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Last edited:
23 September, 2005
1
1
“Ruud
Gullit"
1
Soccer,
Racism and Apartheid
“I am also an
anti-apartheid supporter and I
dedicated my
World and European
Footballer of the
Year award to Nelson
Mandela, the
imprisoned ANC leader.”
- Ruud
Gullit
2
Copyright@ Neo
Lekgotla laga Ramoupi
I DEDICATE
this paper to Hosea Ramasimong (Jazzman & Heavyweight)
Ramoupi.
I am the sixth
and last male born in my family of seven, four brothers and two sisters. My
parents’
first born and my
eldest brother, Hosea, was a professional soccer player in the 70s when I was
growing up as a
boy at home. He played for Moroka Swallows Big Fifteen and Witbank
Black Aces.
He was my role
model, I wanted to be like him: a professional footballer. My role models were
not
Steve Biko, Bob
Marley, Malcolm X, or even Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela.
Me and you
Who am I as I
write this Paper?
I am not a
neutral, objective scribe conveying the objective results of my research
impersonally in my
writing. I am
bringing to it a variety of commitments based on my interests, values and
beliefs which
are built up from
my own history as a black young man who was born, bred and educated under
apartheid rule.
And who witnessed its eradication and now attempting to write in the New
South
1
Rudi Dil is the
name that appears on Ruud Gullit’s birth certificate. About the time that he
realized that he was going to be
a footballer, he
decided to change his name to Ruud Gullit because he didn’t think that Rudi Dil
sounded like a professional
soccer player,
and he felt that Gullit suited a Dutch footballer much better. But on his
official documents, such as signing of
contracts, he
still writes Rudi Dil, his official birth name.
2
See this
quotation on the cover of Nelson Mandela’s book, No Easy Walk To Freedom,
(London: Heinemann, reprint
1987).
During the late
1980s I began my academic career
in 1987
at the University
of Bophuthatswana (Unibo), now
renamed, and
rightly so, University of the North West. There in Mmabatho---capital cit
y of Bophuthatswana, I
purchased Nelson
Mandela’s book, No Easy Walk To Freedom. I then used the above picture of
Ruud Gullit as a
cover-up of my
copy of Mandela’s book. I was disguising this book because at the time the
apartheid government(s)
of South Africa
had banned the Liberation Movements in and outside the beloved country.
Those that were deemed
terrorists
were also banned. Literatures about them were illegal. Shortly after going
through No Easy Walk to
Freedom,
I saw the film, Cry Freedom, there in Mmabatho. Cry Freedom is
a story that supposedly was about
Bantubonke
[all the peoples] Steve Biko, but became in practice more and more about
Donald Woods! Nevertheless,
both Woods and
Biko, on different levels, moved me so much in this film because each defied
racism/apartheid! Then
I bought a novel
copy of Cry Freedom: A True Story of Friendship, by John Briley, London:
Penguin Books,1987.
Now as I
look back, these two books were the very first literature I bought
consciously to learn about the country of
my birth. And
writing this peace from Robben Island, I cannot help but view my personal
readings of the two
Freedom
booksæ Mandela’s and Biko’s
as an awakening of my consciousness that began my long walk to Robben
Island
Museum,
thirteen years
ago
. As I was
editing the final draft of this paper, I noticed that Donald Woods new
autobiography,
Rainbow Nation Revisited: South Africa’s Decade of Democracy ( 2000) is
dedicated to: “STEVE
BIKO who died
for the dream and NELSON MANDELA who made dream come true.” It’s about
consciousness.
2
2
Africa
[adapted from Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity
in Academic
Writing
by Roz Ivanic, 1997].
Preface :
I’ve been working on this project all my life
“Like many
youths in my township, Ga-Rankuwa (30km north-west of Pretoria)…. Soccer was a
major part of my
growing up. At the time, however, little did I know how big a role soccer would
play
in influencing
the person that I would become.
My passion for
this game kept me away from undesirable extra-mural activities such as drinking
and
smoking, and
turned me into an avid reader of soccer magazines such as Shoot, an English
soccer
magazine
imported from Britain through the Central News Agencies (CNA). So soccer not
only kept
me out of
trouble but it inspired me to want to be somebody one day. And what I wanted was
to
become a soccer
player of the professional standards one read of about the teams in the English
Premier Soccer
clubs, such as Manchester United Football Club (MUFC). Bryan Robson, who
captained MUFC
and England in the eighties and early nineties for about a decade was my role
model. I wanted
to be him. And I knew that, as MUFC player, it would be obvious for me to be a
Bafana-Bafana
(South African National Soccer) team member. In fact, at the time when this
dream
was burning so
deep inside me Bafana-Bafana was not yet born because of the Apartheid policies
which made a
beloved country to be isolated from global challenges of almost all sorts.
It is largely as
a result of this boyhood dream to be a professional soccer player that I am
presenting
this paper. I
did not make it to MUFC, my compatriot, Quinton Fortune, Cape Town’s Cape Flats,
made it to that
Theatre of Dreams, Old Trafford. I did not fail to get there. I made a choice,
or rather
destiny chose
for me to go somewhere else. Some place that when I was dreaming as a boy to go
Manchester
United never even occurred to my boyish mind that any one in her/his right mind
would
want to work
there. Robben Island:
“The Memory of
what happened there must be preserved. Robben Island should be developed
as a museum
where the people’s history is preserved … a place for archives… It is too
important to be
turned into a
mere tourist resort” Nelson Mandela [Voices From Robben Island].
Role of Sports:
Sport played
such an important part in the daily lives of Political Prisoners on Robben
Island from the
late 1960s when
they won their negotiations with the Prison Authorities to allow them engage
themselves in
recreational activities.
During the
Apartheid era, sports divided the people of South Africa. Further, sports was
used as
weapon to fight
apartheid South Africa through the Sports Boycott Campaigns.
“Sport is one
sector of our social life that has stood out in performing a unifying role in
the years of
transformation.
Some of the most vividly remembered moments of celebration of our emergent new
nationhood were
those connected with the achievements of our national sporting teams. South
Africans of all
backgrounds and persuasions shared in the triumphs, such as the brave
performances
of our Protea
cricket team, that famous World Cup victory of our Springboks rugby team [in
1995], or
the glorious
lifting of the African Nations Cup by Bafana-Bafana [in 1996], our national
soccer team”
(Nelson Mandela,
Madiba’s Boys: The Stories of Lucas Radebe and Mark Fish, South Africa: New
Africa Books,
2001, p.5).
I feel we can
keep our deferred dream burning inside ourselves by using our love and passion
for
sports and
particularly soccer for me, to research, write and tell our hidden histories.
These histories
3
3
were
left---consciously and unconsciously---out of our formal education curricula,
from pre-tertiary
schooling to
graduate and, astonishingly in some cases, also to postgraduate levels of study.
