Jay Naidoo
This is an edited extract
IN August 2014 I climbed a mountain. As I stood on Africa’s highest peak, looking down on the continent where I was born, that I love, I felt a sense of fathomless wonder at what I saw before me. I found myself pondering where it would be in a few decades — whether it would survive the next century, or for another millennium. Would it all still be here, I asked myself.
These were not merely academic or philosophical questions . . . The answers would affect me, my family and my friends, as well as my community, my country and, ultimately, the entire planet.
I soon realised that asking, “Where will we be?” was just another way of saying, “Where are we going?”
The ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania was a gruelling task.
No, that’s an understatement. It was not only the most difficult physical challenge I have ever undertaken, it was the hardest physical challenge I could imagine anyone ever undertaking. The climb had been on my bucket list, and there were moments . . . when I thought I would kick the bucket. Climbing a thousand metres a day while having to acclimatise to higher altitudes was a challenge I had thoroughly underestimated.
On the last night before the final ascent, at the base camp at Kibo, 4 700 metres above sea level, my son Kami, who was accompanying me on the climb, spent time reassuring me. But I was nervous, especially after witnessing other climbers who had become seriously ill on the mountain being brought downhill on stretchers.
Although I had trained for the ascent for months before, having wanted to complete the challenge before my sixtieth birthday on 20 December 2014, I had sprained my ankle only three weeks before I left for Tanzania and my foot was heavily wrapped up in a harness.
In that frozen world, I realised that nothing can really prepare you for such a task. This was not a Sunday outing with friends. It was ascending one of the highest natural structures in the world.
This final reality check, the prospect of the ascent, terrified me. It terrified everyone at the camp waiting to set out on the trek. Eating was difficult, remaining calm almost impossible. Our team organiser harangued us at mealtimes, “Force it down! Those potatoes could mean the difference between reaching the summit or not.”
That night I struggled to sleep, tossing about in my sleeping bag until midnight, when my fellow mountaineers and I finally set out on our expedition.
Uhuru Peak, a symbol of freedom, loomed over us impressively.
Courage alone would not be enough to get us there; fitness, while important, was not a decisive element on the journey. Faith was certainly an advantage, and discipline and humility essential for tackling what lay ahead. More than anything, however, was the power that needed to be exercised by the mind over the body.
During the climb the Tanzanian guides were a great source of comfort to my group. Experienced, patient, empathetic, optimistic, I found them to be the salt of the earth. Spending each day with them on the mountain brought back memories of my experiences as a labour organiser in South Africa, when I stood side by side with migrant workers outside the hostels or sugar mills. They were community leaders shaped by demanding circumstances, hardship and perseverance. And when I was in the union, I had felt safest with people like them, breaking bread and braaiing meat over the coals on cool early mornings.
There was always an atmosphere of honesty and social solidarity surrounding these occasions. We were like a family, connected by the adversity we faced and in our joint struggle for social justice.
On the mountain I felt that same sense of security with my guides Julio, Salvatore, John, Alex and Alifayo. “Pole, pole,” they quietly reminded me throughout the ascent. Pronounced “poli, poli”, it is Kiswahili for “slowly, slowly”. One step at a time, one breath at a time. Smiley, smiley — revere the experience. Sippy, sippy — take a regular drink of water along the way. All through the ascent, these words became our mantra.
After a while I turned to music, taking out my earphones and distracting myself with my favourite rhythms from Johnny Clegg and Angélique Kidjo. But after hours of seemingly endless upward shuffling, pausing only long enough to moisten my mouth with tea, I felt my body starting to revolt against the intense physical effort.
Simply breathing was becoming a strenuous exercise, although resting for a few moments was not an option either; nor was allowing myself to dwell on my discomfort.
Instead, I drew strength from the examples of two iconic African leaders: Tanzania’s Julius Kambarage Nyerere, known as Mwal- imu (“teacher” in Kiswahili), and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, my father in all but blood. Both men had displayed immense courage and resilience in their personal struggles for the independence of their countries, and the manner in which they lived their lives has shaped much of my thinking.
In December 2013 Mandela was buried in the Eastern Cape among the hills where he was born and where he had wandered as a young shepherd. His death, though long expected, had left me shattered. Like Nyerere, Mandela was successful in guiding his nation to sovereign independence from white rule, and was a symbol of sacrifice and unrelenting commitment to the service of his people.
