Remembering forgotten heroes of the struggle

SADLY, South Africans don’t have a strong sense of history. Political exiles’ harsh years and necessary contributions are now unfairly dismissed as cowardice or derided as a means to enrichment. Those who governed apartheid or benefited from it — whites as a class and black collaborators — are celebrated and treated better by history.

For example, see the pushback by AfriForum, the Democratic Alliance, and their supporters against the decision to rename William Nicol Drive in Johannesburg to Winnie Mandela Drive. At the same time, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who led a violent Bantustan regime and managed a proxy war for apartheid, was elevated to statesman status by News24, the country’s largest news website. It also provides space for whites defending the reputation of Nicol, who was associated with the Broederbond and had Nazi sympathies.

Gladys Nzimande-Tsolo, who died aged 83 on September 27, was a South African freedom fighter. Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, she fled the country in the early 1960s, joined the ANC’s Umkhonto weSizwe in Botswana, received training in the Soviet Union and Tanzania and eventually ended up in East Germany. The latter was a depressing experience politically, but she trained as a nurse, met her husband, Mike, and gave birth to their first child, Julia.

Mike, who also went by Nyakane, was in exile after leading the Sharpeville uprising as a member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which radicalised political resistance in 1961. Gladys gradually grew disillusioned with the class politics of the ANC and joined the PAC.

The family eventually fled to the Netherlands, where they arrived as refugees, lived and worked as ordinary people and did activist work against apartheid for more than 20 years.

In an interview with Marjan Boelsma, former chairperson of the Azania Kommitte, a Dutch organisation, Gladys explained that their time in Rotterdam was stressful. They were poor. In addition to learning a new language (Mike fared better than Gladys), they had to take on low-paying jobs. Only later did Mike become the PAC representative for the Benelux countries: the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. However, unlike the ANC, which had more resources, working for the PAC did not bring any financial benefits.

In 1990, the apartheid government announced formal negotiations with liberation movements. Exiles began to return to South Africa. Gladys and Mike made the journey in 1992. Though they continued their activism (at some point, Mike ran for office in Gauteng), the couple eventually withdrew from formal politics as the contributions and skills of freedom fighters were increasingly sidelined.

People such as Gladys and Mike are now mainly forgotten in public life. As historian Thandolwethu Sipuye told a local news site in 2018: “Nyakane Tsolo is the man who led the Sharpeville protest and is unknown, completely erased from our national narrative and the memory around human rights. He’s never been mentioned, he’s never honoured, there are no monuments, he’s nowhere in the curriculum.”

By the late 1990s, Gladys and Mike were in Cape Town. Julia, who had returned to the country with her parents, also lived with her then-husband, Rogier, in Cape Town, which is how I met Gladys and Mike. I was Julia and Rogier’s next-door neighbour in a block of flats at the top end of Kloof Street. (Another downstairs neighbour was Wolfie Kodesh, who had been Oliver Tambo’s speech writer, but that is a story for another day).

I had moved back to Cape Town after graduate studies in Chicago and was working at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. The Nzimande-Tsolos would see me pass their window and, while it was unusual in that part of the city, invite me over for dinner. These dinners resembled a mix of seminars on South Africa’s political histories and a family reunion. At times, I would also go on outings with the Nzimande-Tsolos. Julia, her parents and Rogier wouldn’t realise how much I cherished those “chance” encounters and late nights.

At some point, Gladys and Mike returned to Rotterdam, which is how I visited them on one of my work trips to the Netherlands and met their son Zakhele (much younger and with an attachment to the Netherlands, he had decided to stay in Rotterdam). I also got a sense of their lives away from home. They eventually returned to South Africa again and settled in Johannesburg.

Gladys, once speaking about South Africans’ xenophobia against black Africans from elsewhere — what she correctly termed Afrophobia — reminded her compatriots: “It is quite important for South Africans to understand that we too were once considered foreigners, homeless, refugees and asylum seekers in various countries around the world.”

In 2002, Mike died from a stroke. Julia has worked hard to highlight her parents’ political activism, including starting a foundation in her father’s memory. A few days ago, via Messenger, Julia told me that Gladys, born in 1940, “went peacefully at home in her sleep”. I felt sad for Julia and sent her my condolences because I know how much she loved her parents and how proud they were of her. But I also felt a sense of pride and accomplishment for having known freedom fighters like Gladys and Mike. May Gladys rest in peace.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.