"The tragedy
of Africa, in racial and political terms [has been] concentrated in the southern
tip of the
continent -
in South Africa, Namibia, and, in a special sense, Robben Island"(Oliver
Reginald
Tambo).
Robben island
history, particularly of political imprisonment, which sweeps about 40 years
–1960 to
1991 – is,
without doubt, one such untold chronicle(s).
Soccer
my dream deferred
is, for me, a
powerful vehicle
to narrate, not only the accounts of anti-apartheid struggles. But perhaps more
fundamentally
for our generation, to write and re-write the histories of our birth country.
Because it is
certain that a
lot of work still needs to be done to close this gap. And particularly by the
African
people
themselves who “are desperately in need of access to histories about
themselves---written in
clear,
unspecialized, demystifying language---that confirm their humanity and show a
more balanced
picture of
[themselves] in South Africa. But also [they must be] convinced about the
possibilities of
conducting
historical research from an African-centred perspective” (Atkins, Keletso E.,
The Moon Is
Dead! Give Us
Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa,
1843-1900).
Shula Marks is
right "it is a curious irony that while probably more has been written about
South
Africa than
about any other country in Africa, very little has been written by historians of
South
Africa about the
history of the majority of its population"
(Shula Marks,
“Historians of South Africa”,
in ed. J. D.
Fage, Africa Discovers Her Past, London: Oxford University Press, 1970).
4
4
“Ruud
Gullit: Soccer, Racism and Apartheid”*
3
Introduction
I was introduced
to RUUD GULLIT by my passionate reading of my favourite British soccer
magazines,
Shoots.
4
At the time I
did not know his name. It was this quotation that aroused my interest in him:
“I am also an
anti-apartheid supporter and I dedicated my World and European Footballer of the
Year award to
Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned ANC leader.”
5
The year was
1987. The quotation was inserted into a picture of a dreadlocked male singer
with a
microphone
situated just in front of his mouth. His left hand was raised in the form of a
fist, which
had, over the
years, came to represent and be associated with the ‘amandla ngawethu’
(‘power
[belongs] to
us’) signature and salutation of the African National Congress (ANC). Something
about
this singer
caught my attention. It was not his dreadlocks:
“I am aware
that many people dislike the name “dreadlocks” because they assume it’s
negative. I
like, even enjoy, the word “dreadlocks” because whenever I use it I find myself
in bemused
dialogue with
African ancestors on several continentsæthose of our people who grew to dislike
their
own hair
because its uniqueness was unappreciated by the flat-haired people who conquered
them
and who
decreed their own physical characteristics the
norm.”
6
But the writing
in white and capital letters that was on the front of his black T-shirt:
"STOP
APARTHEID"
7
3
Oupa
JazzMusic Makhalemele, my Research Unit colleague wrote the Abstract and
edited the Preface of this
paper. Ke A
Leboga Authi! Helen Moffett, our Research Unit Editor, has been very helpful in
critiquing my
thoughts. I
continue to grow from new perspectives that you’re bringing to my attention. Liz
Holden, our
Computer-Assistance,
has been giving valuable lessons about the management of our information, as
well as
Power Pointing
this paper for me--- always with a smile. Thanx. Our Research Unit coordinator,
Dr Harriet
Deacon is
responsible for bringing this team together, and for the facilitation of our
Unit’s presence and
participation in
this Conference – Burden of Race: Blackness and Whiteness, Wits
University, July 5-8 2001.
Lastly, I am
thankful to all my colleagues at the Robben Island Museum for their constructive
criticisms, which
I have found
very helpful. And to Chunku, Chomi ya ka, Nkosi, for being so
crazy to join me at Wits for the
presentation of
this paper.
4
I am mailing
them from home, Ga-Rankuwa in Pretoria, to Robben Island at the end of the
Conference “
Burden of Race?:
Blackness and Whiteness” , University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South
Africa , after
spending one and
half years contemplating about my future on the island, which is such a complex
environment
to work. My
decision is to stay and make it my career: all that we love can be saved.
5
See footnote
number 1 above.
6
Alice Walker,
Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism, New York: Random
House Inc., 1997, p.175
.
7
See this photo,
which appears as the first picture on my hand-made poster, and see also the same
photo covering No Easy
Walk to
Freedom. This picture has become such a significant symbol for me and I
think also for this Burden of Race
Conference
paper.
5
5
I found this a
very bold and striking statement.
I mean, having
grown up under apartheid, there was no way I could avoid being struck by that
pronouncement.
Perhaps another reason I found it so powerful and influential was the fact that
I,
despite my
burning desire to be a professional footballer, had undertaken a decision to go
to an
institution of
higher learning, with history, and later on with political science, as my
majors.
At the time of
seeing that picture
in 1987, I did not know who the dreadlocked person was. I just
assumed he was a
singer because of the manner of his posing and appearance in that photo. And
mind
you, I was
knowledgeable, thanks to the Shoot magazines, about the British footballers,
such as Bryan
Robson, who was
at the time both the captain of his club, MUFC, and his country,
England.
8
Later on, after
some years, I got to know the name behind the locks. Gradually I became
aware of the
man’s impact, not only on the football stadiums of the world, but of his
thoughts and
comments on what
W.E.B. Du Bois considered the problem of the twentieth century, racism. I began
asking myself
why I did not know him, while I knew almost all of the British soccer
players. I am
going to argue
here that part of the answer to that question can be found in the legacy of
British
colonialism. In
his Address to the Joint Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom, then -
President
Nelson Mandela
focused on this British colonialism, in which he “gently but firmly reminded
Britons
yesterday
that it was their colonisation in the 18
th
century that
sowed the seeds of white supremacy in
South
Africa.”
9
The South
African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) fed South African citizens with soccer
programs that
highlighted English Premier Soccer League on a weekly basis, as if the rest of
the
footballing
world did not exist. It seemed normal and I think we took it for granted that we
did not
know much about
the other football-playing nations, particularly those that Britain did not
colonise.
Holland for
instance, and in this case study for example, Ruud Gullit has a different
cultural
background to
those of the English players. Ruud’s nationality is
Dutch,
1
0
and was the
6
6
time 1987/1988 season, playing for AC Milan F.C. in the Italian
Soccer League, passionately and
commonly known
as ‘Seria A.’
In 1995 I
registered for a MA History Research degree at the University of Natal,
Durban.
1
1
That
same year,
Gullit made a transfer move that shocked the footballing world. He left the
Italian League's
Sampdoria
Football Club
1
2
for England's
less famous and reputable London-based club, Chelsea F.C.
