Fallen anti-apartheid activist who lived in Lusaka while in exile accorded justice with re-burial in SA

By Dr Lebogang Maroo

Zambia is the cradle of freedom of Southern Africa. Liberation movements from Angola and Namibia to Moçambique and South Africa established offices in Zambia and exiled activists found refuge here in numbers. Following years of imprisonment on Robben Island, John Pogiso Maroo joined umpteen leaders and members of the movement who lived in Lusaka as exiles. Having been repatriated to his ancestral land as part of the South African government’s programme, Maroo has come full circle.

Born in 1925 in Parys, south of Johannesburg, John Pogiso Maroo was the second of five children of Mme Selina, a housewife, and Ntate Simon Maroo, a farmworker. The white minority-led Union of South Africa, which codified the colour bar, had been established 15 years earlier. The African National Congress (ANC), Maroo’s political home, had been founded in 1912, a year before the devastating Natives’ Land Act that legislated grimmer prospects for Africans. It overnight reduced them to “squatters”, Sol Plaatje wrote. “The section of the law debarring Natives from hiring land is particularly harsh,” asserted the scholar and cadre, adding that its crux was “intended to reduce Natives to serfs.”
This was the society that the Maroo family lived in last century. The threat of serfdom was real. It was thus a given that the family packed and crossed Lekoa for Johannesburg to eventually settle in Soweto. Their first stop was in the cosmopolitan Alexandra. That melting pot, and era, left an indelible mark in young John’s life.

So it was that Maroo spent 40 years in the struggle. His average built, slender and of medium height, belied the hardship that stalked him. He was athletic and very fit. He walked very fast and used to hold his chin high. At 63, one Tuesday in the autumn of 1989, he succumbed to cancer while in exile in Harare. He had been transferred there after years in Lusaka. He was survived by his wife, Mme Rebecca and children Cynthia, Abram – all since deceased – and Lebo. John Maroo’s mortal remains, along those of 48 of his comrades who perished in exile in Zambia and Zimbabwe, were repatriated to South Africa last year. At the time of Maroo’s birth, the ANC was led by liberation theologians Reverends ZR Mahabane and James Calata. In his teens, Maroo was inspired by clergymen who preached freedom. But, as he soon discovered, some people sang from different hymn sheets.

The young John Maroo discovered this when the Methodist Church blocked his path to become a minister for political reasons. As a form of protest, he left the denomination for the Presbyterians. But he soon found out that nowhere was safe under apartheid. After all, the racist system was a crime against humanity. Gun-wielding police invaded the Presbyterian Church in Alex to capture Maroo who had sought refuge there. This is a reminder that apartheid agents could stoop that low and desecrate holy grounds.

However, at the time of Maroo’s death, freedom fighters – assisted by sister nations such as Angola, Cuba, Sweden and Zambia – were closing in. Pretoria, which had terrorised the region (including Botswana and Lesotho), and exported mercenaries, was on the back foot. Its dying kicks manifested in a new round of state-sponsored killing sprees. But, even in the face of that, activists forged ahead.

The journey to Maroo’s burial, in same the year of his centenary, is important but bittersweet. While we are glad to finally lay him to rest in the land of his ancestors, a moment of closure, we note with sadness that in the intervening 35 years since his demise, mom has also since passed on. So have my brother and sister. All of my dad’s siblings are no more. Nevertheless, we are thankful that he is finally home. Our children, their children and generations to follow will be able to pay homage to their freedom-fighter ancestor who was hounded as a “terrorist” for fighting for justice.
Robala ka Kgotso Morolong. Robala ka Kgotso Namane ya Tholo! Like you taught us those many years ago, we shall keep the fight. A Luta Continua, Ntate John Maroo.

This month I wondered how Papa would have felt if he could see South Africa. Let me offer context: Maroo believed in the Freedom Charter, a blueprint for a democratic society where all people are treated equally and offered opportunities. So, I think he wouldn’t believe that we are free. Look at the means of production, look at the colour bar in cultural life. Our society has not fully shed apartheid practices. The Freedom Charter talks about the land. It talks about mineral resources and about wealth being shared. It would be sad if we have forgotten about the Freedom Charter because we still have so many undone things, so many gaps. Those gaps wouldn’t convince Maroo that we’re truly free. It is now up to the next generation to take the baton and fight a just, equal and fair society.

