Читать книгу Holy Cows - Gareth van Onselen - Страница 5
Оглавление1 The beautiful monster
‘Oh yes, that’s good. However, there were problems with all the children coming to Qunu. Although the numbers had been increasing … one morning we woke up and Graça said, “This is too much.” Because the queue was so long it disappeared. That was the children coming for the Christmas party. But some of them came with their parents and their parents were not satisfied that we only gave to their children, they also wanted us to give to them. So what we do now is give Christmas presents to schools.’
– Nelson Mandela (The Star, 23 December 2005)
From the sky, the Eastern Cape spills out wide, as if someone had emptied a bottle of green liquid felt along the great escarpment, from where it has slowly poured down, enveloping the hills and valleys on its way to the sea. It does not shine like the Emerald Isle. Instead, the green is a matt tone – a lush, wild finish, held in place by a thousand tributaries anchored in the Indian Ocean but which fan deep into the interior. From above, it is a thing of great beauty, the seemingly empty vastness of it all.
But man and nature often enjoy an inverse relationship, and so it is in the Eastern Cape. For all the land’s natural wonder, the human condition within its borders is generally a wretched one. From the ground up, the province remains wracked by deep inequality and, as one moves from its urban centres into the rural expanse, one leaves behind much of the basic infrastructure upon which the good life is built. Water, sanitation, roads, electricity – these things nature neglected to incorporate into the province’s grand design and human prejudice ensured the gap was never meaningfully bridged.
Yet this beautiful monster has produced a significant political legacy. The Eastern Cape is the ANC’s heartland and many of its greatest heroes have emerged from here. Of these, both party and province would claim Nelson Mandela as their greatest son. Soon after he was born in the remote village of Mvezo, near Mthatha, Mandela’s family moved to the nearby homestead of Qunu and there he would spend much of his childhood. Today, almost a century later, his burial site stands in Qunu.
Mandela opens his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, with a romantic reminiscence of his childhood home: ‘[It] was situated in a narrow, grassy valley crisscrossed by clear streams, and overlooked by hills. It consisted of no more than a few hundred people who lived in huts, which were beehive-shaped structures of mud walls, with a wooden pole in the centre holding up a peaked grass roof.’ He explains, ‘There were no roads, only paths through the grass worn away by barefooted boys and women.’
It is a somewhat idyllic description. For Mandela, this was not a place of hardship or desolation but a quiet home. It was a rural life uninterrupted by the demands of modernity, and always enmeshed with hills and valleys, rivers and rocks.
Modernity, however, is an insidious thing. Its markers needn’t be bricks and mortar. It works the mind too. There is a subtle sense of perspective hardwired into its encroachment – a glimpse of another world, sometimes out of reach but always on offer to you. Once it has you in its grip, the inevitable result is a personal reckoning, where those things you have are measured and valued for the first time against those things you do not. Where one falls short, despair tends to follow. Modernity rips away the veil. That can be a cruel business because it doesn’t necessarily follow that in its place it will deliver a better view – only a different way of seeing the world.
On Mandela’s return to Qunu, after 27 years spent in one of modernity’s more heartless institutions, the magic of Qunu had gone and, with it, much of the serenity he had earlier recalled. As if to conclude his long walk to freedom, his description of Qunu all those years later in the book’s closing pages cuts a stark contrast: ‘What had endured was the warmth and simplicity of the community, which took me back to my days as a boy. But what disturbed me was that the villagers seemed as poor, if not poorer than they had been then. Most people lived in simple huts with dirt floors, with no electricity and no running water. When I was young, the village was tidy, the water pure and the grass green and unsullied as far as the eye could see. Kraals were swept, the topsoil was conserved, fields were neatly divided. But now the village was unswept, the water polluted and the countryside littered with plastic bags and wrappers. We had not known of plastic when I was a boy, and though it surely improved life in some ways, its presence in Qunu appeared to me to be a kind of blight. Pride in the community seemed to have vanished.’
Christmas cares little for such contradictions. If anything, it thrives in such an environment because it is something of a contradiction itself. ‘Peace on earth and good will to all men,’ the saying goes. But such grand gestures are trapped in time, a fleeting moment. And with its arrival and departure, much like modernity itself, it is the inevitable contrast with an often far harsher reality to which one’s attention is drawn. Good will to all men: but tomorrow there is just our will, refocused, as ever, on those things that might best secure our self-interest.
