Allan Boesak has been convicted by a myopic judiciary, argues Farid Esack, but what about its own tainted history?
If Allan Boesak ends up in jail, he will be the only significant anti-apartheid political figure of the Eighties behind bars. It’s utterly bewildering. He will, after all, not be behind bars for his political activities.
But should his political stature prevent him from being subjected to the same justice that everyone else is? Is the new South Africa not a place where all are equal before the law?
Is the fact that the law got to him before it got to others sufficient reason for him to be free?
Notions of judicial “objectivity” have long been consigned to the rubbish bins of history by a casual perusal of the records of the apartheid judges or a rudimentary understanding of how people function.
Who is the author of this article, who is Allan Boesak and who is Judge John Foxcroft, a person who waxes so lyrical about “the liberation struggle”?
I am a former comrade of Boesak’s. I was never a friend of his despite public displays to the contrary.
A few days ago in court I met Boesak for the first time in 10 years. A local reporter correctly commented that the atmosphere in support for Boesak at the Cape High Court in the past few days was heavy with nostalgia.
In some ways she was correct. However, some of us, including myself, are too preoccupied with the unfinished business of liberation, such as gender justice, to be nostalgic.
A talk show host described me as a “former colleague” of Boesak’s. I wasn’t a damned colleague – I was a comrade! And “comrade” then did not denote what it does now; it denoted struggle and “struggle” did not denote what it denotes now.
It involved plotting, travelling overseas and whipping up support for sanctions, coming home to face treason charges, life on the run from both the cops and your loved ones, tears – bucketfuls – at funerals for other comrades murdered at point blank range, organising, struggle bookkeeping.
It involved torture, long spells in detention without trial, disappearances, meetings and mobilisation. This is where I come from. This is where Boesak comes from and who he is.
His contribution to the struggle was immeasurable. Like all of us, Boesak has his inadequacies and I am not too dumb to be aware of them.
However, no single person played a greater role than he did in mobilising our people – I mean all our people – against apartheid.
Unlike another internationally revered, much- loved cleric, Boesak was a comrade who nailed his colours to the flag of the liberation unashamedly.
He was a comrade whose gifts of public relations with the international community and with “the masses” we utilised to the full.
He allowed himself to be used – not as a favour to the United Democratic Front or to the masses, but because he felt called to be an instrument in the hands of God to fulfil that role.
He did not do us – his fellow comrades – any favours. When, however, that contribution is being glibly passed over and the only thing that stands out is a black dot – made by a judge who is a product of yesterday – and the former comrades ignore the larger white sheet upon which that dot was placed, then something is fundamentally wrong.
That comradely relationship is reduced to a condomly relationship. Having used him to the maximum, we walk away, effectively “protected” from our own culpability of omission or commission.
He becomes a fall guy – a used condom that we unceremoniously tie up and throw down the toilet bowl.
But why should his importance preclude him from sitting out a jail sentence – being flushed down the toilet?
I do not care a damn about Boesak’s importance or anyone else’s, for that matter. It’s about an immeasurable debt that we owe the man for his immense contribution to the struggle for liberation.
Is it possible to find a balance through the eyes of the marginalised between that contribution and “fraud” on the one hand, and mass murders in Cassinga, Lusaka, Gaborone, Sharpeville and Langa; starvation in Duduza, Lilinge and Winterveld; Albie Sachs’s missing arm; Michael Lapsley’s missing hands; and countless missing bodies on the other?
While it is about all being equal before the law, it is also about the law not having any baggage, about the law enforcers not having a face.
It does have a face, and it is still essentially white. It does carry baggage and a fat lot at that; it’s the baggage of complicity in a judicial system that sentenced President Nelson Mandela to jail for 27 years, that sentenced hundreds of comrades to death and routinely processed pass-law cases at the rate of one every 1,8 minutes, with the accused invariably found guilty.
But for the grace of God, the unbounded spirit of forgiveness of our people and the dastardly negotiated settlement, many of these judges would have been on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death for the culpability and/ or complicity in judicial murders and covering up extra-judicial ones.
(And then some of them have the temerity to clamour for the return of the death penalty!)
When last did you see a letter to a newspaper wondering about the millions of taxpayer rands which is being stolen from the poor to fund Elita and FW de Klerk’s flying around the world and to provide him with his two pensions, bodyguards and secretary; about PW Botha’s quiet retirement in the wilderness, only occasionally emerging to point his finger in a judicial “up yours” to our new democracy?
Where is the clamouring for justice for all when so many happily supported the amnesty of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
Where are the noises for the countless bastards who have not “come forward” to be prosecuted?
Farid Esack is a commissioner serving on the Commission on Gender Equality. This article is his personal opinion