The Visit

On 4 June 1987, State President P.W. Botha visited the townships of the Vaal Triangle in the company of his wife Elize and a group of cabinet ministers. Local school children were seen waving flags, welcoming the president and his entourage. Botha, his wife and the group of cabinet ministers were taken on a tour through Sharpeville and Sebokeng, where he addressed an audience at the Mphatlalatsane Hall in Zone 14, Sebokeng. It was a carefully orchestrated spectacle, aimed at creating a semblance of normality and endorsement of the government’s reforms. The mayor of the Lekoa Town Council, Esau Mahlatsi, provoked local dismay when he presented Botha with the Freedom of Lekoa. In Mahlatsi’s words, the Lekoa Town Council had invited Botha to ‘see for himself the conditions under which blacks live’. Local residents, however, were quoted as saying they found the visit ‘absurd’. They called on Botha to address their grievances, namely to release the Delmas treason and the Sharpeville Six trialists, to halt evictions and reduce rent, and to unban the liberation movements. Botha’s failure to visit the graves of the victims of the Sharpeville shooting and the Vaal Uprising confirmed their view that he had little respect for the African population. A spokesperson of the Vaal Civic Association (VCA) sharply condemned the visit, calling it a ‘miserable failure’.

For some, Botha’s visit not only signified the hubris of government but caused outright fear. One pensioner from Sharpeville, who was paid a surprise visit, was distressed about his association with the state president: ‘I curse the day Botha set his foot on my doorstep – it has made my life a misery.’ Worried that he might be seen as a sell-out, he spent restless nights in fear of having his house burnt down. His fear was not unfounded; by then, arson had become a widespread strategy to rid the townships of informers, police and anyone else suspected of collaborating with the apartheid regime. Rumours of being a ‘sellout’ or informer could bring a death sentence.

Violence had begun to escalate since September 1984. While some of this violence was contingent and in response to local grievances, many youthful comrades saw themselves as carrying the banner of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the banned African National Congress (ANC), and, to a lesser extent, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).