Magashule a place in the struggle’s proverbial hall of fame, along with
the likes of Treason trialists Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter
Sisulu and Albert Luthuli, or Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, his
contemporary from the Free State and one of the Delmas trialists.
That Magashule does not hold such status calls into question his
alleged treason charge. In fact, old newspaper reports excavated from
the archives beneath the Johannesburg City Library, a book on Fort
Hare’s history, court records and a few sources tell a far less dramatic
story.
On 1 May 1982 , ‘one of the most significant protests of the early
eighties’ occurred at Fort Hare, researcher and academic Rico Devara
Chapman writes in his book Student Resistance to Apartheid at the
University of Fort Hare.^11 The trouble started when a motorcade
carrying then Ciskei prime minister Lennox Sebe and members of his
government neared the university’s Alice campus, where students were
getting ready for a graduation ceremony. In those days, the town of
Alice formed part of Ciskei, one of the apartheid government’s so-
called Bantustans. As participants in the homeland system, black
leaders like Sebe were reviled by the liberation movement in near equal
measure to apartheid’s white enforcers.
When the cavalcade entered the campus, students hurled rocks at
Sebe’s car, flashed black-power salutes and shouted for the Ciskei
leader to leave, according to an eyewitness account included in
Chapman’s book. The Ciskei police were quick to respond with live
ammunition, batons and whips. The authorities shot two students and
arrested twenty-two people. This is the origin of Magashule’s ‘high
treason’ story.
Newspaper reports from 1982 further help determine what really
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