The unqualified praise that political leaders have heaped on Peter Mokaba following his death has been more than a little nauseating. Yes, he had great strengths and talents. Yes, we all want to speak well of the dead. But the conscious amnesia on which this effusion has depended is insidious.
For the truth, as we all know, is that the integrity of Mokaba — like that of many of us — was suspect. There is no particular disgrace in this. It is one of the paradoxes of the lives we lead that our greatest weaknesses often give life to our greatest strengths. How, for example, other than by reference to Boris Yeltsin’s vanity and prodigious alcoholic intake on the day, do we explain the finest hour of the man who later became Russia’s president? That moment came for Yeltsin in August 1991 when he clambered on top of a tank in Moscow and, somewhat unsteadily, denounced the coup by communist hardliners then under way against Mikhail Gorbachev, in the process inducing its collapse.
But we South Africans are supposed to be satisfied with hagiographies to the dead delivered, our politicians pretend, in our name. We are expected to be complicit in these assertions of collective ignorance. This includes ignorance of the proven wrongdoings of Hansie Cronje in trying to get two vulnerable black cricketers to agree to join him in fixing matches — surely a crime against our future.
In this edition, we devote much space to the many lives of Mokaba. Seen as a hero of the struggle against apartheid, there is also compelling testimony he was an apartheid spy in the 1980s. Though believed by some to be dying of Aids, he denied the condition’s existence. A self-proclaimed Marxist Leninist, he lived the high life and indulged himself with many of latterday capitalism’s finest luxuries. A demagogue, he was also highly personable.
The richness of Mokaba’s life lies in these contradictions, not in the two-dimensional portrayals with which our politicians — from President Thabo Mbeki downwards — have assailed us. If he was an apartheid spy — and we understand the African National Congress might have his confession somewhere — then why not say so? If he was, the ANC’s triumph was, surely, all the greater for rehabilitating him. If he wasn’t a spy, then let the ANC deal with the conviction of senior ANC officials in the 1980s that Mokaba was, and let us, the public, know the conclusion.
The ANC has before buried senior members who confessed to being apartheid spies. One was Francis Meli, a member of the ANC national executive and Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veteran, who was suborned in London in the late 1980s. Another was Solly Smith, another MK veteran who was for some years ANC chief representative in London. When the ANC buried them, it did so quietly, with none of the extravagant praise now being showered on Mokaba.
We ask the ruling party: is there good reason for this difference in treatment? That is, is there proof that Mokaba was not an apartheid spy? Or, might the reason for this difference be a grubby one: that, among ANC leaders in the run-up to the ANC conference, our tradition of not speaking ill of the dead is the cover under which individual politicians are wielding on their own behalf the political capital they sense Mokaba still embodies? To own (and protect from any unpalatable truth) the memory of Mokaba might garner a lot of northern and youth votes for whoever does so. No doubt, some opposition parties have been as shameless in trying to own the more attractive side of Cronje’s memory.
We do not wish to worsen the grief of the family and friends of any dead public figure. But let us tell the truth about the dead, just as we seek to do so about the living. The alternative is, simultaneously, immature and dangerous — and better suited to dictatorial regimes that rule as much by the airbrush as by the jackboot.
Dream the impossible dream
Believe you can do the unthinkable. That has been the lesson of this year’s World Cup first round. From Senegal’s opening day upset over former holders, France, to England’s nerve-wrecking revenge over perennial rivals Argentina — with those results putting paid to the joint favourites — this World Cup will be remembered for more than being the first held in the Far East.
And then there was Bafana Bafana. From the ruins of Kayes in Mali, where South Africa gave an abject display to crash out of the African Cup of Nations quarterfinals, our national football team has grown into a force that inspires passion. It held its own against the world’s finest and has given much promise for the future. Although South Africa fell at the first hurdle again, that was the only similarity with the disjointed effort of four years ago. To be eliminated on the number of goals scored is no dishonour. Jomo Sono’s team did us proud.