As the founding fathers of their respective nations, Nyerere and Mandela have earned the respect and admiration of millions because their motives, while not always popular, were always pure.
Reaching Uhuru was therefore a personal act of gratitude to these men for the selflessness they demonstrated in their individual struggles for freedom. My Kilimanjaro expedition left me wondering what Mandela and Nyerere would have made of the state of Africa today and the circumstances which are shaping our present; what they would have thought of the Africa Rising narrative, which perpetuates a belief in rapid and continued economic growth on the continent while only focusing on the needs of an elitist class, and the doomsday beliefs of Afropessimists, who believe all is lost for our continent as long as the black majority rules it.
I continued my ascent, my thoughts taking on a rhythm of their own, the refrain of my shuffle becoming “One step for Tata Madiba, one step for Mwalimu”. It was the only thing that gave me the courage to endure the journey.
As the night wore on and the climb became harder, my mind began forming strange thoughts. I wondered about the journey of life and whether any of us are ever really alone. By virtue of living in nation states we are surrounded by people who ostensibly share our values and our outlooks.
And as humans move from villages and towns to big cities, geographical boundaries start to blur as well. We live on top of one another, sharing backyards in the crowded chaos of slums and townships while just a short distance away, behind high walls and electric fences, sit large bubbles of opulence occupied by the wealthy, or the skyscrapers in which corporations elevate themselves. The spaces between the ridiculously rich and painfully poor are sometimes only a matter of a few kilometres. An array of high-tech devices further connects these disparate groups.
Yet we discard our ancient knowledge, culture, language and history — things we should be proud of — and as Africans are made to feel inferior. We want to be American, European, anything other than who we are, and this despite living on a continent that is the cradle of all humanity. But it is precisely our individual connections to ancient knowledge, eternal truths and past generations that steady us as we build our future.
Humans today make up the most connected generation in the history of our species, and, as a result, we are never alone, not for a second. But so many of us, regardless of where we are from, still feel disconnected from others, and often lonely and friendless. Around the world, groups of people speak of being under-represented, believing their governments and leaders to be indifferent to their problems. It is ironic that having half a dozen social media sites at our fingertips does not prevent us from feeling entirely voiceless.
Why do we feel like we’re climbing the mountain all on our own?
As a union organiser, I was a witness to the inherent connection that exists between Africans regardless of colour and culture, as well as our capacity to unite around common struggles to fight the system that sought to steal our humanity. It seems as if we have forgotten that we are capable of this. In the long history of resistance against the shared enemies of imperialism, racism and capitalism, our current generation of activists seems to be the flaw in the pattern, holding no unified or distinct position on how to oppose the new manifestations of these forces. It is clearly time for a shift in consciousness. As Africans, we need to come together and restore the ties that once made us the West’s most feared enemy. We have to bring back to the fore our ancient knowledge and beliefs — our traditions of solidarity, compassion and respect for the earth as encompassed in the philosophy of ubuntu — “I am because we are”.
A connection between the head, the heart and the spirit.
As I scaled the last agonising thousand metres of Kilimanjaro’s northern face, I thought back to my own experiences as a boy in apartheid South Africa and the hardships I faced under racist rule. The enemy was all around me in the form of a political system that refuted the idea that black people such as myself had rights. It was a regime that deprived us of our human dignity and made us mere commodities in a cheap labour market controlled by a privileged white minority.
We fought to make ourselves heard, to propose to the regime a set of universal truths that acknowledged the advent of peace only when every South African citizen had the right to vote for the leader of their choice in a democratic, nonracial, non-sexist state.
When the government refused to listen, we fought. And when they fought back, we fought harder. As activists, we refused to collaborate in our own oppression. Step by step, pole, pole, we inched our way towards freedom. So in 1990, when Mandela was released from prison after serving twenty-seven years for opposing the state, the struggle, it seemed, was all but over. At least, that’s what we thought. Mandela’s release signalled the beginning of an irreversible advance for black South Africans. It was the first step towards us reclaiming our dignity. We were suddenly on the road to ending the inhumanity of racial segregation and reconstructing a society that would work for all. We thought we had won the fight. And in many ways we did.
But it turns out that even when you have reached the summit, you are not done climbing.
This is an edited extract from “Change: Organising Tomorrow, Today” by Jay Naidoo, published by Penguin Random House South Africa (R200)