Khusta Jack meets man who hid him from apartheid cops
● Joy as Bay mayor is reunited with ex-medical student who gave him shelter in Bloemfontein 43 years ago
After a three-year search, Nelson Mandela Bay deputy mayor Khusta Jack was finally reunited with a good Samaritan who hid him from the security police in the dark days of apartheid in 1980.
On Saturday, after 43 years, Jack and Wynand Breytenbach embraced during an emotional encounter.
Jack had posted a picture of his long-lost friend on Facebook in the hope that someone would know him and his whereabouts.
An acquaintance of Jack’s saw the post and put the two men in touch with each other.
Breytenbach, who is semiretired now and a part-time farmer in Cuballing, about 190km southeast of Perth, in Western Australia, and Jack arranged to meet on Breytenbach’s next visit to SA.
Finally, on Saturday, they met up at the Beach Hotel in Gqeberha and again on Sunday at the Boardwalk Hotel.
Their first encounter, more than four decades ago, happened under very different circumstances.
Breytenbach, who was a third-year medical student at the time, offered Jack, a young student activist on the run from the apartheid security police, refuge at his flat in Bloemfontein in 1980.
Describing their meeting at the weekend, Jack said: “It was a great experience and a good feeling for me because I wanted to meet Wynand over the years to thank him personally for giving me a roof over my head.”
Jack said during the Covid19 pandemic he received a myriad of pictures that were taken during the struggle.
“When I got the pictures, I didn’t know who was in the pictures, so after thinking very hard it became clear that it
‘It was a great experience and a good feeling for me because I wanted to meet Wynand over the years to thank him personally for giving me a roof over my head’
‘He reached his hand out to greet me but I said ‘no, I need to hug you’ so we hugged, it was amazing, an experience I will never ever forget’
must’ve been Wynand,” he said.
“So I posted the picture [on Facebook] and asked people to check where Wynand was and what he was doing as I remembered that he was a medical student who studied in Bloemfontein and that he was a [member of the] so-called radical white left within the Afrikaner Studentebond.
“It was lovely speaking to Wynand [again].
“We spoke about how we met and all that.”
Breytenbach said he was overwhelmed with emotion when he saw Jack at the weekend after such a long time.
“I was very anxious and had a lot of uncertainty as to how the meeting would pan out,” he said.
“Remember, I haven’t seen this bloke in 43 years, so I was scared.
“But when we started talking, I was immediately at ease, he is like my brother from another mother.
“It was an amazing feeling, it felt so surreal, it was extremely emotional.
“He reached his hand out to greet me but I said ‘no, I need to hug you’ so we hugged, it was amazing, an experience I will never, ever forget,” he said, breaking into sobs.
Breytenbach said that before the meeting he had read Jack’s book, which he had purchased on Amazon.
“It gave me perspective of what exactly happened during those years [apartheid] ...
after I read the book I just wanted to say sorry for what [some of us] white Afrikaners did to people of colour and how we harassed and tortured them.
“In spite of that, he is like [Nelson] Mandela — at ease with it and moved on.
“We can’t dwell on the past and we need to focus on the future.”