MRC’s community liaison officer, Mr Bashin Qunya, and his older brother Zamile Qunya, a founder director of Xolco, as the instigators of the trouble.
A deep-rooted conflict exists within the broader community with the majority of directly-affected local residents opposing the mining development because they perceive it be an unjust expropriation of their deeply cherished ancestral land rights, while rural residents from surrounding communities inland perceive benefits from improved road infrastructure, employment and access to services that the mining operation could bring. To defuse what had become an extremely volatile situation the assistance of the SA Human Rights Commission and the King and Queen of the Mpondo Royal House has been sought, to ensure the opposition of affected local residents to the mining proposal could be channelled constructively.
Accordingly this report needs to be understood in the context of a raging storm of controversy that has intensified over the past two months, with the announcement that the Minister of Minerals and Energy had awarded a mining right to an Australian mining exploration company MRC Ltd, and its BEE partner, Xolco (Pty) Ltd, that have over the past decade acted to secure the co-operation and support of local residents for the mining of a 22 km stretch of mineral sands extending from the coast to up to 2.5 km inland. Known popularly as the Xolobeni Mineral Sands project, MRC borrowed the name of the school for the venture and the BEE company that was formed to take the obligatory 26% share in the venture did the same, calling itself the ‘Xolobeni Empowerment Company’. Therefore by accident of geography and by design of the mining entrepreneurs, the school community — the learners, parents, teachers and the school governing body — unsurprisingly find themselves in the eye of this storm.
The student body of Xolobeni Junior Secondary School (JSS) had apparently been instructed by their principal, Mr Mpange, to wear their school uniforms and attend the meeting on 15 August, and for the school choir to sing in honour of the Minister. They apparently refused to do so, angering the school principal and, as it transpired, Mr Bashin Qunya. In my interviews with scholars it has emerged that the mining controversy has become a matter that has all but eclipsed all other learning. One scholar, a girl aged 16, said, ‘there should be an extra period in the school timetable to talk about the mining. It is all we talk about at school’.
Subsequent to the Minister’s first visit in August a 15 year-old scholar (name withheld) has become a client for reasons of having been arrested for allegedly removing dust monitors that have been erected in various locations as part of the Environmental Management Plan for the mining. At Bashin Qunya’s instigation, he and another boy aged 18 have been charged with malicious damage to property. The Bizana Children’s Court released both boys; the younger boy, who is a juvenile offender, was released into the custody of his parents under social work supervision. Both will re-appear in court on 16 October. Without prejudicing the outcome of that trial, what is pertinent to this issue of alleged corporal punishment by police officers is that the client states that he was taken to the police station and he was physically assaulted by police to induce a confession out of him.
In a subsequent development my client was involved in an argument at school during the week of 7 September with a classmate, who happens to be the son of Bashin Qunya’s older brother, Zamile, apparently also concerning the mining issue. The boy apparently reported this to his uncle (Bashin) who allegedly confronted my client after school the following day and proceeded to physically and brutally assault my client with punches and kicks. My client has now laid a charge of common assault against Bashin Qunya. This is apparently still being investigated and to the best of my knowledge he has not been arrested or appeared in court for a bail hearing, despite the far more serious nature of the charge compared to that facing my 15 year-old client.
Given this experience, upon learning from Mr Zukulu of the alleged intervention of the police and fearing that a dangerous conflict situation was escalating, I enlisted the help of two members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, Nonhle Mbuthuma and Fundile Madikizela, and we interviewed my client again on Thursday last week to seek his version of the most recent incident which had occurred on 17 September, two days after his court appearance on 15 September.
The following is a transcription of a video recording of the interview with the boy.
Q. Can you explain what happened at your school on Wednesday, 17 September?
A. The problem started when we asked for a meeting with the principal. So the principal asked if we knew what a meeting was. So he told us that we wanted actually to toyi-toyi. So as far as we know to do a toyi-toyi is to march in protest. So there was not an understanding between us and the principal and we returned to our classes. While we were in the classes we saw a police van arrive with three policemen. They started with the grade 9 pupils to beat them, then they went to grade 8 and then to grade 7. Nothing was said. The only thing that they said was ‘you are children. You are not to interfere with the mining issues. Your parents are responsible for the mining issues, not you.’
During that time the teachers were in the staff room, so during the first break we just went straight home, and didn’t return to school.
