As a teen, I hated October. 

It is funny that I have not thought about my aversion to the month until recently. The memory was triggered by a powerful discussion about the injustices of South Africa’s turbulent past during the I3rd International Conference on Social Justice and the 4th Social Justice Summit 2022 in October. 

It took me back more than 30 years. 

As a political activist and a human rights lawyer, my father was an enemy of the apartheid state. In October 1988, when I was in Standard 6 (Grade 8), my father’s luck ran out and he was arrested for the second time. The first time I was too young to remember. The only way I could see him after his second arrest was to accompany my mother to court. In gruesome detail, I learnt about the torture suffered by my father and his co-accused. 

The second event that made me loathe October was the burning down of our home by a political militia the following year, October 1989.

Our house was torched when my father was in prison, while my older sister and I (the second of four girls) were at boarding school. My mother was taking care of my two younger sisters and my cousins on this particular Sunday. There had been rumours that some houses of “amaqabane” (those affiliated to the United Democratic Front and/or the ANC) would be torched. 

My mother was in church when she heard the news. She made the young ones leave while she stood her ground and prayed the Rosary as our home burnt to a cinder. She was a fearless woman, my mother. I grew up in a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal and we didn’t have easy access to telephones. In the immediate aftermath, my mother had no way of letting my sister and me know what had happened.

We were called to our dormitory matron’s house on Monday night (funny how every detail is still crystal clear in my mind) and told that our home was no more. It had made newspaper headlines, and my mother had managed to contact the school to prepare us in case we saw the article. Severely distressed, we were housed at the small campus clinic for the night and missed school the next day. 

My mother came the next morning, and she was very upset to find us in bed when we were not sick. She reminded us that we were Mades, and Mades do not fold at the first sign of adversity.

She told us that she had confronted the militia after their rampage, and reminded them what she, my father and my grandfather before them had done for our community. My grandfather built the first primary school in the area and the second primary school, which I was the first member of my family to attend, was named Dr Made Primary School.

As we did not have easy access to water in our village, my mother made arrangements with the water board, which had a water treatment plant in the area, to provide standpipes around the village. She must have been magnificent in her anger; she literally stood over these traditional Zulu men and made them recognise her for the force she was.

What triggered these childhood memories was the 3rd Annual International Conference on Social Justice and the 4th Annual Social Justice Summit in Stellenbosch on 11 and 12 October 2022. The theme was restitution. Particularly, it was the presentation by journalist and author Lukhanyo Calata, the son of Fort Calata, one of the so-called Cradock Four anti-apartheid activists who were brutally killed in 1985. 

His story resonated with me because we lost too many friends and families without answers and restitution. He articulated what I could not. How the victims of apartheid and their families were never given the answers other than those that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

An honest conversation

What is restitution and do we, as a country, need an honest conversation about it? 

The Collins English Dictionary defines restitution as “the act of giving back to a person something that was lost or stolen, or of paying them money for the loss”. 

In practical terms, a restitutive act places a person who has unjustly suffered a loss as close as possible to where they would have been but for the improper conduct resulting in such injustice (Conference and Summit Restitution Framing Paper, 2022).

The conference and summit organised by the Law Trust Chair in Social Justice at Stellenbosch University had speakers and presenters from academia, civil society, international think tanks and victims of discriminatory practices such as apartheid. From Palesa Musa, who inspired the Centre for Social Justice at Stellenbosch University’s Musa Plan, to members of the communities that were forcefully removed due to the Group Areas Act. 

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We all came together to discuss restitution and practical steps that might be taken to achieve it.

In her opening address, Professor Thuli Madonsela highlighted that apartheid disrupted all aspects of life for its victims. 

In my case, I lost my community. 

Growing up, I knew almost every family in my village. I either went to school or church with them. These were the people who burned down our home and these were the people who were the victims of the violence that eventually found its way to our village. Some were killed, including my childhood friend and former classmate, Vusi Mpungose. He was only 14 years old, just starting out high school, but someone viewed his political leanings as a threat.

In the aftermath of this act of violence, my two younger sisters stayed with some relatives in a nearby township where the college in which my mother taught was located. One afternoon, soon after the event, my youngest sister, only six years old, convinced our nine-year-old sister to take her home. 

Her words were: “Ngifuna ukuya ekhaya” (I want to go home). 

She was distressed and would not let it go; my nine-year-old sister had no choice but to comply. 

The two girls managed to get free rides in two taxis to our village. In the fading daylight, they walked through a village that had grown hostile towards us and made it to the ruins of our home. My mother was so petrified when she found out where they had gone, she hired a car to go and look for them. She found them huddled together and safe in that hostile environment of former neighbours who suddenly wanted us dead.

This is what was taken from us, our sense of belonging. We were not special, many families lost too much. Is restitution even possible for people like us? There was never any police investigation into the crime of burning homes, worse still, killing young cadres like Vusi Mpungose. Never then and certainly not now. I wonder if, like Lukhanyo, the Mpungoses feel like justice for their son’s death was sacrificed for reconciliation. 

As for me and my neighbours, we can never get back the sense of community we lost. Some families have moved back, but it is not the same. It is still home because that is where my parents are buried. But my sense of belonging was lost forever that October day. DM/MC