Anthony Holiday
CROSSFIRE
Prison, it is said, changes people. In Allan Boesak’s case, a year of the cold
stone jug seems to have made him a lot more like himself.
Boesak the popular orator has not died. In fact, he has emerged more dangerously
potent than ever before. The cadences and mesmeric tricks of repetition, borrowed from the American Baptist tradition and used to such effect by speakers
such as Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, have been polished and effectively
refined. The speeches are more carefully crafted and his use of biblical passages to carry coded threats has grown more subtle.
The former leader of the United Democratic Front has clearly used his time in
prison to sharpen the tools of his trade. If he was a crowd pleaser during the
heyday of the UDF, he now has the potential to turn himself into a sort of poor
man’s demagogue should he choose to do so. Boesak, the populist politician too,
is not only alive and well, but grown somewhat larger than life.
Moreover, the distinction between the uses of the pulpit and the political platform a difference that seems always to have been somewhat plastic to his
mind appears now to have been altogether obliterated. He is assiduously making
use of the forums provided by the revivalist churches which have always been
big business on the Cape Flats as well as such doors that remain open to him
in the African National Congress.
Last, but scarcely least, there is Boesak the convicted criminal. It is pointless to be anything but plain-spoken here. Boesak was incarcerated in May
last year after the Supreme Court of Appeal confirmed his conviction for stealing from a trust, set up by the singer Paul Simon to help child victims of
apartheid.
The Appellate Division hearing followed a judgement the previous year by Justice
John Foxcroft, convicting Boesak of stealing R259 000 from this trust, R322 722
from the Foundation for Peace and Justice and R762 000 that was donated for an
audio-visual project for voter education. The Supreme Court of Appeal set aside
his conviction for stealing from the audio-visual project, reduced the amount he was originally convicted of stealing to R147 160 and, consequently, reduced the
sentence from six to three years, of which Boesak served only one year before
being parolled.
Since his release and somewhat to the consternation of His People Church, which hosted his appearance at its 5 000-seat centre Boesak has uttered no
word of contrition for his felony. Indeed, he has continued to proclaim his innocence. More than this, it turns out that he is on the best of terms with
notorious gangster and drug lord Rashied Staggie, who has provided him with bodyguards and warmly proclaimed his admiration for the wayward cleric.
Staggie himself claims to have undergone a conversion to Christianity of the
holy roller variety, to have disbanded his Hard Livings gang and to have mended
his ways. But, given his reputation, a pinch of scepticism in this regard is
hardly out of place.
One might be forgiven, for instance, for noticing that by allowing himself to be “born again” as a Christian, Staggie, a Muslim by birth, has positioned himself
at the centre of a Cape Flats constituency that might prove useful in the on-
going vendetta between organised crime and the predominantly Muslim organisation
People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, some of whose members are on trial for the
murder of his twin brother Rashaad. If this circumstance is not fortuitous, then
it may turn out that the priest and the gangster have agendas that coincide at
certain points.
What is surely undeniable is that this combination of religious enthusiasm, politics and criminality constitutes a potentially poisonous concoction, which
the ANC leadership both in the Western Cape and at national level will ignore at its own and the country’s peril. Our social fabric is too heterogeneous and conflict-prone, our crime rate too high and our democratic
institutions too new and untested for this not to be the case.
Thus the question inevitably arises as to whether the ANC is prepared to tolerate an unrepentant convict in its ranks. Will Boesak be permitted to pursue
his career as a public speaker under an ANC banner? May he continue unrepudiated
to trade on his reputation as a UDF leader and his connections in President Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet? If these things are permitted to happen, what conclusions
will foreign governments and potential foreign investors draw? And what conclusions will the populace at large draw about how much control the ANC has
over its followers and over itself?
Nobody ought to pretend that these are easy matters to confront. Boesak is a
hero of the popular struggle against apartheid. More than his comrade of the UDF
days, Frank Chikane; more, perhaps, than even the former Anglican Archbishop,
Desmond Tutu, he gripped the imagination of the poor, the downtrodden and the
inarticulate. For the ANC to discipline him now would be to acknowledge that he
has disgraced himself and that, in disgracing himself, he has tarnished moments
in our history that many regard as sacred.
Yet these considerations provide no excuse for sweeping the issue under the carpet. Not only is it true that such a cowardly evasion would fail in its purpose. Whatever Boesak plans to do next, he certainly shows no sign of allowing himself to be buried by a discreet silence. But it is also true that
the ANC leaders cannot afford to avert their eyes, because to allow Boesak to
continue on his present course is to allow him, however unintentionally, to subvert the rule of law, which is the foundation stone of our Constitution. It
is to allow him to undermine the principle that all of us are equal before the
law, whether that equality be an affair of innocence assumed or of guilt proven.
The law is no longer an instrument in the hands of a clique of racists. It is a tool for the preservation of a civilised and humane non-racial order. The Boesak
affair will test whether our rulers have grasped that difference.
Dr Holiday teaches philosophy at the University of the Western Cape’s School of
Government and at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris