A former military officer under the apartheid regime, disabled and shunned by the very system he chose to serve, has not let the curve ball thrown to him by fate stop him from fulfilling his dreams
Khadija Magardie
It is rare that childhood dreams of becoming a ballerina or a fighter jet pilot are sustained to adulthood. Though there are those who cling to the fragments of the dream, the sobriety of the real world means little choice but “a normal life” for most.
But Neville Clarence’s boyhood thirst for adventure, and a challenge, was one of those translated into reality albeit one of mixed blessings. The “Action Man” he dreamed of becoming and became brightened his life, in one moment of unspeakable horror darkened it, and then brightened it again.
In July Clarence will travel to Tanzania, to climb Kilimanjaro. It will be his second trip he reached the summit of Africa’s highest mountain for the first time late last year.
“I felt so much pride, standing up there,” he says wistfully. And the fit and fortunate who risk life and limb to conquer the world’s peaks agree there is no feeling quite like reaching the top, they say. Some have described it as an ecstasy of triumph combined with awe at the breathtaking view.
But as he stood on the treacherous peak relishing a moment most people only read about, or see at the Imax theatre, he could feel the exhilaration, but still missed a significant part of the experience.
Neville Clarence is blind.
In March next year he plans to conquer Mount Everest, hoping to be the first blind man to do so. Even if he is not there is currently a similar attempt being made his planned summit from the northern side of the mountain will still likely guarantee him a place in the record books. His venture is being organised with the assistance of some of the country’s most renowned mountaineers and the backing of Sensory Oddessey, a tour operator for the visually impaired that Clarence helped start.
Though climbing mountains is beyond the scope of the average citizen, he says the aim of the trip is to show that people with disabilities “can do normal things”. A far cry from an individual, and a life, that has been far from normal.
The white, middle-class, English-speaking family he was born into, he says, had a major influence on him. Throughout his life, which began in earnest when he matriculated from Pretoria Boys’ High in 1977, his tea and coffee merchant father instilled qualities of fair play in his son.
“I wouldn’t say he was completely liberal, but he met with different people in his work, and helped wherever he could,” says Clarence.
Some of his fondest childhood memories were receiving brightly wrapped gifts from several Chinese families in Pretoria, who were his father’s clients. When it came to a career decision after finishing school, his parents encouraged his decision to “try” the military as a springboard of opportunity to a permanent job elsewhere. The qualifications he would gain, they reasoned, would help him in a civilian life later on.
When he first enrolled in the South African Air Force as a fresh-faced 17-year-old, he says he never expected to turn his stint into a career.
“It was just an extension of my boyhood fascination with planes and military, I guess,” he says.
But the air force he joined in 1978 when apartheid was in its heyday was the security apparatus of the apartheid state, then in the process of intensifying some of its worst incursions into neighbouring states in a bid to halt the “Rooi gevaar”.
To whose at whom the wrath of the Nationalist machinery was being directed, the air force and navy together with operational forces such as the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the police were the same thing. Yet for the young recruits like Clarence, it was “a big boy scout adventure”. The prospect of spending one’s life flying planes or commanding submarines was not connected to their usage against the state’s own citizens.
“I and my peers just didn’t see it that way at least not at the time,” he says, acknowledging that political indoctrination was part and parcel of being in the military.
Compared to the SADF, the air force had a limited operational area but, suitably influenced by anti-communist hysteria, its sphere of influence began to specialise in bombing neighbouring countries, including Botswana, Namibia and Angola.
Though he did not expect to make a career of it, Clarence spent 11 years in the force, specialising in the machinery that guided fighter aircraft with the use of radar. His was the guiding hand that led the otherwise blinded planes to drop bombs on the civilians so far from Pretoria.
After losing his sight he continued his specialised role on the air defence systems of other countries and was transferred to the air force’s intelligence division.
Clarence was introduced to the world by popping lights and camera flashes in a Pretoria hall in 1997. It was an amnesty hearing, under the auspices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) operative Abu Bakr Ismail was giving testimony about his role in the 1983 Church Street bombing which killed 22 people, 19 of them civilians.
Days earlier Clarence had taken the stand to give his version of events on May 20 in downtown air force headquarters. When he heard that Ismail would be testifying he told his wife to take him there.
