How badly we have mishandled the cherished project that began 30 years ago today
It is exactly 30 years since that momentous day, February 2 1990, when FW de Klerk stood up in parliament and unleashed an earthquake that shattered age-old tectonic plates — unbanning political organisations such as the ANC, the PAC and the SACP, releasing political prisoners and setting in motion steps for a negotiated settlement.
At the end of the speech, we were all — pro- and antigovernment forces alike — gasping for breath. Gobsmacked, we were not sure we had heard him right. Maybe our senses were playing tricks on us. Or maybe there was a sting in the tail. One could imagine at that moment people turning to each other for some reassurance that they had not taken leave of their senses.
Just as it took Richard Nixon to go to China and Menachem Begin to make peace with Egypt, one would suppose it had to be De Klerk making the speech renouncing apartheid. He had the credibility with his constituency.
Nine days later, on February 11, Nelson Mandela, tall and confident, walked out of Victor Verster prison in Paarl a free man. The world had been turned on its head. SA was irrevocably on the path to freedom and democracy. We were convinced that we were finally walking out of the prohibitive gloom of apartheid into the neverending joys and pleasures of freedom. After what we’d been through, we reckoned that was the least we deserved. How naive.
From then on events seemed to march at a blistering, bewildering pace, jubilation jogging side by side with tragedy, hope with despair, sprouts of a new beginning jostling with death. Lots of it. People were dying in their homes, on trains to and from work, and on battlefields across the country, butchered at times by faceless assassins. There seemed to be no escape, and no-one was spared. Those were scary times. The violence didn’t let up even after De Klerk’s démarche. If anything, it escalated. The country seemed to have lost its collective head. Some even blamed it on Mandela. We were better off when he was in jail, they said. But as we were to learn later, the slaughter was an act of desperation by those who wanted to frustrate the march to freedom.
De Klerk seemed to take everybody by surprise. But the amazing thing is that his party stuck with him. The party had split over relatively minor differences before; the Herstigte Nasionale Party and Andries Treurnicht’s Conservative Party had peeled away in the past. But now that their credo, their raison d’être, their vehicle and prism to power had been ripped from them, their response seemed to be a mere shrug of the shoulder in comparison. Maybe it was war weariness, or sheer fatalism.
But no less surprised by De Klerk’s volte-face was the ANC. Vusi Mavimbela, the
ANC activist, in his excellent memoir tells of a tense exchange at a meeting in Lusaka between party heavyweights Josiah Jele and Chris Hani on the day of De Klerk’s announcement. Hani thought the speech was much ado about nothing and the party should continue with the armed struggle. “Chris!” Jele snapped. “How can you say that nothing has changed when the ANC, the SACP, and a host of other organisations have been unbanned?”
I remember walking into the ANC’s Lusaka offices in Zambia months after the unbanning to find the place almost deserted. It had the air of people having left in a hurry. Tom Sebina, the party’s voice in exile, sat alone in a cluttered office. Senior party members, he said, had left as though they were just going to the toilet. “They said they were going to check out the scene, and they never came back.” Perhaps it was a warning of what was to befall us. We were too excited to notice.
Sebina, like Oliver Tambo and many others who succumbed almost at the finish line, never lived to enjoy the fruits of his toil.
What ultimately defeated the merchants of doom was the desire by leaders of the significant political formations to press ahead with negotiations despite the violence and destruction.
We were lucky, though. Extremely lucky. We had Mandela. And we had De Klerk. It takes two to tango. Both men had the foresight to see beyond the narrow interests of their followers. As a result, the country survived death and destruction to embrace a new dawn.
SA found itself lauded by the international community as the poster child for the peaceful resolution of intractable problems and a blueprint for racial harmony.
And after 25 years of democracy we’re back to being a skunk again, the epitome of corruption and incompetence. We’ve mishandled this cherished project so badly we’ve disappointed those cheering for us and delighted apartheid apologists.
Those who got us into this ditch will be out on a breast-thumping jamboree today. This freedom is all their doing, they will tell their one-eyed supporters. De Klerk and everything to do with apartheid will be grist to the mill — even though if our esteemed leaders had half his courage, the country would probably not be in such a mess. But history will be kinder to him.
The Eskom debacle is a metaphor for our journey thus far. Under apartheid it was light and joy for some, and gloom for everybody else. Now it’s gloom and despair for everybody.
But ours is a story foretold by George Orwell. The pigs have taken over from Mr Jones. And even more tragic is the fact that it’s now difficult to distinguish between the two. A dream utterly betrayed.