Initiatives of Change - Detailed view of For A Change Articles

I was one of those who remained inside South Africa during our struggle, using whatever influence and institutional power I had to obstruct apartheid.
Every morning when I left home I would say to my family, 'I may not see you tonight.' Sometimes they would hear on the radio that I and my colleagues had been arrested. But because we had prominent positions, and because of the international concern, it was difficult for the authorities to hold us.

During the state of emergency we were debarred from holding public meetings. There were informers all over the place. As the Rector of Peninsula Technikon in the Western Cape, I felt it was important to show the students that unjust laws had to be broken. Two days after the state of emergency was pronounced, the college's student representative council came to tell me that they were going to have a mass meeting in the football stadium and that they wanted me to be the main speaker. It was a difficult decision, but I agreed right away.

We held the meeting, with helicopters flying over the stadium making it hard for the speakers to be heard. Then we marched to the gate of the campus, where the police dispersed the students violently.

FRUITS OF COURAGE
On another occasion I called the college president of the National Congress of Students in to see me. His organization had not had a conference for two years, because they were banned. I suggested they should hold their conference on the campus, with my support. 'We won't publicize it and we won't do anything defiant,' I said. 'But we will recommit ourselves to the purpose that you hold so dear.' They held their conference and nothing happened.

On a third occasion, two of the resistance movement were arrested and were on hunger strike. The wives of some of the clergy decided to demonstrate outside the offices of the secret police. They stood there in the cold and rain protesting and after a while the secret police came out with whips. They expected the women to run away, but they just huddled together while the police beat them. Eventually the women were thrown into the cathedral.

Their husbands asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu and two others of us to do what the women had done and invite the police to repeat their medicine. Needless to say I wasn't looking forward to it. I put on a thick raincoat, but the women asked us to take off our coats and jackets and march in those thin gowns that clergy wear. As we set off, I saw to my amazement that the women had joined us. Some of them could barely walk after their treatment that morning. Thousands of people lined the street. Halfway down the road, the police bundled us into vans and took us off to prison. I have never been so relieved to be arrested!

Acts like these showed the regime that we were non-violent and that we could not be scared away. Once you have seen how the fruits of courage diminish the forces of oppression, then you aren't afraid any more. I can remember a policeman holding a gun to my eye, his finger trembling on the trigger. I said, 'Why don't you shoot?' I could see the doubt in his eye. He dropped the rifle.

Often one imagines that the adversary is more powerful than he really is. At that time, Cabinet Ministers would call me and I could hear the fear in their voices, because they didn't know what to do.

Now we are busy rebuilding South Africa. It is enormously difficult to build a non-racial society--where differences are acknowledged, but not paramount; where what the individual brings to the centre is more important than his differences; where what we have in common supersedes what divides us. We started from a pretty bad base, where 11 per cent of the population owned 80 per cent of the land. South Africa's white community was one of the wealthiest in the world, while its black community was one of the poorest. How in a free market economic system do you get people who have become used to owning everything to share with people who have become used to having nothing?

The free market system is in line with freedom and democracy, but it presupposes that people are willing to share. When this does not happen, the government has to intervene. Every time the government intervenes, share prices fall worldwide. Investors aren't concerned about morality or politics, they're worried about stability.

FACING THE PAST
The educational system is in turmoil. There was an excellent education system for the few and a terrible one for the many. How do you bring them into line? We've made enormous progress and credit must be given to the manner in which white people received black pupils and teachers in their schools. But the vast majority of our people cannot pay for education--and to make our country economically viable they have to. What do we do?

We have also decided to face the past courageously and squarely--in spite of those who are clamouring for us to leave it alone. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes it possible for forgiveness to be considered if people come forward publicly and confess their crimes. That's a tough thing to do. It's tough for those who have lost parents, brothers and sisters to forgive--and it's tough for the person who did the killing to tell the truth. There are things we do not want to hear, but we must. Because if you do not deal with the past creatively, positively and constructively, the past will revisit itself on you. This is perhaps also a lesson which the West can learn from South Africa.

If South Africa fails, the world's bigots and dictators will say this proves that the only way to govern a country is by force. South Africa faces enormous challenges, but it also presents an enormous challenge to the world .

by Franklin Sonn