Thirty Three out of One Hundred

I joined the ANC in 1979. It was in Lesotho. I had left South Africa as a War Resistor. That was all I had done. Soweto 1976 came and went. I read the headlines with rising alarm. I was a student at a very rightwing university, at the time - Rhodes University. We were all white students. There were a couple amongst us mad enough (or brave enough) to join Nusas. But not me.

Steve Biko got killed. The news was told me by a black stranger on the streets of Grahamstown. He was in shock – that was clear. He said what I thought was “Steve Peacock is dead!” I tried to look sympathetic, but had no idea what he might be talking about. I only later found out that it was Steve Biko as all the headlines screamed at me – and still I was none the wiser. Who was Steve Biko? I had never heard of him.

I remember that some of us got captured by the thing. It was horrific – that was clear. We were students. Students protest. So we protested. The Minister of police at the time tried to tell everyone that he had killed himself by not eating for 8 days. So we fasted. We would meet once a day at lunch time in the office of the Philosophy Professor, an enigmatic ex-Methodist Minister by the name of James Moulder. We fasted for eight days. And that was it. There was the occasional student protest about stuff I knew nothing about. But that was it. That was my entire experience of the struggle.

Well, not entirely. Up the road from me had lived Eli and Violet Weinberg – Communists under house arrest. The Security Police would sit all night long in a car across from our house – watching the Weinberg house. My mother used to chat sometimes with Eli, over the garden fence. She found it odd that a Communist would, on a yearly basis, send us a Christmas card.

Just up the road from us in Fanny Avenue, lived a woman called Helen Joseph. My mother had a strange fear and fascination for her. She was clearly bad news, because she consorted with the natives – but at the same time, my mother admired her principles and the fact that she stood up for them.

It was only when I was a student in Cambridge that I read some of the speeches from the Treason Trial. I read the Freedom Charter. They were a revelation. They determined for me that, no matter what, I would not allow myself to be conscripted. I was lucky enough to have a wife then, who agreed with me and supported me. Together, we decided to leave the country. It was a big thing for us. But that is all it was.

So we encountered a very suspicious ANC in Lesotho. Our first contact was with someone whose name we had been given while inside the country. The reception was chilly. We decided not to push the issue. And so we were watched. Background checks, presumably, were done on us. And eventually, it became clear that we were to be regarded as comrades, rather than spies. That realisation does not give any sense of the dramatic and dynamic change which was happening inside us.

For the first time, in our lives, we were living amongst black people as equals. For the first time in our lives, we were interacting with black people at an eyeball to eyeball level. For the first time in our lives, we were not the “baas”. Lesotho provided all of us with a foretaste of what liberation might be like. What it might be like to live side by equal side. Cheek by equal jowl.

For many of us, when we found ourselves elsewhere in the world down the years, it was Lesotho that we pined for. Because it was there that we experienced what we could never experience inside South Africa itself. We experienced a unity of purpose. We experienced and we started to live a progressive, revolutionary and life-changing ideal. And once you have crossed over that bridge, you can never go back.

It was black ANC members and the people of Lesotho who gave us back the humanity that apartheid had robbed us of. And this is something I, for one, cannot ever forget. Jacob Zuma held underground meetings in our back bedroom. Tito Mboweni learned to drive in our Volkswagen Beetle. Ngoako Ramahlodi ironed his shirts in our living room. Others, with equally big names bathed in our bath; made tea from our kettle; spent the night on the lounge sofa. And then there were those people, whose real names one never knew – until they were killed in one of the two raids which the Boers (and I use that term knowingly) executed with such extraordinary cruelty in Lesotho.

I wish, passionately – I wish with every fibre of my being – that every white person in the country could have experienced what we experienced. I wish they could have learned, as we did, that white people could not lead the struggle. I wish they could have eaten from that same pot. I wish they could have drunk from that same river. Alas, it is impossible.

But you ask me today why I am still a member of the ANC and I will say this to you: I will say that it is the ANC which has led this country to a peaceful and successful democratic reality. It has done so with the utmost generosity and grace to the former oppressors. It has done so in a way which has ensured that – against all odds – the country still functions and the economy continues to grow. It has done so without violence. It has done so in a way which has been respectful of culture and heritage and origin. It has never faltered from its commitment to non-racialism and non-sexism.

You and I may criticise the ANC. That, in itself, is an amazing achievement. You and I may stare in disbelief at some of the antics of some of its members – but you cannot suggest, if you are in any way honest, that the ANC has failed. That would be not only churlish, it would be fantastically ill-informed.

The ANC has gone through some difficult times of late, but when I compare policy for policy, position for position, principle for principle, I have no doubt where my loyalties lie. And I would suggest that everyone who has come to love and honour that former “terrorist”, who made the difficult decision to opt for armed struggle – Nelson Mandela – should look beyond him to the Movement which gave him life and breath and to which he still owes allegiance. Look to the principles of the Freedom Charter. And once you have done that, take courage in the Constitution of the country, which is our joint crowning achievement.

