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Barefoot

‘There are those who dream of the day they will see their ideals realised, that they will achieve what they had been striving, toiling and working for. In this way our Father helps them to keep the faith through the darkest night as they then know they are working and persisting and persevering for an ideal, a dream.’

Christo Wiese in a school essay, 1958

As a child Christoffel Hendrik Wiese wanted to become a ‘magistrate’.1 This was a big job as the region where he grew up was the largest magisterial district in South Africa.

Upington, where he attended primary school and his first years of high school, is a town of extremes. The country’s longest river runs through it, the airport has the longest civilian landing strip in the world, and in summer temperatures easily rise to above 40 degrees. It is ‘a beautiful but harsh part of the world’, where Wiese learnt that life is ‘not always a bed of roses and sometimes you just have to get on with it’.2 And it is better to take on such a hot place barefoot rather than with socks and shoes. ‘Not because I didn’t have shoes, but because it was nice to walk barefoot there.’3

Wiese’s father, Stoffel, was the owner of a garage and was also a farmer in the Kalahari. The combination was typical of Upington in those days, says Wiese.4 His father taught him never to take something from your own store’s shelves without writing it down. Also, that people of all ranks, creeds and races should be treated equally. ‘He got on with everyone.’5

His mother, Kotie, also ran her own business in town – a bridal shop and florist. From her he learnt not to trouble himself with things he could do nothing about, but rather ‘focus on those things you can do something about and then go ahead and do something’.

For Wiese there has always been a sense of being involved in business. And an interest in politics. He says he is from a ‘Bloedsap’ family. At the time Afrikaners had for decades been divided between the Nats (members of the National Party, or Natte in Afrikaans) and the Sappe. The Sappe were the political descendants of Jan Smuts, who, as leader of the South African Party (SAP) and, later, the United Party, championed cooperation between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. Upington had long been a Sap stronghold, but in 1948 the Nats won there and never lost again, tells Wiese.6

The Nats were the followers of JBM Hertzog and, later, DF Malan, who sought to protect Afrikaans culture and had plans for the economic upliftment of Afrikaners, many of whom lived in poverty. In the general election of 1948 the Nats unexpectedly won the most seats, thanks to overwhelming support from Afrikaners for, among other reasons, a new policy called ‘apartheid’, which would later become a byword for segregation and racial discrimination.

By this time Wiese had barely learnt to read and write. ‘I had a wonderful time growing up. By today’s standards we were not rich people, but in our environment we were well-off because my father had a new car every year or two,’ says Wiese.7

In a school essay he later referred to the home he grew up in as a place where he could ‘find peace, rest and happiness’ and added this about his parents: ‘For their love, guidance and discipline I am sincerely grateful.’8

In standard 9 (today’s grade 11) he was sent to the Hoër Jongenskool or ‘Boishaai’ (Boys’ High) in Paarl for the last two years of schooling. He was not the poorest boy in the school – he had a bicycle and a camera.

The late 1950s were dry years in the world he hailed from and in an English essay he described it like this: ‘The turbulent dust-devils dance across the lifeless flats – the only signs of movement on the stricken earth engulfed by vibrant waves of heat. The whirls of thick, red, suffocating dust seem to mock the death that triumphs over all.’ Not a bad rendering of the Queen’s English for a boy from the platteland. It also probably explains why he achieved the second highest marks in English in his last year at Boys’ High.9

Wiese did well at school, but he wasn’t the top student. He finished tenth in his matric year and was the third best student in German.

The nearest university to Paarl is in Stellenbosch. But Wiese found his way to Cape Town. ‘My dad held a very strong view that good United Party kids who went to Stellenbosch became Nats and he wouldn’t have that.’10

Wiese signed up to study law at the University of Cape Town (UCT), but realised by the middle of his first year that he hadn’t chosen his courses properly or registered for the right ones. ‘I went to certain classes, particularly where there were good-looking girls,’ he quipped later. But it was not a recipe for success and he left Cape Town without a degree. Later, in his curriculum vitae, he described what he did after his short stint at UCT simply as ‘boer’ (farming).11

‘My less than illustrious academic record made me return to Upington with the firm conviction that I was not cut out for academics. I wanted to be a businessman.’ Wiese’s father agreed. He bought a radiator repair business and they moved into a building in town from where they would operate. ‘I swear … it was the only building in Upington where the sun was shining 24 hours a day,’ he says. Upington is not known for its mild summers. On top of that, the carbide used to repair the radiators was applied at high temperatures. The heat, he says, made him think that it might not be such a bad idea to go back to studying.

