After The Party

A Personal And Political Journey Inside The Anc

Andrew Feinstein

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781868424245
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Parties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After the Party burst onto the South African political scene when it was published in 2006, becoming an instant bestseller. Detailing ex-ANC MP Andrew Feinstein's involvement with the ruling party - his euphoria at being part of the new South Africa followed by a growing disillusionment over the ANC's handling of HIV/AIDS and in particular the notorious Arms Deal. Now, in a new edition, Feinstein brings his fascinating story up to date following the watershed ANC Conference at Polokwane and the shift of power within the party. He writes an insider account of developments in the Arms Deal investigations, including the allegations against President Thabo Mbeki, and the German and British inquiries. He details the rise of Jacob Zuma and sets out the overwhelming case that Zuma faces on charges of corruption.

Section I

Early Politics

Chapter 1

A Dry White Season

it is a dry white season
dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out
and with a broken heart they dive down gently headed for the earth,
not even bleeding.
it is a dry white season brother,
only the trees know the pain as they still stand erect
dry like steel, their branches dry like wire,
indeed, it is a dry white season
but seasons come to pass.

‘For Don M. – Banned’

Mongane Wally Serote

My journey began with a polyglot upbringing by an Austrian, Jewish mother who survived the racial hatred of World War II in occupied Vienna, and a South African father of Lithuanian descent. A peripatetic childhood spent in South Africa and Austria involved three ‘semigrations’ from South Africa when my liberal-minded father could not tolerate the asphyxiating insularity of apartheid but found, again and again, that he could live nowhere else but this tortured country on the southern tip of Africa.

My father bought a home for the first time in his life in his late fifties. Three days later he was dead. He was one of a never-ending parade of Jews who were by instinct and history rootless.

This rootlessness manifested in me as a wanderlust that has never dissipated. After a multitude of schools it persisted into early adulthood which I spent in Cape Town, Berkeley and Cambridge. Amidst the spires and chapels, economics books and cricket on the greens I met Simone, a highly politicised Bangladeshi. At the first meeting of our class Simone was reluctant to speak to me on the grounds of my being a white South African. Four years later we were married in the first-ever ceremony in the 700-year history of Cambridge’s King’s College Chapel in which neither bride nor groom was Anglican.

Perhaps my background is best reflected in the life and death of my maternal grandmother. She was born Jewish in the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire, married a Catholic and converted to Catholicism for reasons of self-preservation in late-1930s Vienna. She remained a devout practising Catholic after World War II but nevertheless insisted on being buried in an orthodox Jewish cemetery in Cape Town by a family who could not even muster the minyan of 10 Jewish men to say prayers.

This polymorphous history informs my thinking on notions of identity and belonging, and especially questions of Africanism, Eurocentricity, non-Jewish Judaism and ‘otherness’. In a world of great divides between Muslim and Jew I am an agnostic cosmopolitan. Identity is at one level irrelevant and meaningless and at another crucially important.

*

Our semigrations were spent mainly in Vienna, the romantic city of Freud, Klimt and Bruno Kreisky, the Jewish leader of the Social Democratic Party which ruled Austria for much of the post-war period. The madness, brutality and evil insanity of apartheid was perhaps easier to discern when it was regularly contrasted with 1970s Austria, which was inclusive, fairly tolerant and enlightened.

While in Austria I missed South Africa terribly. However, back in Cape Town in mid-1976 I began to think there was something odd about my surroundings. I was 12 years old and attending a small, government-run primary school in Wynberg. Our class teacher was Mr Naude, a squat, well-built, crew-cutted man who spoke English with a thick, guttural Afrikaans accent. One morning in June he was called from our classroom to see the Headmaster and returned bright puce in the face and neck, the veins in his forehead bulging. Ordered out of the classroom, we joined the river of exiting children and were corralled into the school’s only tennis court where, shouting manically, Mr Naude ordered us to sit down. He barked at us that we were being sent home as soon as it was safe as there was great danger afoot: there were black students in ‘the location’ causing trouble. As he gesticulated his bottle green jacket rode up his paunchy midriff, exposing a holstered gun attached to his belt. We were far too excited to be scared but as I walked the couple of minutes to our house I wondered what had so exercised our teacher.

It was, as my parents told me later, the Soweto uprising in which black students, led by amongst others Murphy Morobe, rose up against an iniquitous education system. The fact that it was centred in far-away Johannesburg only made Mr Naude’s terrified reaction seem more paranoid. But his was the response of many whites to what they saw as ‘the marauding hordes’ from whom they were protected by racial laws, separate group areas and a repressive police force and army.

A few years later, as a 15-year-old at high school, I was compelled, along with all of my white male schoolmates, to register for compulsory military service. We were told by the registering officer: ‘They say that on the border [with Marxist Angola, against which a largely covert war was being fought] there is a communist behind every bush. It’s not true. There’re not enough bushes.’ I realised after an abortive school cadet camp that, for reasons of cowardice as much as nascent, unformed political awareness, I could never serve in the South African Defence Force.

