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17. A New Day
- Ohio University Press
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208 A New Day Almost exactly a year to the date of my dad’s death the new South Africa was born. Getting to that day was a year of parallel hells. I watched the country tear itself apart with violence and death. On TV and in newspapers, people bled to death from gunshots, they screamed and dropped to the ground as they were burnt alive in flames from petrol-doused tyres around their necks. Rocks and Molotov cocktails were flying everywhere. In that year, the man many believed would be president was murdered. Chris Hani was slain not even three weeks before my father died. Far right-wing fanatics plotted his downfall and killed him outside his home in Boksburg, the same place where my father was shot. I sometimes wish that I could go back to those days and beg dad not to go into the burning townships at the time. Gou Sok’s banks were just not worth it, I would have said. I know, though, that dad and his colleagues would have been cautious; the shooting came anyway. Another right-wing movement, the AWB – the same crowd that had scared us enough to jump a red light in Pretoria – were intent on derailing multi-party negotiations at Kempton Park’s World Trade Centre a few months later. They smashed tanks through the buildings, terrorised 17 209 everyone and thought they could bully people into not going ahead with forging a new country. So-called black-on-black violence, third forces and other nefarious evils were also at play like an anonymous army commanded to destroy everything. People went to sleep at night and woke to find their neighbours’ throats slit. All the time, it was put down to the elusive third force. It seemed there was no refuge. People were slaughtered in churches. Schoolchildren were being fired on and people were killed by ‘friendly’ fire as the South African Defence Force’s bullets proved to be indiscriminate. As we edged closer to the autumn of April 1994 and the date for the first-ever democratic elections arrived, canned foods became the highest commodity. The same went for candles and batteries, bottled water, dry biscuits and all the things you would have on your bomb shelter checklist. Even my granny stocked up on canned viennas and bloated soggy bits of spaghetti preserved in fake tomato sauce. She never ate the stuff ordinarily but she was terrified that war was coming and no matter how I tried to convince her that things were going to be fine, she still kept building her stash. Hope tamed the anxiety and there were more ordinary people who believed that a new day was coming. Radio stations played John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance; people stuck bumper stickers on their cars representing peace with blue and white doves. Political sentiments were shifting. The US was talking about lifting sanctions, diplomatic ties were being made thick and fast with our former pariah state and in the coming months there would be a joint Nobel Peace Prize for two former foes, one white, one black, who would now form a government of national unity and set in motion a constitution for a new country everyone could call home. That rumour of change that I had spoken to my father about was no longer an uncertain whisper; now it was being shouted from the rooftops, and no one could help hearing it, not even if you blocked your ears. In our house, silence fell into the places where he used to be – the chair he sat on as he tapped his foot impatiently looking at the fahfee record books PAPER SONS AND DAUGHTERS 210 every night; his clothes that still hung in the wardrobes that he shared with mom; his reading glasses ready on the mantelpiece; the half-used bottles of Vitriol still in the mirrored bathroom cabinets. I used to watch dad shake a few drops into his hand, smooth them into his hair, mess everything up a bit as he stared purposefully at his task in the mirror. His brow would furrow as he combed everything back into place and formed the all important comb-back to cover his bald spot. He would turn a little to each side, checking that the strands were in place. Then he put the comb down. Immediately after dad’s death, we entered into seven weeks of mourning. It is an old-fashioned observance that is...