Q. Can you identify the policemen?
A. The names of the policemen were Veku, Makheke and Deyi from the Mpisi Police station.
Q. Were any children showing physical injuries?
A. Yes, one boy from Mtentu from the Ndovela family was sprayed with tear gas, and he was suffering from burning eyes. I don’t know what physical injuries may be visible on other scholars.
Q. How did the police beat you?
A. They slapped and punched us with their hands and also used a sjambok.
Q. How do you understand what the policemen were saying?
A. It seems the police were wanting to force us to say yes to the mining, because they say why are we involved in mining issues, as that was a question for our parents to decide, not for us.
Q. How do you think I can assist you as a social worker?
A. As a social worker I would like you to help us to prevent this mining in the area by building tourism accommodation on the estuaries, like at Mnyameni. We want development that does not negatively affect the people.
Note: This last answer took me somewhat by surprise, because in an earlier interview in response to a similar question — that wasn’t recorded on camera — he had asked me to make an appointment with the school principal and to try to help him understand that they were not challenging his authority by refusing to wear their uniforms to the Minister’s visit, but the students were concerned that they were being used by the pro-mining interests to give a wrong impression that the mining was supported by everybody. I was impressed with the maturity of the boy and his capacity for insight.
We then interviewed a member of the school governing body (SGB), Mr Xolani Chunu, who presented a rather different version of events.
He confirmed the incident of the police beatings and informed us that the SGB was scheduled to meet with the principal and staff on Tuesday, 23 September to discuss the matter. However, in contrast to my client’s version, he was under the impression that the principal had called in the police in response to an incident in which someone’s cell-phone had been stolen. He explained that the school has a solar panel, which allows for cell-phones to be recharged and that many community members, lacking electricity, send their cell-phones to school with their children to take advantage of the facility. The cell-phone that was stolen apparently did not belong to a scholar, and the owner had complained to the principal.
In response the principal had apparently therefore decided to stop the practice, forbidding learners from using the solar panel for charging cell-phones. It was this decision, which, according to Mr Chunu, had triggered the discontent among the student body, culminating in the principal calling in the police to apparently reinforce his authority by administering a generalised hiding to all scholars, indiscriminately. He therefore believed that the meeting that the client referred to above (which the principal had refused) was in reaction to the cell-phone charging issue, and not directly associated with the mining issues.
We engaged with Mr Chunu as to his personal assessment of the drastic measures taken by the principal, in calling in the police. We informed him that such measures were violations of the rights of the children, irrespective of the circumstances. His response was that in the recent past teachers had been threatened by scholars, and that many carried knives. Some of these weapons had been confiscated by the SGB. We said that we agreed that to do so was correct, but calling in the police was not correct, as this did not help to build trust and respect for authority, and would cause further division between parents and the principal and his teaching staff.
Madikizela further reports that since talking to some parents, they have confirmed that they are not at all happy with the handling of discipline in the school, and await the outcome of the meeting of the SGB and the principal and his staff.
To obtain a third independent perspective I asked Mbuthuma to interview another learner known to us and she contacted a 16 year-old learner (the girl mentioned above who had said mining should be given a special space in the time table), to find out if she could confirm the incident, whether she had been beaten as well, and what the reasons and circumstances were.
Mbuthuma reported back that she had indeed been beaten too, and that all learners had been told by the police to ‘bend over as if they were praying’ and had been ‘sjambokked’ one by one. The police officers said words to the effect, ‘you are not supposed to be involved in the mining issue. You don’t have your own houses and that is a matter for your parents to decide’.
Other indirect reports received state that many learners cannot sit down because of the lingering pain.
The mother of this learner is extremely angry about the beatings by the police and there is growing outrage from the parent body as a whole.’
It had been Ma-Anyina Mthwa and Sikisiwe who had welcomed Nkomba and me into their world two years before. Her baby girl, who was then three weeks old, was now two years old. We were indeed fortunate for Nkomba’s alertness to her tilling the fields and the relationship of trust forged from that first encounter, which enabled us quickly to reach the heart of the matter.