There is a wealth of literature that suggests Mandela was different, that the Christmas spirit stayed with him throughout the year. It was infectious, his generosity of spirit. Reunited with his home, he would bring this spirit with him but it would be during those hot December days that he would come to formalise his kindness on an annual basis.
What happens, though, when you introduce into a desperate wilderness good will and munificence? Charity demands of us to give what we can afford. Give until it hurts, the more radical altruist suggests. Mandela did both. But the Eastern Cape, the beautiful monster, had in his absence developed an insatiable hunger. And the Christmas spirit, so exemplified by Mandela, would be made to compete with those other apparitions that roamed the countryside. Not quite the four horsemen, but their emissaries.
It was 1993 when Mandela first threw a Christmas party, although, at the time, the purpose was not festivity but food. His grandson Mandla Mandela recalls the family sitting round the Christmas table when a 75-year-old Mandela, amid all the cheer, withdrew from the conversation, revisiting that internal universe that must have kept him company all those years on Robben Island. Asked what was bothering him, he responded, ‘I was just wondering what the rest of the community is doing while we are having a huge meal.’
So, despite the late hour, his family went out into the countryside to invite people for some food. About 60 people were quickly found and fed. And from that simple gesture, a tradition was born: Christmas in Qunu. In the years to come, it would grow into an event on international scale.
It didn’t take long for the occasion to adopt the rites and rituals that define most traditions. The venue would be Mandela’s private residence; the event would be held on Christmas Day. Invitations were spread by word of mouth and, to the best of his ability, he would provide as much as he could to as many as he could. No one would be turned away and children would hold pride of place.
By 1995, such was the response that two tents had to be erected outside his home and, after walking in the morning countryside he so admired, cheered and celebrated by old and young alike, in steady rain and a persistent fog, Mandela himself would help serve the food for the guests. Children first – a rule with the old man – then adults. A small choir in traditional dress would welcome him, and a group of young girls provided some dancing.
That year there were some 200 people in attendance, according to reports: ‘We have made preparations at home,’ Mandela said, ‘to entertain as many people in the surrounding villages as possible.’
But he had been pained by the prospect of many who had been eager to squeeze what enjoyment they could from the holiday by slaughtering their own cattle, of which they had but a few. ‘It is a forlorn attempt,’ he reflected. ‘They go back to their squalor, their misery, and you feel really deeply moved. You have to see the way in which people live to really understand the evil of racial oppression in this country, how evil it is for human beings to be so cruel to other human beings.’
Mandela would return to his past, telling the media in attendance how, some 60 years before, Christmas in Qunu had meant little more than a cup of tea – the only one of the year. The villagers would come out of their homes at about one o’clock and give up some of their food; not a full plate but bits and pieces from their own to those who returned from the hills and valleys. This would bring an end to a hard day herding cattle. This memory would be reborn in Qunu, like the ghost of Christmas past.
As 1996 drew to a close, Mandela was starting to feel the full effect of presidential office. Tired, he withdrew to Qunu for a month. His bodyguards, happy to escape the demands of protecting South Africa’s first citizen at home and abroad full-time, were presented with a new challenge, as Mandela would rise at sun-up and walk the hills. But there were whisperings on the wind that year: ‘Christmas is coming.’ And with Christmas came Mandela, and food and fun. Word of his Christmas party had spread far and wide that year, and thousands would descend on his home come 25 December.
So big was the party that, in just the fourth year of the event, sponsors were brought on board to help carry the cost. The children still retained pride of place, though – 1 000 of them this time, some of whom had walked five kilometres to be there. The night before, Mandela slaughtered an ox and 11 sheep. The ox was a gift from Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini. Royalty itself had heard the whispers and such was Mandela’s gravitas, it did what it could to associate itself with the occasion.
By now the media had Mandela’s Christmas party firmly noted in its diary. Print, radio and television journalists in their numbers made the journey to Qunu. In Mandela they had their own living, breathing St Nicholas and, besides, good will makes for great television.
In the middle of the garden stood a giant Christmas tree, decorated with lights and baubles. At its feet lay hundreds of presents. Hope in a box. The children, presented with the unthinkable, were at pains to restrain themselves and had to be held back by security from diving into the pile and gorging themselves on toys and trinkets.
‘There was no Christmas at home,’ said ten-year-old Nopasika Matikinca to one newspaper, ‘but now we find Christmas at this place.’ She had walked six kilometres, unaccompanied by any adult, to be there, bringing only her three-year-old sister with her.
The meal too had been transformed – mutton stew and samp. And to round it off, a two-metre-long Christmas cake decorated in the colours of the South African flag.
