It’s day zero minus one. Tomorrow the nation and the world will expect South Africa to celebrate its new constitution.
The choir, which will sing the constitutional assembly’s anthem in the morning, is practicing outside.
The red carpets have been laid and the wooden podiums put in place. The four-storey constitutional mural, covered by a white cloth, has been hung on the side of a building across from Tuynhuys.
There is excitement and expectation in the corridors, halls, offices and canteens of the old assembly building. There is only one problem. The constitution is not ready yet.
As Cyril Ramaphosa, chairman of the constitutional assembly, later confides, “we were getting into a situation where I didn’t think we were going to reach an agreement”.
President Nelson Mandela tells partygoers at a government function on Wednesday night that he had several speeches prepared for the occasion. “A number of possible alternatives faced our country,” he says. “I just hope I’ve got the right speech”.
Waiting becomes the key activity as senior negotiators lock horns behind closed doors.
“Solutions are in the air,” Leon Wessels, the assembly deputy chairman, tells a packed chamber just before 5pm. The three remaining issues, the lockout, single-medium education and property clauses, are still undecided.
At 7.10pm, Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, the NP’s chief negotiator, hold impromptu press conferences on the marble-floored lobby outside the old chamber.
An agreement is imminent, they say: come back at 7.30pm.
At 8.25pm, the assembly is packed once more with MPs, senators, press, lobbyists, and assorted observers.
Ramaphosa, as has become something of a tradition in the latter stages of the constitutional process, starts reading out a joke version of the agreement. “The state will provide no compensation for the expropriation of private property unless it has the willingness and ability,” he says, chuckling. Once more, the constitutional committee adjourns.
At 9.30pm and on a more serious note, Ramaphosa announces that an entirely new issue has been brought up - the question of pensions.
The NP, it turns out, has realised only now that pensions for office bearers in the previous government - and struggle pensions, as a sweetener - have been left out.
“We are about to finalise this agreement, but there is another consultation that is necessary to seal this. We’ve been waiting two years, so what’s another 20 minutes?” he asks.
It is 10.55pm and the old assembly chamber is fuller than it has been all day. In a sense the venue is remarkably appropriate. It was here, among the dark wood benches, green leather seats and thick pile carpets, that the famous “wind of change” speech was delivered, here that the so-called architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, was killed. It was also here, 10 years ago that Louis le Grange, then minister of law and order, introduced a motion to proclaim a state of emergency.
The viciousness of what happened after that decision, together with the concerted effort to begin serious negotiations, launched about the same time by Mandela from Robben Island and by the ANC’s leadership in exile, was to mark the beginning of the final lap of South Africa’s transition to democracy.
Mandela told the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday morning that he had sent a letter to PW Botha, then state president, in July 1986 appealing for talks to begin in earnest.
The main issue at the time was the government’s fear that majority rule would result in the domination and subjugation of the white minority.
“How far have we moved since then,” he commented wryly.
In the meantime, agreement has been reached. A few hours later, deep into the morning of day zero, and the last amendments have been clarified. The constitution is ready, just a few hours before the public starts queuing for places in the gallery of the national assembly for the festivities.
Day zero arrives. A yellowing band of smog has gathered over Cape Town. In the distance, the dark silhouette of the mountains looks as if a jagged strip has been torn off the bottom of the horizon.
A helicopter buzzes overhead.
The ubiquitous smiles belie the fatigue and stress of the preceding weeks. General Constand Viljoen, the Freedom Front leader, stares vacantly into the middle distance. Govan Mbeki, the senate deputy speaker, has a beatific smile stamped on his face. He later walks across the chamber with Kobie Coetsee, the senate speaker and one of the first senior NP members to engage in negotiations with the ANC, their arms draped around each other.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki is as austere and sombre as usual. Nothing betrays the fact that he began writing his speech at 1am. It is a famous speech, Walt Whitmanesque in its phrasing (“the crack and rumble of summer thunders”) with the passion and conceptual elegance of Frantz Fanon (“It is a unique creation of African hands and African minds, drawing on the accumulated wisdom of all humankind”).
The vote itself takes two tries - the electronic voting system is playing up, as usual. But eventually, on time and by an 85 percent majority, South Africa adopts a new constitution.
Professor Adrian Hadland is a visiting academic associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.
This is an excerpt from the book. Publisher: Low Battery Books Availability: Most book shops in SA and on Amazon.