In my assessment I said to the Powers:
‘It is clear that a measure of militancy exists in the student body, not only at this school, but in the area as a whole. On the whole my impression from other schools I have visited, is that the mining controversy has been a source of real educational value and handled well by the teaching staff. Work done by environmental NGOs to educate the community at large as to the costs and benefits of mining, have been taken up by teachers in some schools with imagination. In one school a formal inter-class debate was arranged with the Grade 9s arguing against and Grade 10s for mining. The grade 9s apparently carried the day, but most scholars, irrespective of the position they adopted for the debate, left with a better understanding of the issues. This is what education should be, and in a sense the Amadiba school-going population might consider themselves privileged to have had the chance to get to grips with a real development issue.
However, the Xolobeni JSS has particular challenges. It is significant that MRC adopted the name of the school as the title of its venture, calling it the Xolobeni Mineral Sands project. Over the years MRC has provided support and investments to the school, including I believe having drilled a borehole and subsidising teacher salaries. Bashin Qunya, who lives within earshot of the school, accommodates the son of his older brother Zamile Qunya, the person who has been the main protagonist for the mining proposal. Moreover the wife of their eldest brother is employed as a teacher at the school, and apparently commands much influence among the staff.
Accordingly it is reasonable to suggest that in the eyes of the Qunya family the Xolobeni JS School has become part and parcel of the mining enterprise, if not their personal fiefdom. Whatever the allegiances or personal views of the principal may be, it is obvious that the Qunya brothers, as influential members of the school community, would have been angered by what they may have perceived as a youth rebellion because of their refusal to wear school uniforms and perform for the Minister’s visit. Under such circumstances it is likely they would use whatever pretext presented itself as an excuse to bring in added inducements for the student body to comply with the pre-determined wish of the Qunya brothers.
I am particularly concerned that, given the latest news that DME will not execute the mining licence pending the outcome of the appeal process, the Qunya brothers will consider this to be a major, if not permanent, setback to their ambitions and will be feeling even more angry and defeated. It can be expected that the less resolute supporters of the mining proposal will start to desert the Qunya brothers, leaving them with growing feelings of isolation.
My various encounters with Bashin Qunya over the past two years have shown that he is prone to desperate measures and to act unthinkingly. His manifest lack of self-control and his previous history of impulsive recourse to threats of violence, leaves me to believe that he may be inclined to take drastic actions, motivated by feeling of revenge, betrayal and humiliation.
I have counselled the ACC and their attorneys to be careful in their public celebrations of the latest development so as not to aggravate any feelings of defeat and humiliation the Qunyas may be feeling — however deserved they may be — as a precaution against those with pro-mining interests feeling justified in taking revenge or exercising reprisals.
Only the ICD and SAHRC responded to my report. The ICD confirmed the incident and recommended that the police officers be disciplined. However, the Police Command Structure shrugged it off, with the officers continuing as if nothing had happened.
No response was received from the Provincial education authorities of the Eastern Cape. I escalated the complaint to the National Minister of Education, at the time Minister Naledi Pandor. She did not respond either.
Richard Spoor arranged for an attorney friend, John Wills, to assist in taking statements with a view to instituting a class action lawsuit against the Minister of Police. Over sixty families joined the action, but John was unable to find an advocate prepared to take the case on risk and it was abandoned.
John Wills also represented the boy accused of removing the dust monitors and succeeded in persuading the prosecutor to withdraw the charges. Bashin Qunya did not relish the prospect of being cross examined, especially since counter charges of assault had been laid against him. Nothing came of them either.
The suspension of the mining rights sent MRC’s share price plummeting and Bashin Qunya was retrenched. His older brother Zamile, pulled strings with the Mbizana Local Municipality to immediately employ Bashin as a civil servant. His job title, laughably, was Tourism Promotion Officer, giving him a secure position from which to subvert the revival of eco-tourism at every opportunity (including a warning to me that I was to stay away from the Amadiba Coastal Area because ‘my bell had been rung’ by him and his supporters. I laid a charge against him at KwaMpisi Police Station for intimidation but these were also dropped.)
Zamile never gave up his ambition to reassert control over the Amadiba community. In February 2013 the CEO of the Eastern Cape Gambling Board, Mr Zwane, appointed Qunya as chair of the board of trustees of the Mbizana Development Trust, the obligatory BEE partner with Sun International. The charitable trust was established with a 30% shareholding in the profits of the Wild Coast Sun Casino. Zamile Qunya, oversees the distribution of a budget of several million rands annually. How long he will last depends on the success or otherwise of a high court challenge — brought by concerned residents of Mbizana, associated with the Mbizana Development Forum — to have him removed. At the time of writing the Umtata High Court was busy fixing a date.