He joined
Chelsea as a player. And when their Manager, Glen Hoddle, was appointed to the
head
coach of the
English team, Glen, with the support ofChelsea Football Club, recommended that
Ruud
be appointed as
a Player-Manager. Gullit’s move to London was significant for me in that when
Gullit
relocated to
England, suddenly I had access to the guy and information about him as if he had
relocated to
South Africa. The media, both print and electronic, provided more coverage about
Ruud
once he was in
London than it was the case when he was in the Netherlands, his country of
birth, or
while he was
playing football in Italy. 1996 saw the publication of his biography, Ruud
Gullit:
Portrait of A
Genius, in England.
1
3
I purchased it
in Durban's Adams Bookshop early in January 1997,
that its reading
provided me with the much needed escape from the punishing aspect of struggling
to
write my MA
thesis. I bought it because ever since I saw his 1987/88 “STOP APARTHEID”
public
stand, there was
always this fascination within me for this unique footballer. For me, he seemed
to
stand out of the
crowd of his footballing generation, and I was curious to learn more about his
background.
It was through
reading that book that I realised that the 1987 photograph which introduced him
to me
was in fact the
inception in my mind of that doctoral proposal
paper.
1
4
My aim had
always been to
find out what
made Ruud, a footballer, make that courageous stand to support South Africa's
struggle
8
Bryan Robson was
my football hero for more than a decade when he was with MUFC. Interestingly and
ironically for me is
that he happened
to be the Manager of Middlesbrough Football Club when Ruud Gullit managed
Chelsea FC to a historic
F.A. Cup Final
victory in May 1997.
9
Cape
Times, July 12, 1996. This Speech by President Mandela to UK Parliament,
London, 11 July 1996. I am in
possession of
this speech for distribution in this burden of race meeting, in case
you’re interested I can just copy it for you or
even e-mail it
to you’ll. Very few, I think, would disagree with my claim that it is one of the
most dignified and important
speeches that
Mandela had ever made.
1
0
Ruud’s father
comes from Surinam, a former colony of Dutch colonialism. I still need to read
on the Dutch colonization
of Surinam to
see what influences it had on the life of the native people of Surinam, like
Gullit’s father. I welcome any
recommendations
that would assist me in this regard.
1
1
I had relocated
to Durban in 1989 as a result of being one of the hundreds of students who were
expelled by the Mangope
regime, former
President Chief of Bophuthatswana bantustan, after the failed coup of 1988, led
by Rocky Malebane.
1
2
In 1993/4 Gullit
had left Milan for Sampdoria because, amongst others, in 1992/3 season, he was
left out of the side that
won the European
Cup Final against Marseille. AC scored one goal. Such was his stunning return to
form that Milan re-
signed him. But
the relations with the AC management had gone so soar that in 1994/5 season Ruud
re-joined Sampdoria
and led them to
victory in the Italian Cup Final before his exodus to England.
1
3
By Harris, H.
and Marcel van Der Kraan,, London: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1996,
1
4
The first time I
put together this writing was for the Nelson Mandela Scholarship
advertisement, which appeared
nationally in
the newspapers in 1998. That June I had just submitted a complete MA thesis that
I had been struggling with to
7
7
against
apartheid and our struggle for freedom. I was not disappointed because the
reasons were there
in his
biography, and here is just one that in my opinion is central.
"Gullit’s
first confrontation with the hostilities against black people came when he was a
13-
year-old
schoolboy. With one of his friends, he had been hanging around in a big store.
Like
many naughty
boys of that age, his friend had wanted to pinch a bar of chocolate. After
approaching
the shelf three or four times, his friend did not have the courage and Ruud
decided to
leave the shop. As they went t hrough the door, a security man stopped them and
took Ruud to
the police. He was accused of shoplifting. The other boy was not even asked
what he had
been up to. Only Ruud Gullit was arrested - because he was
black."
1
5
The argument I
am building here is that, from that tender age of 13, Gullit’s conscience was
awakened
to racial
prejudice in his own society, which he said:
“That was my
first direct experience with racism, and I can tell you, it wasn’t an easy thing
to cope
with. It was a
totally bemusing experience, and I think I grew up a bit quicker as a result of
it. It was
certainly a
turning point for me, because I started to realise what the real world was all
about.”
1
6
Here, I think,
it is also worth reflecting on the composition of his national soccer squad. The
Dutch
team reached the
finals of the World Cup in 1974 and 1978, but did not have a single black Dutch
player in the
squad. Consequently, in 1982 Ruud Gullit became the first black player to
represent his
country when he
made his international debut on his 19
t
h
birthday. This
was fundamentally important
for,
“[I]n Ruud
Gullit, black people in the Netherlands, and throughout Europe, had a successful
sportsman to
look up to. A star who was prepared to fight against Apartheid and to campaign
for all the
black people in the world.”
1
7
For that very
reason, for many of us who were born under
apartheid
1
8
, the
personality of Ruud Gullit
has a very
similar significance to that which Gullit himself, writing in 1996 attaches to
that of
Madiba:
"Mandela
means so much to me and to other young people in the world. He was arrested in
1962 which is
the same year that I was born. It is hard to imagine that someone was in prison
almost all
the time that I was alive."
1
9
complete for the
past three-and-half years. As a result, the application for this scholarship was
written with a free spirited
mind without
feeling guilty that I was wasting some valuable time.
1
5
Portrait,
p.181. The conversation on this racist confrontation is, in Ruud’s
autobiography, distinctly pregnant in meanings
and since I got
this material late for inclusion in this paper, I’ll debate orally during my
presentation. It’s critical because it’s
a good
reflection of the burden of race: blackness and whiteness. And if you are
interested, see his chapter seven titled
Colour of
Skin, pp. 109-117in
Ruud Gullit:
My Autobiography . Updated and revised, London: Arrow Books,
1999
.
1
6
Ruud Gullit:
My Autobiography. Updated and revised, London: Arrow Books, 1999, p.111. I
am grateful to De idre Prins,
Education
Department Programs Coordinator, Robben Island Museum, for remembering to look
out for this much needed
autobiography on
her recent trip to London.
1
7
Portrait, p.181.
1
8
Speaking for
myself, at the time of my birth in 1967, Nelson Mandela had already served
three-and-half years, joining
Robert Sobukwe,
on Robben Island. In addition to that, for the first twenty-three years of my
life, he was in prison. I
remember when we
were growing up, we were told by the elders that one could actually be arrested
for just mentioning
Mandela’s name
or Robben Island. Now some of that generation has this unbelievable crazy
opportunity to work on Robben
Island. It’s
like walking on history. It is complex and painful. But above all, it is
cleansing the soul and inspiring.
1
9
Portrait p.182.
8
8
Racism and
Chelsea Football Club
When Ruud
Gullit chose to join Chelsea of all the clubs in the world, people within the
football
community were
very surprised. But Ruud described his move from Italy to Stamford Bridge,
home-
ground of
Chelsea, as “a decision from the heart.”
