This freedom was never free. And yet, I am often told to forget – to move on, as though memory is something to discard. But memory is not a burden. It is evidence. It is testimony. It is the archive of a life shaped by history.
I was born into that history in New Eersterus, a rural village in Hammanskraal, about 40 kilometres north of Pretoria, then under Bophuthatswana. The village itself was born of displacement in 1969, when Africans were forced out of Eersterus after it was declared a “Coloured area” under the Group Areas Act. But even that was not the beginning. Before Eersterus, there was Lady Selbourne – a thriving, multiracial suburb in Pretoria – declared a white area and dismantled by apartheid. Its residents were scattered across racial lines: Africans to Mamelodi and Eersterus, Indians to Laudium. Lady Selbourne became to Pretoria what Sophiatown was to Johannesburg: a memory of coexistence destroyed by design.
New Eersterus carried the scars of that history. It looked older than the place it replaced. It was one of many neglected villages in Greater Hammanskraal, where the state provided almost nothing. Only Temba township received meaningful support. In the villages, we built our own schools; the government sent teachers only after we had done the groundwork. There was no running water, no sanitation, no electricity, no policing. There was a clinic – understaffed, under-resourced – serving not only New Eersterus but neighbouring villages like Stinkwater, Trust Farm, Mogogelo, and Dilopye.
Before moving to New Eersterus in 1973, my family lived in Stinkwater. The name tells its own story. We drank from wells we dug ourselves, water heavy with fluoride that stained our teeth and weakened them. Between Stinkwater and New Eersterus lay a river in name only – just sand. We called it “Santeng”, a place of sand. Nearby stood the ancient Tswaing crater, a reminder that even the land carried a deeper history than the one imposed upon us.
In New Eersterus, we settled in Block B, among those displaced from Eersterus – people of different tribes and even different countries, like Shumi, the Malawian shoemaker. We were all forced into a Bantustan that was meant to define us, limit us, contain us.
Schooling was a daily struggle. I walked long distances, faced the weather, and endured a bully who turned my journey into a tollgate, demanding my lunch money. Fear and exhaustion led me to skip classes, and I failed my first year. Repeating at a closer school gave me a second chance. Years later, that same bully – now a broken man shaped by the same system – apologised to me. I accepted. Apartheid did not only divide us; it deformed us.
Life in the village offered little beyond survival. Soccer on Sundays, alcohol, and long stretches of unemployment defined the rhythm of existence. Education beyond standard eight required travel to distant schools – Dilopye, Majaneng, Temba, Mabopane – journeys many families could not sustain.
But resistance found its way into our lives. My cousin, Oupa Dube, introduced community theatre. When he left, I formed my own group – writing, directing, producing plays inspired by the African Writers Series. That was the beginning of my political awakening. Our work challenged the Bantustan system, and though it made schools uncomfortable, we continued. Silence was never an option.
In 1982, I launched a handwritten newsletter, The Fortune Teller, while at school in Mabopane. It circulated quietly, sometimes too quietly, as classmates kept copies for themselves. Debate became another arena of growth. The poetry of Ingoapele Madingoane stirred something deeper in me—his words banned in South Africa but alive in our consciousness.
By 1983, we were organising student uprisings against the education system. Raids followed. Detentions followed. We demanded the release of our comrades before returning to class. Even in buses, we turned journeys into platforms for political education.
In 1984, I went to the University of the North (Turfloop) and formally joined student structures. Back home, I transformed our drama group into the New Eersterus Youth Organisation, affiliating it with the United Democratic Front – the first in Bophuthatswana to do so. We mobilised relentlessly, both on campus and in our communities.
But my political journey had already been shaped by earlier influences – quiet, powerful, and sometimes mysterious. There was a karate instructor, Stanley Molefe, who simply disappeared from the village in 1981. Later, rumours confirmed he had left the country to join the African National Congress in exile. His absence spoke louder than words.
Then there was another figure – an unassuming man in overalls who lived among us in Stinkwater. Humble, approachable, ordinary. Until one day, we heard that guerrillas had been arrested. When their photos appeared in the newspaper, I recognised him. It was Benjamin Moloise. He and others were sentenced to death. In 1985, while at Turfloop, we held a night vigil in their honour before their execution – singing, chanting, refusing to let silence claim them.
There were other stories too – whispers of cadres arrested while hiding in a hole, planning to attack the SAP Training College in Hammanskraal. Only later did I learn that among those who survived were figures like Feneral Shoke and Ngoako Ramatlhodi, who went into exile.
It was also in 1985 that I was recruited into the ANC’s Regional Underground Command by Molefi Sefularo. My task was to recruit others and help establish the Duma Nokwe Moretele District Command. I underwent crash courses in armed combat in a village near Mahikeng. After my release from detention in 1988, while working as a journalist for Learn & Teach, I continued this training in Botswana.
By then, I was already on the radar of the state. We lived under constant threat – raids, arrests, surveillance. In 1987, I was detained under the State of Emergency. Solitary confinement in Polokwane and Mokopane lasted three months. Then prison – crowded cells, shared despair. I spent nine months in detention in the Northern Transvaal before being transferred to Pretoria Central Prison.
Detention is not only physical suffering; it is psychological erosion. Even today, the sound of keys or a door forced open takes me back to those nights – 3h00 waiting. I still cannot keep my keys together on one ring.
While I was detained, my grandfather passed away. I could not attend his funeral. Months later, I learned my girlfriend was pregnant. She could not visit me. My son, Thabang, was born while I was in prison. I first saw him through a window when he was two months old.
My studies were disrupted, my path altered. I completed my degree under difficult circumstances, but could not pursue teaching as planned. Even then, there were quiet acts of resistance – like the principal who helped me complete my teaching practice on paper, defying instructions from the authorities.
Democracy in 1994 changed the material conditions of our lives. For the first time, the state reached us: water, electricity, roads, schools, social grants. What we had fought for began to take shape.
Years later, in 1996/97, I returned to these questions academically. At the University of the Witwatersrand, I completed my MA dissertation critiquing the television documentary Ulibamve lingashoni – Hold up the Sun, a five-part series chronicling the history of the ANC. That work reaffirmed something I had already lived: movements endure beyond their leaders. They are tested, strained, sometimes faltering – but they persist.
So, when I celebrate Freedom Day, I do so with clarity. It is not a symbolic date. It is the culmination of lives interrupted, sacrifices made, and futures reclaimed.
Freedom was never free. And forgetting has never been an option.
Happy Freedom Day to all.
Tujenge Afrika Pamoja! Let’s Build Africa Together!
Enjoy your weekend.
Saul Molobi (FCIM)
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