Conversations with Myself (29 page)

South African economy is in a parlous state.

23. FROM A NOTEBOOK,
C
.1993

In the period we are all going into we have to consider moving away from our past – must change our approach.

In such a situation all people become concerned about the future. What’s going to happen to me, wife and chldn [children]. Every country needs a police force which protects its, their values.

We… who have been struggling have to change.

We come from an environment which saw police force as hostile. You come from a background where Govt [goverment] used you to defend interests of ruling party. No doubt many of you joined force to serve State and people. But ruling party made itself synonymous with that state.

Now moving to a state where all of us want to be part of state – police force can now protect people.

Best thing is that those who were in police force and outside police force do it together.

There is no doubt that ANC [African National Congress] is going to be major party in Govt. We want to avoid mistake of the past, we do not want police to be defenders of the ANC. That does not mean that you are neutral to police as individuals.

Police force are neutral to party politics, but defenders of democracy.

Address their concrete concerns.

Obviously there are going to be changes. The experience of running a p. [police] force exists in this current phase.

Ideally all changes must include members of police force and those not members. Whatever changes are done are done with their involvement.

This is approach we are taking I. G. of N [Interim Government of National] – Unity – champion.

Appealing to them to become part of that process of change – in particular change of police force. That way they will make sure that ANC addresses their concerns.

24. FROM THE UNPUBLISHED SEQUEL TO HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

In 1959 [Chris] Hani had enrolled at Fort Hare University and attracted the attention of Govan Mbeki. Govan played a formative role in Hani’s development. It was here that Hani encountered Marxist ideas and joined the already illegal and underground South African Communist Party. He always emphasized that his conversion to Marxism also deepened his nonracial perspective. Hani was a bold and forthright young-man and did not hesitate to criticise even his own organisation when he felt it was failing to give leadership. He recalled that: ‘Those of us in the camps in the Sixties did not have a profound understanding of the problems. Most of us were very young, in our early twenties. We were impatient to get into action. “Don’t tell us there are no routes,” we used to say. “We must be deployed to find routes. That’s what we were trained for.”’

25. FROM A TELEVISED ADDRESS TO THE NATION AFTER CHRIS HANI WAS ASSASSINATED BY JANUSZ WALUŚ ON 10 APRIL 1993
⁸

Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being.

A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster.

A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin.
⁹

The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world. Our grief and anger is tearing us apart.

What has happened is a national tragedy that has touched millions of people, across the political and colour divide.

Our shared grief and legitimate anger will find expression in nationwide commemorations that coincide with the funeral service…

Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for – the freedom of all of us.

Now is the time for our white compatriots, from whom messages of condolence continue to pour in, to reach out with an understanding of the grievous loss to our nation, to join in the memorial services and the funeral commemorations.

Now is the time for the police to act with sensitivity and restraint, to be real community policemen and women who serve the population as a whole. There must be no further loss of life at this tragic time.

This is a watershed moment for all of us.

Our decisions and actions will determine whether we use our pain, our grief and our outrage to move forward to what is the only lasting solution for our country – an elected government of the people, by the people and for the people.

We must not let the men who worship war, and who lust after blood, precipitate actions that will plunge our country into another Angola.

Chris Hani was a soldier. He believed in iron discipline. He carried out instructions to the letter. He practised what he preached.

Any lack of discipline is trampling on the values that Chris Hani stood for. Those who commit such acts serve only the interests of the assassins, and desecrate his memory.

When we, as one people, act together decisively, with discipline and determination, nothing can stop us.

Let us honour this soldier for peace in a fitting manner. Let us rededicate ourselves to bringing about the democracy he fought for all his life: democracy that will bring real, tangible changes in the lives of the working people, the poor, the jobless, the landless.

26. FROM THE UNPUBLISHED SEQUEL TO HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Hani put the last years of his life [into] tirelessly addressing meetings throughout the length and breadth of South Africa: village gatherings, shop stewards councils and street committees. He [lent] all his authority and military prestige to defend[ing] negotiations, often speaking patiently to very [sceptical] youths, or committees suffering the brunt of Third Force violence…Clive Derby-Lewis admitted that they had hoped to derail negotiations by unleashing a wave of race hatred and civil war. It is a tribute to the maturity of South Africans of all persuasions, and it is a tribute to the memory of Hani, that his death, tragically but factually, finally brought focus and urgency to our negotiated settlement.

27. FROM A NOTEBOOK

14.5.93

1.

Priority is commitment to oppressed.

Will fall or rise depending on our success or failure to address their needs, to accommodate their aspirations.

Specifically we must get them houses and put to an end informal settlements; end unemployment, school crisis, lack of medical facilities.

2.

Fears of minorities about future.

3.

Threat from right-wing not from black surrogates.

28. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

You see, Chris Hani was a hero amongst our people, especially to the youth, and there was anger at his death. We had to do something to channel away that anger, and the only thing we could do was to have demonstrations throughout the country so that the people could find expression for their anger. If we had not done so the right wing and these sinister elements would have succeeded in drawing the country [in]to a racist war and incalculable loss of human lives and bloodshed… But because of the steps that we took we prevented that, and in spite of… isolated incidents of violence, those demonstrations went on very well… We frustrated the objective of the people who killed Hani.