I have been a member of the ANC for 33 of its 100 years. I have had my doubts. I have had my worries. I have had my moments of anger and even rage. But I look back on the 100 years of struggle which this movement has led and I know, beyond any doubt, that I made the right decision way back then. I look at where we are now, and where we could have been - and I know it. I look at the tremendous achievements we have made - and I know it. I look at the peace we enjoy - and I know it. I look at the greed and the gluttony and the shenanigans and the unsupportable nonsense - and I know, beyond any moment of doubt, that the spirit of the Charter and the will of the people will survive it all. We just need to make it so. Aluta Continua!

The State of the ANC in the Western Cape

Robbie Waterwitch and Coline Williams Memorial - Athlone, near Cape Town

The fact that the End Conscription Campaign is celebrating its founding 25 years ago in Spier Wine Estate, here in the Western Cape this weekend got me thinking back on the place of the Western Cape in the politics of this country. I remember, back in the 1980s, how we in Kwazulu-Natal used to admire our comrades in the Western Cape. We were, after all, stuck in situation which could not have been more different. Kwazulu-Natal (or Natal as it was then) was politically owned by Inkatha, the creation, oddly enough, of the ANC itself and the stepchild of the Apartheid state.
Inkatha was a Zulu nationalist organisation, run by Mangosuthu Buthelezi – a despot who was once within the fold of the African National Congress (ANC), but had broken away from it when he didn’t get what he wanted. His movement, which was supposed to have been a cover for the ANC, turned against the movement and became a vicious, right-wing, nationalist band of thugs, which played on black people’s deepest fears pandered to white power. It had no hesitation taking arms handed out to it from its white master, while at the same time condemning the armed struggle against the apartheid regime, by the ANC and other liberation forces. In Natal, we would look longingly down to the Western Cape, where Inkatha didn’t exist at all and where the struggle was , apparently, very simple. The majority, against the apartheid state.

I remember when the deaths of Robbie Waterwitch and Coline Williams happened. Two 20 year old comrades from Athlone, in Cape Town, mishandled explosives, and the bomb they were making went up in their faces and killed them. Their deaths were a tragedy. Not only because of the fact that they were so terribly young, but also because of the violence which our country was living with, mostly from the state, but sporadically, and mostly fairly ineffectively, from the liberation forces as well.

The point I am getting to, though, is that their death was a symbol of the level of commitment which was present in the “Coloured” community of the Western Cape. A level of commitment, not only to the African National Congress, but also to the goals and ideals of freedom. We all stood in awe of it. We watched it in wonder.

I was warned, when I was contemplating moving down to Cape Town from Johannesburg, that politics in the Western Cape was “a little odd”. I had no idea of what I was going to find. Most particularly, in the ANC. I had expected racist whites, because Cairp Tahn was actually step one before Perth. So all the dreadful moaners and groaners, all the naysayers, all the glass half empty types, all the solid, unreformed white racists, headed down to the Western Cape. That I knew. But nothing could have prepared me for the level of discord and factionalism I was going to find in the ANC itself. Nothing. Because it was - and is - completely indescribable. (This is not to say that there are not probably the same levels of discord in the Democratic Alliance, because I understand that it is pretty much the same – but it was the ANC that I was most shocked by).

Firstly, I noticed the dreadful, arrogant way they handled governance. The people who had the positions in government, treated them as though they were their own personal possessions. They ran rough-shod over rules, over people and over policies. They made imperial commands. They ruled by fear and by intimidation.
They made one critical mistake, however. They made “Coloured” people feel alienated from them. And so, with the stroke of a ballot pen, they voted for the opposition, and the ANC was unsurprisingly trounced at the recent election. I think their chances of getting back into power in the short to medium term are rather remote. More than that, the factionalism and dreadful nature of the politics in the region, meant that the party also managed to lose, in addition, a fair amount of black votes along the way to the other parties, including the newly formed Congress of the People (COPE), (which is really just an ANC faction).

They managed to alienate all in sundry. They fractured and fought internally. What this has meant at branch level is that there is widespread and general disinterest. This, coupled with the fact that there is a rather extreme lack of confidence in the people actually in decision-making positions. It all amounts to an unmitigated disaster.

I spent part of Friday with the present Premier – Helen Zille. She is Premier, because her party wrested power from the ANC. We visited the Philippi Stadium, in one of the poorest parts of Cape Town. The reason for the 54 Million Rand upgrade of the run-down stadium that was there, is that this is one of the very few social legacy projects which will actually flow from the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The roads were going to be done anyway – as projects they were just pulled forward. But Philippi Stadium was never going to have anything done to it. It was the one of the previous Ministers of Cultural Affairs and Sport, the ANCs Whitey Jacobs, who decided to put resources into the Philippi Stadium. And it was Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance Premier, who was now taking the glory.

I bear her no grudge for this. She is the Premier and she represents all of us, whether we support her party or not. That is exactly the way democracy works. But I did find it somewhat ironic, that the party who actually did not really want the 2010FIFA World Cup in the first place, would be now gaining such palpable kudos because of it. That is the way the worm turns. It is just the way things are.