Mandela wore a red hat and played the role of Father Christmas. But his speech, for the first time, had a more generic, political quality to it: ‘The country’s children are our most important asset,’ he said, ‘because out of them will come future members of the legislature and the premiers, the national parliament, the deputy president and even the president.’
So, politics and patriotism, which had also quickly found their way into the Qunu Christmas party, would come to help define the event too, and both boast an insatiable hunger of their own.
Some of the presents under the tree were toy guns – something the newspaper, The Daily News, doing its bit to ensure good will adhered to those parameters that orthodoxy demands, wasted no time moralising about in an editorial the following Monday: ‘With the spirit of joy and peace so evident at the Qunu festivities, it struck a sour note that someone in the backroom slipped in choosing some of the gifts handed out by the President. Toy guns are contentious items at the best of times, and, with the television cameras rolling, this was certainly the worst of times to put them into young hands.’
Mandela learnt his lesson well. His party was no longer a private gesture, but a public symbol. When you are in the public eye, authenticity has to be quickly diluted down to its blandest, most palatable form. The guns would never make another appearance.
But the media, it appears, was not quick to forget. Two years later, after the 1998 party had come and gone, The Herald took to its editorial pages to bask in the triumph that it had been a ‘gun-free’ Christmas party: ‘We don’t want our children to grow up like those in Liberia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have found themselves fighting in adult wars without even knowing who they are killing and why.’ No doubt the press had saved many lives when first it decided to campaign on this issue.
As time passed, Mandela’s Christmas party grew … and grew. It had now become a phenomenon. ‘Word has spread over the years,’ said Mandela’s private aide, Zelda la Grange, ahead of the 1999 festivities. ‘The number of children attending annually has grown.’
Grown they certainly had: some 5 000 people would attend that year, and the next year it would grow again. It was reported that some children travelled for two days so that they would arrive in Qunu for Christmas Day, only to travel two days back home after the event had drawn to a close.
But as South Africa more generally grew accustomed to freedom over the years, poverty did not relinquish its grip on the Eastern Cape. If anything, in the 364 days between each party, it had tightened its hold. La Grange would later write in her memoir, ‘I saw children infected with diseases without names. Underfed, deformed, mistreated, neglected.’ The party might have grown, but the hunger it sought to feed was becoming insatiable.
By 2002 the party prepared to welcome 15 000 people. And as it had expanded, so had its reputation – and not just in Qunu but across the entire Eastern Cape, among those valleys and beyond the hills, into the rest of South Africa, across the sea and all the way to the United States of America. Oprah Winfrey would even make an appearance that year. Mandela was Oprah’s adopted father figure, and she, like so many others, adored him and was captivated by the occasion. An occasion that, as coincidence would have it, also made for great television.
The event was brought forward a few days, to 22 December, specifically to allow Oprah to attend (no doubt because she had Christmas plans of her own in the States). But, even though the Christmas party was now no longer on Christmas Day, this did nothing to dampen its popularity. Banners reading ‘Christmas Kindness’, the name of Oprah’s international Christmas campaign, were installed all around Mandela’s residence.
The ghost of Christmas present roamed Qunu that day and, with it, an infatuation with the moment – and with framing the event perfectly on celluloid, so that the unselfishness of spirit could be projected to a global audience.
The children arrived on foot, in makeshift ox carts, on squeaking bicycles, in taxis and buses, some in wheelchairs, others even on horseback. ‘We can’t seem to keep up with the demand,’ said La Grange. ‘Every year, by word of mouth, the children learn of the party and the numbers have been multiplying year after year. You can’t believe your eyes when you look out at the sea of excited faces. The queues go all the way into the hills.’
Some had queued since 2 a.m.
No longer would Mandela be serving the food; he was now more an observer than a participant. The South African Chefs Association had committed a team of 40 people, who worked for 20 hours packing meals. Each lunchbox would contain two pieces of roast chicken, some cheese, chicken sausages, peanuts, yogurt, a boiled potato and coleslaw. The association’s vice president, Martin Kobald, described it as a ‘logistical nightmare’.
Mandela would make a grand entrance in a defence-force helicopter, and later he would mingle with politicians such as Bantu Holomisa and Makhenkesi Stofile. Ladysmith Black Mambazo were booked to provide the entertainment.
