WHAT PRICE RECONCILIATION?  

Reconciliation. This is the word we heard more and more in the run-up to 1994 general elections and even more after those elections. These calls were being made even as Almond Nofomela, notorious Vlakplaas askari, was making startling allegations about the activities of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, most notable of which was the unleashing of Aids infected agents from Vlakplaas onto the shebeens of nearby Mamelodi.

This was a time when violence against black township residents was being systematically orchestrated by the same CCB and unleashed with heart-stopping ferocity. Almost everybody came to know of a neighbour, friend or relative who was a victim of the violence. Although black politicians, who were poised to succeed the apartheid regime, knew who was behind the violence, they miraculously chose to refer to the perpetrators as a “Third Force”. Ostensibly, naming the perpetrators by name was going to derail the Rainbow Train to Reconciliation station.

As the negotiations continued, even as the tide of violence against black communities rose and fell with the timing of the CCB, something that was called a “sunset clause” was added to the two minutes of the negotiations. The clause allowed civil servants who had served in senior positions in the apartheid regime to stay on until the first term of the democratically elected government had run its term, also setting the scene for the government of national unity of the time.

All this had been done in the name of Reconciliation. What it also did was it allowed people who had been part of a very corrupt system to stay on and transfer skills to the newcomers. It is not clear what skills were transferred but soon the new civil service started showing signs of corruption which grew as the years rolled on. The new civil servants, most of whom were not quite as smooth as their tutors, quickly showed signs of high living that raised eyebrows. Also believing that heir time had come, they did very little in trying to cover their tracks. So learning corrupt ways from all time masters was one of the consequences of reconciliation.

One of the civil service units of the dying apartheid regime had been the so-called Regional Management Councils. There has been press speculation about the amounts that they embezzled but this may never be public knowledge because the reconciliation process meant that they would never have to answer to anyone for the moneys they allegedly embezzled. And it also meant the managers of Vlakplaas would never stand trial for using AIDS as a weapon of war. If there is anybody who must face genocide charges for AIDS deaths in this country it is this group.

Along the way came the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The perpetrators of inhumanities against black people would own up for some of the things they did publicly, and commissioners would pronounce them forgiven. But this did not happen until black people would have appeared before the same commission and wept publicly about things that had been done to them or their relatives, all this done in the full glare of television cameras from all over the world. So with a blush and a tear the reconciliation was supposed to have been sealed. Measly sums of R30 000 were touted as amounts that would help clear the tears and unburden the heavy hearts of black families who had wept their pain for the entire world to see.

Besides the fact that the sum proposed conjured memories of the Biblical thirty pieces of silver, the public weeping took a lot of shine from blacks as a people. After all, the world remembered us for the brave and defiant way in which we faced bullets and the hippos armed with stones and with dustbin lids for armor in the 1976 to 1977 uprisings and the intermittent uprisings that started in September 1984 and took three states of emergencies and secret negotiations to bring to an uneasy end. Did the world not have memories of fatally wounded black youths shouting “Amandla” with their fists in the air even as they were going down. Suddenly we were reduced to a people who wept for a mere thirty stena and to induce public hugging and rubbing of backs by professional comforters. So we also lost our dignity and the respect and awe that nations had for us, all in the name of Reconciliation.

The saddest part of our loss has been our hallowed national anthem Nkosi Sikelel’I Afrika. This hymn of Afrika, which many other African countries had adopted or were in the process of adopting as their national anthem, was mutilated. Two verses which carry the prayer essence of the hymn were ripped out and in their place the odious “Die Stem” verse was put in. Some of us who were unfortunate enough to have been forced to read a book called Die Erwe van Onse Vadere, a collection of essays by one C J Langenhoven, as prescribed matric reading text, remember that Die Stem is a poem that was plucked out of that book and turned into an Afrikaner republic anthem. In the outpourings of that book, the author makes it clear that his vadere do not include Makana, Hintsa, Shaka, Dingaan, Moshoeshoe, Sekhukhune, Makhado or Ngungunyane. In the final sentence that says “laat die erwe van ons vadere, die erwe van ons kinders bly”( Let the heritage of our forefathers remain the heritage of our children), it is clear that the heritage of their forefathers includes the land usurped from black people and the slave labour that resulted from it, and that “ons kinders” do not include the descendants of the African Kings named above. Many of us who were participants in the 1976 uprisings, believed the diatribe from Die Erwe added fuel to the fire that was to come in 1976.

It seems like the negotiators of that Codesa deal were just too eager to please and were not sensitive to what a national anthem is supposed to be. A national anthem is supposed to be the carrier of the dreams, hopes and aspirations of a people, and in what way does any part of Die Stem begin to address  the aspirations of black people in this country?

There is a big sense in which we have lost out on Nkosi Sikelel’ I Afrika, because all those African countries who had adopted Nkosi, have quietly dropped it and fashioned other national anthems. How do you show respect for the heritage whose direct beneficiaries have no pride in? We should not then wonder when our African brothers consider us half-wits and proceed to treat us that way.

All these things have added up to create a black man who has no anchor, and we should not be surprised to see a reversion to the non-white character that predates the dawn of black consciousness. All of us may have noticed black petrol attendants, bar-tenders, waiters and even tellers who fall over themselves to attend white patrons who arrive long after a long queue of black clients had formed. After all in the new South Africa “ Dumedisa Basa” is the motive force that drives the Reconciliation merry-go-around. But this crowd is beaten hands down by a generation of non-whites which has grown up to call their fathers “garden boys” and their mothers “kitchen girls”, and do it in joyous song for that matter.

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