TRANSCRIPT: 24 YEARS, 2 MONTHS AND 3 WEEKS
I travel to Lusaka, to Harare for meetings. We’re meeting people from home. We’re meeting lawyers from home. We've got so much to tell each other! And we’re meeting writers from home at Victoria Falls. I remember Antjie Krog was there and a number of mainly Afrikaans speaking writers. And Antjie shed so many tears, we commented the waterfall would be augmented if her tears flowed down the Zambezi with her. Very emotional moments of reconnection. And that sense of conviction: we’re going to come home and we’re going to transform the country and we’re on the way.
February the 2<sup>nd</sup> 1990. I'm working with the ANC Constitutional Committee in Lusaka. And Zola Skweyiya, who's the chairperson of the Constitutional Committee, says, ‘OK, let's see what the BBC says about De Klerk’s speech in Parliament.’ We were expecting nothing after the famous non-speech of Rubicon some years earlier. And I remember, it comes on. And the voice is saying, ‘…and because of the unbanning of the ANC…’ ‘What?!’ We can’t believe it! And we’re dancing around. It was a complete surprise to me. I think it must have been a surprise to Zola. And Zola was on the National Executive of the ANC and he didn’t even know about it. And now that sense of breakthrough. But everybody’s waiting. The ANC says, don't rush home, we must go back in an orderly way, and nothing’s happening. Nobody’s taking decisions. Oliver Tambo had had a stroke – he I’m sure would have provided very clear leadership. And people are saying wait, wait, wait until you get permission to go back home.
So, the Constitutional Committee is meeting in Lusaka and now members can come up from South Africa. Two persons who have been asked specially by Nelson Mandela to join us – Arthur Chaskalson; George Bizos – come and sit with us. Dullah Omar at the University of the Western Cape – he's there. Bulelani Ngcuka. Essa Moosa from Cape Town. Again, that sense of joyous connection. And now we’re not just envisaging one day in South Africa, we need a constitution that’ll have certain qualities. We’re now beginning to plan our return. And Dullah says, ‘Comrade Albie,’ he said, ‘we keep waiting for you people to come back. No-one comes to Cape Town. Everybody goes to Johannesburg. We need you in Cape Town! And I'm going to invite you as Professor Albie Sachs, not Comrade Albie Sachs, to come to University of the Western Cape. And get a ticket for you.’ And I agreed. So, I went back not as Comrade Albie Sachs, member of the Constitutional Committee of the ANC, I went back as Professor Albie Sachs to UWC.
I flew back from Lusaka to South Africa. First landing in Johannesburg, I remember flying in over Joburg and looking down and seeing the beautiful Northern Suburbs with all the blue swimming pools… and then the townships. Uh oh, I’m back home, I’m back home, this is a divided South Africa – you see it from the top. When I landed there was a white immigration official, Afrikaans-speaker who said to me, ‘Welcome back Albie.’ And I was kind of totally astonished and feeling fantastic after 24 years and two months and three weeks and a couple of days or hours or whatever it was.
The next day I fly into Cape Town. It was so joyous at the airport; people were singing and cheering. My mother’s there, the TV cameras from all over the world, and I’m feeling so buoyant! And people are seeing me… they’d only seen me with two arms before, they’re seeing me… but they’re seeing me moving buoyantly, moving, moving, cheerfully. And I climbed Table Mountain on the first day. I dreamt of climbing Table Mountain every single day in my years of exile – when I come back home, I’m going to climb Table Mountain. Ooh I felt fantastic! I didn't know that I’d even be able to do it and I’d done it. I’d reconnected with nature in Cape Town.
And then Dullah said, Comrade Albie, where would you like to go? Such a simple thing – where do you want to go? He said, you can come and stay with him and Farida in Rylands on the Cape Flats. I can stay with the Ngcuka family in Gugulethu. Or I can stay with my mom in Gardens. Now that simple question: where would you like to go? It's not where would you like to go, it's really who are you? I couldn't go and stay in a white area, emotionally. I’d go and spend time with my mom, of course. But where should I stay? And I didn’t know Bulelani all that well, so I said, Dullah, I’d love to stay with you and Farida. And it was such a correct decision. I remember their son took me to get a video. Videos were the big thing. And we drove from their home in Rylands, not very far and the son was saying, ‘And Uncle Albie, this is where we marched on such and such a day when the police came and shot us.’ So, we go over a bridge. And he said, ‘There was a doctor there, he wasn’t active in the struggle. But when we were injured, we would run into his place, and he would tell the police there was no-one there.’ And we’re driving further, he says, ‘This is our school, and we would at night put up the ANC flag and the next morning the cops would come, and they’d pull the flag down and we’d sing bobbejaan klim die berg...’ Now he’s just taking me to fetch a video, he’s not taking me on a struggle tour. But going through that community area, he’s just telling me these stories. It was more profound and more wonderful than any video that we could ever get.
