The All-Consuming Evils

Duncan identifies three pieces of legislation as the nerve centre of the all-consuming evil of apartheid: the structure of pass laws and influx control, the process of forced removals and Bantu Education. Her track record on amassing detailed information and irrefutable facts on the effects of these systems, and exposing the human suffering of countless people to public scrutiny, is a story documented and well known. Ultimately three and a half million people were forced to move in order to conform to apartheid notions of who should live where. When the process started a group of women, who included Duncan, visited and told the stories of people's suffering and resistance in places like Lime Hill in Natal, Mogopa (in the western Transvaal), Driefontein, Klipgat, and elsewhere. The story she tells of the people of Driefontein whom the government wanted to move to Oshoek, is but one of many. She tells of the minutes of a meeting between Dr Piet Koornhof, the minister responsible for the removals, and the local residents. "You must go because you are squatters," the minister told them. "But we own this land," they responded. Back

came the reply: "All black people in South Africa are squatters if they are outside their traditional lands." Her story continues:

The negotiations and meetings went on and on, but the people never faltered. They continued to say that they weren't moving. Then the police arrived at a meeting of the community in the schoolyard, and a policeman called Nienaber shot and killed their leader, Saul Mkhize. That was the turning point in their struggle. Saul had been in the schoolyard, and the policeman was outside a high wire fence, but be claimed he was in danger of his life and that's why he shot Saul dead. The people remained firm and said: "On no account are we going." The women made a plan to dig their own graves, and said: "We will stand beside our graves because we are not moving from here. You can shoot and we will lie in our land forever."^[2]

The people of Driefontein eventually won the right to keep their land. Others were less successful. "Nazism was about genocide. Apartheid has destroyed millions of people in South Africa, decreeing that skin colour was sufficient ground to locate and relocate people around the country, provide them with an inferior education and ultimately reduce them to mere vassals. More than that, apartheid has killed millions of people, through starvation, as a result of disease, and in police gun fire. It too is genocide."