The move from the strictures of an all-male, whites-only government school to the University of Cape Town – ‘Moscow on the Hill’ to the authorities – was an enlightening one. My time at UCT was characterised by demonstrations forcibly broken up by police, frustration with well-intentioned but sometimes juvenile student politics and the usual gamut of police spies in student ranks. It also marked my awakening to real politics through Shawco’s work amongst the impoverished communities on the outskirts of Cape Town. ‘Bed City’ was one of countless manifestations of the human misery and suffering wrought by apartheid.

In the townships and squatter settlements of the country resistance to apartheid was growing. This defiance led to the creation of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a thinly disguised, mass-based internal wing of the ANC that developed a remarkably open, non-racial and inclusive culture. As part of its strategy the UDF spawned a number of white left-wing organisations that were sympathetic to the ANC. I was peripherally involved in the End Conscription Campaign and the Five Freedoms Forum. This was our 1960s, socially and sexually carefree while politically committed, hopeful and idealistic.

My sense of the history and principles of the ANC intensified during this heady time. I developed a romantic picture of a values-driven, moral and quite dashing movement organised in underground structures within South Africa, in exile and at ‘the university’, as Robben Island was known.

Ten years after the Soweto uprising, in June 1986, an atrocity was perpetrated when the police and army, supported by reactionary warlords within the community, destroyed countless shacks – leaving 60 000 people homeless and killing 60 – in an attempt to quash the militant squatter settlement of Crossroads and move its inhabitants to Khayelitsha. As President of Shawco I was one of the coordinators of the relief operation for these destitute families. Together with my Shawco colleagues and the other relief agencies I was one of the few non-residents who had access to the area cordoned off by the security forces. We saw at first hand the devastation that had been wreaked.

Anton Richman,[3] one of the students working with us, was stranded in a church hall as the security forces unleashed an attack on it. A close friend, Lance van Sittert, and I jumped into a kombi and raced towards the building, which burst into flames as we approached. From the smoke-filled distance shots rang out – aimed, we thought, at us. I turned the kombi around and sped back to our base. Thankfully, Anton managed to escape, but at least a couple of local residents who were seeking refuge in the hall were not so fortunate. The incident brought home to us the brutality of late apartheid and the manner in which the community – organised by the ANC underground and the UDF – united in defiance and fought back. There were even occasional snipers from within the community firing at the security forces.

At the height of the Crossroads crisis I was asked to attend a meeting with the UDF leadership. I was taken to a small house in Nyanga East where I was introduced to a vivacious young woman and a slightly sinister looking man with a balding pate and longish hair straggling down on to his neck. They asked for details of what we had been doing in Crossroads and how we intended to proceed. Cheryl Carolus was warm towards us and full of praise for what we were doing. Trevor Manuel was more abrupt and slightly gruffer. He asked me to keep them informed of what we were up to and any important developments in the relief operation. I was filled with awe and respect for these two activists who I knew had been battling the apartheid state on the streets of the townships since their teens.

For the duration of the crisis we were hosted and supported by a remarkable household. The Jacks, a stalwart ANC family, had devoted their lives to the overthrow of apartheid. Their house served as a physical, political and emotional base for us. The eldest son, Pro,[4] a member of the banned ANC, would guide us through the political dynamics of the area. Led by their indomitable mother, known to us as Ma Jack, together with sister Buyiswa, a fiery gender activist, and younger brother Xolo, they offered food and succour throughout those long weeks. By the end of the crisis Xolo had given up his studies and had developed what became a debilitating alcohol problem.

The violent flames raging from the destroyed Crossroads community were visible from the centre of Cape Town just 10 kilometres away. But most white South Africans, including my own parents, refused to believe what was happening. On hearing that my colleagues and I had been using our status as a welfare agency to take undercover journalists into the area, an uncle of mine admonished me and remarked: ‘Just be grateful it’s the schwarzers and not us.’ It was a graphic reminder of how the vast majority of white South Africans had allowed themselves to be insulated from the reality of the country; how willing the white mind was to be numbed by ignorance and avoidance.

During my involvement in these events the Defence Force took pleasure in informing me that I was about to be conscripted and would be sent back into Crossroads as an infantryman serving the apartheid state. I was teaching a course on Freud and psychoanalysis at the St Francis Adult Education Centre in Langa at the time, and when my star student, a woman teacher from the militant Gugulethu township, commented: ‘Andrew, that was highly entertaining, but what relevance does it have for our lives?’, I saw her point. It was time to move on.

Chapter 2

Stirrings of Change

I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom ...
I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people to be free …
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts ...
I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free.
Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return.

Statement rejecting a conditional offer of freedom from President PW Botha

Nelson Mandela, 10 February 1985

Two days before I was due to report for military service I left South Africa for the University of California at Berkeley, sponsored – with comic consequences – by the Rotary Foundation.