2
0
Is it
possible that this decision had anything to do
with the history
of Chelsea, or was it just one of life’s coincidences?
The history of
Chelsea Football Club, like Gullit's, is a very interesting one.
"... Chelsea
fans were among the most notorious in the country for t heir open support of the
National
Front. From the mid-'70s to the early '80s, Chelsea were some of the worst
offenders
as racism and
violence took over a significant section of the game and the authorities turned
a blind eye
... At the time many supporters actively refused to support black players
wearing
blue shirts
[Chelsea's jerseys], and those players were subjected to horrific racial
abuse ...
Goals scored
by black players were refused acknowledgement, even to the extent of
constructing
their own league tables discounting those
goals.
2
1
Given this
background, it seems incredible that a black man, one with
dreadlocks
2
2
, for that
matter,
led the most
racist soccer club of the seventies and eighties out at Wembley for the 1997 FA
Cup
Final in May.
"The teams
emerged from the tunnel at the opposite end of the stadium from the Chelsea
contingent,
at the red end. But even all that distance away, Ruud Gullit still led out the
Chelsea
team looking like a giant, looking as if he owned the place, cool and
calm in his dark
blue suit,
the first foreign coach ever ... The Man had pride, you could see
it."
2
3
It is clear that
this statement - ‘The Man had pride, you could see it’- operates on several
levels. One
meaning is
obvious in the quotation above, and that is pride in his team, the work they had
done. And
the
not-so-obvious meaning points directly to the legacy and “message of
self-esteem pride: Black
Consciousness.”
2
4
2
0
Ruud Gullit:
Portrait, p.29.
2
1
Total
Football, October 1997, p.46.
2
2
“
I am aware
that many people dislike the name “dreadlocks” because they assume it’s
negative. I like, even enjoy, the word
“dreadlocks”
because whenever I use it I find myself in bemused dialogue with African
ancestors on several continentsæthose of
our people
who grew to dislike their own hair because its uniqueness was unappreciated by
the flat-haired people who conquered
them and who
decreed their o wn physical characteristics the norm.” Walker, A.,
Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s
Activism,
New York: Random House Inc., 1997, p.175. If you have as much interest in
this hair topic as I do, you would find the
article,
“Oppressed Hair Puts a Ceiling on the Brain” in Living by the Word , an
enlightening read. Same author.
2
3
Downes, S.,
Bridge of Sighs: Chelsea’s 1996 - 1997 Season.1997, pp.197 -8. My
Autobiography also stresses this pride.
See especially
chapter eleven titled Precious FA Cup, pp.161-174.
2
4
Harlan Judith,
Mamphela Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa, New York: The
Feminist Press, 2000,
p53.
9
9
The Wisdom of
Black Consciousness:
Biko,
Mandela, Mbeki and Marley
2
5
I have borrowed
a framework for an understanding of Black Consciousness. Here it is reflected in
both political
and popular culture from the writings of Biko, Mandela, Mbeki and Bob Marley.
Their
writings are
helpful in unpacking ‘the man had pride, you could see it’ beautifully.
Biko:
I Write What
I Like is definitely a starting point for this
awareness.
2
6
When I was a
boy at home, two
of my elder
brothers, Sello (Cry) and Lemogang (Awareness), were politically conscious
through their
African history
studying and photojournalism interests
respectively.
2
7
They owned this
copy of I
Write What I
Like, and it was in a terrible shape, with lose pages in between. They kept
it on top of
our wooden
wardrobe in our bedroom which all of us shared. Every time each one was reading
it and,
for some
reason, forgot to put it back to where they agreed it should be placed, they
came screaming
at me: “Hey
wena e kae I Write What I Like! Or “Hey, wena, e kae buka ya
Biko!”
2
8
Both meaning
respectively,
‘Hey, you! Where is I Write What I Like!’ And ‘Hey, you! Where is Biko’s
book!’ So
from a very
early age of about ten, which is what my age was at the time of this seventies
decade, I
knew only three
things about this book. Firstly, that it was called I Write What I Like.
Secondly, that it
had
something to do with Biko not that I knew that
Biko wrote it! And thirdly, that it was a
dangerous book
to carry it around and play with it. In fact, I was not allowed to touch it!
Anyway, I
was not
interested. How can a boy of my age be interested in such an extraordinarily
book, worse in
tatters!? I had
no reason at all to be, this book was funnily associated with
gevarlek
2
9
when I did feel
I
2
5
The list
is endless: Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Spike Lee. And our
supposedly Un-educated parents
and elders,
whom, unlike us, are not diplomated, degreed, honoured, mastered, PhD-ed and
post-doctoraled. And in that
sense, the
sense of their self (black-consciousness) is still intact because the western
education which most of us went
through taught
us to question and dislike our sense of our self, which cannot be any other
except that very
consciousness
black.
2
6
Biko, S., I
Write What I Like. A Selection of his Writings, New Edition, Johannesburg:
Ravan Press, 1996.
2
7
Sello Ramoupi,
4
t
h
born, compiled
an album on Africa’s history and politics. I remember one time when he was
taken by
Security forces from our home, they were black policemen and so careful
with him in the public. Lemogang,
Ramoupi,
5
t
h
born , was in
love with photography that he was earning so much from taking community
gatherings
pictures that
he ended up paying for his school fees and whatever was required. He free-lanced
for Pretoria News
while doing his
High Schooling. These were the types of brothers I grew up with and were my role
models. Not any
politician or
consciousness-raisers like Mandela or Bob Marley.
2
8
Written in
Setswana, my mother tongue. I am Motswana and proud.
2
9
‘Gevarlek’
means danger in Afrikaans. This language caused the June 16 1976 Students
Riots in Soweto and
country wide
gene rally. Because of that, I did not do that well for my Matric Examinations
in Afrikaans subject, not
because I am
stupid. No. Simply because our attitude towards learning Afrikaans, even in the
early eighties, was not
still not
favourable. And when the official language(s)’ issue came up with the birth of
the New South Africa, there
was, I think,
an unnecessary concern, among the Afrikaans’ speaking white South Africans, that
the Mandela or even
the present
Mbeki presidency/government are intending to do away with their Afrikaans
language and all that goes
with it. And
our two Presidents have said it categorically that. although the white
community’s concerns are
10
10
was not getting
enough time in a day to indulge myself in our passion, playing
challanse
3
0
, street
soccer
tournaments.
After about
another decade, I was in my early twenties, I saw that film Cry Freedom
during my
formative first
years at the University of Bophuthatswana. And then immediately I bought Cry
Freedom,
a novel by John Briley based on the original
screenplay.
3
1
This is how I
got interested and
attracted to
that beautifully black man, Steve Bantu Biko. In late 1988 I was one of the
hundreds
students that
were first imprisoned and then expelled from Unibo for our political
persuasions.