This was a turning point in the life of Mandela’s Christmas party. The numbers were so large now that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain order. It is one thing having 1 000 children swarming around a Christmas tree, quite another managing 20 000. As Ladysmith Black Mambazo played their hit song ‘Diamonds on the souls of her shoes’, the crowd, already a pulsing mass of enthusiasm, began to squash up against the railings. The show was promptly stopped as security guards had to push the crowd back. A number of children were squeezed up against the fence, emerging later, after the music had stopped and the crowd dispersed, bruised and cut. A decision was made to dismantle the fence to avert widespread injury. Two children were less fortunate, though. They were crushed and had to be evacuated to a local hospital, although they were discharged soon afterwards with minor injuries. It was reported that a worried-looking Mandela stared out over the crowd as chaos began to embrace his guests, before he retreated to the safety of his house.
The Sunday Times described the event as follows: ‘The officers, armed with batons and sjamboks struggled to control the horde. Some people fought their way through openings in the fence, while some adults threw their children over the fence onto a rocky piece of ground alongside the N2. The sounds of crying children and the occasional scream from a parent whose child was hurt or battling to breathe could be heard above the noise.’
It emerged later that in excess of 20 000 people had arrived at Mandela’s house that day. The organisers were simply overwhelmed. The defence force had to be called in, as well as local police. Likewise, a medical-assistance helicopter was dispatched following the mayhem and a small fleet of ambulances was seen lined up outside the residence late into the afternoon. In the aftermath, children’s shoes, long since separated from their owners, were seen scattered across the grounds.
Later, a secondary disruption saw children and adults swarm the stash of presents as they fought and jostled for a prize.
Oprah Winfrey’s website has a two-minute video of her 2002 visit, which portrays the event in a rather different light. Titled ‘From the Oprah Show vault: Nelson Mandela’s Christmas surprise’, it shows what appears to be an unprecedented triumph of compassion and generosity, all framed with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for the Oscars. Curiously, it makes no mention of the chaos. It tells of how Oprah’s team measured each kid’s feet on arrival, so that, later in the day, they could receive a custom-fitted pair of Nike sneakers. ‘In fact, most of the children didn’t know there would be gifts at all,’ Winfrey claims in her narration, an assessment somewhat at odds with the accounts in the local media. Her website also makes the exaggerated claim that there had been 50 000 children in attendance. One way or another, you can be sure those shoes, many of them left behind in the confusion, were the best Hollywood could afford.
Winfrey also makes no mention in the video that Mandela’s party had earlier origins. The implication is that the 2002 occasion was the consequence of a ‘partnership’ between her and the great man, an event that she was central to realising. On film it looked magical indeed.
Oprah escaped the chaos unscathed and with her local reputation stronger than ever. In an editorial headlined ‘Lessons from Qunu’, the Pretoria News wrote: ‘Oprah stands out as a caring being in a world of obscenely rich show business personalities, many of whom achieved their “fame” through vulgar exploits. She set an outstanding example, not only to her peers but also to the people of this country.’
Oprah never attended another Mandela Christmas party.
In light of the 2002 problems, organisers said the Christmas party would have to be reassessed if it was going to have a future. La Grange was adamant that the risks outweighed the advantages: ‘We would seriously advise Madiba not to do it again. The situation was very dangerous when 20 000 people, including adults, came, when we had expected 5 000 children only. We will definitely reassess the annual parties that began in 1990. We simply cannot have a repeat of having no control over irresponsible people who entered Mandela’s property.’ She was not immune to some exaggeration herself, then, as the mythology of the party had now been set three years further back in time.
It appeared the ghost of Christmas future did not have a promising vision to deliver. La Grange said that some people had lied about their age to qualify for a donation, while others, who were smartly dressed, suggesting no dire personal circumstances, had helped themselves to presents and food.
But the saddest story emerged a few days later when it became known that a small child with cerebral palsy had been abandoned at some point during the afternoon; deliberately so, it seems. Left sitting next to a pile of contraceptives, two nappies and blanket, he was later handed over to the Happy Home Disabled Children’s Centre for care and attention, as a search for his mother was undertaken. The child’s final fate was never reported.
Despite the problems, the party was not abandoned. Instead, it took on a new, regimented precision. Details of how the 2003 edition would be run were presented to the press at the beginning of December and it was made clear there would be none of the disorder that had sullied the previous occasion. Entrance was to be strictly controlled, children would have to be accompanied by an adult, and only children between the ages of six and 14 would be allowed entry, with a maximum of five children per adult. Despite these restrictions, 20 000 guests were expected again.
Logistics also took on more ominous proportions: a private security firm was hired and the army deployed to police the vicinity. A large, green metal fence was erected. A closed-circuit television camera system was set up to monitor events from a central command room and highly trained personnel were brought in to observe and maintain order.
