Govan Mbeki:
Promoting the Human Project

Mbeki insists he is a "committed Marxist" and "definitely an atheist". He is also, in a certain sense, a spiritual kind of person.

Reflective in his desire to unravel the meaning of human existence, his passion is to transform society into a more tolerant place within which people can give expression to their humanity. "I am convinced," he states, "that life ought to be more than a grim battle for survival. Life must include the joyful pursuit of a fullness towards which all awakened people are compelled to reach." Asked to explain what it is that drives him as a person, he responds: "It is the human project. I am busy empowering people to be makers of their own future." He chooses his words carefully:

Life is about freedom. Where there is freedom there is life. Where freedom is denied, rebellion and revolution are inevitable. Where people, on the other hand, are afforded the opportunity to be free and explore the implications and the restraints of freedom—and there are restraints if everyone is to be free—life consists of a series of events within which human beings have the opportunity to realise their full potential as people, and to share in a creation of a better tomorrow.

As he speaks his large and lean frame, white hair and casual but neat attire constitute a commanding presence. His lived experience and remarkable intellect, together with a warmth of personality and readiness to converse, give one the sense of being in the presence of one who is at once both a wise elder states-person and a benevolent teacher.

An intellectual and an activist, Govan Mbeki's conversation soon reveals a broad, classical education. The product of an early twentieth century missionary education at the Methodist Church's Healdtown Institution, near Fort Beaufort, it was here that he acquired a profound love for Latin and classical literature. This developed further at university and it continues to come to expression in illustrations and the odd turn of phrase to which Mbeki resorts as he speaks about the long and eventful years that constitute his life. Anything but an ivory-tower intellectual, his learning is grounded in the rough and tumble of tough and demanding events.

His reflective character (the spiritual and intellectual side of Mbeki) must at the same time be understood in relation to a person who realises that the immediate demands of life often require no more than the simplest and most instinctive will to survive. Indeed, he argues, "unless people are released from their desperate quest for mere survival they cannot begin to understand the higher implications of freedom, which include mutual respect for one another".

Ever concerned about the lot of the vast majority of people, he points out that "the fight for survival is all that many oppressed people in South Africa have been able to address themselves to since the beginning of the colonial period, and more especially since the advent of apartheid in 1948". It is this reality that drove Mbeki, school teacher, author, journalist and political organiser to become a founding member of the High Command of Umkhonto we Sizwe when the African National Congress resorted to armed struggle. "Historical circumstances and the obstinacy of the regime left us with no alternative but to fight."

The complexity of human existence, which he sees as involving survival and freedom on the one hand and intellectual reflection on the other, is vividly portrayed in two images on which an ageing Govan Mbeki likes to ponder. The one is his personal quest for survival extending from an attempt to escape arrest at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia on 11 July 1963, through 24 years of imprisonment until his release in 1987. The other is the intellectual and moral importance of the story recorded in classical Greek literature of Odysseus navigating his ship between Scylla and Charybdis. Mbeki frequently reflected on this story during his early days on Robben Island. The mundane will to survive and the intellectual quest for perspective on the harsh realities of life are two inter-related dimensions that constituted the person of the young revolutionary sent to prison for life in 1963. To fail to appreciate the pathos which fuels either of these images, is to fail to appreciate the richness of the older Mbeki's outlook on life.

Two Sides of the Revolutionary Mind

"My only concern was to get away. The adrenalin was pumping hard. I almost managed to escape." Mbeki's reflections on his Rivonia arrest constitute the opening chapter on a story of harshness, loneliness and brutality. It clearly cut deep into his character. "We had already decided that this ought to be our last meeting at Lilliesleaf. But it was already too late. A dry cleaners' van came up the driveway and made its way to the main house where Arthur Goldreich was living. Watching from the cottage where I was staying I soon realised that something was amiss. Suspecting it might be the police I jumped out of the window and was about to round the corner of the house, aiming to reach the long grass a short distance away, when the command came to 'Stop!' I heard the revolver being cocked,

I turned around and I knew that a certain phase of my life had come to an end. The other chaps, Sisulu, Kathrada, Goldreich and the others had also been arrested."

There is a gentle smile on Mbeki's face as he revisits the event. "Such moments have a way of reducing one to the basics of life—the will to escape and survive. At the same time, my commitment to the struggle thrust itself into my consciousness. It was a commitment which sustained me and others in the years ahead."

