Swimming with Cobras (20 page)
For myself there were moments when I felt distinctly uncomfortable. During the debate on the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), for instance, it became clear that the ANC viewed the ECC as an offshoot of their armed struggle. I knew from experience that many embraced the ECC as a pacifist cause, and when I said so, I could sense the general antagonism. In a plenary discussion on Palestine and Israel, Karin and I dissented in the face of the overwhelming consensus in favour of Palestine. There were many Jewish members in the Black Sash who would have rejected the conference's simplistic analysis of the Middle East situation, and we felt compelled to represent them. Swimming against the tide gave us a slithery sensation of fear. It was small wonder that Ruth Mpati questioned my allegiance as she said goodbye to me at Schipol airport. I felt I had to digest all that I had seen and heard and so my response was simply to shrug and smile.
The conference had culminated in a series of discussions on women's unity, and as the delegations parted and went their separate ways â some home to South Africa, others not â we were all aware that much remained to be done to ensure the fair representation of women in the new South Africa.
Airport authorities at Schipol were lenient about overweight baggage for our return fight. Several women had acquired large bags, which they had filled with winter coats, boots and other goodies that had been on offer to delegates who were not equipped for the severe Dutch winter. At Jan Smuts airport, where overweight restrictions on domestic fights were much more stringent, these bulging bags caused great consternation, with racist accusations beginning to fly in all directions. The situation was exacerbated when one of the Port Elizabeth delegates was marched off to a customs office. At the end of the conference we had been told emphatically to destroy any literature that might be banned in South Africa, but as it turned out, that was not this woman's sin. The offending item was a small rubber doll, complete with urinating penis!
Shortly after our return home, FW de Klerk made his momentous announcement. The ANC was to be unbanned and Nelson Mandela released. The news exceeded our wildest dreams. Was the struggle won? Were we about to see the dawning of non-racialism and equal opportunity, service delivery, an end to poverty, education for all, a new constitution, open media and freedom of speech? Would this country at last be able to hold its head high? The euphoria was almost unbearable; I wanted to dance in the streets. Of course there were dangers ahead and much to be negotiated, the quagmire of political jostling not the least of it; but the world was right to hail this as a miracle nation and I was proud to be part of it.
“It is a hot day in the Western Cape,” the TV commentator noted uninspiringly. Unused to momentous moments such as this, he grew increasingly banal as the waiting dragged on. “The sun beats down relentlessly in Africa,” he tried again. The camera continued to stare at the gates of the Victor Verster prison in Paarl. It was 11 February 1990, the day of Nelson Mandela's release after 27 years in jail. Malvern and I sat fixed to the television awaiting a glimpse of the man whose name we knew so well but whose banned image had hardly ever been seen in South Africa. At last the waiting crowd exploded with excitement and there he was, hand in hand with Winnie, acknowledging the roaring greeting. I felt a lump in my throat. A few months previously in Amsterdam such an event had not seemed possible. We watched every move of the cavalcade as it made its way to the Grand Parade in Cape Town where the icon of the struggle was to make his first public address. There, from a balcony overlooking the jubilant crowd, Mandela took my breath away when he publicly thanked two white organisations for their contribution to the liberation struggle: the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and the Black Sash. It was an unexpected and unbelievable moment.
Lucy, a UCT student at the time, was in the crowd on the Grand Parade. She and her group of friends were ecstatic, but they decided to move off when some breaking of shop windows and hasty looting began nearby. It was inevitable that opportunists would seize the moment, and in their rash act they provided a warning of the roller-coaster ride that lay ahead. The ANC colours started to appear everywhere, on cup, scarf, shirt and cap, and the South African Communist Party fag was flown openly. Euphoria and hope were in the air, as was an exciting feeling of comradeship among all those who had taken part in struggle-related activities. We really seemed to be entering a wonderful non-racial period. The Black Sash national conference was held in Grahamstown that year, and while joy and elation were present there too, I was impressed by the clear-headed realism that marked the discussions. With its hard-won experience of the dynamics that had been brewing in the country, especially through the 1980s, the Black Sash knew that some very delicate and perilous work awaited all South Africans. Much thought was given to the new role the organisation would have to play in a radically altered socio-political landscape.