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Mandela notes the address of Graça Machel (who was later to become his third wife) on his personalised notepaper.

29. FROM A NOTEBOOK

I met Graça Machel in Johannesburg on no less than three different occasions. She always was polite, discrete and understanding. But in Maputo, where she was Minister of Education and Culture for 14 years, and where she still remains Member of Parliament in charge of International Affairs, I met a totally different Graça, firm and authoritative even though courteous and charming. I had enormous respect for President Chissano.
¹⁰

30. FROM A NOTEBOOK,
C
.1993

I will leave at 7 am tomorrow for Pieterm[aritzburg] + will return on Sunday evening. Some third force elements, believed to be State Security Service, have in that area, recently killed an alarmingly large number of innocent civilians, including children going to school. The massacre started a day before the start of the peace talks in Johannesburg. We suspect that these elements want our people to continue to slaughter one another [with] the ultimate aim of stopping negotiations. Our investigations show serious discrepancies between the police version of what happened and ours.

31. FROM A NOTEBOOK,
C
.1993

Writing letters to friends used to be one of my favorite hobbies and each letter gave me a lot of pleasure. Pressure of work now makes it impossible for me to engage in this hobby. Apart from typed formal letters from the President’s office, I cannot remember ever writing any message similar to this letter since February 1990.

32. FROM A DRAFT LETTER TO GRAÇA MACHEL

The situation in Angola is causing great concern.

Now on a personal note: Mr Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, has invited me to a health farm in Switzerland for a check-up and treatment presumably for about 7 days; Although I know very little about such health centres, I have agreed to go. You probably know better in this regard than me and I would be happy to get your advice.

Meeting the girls for the first time made me hesitant to discuss certain ideas with them, at least with Olivia. I wanted to find out about her schooling. Being your daughter a lot is expected of her both inside and outside Mozambique. The upgrading [of] high academic qualifications would certainly put her in a better position to serve Mozambique and its people. If she is interested in going to High School or university you and I can then discuss the matter further. It may perhaps be wise not to mention the matter to her until we have exchanged views.

I went back to the office on 8th March and plunged immediately into work with the first engagement being at 7 am and leaving the office at 5 pm. Yesterday
I started at 6.45 am but was back home by 2 pm. We are trying to limit my office work to mornings only.
Today I again started at 6.45 am. Had lunch with Board of Directors of Liberty Life Insurance Company and other leading businessmen and I was back home at 3.45 pm.

When friends go abroad we tend to feel lonely even though we have never actually lived with them. There’s always a conflict between reality and feeling, between the brain and the blood.

33. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

Well, it was clear that something was happening because there was an unacceptably high incidence of violence in which people were killed. And the arrests and convictions, you see, were few and far between, and it was clear that there was connivance on the part of the security forces. Some of the incidents indicated that the police themselves were involved, the police, the army. Because if you went to the townships – talked to the people there, they had no doubt that the police are
highly
instrumental in this… Yesterday I went to the Vaal, to Sebokeng, and then in the course of my speech I said that the police are very much involved…
¹¹
I went to the hospital first and saw the people, the patients there who were shot but escaped death. I saw them, and one of them, a young lady, a young girl, said that she was shot by a white man in a bakkie [pick-up truck], yes… So I say, ‘Well this is the first time I hear of this.’ She says, ‘No, I could see the white man very clearly, and when he shot me.’ And because the press as well as the TV and radio have been saying, ‘Four black men’… and this young lady says, ‘No there was a white man.’

34. FROM A NOTEBOOK

On the dropping of the voting age below 18… it is clear from the explanation given by Cde [Comrade] Cyril [Ramaphosa] yesterday morning that the N.C. [Negotiating Committee] does not endorse my proposal as I thought, and that the organisation as a whole has not accepted that proposal.
¹²

A statement on major policy matters should not be made without being processed and cleared, no matter what the status of a comrade is.

The statement must be an acute embarrassment to the policy making structures of the organisations, and to the membership as a whole…

35. FROM THE UNPUBLISHED SEQUEL TO HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

At meetings of the ANC [African National Congress], I often stressed that I did not want weak comrades or puppets who would swallow anything I said, simply because I was President of the organisation. I called for a healthy relationship in which we could address issues, not as master and servants, but as equals in which each comrade would express his or her views freely and frankly, and without fear of victimization or marginalization.

One of my proposals, for example, which generated a lot of sound and fury, was that we should reduce the voting age to fourteen, a step which had been taken by several countries elsewhere in the world. This was due to the fact that in those countries, the youth of more or less that age were in the forefront of their revolutionary struggles. It was that contribution which induced their victorious governments to reward them by giving them the right to vote. Opposition to my proposal from members of the National Executive Committee was so vehement and overwhelming that I retreated in order. The Sowetan newspaper dramatised the issue in its cartoon column when they showed a baby in napkins voting. It was one of the most graphic manners of ridiculing my idea. I did not have the courage to insist on it again.