He speaks of the winter's day on which he and the others arrived on Robben Island on 13 June 1964. "The place was desolate and windswept. The reality of what lay ahead suddenly dawned on me. We had gone to jail for refusing to believe that life was mere survival. It was now going to take an extraordinary effort to both survive and triumph over these new circumstances. At the same time I instinctively knew that our belief in the moral and political integrity of our struggle would enable us to rise above the challenge. Even when the most brutal prison wardens tried to reduce us to animals, we knew that both right and history were on our side."

By nature a gentle and thoughtful person, the harshness of the years that followed challenged Mbeki to think deeply about the possible source of the hostility which drove some of his warders to the degree of aggression which he experienced. He recalls them trying to drum into his head the fact that his jail sentence was for life.

"Julle gaan in the tronk vrek! " ("You will die in prison!") one of the more determined warders liked to remind me. This particular warden managed to generate a particular hatred for me. He would speak to me as though he were talking to a dog. When once a more senior official was speaking to me about my studies, suggesting that by the time I got out of jail I could have earned a doctorate, this tormented fellow butted in: "The only way he will get out of here is feet first!" I looked at the pitiful chap. His entire life seemed to be bound up with prison and a need to torment and abuse prisoners. "If I come out of here feet first," I told him, "so will you, and one day when there are no more political prisoners for you to depend on for your existence you will presumably have no reason to exist." I don't think he even understood what I was talking about. What a miserable understanding of life the poor fellow had.

The captivity of the warden seems to function for Mbeki as a metaphor of the bondage within which people are entrapped, while persuading themselves that they are free. "The prisoner," he continues, "who knows that he or she is in jail is often more free than those

who are weighed down by their own invisible chains. Rousseau was right: 'born free, humankind is everywhere in chains.'"

Memories, history, dates, incidents and people are all part of the story Mbeki tells. With equal ease he speaks of literature and almost instinctively he is back in the classical period, as he locates his experiences within the context of the history of intellectual ideas. "In times of anguish I have often thought back," he says, "to writers like the Roman historian Livy and especially the Latin poet Ovid who wrote of his experiences in exile. I have also found myself returning again and again to Greek mythology and the story of Odysseus steering his ship between Scylla, the giant rock in the Strait of Messina and the whirlpool of Charybdis." He carefully, almost with fascination, explains how before the advent of the compass this was accomplished by fixing one's course on the appropriate star, in order to pass between the rock and the whirlpool en route to the spices and wealth of the East.

The person who goes to prison, driven by a great ideal is prepared to pay what price is necessary to see that ideal realised. He or she is really like the navigator of an ancient ship, with eyes set on a star. . . There is an objective before which all else, wild seas and treacherous winds, are regarded as mere obstacles to be overcome.

You fix your eyes on a goal, on an horizon, and deviate not until you have reached it. You know that whatever problems may appear in your pursuit of that goal, must simply be overcome. There is no alternative. Whatever cost you may be required to pay, you are ready to pay, because the goal for which you are reaching is clearly before you and important enough to be your guiding star. Lose sight of the star and you are bound to deviate. Keep it firmly in your mind's eye and whatever challenges appear before you can be met.

I repeatedly reminded myself of Scylla and Charybdis while in prison, and kept my eye on the star. My contact with other political prisoners, both my contemporaries and those younger comrades who joined us, had a way of making the star ever clearer to me. We sustained one another and the star became ever brighter.

Mbeki explains the nature of the star. "In a word, the star is a star of freedom," he says. He insists that the deep-seated restlessness in the masses, together with the instinctive and experiential knowledge which they have of their oppression, is not sufficient to enable them to

clearly understand the reasons for their oppression. "Ask the average black person why he or she is oppressed and the answer is, 'Oh because whites don't like us—they don't pay us enough money'." It is the task of political leadership and activists to reach beyond this initial sense of oppression, he explains. It is to enable people to understand what underlies the attitude of so many whites to blacks and the nature of the economic basis of white wealth and black impoverishment. "When black people begin to understand this process," he argues, "then the simple black-white divide that underlies their understanding of South Africa begins to change. It is then that oppressed people begin to realise the importance of a non-racial struggle; of the complex structural economic factors involved in apartheid and the need for the building of political alliances which transcend race, class and gender."