Wiese, by that time, already had a few balls in the air. Within two years he was part of management at the Upington Afrikaanse Sakekamer (Afrikaans Chamber of Business) and was sent as a delegate to attend the congress of the Handelsinstituut (Commercial Institute), first in Pretoria and the next year in Cape Town.12

But this was not the life for Wiese. And someone noticed. Renier van Rooyen, who was married to Wiese’s cousin and was running a few stores in Upington at the time, persuaded the young man to return to university and gave him the financial support needed to study at Stellenbosch, according to the veteran financial journalist David Meades.13

When Wiese arrived in Stellenbosch in 1963 at the age of 21, he was relatively old for a first-year. Once again he registered to study law. He stayed in Wilgenhof, the oldest men’s residence (koshuis) in town. The koshuis – known among its residents as ‘Willows’ or simply ‘Die Plek’ and which is jokingly called ‘Bekfluitjie’ because of its resemblance to a harmonica – is steeped in tradition and had been home at one time to rugby legend Danie Craven.

Wilgenhof, in those days, was a relatively enlightened place among the Stellenbosch residences. Dagbreek, further up the road, had a reputation as an incubator for National Party politicians such as prime ministers Hendrik Verwoerd and John Vorster. Wilgenhof’s best-known political figure is the anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé. Wiese landed in res with the future leader of the parliamentary opposition Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. Later James Wellwood Basson, a blond boy from Porterville nicknamed ‘Whitey’, was also in Wilgenhof with Wiese.

Just as in Upington, Wiese was soon busy, becoming involved in student affairs. He was a first-years’ representative on the Law Society. He also joined the Debating Society and served as its treasurer in his second year. Here was a man who could clearly think on his feet. His contemporaries describe him as a very effective public speaker.

Wiese was elected to Wilgenhof’s house committee in his second year. That same year he stood as a candidate for the Students’ Representative Council (SRC). In an election issue of the student newspaper Die Matie, he undertook, as part of his policy statement, ‘to establish a basis for closer cooperation between English- and Afrikaans-speaking students on a foundation where they can cooperate without sacrificing their own principles.’

Wiese attracted enough votes to be elected as one of the SRC’s 14 members. He was handed the portfolios of Societies and Public Relations. Part of Wiese’s job was to make submissions on behalf of the student societies that applied for funding from the SRC. But general policy, leading ideas and matters of the day were also discussed at council meetings.

At an SRC meeting in 1965 Wiese suggested a tour to Angola in the June–July holiday.14 Still part of the Portuguese colonial empire, Angola was a very exotic destination for a group of Afrikaner students in the mid-1960s.

At the next meeting of the SRC, a matter of greater political importance was discussed. Wiese proposed that the SRC reject an application by the National Union of South African Students (Nusas) for official recognition as a student society at the university. Nusas was a liberal, mainly English-speaking student organisation that campaigned across South African campuses for multiracialism and political change. The SRC decided that Stellenbosch was no place for Nusas.

The SRC, at the same meeting, expressed its dissatisfaction with another society that had invited the American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King to speak on campus. The SRC unanimously accepted a motion to inform the society in question: ‘That this dissatisfaction is based on the fact that Dr King is in essence a mischief-maker who commits bloody crimes in the name of freedom.’

This was the year after King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

During the third term of 1965 Wiese was re-elected to the SRC. Once more, he was a busy man as Wilgenhof also chose him as its primarius – the head student and chairman of the house committee. It was around this time that he woke up one morning, as he recalled years later, with the realisation that he would never again live in Upington.15

Amid all of this Wiese was also a real student, because in September he left an SRC meeting early ‘due to academic pressures’, as the minutes show. At another meeting he said that his studies had ‘taken a turn for the worst’. And so he took a little longer than usual to finish his BA (Law) degree, only graduating at the end of his fourth year of studies.16

Wiese served on the SRC with a gaggle of theology students – known in Afrikaans as tokkelokke. Campus politics was then greatly influenced by the men studying to become dominees in the Dutch Reformed Church.

In stark contrast to the freewheeling 1960s at universities in most of the Western world, Afrikaans campuses were quite conservative places. There was still debate about whether female students should be allowed to smoke in public. Die Matie also carried opinion pieces about the university’s so-called Christian-national character, in line with National Party ideology, and, more directly, the unacceptability of premarital sex.

In June 1966 Wiese was one of the proponents of a motion that the SRC should be elected by students organised by faculty and not through the open nomination of candidates. He made his point at a monstervergadering, a mass meeting of students where they could vote directly, in the Ou Hoofgebou. Die Matie’s take on it was this:

The implications? The influence of the kweekskool [the theological seminary] on student politics should be limited. But such things are never said openly – therefore the other speakers need to point out to the proponents [of the motion] that their actual motive is to pull the rug from under the tokkelokke, the bastion of Christian principles on the campus.17

The Matie students firmly rejected Wiese’s plan for proportional representation. The tokkelokke would continue to rule the roost.

