PHOTO: THE GENTLE GIANT OF LIBERATION – THE LATE MUNTU MYEZA
OUPA NGWENYA
The late Sowetan newspaper editor Aggrey Klaaste called him “the charming gentle giant”.
The name stuck. But there was nothing gentle about Muntu Myeza’s courage.
In 1985, Black Consciousness was under siege. AZAPO stood as the last organized bulwark against its liquidation. The strategy of those who wanted BC erased was simple: destroy AZAPO.
Their weapon was the necklace. A tyre soaked in petrol, placed around the neck of a political opponent and set alight. It became a signature brand of cruelty in the townships.
Exasperated beyond endurance, Muntu Myeza called me one Saturday afternoon.
“Be home at 3. I have a statement for the Sunday Star.” There were no cellphones at the time. My landline in Mofolo, Soweto, was the newsroom.
The statement was for editor Jon Qwelane. At 15h00 the phone rang.
Muntu read three lines:
“We condemn it. We do not condone it. We shall not use it.”
I waited for more.
“This is it,” he said.
That was it. Three lines that ripped through the headlines the next morning. Overnight, the perpetrators of necklacing were put on the back foot. A sigh of relief fell over the land.
In that moment, BC led. And Muntu Myeza was its brave face and voice. Undoubtedly a real black person.
I do not prefix his name with “Comrade”. I stopped when the title was hijacked by what we came to call “Comrade Tsotsis” – those who made the country ungovernable in the townships while the suburbs remained untouched. The mistaken belief that suspension of education would bring liberation nearer, precipitated the unacknowledged slogan selling “Liberation Now, Education Later” as if ignorance was a revolutionary virtue.
Muntu rejected that. Again he wisely rose: “Education for Liberation.”
The response from Congress-aligned forces was to form the National Education Crisis Committee. But NECC’s good intentions were suffocated the moment it was affiliated to the UDF, whose sectarian project was to ‘Congressify’ every formation through wall-to-wall adoption of the Freedom Charter.
That was a telling blow to the solidarity approach BC had fought to impress upon the broad liberation movement: unity without liquidation of identity. BC lives and an anti-dote as a cleansing purgative that black people need more than ever before.
Through all of this, Muntu Myeza never failed when history demanded leadership.
If there is one thing to be clear about: he erred on the side of liberation. Not against it.
It takes people mad enough to believe they can change the world. Muntu was one of them. Men, women and children who believed ideas could defeat tyres and petrol.
There come moments in life when you must choose between angels who will lead you to hell, and devils who know hell well enough to lead you out of it. The choice is never easy.
On such defining moments, Muntu Myeza would not have suffered a vocational crisis. He would have known exactly on which side to err.
Today a WhatsApp group bears his name: The Muntu Myeza Group. It carries a responsibility. It can do better. It must do better. Through proper reading, writing and reasoning of the times we find ourselves in. That is how we honor him.
Peace to Myeza’s soul. The charming gentle giant. Ingilosi yo mhlaba – the angel of the land – he was called by the BC youth grouping.
