Interview Segment

Kgati Sathekge interviewed by David Wiley
May 16, 2006 Pretoria, South Africa.
"Different government officers were targetted and burned... The police went on a rampage. Wherever they found groups of people, they were shooting." [6:48]

Kgati Sathekge, one of the student leaders in Atteridgeville, an African township of Pretoria, explains how students in his community responded to the police killings of students being shot in Soweto, 35 miles (55 kilometers) away.

Kgati Sathekge was born in 1959 and lived in Atteridgeville, an African township of Pretoria. He was active in organizing students in the Pretoria area in response to the police brutality against the Soweto student uprising of June 1976. He was detained for six months and was charged with sabotage, but was found not guilty. His arrest in 1977 was very traumatic, and he lost use of his legs for three months. While studying theology at Rhodes University, he joined the African National Congress underground, and went into exile in 1980 first in Swaziland and then in Mozambique. Sathekge came to the United States where he earned a B.A. degree in journalism and worked in the anti-apartheid movement as an ANC member. He returned to South Africa, where he works in the Communications Directorate of the Department of Social Welfare.

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