3
2
And
then in 1989 I
enrolled at the University of Natal, Durban, where this late eighties black
student
generation was accommodated in Alan Taylor Residence (ATR), where the Biko
generation
resided during
the late sixties and seventies medical students years. It was at ATR that I
first read and
bought a copy
of that famous book, I Write What I Like, that my two brothers owned at
home. I love
my brothers for
their bizarre affection with that Biko book. As I read I Write What I Like,
in Durban,
so far away
from home and my brothers, I could not help but wish they could had at least
told me why
their tattered
copy of Bantu Biko was so captivatingly important to them. For that I am not
sure I can
forgive them. A
lesson for me in this is that if something is significant to you tell those
around yo u,
understandable
especially when you take into consideration what the previous National Party
governments have done
particularly
with the indigenous African languages. But it is not in their interests to do
like they’ve treated us. My
mother, who’s
worked almost all her life for the Afrikaans speaking families in Pretoria, is
more fluent in Afrikaans
than she’s in
English. Just for that reason, my beloved mother, black and beautiful as she is,
would vote for and not
against
Afrikaans. It’s just common sense, our mothers have that in abundance. It’s
got nothing to do with politics of
race and
language. Both of which my mother has no gain or interest really. My mother
represents easily the majority
of the mothers
of my generation, especially those who worked for the Afrikaans speaking
families nationally. These
mothers, I
believe, are not in the minority.
Now I am in the
Cape of Good Hope. I have awakened to the fundamental significance of Afrikaans
language that is
obvious here.
And after having spent a decade in Durban, which is very English, and at the
same period have also
been on an
academic institution that is so proud to be English, I am saddened by the fact
that my Afrikaans never got a
chance to
improve there. If I had fooled myself about the insignificance of Afrikaans in
my post-June 16 1976 period,
my migration to
Western Cape province has rude awakened me of the critical importance of
Afrikaans.
Moreover,
Robben Island and it’s history of political imprisonment, which is my area of
interest, was conducted
mainly with
Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. So far, I have interviewed three
Ex-Warders already, because we
cannot
comprehend political imprisonment without their voices. In these interviews I
found out that because their
English is so
broken and my Afrikaans is so broken, we cannot have a flowing communications.
And my deepest wish
is if I can go
back to my post-June 16 1976 times and change my attitude towards Afrikaans so
that I can
communicate
fluently with these vaders (fathers)
and properly in
Afrikaans and in my mother-tongue, Setswana, you
know, why
not?
3
0
Challenges of
street soccer where we would put money each street team and winners take-it-all
type of thing. It
comes from this
English word ‘challenge’ but as we were not concerned about trying to be
gentlemen’s at that age,
saying
challanses was just enough and right. Thanks to my partner, Chunku
Chomi Nkosi
born and bred in streets of
Soweto herself
for reminding me that we called those street soccer
games ‘Challanses’ and that it is important that
we do not
change the vocabulary of our times to satisfy others’ needs. Because, yes,
All that we love can be saved.
3
1
John Briley,
Cry Freedom: A True Story of Friendship London: Penguin Books,1987. I
cried during the filming of
this movie. But
I also laughed so much. There was so much beauty that was worth crying and
laughing about, you
know?
3
2
This generation
of students need to write this history so that we stop distorting our history by
putting too
11
11
for example,
the National Party Presidents, like P.W. Botha, told us and the world that
apartheid was
good because it
was separate development.
Since I
Write What I Like is a fundamental departing point for me, I find
Bantubonge
3
3
Biko‘s
definition of
Black Consciousness interesting and it is worth sharing with you:
“What Black
Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process real
black people
who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society [and in the New
South Africa,
this is applicable to anyone---amongst the AfriKan people themselves---who
perceives
themselves superior to another]. This truth cannot be reversed. We do not
need to
apologise
for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the
world a
number of
people who are not aware that they too are people. Our adherence to values that
we set for
ourselves can also not be reversed because it will always be a lie to accept
white
values as
necessarily the best.
3
4
A clip from the
film Cry Freedom helps to illustrate precisely what Biko meant by Black
Consciousness
producing at the output end of the process real black people:
“They
[Donald Woods & Bantubonke] drove out to the clinic at Zanempilo
[meaning
literally,
‘to come with health’]. It was about fifteen miles from King William’s Town,
located
in arid hill
country on land so dry no one in South Africa bothered to farm it. They were
followed by
the two local security police, Biko’s ‘minders’, and as they sped up the dusty
hill
road that
led to the clinic, Woods glanced in the rear-view mirror at the police car
eating
their dust
and creating a second cloud of its own.
… Woods
parked the car into a little space just below the clinic compound. The police
car
had stopped
at its usual spot further back on the road. Woods and Biko got out of the car,
Woods
lingering by the door to view the whole complex. There were three buildings –
long,
single
storey, of wood, looking a little like military barracks – then the church and a
large
outhouse.
There w as a line of blacks waiting outside the building nearest them – pregnant
women, women
with small babies, children, old men.
Dr Mamphela
Ramphele had come out of the central door to select some patients from the
waiting
queue. She was in her white clinical coat, a stethoscope around her neck, some
files
in her
hands. She paused on seeing Woods and Biko together – staring off at them. Even
with
her hair
drawn back, and her figure straightened by the loose coat, she was a remarkable
sight. For a
moment she watched them expressionless, then she gave a short nod to Woods,
glanced at
Biko and turned back to her patients.
Woods looked
across the top of the car. ‘Was this place her idea – or yours?’ he asked Biko
challengingly.
Having met her, he suspected she had more than a little to do with it.
‘It was a
“collective” idea,’ Biko replied, answering the challenge in Woods’ voice with a
bit
of steel in
his own. Then he glanced up at Mamphela again. ‘But we were lucky to find her,’
he added.
Woods
weighed it all – her intelligence, Biko’s reputation. Well, it didn’t make any
difference.
The clinic
was a kind of miracle whoever pulled it off. He turned to Biko again, the
challenge
still in his
voice, but some of the unpleasantness gone. ‘And a white “liberal” doctor doing
the same
thing wouldn’t serve your purpose?’ he queried ironically.
much emphasis
on our liberation struggle being won mainly by politicians, political prisoners
all over and the exiled.
We have been
here all our lives, young and very angry to grow up under apartheid governments
that Denied Us Our
Dreams .
3
3
Translated
loosely, “Bantubonge” which is Biko’s AfriKan name, means all the people.
It is interesting that Biko lived
and died
attempting to unite or bring all the people together.
3
4
I Write What I
Like, p. 51. Chapter 9, pp.48-53.
