He was endearingly messy and relaxed in life — and so was his farewell. Mark Gevisser reports on the symbolism that emerged at Joe Slovo’s funeral
AS I drove the 12 kilometres from Orlando to Avalon on Sunday, crawling through the human avenue of thousands of people, a young man rushed up to me, carrying a stone. The impulse was to flinch — I am white, this is Soweto — but I was confounded: “I’m not going to make it there in time,” he cried. “Please put this stone on his grave for me.”
There were other stones at Joe Slovo’s graveside; those lobbed by the crowd, that succeeded in chasing people off the scaffolding where the pleas and commands of Cyril Ramaphosa failed. It was a shocking moment, mob justice of a sort, applauded even by those on the podium: the rule of the stone prevailing over the words of the leaders. A symbol, perhaps, of the ANC’s losing control over its constituency?
Earlier, in the Orlando Stadium, 40 000 people sat, immobile, through long ponderous speeches. Reverend Barney Pityana offered an academic exegesis on faith and liberation; Cosatu’s John Gomomo waded through treacle- thick exhortations to the working-class; the South African Communist Party’s Charles Nqakula fashioned overwrought populist imagery that failed nonetheless to ignite the crowd.
The crowd showed only three moments of palpable engagement: when President Nelson Mandela entered the stadium, when he finished his speech and when Mzwakhe Mbuli sang his praise- poems. Otherwise, they seemed rather detached. A symbol, perhaps, of the ANC’s alienation from its community?
Slovo’s interment was this country’s major public event since Mandela’s inauguration eight months ago. It was, on paper, the first state funeral of the new South Africa. In fact, state coffers only contributed five percent of the R2-million to R3-million bill; the rest goes on to the mounting heap of debt accumulated by the ANC. It was neither a state-funeral nor a struggle-funeral. It had neither the pomp and ritual of the former nor the fervent engagement of the latter. It was something inbetween; a transition funeral holding a mass of contradictions and ambivalences reflecting, perfectly, the transitional nature of the tripartite alliance of the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu.
There were the obvious ironies: the words of the The Internationale printed on government paper; the presence of Joe-Hunter Number One, Pik Botha, sitting decorously next to Mandela just behind the hammer and sickle fashioned of roses beneath the podium. These ironies were not lost on the speakers. Mandela himself called it nothing less than “the tragedy of South Africa” that Slovo’s “humanity, pragmatism and industriousness” were realised by whites only now, after 40 years of banning and that “these qualities are extolled by some, as if they were new”.
Just as the alliance itself is struggling with the dual roles of mass-movement and governing political party, so too did the funeral. It was there, for example, in the space between Ramaphosa and Thabo Mbeki at the graveside; the former on the crowd-mike, trying to control the people; the latter seated and dignified with his wife up on the podium, only intervening at the very last minute to quieten the crowd for Helena Dolny’s speech.
And one saw it, most acutely, in the absence (or presence) of the military. Mbeki and other ANC heavyweights arrived at the graveside in Nyalas laid on to transport them from their cars through the mud. Later, township people climbed atop them to get a better view, a casual display of new ownership. But then, when the soldiers tried to clear them off, things turned nasty. Once more they were “comrades” against boere: insults — and mudclods — were traded.
The decision to cart Slovo’s coffin through Soweto on a South African National Defence Force gun-carriage had intense symbolic significance. In the popular imagination of those tens of thousands lining the streets, Slovo was first and foremost a military commander who, with a great mind and a handful of committed cadres, defeated the armed might of his own people. The gun-carriage that carried him was thus his final trophy; the materiel of oppression commandeered for his final ride.
But where were the Impalas flying overhead, trailing the colours of the SACP? Why were there only two soldiers with popguns giving the final salute rather than 24 Howitzers? Where was the swagger of military might so essential to the public display of patriotism that takes place at a state event?
The answer lies, once more, in the ambivalence of the ANC to its newfound executive power. On one hand, military might now belongs to the people it used to oppress; it is controlled by the ANC itself. On the other, it carries with it the memory, from funerals past, of teargas and bullets, of the disruption rather than the facilitation of mourning.
Batallions of soldiers and barriers around the graveside would have prevented the possibility of a tragic crowd crush but the ANC, as the new government, would have inevitably found itself on the wrong side of such barriers, separated from the people it purports to represent.
And so there was also intense and very self-conscious political significance to the fact that Umkhonto weSizwe, rather than the South African National Defence Force or the police, buried Joe Slovo.
Umkhonto, remember, no longer exists. It thus came across as an assertion of the ANC’s liberation-movement self over its government-self.
And an unsuccessful assertion at that, for the MK cadres deployed at the graveside were unable to prevent the near- chaos. Indeed, the firing of their AK-47s, as the coffin was lowered into the earth, was barely heard above the hubbub of the crowd.
Perhaps that’s appropriate. Because in the banner headlines proclaiming “Unruly crowds at graveside”, one essential and unforgettable truth is lost: the whole of Soweto came out to bury one man, one white man, as they have never buried anyone before.
The true funeral took place neither in the stuffy confines of Orlando Stadium, where there was too much order and discipline, nor in the muddy chaos of Avalon Cemetery, where there was not enough. Rather, it took place along the way between the two; where the people of Soweto could mourn and celebrate unmediated; where they could sing Hamba Kahle Umkhonto with the gusto lacking at the graveside or in the stadium; and stand outside their homes with buckets of water, just as they did during earlier funerals when it was needed to ward off the teargas.
When Chris Hani was buried — the last time there was a major public funeral — the tension brought out the anger of urban life. The people were seething, ominous, jealous of their space.
The crowds along the route of Slovo’s procession presented that other basic urban mood: the laughing, ribald air of a carnival — in which people shouted “Vivo!” instead of “Viva!” and traded earthy humour with the cars that passed.
What a relief there seemed to be among people, now that they no longer had to shout “Viva!”; now that they could quote a brandname instead. There was celebration in the air; an irreverence and delight that seemed to match, perfectly and perhaps unwittingly, the “wine, women and song” Slovo that those who knew him better were commemorating.
At the end of the funeral, Dolny spoke about her husband. Finally, the family of this public man was staking its claim to his memory. Dolny’s speech was moving, generous, brilliant: she claimed him back without requiring the masses to relinquish him.
He was, she said, “endearingly messy and relaxed”. Perhaps the same could be said about his funeral.
Slovo was, according to his wishes, buried by a mass of people, with all its contradictory impulses, rather than by a taut state ideology. Perhaps the alliance should be praised, rather than criticised, for not managing the memory of Joe Slovo more effectively.
How reassuring that South Africans are trapped neither in struggle nor in blind allegiance to their leaders.