‘Be the change you want to see in the world’, the great Mahatma Gandhi once said. To hope that things will change on the strength of a professional report to authorities is to hope in vain. Waiting for official responses is not what has sustained my social work passion for over thirty years. It has been the simple virtues, the courage, the resilience and the spirit of the people I work with that keeps me going.
I can now disclose what kept me going after the shocking incident of September 2008. After the passage of years the children’s rights of the Xolobeni JSS learners no longer applies, since all have turned 18 and are now young adults.
Sikisiwe invited a group of her friends who had endured the beatings with her to meet with Nonhle, Mzamo and me to talk through the traumatic experience. I filmed the therapy session and the recording stands as an extraordinary testimony to the courage and fortitude of the teenagers. These were not juvenile gangsters intent on disrupting classes and making mischief on the streets of urban townships. These were poor rural youngsters who would upon getting home from school each day, immediately turn their attention to fetching water, tilling/planting/harvesting in the crop-fields, herding livestock and performing a never-ending burden of household chores before settling down to do their homework by candle light.
As each of the young men and women took their turn to share their trauma and vent their emotions, little two year-old Nosipho (not her real name), not old enough to understand the horror being described, came inside the hut and dropped off to sleep resting her head on Ma-Anyina’s lap. After two hours the indoor light was fading to blackness on my camera viewfinder, for the sun was casting ever-lengthening shadows across the picturesque rural landscape. Nosipho was stirred awake by the sounds of singing and drumming. As we wrapped up the therapy session our mood lifted as we too went outside to join the music. Recourse to song and dance brought fitting closure to the distress.
Fortunately I had enough film and battery life left to capture the impromptu entertainment. Don Guy was grateful for the footage. Although somewhat sow’s-ear-ish in terms of camera technique, Don was able to fashion a silk purse from the singing, clapping and drumming, which served as a musical soundtrack for the short documentary film Pondo People that 50/50 had commissioned him to produce.
As dreadful as the sjambokking incident was, the abiding lesson from the incident was the importance that cell-phone technology played. The interviews with the scholars revealed that the precipitating cause of the confrontation had been Mr Mpange’s sudden arbitrary ban on the charging of cell-phones.
My theory is that his arbitrary decision was motivated by pique because he realised it was thanks to the instantaneous communication channel afforded by cell-phone technology that the anti-mining campaign was so successful. To get messages circulating was as simple as buying airtime from an ATM in Johannesburg, to top up phones belonging to Nonhle and Mzamo, 800 km away on the Wild Coast. But to ban the charging of cell-phones was to close the stable door after the Pondo ponies had bolted.
The incident reminded me of the lesson I learned from a former political prisoner who took me on a personal tour around the prison cells of Robben Island. Walking around the cellblocks he told me about the ingenious method which prisoners in separate cellblocks had used to communicate with one another. He showed me how (at regular pre-arranged times, usually late at night) they would scoop the water out of the toilet bowls, stick their heads into the toilet bowls, cover their heads with blankets in case patrolling warders might hear them, and talk to each other. The plumbing became a communication network within a simple, but very effective, knowledge management system. Prisoner morale was kept up, warnings were circulated about troublesome warders and overall political consciousness was developed, as the ‘cell-phone’ messages reverberated through the pipes. Some warders apparently feared that they had mastered a special form of witchcraft.
Life must go on.
‘John, my uncle needs some vaccination medication for his horses to prevent horse flu”, Nkomba called me, “there is a farmers’ co-op just near Tony Abbott’s farm. You and Mzamo must go there before you go to see Mrs Mthwa. I will meet you there as soon as I can.’
‘Good. I have a gift I need to buy her. It’s the perfect place.’
‘I will be there as soon as I can, but while you are waiting for me can you ask them which medication exactly is needed. They will know.’
In rural areas, far more so than urban shopping malls, trading stores and spaza shops are places where community is kindled. The farmers’ co-op above the Mthamvuna Gorge is no exception.
I arrived at the rendezvous and asked the somewhat shy but helpful shop assistant if she could advise which was the appropriate vaccine for Mr Zukulu’s horses.
‘I will find out for you. Just a minute.’
