A Fork in the Road Page 48

  From then on there was a rough ride to freedom. Well after negotiations had begun to take the country to a new dispensation, South Africa staggered under waves of violence, particularly fomented by the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party in campaigns that largely had their origin in the province of Natal, but spreading to the Witwatersrand and elsewhere. The worst massacre took place at Boipathong, where there was strong evidence that the IFP had the full support of the police. The most obscene moment came when immediately after this outburst, de Klerk visited Boipathong escorted by the very police believed to have been at the centre of the massacre. Not long afterwards, when the charismatic communist leader Chris Hani was gunned down in the driveway of his own home by right-wing activists and it seemed as if South Africa was going up in flames, de Klerk remained conspicuously invisible, while key figures of the ANC – notably Mandela and Tokyo Sexwale – took charge of the situation and displayed the clear vision and guidance one would expect of leaders.

  When at Hani’s funeral a white dove released as a symbol of hope in the cemetery, flew down into the grave, it really seemed like the worst possible omen for the future. But at the last moment a soldier of the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe – Spear of the Nation – in a gesture of both real and symbolic significance, clambered into the open grave to salvage the bewildered white dove and set it free. And the day, which could so easily have become mired in tragedy, soared above its dire possibilities and turned into an affirmation of hope. It demonstrated that, just as humanity had succeeded in triumphing over Auschwitz, or the murder of Gandhi, or that of Martin Luther King, we could also emerge from the shadow of apartheid and the death of Chris Hani. In a real moment of choice the country rejected the violent option and turned once again towards negotiation and peace. Which was, in retrospect, only fitting as a tribute to Hani, the committed soldier who always carried Shakespeare in his pocket.

  There was still a long way to go, as the negotiations of CODESA, the Conference for a Democratic South Africa, stumbled from one hurdle to the next – including an invasion by 4x4 vehicles driven by members of the right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the AWB, of the International Trade Centre where the negotiations were taking place; a massacre of peaceful protesters by the police of the absurd little homeland of Ciskei; an attempt by the AWB to take over the bantustan of Boputhatswana; disgraceful manoeuvring by de Klerk to wreck the negotiations behind the scenes, which forced even the dignified and unflappable Mandela to lose his cool and fulminate against ‘the leader of a disgraced, illegitimate regime’.

  More than once it seemed as if everything would sink into despondency and despair and conflagrations of unmanageable violence. Even after a date for the first democratic elections in the country had finally been announced, it was difficult to believe that such a day would ever arrive. Until the last moment – the morning of 27 April, 1994, the very day of the elections – there were disquieting reports of violence in many parts of the country. But then, almost miraculously, it stopped. The day itself unfolded in unbelievable peace and quiet.

  Over the previous month I had been in Montpellier in the south of France as a visiting professor, returning on the very eve of election day, just in time to vote. I have already written about that remarkable day; but it was such a watershed event, in my life and in the country’s history, that I have to return to it here.

  At eleven o’clock I go to the nearest poll station with Attwell Jongibandla Bontsa, who tends my garden once a week and who has chosen to wear a very natty outfit for this day, even though it is raining cats and dogs – to him, as a Xhosa, it is a very auspicious sign; to me less so. This is a unique experience for him: in his fifty years, this will be the first time he has ever voted. I have not voted all that many times either, but of course I’d always had the choice. Huddled closely together under a large black umbrella, the two of us set out for the sports centre where a long queue is already snaking along the main road; just before our arrival a few busloads of voters turned up from the black townships, to relieve the congestion in the voting stations there – so it is obvious that we are in for a long day. Fortunately a few enterprising individuals turn up with stacks of black rubbish bags that can be used as raincoats, and soon what seems to be a funeral procession is formed between the voting station and the freeway half a kilometre further on. But there is nothing funereal about the gathering. It is one of the happiest events I have ever experienced.

  There are brief let-ups in the rain, but the earth is soggy, everybody is bedraggled and spattered with mud; yet there is an unrestrained exuberance in the crowd: we are representative of the whole rainbow of South Africa, all shades from shiny boot-polish black via various browns and ochres and beiges to the many shades of pale that pass for white; in the common predicament of bad weather and the shared experience of waiting through a seemingly interminable day, I remind myself that in Spanish the word for waiting also means hoping. Pools of conversation along the ever-growing line spill into each other to form one moving river of talk – bantering, encouraging, teasing, laughing, speculating, in Xhosa and English and Afrikaans and Sotho. Businessmen and street-sweepers, academics and domestics, society ladies and chars, the affluent and the jobless, all mingle easily, even exuberantly. From the badges some people are wearing, and the posters and flags on the minibuses that arrive with more and more people, it is clear that most of the nineteen parties contesting the election are also represented among us: yet no one, as far as I can make out, speaks a word of party politics. Instead, we talk about our lives, our jobs, our families, about the long wait. And the tone is mostly light-hearted, easy-going, with laughter constantly hovering just below the surface.