All of this, together with an overcast day and a constant trickle of rain, led to a far more muted affair. Mandela, ever sensitive to the right occasion for the right message, took to the stage to suggest the event be extended to South Africa’s other provinces: ‘We are going to discuss now with leaders around the country, that they must also start something similar and I will assist them in talking to business to say this must happen in all nine provinces in this country.’
Christmas and politics had now finally merged completely.
The 2003 party had proved wildly popular again. A two-kilometre line of people had stretched away into the distance from Mandela’s front door as people queued from as early as 5 a.m., with some having slept out overnight next to the N2. As a reward, they were entertained by, among others, Kami, the world’s first HIV-positive Sesame Street muppet. The presents consisted of school uniforms and stationery. How The Herald must have nodded in quiet approval. Although 20 000 people had been expected, on the day, organisers said the final number was closer to 30 000.
One thing The Herald did not use its editorial space for was to bemoan the presence of real guns in Qunu that year – an irony lost on a paper so quick to prescribe political correctness.
Yet despite Mandela’s calls for the party to be broadened, the 2003 event turned out to be the last party unmarred by significant controversy and the second last ever, as the following year, despite all the precautions, things again descended into anarchy from which the annual occasion was unable to recover.
Its final manifestation, the 2004 Qunu Christmas party had reached its nadir. What had started with 60 people over a decade earlier now saw 50 000 people swarm into the village. Those in charge had planned for no more than 20 000 and, despite their best efforts, it was all too much. The ensuing chaos saw a stampede, as people pushed and shoved for a place in the queue and to get their hands on a present. At one stage, people stormed one of the trucks carrying the gifts.
As temperatures soared, the event organisers called the whole thing off midway through. Outraged by the conduct of the crowd, they cancelled the presents and told the guests that because of their behaviour they should now go home. Again, fences were taken down as the mass of people pulsed dangerously in the controlled environment. Several people were injured and, in the aftermath, it was again found that a number of infants had been abandoned.
But, for the first time, Mandela was not there to see any of this. If the spirit of Christmas had moved on from his party some years ago, ‘Santa Claus’ was no longer there in person either. Mandela was in Johannesburg, having cancelled all public engagements on account of his son, who had been taken seriously ill.
Just before the pandemonium had broken out, guests had been addressed by the Eastern Cape premier, Nosimo Balindlela, and she would assume the political responsibility that now flowed from the failed event. Mandela’s Christmas party was now the legislature’s business. A plan was made between the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and the provincial departments of education and social development to deliver the presents that could not be distributed on the day to local schools early the following year.
And that, as they say, was that. The 2005 party was cancelled. Mandla Mandela’s father had died and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund said that, instead of there being a party, gifts would be delivered to schools, in an attempt to ‘minimise exposing children to unnecessary difficulties’.
The spirit of Christmas was vanquished. The beautiful monster had eaten is own gift.
Reflecting on Christmas while imprisoned on Robben Island, Mandela wrote in his autobiography: ‘What Sundays were to the rest of the week, Christmas was to the rest of the year. It was the one day when the authorities showed any goodwill toward men. We did not have to go to the quarry on Christmas Day, and we were permitted to purchase a small quantity of sweets. We did not have a traditional Christmas meal, but we were given an extra mug of coffee for supper.’
Robben Island is one of the world’s more beautiful prisons, something of a beautiful monster itself, at least so far as its location goes. From its shores, a blue carpet stretches out towards the African continent and Table Mountain stares back at you. The mountain might well have felt like a prison wall of its own to those on the island, as if nature itself had erected some monumental fail-safe barrier should anyone attempt to cross the divide without permission.
For the children of the Eastern Cape and the prisoners alike, both Mandela’s Christmas party and Christmas Day would come to mirror each other in an eerie way: some small, precious gift, the enjoyment of which would be monitored by guards. All hemmed in by fences and gates. In both those worlds, come Christmas Day, freedom and control would let their mortal enemy take some small step into their domain.
No one better understood the value of that gesture than Mandela. The memory alone, of a fleeting respite from control’s relentless oppression, made an indelible impression upon him. How he must have wished to bestow upon Qunu some equally valuable relief from the tyranny of poverty, even if it was ephemeral. How it must have pained him to watch on as those crowds, desperate and deprived, swelled and crushed not just each other, but the gesture itself.
Few things break the heart more fundamentally than desperation. It can be as self-destructive as it is unjust.
