I SAT at my desk at the Cape Times for the last time yesterday, trying to compose a farewell column. But every time I tried, I teared up (to use an Americanism) and the words became a blur. This is the last Man Friday column I will be writing for the Cape Times. But it won’t be the last Man Friday – part of my separation deal is that I retain the rights to this column, and it will find a new home next year, once I get back from some fishing and surfing. Who knows, there may even be a book, something like Tony Weaver Has Gone Fishing.
So instead, I decided to simply re-run the very first Man Friday ever, published on November 5, 1999:
When Ryland Fisher rashly agreed to give me a weekly column, the words of an old Paul Simon song ran around my brain: “Gee but it’s great to be back home.” The Cape Times was last my home in the heady days that stretched from 1981 to 1987, and has been my spiritual home ever since.
Well, Weaver’s back, but this time I don’t have a PW Botha, a Louis le Grange, a Major Dolf Odendal, a Rooi Rus Swanepoel or a Warrant Officer Barry Barnard breathing down my neck. The bad old days are gone, let the good times roll. Just how good those times are came home to me on Saturday, as we sat and watched South Africa get beaten by Australia in the rugby.
Watching with me were two old friends who were in exile for several years. One had been a key ANC intelligence operative, running one of MK’s most effective intelligence networks, a network that has until this day never been made public. On Saturday, we were just a normal bunch of guys doing normal kinds of things like swigging beer, munching crisps and cheering the Springboks. Our kids were playing in the garden. Later on, we had a braai and talked about the rugby. Just another South African day.
The next day, an even bigger social gathering. This time the occasion was a housewarming, a big coming together of friends. Again, lots of rugby talk, lots of catching up on “how’s the baby, how’s the house, how’s work?” I never heard anybody talking about emigrating, there wasn’t any “aren’t things dreadful?” kind of talk. Sitting around the table on the stoep at one stage were a whole bunch of old buddies, all prominent people in Cape Town.
Between us there had been stints in exile, periods in detention, a banning order, some had been active in the ANC underground, co-ordinating intelligence and military operations; another was active in Communist Party underground operations, several people at that party had been on trial for offences against the apartheid state, most of the white men had been war resisters. All of us had had people close to us killed in the struggle.
It made me think about what an extraordinary city, and what an extraordinary country we live in. And it led me into a sad and painful process, a process of remembering. I went into my archive cupboards and pulled out my old contact books, the lifeblood of any journalist. I leafed through them, looking at the names crossed out in red ink, the terrible roll call of the dead and missing.
Some were particularly painful, because these were the contacts who were also good friends. Ken Nxu, the St John’s ambulance driver in Crossroads and Gugulethu who saved my life several times in the dark and deadly days of 1985 and 1986, hiding me under blankets in the back of the ambulance when the boere and the witdoeke were out searching for me. He was murdered in a hijacking.
Mzonke Pro Jack also saved my life twice. He was gunned down by an ANC comrade in an alleged case of mistaken identity.
Douglas, who refused to tell me his surname, one of my most reliable township informants, stabbed to death by gangsters in the pay of the police.
David Webster, murdered by the CCB, gentle David, who would phone me at one in the morning to tell me about another activist who had been detained, or another killed.
Anton Lubowski, my Windhoek drinking buddy and hotline into the Swapo high command, gunned down, probably by the CCB.
Brian Bishop and Tian van der Merwe, both brave fighters for human rights, dead in car crashes.
Too many names in my contact books have been crossed out. Some of the names are of friends who went into exile and never returned. Some are of colleagues who died violently, like Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, John Rubython, Aziz Tassiem, John Harrison, Mohamed Amin, Billy Paddock, Andile “Chooksie” Nteyi.
Sitting on that stoep at the housewarming party in the late afternoon summer sun, sipping wine, chatting with old friends, it struck me just how good life has become. My son was running around with his mates, my daughter was crawling around at my feet. Table Mountain loomed above us, the French were about to thrash New Zealand, and all was right with the world.
I no longer have to risk my life every day to make a living. I’ve done war, I’ve been there and I’m never going back.