Luvo Clifford, 52, is fairly confident that he is standing on the exact same spot on the Grand Parade where he watched, along with the world, Nelson Mandela emerge onto the front balcony of the now iconic City Hall.
It was 34 years ago, the curtain call of an apartheid horror show whose cast was nowhere to be seen. Instead, in the fading light of a February evening in Cape Town, 100,000 people craned their necks, pushed, cheered and screamed in excitement as they tried to catch a glimpse of the future; or at least to be a part of it in that historical moment in 1990.
“I was here, and he was standing right there,” says Clifford of the scene at twilight when Madiba appeared on the balcony with his wife Winnie, and (now president) Cyril Ramaphosa — who was chair of the committee co-ordinating the release of the most famous political prisoner in the world.
On 11 February at twilight, Madiba gave his long-awaited first speech as a free man after leaving Victor Verster Prison just after 4pm that afternoon. SA and the world watched with bated breath and breathless excitement.
“I was still a bergie (homeless person) then. I think I was standing right here where you found me today.”
“But this statue was not here — it was another one, a white guy,” Clifford points a finger at the marble figure shadowing us from up high, and then recoils in surprise upon noticing it is still the white guy, still the British King Edward VII, still standing immobile since 1905 opposite 'The Hall'.
“Oh, I thought it was the statue of Mandela.”
Confusion is not uncommon on the paving stones of history, where a statue is quickly obsolete. A king he might have been in St James Castle, but on the Grand Parade Edward VII is now a concrete stranger in a sea breeze helping the local pigeon's along their way.
The Parade used to be a colonial outpost, the site of Jan van Riebeeck’s original fort; it is now an independent homeland of diversity, of foreign merchandise and slap chips, hemmed in by big business overlords. It used to be a place to punish and trade slaves in bygone days; now the destitute and homeless sleep in plastic hovels on the far side of the road, outside Riebeeck's Castle of Good Hope.
History speeds up as it loops around in thoughtless circles.
Clifford’s journey is also testimony to the uncertainty life brings. Just 19-years-old and newly arrived from the Eastern Cape when Mandela made his grand appearance, he had to muscle his way in to a car parking gig in Sea Point, at one stage losing teeth in a fight with a rival. “It was from a brick but he was actually defeated — I won that place,” says Clifford, forcing a crooked smile.
While Mandela and team wrangled over the interim constitution, Clifford battled his way up the car-parking pecking order, from Sea Point to Green Point and eventually to exacting a toll from other junior parkers.
“Then I came here to the Grand Parade, and that’s when I decided, no man, I need a job. This is not a job.”
So he used his earnings from guarding cars to qualify as a trained security guard, allowing him to land a full-time position. Again he worked his way up the ladder, as a guard in Sea Point and Mouille Point, then as a driver. He now works as an armed escort, and goes home to his wife and children in Langa.
“Today I’m driving my own car. There it is over there. A silver grey Polo. Here are my keys.”
Some may see a parallel between Clifford’s success and Mandela’s unlikely journey to the Grand Parade; but Clifford insists there is no comparison.
“I had to push myself to be where I am today. Nothing has changed. It is still an unjust society.”
Self-made he may be; he insists it had nothing to do with national liberation. The promises Mandela made that February evening, along with all the others that followed across 30 years of democracy, are for Clifford as inconsequential as the windswept garbage pirouetting across the Parade.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that apartheid times were better than this time — people are suffering more.”
“The people eating the money are the people who promised they would do something for us,” fumes Clifford, earning an approving murmur from those within earshot — three other fugitives from the city midday sun, all slouched in the thin slither of shade thrown out by the foreign king.
One of them approaches to share his own recollections: “We waited all morning,” says the former photographer, preferring to stay anonymous.
“They kept saying he is coming, then they said he is no longer coming. Eventually he came out, and his first words were, 'I greet you in the name of peace’. Oooh, everybody went mad, mad, mad. People were crying and dancing.”
But it has been downhill ever since, he adds glumly.
“For goodness sake, this country went down. It’s painful, and it’s all the same all over the show. There is no food. They don’t give you a pension. People still walk to school.”
Dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs is the consensus position on the plinth of the concrete king that no-one knows, but the Grand Parade is more confusing than that.
In a corner near the bus terminal, selling leather bags he makes himself, is a 50-year-old trader from West Africa, who does give his name but requests I don’t use it.
Yes, times are tough, he concurs, at least compared with ten years ago before the cost of living skyrocketed. But Parade life is still a lot better than conditions back home. “Here at least you can make something of your life,” he muses.
The Parade is better understood as a split personality — friendly by day, dangerous at night, explains a chatty security guard watching over a film set.
Things were definitely quieter a few years ago, and these days you need to watch your back after dark. But the right attitude goes a long way when dealing with the bad guys, says the guard, you need to be able to talk things through, he wisely advises.
A city council staff member guards the stairs leading up to the official Mandela statue on the now immortalised Hall balcony. The crowd is gone; as well as the comrades and cameramen, replaced by that air of watchful anticipation common to many public spaces where anything can, and does, happen.
Or did the seismic events here on the eve of democracy send up a miasma of wonder that still filters down on the endless parade, of bin pickers, of parking attendants, waiting here for a reprieve?
The icon stands alone, a silhouette against a skyline of a fist raised aloft, his face a rictus of ten thousand frozen promises.
At least one of them has come true.
Luvo Clifford, pot-bellied and sweating from the exertion of indignation, is off to the office nearbyof the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, with a job-related grievance. He says there’s a good chance he might win.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.