As we crossed the Bay Bridge from San Francisco into Berkeley my elderly Rotary ‘host father’ drove past a car abandoned in the middle of the bridge. ‘Bloody niggers,’ he intoned. ‘Only a nigger would leave his car there.’ A few hours later, during dinner with a few Rotarian guests, he ushered me into the kitchen: ‘Andrew, I notice you use the word ‘adore’ a great deal. Men don’t say ‘adore’ here, especially in the Bay area. People may get the wrong impression.’

Welcome to the world of Reagan and Thatcher, the rise of monetarism and its social consequences. This revolution was characterised by a profound contradiction: its extreme free market reforms served to undermine the very social conservatism, connoted by the aphorism ‘family values’, that was its supposed moral underpinning.

As I was about to address my very wealthy host club, Reagan supporters to a man, a senior member said to me: ‘I am so glad you are here to set right the lies that are told about your country.’ After my speech – entitled ‘South Africa: Its People and Politics’ – he was somewhat less enamoured of me. I received a message from my sponsoring club in South Africa reminding me that Rotary scholars were expected to desist from discussing politics.

Once in bohemian Berkeley (whose main square had been re-named Biko Plaza), I flirted with dependency theory and an Israeli student of Russian origin working on a PhD in Buddhist studies. I made contact with the liberation movement in exile and became involved in the Azanian South African Students Movement, led by Saths Cooper, a former leader of the Steve Biko-inspired Black Consciousness (BC) group, Azapo. I also befriended another former Azapo leader, Mlungisi Mervana. My engagement with them felt a little strange at first: I had been told that the BC movement was anti-white, but Saths, Mlungisi and others were never anything less than welcoming and great company. At times, however, I got the impression that the BC movement was stronger in California than in Crossroads.

Meanwhile, in the South Africa of the late 1980s, a contradictory dynamic of secret negotiations and simultaneously intensified repression had been initiated by President PW Botha. Measures such as the assault on Crossroads were taking place in parallel with a covert approach to the jailed Nelson Mandela. Botha was, however, unable to make the political leap of freeing Mandela and others and instead created less powerful and thus meaningless political institutions for each of the Indian and ‘coloured’ population groups. Botha suffered a debilitating stroke in 1989 and was deposed in a silent coup from within the National Party.

My father died unexpectedly of a heart attack while I was at Berkeley. My journey home for his funeral, generously paid for by Rotary despite my political misdemeanours, took me via Tel Aviv where, in an unfriendly hotel, I passed an unsettled night ruminating on his unsuccessful attempts to create a bond between his children and the state of Israel. While he was a completely non-observant and I assumed non-believing Jew, he was deeply conscious of anti-Semitism and was unambiguously supportive of Israel.

His death also led me to consider the basis of his rootlessness. My parents moved house 29 times in 32 years of marriage. It probably didn’t help that his domineering Lithuanian mother, who ran a ‘frock shop’ in Johannesburg, would move him from boarding school to boarding school as she heard from her society friends that yet another school was now the country’s premier educational establishment. This impermanence was exacerbated by her habit of buying him gifts, most memorably a puppy and a bicycle, ‘on appro’ and returning them to the shop as soon as he had departed for whichever school was the current favourite.

After my father’s funeral and the completion of my time at Berkeley I returned to South Africa briefly to set up a Public Affairs business. Called Interface Africa, it comprised myself and a colleague, Mohammed Salloojee, providing political and corporate social responsibility advice to companies and NGOs. We also assisted the ANC’s nascent business wing, run by Peter Roussos. I embarked on an engrossing, sometimes surreal tour around the rural areas of the country, managing a music talent show. This brought me into contact with the burgeoning jazz scene in Johannesburg. I worked with the newly created non-racial musicians’ association, SAMA, led by the People’s Poet, Mzwakhi Mbuli, Johnny Clegg, Jennifer Ferguson and the formidable Queeneth Ndaba, all ANC-aligned musicians.

To continue avoiding the long arm of the draft I returned abroad in 1989 to study economics at Cambridge University, where I met my wife Simone, made contact with the ANC in exile and fell under the intellectual influence of Professor John Sender, a South African-born economist who was a follower of the little-known but brilliant and controversial political economist, Bill Warren.[5]

While I was at Cambridge the stirrings of change in South Africa intensified with FW de Klerk’s ousting of Botha. Although regarded as conservative within the National Party, De Klerk had the foresight to realise that apartheid’s days were numbered. He acted with courage and alacrity, stunning not only South Africa but many of his own party colleagues by unbanning the ANC and its allies and affiliates, and releasing political prisoners.

I watched Nelson Mandela walk free from Victor Verster prison on a small black and white television in my room in Cambridge. I was struck by how he emerged both regal and humble, this man whose only likeness the world had seen was almost 30 years out of date. It was the most significant moment of my and many South Africans’ lives. I abandoned plans to research a PhD under John Sender and returned to South Africa, where I could now join the ANC legally. I wasn’t sad to leave behind the suffocating conservatism and hypocrisy of Thatcher’s Britain.

Chapter 3

Towards the New Jerusalem

Forward we shall march, forward we shall march
Forward we sha...