She was a quiet, pretty girl from the countryside who did not seem overawed by the comings and goings at the Sisulus’. She was then training as a nurse with Albertina and Peter Mda’s wife, Rose, at the Johannesburg non-European General Hospital.

Evelyn was from Engcobo, in the Transkei, some distance west of Umtata. Her father, a mineworker, had died when she was an infant, and her mother when she was twelve. After completing grade school, Evelyn was sent to Johannesburg to attend high school. She stayed with her brother, Sam Mase, who was then living at the Sisulus’ house. MaSisulu, Walter’s mother, was the sister of Evelyn’s father’s mother. The Sisulus treated Evelyn as if she was a favorite daughter, and she was much loved by them.

I asked Evelyn out very soon after our first meeting. Almost as quickly, we fell in love. Within a few months I had asked her to marry me and she accepted. We were married in a civil ceremony requiring only signatures and a witness at the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg, for we could not afford a traditional wedding or feast. Our most immediate problem was finding a place to live. We first went to stay with her brother in Orlando East and then later with Evelyn’s sister at City Deep Mines, where her sister’s husband, Msunguli Mgudlwa, worked as a clerk.

12

IN 1946, a number of critical events occurred that shaped my political development and the direction of the struggle. The mineworkers’ strike of 1946, in which 70,000 African miners along the Reef went on strike, affected me greatly. At the initiative of J. B. Marks, Dan Tloome, Gaur Radebe, and a number of ANC labor activists, the African Mine Workers Union (AMWU) had been created in the early 1940s. There were as many as 400,000 African miners working on the Reef, most of them making no more than two shillings a day. The union leadership had repeatedly pressed the Chamber of Mines for a minimum wage of ten shillings a day, as well as family housing and two weeks’ paid leave. The chamber ignored the union’s demands.

In one of the largest such actions in South African history, the miners went on strike for a week and maintained their solidarity. The state’s retaliation was ruthless. The leaders were arrested, the compounds surrounded by police, and the AMWU offices ransacked. A march was brutally repulsed by police; twelve miners died. The Natives Representative Council adjourned in protest. I had a number of relations who were mineworkers, and during the week of the strike I visited them, discussed the issues, and expressed my support.

J. B. Marks, a longtime member of the ANC and the Communist Party, was then president of the African Mine Workers Union. Born in the Transvaal, of mixed parentage, Marks was a charismatic figure with a distinctive sense of humor. He was a tall man with a light complexion. During the strike I sometimes went with him from mine to mine, talking to workers and planning strategy. From morning to night, he displayed cool and reasoned leadership, with his humor leavening even the most difficult crisis.