EXTRACT | A day of turmoil as democracy struggled to be born

FNB Stadium also served as a venue for political rallies and events, such as the homecoming celebration of Soweto’s most famous resident, Nelson Mandela. Shortly after his release in February 1990, he’d addressed a capacity crowd, raucous in their jubilation.

“Today, my return to Soweto fills my heart with joy,” he’d said. “At the same time, I also return with a deep sense of sadness.” With his love of schooling, it was no surprise that he’d singled out the crisis in South Africa’s unequal education system as one of the causes of his sadness.

“Apartheid education is inferior and a crime against humanity,” he’d said. “Education is an area that needs attention. That means the attention of all our people — students, parents, teachers, workers and all other organised sectors of our community.” His words had resonated, helping ignite my own mission for change. 

Now Mandela would be addressing the stadium again, saluting a fallen comrade and calling for strength and resolve on the journey ahead. 

The mood of the nation was tense. A high-ranking member of South Africa’s white supremacist Conservative Party, Clive Derby Lewis, had been arrested for his role in planning the assassination. Riots had broken out in several cities. The multiparty negotiation talks had stalled. 

Monday dawned and I set out early to brave the traffic. Although I’ve never been a political party member, I positioned an ANC poster inside my Audi in the hope of easing the way. As advised, I had the faxed speaker’s invitation to prove my bona fides when I got to the stadium. I knew my two-minute speech by heart, but I had a copy in my jacket pocket just in case. I was wearing a suit with a clip-on tie, having not yet mastered the elusive art of tying a necktie. 

But first, I had to stop in Rosebank to pick up a passenger. It was 6.30am. Dr Dzingai Mutumbuka was waiting in the hotel lobby, bright-eyed and business-suited. He looked like he had never worn a clip-on tie in his life. He was a burly, bearded man with an easy laugh and a deep voice that commanded attention.

I’d come to think of him as a schoolmaster, a mentor blessed with a wealth of wisdom that he was only too happy to share. “James, you are greedy for learning,” he’d once told me. It was not the kind of feedback I used to get on my school reports. 

In his home country of Zimbabwe, he had served as minister of education & culture in Robert Mugabe’s post-independence cabinet. His hunger for learning had led him from a rural childhood to a doctorate in physical chemistry from Sussex University, which he’d attended on a scholarship. He’d taught at the University of Dublin and the University of Zambia, before the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe had drawn him back home. 

After a chance encounter with a group of wounded freedom fighters in Zambia, he’d volunteered to take up arms and fight in the field. Given his qualifications — why would a doctor of physical chemistry want to join the fighters? — he’d been dispatched to Europe to help with propaganda efforts against the white minority regime of prime minister Ian Smith. 

Dzingai later spent five years in Mozambique, where he ran a system of education for over 12,000 Zimbabwean children. Now he was working for the World Bank as a senior education specialist, deploying his political and academic expertise in a new struggle: to build better, more equitable education systems in Africa, including South Africa.

I’d got to know Dzingai well during his short tenure in the country. I’d introduced him to Walter Sisulu and other leading figures in the ANC, the private sector and the National Party, which was still running the country in the prelude to constitutional negotiations and the first democratic elections. 

Dzingai was a born diplomat with a mischievous sense of humour. I discovered this when I accompanied him to a meeting, set up on his request, at the department of education & training in Pretoria. It was a government institution of the old school, overseeing education for whites only in the last-gasp days of apartheid. The unsmiling officials around the table were all white too. 

Dzingai chose his place at the head of the table. He was the odd man out. He looked around the room, sat back and proclaimed in his booming baritone, “Ek is ’n regte Afrikaner!” I am a genuine Afrikaner! The officials shook with laughter. 

Dzingai was used to being the odd one out. He’d been the only black student in his B.Sc class at what was then the University of Rhodesia. His brilliance in geology and chemistry had led to a job offer from Anglo American. He’d worked in a laboratory, assaying the mineral content of gold, nickel, platinum and chromium. Then, a group of white artisans complained to the chief chemist when they saw Dzingai eating in the communal dining room, and he was forced to quit after just two weeks. He took a train home, with three months’ salary in his pocket. 

With his career as a scientist derailed by the colour of his skin, Dzingai followed a different track. It led him to teaching and resistance. 

In the development field, he retained his scientific curiosity, eager to absorb insights, knowledge and information. He asked a lot of questions and voiced a lot of opinions. But as we turned off the freeway to Soweto, Dzingai was uncharacteristically silent. 

