Author’s Note: On June 16, 1976, the youth of Soweto, Johannesburg’s massive Black township, rose up to protest a new rule making Afrikaans the language of instruction in their schools—a language that most did not know well. They were led by Tsietsi Mashinini, a charismatic high schooler. The nationwide eruption that Tsietsi set in motion on that day would change South Africa, and his family, forever. Many of Tsietsi’s 12 siblings got swept up in the ensuing political violence and fled the country, including Mpho, a younger brother. He escaped to neighboring Swaziland (now called Eswatini) to join the outlawed Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), an anti-apartheid organization—only to be arrested while trying to re-enter South Africa on a mission.
Mpho was kept in a solitary-confinement cell at a police station in Standerton. The cubicle contained a lavatory and a concrete slab with a foam mat and blanket; for a pillow, Mpho rolled up another blanket. He usually awoke at seven o’clock, when the other prisoners began to stir. At eight his breakfast arrived: mealie pap (thick porridge) with a greasy meat gravy, which Mpho found unpalatable. The only time he would eat well while in confinement was during interrogations. Then he ate whatever the policemen ordered for lunch. Sometimes Mpho kept the food to savour later in his cell, away from his inquisitors: a pint of milk, packet of chips, good bread.
After breakfast, the guards escorted Mpho, in handcuffs, to the police station, where the Special Branch officers had set up a temporary office. On the first day of his interrogation, an officer handed Mpho a pen and a sheet of paper. Write everything, he commanded, where you were born, where you went to school, the subjects you studied, your friends, girlfriends, your activities in Swaziland, your mission in Soweto. Mpho painstakingly wrote out seven pages of his history; it took him virtually the entire day. The officer read the completed composition, his lips silently forming every word, until he came to the end. He put down the papers and looked up at Mpho. ‘Kak,’ he said (Shit). The officer tore up the essay into small pieces and handed Mpho more paper. Write it again, he ordered, even if it takes you all night.
Mpho returned to his cell. Several veteran PAC members in Swaziland had lectured the youngsters about how to survive an interrogation. Give the authorities something, they said, otherwise they will kill you; when you provide names, make certain they are people who are deeply underground or safely in exile and cannot testify against you. Following these guidelines, Mpho wrote out exactly what he had recounted the first time. He did not know that his hosts in Swaziland were members of the PAC; he was naïve about such political matters; he had simply decided to return home, which is when he was arrested.
The police tore up Mpho’s second version. After the failure of his third, then fourth, composition to satisfy his captors, the security officers decided to ask him questions directly. They also began to beat him. You’re talking shit, one of them would roar, hitting him. One policeman became so enraged that he grabbed a pair of handcuffs and swung them with full force at the side of Mpho’s head, drawing blood. Occasionally Mpho said things that caught the security officers’ attention; they ordered him to write them down. Back in his cell, Mpho had time to think. If they were interested in what he said, it must be incriminating; anything that resembled a signed confession could consign him to jail for life. Mpho refused to write any more.
On some days, the police beat him mercilessly. On others, they left Mpho sitting in an office and ignored him. Once, a security officer who had a farm nearby brought in a large box of fruit and vegetables from his fields. He gave them to Mpho, the only time he tasted fresh produce throughout his incarceration. A few days later, the same policeman made Mpho lie on the floor and walked on him because he was displeased with Mpho’s responses to his questions. At weekends, Mpho sat in his cell and thought about Monday and how it would all start again.
Interrogative detention, as conducted by the security police, was a kind of fishing expedition. The aim was to develop background information and intelligence on particular people and organizations. The Special Branch officers who interrogated Mpho were responsible for monitoring cross-border activities and thus interested in his work in Swaziland. They also attempted to determine specific crimes with which a detainee could be charged. Often, after finishing a broad and, quite literally, torturous examination, the officers would present a massive file to the Attorney General and let him decide who should be charged and with what.
Unlike other authoritarian regimes where political prisoners were disposed of unceremoniously, the South African government was bizarrely legalistic. In part, its motivation came from the structures it inherited from the British system and that remained even after the introduction of apartheid. An inquest, for example, was held any time a person died while in prison. But the government’s seeming obsessiveness with going through the legal motions also attempted to prove, to the white population and the world in general, that South Africa was still a democracy. Indeed, whites continued to enjoy basic democratic privileges. They had the right of habeas corpus; they could sue a government minister; and so forth. Despite the denial of such rights to the majority of its people, the government hoped its judicial proceedings would keep South Africa from being classified with, say, the Communist Bloc countries, and from being similarly ostracized. The Calvinist Afrikaners justified the rule of apartheid under the rule of law.
One morning, Mpho’s captors came for him before dawn. Handcuffing him, they put Mpho into a vehicle and began driving out of town. He repeatedly asked the policemen where they were going, but received no response. When they reached the veld, open, grassy country, the car stopped; the officers pulled Mpho out, handcuffed his arms behind him, attached irons to his legs and slipped a hood over his head. They pushed him back into the vehicle and began a bone-shaking drive over an unpaved road. Mpho was terrified. He thought they were going to kill him.