  At one o’clock somebody arrives with coffee for a couple waiting behind Attwell and me; like the biblical loaves and fishes the two mugs multiply to be shared by seven, eight, ten, a dozen people; the last drops of sugar at the bottom are noisily slurped up by a cherubic black baby waiting on his mother’s lap in a minibus.

  There are many people with babies or small children: not a very wise idea, I think in the beginning – but as the day wears on I start wondering whether they were not more prescient than us. For by the time we reach the booth most of these children may well be old enough to vote.

  More Samaritans appear with buns and sandwiches and fruit and soft drinks to dish out. And still there is no sign of the queue shortening. At one stage we are stuck in the same mudpool for an hour and a half; no one knows what has caused it, yet no one complains. There are no toilet facilities, so from time to time people drop out of the line and cross the broad street to a water tower which offers some protection on the far side.

  At irregular intervals Attwell takes out his alarm clock to check the time. ‘I think we shall still be here at three,’ he confidently announces at one stage. It is the time he usually knocks off from work. Usually he starts getting fidgety about an hour before then; but today he seems unperturbed by the prospect. We have a long talk as we wait. About the twenty years or so he has been working in Cape Town. About the small plot he has in Transkei, and his dream of going back – ‘as soon as I have enough money’ – to start cultivating it. Unfortunately, his earnings as a gardener just about cover the expenses of staying here, and all he can manage is a brief annual or biannual visit to his family. Still, that has not dampened his spirits, and today there is a new buoyancy in his attitude, as if the events in the country have enhanced his personal chances of a happy future.

  Two o’clock. Half-past. Three o’clock. Half-past. Four o’clock. There is a new delivery of refreshments. This time there is enough for twenty or thirty members of the crowd. Black and white throng around the woman who has brought the food. ‘Thank you, Mama. Thank you, Mama!’ they call out after her.

  Half-past. We are now at the periphery of the sports complex.

  Occasionally the conversations falter and subside; people are really getting exhausted. But what the hell. Every inch one shuffles along is a step c
loser to consummation. Here I’ve been waiting for five hours. Some of these people, I remind myself once again, have been waiting for thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years. The country has been waiting for centuries.

  Five o’clock. We are very close now. And each face emerging from those big doors ahead carries the radiant message of fulfilment, of a joy too great to express in words. New ripples of cheerfulness move through the crowd. We have all become members of one extended family. Black, brown, white: in the course of this one day a quiet miracle has been taking place. Only a week ago some white people in the country have begun to barricade themselves in their homes, expecting a wave of violence to swamp them today. What is happening here is the opposite. We are discovering, through the sharing of this experience, that we are all South Africans. It is as simple and as momentous as that. Tomorrow most of us will return to our separate existences. In the commotion of the coming days, months, years, much of this day may fade. But one thing we cannot, ever, forget: the knowledge of having been here together, black and white, the awareness of a life, a country, a humanity we share. By achieving what has seemed impossible, we have caught a glimpse of the possible.

  Half-past five. Attwell and I have reached the threshold. Briefly, we look at each other. We put our hands on each other’s shoulders. Then we go in, each towards his own voting booth, but sharing a small precious moment of history.

  It takes only a minute. We return from the cubicles, Jongibandla Bontsa and I. It is over. But in so many ways it is just the beginning.

  A few days later there was another momentous occasion when Mandela was sworn in as president in front of the Union Buildings, the stately crescent of the Herbert Baker edifice in Pretoria which had served as the seat of the executive wing of government ever since 1910. In front of the diplomatic corps and dignitaries from all over the world, the transition from the Old South Africa to the New was confirmed.

  FW looked grim, his face like a skull on a Jolly Roger. His wife, Marike, never a warm or welcoming person and reputed still to be firmly entrenched in the mindset of apartheid, observed the events as if they all formed part of a funeral. And for people like her, of course, it was nothing less.

  Shortly before the inauguration a number of artists were invited by Mandela’s office to attend the ceremony and perform at the celebrations following it. These included a handful of writers – among them Nadine Gordimer, Antjie Krog, the poets Adam Small and Willie Kgositsile, the musician Johnny Clegg, and others. This was probably the first time writers were involved in such a celebration in South Africa. Under the previous regime, even at the inauguration of the Afrikaans Language Monument in the seventies, writers were studiously kept out of the way. Not that many of us would have been prepared to be seen in such company anyway. Now it was made clear that in the New South Africa there would officially be a place for us. Although it was obvious from the reaction of the vast audience that covered the sloping lawns of the Union Buildings that they were more tuned in to pop music than to literature, but at least our presence was acknowledged. Without ever discussing it between us, Nadine read the prophetic passage from A Sport of Nature in which an event from the future is depicted – the investiture of the first black president of an African country – while I read, from An Act of Terror, my own version of exactly the same event, now placed overtly in the New South Africa. Fact was indeed beginning to take over from fiction.