12
12
Biko’s voice
took on a solemnity Woods hadn’t yet heard. ‘When I was a student trying to
qualify for
the jobs you people let us have,’he began, ‘I was suddenly realised that it
wasn’t
just jobs
that were “white”, the history we read was made by white men, written by white
men
… medicines,
cars’ – he hit the roof of the Mercedes – ‘television, aeroplanes – all invented
by white men
– even football…’ He paused for a moment, reflecting on i t broodingly. And
Woods was
struck by his sombre reaction as by the thought itself. ‘In a world like that,’
Biko
went on,
‘it’s hard not to believe there’s something inferior about being born black.’
He let it
hang in the air for a moment, then he glanced back at the two policemen watching
him from the
shadows of the police car. ‘I came to think that that feeling was even a bigger
problem for
us than what the Afrikaners and the System were doing to us.’ Slowly, he turned
to Woods to
Woods. ‘I felt that, first, the black man had to believe he had as much capacity
to
be a doctor
- a leader – as a white man.’ He paused and Woods made his first concession,
nodding his
understanding of that thought, impressed by it, and at last impressed by the man
who reached
it.
Biko looked
off at the clinic. ‘So we tried to set this place up,’ he said. ‘My own mistake
was
to put some
of those ideas on paper.’
‘And the
Government banned you.’
Biko nodded
and glanced across at him. ‘And the “fighting liberal editor”, Donald Woods,
started
attacking me.’”
3
5
Black
Consciousness was/is not about black men, like Bantubonke Biko and his
generation only. It
was/is about
black women too. Feminism, if you like. But what is feminism, anyway? I
am not sure,
but the writing
of a colleague c ould assist here:
-----Original
Message-----
From:
prince dube
[SMTP:pdube@mj.org.za]
Sent:
Monday,
November 27, 2000 10:44 AM
To:
Mellanie
Shell-Weiss; Cheryl Dixon; Dorothea Groenewald; Graham Goddard;
Hallie Stone;
Leslie James; Louis Grundlingh; Marius Coetzee; Mieta
Motlhabane; Neo
Ramoupi; Paul Tichmann; Phyllis Zungu; Ronald Dorris;
Trevor
Mokeyane; Carol Van Wyk; Leanne Engelberg; Diana N'Diaye; Marsha
MacDowell
Subject:
Feminism
Dear All,
This debate is
for everybody, Africans and Americans. The issue is
universal and
feminism struggles against all forms of descrimination.
I think I am
getting somewhere with the understanding of feminism. You
haven't had a
thing about my grandmother. That was a superwoman. I owe the
respect I have
for women to her too. I don't even want to start with my
mother, because
you may want to vote her for presidency. (With due respect
to Americans).
It seems as if I was a victim of man's sully campaign to
denigrate
women's right movement to think that the outcome of feminism is a
familyless
society.
It is therefore
not bad at all to be a feminism from my perspective. I
3
5
Briley J,
Cry Freedom. Based on his original screenplay, London: Penguin Books,
1987, pp.35-6. I intend to use this film
clipping for
the presentation of this paper at a Conference at Wits titled The Burden of
Race: in July 2001. It is this film (of
the life of
Donald Woods), and not my formal education at school and university, that
started this awakening for me. I saw it
in Mmabatho
(North West province) in 1988 when I was a student at Unibo. It made me cry. But
I laughed too.
13
13
didn't want to
bring the goddess of life, my mother uNjomane, in this
subject, but it
is impossible to write without touchimg her. It might be a
strange thing
that when my brother and I grew up we were not read any
bedtime
stories. But my mother would read us a book in the morning. You may
thing of all
the books your parents read you when you were small, I guess
none of those
books was my mother's choice. She read us biography of John
Fitzgerald
Kennedy, former US President. My brother was 3 and I was 5 years
old by then.
When we grew
older I had learnt from school that work at home is divided
according to
sex. I refused to do some work on the grounds that that was
for women. I
will never forget the way my mother washed that theory from my
mind. From that
time I learnt to do anything without categorising it. She
also proved
that women are better than man in all the years she raised us
without saying
a word about it. In fact I should be writing a book about
her and my
grandmother.
I think the
idea of oppressing women is learnt from school. My grandfather
never went to
school and he didn't oppress his wife, but my father went to
school and he
forced my mother to leave her profession and become a house
wife. That is
why she had time to read us book in the morning. She finaly
decided to defy
my father and went back to work, indeed with her
mother-in-law's
backing (umaMwandla). My grandmother loved my mother mo re
than her own
biological children. I sometimes became jealous because my
mother would
spend more time with my grandmother than us.
The other issue
that we need to address to finalise women's emancipation is
the patriarchal
system, in both the family and the state. In the modern
families we
have surnames which we didn't before. (Dr Zungu must please
correct me if I
am wrong here). When a feminist chooses to marry a man, man
domination is
sustained through surname. Before we used our father's names
(although this
was also patriarchal) as surnames, and a married woman would
keep that name
as her name. My mother's surname is Mhlongo (supposed to be
called
umaMhlongo), but is called Mhlongo by my grandparents and the
community
because of respect she is commanding in the family and the
community due
to her hardiness. What should be done? The struggle shouldn't
take so long.
Since I have
decided to marry (a woman) soon, I realy don't know what to do
to eradicate
the remaining oppresive practices. I want my wife to be as
happy and free
as my grandmother. Your help will be appreciated.
Regards
Prince
3
6
36
Prince Dube is
an artist and he works for the Johannesburg Art Gallery. We met in Michigan
State University
last July when
we were a group of South Africans attending a Workshop on Culture, Arts,
History, Research
and Museums in
the USA. We have been keeping contacts and our intention is to co-write a book
from the
perspectives of
this Feminism letter. Because we believe all that we love can be
saved.
14
14
In this letter
I am attracted to “[b]ring the goddess of life, my mother uNjomane, in this
subject.” I
think it’s
actually more relevant because, and for her principle that she adopted when she
raised
her children,
which is clear in this paragraph:
“When we
grew older I had learnt from school that work at home is divided
according to
sex. I refused to do some work on the grounds that that was
for women. I
will never forget the way my mother washed that theory from my mind. From that
time I
learnt to do anything without categorising it. She also proved that women are
better than
man in all
the years she raised us without saying a word about it. In fact I should be wr
iting a
book about
her and my grandmother.”
uNjomane,
Prince Dube’s mother, I believe, she was talking about women of the stature of
Mamphela
Ramphele,
who challenging Apartheid in South Africaæwhen, according to her son,
Prince, said
‘women are
better than man.’
3
7
This clinic,
Zanempilo, “was also a chance for black South Africans to prove ‘what their own
people
could do’,
explained Mamphela’s friend, Father Aelred Stubbs, in his memoirs. The clinic
was run by
black South
Africans for black South Africans, and the medical care was top-notch. As
it turned out,
the clinic also
raised the consciousness of both patients and staff, but not through political
discussion.