Remembering again his time in prison, he talks of how he used to think of the days of slavery. He imagined how individual slaves must have felt that slavery would never end. He thought of the slave uprisings in Rome of which he had read and the history of slavery in South Africa. Stressing his belief in the movement of history, he reminds us that time has a way of making a mockery of the stern promises and threats of any one age. He repeatedly reminded himself that apartheid too would end—insisting that it simply had to happen in his own life time. "I always told myself I would see a democratic, non-racial South Africa. I am an old man today, but now fully expect to see this happen before I close my eyes in death."

Mbeki recalls the loneliness of his prison cell. Frequently he was punished for what was regarded as insubordination to a warden or because he was part of an act of prisoner resistance. He would be sent into isolation—sometimes away from the Island. On one occasion he was sent to Colesberg for ten months. On another occasion he spent a month in a Uitenhage prison cell. "It was disorientating, I never knew what they were planning to do." He vividly describes the loneliness of the isolation cell. "It is empty. You have only the blanket which you fold and make into a bundle and the mat on which you sleep. In the morning, as part of your punishment, you are ordered to place the blanket and mat outside of your cell. You have nothing to read, except the Bible. I became tired of reading it. I was in this kind of isolation for three months on one occasion and for several shorter spells on other occasions. My life consisted of cold, grey concrete, iron bars and my thoughts," Mbeki says quietly. "If you are not prepared for it, you can

go off your head. But we were prepared and this was what sustained us. We knew why we were in jail."

Did he ever doubt the stand that he had taken? Was there ever a time during his imprisonment when he felt tempted to compromise, to simply do what was necessary and to get out of jail? "Never!" comes the adament reply. What did he make of P. W. Botha's conditional offer of release if he forswore violence? "We treated it with the scorn it deserved. It made a mockery of the history of our struggle—the integrity of which had sustained us for years in prison. It was absurd for Botha even to have thought we might respond positively. If anything, it reminded us of the extent to which Botha was out of touch with the reality of our struggle."

A Teacher at Heart

Mbeki was a teacher from 1937 until 1954 when he became editor of the newspaper, New Age . Twice during this period he was dismissed for his political activities. "I've done many things in my life, but at heart I am a teacher." His commitment to the profession is clear as he speaks about the process of enabling people to understand. "You get into a classroom. The students ask you a question. You answer them. You sometimes see blank expressions on their faces. You explain your answer in more detail, you illustrate your point by referring to a concrete example and eventually the 'penny drops'. You see faces beginning to brighten up and you realise how fulfilling your vocation as a teacher really is. And where there are some who still do not understand, it is your task to spend more time with them. It is your obligation to ensure that they understand the point you are trying to impart." He emphasises the importance of enabling people to understand the social, political, economic, cultural and religious dimensions of their oppression, pointing out that political education is a complex and varied exercise, which includes a knowledge of history, an ability to analyse the prevailing situation and above all lived experience. "When that happens the simple awareness of oppression gives way to an intensified desire to be free. The star of freedom appears before their eyes. They become committed to the struggle for liberation." He pauses. "This is at the same time a struggle to be human. It is a struggle to be a subject of one's own history. It is the process of being a person—not someone else's boy!"

Deeply interested in the 1976 Soweto school rebellion, he argues that even where formal education was as poor as it was, the reality of

oppression was such that even the most limited amount of political conscientizing could mobilise a whole generation of students in revolt. "People were always aware of what Bantu education was intended to achieve. Then, as a result of a series of events it was as if the scales fell from the eyes of our people, they gained a vision of what needed to be done, and South Africa has not been the same since."

Even Bantu education and all that Verwoerd conceived in his grand plan of apartheid could not kill the instinctive human will to be free. Even when oppression and the social engineering of apartheid was most intense, ordinary people, badly educated students and parents who had been bullied and seemingly beaten by the structures of apartheid oppression, knew that it was in their capacity to be free. All that was needed was resolve, vision and organisation.

The seed of freedom is located within the depths of every human being. It is our task to nurture, water and cultivate it. When that happens the seed sprouts, breaks through even the hardest ground, blooms and bears fruit.

Education, whether in its institutional form, whether political or at the level of people's education, that does not enable people to realise their full potential as people and to be free and responsible human beings is simply the impartation of knowledge. . . Knowledge is important . . . but education involves more than the impartation of knowledge. It has an empowering and transforming character about it.