Coincidentally, my father was among the thousands who in June 1955 met as the Congress of the People, which in turn birthed the Freedom Charter. The site where this took place, Soweto’s Kliptown, has been declared by Unesco as one of 14 locations that represent the legacy of South Africa’s struggle. My father’s activism had begun in Alexandra when his family moved there. This is where he witnessed era-defining bus boycotts. He heard the clarion call, Azikhwelwa, and recognised the boycotts’ impact on white-collar economy that was restricted to the white minority. The people of Alex managed to force the establishment to reduce fares. Such was the milieu. Such was the cause. This is the same Alex that was at one time or another home to exemplars like Moses Kotane, Thoko Mngoma, Gaur Radebe and Adolphus Boy “JD” Mvemve (nom de guerre John Dube). Notably, Samora Machel sojourned in Alex en route to exile. Order of Luthuli recipient ANC Women’s League leader Florence Mophosho also lived in Alex.

As early as the start of 1950s, following the rise of the racist Nationalist party in the all-white polls, John Maroo had been assigned critical tasks. The sensitivities that went with that meant that only a small circle of people knew what his activities were. Beyond that circle, some people were aware that he distributed African National Congress pamphlets at train stations, from central Joburg’s Park to Naledi, Soweto, and that he spray-painted government’s offensive signs that had captured public benches and other amenities: “Europeans Only”, “Non-Europeans Only”, “Blankes” and “Nie-Blankes”.

As the ANC began to send its members abroad for military training, political education and to establish offices in exile. John Maroo was recruiting and assisting activists cross the border to Botswana via Zeerust, a South African town. From there those men and women proceeded to Zambia and Tanzania, or, sometimes, further afield: Britain, Bulgaria, China and Soviet Union. So many nations enabled Southern Africa’s decolonisation and liberation. Such was the spirit of solidarity, something we should keep alive.

By then, John Maroo was deeply underground. For years, the Boers raided our home in Soweto at ungodly hours. The year 1963 marked the beginning of his 12-year prison term on Robben Island. Police raids continued during and after his imprisonment. He had been barred from attending his mom’s, my gran’s, funeral. Even after his release, in 1975, his movements were restricted having been also banished under the then Act No. 44 of 1950 sec.9 (1) 30 to a faraway Ga-Rankuwa – 100 km from his family. So, the five of us, as a family, had only one opportunity to pose for a picture together. This was in 1976 with Papa home for gran’s tombstone unveiling ceremony in Moletsane, Soweto, albeit under police guard and menacing surveillance. Banned and still suffering chronic backache and bearing scars from hard labour, Ntate John told me while he was under house arrest, that the Boers weren’t going to make him “shrink and do nothing out of fear of torture, I’ll keep fighting. We must keep fighting.” Indeed, most family members feared for his safety.
Hardly 12 months after Papa’s release my brother, also known as Maroo or Oupa, skipped the country to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s military wing. In MK, Oupa’s nom de guerre was Harrison Mqwathi. In line with scores of others who left throughout the years, my brother’s conviction was obvious: Freedom or death, victory is certain, as the liberation war’s slogan went.

The charged Siyaya/Kubi, igwijo (liberation song), explains that cadres embraced the inevitability of torture, detention, exile and death. They embraced the inevitability of a life underground. They embraced house arrests. Thus, John Maroo was, upon release from prison, banished to Ga-Rankuwa – 100 km from our Soweto home. This was frustrating and added a familial and financial stress. However, upon arriving at what was supposed to be his new home, a men’s hostel, Maroo was incensed. He forced the authorities to respect his rights and dignity even as a banished individual. He flung their humiliation games back at them. In South Africa, hostels, a lamentable epitome of the dreaded migrant labour system and slave salaries, were built as black labour reserves.

“I have a family. How are my wife and children supposed to visit me here? Should they travel to this hostel for them to stand outside the fence and I inside? I’m not staying here,” Maroo charged, refusing to stay there. “Feel free to take me back to Robben Island!” Maroo dismissed the officers’ arrogant orders for him to obey. So, this continued for hours. Only then, with Plan B identified and activated, he was moved to Mr Nthite’s mayoral residence in the area until he was transferred to a house in nearby Mabopane, north of Pretoria. This remained an expensive punishment and kept us apart as the family.

John Pogiso Maroo’s had in the 1950s become a subject of apartheid security personnel’s surveillance. That culminated in raids. Then there were wall-to-wall soul-breaking 90-day detention without trial. That draconian system was designed by the oppressors to keep activists behind bars for long spells. In detention, they had nothing to do. They had nothing to read. They had no one to talk to. All some of them did was to stare at the walls. They stared at the ceiling.
In those years, South Africa was run by a white minority under Hendrik Verwoerd. The measured Chief Albert Luthuli, another clergyman, led the African National Congress. Despite the tumult at home, the 1950s held promise for the oppressed Global South. Kwame Nkrumah had led Ghana to independence. Gamal Abdel Nasser-led revolutionaries liberated Egypt. Across in the Caribbean, 32-year-old Fidel Castro led a revolution to end imperialism in Cuba. The Europe-dominated United Nations installed Dag Hammarskjöld, viewed as a decolonisation agent, as its Secretary-General.
The picture was bad in East and Southern Africa. Britain’s Conservatives, then running an oppressive colonial machine, were imprisoning freedom fighters in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Simon Kapwepwe, Kenneth Kaunda, Harry Nkumbula and their comrades were locked up by the colonialists in the 1950s. In the Union of South Africa, levels of injustices worsened. Verwoerd unleashed 90-day detention without trial. While in detention, Maroo and fellow sons and daughters of the land, at the hands of their captors, endless abuse, torture, sleep deprivation, starvation and dehydration. The practice was common but always ruthless.

After his eventual release from prison, but still operating in a restricted environment, Papa continued his underground activities for two years before, in 1978, leading a group of six youngsters to exile. That is how I left South Africa in my teens. From Botswana, where dad and I hurriedly split (after the ANC discovered that the Boers were tracking us), I was rushed to Lusaka after which I, for academic reasons, proceeded to Tanzania’s Mazimbu then Cuba. I was in Santiago de Cuba at the time of Papa’s passing and my brother was in Lusaka, while the rest of the family was in Johannesburg. My father had spent some of his exile years in Zambia and was at times deployed to Gaborone and Maseru, where he survived the December 1982 Pretoria-exported massacre. To elude the wrath of the apartheid regime, which wanted him deported, Botswana declared Maroo a persona non-grata. This came about after some talks with the then ANC President OR Tambo.
At the time of Papa’s demise, after almost 12 years in exile, the tide was turning down south. Pretoria, which had destabilised the region and exported mercenaries, had been humbled at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. But in a bid to cling on to power the Boers soon found and funded a new avenue: violence sprees in townships as seen with the Boipatong Massacre. Alas, activists pushed on. Siyaya/Kubi (Nguni for “Forging Ahead”). Their spirit could be explained in slogans like Freedom or death, victory is certain.

February marks a historic point in our journey. Fifty-one years ago, exiled Onkgopotse Tiro was slain, in Gaborone, by the racist regime’s cross-border killing machine. He was 36. This was on February 1, 1974. In the previous February, Pretoria had banned leaders of the South African Students’ Organisation – including Tiro for fighting the crime against humanity. In February 1970, Winnie Mandela and 20-plus men and women detained under the Suppression of Communism Act were acquitted only for most of them to be re-charged and placed in solitary confinement in Pretoria. With the passage of time some of us, though wrongly, let some names and events fade. This should not be the case.

As my first political educator, Papa introduced me to the story of Tiro in the mid-1970s when he was under house arrest. The story of activism in Tiro’s short life was in many ways era-defining and reverberated for decades. In fact, as Azapo’s former president Prof Itumeleng Mosala noted after the launch of Parcel of Death, by journalist Gaongalelwe Tiro, the martyr’s spirit “was to galvanise another generation decades later in the (#FeesMustFall) and decolonisation movements at the turn of the century.”

Eleven days after that bomb, Pretoria’s machinery struck in Lusaka. On February 12, another parcel of death sent to Lusaka killed Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Mvemve (JD). This is the same Mvemve that was comrades with Maroo since their Alex days. Decades after Alex, and decades after the advent of a democratic rule, dad and 48 fellow struggle heroes who gave up their ancestral lands to advance the fight for liberty are accorded dignified treatment on home soil. They are accorded dignified funeral services on home soil. It is just as this is the South Africa that they lived and died for. Justice has been served, albeit posthumously.

Dr Lebogang Maroo is the daughter of the late John Pogiso Maroo. She went into exile in her early teens. She graduated as a medical doctor in Cuba in 1989 and returned to South Africa in 1992, working mainly in the healthcare sector.