I remember being at the airport when Oliver Tambo returned. He came back in December 1990; Oliver Tambo came back. I happened to be in Johannesburg at the time. I went to the airport. Huge crowd there with wonderful posters. He was legendary. There were songs about ‘OR Tambo…’ [sings]. And the plane has landed, and then he emerges. He was… frail is too strong [of a word] … but he wasn’t strong. You didn’t get that Tambo smile and that sense of quiet authority that he had. And it was sad for me that I knew him the way he was. And the thousands of people there, they were just seeing what looked like an elderly, not very well man. If I remember correctly, somebody helped raise his right arm. And he gave just a very short speech. And he said, ‘I return to South Africa. I bring the ANC intact with me. Look after it.’ It was a thrilling moment to feel he’s come back. So, even although he didn’t have an active leadership role from then onwards, just the mere fact that he was there was… was comforting. And he would come to meetings, and we all felt reassured that he was there. And I believe he would be consulted. But he wasn’t playing that very dynamic and very active role… that wasn’t there.
And then he attended the conference at the University of Durban-Westville in 1991, where the new leadership was elected. ANC’s first conference, now, in over 30 years on South African soil. The highlight now is electing our top leadership. So, there won’t be an acting president, there’ll be a president. And electing the national executive of the ANC. My name is nominated. There are 50 positions. I froze. I’ve never run for office. I’ve been a volunteer. I’m not going to shake hands. I’m not going to smile. I’m not going to glad-hand anybody. I was even cold to people. And then I heard somebody saying to Kader Asmal, ‘Kader, where’s your constituency?’ He had no constituency. And I’m thinking, my constituency: Table Mountain, the fynbos and the beach. I’m not going to shake hands. I’m not going to smile.
Late in the evening, they’re announcing, 2,000 voting. They have to tot up all the numbers, number one, number two… 22, so-and-so, 23, so-and-so, 24, Albie Sachs. So, I walk up to the platform where the new elected members are now sitting, and I raise my right arm, the arm of struggle. And I sit down, and I see I’m quite close to Oliver Tambo. And he wants to reach me, but his right arm is paralysed. And my right arm is short. So, I just had to lean forward with my hand, and he kissed my hand. It, it was an exquisitely beautiful moment for me. He’s not somebody given to gestures. But that was the only way we could actually have physical contact. And it was enormously, enormously special for me.
And we’re now back in South Africa. Constitutional Committee of the ANC is functioning. But it wasn’t just returning, it was returning with very rich experience. The whole organisation, the whole country, is speaking about a new constitution. Will we have this, will we have that and the other? Now UWC became our base. Dullah set up the Community Law Centre. Bulelani left his practice, Dullah left his practice, to work full-time there. Zola Skweyiya came to join. I was there. Kader Asmal returned. Brigitte Mabandla came to UWC. A little while later, Yvonne Mokgoro… So, there’s a big team of us. And that was the engine room of the Constitution. Because the people involved there were people involved with communities and feeding in ideas. Other universities made their contributions, but UWC became the centre point for our work. We put on wonderful workshops, very open-minded, on the land question, on regions, on gender, on social and economic rights, should we have a Constitutional Court. So, we were like in that sense super-intelligent and exceptionally well-prepared for the actual negotiations being conducted at a political level.
We’d had hard times in exile. For many, the living conditions were extremely harsh. I was blown up. Other people knew all sorts of different forms of marginalisation and difficulty. And we had crooks inside our own organisation. And we had people who weren’t crooks, but who behaved in a totally inappropriate way. But we never lost our core beliefs. And we always had people like Oliver Tambo setting an example from the top, of pure, honest, dignified, thoughtful leadership. And we had people like Chris Hani, always brave and thoughtful and full of energy and fun. And Joe Slovo. And we had amazing comrades – Mac Maharaj, all over the place, brilliant, sharp, quick, complicated. And we had Ruth Mompati at ANC headquarters, always composed, always serene, always thoughtful, always interested in everybody. That feeling never left us. And the total conviction now: we've got the right ideas, it's for the nation, it's what the world wants from South Africa. And we happen to be the bearers of the intellectual, conceptual ideas for a new constitutional order. You have the time of the political activist; you have the time of the soldier; and now, in a sense, it was the time of the lawyer.
