spicedoutcalvincoolidge: May 2011

The following essay is "reprinted" here with the permission of its author, Edwin Smith. Edwin is the director of the University of Pretoria-Mamelodi Campus where I work. He is a brilliant intellectual, a committed campaigner for his community, and a wonderful mentor figure to have here. He lived in exile for many years (due to his involvement in anti-Apartheid politics at a young age), but returned home to work in shaping the new South Africa. This essay explores the complex relationship between the present and past, between memory and reality. It also concerns itself with the transitional moment in current South Africa, and the, at times, uncertain direction the country is heading. Moreover, it captures the spirit of South African resilience far more eloquently than I ever could! Please read it if you have the time.

Repatriating legacies and building communities through honouring memories

On Saturday, 26 March 2011 the community launched the Moss Morudu Stanza Bopape Foundation at the Mamelodi West Community Hall in Mamelodi. The event was slated to last all of four hours given its extensive program and sincere attempt to represent all imagined stakeholders in the community legacy project the foundation represented. According to Mr. Mandla Skosana, a member of the Steering Committee become a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation, the foundation was the culmination of 20 months of hard and enduring work, which also benefitted from the support and active participation of the late Dr. Nico Smith, another Mamelodi resident of note. By all accounts, the launch was a community event, albeit laced with a tinge of sadness as it memorialised community activists who lost their lives during the struggle against apartheid, many of whose remains were and possibly will never be found.

While a significant part of the audience were members of the families of those being memorialized, the 300 or so audience also consisted of interested and affected community members, among them the wife of the late Dr. Nico Smith who was treated with the characteristic deference reserved for senior and important members of the community. It was touching to witness how deeply a part of the community this old lady truly was as she was ushered in on the arm of one of the organizers of the event and set in the ranks of her peers in the audience. The gesture, subtle and sublime, is lost only to the deaf and blind.

Almost near the end of the program the event finally managed to mimic a celebration befitting revolutionary heroes. Jabu Masina, one of the Delmas Four treason trialists, who also commanded the unit in which Jabulani Sibanyoni, one of the people being memorialized, served in, reminded the audience that these men were brave men who fought valiantly against the apartheid government and that their supreme sacrifice culminated in the birth of a democratic South Africa. Their lives were not to be mourned but celebrated Masina, himself also a struggle hero who was sentenced to death for his role in the fight against apartheid, commanded the audience. In response to this charge, the program director, Ms. Morudu, encouraged the “comrades” in the audience to bellow a “revolutionary song” in honour of the fallen heroes. A handful of ANC t-shirt clad women managed to sing “Siyaya, noba kubhi” (We’ll proceed, even if it is perilous), which somehow seemed appropriate given the occasion and its intention.

Notwithstanding the sparse decorations and the simple community hall setting with the ineffective ceiling fans churning the heavy and hot air in the hall, the event was a serious and significant attempt at recapturing the memory of community leaders who could very easily slip from social awareness given the seismic changes ushered in by the advent of democracy in South Africa since 1994. Dr. Ivor Jenkins, another noted activist alongside Dr. Nico Smith, reminded the audience of the long road South Africa and Mamelodi have travelled to the launch of the Moss Morudu Stanza Bopape Foundation. Recalling incidents he personally experienced with the community, Jenkins repeated his injunction with, “Do you remember when …”, as he retraced the memory of the horror the Mamelodi community collectively suffered. With heads raised the community nodded in acknowledgment. They did remember. How could they forget; how could anyone forget. Following this harrowing journey down a dark memory, Jenkins then turned to the here and now and painted the current situation to assist the audience appreciate that while all was not well in contemporary South Africa, much was achieved since those dark days under apartheid. To transport the audience to his vision for the future of the country and community, he relied on another noted South African thinker, Prof Jonathan Jansen, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Free State, who recently published his thoughts on his kind of South Africa in the local media (The Times, 9 March 2011). For Jenkins, Jansen’s kind of South Africa captured the dreams of many, and he then read most of the text of Jansen’s thoughts on the kind of South Africa he lives in but is not read about on the front pages of newspapers or seen on primetime television news. Again, the point was acknowledged with the characteristic nodding of the heads in unison.