At this time the Jan Smuts air terminal in Johannesburg was undergoing renovations. Notices were put up depicting a cartoon figure losing his balance on a slippery floor. “Improvements in Progress!” the signs warned. As the year unfolded, change and improvement did indeed seem like a slippery floor to me, and that image became more and more apt. Bronwyn Brady, our young fieldworker at the time, was rushed off her feet as the Sash participated in ever more meetings and rallies and joined in the general bustling among comrades. Soon, however, we all found ourselves longing for less rhetoric and strategy, and more in-depth consideration of policies. As shared jubilation gave way to a rising sweep of triumphalism, we became concerned to see the rallies turn more and more militant. Amid the inevitable jostling and competition among factions, we were sometimes caught awkwardly in the middle. We soon realised that we would have to cling firmly to our independence. In the words of the Black Sash dedication, we were pledged to “uphold the ideals of mutual trust and forbearance, of sanctity of word, of courage for the future and of peace and justice for all persons and peoples.” At a time when national values were up for renegotiation, we steadfastly had to resist any diminution of these principles.
As our Zimbabwean sisters in Harare had warned, once the struggle was over the role of Comrade Freedom would be at severe risk if we did not guard it carefully. Many women in Zimbabwe felt that they'd been sidelined to the cooking pots after the war. I was reminded of this when plans were being made for a massive rally in the Bisho stadium at which Mandela would be present and the Black Sash in East London were asked to do the catering. The request gave rise to heated debate. We certainly needed to reassess our role in the activist arena, but should a human rights organisation be relegated to the task of catering? On this occasion the East Londoners decided to join in the spirit of the hour and do the task assigned to them, but we all undertook to remain vigilant in this regard.
All roads led to Bisho on that memorable day. Every form of transport had been commandeered and taxis and vans were bursting with people. The white section of neighbouring King William's Town was cordoned off, in fear and trepidation of the black invasion. A small group from the Grahamstown Sash found a spot to perch on some rising ground overlooking the vast crowd. People stood shoulder to shoulder, helicopters hovered overhead. Marshals were searching everyone who entered the stadium, confiscating any sharp objects which could lead to trouble. At last Mandela arrived in a high-speed convoy of cars, some with blackened windows. From where we stood we could see only a vague outline of the man, but it was the roar of the crowd and the soaring singing that made the day most memorable.
I had to wait two years to have more than just a distant glimpse of Nelson Mandela. In November 1992 I was invited to a lunch in his honour in the Albany Recreation Centre, hosted by the Grahamstown Civic Organisation (GRACO). This was the hall where Malvern and I had attended a service many years earlier when Allan Hendrickse had been detained. It was on that Sunday, twenty years before, that I had decided to start keeping a diary. In the interim I had been to many meetings in that hall, some of them secret, some more overt. To see Nelson Mandela there felt like a circle completed.
GRACO was an organisation run by coloured Grahamstonians and the Recreation Hall was in the coloured area. After the lunch Mandela was due to attend a rally at a stadium in the black township. I was intrigued by this order of events. Was it a shrewd political move by the ANC to garner coloured support? Or had the coloured community stolen a march on the township? In any event, it was a wonderful occasion. The usually bare hall was transformed with flowers and balloons and a large welcoming banner hung above the stage. We sat at trestle tables groaning under platters of food, which ranged from curry and legs of lamb to trifle and mousse. A centrepiece of fruit gave the occasion the air of a banquet. Outside the hall a crowd gathered, and we knew when Mandela had arrived from the customary roar that greeted him. A red carpet stretched from pavement to hall and two little girls dressed in white held flower baskets full of corsages, which they presented to the VIPs. One of the girls was called Zinzi, the same name as one of Mandela's daughters, and later he had a photograph taken of her sitting on his knee. I recalled reading an interview with him in which he said that the absence of children during his prison years had been one of his most severe deprivations.
