Holding Up the Sky (16 page)

We were told that the government had allocated Mason's Mill, a vacant site in the industrial area between the township and town, as medium-term accommodation for the refugees. After being reunited, the families stayed with us for a few days until the new site was opened. After twelve days of round the clock care, we began the process of shuttling families down to Mason's Mill. Some families found space inside the vacant buildings, others made their homes in the rows of tents the government had provided.

We said a sad goodbye to each family whose children or grandparents we had cared for, including Xolani and his brother who were back with their father. There was no way to know what the future might hold for these families: whether the community would re-establish itself or be lost. We did know that no one was willing to return as yet, and that people would need to rebuild their lives from Mason's Mill for now. I watched Thando and her mother as they walked away to one of the buildings. Thando turned and waved, giving me one of her dazzling smiles–a row of perfect white teeth against her dark skin. I so wanted to steer the course of her life towards something better than this shaky start might suggest, but was ultimately powerless to do so.

Our tribe of over eighty had dwindled to just a few. Where parents could not be found, other members of the extended family took the children with them. Those who remained were old women who had no one to claim them and, due to the destruction of their homes, nowhere to return to. Keeping them with us was not a real option, so after some discussions with the Chief and community organisations, they too went to Mason's Mill.

Then it was over. The marquee was dismantled leaving a brown stain on the front lawn where people's lives had been. Beds were stripped, plates put away, letters of appreciation written. We had been flooded with clothes, blankets, food and volunteers from the schools and churches we worked with, black and white. We even had students from Hilton College who had offered to act as life savers and watch over the children who swam in the pool from early in the morning until late at night. I was overcome with the generosity of our community and how they had worked together to support strangers–our community who, a year ago, were individuals and groups who only peripherally knew of each other's existence. Not only had we made a difference to the lives of the refugees but we had also become a vehicle for others to show their care and support in a time of crisis.

After the packing up was done, I sat for a while at the table on the front stoep with my journal. The table was a large wooden hexagon with sturdy logs for legs and benches all around; a table that hosted our team lunches each day, all our meals during programs and now where the children of Table Mountain had been fed and cared for.

In my journal I wrote:

Too tired to stand, I sat at the table and looked out over the empty lawn. I had neither slept enough nor eaten enough over the last two weeks and now I felt the physical strain on my body. The emotional strain was heavier still. It is one thing to read about such a crisis in the local or international papers. It is another thing altogether to meet the people whose lives have been fragmented; those who have seen a parent or a child hacked to death before their eyes. The horror etches itself into your bones.

Given the strength of our relationships with the families from Maqongqo, we visited Mason's Mill every other day. The joyous reunions were a constant source of amazement and delight to those who had been accommodated elsewhere. Their experience had been one of neglect, living in the shanty that COSATU House had become. While community organisations had done what they could for the 450 people crammed into the building, these refugees knew that government departments had refused to help, fighting among themselves to place the responsibility at someone else's feet. At Mason's Mill, they saw white people who had responded to the need of another community and had not forgotten them when the crisis seemed to have passed. I was proud to be part of that group, where I was able to be the kind of person I always hoped to be.

Outside of social visits to Mason's Mill, we were also able to pass over the clothes and food that continued to find their way to Phezulu. It soon became clear that our response needed to be more long-term. So Themba organised to run a few tin craft workshops to give some of the young men a skill they could take with them. To my delight, a group of mothers–having seen what the young men had produced– approached Themba to run the workshop with them. It was this group of women who ultimately built a sustainable business out of tin craft as a way to support their families.

In the midst of this follow-up work more bad news reached us. One night, a group of armed men gathered outside the home of a friend I had made through the leadership program. She had become a powerful youth leader in her community and the men had come for her. They called out to the family in the darkness: ‘Give her to us and we will leave you alone'. Her parents and two younger brothers blew out the few candles that lit their small home and sat together on the mud floor, fearing what was to come. With no response from the house, the men burst inside, dragged the young woman's father out and shot him instead. My friend, having heard there might be trouble, had slept elsewhere that night. Now she was unable to forgive herself for what that decision had cost her family.

Robbie, Pete, Anne and I attended the father's funeral that weekend in the same church where we had celebrated Skhumbuzo's wedding a few months earlier. Many of the same people were there, including Mdu, Zonke and Skhumbuzo. During the service, one woman became hysterical with grief. She was the mother of one of four young men who had been shot in another incident the night before. She begged us all to tell her why these things keep happening. ‘Where was God?' she cried. The minister rose to his feet and spoke of the snake in the hearts of the few who, to increase their own power, made enemies of neighbours and forced us to bury our children. He told this mother that if we listened, we could hear God weeping with us.

There was one moment of normality for me in the river of loss that swept over us in February. Through Sizwe, we had come to know a few organisations attached to the 'Maritzburg campus of the University of Natal. One of those was ETHOS, the Evangelical Theological House of Studies. It was both a program and a residence that facilitated access to tertiary training for black men and women who wanted to become ministers and church community workers. All the applicants for the ETHOS program were people who could not gain access to university through the standard points system. Jacques and Margie, friends I had met through Msizi and Gary from Grahamstown, were moving to 'Maritzburg to live in the residence with the students and lead the community that was to be established there. Given his academic background, Jacques would also teach part of the curriculum. The principal of ETHOS, Tony, was a good friend of Steve's, as were Jacques and Margie, so the entire Sizwe team was invited to the opening.

