Sowetan freedom fighter Moli Ntuli on the struggle for women’s empowerment

By Heather Wood

Moli Ntuli will always remember June, 1976.

The high school teacher witnessed police fire live bullets on thousands of Soweto students as they protested against apartheid in her native South Africa on June 16.

The following day, as she walked through the wreckage of that fateful event, she spotted a young girl.

“The fires were still smouldering but it was her red dress that caught my eye,” she recalled, tears welling in her eyes. “I picked her up and the red spread to my hands. And then I saw her organs and realised she’d been cut. She couldn’t have been more than four.”

Afrikaan soldiers ordered her to drop the child and when she didn’t, they grabbed the little girl and tossed her away as if she were garbage.

“I saw her eyes; I was happy that she left her soul with me before they took her body. I don’t tell that story very often, but it’s something I’ll never forget.”

She and her two children left Soweto that month. With help, they travelled to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and on to Botswana where she received passports and transport to America where her journalist husband had fled because of his relationship with anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko.

They were divorced within a year, leaving Moli to care for their children on her own, in a foreign country. It’s a story she’s since shared with the United Nations and various women’s groups across the US — and one she shared with The Royal Gazette while holidaying on the Island.

“My philosophy is, the struggle goes on. It’s something I adopted from Nelson Mandela,” said Moli, who worked with the late South African leader. “I don’t know much about Bermuda, about Bermuda politics, but my message is to women all over the world.

“I think women are put on the back burner. We have to stand up for ourselves even if there is a man in the house. Don’t just sit and wait for men to make decisions, you have to be who you are.”

Moli began fighting apartheid at the age of 15, when girls at her Soweto boarding school warned her that the photos she’d been so excited to have taken would be used to create a government ID card known as a ‘dom pass’.

Translated, the name literally meant ‘dumb pass’. The document, which had to be carried by all black South Africans over the age of 16, specified where, when and how long a person was allowed to be in a certain place.

“We rebelled. We had a sit-in at the school and we were told if we didn’t allow them to take our picture we’d be arrested and expelled.”

The girls gave in, but “went to the adults and questioned their support of Afrikaan businesses — and we protested”.

“We said we’d no longer do all that the Afrikaans told us we should do.

“The grown-ups begged us not to cause trouble but we disagreed and protested for our freedom.”

Moli’s name was added to the government’s notorious list of “political agitators” after her arrest during an underground meeting of the Black Parents and Teachers Association against Apartheid.

It didn’t deter her efforts — or those of the ruling National Party.

“One day, while [my husband] was out, they came and ransacked our house. They kicked in the doors and the windows. I was three months pregnant at that time and they manhandled me.

“I woke up in hospital where I discovered I’d had a miscarriage. Soon after, my husband left the country for Boston.

“They came into my class and dragged me out. They threw me into jail and my kids had no idea where I was. After two or three days I was released but, without going into too much description, anything that can happen to a young black woman happened to me.

“One of them learned I was afraid of mice and threw me in a cell with them. All the time I feared for the welfare of my kids.”

After the Botswana government issued her a passport based on her status as a political refugee, Moli and her children were able to travel to Boston, and then New York.

“I was very close to [Mandela’s former wife] Winnie, and when I got to New York I was still involved in sanctions and working with Americans. They were a big part of us getting our freedom because of the sanctions against companies such as Coke and Kodak, telling them: if you don’t divest we’re pulling out.”

After less than a year in the US, her husband left her.

Moli relied on a philosophy she learned from Mandela to guide her: You have to stand for what you believe is right; you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

“I was a single mother in a foreign country and they told me that all my teaching qualifications were useless,” she said.

Rather than wallow in self-pity, she worked at a day care centre in the mornings and pursued a bachelor’s degree in the evenings. “How did I pay for it? I went to the United Nations. They gave me a scholarship because I was a political refugee.”

Her 4.0 average placed Moli on the dean’s list and she graduated with honours. Next up, a master’s degree, again paid for by the UN.

She now teaches maths and forensic science with the Board of Education in New York, and Zulu at New York University.

“At first I hated everything white. It took me to go to college to learn it’s not the colour, it’s the characteristic [of the individual],” she said.

“In 1990 Mandela was released and I was able to go back to South Africa and work in his office after the South African president said all political refugees could return.

“I was there when he was elected and I was with him on the day of his inauguration.”

Mandela’s struggle is one she has applied to her own life.

“For women, we’ve been struggling for a long time and we can’t sit down and say we [can’t accomplish because] my husband’s not there or because my husband’s giving me problems. My advice to women is don’t give up — no matter what.”