The road to FNB stadium was thronged with foot soldiers, chanting, singing, toyi-toyiing, and brandishing posters and portraits of Hani. “Don’t worry,” I assured Dzingai as we edged forward. “We’ll be fine.” He didn’t look convinced. For my benefit, he translated the singing and chanting: “Give me my machine gun, so I can go and kill a boer.” As a “regte Afrikaner”, by his own admission, Dzingai knew that a boer, in this context, wasn’t just an Afrikaans farmer.

It could just as easily have referred to me as a white beneficiary of the apartheid system. But as we entered the stadium, I felt safe, welcomed and proud to be present

It could just as easily have referred to me as a white beneficiary of the apartheid system. But as we entered the stadium, I felt safe, welcomed and proud to be present at an event of this magnitude. 

We worked our way through the crowd, and up to the stadium’s presidential suite. I looked down as Mandela took the podium. “Amandla!” he shouted, raising his fist. “Awethu!” came the response. He looked around, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. He shook his fist again. “Amandla!” This time, the response was a roar. “Now I can hear you,” said Mandela.

 Just behind him sat Sisulu, his trusted friend, mentor, confidant and comrade. They had been through so much together, so much sadness, striving and struggle. Now, in their white-haired days, on the brink of seeing the society they had fought so hard to build, here they were, gathering to bury a man who might one day have taken their place. Hani’s coffin was on the edge of the pitch, garlanded by floral tributes, with his camouflaged peak cap resting on top. 

Earlier, a brass band had played Abide With Me, the sun gleaming on the instruments. In perfect lockstep, a squad of soldiers from uMkhonto we Sizwe had slow-marched past the coffin, saluting with their white-gloved hands. I’d felt a surge of pride to see such discipline, and a sharp pang at the loss of so many lives in a conflict that was now inching towards peace. 

In his eulogy, Mandela spoke of a place called Sabalele in the Cofimvaba district of the Eastern Cape. “It is a place well known to me,” he said, “not for its beauty, but for its harshness. No running water. No electricity. No decent housing. Inadequate health care. Little formal education.” It sounded like so many other small places in South Africa, names on the map, far from the main roads, far from the hope and promise of a better life. “Yet this small, virtually unknown village produced Chris Hani, whose life shook the whole country and impacted on the world’s stage.”

Hani had loved life, said Mandela, and he’d lived it to the full. “But he loved freedom more.” Then his sorrow turned to anger, and his voice hardened. The assassination had not been an “aberration”; it was consistent with the patterns of the past, the latest in a long line of unsolved assassinations of activists and opponents of apartheid. “That is why, although millions of people have been outraged at the murder of Chris Hani, few were really surprised.” 

It was time, Mandela said, to end white minority rule. “We want to build a nation free from hunger, disease and poverty, free from ignorance, homelessness and humiliation, a country in which there is peace, security and jobs. We want an election date now. We want to know when we will have a government of our choice, that follows a programme that is in the interests of all the people of this country.” (Mandela’s words would galvanise the stalled negotiation process, and the election date would be set for just over a year away.) 

After Mandela’s address, the agenda began lagging and the crowd grew restless. More than 75,000 people were in the stadium, and tens of thousands more outside. More than once, Cyril Ramaphosa, future president of South Africa, now acting as master of ceremonies, called for calm, patience and the respect worthy of a dignified farewell. 

I went over my speech in my head. “Let us pray and hope that in the near future all South Africans, black and white, will join hand in hand —”

Crack! Crack! Crack! 

I ducked instinctively and looked around to see where the gunshots had come from. The stands erupted with a thunderous stamping of feet. It felt like an earthquake. “Comrades, comrades!” shouted the master of ceremonies. He warned that the stadium was in danger of collapsing. There were more gunshots, and for the first time I felt nervous and fearful. The gunshots had come from outside the stadium, in a clash between protesters and the police. The pitch was cleared to make way for medics and the wounded. 

With the day’s programme cut short, the stadium quietened and emptied slowly. It would be almost three hours before Dzingai and I made our way into the throng. 

I looked at the pitch and said the final words of my speech out loud, knowing they would be heard only by myself, but hoping that, somehow, they would find their way into the swirling winds of history. “Hamba kahle, Chris.” Go well on your journey. 

This is an edited extract from It Always Seems Impossible: My fight to build and save Education Africa by James Urdang, published by Bookstorm (R360).