Sitting inconspicuously in the audience, I attempted to survey the mood and eavesdropped on the hopes, disappointments, misgivings, and anger I imagined issuing around me in subdued tones below the formal proceedings. Looking for the restless shuffling of feet, the listlessly hanged heads, the impatient wringing of hands, I found an audience around me mostly intent on savouring every word and thought shared by those who have come to remember with them. This extraordinary commitment was palpable and only interrupted by the exceptional divergence as at one point, one of the family representatives kept leaving the hall to attend to the incessant phone calls issuing from his pocket while those around him looked upon him with sheer astonishment. I did not know who he was until he approached the stage during the part of the program calling for family representatives to address the audience. He was a family representative who, for all intents and purposes, seemed more preoccupied with matters outside the community hall than the memory the community seemed committed to breathing life into.

Following the report presented by Madeleine Fullard from the National Prosecuting Authority’s Missing Persons Unit, which was augmented by Claudia Bisso, an Argentinian archaeologist or anthropologist, sharing the experiences of her country with people who disappeared as a result of the dictatorships Argentinia suffered over many years, the families of Moss Morudu, Stanza Bopape, Patrick Mahlangu, Oupa Mogale, William Lekhuleni, and Jabulani Sibanyoni took to the stage to share their views and thoughts to the news Fullard delivered about the prospects of the remains and final resting places of their family members. Speaking in a gentle and visibly sincere tone, I did not envy Fullard the task she executed with so much feeling and sensitivity. She was the bearer of not so good news and she was aware of this. However, she had over the years grown close to the families of the missing comrades and a clear bond and trust was visible even to an outsider like myself. The news was received with dignity and patience sourced from a deep well that has kept these families and community proceeding, even if it was perilous. Some were clearly upset and distraught by the news that their loved ones’ remains were never going to be found while others recognized the significance of the community actively remembering and celebrating their family member’s sacrifice and contribution to the birth of a free and democratic South Africa.

Jim Axelrod recently reviewed former New York Times reporter and editor John Darnton’s memoir, Almost a Family in The New York Times of 24 March 2011. Reminiscent of what Axelrod saw as Darnton describe[ing] “the poignant process of examining and debunking the elaborately constructed defenses erected to cushion a boy growing up without a father, a family member shared a letter from Patrick Mahlangu’s son who, like Darnton, had to grow up without his father and through the aid of his mother, imagined his father a large figure. Axelrod correctly notes that “[a]s coping devices go, mythmaking is a bit more sophisticated than vodka or pills, if less conscious. Especially when a son is trying to make sense of a father’s fingerprints on his soul.” With the launch of the foundation at the Mameodi West Community Hall this past Saturday, many of those family members in attendance were possibly suffering this challenge in reclaiming the memory of their loved ones.

Through the day, speakers rose as per the program to make known their feelings and views of the occasion, their grief, gratitude, and anger. Notwithstanding the public gesture, what their relationships were to the martyrs while they were alive, we may possibly never really know; what right they had to insist on retribution or reconciliation can be debated to no end; what was the correct way to proceed to balm the gaping wounds of the memory and loss can be greatly disputed. But it is certain that without a concrete, structured and impassionate quest to honour and preserve the memory of our communities, the void will of necessity be occupied by myth. That there are divergent narratives around those being memorialised, their family representatives and their various roles was made clear when one light-heartedly and dare I say honestly acknowledged his self-serving stance during the height of the political struggle, which, unlike his brother, led him to never being in trouble with the apartheid authorities. “I was a coward,” the brother declared to the audience. And like so much of South Africa, this paradoxical truth nestled comfortably alongside the acknowledgement of the heroic lives of the memorialized and the guilt the survivors carry with them every day they live and enjoy the fruits of their family member’s and community’s sacrifices.

That the family representatives were afforded only three minutes to share their reaction to the news that the remains of their lost loved ones were either found or mostly not found, may seem insensitive and inappropriate given the program commenced almost an hour late while those in attendance were all forced to wait for the very important dignitaries to arrive. When it became clear the dignitaries were not going to arrive, the delay could no longer be justified and the formal program commenced with great dignity and poise. During all this, the community suffered in silence and kept their peace and composure, almost as if they were more than accustomed to the waiting for important people to take their plight seriously. For those in attendance, the truth was that the loss was real and the memory, though fragile, tenuous and contested, was a living and painful reality. The truth was that the community hall was filled to capacity, notwithstanding the absence of the dignitaries and that the audience sat through the entire program, which lasted three hours instead of the planned four. The community remembered its loss and celebrated its achievement at such great expense. In Mamelodi, the people who could not forget, sat patiently and basked in the knowledge they were not alone. Others had joined them to remember and through their collective memory, to help them reconcile themselves with the bitter truth; together they looked to tomorrow with greater hope and enthusiasm.

