The Children Who Endure Apartheid

The crude but powerful drawings show policemen chasing, beating, handcuffing, arresting and shooting children.

The scrawled mini-essays, complete with childish misspellings and grammatical errors, are chilling testimony to the deeply traumatizing effects of hate and violence on a generation of black youngsters in South Africa.

"In a small village of Johannesburg called Soweto, there's too much going on," writes 14-year-old Ishmael. "Children are boycotting classes and they say they want freedom. And then when they see Boers they sing freedom songs. Then the Boers start shooting with rubber bullets, throwing teargas. Then those start throwing stones and bricks to the Boers. After there children burn houses, stores, cars and bakeries. Then they say Siyayinyova (we are rioting). . . . Those children goes to the stations and beat children & brothers who came from town. They say what do they want or looking for in town."

"When the police come children get scatered in Townships and they say shoot to kill because they say there is a state of imegency which means they must not see any child between school hour," writes 11-year-old Bongane.

"I feel very scared about what is happening," writes 13-year-old Given. ''About 30 scolars are in jail one of the is a principal's child is a boy of 16 years old. And every day the police come to our school and check that you where not upsend during school hour. If you are a girl they rape you and orest you . . . ."

"President Botha . . . is not the real Christian as he said in Durban when he was speaking," writes 13-year-old Shoitto. "The reason why I say he is not a Christian is he allow soldiers to kill us but he says he believe in one God. . . ."

"When I am old," writes 8-year-old Moagi, "I would like to have a wife and to children a boy and a girl and a big house and to dogs and freedom."

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Two Dogs and Freedom, Children of the Townships Speak Out is a children's book, but it is no fairy tale.

This remarkable book, in which black youngsters describe, in words and pictures, what they see going on around them and how they feel about what they see, was a project of the Open School in Johannesburg, a cultural and educational program based in Johannesburg that runs workshops for young black people.

Published by Ravan Press of South Africa and distributed in this country by Ohio University Press, Two Dogs and Freedom gives us a look at the horrors of apartheid as seen through children's eyes.