I remembered the chaos which once presided in her party, the Democratic Alliance. There was fraud, there was crookery, there were idiots and scoundrels who were its leaders in this province. They now have someone of somewhat more substance, whatever one might think of the policies. And just that, just the fact that she holds some kind of perceived moral compass on her hands; just the fact that she is not afraid to speak her mind – and just the fact that she is against the ANC, has been enough to propel her to power. Her party holds power no-where else, just here, in the Western Cape. And the reason for this is, of course, the complete mess which the ANC allowed to develop here, while all their snouts were firmly in the trough.

Because it is not that people in the Western Cape do not support the ANC. It is simply that they will not support this particular form of the ANC. It is not as though there has never been support for the ANC amongst the Coloured community of the Western Cape – there have been spectacular examples of how they have done so in the past. But they will not do so now. And they will not do so, because they do not see it as being in any way in their interests to support the ANC. To quote President Zuma on a recent visit here, the ANC has failed the people of the Western Cape.

Does the worm inevitably turn?

Pic: A dam just outside Worcester - where the meeting was held

“To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"
Shakespeare Henry VI Pt. 3.

I am interested to note, these days, how quiet the media is, (and more interestingly, the white public is) about Jacob Zuma. Just a matter of months ago, you could have sworn that the sky was going to fall, the earth was going to heave and we whites would all be swallowed up in the disaster which would follow the victory of the ANC at the polls and his ascendency to the Presidency.

I note with further interest, a recent newspaper report about a meeting which the leader of the opposition and Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had with the President. She came away from it saying that it is “hard not to like him”. She went further and said that this was all the more remarkable, seeing she had run a specific and individually targeted campaign to “Stop Zuma” during the election.

I also see how silly former President Thabo Mbeki is seeming these days and I can’t help seeing some kind of vague similarity between him and “Die Groot Krokodil” – former apartheid President, PW Botha. When he, in his day, was kicked out by FW de Klerk and the new breed of Afrikaners (who were seen as crazy reformists in some circles) and the ANC, Communist Party and other Liberation movements were unbanned, Botha continued to breathe fire and brimstone, never seeing the wood, for a forest of trees.

And some whites, many whites, perhaps even the majority of whites today, are still breathing the same fire and brimstone. I hear them all the time, all around me. The other day I was in a meeting in a rural area way out of Cape Town. There were a total of five whites in a meeting of about 20 people. At lunch, being fairly early in the queue, I happened to sit at a table with no-one else at it at that point. I could not fail to notice that within a short while, all the other whites in the meeting had gathered at my table. And then it started…

They simply assumed that I was one of them and would therefore agree with their reactionary position on things in general. They spoke about “them” and they spoke about “us”. They lamented the passing of the old days. I chewed on my salad and said nothing. Not because I am shy. Not because I am slow in coming forward, but because I was totally gobsmacked!

These were four people I had never met before in my life. They work in significant, public interface related jobs. They deal with black people on a daily basis. But their minds are twisted and distorted and their understanding of South African reality is profoundly skewed. The world which they apparently live in is monochrome and diseased. And here is the tragedy – they have no idea that this is their reality!

The tragedy is that they position themselves as liberals – as people who “never supported apartheid”. Now they are merely observers. Now they are the experts on democratic government. Now they are the victims of affirmative action. They chose to ignore, I could not fail to notice, the fact that three of them were actually employed in the state itself or para-statals!

It is this killing, whinging mindset which is so totally reprehensible. Crime is “their” responsibility – and “they” don’t have a clue how to solve it, because “they” are either criminals themselves, or stupid – or, of course, more probably both.

And what does this kind of attitude do (besides making the bearer into a bitter, twisted human being)? This is what I think. I think it infects everyone – the good and the bad, the criminal and the victim, black and white. It sets up a societal dynamic which corrodes and insinuates itself into every aspect of life. It is there in the shopping centre, the gym, the Church, the street, the airport. It feeds on itself. It grows fat and it spreads. It is insidious. It is contagious.

But here is the issue. It is not just a “white” thing. There is nothing genetically involved here. It can equally become a “black” thing. In the Western Cape, it is undoubtedly now a “coloured” thing.

I see yesterday in the press, the African National Congress in the Western Cape issued an apology to the Western Cape Province, for its previous fractious, inefficient and nepotistic government. It was a government which was fairly trounced at the polls, bringing the Democratic Alliance to power again.

I think the apology is well intended and it is a desperate attempt to salvage some level of credibility. But I do not think it will work. It is not the case, after all, that previous Democratic Alliance governments were wonderful. In fact, they were disastrous. But the ANC has managed to completely alienate vast swathes of the Western Cape population – a population which is already deeply conservative, racist and divided. What the ANC has managed to do is to compound fears, prejudices and racist beliefs. It has done so by ignoring people, by marginalising people, by arrogance and by greed. This is the consequence of its actions.

So, whatever good President Zuma may achieve - through openness, or accessibility or through tight controls on corruption – it won’t matter a damn in the Western Cape in my estimation, for a very long time to come. Because the party he belongs to seems to have forgotten the primary matter of race in the equation. Race isn’t an issue which can manage itself and in this country it isn’t going to just go away. And as long as there are some South Africans who feel more important than other South Africans, we have all the ingredients we need for a profoundly depressed and diseased society.