Kameraad Mhambi

Now Minister Nel might ask why – if according to my own version of the events – there were many involved in setting up the arms deal, corrupting it and white washing it – why you are the person I pick on.

Kameraad Mhambi and friends celebrating Freedom day April 1995 at the Union buildings. The year before we were there at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.

Well the answer is perhaps somewhat banal.

It was simply because you are the only person in this whole sordid affair I knew personally from my own young activist days. But not only that.

We in South Africa do not have a constituency system like some other democracies. We don’t vote for our own MP. But to me, you were the closest person to approximating me – representing me – in parliament.

Like you I come from a family that are proud Afrikaners.

My dad always regarded himself as a verligte Nasionalis. So did I at school. Always defending Pik Botha and the more liberal of the party against the right and the Conservatives was I at school.

To me it made complete sense. I mean were we not doing to black South Africans what the British did to us?

At the University of Pretoria circa 1990 there were not many left leaning Afrikaans students. And like you we were called traitors. But there was a core of us at Die Perdeby, the student newspaper. A paper I joined immediately.

It was at one of the Die Perdeby parties one night – in the flat of Hanlie Booyens that I met you. You came in late, surrounded by a few other important, exotic, and cool looking people. And somebody whispered to me, that’s Andries Nel, he is senior in the ANC. I was a bit in awe.

Throughout my student years at Die Perdeby we campaigned for a fully fledged democracy. We were often called traitors but we were filled with a romantic righteousness.

I ended up voting for the ANC in that first election, after helping to run one of the polling stations just outside Hammanskraal. I felt so emotional when Mandela was elected.

I never got to know you well but I was proud and felt vindicated when I heard you had been made an MP. The ANC was a party for all of us. Afrikaners as well.

But soon the ANC started to disappoint.

The Denis Davis incident – where a white anti-apartheid stalwart was rounded on for criticizing a black apartheid leader left a bad taste in the mouth. But for the most part when things started to go pear shaped within the ANC and government I tried to ignore it.

It was difficult when Ken Saro Wiwa was murdered. What was going on with our foreign policy? The goings on at the SABC had me worried.

All the time I thought, kalmeer. The ANC has people like Kader Asmal (an occasional lecturer of mine at Tukkies and a friend of Bono nogal), it had UDF democrats like Trevor Manual, and it had Nelson Mandela. Things just won’t get out of hand.

moedverloor, originally uploaded by Christo Doherty.

I also knew they had rank and file good members – like you. Political expediency will only go so far. Its normal in politics to push at the boundries of ethics now and again. Some lines – those that really matter – will never be crossed.

But the betrayals crept onwards. Over many lesser lines they marched. And then some big ones. Inequality did not fall, it started to go up! Aids became a national tragedy.

All who dared speak out were silenced. Max du Preez, one of my heros at the time – for example – was chased all the way to his farm.

Increasingly so the gloom spread. The frequency of abuse of the principles we had stood for became so intense that some of my friends (who you know) stopped reading the papers (except for the Business Day). Reports of normal daily life in South Africa being just to damn depressing.

But one could not escape. From another friend from our Tukkies days, working at Lawyers for Human Rights we heard of the killings of foreigners. The press did not even cover that.

And then Mbeki came to power. And it was as if a wet ideological blanket was thrown over the flame of our democracy. Smothering all open debate, the president was sprouting deadly nonsense about the causes of Aids.

I became angry. Bitter even. Was this why we gave up on the dream of an Afrikaner republic? I was confused. Where was Kader Asmal? Where was Mandela? Where were people like you?!

Related deployments:

1. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 3)
2. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 1)
3. Kameraad Mhambi gets some press