Madiba is not well. At least, constant updates from the Presidency, this time around, have been somewhat reassuring. Mac Maharaj can be quite convincing, especially when he’s not talking about compounds and black culture. Trepidation persists nonetheless. At some level though the anxiety is possibly exacerbated by the moment.
The Easter period always invokes sadness in one.
Chris Hani, South Africa’s most captivating leader of his generation, died over an Easter weekend, some 20 years ago.
It was a normal day. Nothing suggested that April 10, 1993 would engrave itself into history. My memory of it is still vivid in my mind.
I was visiting family in Khubvi, a remote village in what was then Venda, sitting on a rondavel stoep scrubbing shoes, using the brick-like, green sunlight soap.
Unexpectedly, while relishing the idea of feasting on mangoes as I sought to distract myself from the unpleasantness of my chore, the news of Hani’s fatal shooting came through the radio from nowhere.
The experience was weird.
A life-changing tragedy had just struck, but everything around me continued undisturbed. I was looking for earthly acknowledgement that life had just changed.
Bro Chris, as we called him, was a remarkable man. He embodied a youthful, defiant spirit. South Africa’s 1990s black youth revered Mandela, but adored Chris. None could enchant a massive crowd quite like him. “ Lo rhulumente wemi gqakwe(This government of bastards)”, he’d say, eliciting a deafening cheer.
The apartheid government feared him most.
And Chris never tried to endear himself to the establishment.
“If FW de Klerk doesn’t want to surrender power, we must seize it,” he said once, throwing the apartheid regime into a panic that he was inciting a popular insurrection.
That was Chris Hani at his finest, defiant self.
Pardon me, my dear reader. As you’ve noticed by now, I’m still reminiscing. One should never forget.
Remembering is a necessary exercise in identity formation.
We are what we remember and know of ourselves. And, hardly 20 years old, the democratic republic is still in its infancy, battling to define itself. What is the meaning of freedom; and what do we make of erstwhile liberators who’ve become predators, turning the dream of freedom into a nightmare for some?
These are questions that continue to, and should, occupy our public discourse.
Memories, however, are not always invoked to inform. Recollection can also be selective and biased in a way that distorts the essence of those we purport to remember.
Today, as I remember Chris Hani, I wonder how much, if at all, his memory has been a subject of deliberate distortion and shameless manipulation.
Fortunately for Hani, if at all death can ever be an act of providence, dying “young” has meant we mostly remember him as a heroic figure. For he died still in the midst of battle, with victory in sight. Inevitably, the narrative about his life, especially because he was a military commander that led from the front, is dominated by episodes of valour and compassion for the soldiers under his command.
Not all Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) commanders led or even cared about the troops whose young lives had been entrusted to their command.
In Hani’s case, however, most of us have heard the story of how, at 27, he led the Luthuli detachment in 1967, the first notable attempt at a military incursion back into South Africa after a lull in the early 1960s.
The campaign was marred by poor preparations, however. And Chris assailed MK’s military command for the sloppiness. The memorandum he presented to the national executive committee, precipitating the convening of the 1969 Morogoro Conference, has now attained legendary status. In that memo, the young soldier, without any thought of what could befall his own person, took on his superiors, effectively telling them they were not fit for command.
MK’s security establishment consequently detained him.
The memo was not a rare moment of truth-telling. Many such moments followed. And this made Chris the commander most loved by MK’s rank and file. So his death at the hand of a racist assassin, Janusz Walus, was not only tragic, but also an ultimate act of injustice.
Chris deserved the prize of freedom more than some. Because he was among the most worthy of the reward, yet denied it in the most cruel of ways, Chris has become frozen in our consciousness as an epitome of innocence, the most pure of freedom fighters.
That said, Hani’s memory has not escaped contestation. It fell victim to the ideological rivalry that ensued soon after his comrades assumed power. It is quite telling, for starters, that public efforts at commemorating Hani’s memory, despite his stature, have been somewhat tentative. Though Soweto’s prominent Baragwanath Hospital was renamed after him in 1995 – the first big honour bestowed on his memory – it would take eight years before an institution dedicated to his memory, the Chris Hani Institute, was launched.
This also saw the simultaneous introduction of a memorial lecture, the first of which was aptly delivered by his kindred spirit and comrade, Pallo Jordan. He too suffered detention for saying things that the ANC’s securocrats did not like.
Perhaps more than the delayed celebration of Hani’s memory it is the differing aspects of his biography that rivals zoom into – something that is most intriguing. The memorial lectures of 2011, delivered by Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi and the SACP’s Blade Nzimande, are quite revealing.
Delivered days apart, on April 9 and April 13, the biographical parts that each speaker selected not only shed light on the character of their subject, but also illuminated the political controversy of the time.
While both lauded Hani’s selfless dedication to the cause, their emphasis differed vastly. To illustrate his point, Vavi chose Hani’s decision to renounce leadership positions in the ANC, choosing instead to focus on being general secretary of the SACP. In doing so, Hani effectively ruled himself out for a cabinet position.
Vavi quotes Hani’s explanation for his decision: “The perks of a new government are not really appealing to me. Everybody would like to have a good job, a good salary… but for me that is not the be-all of struggle. What is important is the continuation of the struggle… the real problems of the country are not whether one is in cabinet… but what we do for the social upliftment of the working masses of our country.”
In his speech, the general secretary of the SACP, Nzimande, who, in contrast to Hani, has chosen to serve in the cabinet, makes no mention of similar details in his enunciation of Hani’s splendid character.
Rather, Nzimande refers to Hani’s 1967 memo, especially his denunciation of leaders’ involvement in business:
“There are certain symptoms which are very disturbing and dispiriting to genuine revolutionaries. These comprise the opening of mysterious business enterprises which to our knowledge have never been discussed by the membership of the organisation… as a result of these enterprises more and more MK men are being diverted to them… we are therefore compelled to conclude that there is no serious drive to return home and carry on the Struggle.”
Each speaker selected parts that spoke to their immediate concerns.
Nzimande appropriated Hani’s memory as a fellow critic of “tenderpreneurs”, while Vavi used Chris’s example to buttress his disapproval of Nzimande’s serving in government. Cosatu argues that this has compromised the party’s independence and weakened its organisational structures. So the public is treated to varying narratives of who Hani was, determined solely by the self-interest of the storyteller.
Multiple narratives are inevitable. What is most gratifying about Hani’s life, however, is that it exemplified values that are timeless.
We need to remember him even more often so we’re inspired to “tell no lies”, question authority and reject the decadence of those in power. Hani is an icon of civil religion that sustains a democratic state.
n Ndletyana is head of the political and economic faculty at MISTRA.