A Burning Hunger by Lynda Schuster

Author:Lynda Schuster [Schuster, Lynda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, General
ISBN: 9780821442074
Google: a-1HBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2014-09-15T04:17:53+00:00

Shortly thereafter, on the evening of 31 July 1981, Joe Gqabi was gunned down in his driveway in the Zimbabwean capital. His assassins were never found.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dee

Dee returned from Cairo to a very different place in the East African bush. In his absence, the Tanzanian government had allocated 3,400 acres of an abandoned sisal plantation to the ANC to build a school. The site, known as Mazimbu, was located about twelve miles from the old camp. The ANC had only recently begun constructing the school; when Dee arrived he found one solitary dormitory block, a single-storey, concrete-and-brick structure with a metal roof. The rest of the campus consisted of a smattering of small huts that were used as classrooms and endless expanses of baobab trees, bounded by mountains on three sides.

But the ANC had ambitious plans for the institution, which it named the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, in memory of the first Umkhonto guerrilla to be executed by the South African government. SOMAFCO, as it was known, ultimately comprised nursery, primary and secondary schools; nearby, the ANC would build factories and a sprawling farm. The governments of Norway, Sweden and Holland helped to pay for much of the construction. More than 1,000 exiles would study and work in Mazimbu when the facilities were completed.

When Dee returned at the end of 1979, there were about 150 students in the school. Dee recognized many of them from the old camp; they had never left to study overseas. Their presence cheered him somewhat, if only by default: unlike those poor souls, he, at least, had escaped the bush for two years. The youths lived in the dormitory block, which had a large hall and separate wings for the boys and girls. The students slept ten to a room; every morning, the commanders of the rooms roused their charges at six o’clock. The youths showered quickly, then dressed in the school uniform: military-style khaki trousers, a blue long-sleeved shirt, and shapeless Russian-made shoes that everyone called pão, because of their resemblance to the puffy Portuguese loaves. Each commander inspected his students to check that their uniforms were clean and pressed. There were weekly competitions to determine which room had the most neatly dressed youths, the best-made beds, the most brightly polished floor.

After inspection, Dee and the others ate breakfast. Then all the students gathered for morning assembly. The youths stood quietly in formation as one of their peers recited a clause from the ANC’s Freedom Charter: ‘. . . Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws. All the people shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country. The rights of the people shall be the same regardless of race, colour or sex . . .’ Each student was required to memorize one clause from the document and repeat it before the assembled student body; the honour rotated among the various classes every morning. At first,

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