Project name: Alternative History Project
Date of interview: 2007-06-15
Location of interview: Maandagshoek, Limpopo
Language of interview: Sotho
Name of Interviewer/s: Dale McKinley & Ahmed Veriava
Name of Interviewee/s: Chief Isaac Kgwete
Name of translator: Emmanuel Mokgoga
Name of transcriber: Moses Moremi
Audio file name of interview: AHP_MAA_KgweteIsaac_20070615 a INTERVIEW WITH CHIEF ISAAC KGWETE (a)
Dale: Kgosi thank you for agreeing to talk to us, what we need to first start out with is if you can tell us your full name and your position here in the community as chief.
Kgosi: My name in full is Issac Kgwete, I am the traditional leader of Maandagshoek.
Dale: How long have you been Kgosi of Maandagshoek. Kgosi: I started in 2004.
Dale: Were you born in this community and when were you born?
Kgosi: I was born here at the Maandagshoek hospital in 1960 14th of September.
Dale: Ok, and were you born into a family of chiefs, or was your father a chief or your grandfather.
Kgosi: My grandfather was a chief at the time I was born.
Dale: In this area or somewhere else?
Kgosi: Here.
Dale: When you grew up did you go to school here?
Kgosi: Yes.
Dale: Can you tell us a little bit about how things were in those days, in the 1960's and 70's, as a child?
Kgosi: In the 60's I was still young but in the 70's I can tell you a bit.
Dale: In the 1970's when you were here in school how were things?
Kgosi: At the time I was growing up life was great because the old government of apartheid used to give us what we wanted, like eating for free at school.
Dale: Did you feel like you were getting a good education?
Kgosi: Yes it was, the school at that time ended in standard six and the people who were teaching at that time are now principals.
Dale: How far did you go in school?
Kgosi: I got to standard one.
Dale: What were the reasons (for dropping out)? Were you working or did you have other responsibilities because of your family?
Kgosi: We had cattle, sheep, goats and when I'm gone to school there was nobody to look after them, because I was the only child that's why I had to drop out.
Dale: As a child born in a chiefs family was it different to other families? In other words did they have lots of cattle goats and land?
Kgosi: No we had equal assets, we all had lands for farming, equal cows, and goats, and you would not even know that we were a chiefs family.
Dale: So when growing up were you given other responsibilities that you had to do as the son of the chief?
Kgosi: When I grew up they was no difference, I was just like the other children, you would not even know that I was from a chiefs family, what the other kids did I did.
Dale: How were your memories when you became a young man? Lets say after you left school and started working for your family, about how was the role of the traditional leaders under the apartheid system ... was it good, was there a lot of fighting going on, what was the situation?
Kgosi: There was no problem because they used to treat us nicely, everything we wanted we got. Even the roads were better because they used to keep them clean.
Dale: So when the 1980's came along and things started changing and a lot of the struggle started happening did that change the relationship? What was the relationship between the traditional leaders and the community once the community started struggling and toy- toying?
Kgosi: It was the same as now because we also did not like what had happened to Mandela, we too toyi-toyied, we were part of the masses.
Dale: What were you doing in the 1980's because by that time you were in your twenties, so you were a young man ... what were you doing?
Kgosi: These things of the toyi-toyi came later here and at the time it came it was from '82 to '86
Dale: When the things began to happen particularly from '86 until the late '80s were any of the traditional leaders part of other organisations like the UDF and other community organisation ... how was it here?
Kgosi: I wouldn't know because at that time my father was the chief, because I was younger we could not ask them which parties they belonged to, so I would not know if they were in ANC or UDF, what I know is that my father belonged to the ANC.
END OF AHP_MAA_KgweteIsaac_20070615a Isaac Kgwete; 2007-06-15; 1
Biography: Isaac Kgwete, fourty seven years old at the time of the interview, is married with several children. He was born in Maandagshoek and went to work in Witbank as a forklift operator for many years. He returned to Maandaghoek when his uncle (then chief) died, and was installed as the new chief by a section of the community. He works with Joyce Kgwete and together they oppose her estranged husband's claims to traditional leadership. Isaac has become very active in opposing Modikwa mine's Section 21 companies and in negotiating new agreements for future mining in the community.
Description: The first part of the interview with Isaac Kgwete, chief of Maandagshoek, was conducted by Dale McKinley and Ahmed Veriava in Maandagshoek in 2007 as part of the South African History Archive's Alternative History Project, titled 'Forgotten Voices in the Present'.
Date: June 15, 2007
Location: Maandagshoek, Limpopo, Republic of South Africa