Janice Warman Remembers Her Generation (Jaffer, Berger, Sparg)

November 20th, 2009 by Ronel S

Zubeida Jaffer’s memoir Our Generation is now available in the UK. To mark its appearance there, her old schoolmate and activist friend Janice Warman reminisces about the heady, terrifying days of the late 70s at Rhodes University. An unforgettable piece featuring some unforgettable characters – including Marion Sparg and Guy Berger – in The Observer:

In 1979, three middle-class students in the Eastern Cape joined the ANC’s war with Apartheid. They were tortured, jailed and branded traitors. Thirty years on, they are national heroes.
For heaven's sake,” my father said, seeing me off at the airport, “don't get drunk, don't get pregnant – and don't get involved in politics.” He was right to be concerned. Rhodes University in the late 1970s, with its Sir Herbert Baker-designed campus and its lush green lawns, looked prosperous and sedate. But the Sunday papers had been full of the escapades of its notorious drinking clubs and loose morals; the Eastern Cape was, after the riots of 1976, a place of turmoil and desperate poverty; and the campus was thought by most conservative parents to be a hotbed of political activity.
Nearby, the Nationalist policy of forced removals meant thousands of black people had been moved from the cities into the black “homelands” of Transkei and Ciskei, and dumped there with only a standpipe and a couple of huts for company; two out of three children died of malnutrition before the age of three .
I arrived in 1977, the year after the Soweto riots, to study journalism. Months later, Steve Biko was murdered in custody. The campus tipped over into turmoil. There were demonstrations and hunger strikes. For most of us, Rhodes was a revelation. We had been brought up to respect authority. Here, we could forge a whole new identity, personally and politically.
I arrived in 1977, the year after the Soweto riots, to study journalism. Months later, Steve Biko was murdered in custody. The campus tipped over into turmoil. There were demonstrations and hunger strikes. For most of us, Rhodes was a revelation. We had been brought up to respect authority. Here, we could forge a whole new identity, personally and politically.
Out of that class of 1979 came two women whose identities merged with the painful birth of the new South Africa: two journalism students whose journey was to take them through defiance, imprisonment and torture during the apartheid years. One of the quietest girls in the class, Marion Sparg, joined the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), trained in exile in Lusaka, and was eventually convicted of bombing two police stations. An Asian journalist, Zubeida Jaffer, was imprisoned and tortured for her writing and union activism, yet ultimately chose not to prosecute her torturer.