For the detached observer, such exercises cut both ways. It is important to remember our past in order to understand and appreciate the legacy we have inherited as a result of our particular history and struggle. However, our history is a painful history marked by the sound of gunshots, screaming mothers, tortured children, and public denial of the injustice visited on the black majority of our citizens. To even attempt to plead a special dispensation to those who suffered severely under apartheid is today met with certain rejection from the middleclass in our country who see the wretched of our nation blaming apartheid and its legacy for their current condition as no longer necessary given we, as a country, have had sixteen years of democracy. That I sat in the same hall with mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, family, and community members who lost their sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, their loved ones, who will never return, reminded me of the injustice we inflict on our communities every time we fail to acknowledge the persistent impact and legacy of our past on our present, and consequently underestimate its impact and shaping of our future. While the Mamelodi community showed their resolve never to forget the price they paid for freedom, we, as a country and a nation, do this at our own peril. For many of our people and communities, the hurt, pain, suffering, and loss are real. Only the foolish will ignore this, and ignore this at their own peril.

For many the launch of the Moss Morudu Stanza Bopape Foundation in Mamelodi should present us an opportunity to hold hands with our communities and dare the future Dr. Ivor Jenkins shared with the audience, a South Africa of real people engaged in real deeds to help one another. We must assist our communities regain their sense of being and purpose by building on their enormous reservoirs of strength, resilience, optimism, and enthusiasm while not denying them the opportunity to remember their pain, loss and suffering. All these experiences must guide us in our daily engagements with our work, our colleagues, families, neighbours, and communities if we seek to ensure a better life for all in our country. Tended properly, our memory can fuel our imagination of what is possible for us all and help us deliver the kind of South Africa worthy and deserving of the price our people paid for her birth. In their own humble gesture, the community in Mamelodi is showing this is possible. They dared to remember and are institutionalizing their memory for posterity. These will be their gift to future generations.

As I sat through the launch on Saturday, I scribbled a few rudimentary thoughts in between listening and looking around me. While the below are fragments of a tortured mind, they are sincere attempts at understanding what I experienced. For an outsider like myself, Mamelodi is a community fraught with deep divisions. One of the many features of our new democracy is the jousting for political office, power and control which further fragments the community, making its need to unite in order to claim its day in the sun in the new South Africa even more arduous. While it is apparent Mamelodi cannot compete with communities like Soweto and others in South Africa, it has distinct legacies it can capitalize on to draw interest and attention to itself. However, the tools the struggle made available to communities like Mamelodi seem lost even as I sat in the audience watching the community grapple with the significance and opportunities of the legacy of our struggle. Sadly, I noticed that even the symbolic significance of the fist thrust into the air as a sign of the power of the people seemed lost to many around me. That the significance of pulling together our fingers into a balled fist to enable us to collectively strike a lethal blow to any enemy be it poverty, unemployment, homelessness, disease, and the myriad of social ills running rampant in our communities, is a legacy of our struggle our communities can build on to unite against the challenges we face and engage the opportunities the new dispensation makes available to us, seems to be a major deficiency in many of our attempts to change the reality in our neighbourhoods. In our various manifestations across our land, we are well endowed with great traits. However, memory is contested terrain. The battle to turn our legacies into living memorials for posterity is upon us. Notwithstanding, one thing is certain, we can achieve a great deal if only we dare to remember together and learn from our past.

Thought 1 Thought 2

The song of the bones split my scull Memory is a sword

Into a million fragments, and We grasp with conviction

with desperate fingers If we are to survive the darkness

I gather the bits of my being Enveloping us in broad daylight

Into a fractured whole

With the glint of its blade

The song of the bones gel into a glue It makes visible where we have been

As we weigh and exchange our loss And where we must not return

Yours against mine and mine against yours We know what we have suffered

Seeking to find the greater one among them 150 were hanged in Pretoria Central

And when we do, how do we proceed? and buried in unmarked graves