Walter Sisulu can still bring the party together.
If South Africa is in danger of having the African National Congress as its ruling party for the next 100 years, it is in no small part due to that movement’s uncanny ability to manipulate events — sometimes entirely by accident.
What other political movement in the world (let alone
South Africa’s motley collection of puny, squabbling opposition parties) is able to boast the miraculous return of its collective leadership after a quarter of a century of incarceration? Who else was able to turn Robben Island, the Alcatraz of the South Atlantic, into a symbol of hope and transformation? Who else could have had the good fortune to be able to turn the memorable Woza Albert phrase, “We’ve got Morena!” into “We’ve got Madiba!” and make the rest of the world green with envy and admiration?
Well, if you thought they’d used up their fund of tricks, they managed to pull off another one last weekend.
It wasn’t enough that we were given the chance to celebrate the 90th birthday of Walter Sisulu — a miracle of a man in his own right. The people’s party was not shy to top that event by pointing out that Sisulu and the ANC just happened to have been born in the same year — making the man and the movement twins. And it just so happens that Sisulu is unavoidably associated in our minds with the transformation of the ANC — including the moulding of Nelson Mandela and others as its leaders — into an unbeatable force for the destruction of apartheid, and the making of a South African revolution. The man and the movement are not just siblings “born in the same hour”. They are in many respects one and the same.
Or they were. The old and the new ANC were gathered together beneath the roof of the spanking new Sisulu Hall in Johannesburg’s Voortrekkerish suburb of Randburg to pay tribute to the venerable Tata Sisulu. And as the proceedings unfolded it became clear that there are subtle distinctions between the old-world courtesy of the old ANC, and the rather more brash and ambitious style of the new.
It was Mandela, of course, who set the tone of the old-school way of doing things by delivering a warm and very personal tribute to his old friend and mentor.
Proceedings had started a little late on this balmy Saturday afternoon, owing to the delayed arrival of the guest of honour and his loving wife. Mandela, punctual as usual, had good-humouredly chided his friend, now frail and wheelchair-bound, for keeping the rest of us waiting.
“I’m 90 years old,” Sisuslu had riposted. “I deserve to be late from time to time.”
“But I’m royalty and you’re a commoner,” Mandela had responded. “Commoners aren’t supposed to keep royalty waiting.”
The good humour had carried on into Mandela’s prepared speech, which he himself interrupted from time to time to deliver lengthy anecdotes about shared moments of triumph and adversity.
Everyone has an endless fund of anecdotes about the lovable personality of Walter Sisulu. Ahmed Kathrada has described how his extraordinarily patient personality earned him the nickname of “Saint Allah” during the early years of intolerable suffering on Robben Island — largely alleviated by Sisulu’s calmness and his brilliant handling of potentially disastrous situations. Albertina Sisulu has told of how, after being separated from him for the 25 years of his imprisonment (during which time she and all of her children had suffered almost incessant persecution on their own behalves), she had had to gently coax his prison habits out of him when he finally returned home — such as thinking that he still had to keep his toothbrush and toiletries neatly arranged in his little suitcase at the end of the bed, rather than simply leaving them in the bathroom and believing that he was still supposed to sleep with the light on.
On this occasion we were reminded how Walter Sisulu was also capable of some sly political tricks when he judged that circumstances called for them. He had led Mandela and others to believe that Chief Albert Lutuli had fully endorsed the decision to form the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, in 1960, whereas in reality the pacifist and profoundly religious chief had done no such thing. Once Mandela and the others had bought into the idea, however, the chief, in his turn, had no option but to follow suit.
Mandela’s birthday message included some cautionary words for the modern incarnation of the movement Sisulu had done so much to build:
“While the circumstances and the specific nature of the challenges in our country might have changed,” he said, “the task of our organisation basically remains the same: to lead the country in creating a better life for all our people, particularly the poor. The cardinal attributes of Walter Sisulu, the freedom fighter, remain as important to emulate today, as it ever was the case.
“The absolute selflessness with which he gave his life to the struggle is especially important to remember and hold dear as the new conditions create the temptations of self-interest and personal enrichment. Corruption, opportunism and self-serving careerism have no place in the organisation Walter Sisulu led and helped build.”
He ended by congratulating his old friend and colleague, and offering up his “best wishes for the years we have left”.
When President Thabo Mbeki rose to speak, many of us breathed a sigh of relief that he was not apparently going to lean on his old favourite WB Yeats as his co-speechwriter. Instead, he chose to quote from a poem by my old pal Ben Okri, a London-based Nigerian.
Beautiful as the poem is, it was an odd choice for the celebration of a long life that was still there for us all to share. The poem was entitled An African Elegy — and elegies, as we all know, are usually recited at a moment of sadness. The dictionary describes an elegy as “a song of lament, especially for the dead”.
Mbeki then went on to quote from Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, and then, sure enough, topped it off by hauling in Yeats after all — with a poem whose first line ran: “I dreamed that one had died in a strange place…”
These were rather morbid sentiments to plonk into the middle of a celebration. Was the new ANC subliminally burying the old, while it was still on its feet?
It is hard to tell in the treacherous game of politics. But for those few hours at least, we were able to put aside the inexorable rush of fate and take joy in the continued presence in our midst of the one and only Walter “Saint Allah” Sisulu.
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