That same year the SRC hosted a formal dinner and on the menu for the event the organiser printed a photo of each member of the council. ‘On top of every member’s head was a halo, but on top of Christo’s head was a Goodyear tyre,’ recalls Boy Geldenhuys, himself a student of theology and that year’s SRC chairman.18

The year 1966 was one of great turmoil on South African campuses. By that stage the government had already passed a law to segregate the universities. English-speaking higher institutions, which had once been relatively ‘open’, allowing students of all races to attend, could now admit black students only under strict conditions. Race relations at universities were a constant source of news. ‘Ikeys [UCT] elect non-white to SRC’ ran a headline in Die Matie that year.19

In June the United States senator Robert Kennedy, a strong contender for the US presidency, travelled to South Africa at the invitation of Nusas. Stellenbosch’s SRC was opposed to his visit. Wiese warned at a meeting that the SRC should be ‘careful’ on the Kennedy issue not to create the impression that the left-leaning Nusas was the only representative of students’ views in the country. Eventually the men’s residence Simonsberg hosted Kennedy in Stellenbosch. Two years later the senator, brother of President John F Kennedy, was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. When the Kennedy family came to the country thirty years after his speech at Simonsberg to commemorate his South African visit, Wiese was their host.

In July 1966 the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), a nationwide organisation for Afrikaans-speaking students, held its annual conference in Stellenbosch. Afrikaner students from all corners of the country gathered to discuss the issue of ‘unity’ and elected Geldenhuys as ASB president. As part of the proceedings, the ASB approved a controversial motion, in which it thanked and praised one SED Brown, editor of a right-wing monthly publication called the South African Observer. In a recent edition Brown’s publication had gone so far as to insult several prominent Afrikaners by calling them something considered incredibly unsavoury. Businessman Dr Anton Rupert, Stellenbosch rector Professor HB Thom and the industrialist Hendrik van Eck were among those singled out. The insult? They were called ‘liberal’.

For Wiese this would not do. With the support of Simonsberg’s primarius, Willem van Drimmelen, he started a petition and soon gathered more than a thousand signatures demanding the ASB withdraw its motion of thanks to Brown. More than a quarter of the university’s students supported the petition, Van Drimmelen told the Rand Daily Mail.20 And in the process Wiese also got his first national media exposure. ‘We do not dissociate ourselves from the ASB or from any other motions taken at the ASB conference but I will not tolerate attacks by Brown on people like Mr Piet Cilliers [Cillié, editor of Die Burger] and Etienne Rossouw [Rousseau, MD of Sasol],’ Wiese was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

Geldenhuys did not want to accept the petition – with its 1276 names – as it was apparently ‘unconstitutional’. But Wiese brought a motion before a mass meeting of students and so Brown’s comments regarding the prominent Afrikaners were condemned and a committee was appointed to investigate the matter further. Die Matie described it in this way: ‘The petition was one of the best chess moves in many years in Matieland’s student politics. And one of the most talked about. Long after the many copies had been signed or not signed, it was still being discussed.’ The newspaper added that the whole Brown affair was a coup for Wiese and the progressives.

One of the students who attended the monstervergadering and heard Wiese speak was GT Ferreira, later chairman of the FirstRand group. ‘I was very impressed by how smooth the bliksem [bugger] was,’ Ferreira recalled in an interview in 2018.

Wiese ran for the SRC a third time. But it was not as easy before, because being seen as a progressive candidate had its drawbacks. Die Matie reported:

In the early hours of election day, last Monday, some brash and unimaginatively shortsighted people stooped to the most reprehensible and irresponsible conduct ever in our student community. Die Matie wants to express its disagreement, and as such totally distance itself from the smear campaign against the two SRC candidates, Messrs Willem van Drimmelen and Christo Wiese.21

In an effort to discredit Wiese and Van Drimmelen only hours before the SRC election, copies of a so-called ‘blue paper’ were delivered to nearly every room in every residence on campus and accused the two of ‘McCarthyism’ and of ‘condemning the Christian-national principles of the Afrikaner’. (Joseph McCarthy was an American senator who launched a witch-hunt against communists and other leftists in the US government. From the context it is not clear why Wiese was accused of McCarthyism.) Wiese, nevertheless, attracted enough votes for a third term on the SRC. He ran for the position of deputy chairman, but did not succeed.

Only two weeks after the SRC election, there was a momentous event on the national stage: the prime minister was assassinated in parliament. A parliamentary messenger, Dimitri Tsafendas, fatally stabbed Hendrik Verwoerd in his seat in the legislature. At the next SRC meeting Wiese suggested it would be a fitting gesture if the whole student council attended Verwoerd’s funeral.

In his third term on the SRC Wiese looked after the portfolio concerned with a proposed student centre, the Langenhoven Gedenksentrum (later called ‘Die Neelsie’). It was a long-held dream of the student community to put up such a building on campus, but the project had been stuck in limbo for ages. During Wiese’s term he got the ball rolling and by the end of that year Die Matie could report that the foundations of the student centre were soon to be laid.

Wiese did not run for the SRC again, but was appointed convenor of the next election. Besides organising ballot boxes and voting stations, he also chaired a gathering where student were given the opportunity to quiz candidates about their policies. Die Matie reported: ‘Students spoke highly of the brilliant way Christo Wiese chaired the Sirkus [student gathering]. Importantly, he did justice to both those posing the questions and the candidates.’

Eventually Wiese also did justice to his studies and graduated from Stellenbosch University with an LLB degree.22