What about Religion?

I suggest to Govan Mbeki that his obvious concern for people to realise their full potential as human beings and the pursuit of individual and corporate freedom is what religion is supposed to be all about. He is quick to respond: "I came out of a religious home and lived under the influence of many religious people; my problem is that in reality I have never experienced religion as a liberating incentive. I have experienced religion as a restrictive, incapacitating and limiting activity. The religion I knew in the formative period of my life simply did not address the things that concerned me most. It was moralistic and authoritarian, restricting me in my quest for fulfilment as a person and in the pursuit of political freedom." He vividly recalls Max Yergan, a politically aware evangelical black American representative of the American Young Men's Christian Association, being banned from the Fort Hare pulpit for preaching a

dynamic sermon on the text: "I have come that ye may have life and have it more abundantly." The rector found it 'too political'. Mbeki was fascinated by the sermon. "Yergan," he tells us, "eventually felt compelled to leave the church because of his political views. He became a Marxist and then did a full circle, becoming a right-wing anti-communist." For Mbeki religion was authoritarian religion which shunned politics. "I simply came to find humanism and Marxism far more relevant to my needs. I drifted away from the church, finding no scientific or rational basis for believing in God. I am an atheist."

Mbeki speaks at length about his early life and the religious impact of his home, school and university career. He was born on 8 July 1910 in Mpukane, a small village in the Nqamakwe district of the Transkei. His father was a successful small farmer, a devout Methodist and teetotaller. "He would not even drink a glass of water without saying grace!" His mother was the daughter of a Methodist minister. "I attended Sunday School, wrote the scripture exams and remember obtaining 100% for my knowledge of the Bible in standard six." Mbeki's parents chose to name him Govan Archibald Mvunyelwa: "The Govan came from a Presbyterian minister and former principal of Lovedale College who had died 35 years earlier. Mvunyelwa means 'the one for whom people sing'; and Archibald is an additional name that simply slipped in!" He began his schooling in the local Methodist primary school, went to high school at the prestigious Healdtown Institution, a leading Methodist mission school, and then proceeded to Fort Hare University where he first completed his Senior Certificate and later enrolled as an undergraduate, earning a BA degree. He began to show an interest in politics in the late 1920s, acting as an interpreter for his cousin, Robert Mbeki, who was a member of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU), but it was his time at Fort Hare (1932–37) that was formative in his life. By this time he was already questioning the relevance of the Christian faith. "It was the relative silence of the church during the passage of the Hertzog bills in 1933/1934 that was perhaps the final straw for me. My dilemma was not initially with religion per se, but the kind of religion that came to expression in the missionaries with whom I had contact. They simply did not live up to the message that I read about in the Bible. Eventually I lost all interest in religion."

He met Eddie Roux who was spending his honeymoon camping with his wife Win and taking time out to hold outdoor meetings at Fort

Hare and elsewhere. Deeply impressed with Roux's ability to relate Marxist theory to the very issues that he was trying to work out in his own life, Mbeki struck up a friendship with him that would last long beyond Roux's break with Marxism and the Party. He saw the Communist Party engaging in the struggle of the poor and the workers, against the rich and the comfortably off, and in a manner that the church never even approximated. Although Mbeki had already joined the ANC in 1935, he did not join the Party until after the banned Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was reconstituted underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953. "Roux had started to steer my thoughts in a new direction. I began to read Hegel, Marx, Darwin and others. I also enjoyed poetry and the classics." His favourite authors were Wordsworth, Kipling, Mqhayi, Cicero, Ovid and Vegetius. "It took time, but eventually there seemed to me no good reason for me to believe in God," he continues. "Education can be unkind to religion. My political engagement in turn made the abstract religion with which I was surrounded seem quite irrelevant."

Interested in more recent developments in the study of religion and particularly the liberation theology debate, Mbeki sees God-talk either as escapism or, positively conceived, as a poetic or symbolic expression of a human quest. "I accept the importance of this kind of religious discourse for vast sections of our population. I can only say that it has never been a source of inspiration to me, nor has it motivated me to be politically engaged. The religion I was taught was about a God out there sitting on a throne, with angels to the left and right of Him. I contend that such notions are not only irrelevant to the quest for freedom but undermining of it. There is furthermore simply no evidence to show that such ideas are any more than the figment of human imagination, grounded in an age long gone." In his most distressful moments has he ever thought back to the religious influences of his youth? Was he ever tempted, while in prison, to resort to prayer? "I often thought back to my early days in the Transkei, with affection to my parents' home, with gratitude to my teachers for what they taught me but no, not for decades have I felt the need for prayer or religion in my life. My religion is a thing of the past. It is gone forever."

