Remembering human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, assassinated 43 years ago
Human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge was assassinated on the night of 19 November 1981.
He was the son of peasant farmers in Rayi near King William’s Town (Qonce) who qualified as a lawyer. He could have pursued a life of privilege, comfort and ease. But Mxenge chose to be a freedom fighter and a human rights lawyer during the times of the brutal apartheid regime.
In the 1950s, while a student at Fort Hare university, he joined the ANC Youth League. After completing his BA degree majoring in English and Roman Dutch law, he proceeded with his LLB degree at the University of Natal. While a student Mxenge was detained for 190 days and later convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act because of his ANC activism. He was sent to Robben Island to serve a term of two years.
After his release from Robben Island he was served with a two-year banning order and regular detention by the apartheid security establishment, including a period of 109 days in solitary confinement.
Mxenge died in his forties at the front line of the anti-apartheid freedom struggle. A young man in the peak of his life. He was killed in the most gruesome way by the apartheid regime’s death squad. There were 45 stab wounds on his body inflicted by three okapi knives and a hunting knife. A wheel spanner was also used by the killers. They slit his throat and cut off his ears. They cut his stomach into pieces. This was the naked expression of apartheid’s racist barbarism.
Griffiths was principled and ethical. He did not seek fame or fortune. Being an activist in the apartheid era was different to being an activist in the post-apartheid period. You put your life on the line when you resisted apartheid. This is the path that Griffiths chose because he was deeply rooted in the soil of South Africa. He could not extricate himself from the land and its people. This is why he sacrificed everything; his career, his income, his family and, ultimately, his life. The political freedom and civic liberties that South Africans enjoy today is rooted in the blood of people such as Griffiths Mxenge.
As a lawyer, he represented Maphetla Mohapi of the Black Consciousness Movement, who died in police custody. He represented Joseph Mdluli, an uMkhonto weSizwe cadre who also died in police detention. He was the instructing attorney of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) leader Zephaniah Mothopeng in the Bethal “terrorism” trial. This tells us that he had the courage to fight these legal cases.
Although he was a committed cadre of the ANC, Griffiths was not a sectarian and had the wisdom to act outside of party political sectarian divisions. He respected everyone who fought against apartheid, which is why he represented freedom fighters from political formations outside of his ANC, such as the PAC and the Black Consciousness Movement. He valued the unity of the oppressed people and all the progressive movements resisting Apartheid.
It behoves us to remember that these national liberation movements in South Africa were deemed to be terrorist organisations and the leaders such as Nelson Mandela were declared terrorists by Western governments.
With Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza going on for more than a year now has shattered the image of Western governments such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom as a champion of international law and human rights. In this context, the South African government has honoured the legacy of Griffiths Mxenge by standing up to Israel and to defend international law and human rights by pursuing the charges of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
The anniversary of Mxenge’s assassination is an opportunity to reflect. What would he think about us? Will we have the courage to look him in the eye and tell him that after he was killed we liberated our country politically but have not democratised our economy and we remain as one of the most unequal nations of the world? As we remember how Mxenge died, what we would say if he were to ask us: “What have you sacrificed for this country, for freedom and justice? And when he asks us: “Why do some of you live a life of luxury and opulence while the majority of people are starving and living in squalor? Why is it that you say that South Africa belongs to all but only a minority owns land and property? Why are you who are committed to social justice and the equal distribution of wealth so divided? Why do you steal from your own government when the blood that was sacrificed by comrades was to create a people’s government whose wealth belongs to the people of the country?
What are you doing with the political freedom that so many sacrificed their lives for? Will you only wake up when the political system reverses to the right or will you act now, urgently, ethically and fearlessly in pursuit of the actualisation of social justice so that every child will get a quality education, proper nutrition, a fair chance at life, live in a brick house with water and electricity, have access to quality medical care.
Equal rights and equal citizenship with a shared and democratised economy, a social ownership of wealth where every South African can live a dignified life — these are the values that Mxenge and many like him fought and died for. We can only truly honour his legacy if we actualise these values.
Iqbal Suleman is a social justice lawyer and former head of the law clinic for Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria.