TRANSCRIPT: HUMAN BEINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME
I would say I was one of those who had that sense of historic certainty. This was a battle we were not going to lose. We couldn’t lose. And from the moment I got back to South Africa, we were coming back on our terms. And there was a kind of momentum, and we saw the popular support we were getting. And also, our ideas were so clear that in that sense I never had doubts.
And what a journey it had been even to get started. The Groote Schuur meeting to deal with exiles coming back, ending the armed struggle, people out of prison, then the Pretoria Minute after that, dealing with who should negotiate, how should we negotiate? Then the peace accords to get peace on the ground. And now finally, CODESA – the Convention for a Democratic South Africa – was actually starting. It started well, with a Declaration of Intent. We had then very difficult times early in ‘92. And we were clashing on fundamentals. And then the Record of Understanding, the multi-party negotiating process starts again.
The big, big, big breakthrough, the breakthrough of breakthroughs came when the National Party finally agreed not to have group rights, not to have power-sharing, finally agreed to universal franchise for everybody, protection through a bill of rights.
The whole apartheid system was based on seeing people as members of groups, not as human beings. And we had to destroy that – we couldn't have group rights in our structures of government. People could protect their language, their culture, their religion, their beliefs. But that's through a bill of rights, not through coming together as blacks, as Zulus, as Afrikaners. Once that fundamental was agreed to, we could move onto the multi-party negotiating process, and then fight over the regions, fight over the judiciary, fight over a whole range of different things. But the foundations were there.
But there were several crises as well. And each one of them could have shipwrecked the negotiations altogether. At some stage – ’91? The press are making big headlines about Operation Vula, ANC insurrectionary attempts and so on. And looking back now, it seems to me Vula was there as a safeguard. It actually facilitated negotiations. Because the people who were afraid that the whole thing was a trap and we would be disarmed, felt if they do betray us, if they do lock up our leadership, if they do send us back into exile, and so on, we’ve got a mechanism there, we’ve got the people there able to fight back. So paradoxically, sending people in secretly, having the arms caches, having the potential for an insurrection, if necessary, actually facilitated negotiations. But it wasn’t handled in a clear way. It was certainly a highly secret operation. So, the general membership of the ANC didn’t know about it. The NEC didn’t know about it.
Then the breakdown in 1992 triggered by the Boipatong Massacre. Armed gangs came and just massacred, slaughtered people in their beds, in their homes. Uh, it was a terrible, ugly night of murder. In 1992, there was the terrible, terrible massacre in Bhisho, in the Ciskei. The Ciskei army opened fire and… and scores and scores of people were shot dead. It was a huge shock for South Africa. One extremely important moment was the rebellion in Bophuthatswana. It was now against the regime led by Mangope. And we all saw on television, a black African soldier from the Bophuthatswana Defence Force, that had been in rebellion, shooting dead a wounded white commander from the AWB, a right-wing pseudo military unit that had come in to support Mangope and the Bophuthatswana regime that was being overthrown. It was a shocking moment, but also one of those moments where you’re feeling the balance of forces is changing in the country.
The massacres weren't the only form of violence. Strange things were happening. Black commuters were being thrown off trains. Clearly, there was some hidden hand orchestrating, co-ordinating things. And we were totally sure that important elements of South African security were involved. So many things in so many different parts of the country. Gangs called impis were going from hostels, armed, killing wherever they went. And of course, there were right-wing elements, trained soldiers, and untrained soldiers speaking about war. More people died in the period 1990 to 1994, through political violence, than in all the years from 1910 to 1990. It was thousands and thousands and thousands. The situation was very, very tense throughout the country.
And then of course the AWB attacks. An armoured car crashing through the window, trying to disrupt the proceedings at Kempton Park, where the negotiations were taking place. Much more serious though than the AWB was the fact that Constand Viljoen and people who saw the world the way he did were still in command of the South African Defence Force. They had the guns. They had information. They had people placed all over the country. And they could have gone in for some kind of a coup that could have destroyed everything.
Another crisis was the assassination of Chris Hani. The only time during this whole period where I felt truly afraid that everything might dissolve was after Chris was killed. He was the general secretary of the Community Party. He’d been a commander of MK. Chris had also been my personal friend. We'd been in the underground together in Cape Town, I'd helped him to escape. His family had stayed with me in Maputo. And now he’d been murdered. It was a Sunday morning, Easter weekend. He’d given his security guards time off. He gets home and kwa, kwa, kwa… shots in his head. He’s dead. He's dead. It was a terrible, terrible moment for South Africa.
The rage was immense. When we went up to his funeral, we were in buses and young Africans were banging the buses, banging the buses. There was a sense of fury. The objective of the assassination could have been achieved if there’d been a racialised response. And we walked past his body, and I saw Chris, my friend Chris. And the bullet wounds had been stitched up. And there was singing and singing. It was very intense, very emotional.
Chris was very cautious about negotiations in the beginning, very, very cautious. But he definitely came down absolutely firmly on the side of negotiations sometime afterwards. And I think what shocked him was the fighting that was happening in what was called the East Rand. This was between the young lions of the ANC and AZAPO youth. And they were killing each other. And he investigated and he came away and he said no, too much bloodletting, we have to let the peace negotiations go forward.
And in a sense the killers, the assassins were testing the capacity of South Africa to stand back from catastrophe. And the willingness of the government to say Mandela is the only person who can save the country. In a sense he became president of South Africa on that day because he spoke to the whole nation when he went on television and he spoke so calmly, so profoundly. And it was clear he was the only person who could speak in a way that reached everybody. And critical to the non-eruption of violence in response to the killing of Chris, was fixing a date for the elections. There was another way forward – through the elections, through democracy, through the vote. If we hadn’t had a date for the elections, I think our country would have erupted.
It was an exceptionally painful period. And was it ten days later? Oliver Tambo died. So, it was like a funeral upon funeral. Two magnificent leaders passing in a short period of time. Huge gathering at Orlando Stadium. It was heavy. The crowd was there. The only speaker who roused anybody was the people’s poet, Mzwakhe Mbuli, ‘Oliver Reginald Tambo! O! R! T! Organise! Resist! Take over!’ And we all jumped up. ‘Organise! Resist! Take over!’ But it wasn’t takeover. It was create a country for everybody.
Eventually, 1993 we sign, seal and deliver the Interim Constitution. And we’ve got it; we’re going to have elections, fantastic! But what about the IFP? The Inkatha Freedom Party, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, based in KwaZulu Natal, very strongly identified with the kind of Zulu nationalism, had walked out, very early on in the negotiations, when it became clear that they didn’t have a veto. They walked out. They’re boycotting. They’re not a party to the negotiations. They are threatening to undermine in KZN – KwaZulu Natal. And we want them in! We want them to be part of the nation, part of the project. And eventually, very, very, very late in the day, an agreement is reached to bring about some last-minute changes. The IFP is joining in the elections, hooray!
In South Africa this wasn’t just another election, this was an amazing event. It was miraculous. And it worked. Democracy works. People lined up long, long queues, sometimes standing for hours. One elderly African man was brought in a wheelbarrow, he couldn’t walk. People in their nineties said, ‘Before I die, I want to vote.’ In my own case, actually, the voting was a huge anti-climax. I go to Camps Bay to vote. And I’m standing in a line. And this is going to be the hugest moment in my whole life. And I sign my cross. And I see all these white people signing their crosses and I’m thinking, what’s going on here?! Their vote counts for the same as my vote? They did nothing! They supported apartheid – their vote is equal to mine?! It was a very weird kind of a feeling. But also one of exhaustion. It wasn’t one of exhilaration. But the exhilaration was the knowledge that the elections were happening. And that was hugely participatory.
And the fact that it was so peaceful and that it was well organised, and that democracy proved to be the basic answer to all the divisions in South Africa had an enormous impact. And all the whites who’d bought canned food because they were in panic felt they didn’t have to rely on canned food anymore. There was like a huge sigh of relief from all those who’d been frightened. And a sense of joy from all of those who’d felt we are becoming human beings for the first time in our country. Oliver Tambo’s wife Adelaide said when she gave her maiden speech in Parliament, ‘My one regret standing up and speaking today is that Oliver Tambo could not achieve his lifetime’s ambition to vote as an equal in a democratic South Africa.’