He recalls Alexander Kerr, rector of Fort Hare while he was a student there, frequently ending his sermons with a verse from one of Tennyson's poems:

Strong Son of God, immortal love,
Who we, who have not seen they face
By faith and faith alone embrace,
Believing what we cannot prove.

"These are words that have stayed with me over the years. Some people of great personal integrity, whose participation in our struggle is vitally important, are believers—people like Desmond Tutu, Frank Chikane, Beyers Naude and others. They cannot prove their faith. Who am I to suggest that their faith is not important? It has motivated them to be involved in the struggle for a better society. That is enough for me." Does he have any sense of life after death or an appreciation for the African belief in the significance of the ancestors for the living? "I dismiss outright any possibility of life after death. I cannot accept notions of ancestral veneration. This is an appealing belief, but without substantiation. When you die you are dead!"

Mbeki wrote a tribute from prison to Ruth First at the time of her assassination, to which he refers. He prefaced the tribute with words from Wordsworth's "We must be free or die".

Comrade Ruth is no more, but to those who would shed tears we say: Weep no more. She lived a full and fruitful life. Her life holds lessons for us, the living: to hold back nothing of ourselves to ensure ultimate victory for the cause of the struggle against fascism. Comrade Ruth dedicated her life to this noble cause, and in thinking of her, let our resolve to bring about liberation of the masses of the oppressed and exploited peoples of this land—whatever the price—be strengthened. She has shown us: "We must be free or die." (Learning from Robben Island: The Prison Writings of Govan Mbeki .)

Reflecting on the tribute, he continues: "We must never ultimately trade freedom for life. We must live freely and die if necessary for the freedom of others, without selfishly imagining that we will be rewarded in heaven for so doing."

Does he think religious institutions have a role to play in a new society? "The task of all people and organisations committed to peace, is to share in the humanising project, to help people realise their full potential and make society a better place. My understanding of the Bible is that this is what the church is supposed to be doing. If the church, mosque and other religious organisations commit themselves to this they have a vital role to play."

After 24 Years in Prison

Mbeki fixed his eyes on the star of freedom. This enabled him to live through 24 years of imprisonment. His goal throughout this period remained the realisation of the fullest human potential of all people. He was prepared to pay whatever price was necessary to see freedom reign in South Africa. When did he come to realise that he was going to be set free? He tells the story with the skill and passion of a village elder:

One day, which promised to be the same as any other day in prison, the head of the prison simply told me to pack my things. I was being moved to a new section. . . I was instructed not to be difficult, otherwise force would be used. After several weeks I was called into the reception area and measured for a suit. Again I was told nothing, but realised that something was in the air. I cautiously admitted to myself that this could mean I was going to be released, but prevented myself from becoming too expectant. Again there was no further action for a number of days. . . Then early one morning before breakfast, while I was washing my balie (bucket) I was called, placed in an ambulance and driven to the quayside where I boarded a speed boat and was taken to Cape Town. I was escorted to a waiting car and taken to Pollsmoor Prison. There I met with Nelson Mandela. He told me that I would be the first of the Rivonia prisoners to be released.

I was eventually placed in a cell of my own. Again weeks passed by. . . Eventually, late one afternoon, a Major in the security police visited me and said I was going to be released, but that he was not able to say precisely when. I was also warned that my behaviour would determine the fate of the other Rivonia prisoners. I prepared myself for a wait of days if not weeks, but the next morning I was awakened at 5 o'clock, placed in a helicopter and flown to Ysterfontein military air base. From there I was taken to Port Elizabeth. A long chapter in my life had come to an end. That was 5 November 1987.

A New Task

"There is no point in being bitter," Mbeki responds to the inevitable question. "If we are unable to realise our potential as the makers of our own destiny, we simply become the victims of history. Those who imprisoned me should perhaps be pitied. They could not face up to the challenge of the changing process of history. They capitulated under the weight of change and tried to fight against the inevitable in the only way they knew how. Sometimes I still get angry when I think

of the long years that could have been better spent. But no I am not bitter. I try not to be."