On the Sunday night following the funeral, a
braai
was held at the new residence which was a large converted two-storey house opposite the main gate of the campus. The other partners in this venture were from CE, Concerned Evangelicals, a non-denominational organisation that represented the voice of the black evangelical churches on issues of justice, democracy, poverty and growth. CE's director was a man by the name of Moses, or Moss to his friends. With him came another CE representative by the name of Teboho. They both lived in a Johannesburg township on the far side of Soweto called Mohlakeng. Over the course of the evening, I found myself talking to both of them for quite some time. Moss was married with a baby son and I assumed Teboho's circumstances were similar. They told me of the work they did in Jo'burg and the issues around which they were lobbying the government. I enjoyed hearing more examples of work that integrated faith and social activism, as they seemed to be few and far between. What I did not know as I stood there, plate in hand, was that these two men would become important figures in my life in the years to come.

February had one more surprise in store: Mandela was coming to Durban for his first rally since his release and we were going to hear him speak. Robbie, Themba, Pete, Anne and I commandeered the Sizwe kombi and, picking up a few of the new ETHOS students on our way through town, headed off to Kings Park stadium in Durban. It was and still is famous for the rugby matches that have been played there over the years. That day, more black people flocked to the field than ever before or since. In fact, there were so many people that the stadium could not hold us. Over 100,000 gathered on the lawns outside and waited patiently for hours for Mandela to appear.

Pete took photos of the crowd, a sea of faces to the horizon, all black except for our own. But there was nothing intimidating about a crowd that size on this day: it was akin to a rock concert, the air electric and festive in equal parts. Our entry past the marshals at the gate triggered mass head-turning and eyebrow raising that was to recur throughout the day, but our presence was also welcomed with smiles and good humour once the initial shock subsided. My growing command of the Zulu language also allowed me to chat to those around us, explaining who we were and why we were here. There were many nods of understanding when people realised we weren't white South Africans. While today, most white South Africans feel a deep kinship with Mandela and what he stands for, prior to his release he had been portrayed to the white community as a communist and a terrorist; therefore, his visit to Durban was a matter for concern rather than celebration for its white residents.

After a few hours in the sun, we were told that Mandela was on his way. The crowd erupted, 100,000 people leaping to their feet and singing liberation songs to herald his arrival. Pete, Anne and I did the same, doing our best to keep up as I was the only one even vaguely familiar with the words. ANC banners and fags were raised into the air, having not been seen since the ANC's banning decades before. Three hundred years of pent-up frustration and despair were transforming into hope like fire moving across oil, igniting the toxic liquid into dancing fame. They danced, they sang, they raised their arms in the air, they celebrated the pure joy of gathering together without the guns of the police to their heads. They called for the man who symbolised the possibility of a different future to take to the stage. As he did, the sounds of celebration, which already seemed to be at fever pitch, doubled.

It was impossible to not be caught up in the moment. Mandela towered above the other people on stage and waved his acknowledgment to the sea of joy that stretched out before him. One hundred thousand people returned his greeting. Mandela waited for the cheering to quieten and when, after almost fifteen minutes, it did not he once more raised his hands and motioned for us to sit. To a person, we did as he asked. Then the crowd held its breath and waited for him to speak, waited to hear the words of a leader that the vast majority had never seen, having been born after his imprisonment twenty-seven years before. But the power of the man and his steely commitment to freedom had been spread across generations, passed from father to son, mother to daughter, neighbour to neighbour over the decades. And now each one waited to hear him speak. I imagined that the spirits of those who had died at Sharpville, in Soweto, in the killing fields of Natal, were here with us, also waiting.

And so Mandela spoke.

‘Friends, comrades, and the people of Natal, I greet you all.' The crowd erupted once more. ‘I do so in the name of peace, the peace that is so desperately needed in this region.'

He went on to acknowledge all those who had worked for change, dead and living, male and female, black, white, coloured and Indian, all those whose actions had brought us to this moment in history. He then turned to the conflict in Natal, the blood-letting that had undermined the unity of black South Africans, making murky the waters of change.

‘In Natal, apartheid is a deadly cancer in our midst, setting house against house and eating away at the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knives and your
pangas
, and throw them into the sea. Close down the death factories. End this war now!'

He then spoke of the history of Natal and all those who had worked for change. He went to the knife's edge when he gave his opinion on the role of traditional chiefs in a democratic future and the role of Inkatha itself. Outside of those hostel dwellers in Johannesburg, Natal was the only province in the country that had an Inkatha presence. And it was in Natal that the bloodshed had been the most widespread. Many chiefs had strong alliances with their traditional Zulu structures which were, for the most part, led by Inkatha members. Ironically, Chief Albert Luthuli, one of the Zulus' greatest chiefs, was also the ANC's President-General. So the lines in Natal were not clear and the roles of chiefs in a democratic future would require a respect for tradition coupled with a desire for change. As I listened to Mandela speak, I believed that there were few men who could run the gauntlet of this topic as he was now doing and still emerge with a message of unity.

‘Our struggle has won the participation of every language and colour, every stripe and hue in this country. These four strands of resistance and organisation have inspired all South Africans, and provide the foundation for our struggle today.'