Ramaphosa anecdote tells of love and strength in crisis
At this difficult, frightening time, SA is uncharacteristically in love with its president. It is a good moment, I think, to tell a tale about the Ramaphosas.
The story, told by the president’s brother Douglas in 1989 to an oral historian while in exile, begins in 1963 or ’64. Douglas is six or seven years old. Nelson Mandela is all over the news, probably because he has just been captured.
“Never become like Mandela,” Ramaphosa senior,
Samuel, chides his sons. Ramaphosa senior is a policeman; it is no surprise that he fears having freedom fighters in the family. “Be good children,” he says. “Go to school and forget about politics.”
The Ramaphosa brothers did the opposite. Twelve or 13 years later, in the aftermath of the 1976 uprisings, both were detained without trial. Knowing full well that their sons were in all likelihood being tortured, their parents must have been beside themselves.
Douglas was 19. He was bewildered and scared. The police would interrogate him for 14 hours at a time. Unsure what to reveal and what to keep to himself, he felt way out of his depth. Some time after his arrival at John Vorster Square Douglas was told his older brother, Cyril, had arrived: he was a few cells down the corridor. Douglas borrowed a ballpoint pen from a neighbour and wrote a note that was smuggled to Cyril by the common law prisoners who were permitted to move about the prison. Fifteen minutes later he received a reply.
What could the older brother say in these circumstances? He wrote that Douglas should be strong, that he should not easily give in. He advised his brother to start a daily physical exercise regimen in his cell; a routine, he said, was crucial to gain a sense of self-control.
If these words seem empty or slight, they were anything but. The knowledge that his brother was a few paces away, thinking of him, willing him to cope, saved Douglas. “He’s the one who really kept me strong,” he recalled.
And he got to see Cyril, too, in the strangest circumstances. Detainees were taken to shower in batches of four; their guards watched them like hawks while they washed; they were strictly forbidden to speak. Cyril and Douglas were taken to shower at the same time —a lucky coincidence, it seems.
They stood there, naked, in absolute silence, each exhilarated by the knowledge that the other was still healthy, still alive.
Much later, the Ramaphosa brothers were moved to Norwood police station, where they were permitted a 15minute visit from their parents every fortnight. Douglas was never sure why this happened. He guessed the security police were expressing sympathy to his father, a fellow police officer.
And Samuel came, like clockwork, every fortnight, dressed in his police uniform.
Usually uncommunicative to a t, he had simple, reassuring words for his boys. “Take it easy,” he would say. “Don’t worry.” It will be over soon.
What did Samuel Ramaphosa say about his sons’ detention after their release, Douglas’s interviewer asked. “He was a person who never talked a lot,” Douglas replied. “I find it difficult to actually say what he thought about it.”
Whatever he felt he kept to himself. He never raised the matter, not once. Instead, Douglas’s abiding memory of his father at this time was of the courage he offered his jailed sons, visiting each fortnight with those spare words of reassurance. It may well have been the most candid expression of paternal love he ever dared show.
None of us can know what is in a stranger’s heart. But if Douglas’s sense of things is right, his is a story of three men whose love saw each survive a journey through hell. It is very much a story for now, for care is in the highest demand.