Cijimpi Mnyandu

Cijimpi Mnyaundu, a trade union leader and African National Congress (ANC) member, who worked in Durban, was from the Makhanya Tribal Area, Umlazi District, on the south coast of Natal [now KwaZulu-Natal].

In early November 1959, Mnyandu was notified that he should see the Native Commissioner (NC) in Umbumbulu, on the south coast of Natalon 7 November. He went to meet him with other members of the community delegation but was the only one permitted entry. He was told, ‘This is the paper, and you are banished to Sibasa, [Tshivhase], Northern Transvaal [now Limpopo Province].’ He was given £2 [R4] and the banishment order.

The official reasons provided for his banishment were that, fromSeptember 1957, Mnyaunduwas the spokesperson for those who were against the filling of dipping tanks by women; that he had formed an organisation called ‘Makhanya Hlanganani’ and urged that cattle not be allowed to drink from dipping tanks as it was suspected that there were chemical substances in the tanks that were causing disease among the cattle; and that he continually disrupted meetings and incited violence against BAD [Bantu Affairs Department] officials.

He travelled with his belongings from ‘Makhanya Tribal Area’ to Johannesburg in the Transvaal, [now Gauteng], then to Louis Trichardt [Makhado], Northern Transvaal, and finally to Kirsten Farm in the Sibasa district of the northern Transvaal.

Mnyaunduwas actually taken to New Union Mines Halt on the Mozambique border, where he worked as a ‘Boss Boy’ for an Agricultural Officer at a rate of R10.17 per month. Here, he helped locals undertake a strike. This was confirmed by his second banishment order, which said that soon after his arrival he employed an antagonistic attitude towards authority, and instigated his fellow labourers to oppose working for a slave wage. He allegedly also told his fellow workers that he was part of ‘some or other “Congress,”’ which will soon end this exploitation.

Since Kirsten Farm was far from the NC’s office in Sibasa, it was requested that Myaundu should be banished rather to an area where his activities could be monitored.As a result, he was located on Rembander Farm in the Sibasa district. Here, he was employed as farm labourer for £5 [R10] a month. He could move around the village but was not allowed to leave or go to Louis Trichardt, the nearest town, without permission.

He refused to pay poll tax and  rent for his hut, saying: ‘I am in jail, and you don’t pay rent in jail.’ When Helen Joseph and her companions met him in 1962, he recounted that he had been part of a community delegation to express grievances related to cattle dipping and to women no longer being paid for transporting water to cattle dips. The community had submitted grievances on numerous occasions but the Native Commissioner (NC) remained intransigent.

His only question when Joseph visited him in 1962 was ‘When are we going to get our freedom.’

Cijimpi Mnyaundu did not live to see ‘freedom,’ dying of pneumonia at the Tshelethsini Hospital on 15 October 1964.