In a deeply moving gesture of reconciliation, Clarence was led to a visibly apprehensive Ismail during the recess, shook his hand, and simply said: “I hold no grudges.”
Ismail responded that he was sorry about what had happened. The relationship between the two has since grown to friendship and they meet regularly. It is a relationship perhaps born out of morbid curiosity, matured by respect.
“As one army man to another, I think the main thing is that though one may not agree with methods, there is always respect,” says Clarence.
If there are any grudges, or bitterness, they have arisen out of the fact that despite losing his sight in the blast, he was denied compensation.
Though he does not fully recall everything that happened on that fateful day, Clarence says he lives with the lasting memory and consequences of injuries sustained because of who he was, and where he was, yet those who he was dedicated to serving turned their backs on him.
After leaving his base at Waterkloof Air Force Base that afternoon, Clarence, still in uniform, drove with colleagues to air force headquarters in town to collect documentation he was due to leave later that day for Pietersburg to conduct training at a base. By the time they arrived at the building, it was approximately 4.20pm on May 20.
It was several minutes before they could find a parking space directly outside the building’s entrance. They had just pulled into a parking space and were deciding whether the person with the documentation had not already left work, when a powerful car bomb directly in front of the car Clarence was sitting in ripped through the street and its surrounds. All he remembers was a slight clicking sound and silence the impact of the bomb created a vacuum around the cars.
His next recollection was walking around asking people what had happened. At the time, paramedics did not attend to him, thinking that he was less injured than others.
“They thought I had a blackout but I knew, I just knew something was horribly wrong,” he says.
He next remembers being told by a surgeon in the hospital that he would never regain his sight. The impact of the blast had flung him against the car seat, severely knocking his head. His retinas had been dislodged.
“I don’t think I was ever angry, just surprised and confused.”
The following months were a painful role reversal, from an army officer used to commanding respect and leading an independent life to a frail man who was dependent on a walking cane and had to learn the basics of reading and writing in Braille.
He says a hard thing to deal with was his image one minute a military man, the next a disabled person viewed with sympathy, not respect.
“I felt embarrassed, even humiliated, like I was a schoolboy again,” he says sadly.
He returned to the air force and did several brief stints lecturing to juniors and cadets on air defence theory. During this time he was promoted to the rank of captain, at the age of 22.
By the time he left the air force he had attained the rank of major. He filled out several applications for compensation, but he was refused. The bomb, the Workmen’s Compensation officer reasoned, had exploded at 4.20pm 20 minutes after the official off-duty time.
Despite Clarence’s being in uniform at the time and having gone on work-related business to the headquarters in town, he was turned down. Subsequent letters, even to Nelson Mandela in 1994 requesting a review, had the same result.
In 1989 he finally left the air force, embittered and, he says, wiser. The loss of his sight motivated him to find out why the bomb was planted and he started devouring books on the African National Congress and the struggle against apartheid.
“When it became obvious my presence in the air force was making people uncomfortable, I started to look into where I really did belong and what I should be doing,” he remembers.
But it took a bomb to bring him to his “political Damascus” Clarence remained in the military, even after losing his sight. Some would say an army officer at the service of the apartheid state deserves scant sympathy especially when political conversions are made out of necessity. This is something he does not deny, but he says that, had it not been for the loss of his sight, he would not have had a second thought about his otherwise comfortable life.
The need to provide for his then young family forced him to look at other avenues for making money after being denied even the simplest form of financial assistance from the air force. His background in IT and his own need to communicate drew him to the idea of finding access for blind people to computers.
Neville Clarence Technologies, the business he has now dedicated his time and energy to, imports software for blind people and is thriving. Born out of his own need, it now serves hundreds of visually impaired men and women with talking computers and Braille printers giving people without sight the chance to “do normal things”, like reading their e-mail.
The planned trip to Everest will also, he says, give hope to people who think losing their sight is the end of a regular life.
Looking back on his days in the air force, and the TRC hearings, he acknowledges that he may be viewed as an opportunist, hoping to make political mileage out of his blindness. But, he says, he had not established himself purely as a victim who sat around waiting for opportunity to fall into his lap his particular plight was not unique in a country where black victims of apartheid’s war far exceeded white ones.
“At the end of the day, it is difficult to see the other side, but understanding what makes people do things always goes a long way,” says Clarence.