In 1965, while visiting his 60-year-old mother, Khawulezile Sandi was detained by the police and subsequently beaten while his mother looked on helplessly.
Sandi was an active member of the Black People’s Convention, which was formed when the African National Congress was banned.
In 1965, while visiting his 60-year-old mother, Khawulezile Sandi was detained by the police and subsequently beaten while his mother looked on helplessly.
Sandi was an active member of the Black People’s Convention, which was formed when the African National Congress was banned.
Sandi was born in Fingo Village in Grahamstown in 1957 and has lived his entire life there. “Things are better than in apartheid,” he says, “but some things haven’t really become better”.
He lists poor housing, the large amount of squatters and the bucket toilet system as a few of the aspects of township life that seriously need attention.
Having grown up in Grahamstown, Sandi attended Nomzamo Secondary School, and worked his way into Rhodes University in the late 80s.
Life at Rhodes was not easy during his time there, he said. Sandi tells of how he studied a BA in politics with both white and black students, but said that he “dropped out due to police harassment”.
“We lived under the shadow of the police,” he explained. He recalled how the police used students on the Rhodes campus to act as spies, and remembered once returning to his car to find it smashed up and immobile.
Sandi joined the Black People’s Convention, which was formed by the late Stephen Bantu Biko. The movement was established because the black population wanted to be treated equally and wanted the same rights as the white population.
The Black People’s Convention eventually became an affiliate of the Black Consciousness Movement. Sandi said that there were a “few people active in the Black People’s Convention”.
He was elected as the president of the street coordinating committee council in the townships. The councils, made up of about ten people per street, would meet to represent and help the residents living in each street.
Sandi recalls that “people of the Catholic Church would help out” but that it stopped when Biko was killed. Sandi was imprisoned for his activism and was detained in St Alban’s Prison in Port Elizabeth.
He tells that he was moved to the Kentonon- Sea police station. Where there that he was repeatedly beaten and subjected to interrogation.
They moved him away from the other Xhosaspeaking prisoners so they could not communicate. When asked what 21 March means to the people of Fingo Village, he replies that it “was a reminder of what happened of that day in Sharpeville,” a day when 69 protesters were killed.
However, he says “people can’t focus on the past” when talking about Human Rights Day in the 21st century. He ended with a chuckle saying that he is “taking a break from politics”.