Mbeki believes his final years can best be spent in political education. He speaks with almost a sense of awe as he recalls the education programme in which he was involved in prison. With obvious affection he remembers Joe Gqabi who was incarcerated in the same section of Robben Island prison as the Rivonia prisoners. "The late Joe Gqabi was an expert in covert communications. He set up an underground network for communications in the prison which was still in operation when I left Robben Island. In addition to the important role it played in enabling us to communicate in a manner that the prison authorities never understood, it also provided a structure for our prison education programme." Mbeki and other senior prisoners insisted that newly arriving prisoners should engage in formal study—for some this meant literacy classes, for others higher education, for some Matric and for others university courses. "When some young comrades were reluctant to study I took them aside and explained that while on the Island the ANC leadership had a duty to function in loco parentis . They were told that they were simply required to study." Mbeki set the example by earning a BA Honours degree while in prison, in addition to taking responsibility for large sections of the political education curricula.

In later years prison conditions improved to the extent of allowing the implementation of political education in a more open manner. Mbeki helped design a three year course in political history and organisation, sections of which have since been published as Learning from Robben Island: The Prison Writings of Govan Mbeki . The author of many articles in a variety of magazines and journals prior to his arrest, he also authored several books, including Transkei in the Making and The Peasants' Revolt . His latest book, The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa , was published in 1992.

The Future

Mbeki views life communally. He returns a second time to the hapless warden who seemed to acquire a sense of joy at the thought of a prisoner dying in his cell. He argues that while some are made to suffer in South Africa all will suffer. "The freedom of one person is intrinsically bound up with that of another. We must get apartheid and unnecessary human suffering out of the way so that we can all be free. We must eradicate those influences and drives from society

which embitter people (like the prison warden) or cause them to be preoccupied with mere survival (millions of South Africans), so that we can learn as a people what interdependence means and why we must all be free in order for some to be free. No white South African can know true freedom and the security of peace while blacks are forced to endure under the captivity of apartheid and poverty. There is a long journey ahead for South Africans before they may fully appreciate this, but it is a journey that must be travelled. To learn tolerance and acceptance of one another, knowing that the violation of someone else's rights constitutes a violation of my rights, is something that will take time. When one member of a family suffers the entire family suffers. When we begin to learn this at a national level we will be a nation. Not before."

Does he have fears about the future? "Well the victory has not yet been won. There can be many a slip between cup and lip." He fears the damage the right-wing can do. He is highly critical of Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party and the activities of some other Bantustan leaders. "Our young people who are determined, committed and brave freedom fighters, often need still to learn from our history of the nature of the goal towards which we are reaching. They must be helped to understand the difficulties and obstacles which still lie ahead of us. I am sometimes anxious that their impatience will not be channeled in a creative manner. But then I remember the remarkable maturity that so many of them have shown in the most demanding situations."

He spoke of the challenges facing the new society. "I sometimes fear the possibility of a bourgeois revolution," Mbeki seems almost to confide. "It would be a pity if our long struggle ended short of a serious commitment to resolving the problems of poverty. These problems cannot be solved by merely replacing the present leaders with a few black leaders. There will be enormous pressures on a democratic government to conform to the patterns of western capitalist regimes. We need to resist this pressure. There is so much talk about the success of the capitalist system, while the problems of illiteracy, the squalor of townships and the reality of ghettos remain in the most successful capitalist countries of the world. We must find an economic vision that goes beyond the vision of the West, while recognising the failure of the Soviet bloc countries."

How does he see the role of the SACP? "It is to work towards the same goal as the African National Congress," Mbeki insists. "This is

the common good of all the people of South Africa. It is to remind the ANC of this commitment. It is also to share with others, whether in trade unions, churches or elsewhere, in showing a priority commitment to the welfare of the poor, nudging the leadership of the ANC in the direction of the goal that we all set for ourselves in the early years of this century."

What is his task now that there is the possibility of a democratic South Africa emerging under an ANC government? He returns to the theme on which he dwelt earlier in the interview. "It is to share in the human project. People must be enabled to realise their potential as people and share in the democratic restructuring of the country. This is why I got involved in politics in the first place. It must continue to occupy me in the final years of my life."

PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:  South