  During the inauguration ceremony we were seated close to the podium with special guests from around the world: Fidel Castro was there, Father Trevor Huddleston, the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac … My seat had been allocated somewhat to the right of the podium, in a position from where I would be able to see much of the stage, but not Mandela. But as the invited artists were shown to their places before anybody else, I took advantage of this and stealthily began to shift across to the centre, one seat at a time. When the diplomats arrived, I was prepared to beat a retreat, but as it happened I landed in the Hungarian delegation and they generously made room for me, affording me a prime position from where all the main role-players were fully visible and not a moment of the unfolding of this particular bit of history was allowed to pass me by.

  After the momentous events that marked our transition to democracy, including also the first session of the new parliament, which I could not attend, thereby missing Mandela’s reading of Ingrid’s poem ‘The Child’, I was happy to fade into the background. At long last it was possible to focus only on my work: above all on my own writing, and on what remained of my career of teaching at UCT, focused more and more on students of creative writing.

  There was only one occasion on which I agreed to get involved in the official process of transition, and that came when my good friend Kader Asmal asked me to compose a draft for the closing section of the new interim constitution, the ‘reconciliation clause’. This I did, and it was indeed gratifying to see a final version of it incorporated in that document. It was, Kader told me later, the first time the term ubuntu was used in an official document. This was the clause which determined the parameters for the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To my regret, the clause was dropped from the definitive new constitution – mainly, I learned from ‘informed sources’, because of objections by F. W. de Klerk.

  In its final form, the clause in the interim constitution reads as follows:

  This Constitution provides a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, and a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence and development opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex. The pursuit of national unity, the well-being of all South African citizens and peace require reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society.

  The adoption of this Constitution lays the secure foundation for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge.

  These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.

  Many events during our transition to democracy provided a context for what we experienced then, or could hope to experience in the near future. Some of these were very personal; and some even happened far away from South Africa. One of the most memorable involved a visit to the Caribbean island of Martinique, to which I’d been invited by a man from modern legend, Aimé Césaire.

  It came at a time, in 2004, when I’d just planned a trip to two other islands in the region, the small paradise of Guadeloupe, and the tiny pimple of Carriacou, where H and I, temporarily reunited after decades of separate lives, spent a few blissful days with my son Danie.

  For me, Martinique had first been evoked in a time beyond time by Mireille from the rue Saint-Denis in Paris, Mireille of the smooth amber-and-honey body and the flowing black hair and the dark-brown eyes flecked with gold and the musical voice, in which she told me about her family and her girlhood in a distant world of volcanoes and fairies and songs, which now, at last, became a geographical reality with its mountains and green valleys and its memory and deep scars of volcanic eruptions, marketplaces strung with festoons of brightly coloured drapes, palaces still startled by the haunting images of imperial, Napoleonic splendour, and in the heart of a palatial building, the tiny old man with the gleaming black shoes, Aimé Césaire, surrounded by chantings from his poetry.

  It was of course Césaire who, with Senghor, introduced the world to négritude, that heady wave of black self-awareness that swept across the globe in the second half of the last century: the movement was largely misunderstood in the Third World, which came to view it as a sentimental philosophy of Uncle Toms appropriating the valu
es of Western Europe in order to enhance their own status as black artists; equally misunderstood in the West that turned it into the very opposite, an early manifestation of Black Power as it expressed itself through a range of writers and activists ranging from the Black Panthers to Steve Biko. Behind all the hype, négritude boiled down to a space that offered the black artist a source of self-assurance and pride as an antidote to what had become known as ‘colonial cringe’. Today it is difficult to appreciate just how much négritude contributed to changing our perception of the value of the individual in the years surrounding the Second World War: that is, no longer to base your definition of who and what you are on somebody else’s perception of you; to see yourself as standing in the centre of your own world, and no longer on the periphery of somebody else’s. A discovery as momentous, psychologically and philosophically, as Galileo’s statement about the earth and the sun.

  The most famous exponent of this philosophy was Senghor, and once he became president of Senegal, his position added weight to his poetic beliefs. After the ban on Looking on Darkness he invited me to Senegal, but it was not possible to accept at the time. When the new invitation came in 2004 to meet his great friend and colleague Aimé Césaire, I was resolved not to let another opportunity slip past. In a way it had become a personal appointment with history.

  Hence our meeting in Martinique, late in April, when after the dry months in the Caribbean the weather was turning inclement. I was invited to visit him in his palace. In a manner of speaking. Because actually it is no more than the city hall of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, where Césaire had by then been installed as president in all but name. In fact he was mayor, but in prestige and dignity he was the equal of any head of state. He had been mayor for fifty-six years, officially retiring at eighty. But only officially, because de facto he simply continued as before (in 2004 he was ninety-one): going to the office every morning to perform his duties in the imposing old mairie with its columns and decorated ceilings and stained-glass windows, surrounded by a contingent of devoted women.