[New] MERA Speaker Series - A Personal History of South Africa

by Jeff Green

Steve Kotze is an accountant based in Elphin, an avid soccer player, organiser, and a former Green Party candidate. He was born and raised South African, and his own family history is tied to the anti-apartheid movement.

He prepared, and last week presented, what he described as his “personal perspective” on events from the past and the present day in South Africa.”

He started by saying that “as much as I decry racial stereotyping, I am a White man, of European descent, born into privilege in a country where race defined everything about a person’s life.”

He said that Whites, representing 1012% of the population, were at the top, and Blacks, representing 85% of the population, were at the bottom. Whites had 100% of control over government, and only Whites were allowed to vote.

All aspects of life were controlled.

“Apartheid, meaning separateness, was the official policy of the national party when they came into power in South Africa in 1948 in an all-White election.”

As an aside, Kotze pointed out that the “architects of apartheid traveled to Canada to study Canada’s reservation system as a model for apartheid.”

Apartheid did not come from out of the blue. From the 1600s, Dutch colonisers enslaved the Indigenous population. Africa, as a whole, was carved up into nations at a conference in 1885, based not on communities of interest or historical connection, but based on the interests of the colonisers, and what Kotze described as “European greed”.

The mineral deposits in the Transvaal region of South Africa drew the attention of the English, who took over the country through force in the Boer War at the turn of the 20th Century. 26,000 Afrikaner women and children and 20,000 Africans died in Concentration campus during a brutal war. Not surprisingly, English rule was never accepted by the Africaner population who were long established in the country before the English arrived.

“Anti-English sentiment was one of the reasons for the victory of the National Party in 1948, and the institution of apartheid that followed,” he said.

He pointed out that his mother, Helen, was a second-generation English immigrant to South Africa, whose parents were both born in Manchester, England, and his father Theo was a 7th generation Arfikaner..

The African National Congress was created in 1912 to advocate for the rights of blacks in the county, long before the official onset of apartheid.

In 1955, 3,000 delegates came together and created The Freedom Charter, which “laid out the basis of a future, egalitarian South Africa. By the end of that year, 156 people who were involved in the creation of the charter, were arrested and charged with treason. Nelson Mandela was one of them. After a 4-year trial, they were all acquitted.

The Pan African Congress, a more militant offshoot of the African National Congress, was founded by Robert Sobukwe. In 1960, a Pan African Congress protest in Sharpeville resulted in a brutal attack by po- lice, resulting in the death of 69 people, and 180 injuries.

In 1961, the ANC and PAC decided to take acts of sabotage against the state.

At the time, Nelson Mandela said that 50years of non violent (acts of resistance) had brought the African people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.”

Robert Sobukwe was arrested after the Sharpeville massacre, and Nelson Mandela was arrested a year later.

Kotze said that he was not aware of any of this when he was growing up, as not only was he young, but censorship laws ensured that Whites were not informed about what was going on outside of their own, protected communities.

In 1963, the Christian Institute of South Africa was formed. It declared apartheid to be a heresy. Kotze’s father, Theo, a Methodist Minister who had been wrestling with the same issue as the clergy who had formed the institute, learned about the declaration.

“And so, my family’s involvement with the anti-apartheid movement began.”

In 1966, Steve’s father was appointed to be Chaplin to Robben Island, where many of the political prisoners were held, and he met with “Mandela, Sobukwe and many of the other leaders who were serving their sentences there.”

Six months later he was removed from the position because “‘he did not know how to behave towards the prisoners’, meaning that he treated them as human beings”.

The experience had a radicalising effect on Theo Kotze. Two years later, he took on the role of Regional Director of the Christian Institute for the Cape and Namibia.

In the early 1970s, new leaders emerged, including Steve Biko, and organisations like the New Christian Institute started attracting unwanted attention, including from right wing vigilantes.

This attention included a Molotov cocktail being tossed at the window of Theo Kotze’s office, and an incident where shots were fired at the Kotze house.

Theo Kotze, being a devoted Christian and a man who was inspired by the Black anti-apartheid leadership, did not waver in the face of these threats and attacks.

The death of Steve Biko in 1977 at the age of 30, after being arrested for contravening a banning order, also had a profound effect on Theo Kotze, as they had met on several occasions and Kotze had a lot of admiration for Biko and saw him as a leader.

On the 19th of October, 1977, a day known in South Africa as Black Wednesday, many organisations including the Christian Institute, were subjected to banning orders. Among other restrictions, banned individuals were not allowed to meet with other banned individuals at all, or more than one other individual at any time. They could also not leave the district where they were assigned.

A year later, recognising that he could not remain in South Africa without taking action against apartheid and that that would likely lead to imprisonment or death, Steve, “being a person of privilege who had options” decided to leave for Europe.

3 months later, he learned that his father had made his way to England. His mother was already there, ostensibly for a family visit.

Theo Kotze’s escape from South Africa culminated in crossing the border with Botswana in the trunk of a car that was being driven by an American diplomat.

Helen and Theo Kotze spent the next 15 years working to convince church leaders in Europe to end their investments in South Africa.

In 1985, Steve emigrated to Canada, and found support for the anti-apartheid movement was well established in Canada, extending all the way to the government.

“I found it ironic, to say the least, that while Canada was so strongly opposed to apartheid in the 1980s, the last residential school in Canada did not close until 1996.”

In 1994, Steve Kotze voted for the first time in his life, casting his ballot at the South African High Commission in Ottawa. That same week, he became a Canadian citizen.

The story of South Africa does not end there, however.

“I have learned that governments, despite their best intentions, are invariably instruments of the power elite, designed to protect monied interests. In South Africa ... it is the monied investment that has corrupted the ANC.

“I have also learned that racism, and racist legislation and policies is not unique to South Africa. It is part of divide and conquer, but it is deeper than that and it is much more complex and insidious. I do know, though, that we are all part of one big human-family, that we all bleed the same colour, that we all feel joy, pain and sorrow, and that the pigment of a person’s skin says nothing of their character or their capability. I also know that diversity makes us stronger and more resilient, and makes life a lot more interesting.”

A lot of the optimism about the future of South Africa has dissipated over the years.

“There is a book called the ANC Billionaires. The title says it all,” Kotze said at the end of his presentation, but then he added that there are people in South Africa, and elsewhere, who continue to work for a more just future, and “that gives me hope.”

In the conversation with the Zoom audience after his talk, Kotze mentioned something he had heard.

“From the perspective of the 1990s in South Africa, what had happened to the country over the last 25 years is a disaster. But from the perspective of the 1980s in South Africa, it is a triumph.” ■