It inspired
people because it was an example demonstrating what blacks could accomplish.
‘The spirit
of Zanempilo …
proclaimed the gospel of Black Consciousness far more effectively than any
“political
talk” could have done’, wrote Father Stubbs.
Zanempilo
reflected Mamphela’s ideals; it was dynamic, dignified, and
responsible.
3
8
This
seventies d ecade was a time of hard work, with high hopes, and joyous
gatherings. In addition to
directing the
clinic, she also began managing Black Community Programmes in the Eastern Cape.
She
was at the hub
of a movement, surrounded by excitement, and busy every day with work toward
South Africa’s
liberation.
3
9
If this
movement of Black Consciousness is what produced current World Bank’s Director
for Health,
Education, and
Social Protection, Dr/Professor Mamphela Ramphele, is it too much to request to
revive and
cease to distort its real mission and message?
Before Mamphela
left for Washington DC, for this Directorship, ‘she told Chronicle of Higher
Education
that she sees this as an important opportunity for a South African women “to put
on [the
bank’s]
agenda issues that are of importance to those of us who living in the developing
world.”’
4
0
It’s proper
that to conclude
Black Consciousness is about black women
too. Feminism, if you
like
I reiterate the last paragraph of her Challenging Apartheid in South Africa’s chapter:
“Mamphela’s
work in the Black Consciousness movement is rewarded today as young black
South Africans
find their way to self-confidence and embrace Black Consciousness ideas as their
own. She has
come a long way, long way from her childhood in apartheid South Africa, from the
day
when the
domineer of her village told her that a young black woman becoming a doctor was
a pipe
3
7
Harlan Judith,
Mamphela Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa, New York: The
Feminist Press, 2000.
3
8
Mamphela
Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa,
p.63.
3
9
Challenging
Apartheid in South Africa, p.63.
4
0
Mamphela
Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa,
p.99.
15
15
dream. She made
it past many ‘gatekeepers’ along the way who tried to fence black students, and
especially
girls, out of white schools. Today,
4
1
as
vice-chancellor of a top South African University,
she has become
a gatekeeper herself. But as she sees her job, it is not to keep the gates
closed, but to
keep opening
them again and again until opportunity is open wide to
all.”
4
2
In 1989 F.W. de
Klerk took over the leadership of the ruling party, National Party, and the
political
mapping of
South Africa took a radical turn. Amongst the many, was De Klerk’s announcement
that
all political
organisations were to be unbanned.
4
3
In that
significant year, the University of Natal, Durban’s (UND)most famous students
residence,
Alan Taylor
Residence (ATR) was closing down. The generation of Mamphela, Biko, Gomolemo
Mokae, Dr Ben
Ngubane, Dr Barney Pityana, Mamphela and many
others
4
4
all except
Pityana, resided
at ATR during
their medical studies years. This residence was located in a formerly Coloured
residence,
Wentworth, just next door to the Oil Refinery, and far away from the main campus
of the
UND. This
separation was as a consequence of apartheid legislation which segregated
residential
areas according
to races. Zanempilo was actually conceptualised at ATR during their medical
practitioners’
training and trials.
4
5
In October
1989, these spirits of Zanempilo gathered at ATR when
all medical
students of the sixties and seventies were invited to close a horrible and
important chapter
in the history
of Natal University and ATR respectively.
4
6
The generation
of black students that enrolled at UND and were accommodated at ATR, were the
last
to enjoy the
privilege, opportunity and fortune of being in the hub of the reminiscence of
the ‘ spirit of
Zanempilo.’
What most thought was a reflection of the generation of Biko, Prof. Malegapuru
W.
Makgoba, Dr
Gomolemo Mokae, Dr Ben Ngubane, Dr Barney Pityana, Mamphela and many others, I
am one of the
students who got to UND in 1989. Retrospectively, it was for me a question of
bearing
4
1
Today she is at
the Headquarters of the World Bank in Washington DC.
4
2
Mamphela
Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa,
p.99.
43
There’s been a
lot written on this period. I’ve enjoyed Talking with the Enemy, chapter
ten of Long Walk to
Freedom,
pp.502-548, because Nelson Mandela takes you through some of the craziness that
occurred in the
early 1980s and
what preceded De Klerk’s change of heart, if that was the case.
44
Biko was assassinated in 1977 September. His spirit lives on. Prof.
Malegapuru W. Makgoba is President of the
Medical
Research Institution here in Cape Town. He taught all of us a lesson as
vice-chancellor of Wits University.
See his book
for these lessons, titled Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair) Dr Gomolemo Mokae
is my hometown (Ga -
Rankuwa)
brother, and is a respected Medical Doctor and Script-Writer for the South
African Broadcasting
Corporation
(SABC). Dr Ben Ngubane is Our National Department of
Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. And
Dr Barney
Pityana is the Chairperson of South African Human Rights Commission, as well as
Prof/Dr Maphela
Ramphele
currently one of the Directors of World Bank in Washington DC. The list is
endless…
45
See Mamphela
Ramphele’s autobiography,
Mamphela
Ramphele:
A
Life.
46
Horrible
because how can an institution of higher learning dump its future medical
doctors, Ministers and
Directors of
World Bank in such a terrible place as ATR. And important in so many ways.
First, because look
what these
medical students have become today. Second, it has never been about living in
posh surroundings
that nurtures
what we are and what we want to be. Thirdly, and which is a fundamental lesson
for those who
were in
government then and now, you cannot fool all the people all the
time (Bob Marley), which I think
apartheid was
about.
16
16
witness to
black culture.
4
7
Stayed there
for a decade and proudly earned myself MA in History
Research degree
at the cost of enormous student loans, which we are struggling to repay with
abnormal
interest rates.
4
8
Mamphela’s
ideals, her dynamism, her dignity, and her responsibility are all, like the
health care she
provided at
Zanempilo, found in the “message of self-esteem and pride: Black
Consciousness”.
4
9
Songs of
Freedom: Bob Marley
5
0
This
message of self-esteem and pride is all in the name and life of Nesta Bob
Marley. Even after his
death, that
message continues to ring in our conscience because of his legacy contained in
his Songs
of
Freedom.
Every country
has its own Freedom Songs.
Baleka
Kgosietsile-Mbete, Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has this to say about our own
‘south african
freedom songs,
inspiration for liberation’:
“In the
struggle, music has played a role that I just don’t see how one would have got
through
the many years
of struggle at home, in exile, in camps, all over the world, without being
sustained by
music, song.
You had to sing to keep yourself alive.”
5
1
This past
weekend, June 22-24, 2001, our Heritage Interviewing crew was hosting the
‘Khulukuthu’/B-Section
Ex-Political Prisoners as part of the museum’s preparations to open the
Exhibitions of
the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island Building on the V and A Waterfront.