When the vehicle stopped again, the policemen dragged Mpho out and made him sit on a chair. ‘Today kaffir, you’re going to talk,’ one of the officers said to him. ‘We’re sick and tired of your games. Today you talk or we’ll leave your body here and no one will find you.’ The policemen pushed a thick stick under Mpho’s bent knees; they chained his hands in such a way that they were clasped under the stick. ‘We want names, kaffir,’ the officer continued. ‘We want the names of your people in Swaziland, who is being trained, who is doing the training.’ With that, the policemen hoisted Mpho up by the ends of the stick and suspended him between two branches of a tree; he swung there, head down, in a kind of tilted foetal position. In the copious lexicon of police torture, this was known as ‘the helicopter’. Intended to make its victim feel unspeakably helpless and vulnerable, it slowly stretched muscles and tendons and made blood rush to the head.
Mpho felt the policemen smear a cold, gel-like substance on his fingers, toes, elbows, and the sides of his knees. They were attaching what felt like strings to the areas that were spread with gel. Mpho struggled, trying to kick his way off the tree; suddenly, he was jolted by an indescribable, searing pain that coursed through his body. He began to scream. The pain continued for what seemed like an eternity; Mpho went on screaming long after the electricity had ceased. ‘Nou praat,’ said a policeman. ‘Now talk. Who was your handler in Swaziland?’ After weeks of interrogation, Mpho knew what they wanted him to say. He shouted out the names of people his inquisitors had mentioned to him: anybody, everybody, to ensure they would not turn on the electricity again. His strategy of not identifying anyone who could be arrested crumbled; he would implicate the entire world to make the pain stop and never return. He was willing to say anything.
The torture session continued for a long time. The policemen applied electric currents to Mpho’s body several times when the answers did not come fast enough or failed to please them. At midday, they took Mpho down from the tree, put him in the vehicle, removed the hood and offered him lunch. They were having a braai, a barbecue: drinking beers, laughing, smoking, making an outing of their day in the country. Mpho could not eat. When the officers had finished, they hoisted Mpho into the tree and resumed the interrogation. It went on until late in the afternoon; afterwards, they returned him to his cell. ‘Write down everything,’ one policeman commanded him, and locked the door.
Alone, Mpho gingerly checked his body. The electrical currents had left no marks on his skin. He could not touch anything in his cell; he got shocks from simply brushing up against the wall. Now that the pain had abated, he felt angry and humiliated. He had broken under torture. Mpho could not sleep that night, berating himself for having been weak. Still, he knew that his confession was worthless without his signature. He would regain his dignity, his sense of power, by refusing to put his name to anything.
Mpho informed his captors of his decision the next morning when they fetched him from the cell. ‘I said all those things yesterday because I was under duress,’ he explained. ‘I won’t write anything.’ Furious, the policemen dragged Mpho to an awaiting car and pushed him inside. ‘Today kaffir,’ an officer warned, ‘you’re not coming back.’
They drove him to the veld; this time, they did not bother to put a hood over his head. Mpho saw that they were in a graveyard. He also saw a second vehicle, with what looked like a portable generator inside. ‘Ag, kaffir, today we’re going to kill you,’ said one of the officers as they thrust the stick under his knees, locked him into the foetal position, raised him aloft into the tree, smeared him with gel. ‘Put it on high,’ someone was shouting, ‘put it on high.’ Mpho felt the pain again; it would not stop. He vomited. Then everything went black.
When Mpho awoke, he was on the ground being prodded by the policemen. They seemed relieved that he had regained consciousness and that they had not killed him. They would not have to face a disagreeable inquest into yet another death of a Black detainee. The officers returned Mpho to the vehicle. He was too weak to remain upright during the ride back to the jail. A doctor visited him in his cell; he did not find any serious injuries from the electric shocks, only weakness from dehydration and lack of food. Mpho was given two eggs, a piece of meat and a glass of milk for dinner that night.
After that, Mpho was left alone for several days. He did not care anymore if he went to prison; he had been pushed beyond his tolerance. He would rather die than submit to the electric shocks again. Mpho thought constantly about when his tormentors might return, what they would do, how long it would last. The anticipation of being tortured was a kind of torture in itself. Thus, it was almost a relief when the security officers came back one morning before dawn. They did not go to the trouble of lifting him into a tree, but simply suspended the stick between two chairs. They applied the electric current more carefully: We want answers now, the interrogator told Mpho. We want a signed confession saying you are a part of the PAC underground, that you took people out of the country for military training. Mpho heard himself shouting that he didn’t give a damn; they could write what they like.
The Special Branch men returned Mpho to his cell, where he was left in solitary confinement for several weeks. The local, uniformed police were now his warders; blatantly racist, they often withheld Mpho’s meals. Mpho languished in isolation. He paced the confines of his cell, logging almost 6,000 steps daily. He read the entire Bible twice. He sang hymns and protest songs to himself. He climbed on the toilet seat to glimpse a bit of sky, a bird, from the window. He waited for the Special Branch officers to come back.
Excerpt from the book A Burning Hunger: One Family’s Struggle Against Apartheid by Lynda Schuster copyright © 2026 Ohio University Press. Reproduced by permission.
