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Struggle veteran Obbey Mabena: ‘Freedom without free education is not what we envisioned'
As the country observes Youth Day, children remain at the forefront of battles that outweigh their young lives.
Exiled during apartheid, Mabena says SA is not too poor to provide free education and quality housing.
The older generation has a responsibility to educate and equip the youth with the knowledge of SA's history.
Struggle veteran Obbey Mabena, who turned 75 recently, joined the ANC in March 1976, three months before the Soweto uprisings.
He was immediately tasked with recruiting youngsters into the movement and later travelled to Swaziland to report to party officials that he was ready to mobilise. When the protests broke out on 16 June, he was still in that country, only returning to Soweto on 19 June.
'So, I left again on 20 June 1976. They [the security police] were looking for me because of the role I had played in opposing the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools. So, I went back to Swaziland and then to Angola and didn't return home for eight years.'
On his return, Mabena learnt that his family had been harassed by the apartheid forces for three days. They showed up at their home demanding to know his whereabouts.
This meant he was not safe in SA, prompting Mabena to leave a day later. He was subsequently taken to what was dubbed the ANC Quatro, which he described as a prison. There, extreme force and torture were unleashed on him and others – the same treatment they had endured under the apartheid regime.
The youth of 1976, whose bravery against armed apartheid police is at the centre of the commemoration of Youth Day annually on 16 June, were essentially children; teenagers who were still in high school. A few months ago, children even younger took to the streets, holding up placards protesting #JusticeForCwecwe.
Asked about his sentiments on children fighting battles that adults are more equipped to undertake, he lamented the distortion of the slogan Power to the People. He added that the infiltration of apartheid into black communities left a systemic lapse in society's moral fibre.
Youth Day honors the bravery of the youth of 1976 and the profound role they played in the liberation of 🇿🇦South Africa....
Posted by Embassy of Belgium in Pretoria on Saturday, June 15, 2024
Speaking on the education system, Mabena said this was nowhere near the freedom that he and his comrades had envisioned when they embarked on the liberation struggle. He said education was a tool with which they had hoped black people's lives would be changed for the better.
If the funds in SA were not being mismanaged, we would be able to afford giving our children and grandchildren free education, which is one of the things we were fighting for. Some countries, which are far poorer than SA, can provide free education.
Obbey Mabena
'Even these poor-quality RDP houses – our people deserve better. We are one of the richest countries in Africa, accounting for more than 70% of the world's platinum production. Where does that money go? We can afford to give our people better,' he bemoaned.
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Mabena, the father of Duma Collective founder Sibu Mabena, strongly condemned the reference to youngsters as the lost generation.
Mabena's sentiment was that apartheid left enduring systemic injustices that have derailed the educating of young people about SA's real history and arming them with the right tools to take the baton from veterans like him.
'Young people can't take over out of the blue. We must teach them about where we come from and what we intended when we started fighting for our country.'
