Krisjan Lemmer
The man who gets this year’s Groot Marico public conscience award is Aboobaker Ismail. This week he went further than any other African National Congress official in owning up to responsibility for some of the horrors perpetrated by the “good guys” in the liberation struggle.
Appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Pretoria, the former Umkhonto weSizwe chief of special operations admitted to being the mastermind behind 14 bomb attacks, including the 1983 Church Street explosion, and gamely faced some of the survivors – like former South African Air Force officer Neville Clarence, who was blinded in the blast.
But Lemmer was less impressed by the failure of any senior ANC officials to spare a few minutes of their precious time to give Ismail some moral support in the ordeal. A sympathiser, noting this on the first day of proceedings, rang around leading ANC stalwarts in the evening, urging them to attend. But, on the second day, they remained conspicuous by their absence. Comrades …?
A striking aspect of the hearings was the fact that, despite the efforts of our colleagues in the Afrikaans press to whip up emotions on the issue, three victims of the Church Street bombing – which left 19 dead and over 200 injured – were the only opponents of Ismail’s application for amnesty.
Hopefully they will together be able to find the funds to pay for the very expensive services of their lawyer, Louis Visser, who is not known as the “gold fisher” for nothing.
Hats off, also, to Neville Clarence, who did turn up for the hearings – but not to oppose the application. The exchange between him and Ismail alone justified the entire cost of the truth commission.
Ismail: “This is very difficult. I am sorry about what happened to you.”
Clarence: “I do not hold any grudges.”
If the goodly burghers of Pretoria want a new monument to put up in Church Square, we’d suggest this exchange offers the inspiration.
The Internet craze has hit the Dorsbult Bar, regulars showing what might be deemed an unhealthy interest in a video file to be found at . A vigilant cameraman captured a couple of spectators, high up on the grandstand at what most South African men hope is the Wanderers, playing a game which is definitely not cricket. On closer inspection the fact that the fellow appears to be more interested in the match than the vigorous activity on his lap can only lead us to conclude that the ground must be Lords.
A missive has reached us from the Department of Correctional Services (ne the prisons department) with regard to the Marthinus van Schalkwyk kerfuffle. It says: “I wish to inform you that your journalist had no permission to publish the story in terms of Section 44 of the Correctional Services Act. This is not the first time that your journalist sneaked into prison with hidden agendas. Their [sic] behaviour is unacceptable and therefore unproffessional [sic].”
No permission to publish! Secret agendas! Sounds like the good old days. In the good old days it was, of course, a criminal offence to photograph a prison, much less interview the unfortunates languishing inside one – which led to the ludicrous situation whereby newspapers taking pictures of Table Bay had to airbrush out Robben Island for fear of being thrown into the dungeons themselves.
Maybe correctional services would have us airbrush Van Schalkwyk out of the public consciousness? Might save the nation a lot of trouble …
Rapport, thrashing around in a leader to find some grounds to pontificate on the Van Schalkwyk story at the weekend, fell back on the hoary old saying about there being “no need to bribe the British journalist, when you consider what he will do unbribed”. Coming from a former handmaiden of the apartheid regime, that’s a bit thick … isn’t it, old boy? Not to mention the paper which paid “White Wolf” Barend Strydom to boast about how he slaughtered eight people in Pretoria.
Mzwakhe Mbuli, “people’s poet”, seems to be having a rough time in jail as an “awaiting trial” prisoner facing bank robbery charges.
City Press reports that, after engaging in a hunger strike to protest against his conditions, he was moved from a single cell to one shared with 52 other prisoners where the toilet does not work.
Mbuli – a non-smoker – is asphyxiated daily by clouds of smoke from his cell mates enthusiastically puffing cigarettes and zols. South Africa does not, of course, extend much sympathy to criminal suspects, but is this any way to treat a poet who is to be presumed innocent until …?