to utilise their skills in ways that would benefit SA. The task is not easy, given that he is perceived to be a ruthless Randlord, but I hope that by now he is so tired of making money that he will truly focus on the poor, the unemployed, the landless and the huge army of HIV-infected people.
Lest I forget, Ramaphosa had a fair amount of political groupies who swooned over him, obeying his every beck and call. Everyone wanted his attention and while he loved the grovelling, work got done around him. If he stands for president, we might just be in for one of the most exciting dispensations this country has seen. I am sure the country will rally around him despite some minor misgivings.
Business Day August 5 2003
‘He towers above all of us with his humility and intrinsic dignity.’ – Nelson Mandela. Walter Sisulu’s passing, sadly, is the beginning of the end of an era in the African National Congress (ANC).
Described as a postmodern feminist by his daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu, one can comfortably call him the grande dame (I don’t know the male version) of ANC politics. Amina Cachalia called him a selfless, nonmaterialistic comrade, a sentiment echoed by Ahmed Kathrada. George Bizos praised him for his sacrificial service, a model to young people, who would do well to imitate him.
Former president Nelson Mandela movingly talks about how their lives were intertwined for the past 62 years. ‘We shared the joy of living, and the pain. Together we shared ideas, forged common commitments. We walked side by side through danger and tribulation, nursing each other’s bruises, holding each other up when our steps faltered. Together we savoured the taste of freedom. His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone.’
What an epitaph.
Mandela’s pain at losing a bosom pal is poignant and one senses his apprehension that Sisulu’s death signals the slow demise of a camaraderie typical of comradeship in those days.
Reading Sisulu’s history, one cannot help but notice that he was born, ironically, the year that the ANC was formed. He had a difficult young life, moving from job to job to survive. His quest for dignity as a black man automatically attracted him in 1940 to the ANC – the home then of the marginalised and oppressed.
Those were difficult times, the decade before and after the Nationalist Party took over. Sisulu’s militancy and uncompromising nature were understandable given the tyranny with which resistance was met.
His life was a product of turbulent times, yet he remained a devout family man, husband and comrade throughout his life of hardship. The ‘50s and early ‘60s were marked by police intimidation, harassment and imprisonment, culminating in the treason trial in 1963.
In looking at this eventful life, one cannot help but link Sisulu with his wife Albertina, a stalwart partner who encouraged him to continue his political commitments through the ANC Women’s League and the Federation of SA Women when he was banned.
A great political couple, they complemented each other. They managed to keep marriage and family together despite the disruptions and threats to their lives. Their intense political involvement enriched their family in ways that we will never be able to measure. While Sisulu was in jail, Albertina’s small nursing salary provided for seven children, her own five and two of her sister-in-law’s. As a member of the Federation of SA Women, she was jailed while still breast-feeding her ten-month-old baby, banned for five years and placed under house arrest for ten years.
In 1981, Albertina was arrested for speaking at the funeral of Rose Mbele, one of her patients. At the trial she was even blamed for the ANC flag that draped Mbele’s coffin. The judge’s statement at her sentencing signalled how the law at the time saw her and Walter as one: ‘You allowed yourself to be used by the ANC by allowing yourself to be introduced to the public as Mrs Walter Sisulu, the people’s secretary.’ She was sentenced to four years in prison for being Mrs Sisulu.
The Sisulu history is an example of an effective and heartwarming political symbiosis, of a couple who embodied the noble principles of the Freedom Charter and what the ANC represented. In a cynical world where marriages and relationships don’t last, the Sisulu partnership, under extremely difficult and trying circumstances, is writ large on the political canvas of history.
We say hamba kahle to an ANC cadre who gave the movement the grace, dignity and humility I hope will be kept alive with renewed vigour in the party. In the words of Bizos: ‘SA has lost a great man. He has left us with a legacy of what it means to be a great citizen.’
Mail & Guardian April 2 to 8 1999
I wish to respond to Farid Esack’s condemnation of Judge John Foxcroft’s ruling against Allan Boesak (‘Used and discarded like a condom’ , Mail & Guardian March 26 to April 1 1999). As a religious teacher and gender commissioner whose primary concern should be with establishing the rule of law and morality in a country where crime is the order of the day, he sets worrying precedents.
Esack knows he is treading on dangerous ground, hence he seeks conscious justification for illogical arguments. His basic argument is, given Boesak’s stature and the horrors of apartheid, Boesak’s crime pales into significance, hence he should not have been sentenced. And what right has this judge of yesteryear to judge our inimitable cleric?
Boesak has been condemned by many as yet another senior ANC official found guilty of theft and fraud. More seriously, a point missed by many, the man is a highly trained theologian and dominee, who strayed from his calling through his lust for power, money and women, in that order.
Ironically, his conviction coincides with that of the president of the Baptist Church in the United States who was found guilty of fraud of enormous proportions. The difference, however, is that the Baptist president publicly apologised to his wife, children, church and nation for his misdemeanours. There was not one iota of remorse and repentance in the fibre of Boesak’s being.
The tragedy about Boesak is that his attraction to Mammon made him forget that his talents lay elsewhere. And a gifted theologian he was. As a chaplain of the University of the Western Cape in the 1980s, he never lacked an audience. I, too, was astounded at his polished enunciation of one of the complex utterances of Jesus: ‘I come to bring a sword not peace.’ The man, therefore, is to be pitied for, like a Shakespearean tragedy, his fall has been occasioned by his lust for power, regardless of all his other talents.
It was clear to many in the struggle that his intoxication with his meteoric rise to power would be the seed of his destruction. If he ‘felt called to be an instrument in the hands of God’, why did he succumb to the temptations of the world? To be called and to feel used are different things, and reflect Esack’s muddled thinking. Boesak cannot be a victim while also wanting to be an instrument.
While his oratory skills and courage were not doubted, Boesak engineered his own leadership and his own detention in ways that kept many dinner conversations going. There was a way in which apartheid forced greatness on all us, and Boesak’s ego was ready bait for this. Why this sudden emphasis on his exceptional leadership when many of his friends gossiped endlessly about his newfound opulence, his self-conscious vanities and his affairs?
As a humble cleric, with a sudden rise to fame and easy access to funds, he sowed the seeds of his downfall by submitting to pleasures of the flesh. And for this he is solely to blame. Beyers Naudé, Desmond Tutu, Cosmos Desmond,