Inside the hall there were presentations of gifts, speeches of welcome and toasts. As I looked about, I mused on past occasions in that hall and on my fellow guests. There were people I had worked with at GADRA and in many other non-governmental organisations. I was one of only a handful of whites. I felt deeply privileged and knew that it was thanks to the Black Sash that I was there. Alongside me sat a well-known Grahamstown couple, he a Black Consciousness priest who had spent time on Robben Island and she an acerbic academic. They'd always had a way of deflating my naive enthusiasms and even on this occasion they seemed mocking of my excitement. “So, Rosemary, aren't you feeling important, being here today.”
But nothing could destroy the magic for me. Mandela looked younger than I had imagined, a man of charisma and strength, and as he spoke I thought, “Here is a person really in touch with himself.” He spoke for 45 minutes without a note, in humble vein and on the theme of reconciliation. He recollected that the first coloured people he had met had been members of the Garment Workers' Union, women who had impressed him with their strength and ferocity. He told of arguments in prison with Neville Alexander, a coloured leader and educationalist who had urged that in a new South Africa, Afrikaans should be abolished for having been the language of the oppressor. He spoke of various prison warders who had shown him kindness. I heard Mandela speak again on various occasions afterwards and saw him at other functions in Grahamstown, but nothing could eclipse that first time in the Recreation Hall.
A new dawn had broken but it was clear the path, finally visible ahead, would be long. First of all, preparations for the election had to be made. But at the same time, the shape of the future had to be negotiated. Not only did first generation civil and political rights have to be secured, but it was also up to organisations such as ours to ensure that the second and third generation rights like social security, education, adequate wages, peace, a healthy environment and opportunities for development were not left out of the blueprint.
The immediate challenge, in Grahamstown as elsewhere, was the establishment of transitional local government structures in which both the expertise of the old civic structures and the political aspirations of the new guard were accommodated. This was often an unequal and acrimonious tussle as the community-based organisations tended to be poorly equipped and easily duped, while the established authorities were in a state of disorganised retreat, unsure of their future and sensing the carpet gradually being pulled from under their feet. In these scenarios the Black Sash played a consulting role. Our fieldworker Glenn Hollands was now a highly skilled negotiator who had earned widespread credibility in the Grahamstown community, and most of this delicate work fell to him. Glenn's top priority was that a climate of free political participation be maintained.
In preparation for the transition that lay ahead, we renewed what we had in the past called “white outreach”, a range of projects aimed at white Grahamstonians. Sociologists, when they describe a country's development, talk of societies as either “ascribing” or “achieving”. An ascribing society clings to the past and to values handed down by previous generations, making it difficult to adjust to changes in the outside world.
In an achieving society people are no longer imprisoned by the past but look outward with confidence towards the future. The transition can be painful, as people have to abandon certainties that had previously given shape to their lives. It was this process of adaptation that we were anticipating when we launched a series of public panel discussions entitled, “Signposts to the New South Africa”. We had a range of good speakers and interesting topics, but the audiences were sparse and the impact probably did not warrant the amount of work we put in. We managed to reach a larger audience at the National Arts Festival in 1992, when I was asked to be part of a panel discussion entitled “Living Space for All”, which addressed the future of town planning.
I found myself on a platform with some leading South African architects and an ANC spokesperson on housing. My humble brief was to describe housing conditions in Grahamstown and I was glad of the opportunity, hoping that somewhere someone of influence might be listening. I invited the audience to look out from the large plate-glass windows of the monument, over the town to the township, and to observe the hillside peppered with wattle and daub houses. Erected by the people themselves of tree poles and mud, these primitive structures had proliferated since 1989 when restrictions were being loosened and spontaneous land invasions had begun on every available patch of vacant land in and around the township. The last time any official housing development had occurred had been in the 1960s, and by the 1980s the situation had become dire.