While she went into the back office, Mzamo and I entertained ourselves by browsing through the store, full of things that one doesn’t see in Johannesburg shopping malls. I had resolved to buy Mrs Mthwa a new hoe in gratitude to her for opening her home to allow us to gather the Xolobeni scholars together to process the sjambokking incident. I specifically wanted to buy her a new hoe because when we had first met two years beforehand at the Mgungundlovu Komkulu, Nkomba had noticed that the metal hoe blade was threatening to part company from the wooden shaft. We had asked her for an action shot of her digging. The blade had come off the handle and had to be hammered back on. Any labour saving device, like a sturdy hoe that got the job done quickly, was vital. She had given birth to another child in the intervening two years. Sikisiwe had homework to do.
“A good sturdy hoe. This is what we will buy her,” I told Mzamo.
“That would be very nice.”
The shop assistant returned. ‘Our vet will be here in a minute,’ she said, ‘he will advise you what vaccine to buy.’
‘My gosh, you folk are on the ball. So you have a vet on standby for your customers?’ I applauded, ‘This doesn’t happen where I come from in Johannesburg. In fact I think I need a gynaecologist. Do you have one on call too?’ I joked.
Dr Watson arrived before Sinegugu, and was interested to know more about our mission. I wanted to know the extent of his veterinary practice.
‘Mr Zukulu lives above the Mtentu River gorge, just where a vulture colony once thrived. We would love to get them back by opening a vulture restaurant.’
Dr Watson was most helpful. He explained that the Cape vulture is threatened for want of more calcium for bone development. He offered us a supply of carcasses of horses that he would from time to time have to put down after injuries.
‘The Cape vulture normally occurs together with the Lappet-faced vulture, with the latter species having a more powerful jaw to break open the bones so that the Cape vulture can get to the mineral-rich marrow,’ he explained. ‘So when the carcass is stripped down all you need to do is get a ten pound hammer and smash the bones up so that the birds can get what they need.’
It was a perfect illustration of nature (Cape vulture) being helped by technology (ten pound hammer) by a clever specimen of humanity (Dr Watson). It all seemed so elementary!
Mrs Mthwa was speechless with delight upon being presented with the bit of technology she needed to open the soils of nature to feed the humanity under her care.
‘Most people are not really interested in your story,’ Alastair McIntosh had advised, ‘in my own writing I try to use the particular as a carrier for the universal. I advise you to do the same.’
How does one do that? It proved to be another good question. An old friend, whom I had neglected for far too long suddenly reappeared in my life with an answer. Manfred Max-Neef’s universal language is music. Chris Zithulele Mann’s language is poetry. His poem The Road to Emmaus serves as a fitting reflection with which to show that the Sjambok does not have the last word.
It’s not the friendliest of villages, Emmaus,
the people parochial, as desert people are,
bound up in the herding and bartering of beasts,
the vines on its terraces encumbered with thorns,
the children in the market roasting a sparrow,
hardly the place to expect revelation,
if revelation’s the word — I leave that to you.
Not that we’d never believed, my partner and I,
not that, but leaving Jerusalem on business,
with news of the death, or perhaps I should say
the absence among us of someone like a God,
we felt at a loss, and not a little diminished,
and talk as we may, of covenants and creeds,
our thoughts came round to the prices of wool,
the bundles of raisins and dates in our panniers.
Besides, by then we were tired of religion,
what with the heat, the dust, a mule going lame,
and the stranger who’d fallen in with our journey
going on about prophets, the life in that death,
a vision which didn’t make much sense at the time
but stirred our hearts greatly, before we tired
and hungry and irritable, slapping at the flies
entered Emmaus and tethered our beasts.
That it should, that it could have been otherwise
presumes I think too much of human piety
and grants few gaps for love’s irruption
unbidden, uncalculated into our lives.
His hands, the strong sunburned fingers
breaking the rough brown bread of the tavern
and writing a cross in the spaces between us,
above the wine in the cracked clay goblets,
the dim yellow sputter of the wick in its oil,
his hands first brought it home to us, in Emmaus.
There was a silence, a humming, a burning,
the coming more alive of all things about us,
those arms, opened, their palms in shadow,
embodying a promise, a blessing still live.
And then? Ah, the sting of it still afflicts me.
A breeze off the desert entered that moment,
the lamplight flared, a door banged shut.
Emmaus, as I say, we never really go there,
Emmaus comes to us, when least expected.
It’s not just the journey, the settings out,
the routes through the desert, the arrivals,
it’s travelling in readiness for Emmaus that counts.