4
7
Borrowing the
title of Michael Eric Dyson’s book, Between God and Gangsta Rap:
Bearing Witness to Black
Culture,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. My gratitude to my colleague, Inez
Stephney for interesting me in
the title of
this book.
48
For example,
since I began working on Robben Island Museum at the beginning of last year,
I’ve been paying
Stand Bank
R1200, which is Stopped Ordered directly from my salary to their Bank. As
recently as April, Stand
Bank is
summoning me to the Courts because they want me to increase that amount to R3500
monthly as if I am
earning this
4X4 salaries that is becoming the norm in the New South Africa! Now the
big question that I want
to ask these
Banking institutions Managers, whom 99% of them are white s till, is what role
is these Banks
playing in the
Presidential program of African Renaissance? You must not misunderstand me, I am
not for the
cancellations
of these Students Loans because we are about building our beloved
country.
4
9
Mamphela
Ramphele: Challenging Apartheid in South Africa,
p.53.
5
0
Songs of
Freedom is a compilation of Bob Marley’s work, from the beginning – Judge
Not, which was the song he
recorded,
to the end - Redemption Song, a song considered the very last he
recorded, in Bob Marley Foundation, Island
Records Ltd.,
1992. Three years later (1995), a book was also produced with the same title
Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom,
by Boot, A.,
and Salewicz, C., with Rita Marley (Marley’s wife) as executive editor. USA:
Viking Penguin.
5
1
This comes from
the first page of the booklet which is a part of the two CD compilation of 25
songs of the South
African
Liberation Struggle, titled South African Freedom Songs Inspiration for
Liberation, for Mayibuye Centre and
Robben Island
Museum. At the time (year 2000), they were separate institutions. Celebrating 25
Anniversary of June
16 1976, on the
June 13 2001, Deputy President and former Robben Islander for a decade, Jacob
Zuma, official
opening the
Union of Mayibuye Centre with Robben Island Museum. We are one organization now
in two diverse
locations---on
the island and on the mainland, at the University of Western Cape. This makes
our historical archiving
a difficult
task, for instance, I am within the Research Unit and our Collections Unit is at
Mayibuye Centre with its
staff. All two
Units belong to one Department, Heritage.
17
17
The
‘Khulukuthu’ terrorists for others and freedom fighters for us is
the early 1960s and early 1970s
prisoners of
conscience in South Africa. They moved us when they sang some of these Freedom
Songs
inspiration for liberation for us a generation that was not born yet when they
were their
consciousness
imprisoned them.
5
2
So Bob Marley’s
Songs of Freedom is, I think, more universal than it is Jamaican. A good example
is
the Zimbabwean
Independence in April 1980, when newly appointed President, Robert Mugabe, had
invited Marley
to come and sing his songs of freedom with the Zimbabweans in Harare. When Bob
sang his
‘Zimbabwe’ Song, it is recorded that almost all the Zimbabwean freedom fighters
sang in
unionism this
liberation song with Bob Marley and the Whalers so much that they wrote it with
Bob
Marley.
5
3
Who would not
love this beautiful song:
“Get
Up, Stand Up, Stand up for your Rights”?
It is
such a simple but powerful statement to make and Marley was exceptional when it
came to that.
Amnesty
International found this song too influential to ignore. The result was that
this global
organization
used ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ song as their anthem.
5
4
Ruud Gullit, in
his battles, could not resist the message that is present and carried in this
song:
“The more
you stand up for your rights, the bigger a player you are, the more hostility
you will face. I
just said to
myself during these trying periods, ‘Okay, Ruud, when you stick up for yourself
you know
what
happen.’ I haven’t changed my attitude: I’ve always done what I felt had to be
done, what was
right.”
5
5
The importance
of Bob Marley is, for me, in the role that he centrally occupied as a human
being who
was so
passionate about
“giving the
poor a voice in the international arena of ideas. His message was that the
individual
has intrinsic dignity and e ver shall. Meantime, thanks to the politicians
Marley
never
trusted, the sufferahs in the shantytowns of West Kingston are barely subsisting
in
squalor
twice as horrendous as that which the Tuff Gong [Marley] knew. So when these
downtrodden
say, ‘Send us a nother Bob Marley’, they are not asking for another musical
superstar,
or even another candidate for the Order of Merit. They are simply seeking a
kindred
spirit of the kind who would believe like Bob. They want a leader who needn’t
run for
office, so
long as he has the integrity to fulfill his true dignity. They need a person
with the
courage to
act on hope, a role model whose own voice is the mirror of his
conscience.”
5
6
What was
the conscience of Bob Marley?
5
2
Amongst them
those who managed to defer their busy scheduled were our chairperson, Ahmed
Kathrada, Namibian
Labour
Minister, Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, Botswana’s Opposition Party member, Kitso
Michael Dingake, Wilton
Mkwayi,
Lulamile Clarance Makwetu etc. it’s meetings like this that no cash prize can
buy.
5
3
Bob Marley:
Songs of Freedom
5
4
See Bob
Marley Foundation, p.28.
5
5
Black and
White, Issue 56, p.32.
5
6
Bob Marley
Foundation, p.45.
18
18
The reformation
of the Wailers in 1974 after Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston (later Wailer) had
left
saw the
new-look Wailers fusing so many elements of the black experience. The elements
of this
high-powered
team created the album that stamped Marley’s name indelibly on rock
consciousness,
and set the
seal on the psyche of a generation of black youth.
Natty Dread
was the album and he talked about “I! Rebel
music!”
5
7
For many black
youths, Marley came just in time. There had been no inspirational movement to
identify with
since the Black Panthers. What Natty Dread presented was a forceful,
positive image of
Rasta, burning
with righteous anger and determination. It was serious music, reality music,
dealing
with their own
everyday degradations and petty brutalisations that Marley was also experiencing
as an
anti-social
dread in Jamaica, played in a roots reggae.
5
8
This was
significant, for
“Rasta gave
black youth a new, dread way of walking, with head high and proud, and an
incentive to
check their roots. For some people, that meant changing their accent to sound
more like
visiting
Jamaicans. For others, it meant learning Amharic. Changing your name to lose the
colonial
slave label
and re-claim a new, African identity.
The idea of
a place where you belong is seductive, if where you are conspires constantly to
make you
feel unwanted, by harassment and rejection on every
level.
5
9
In
Natty Dread Marley sang:
A dreadlock
congo bongo I
Children get
your culture.
6
0
Marley was out
there, indomitable like a lion ruling in the jungle, beautiful, speaking the
truth and
actually making
a fortune doing so. The fact that a black man could retain his dignity and
integrity
and still be an
internationally respected star, was an
inspiration.
6
1
Black youth and
some white youth
globally
started to break their combs to grow their hair into dreadlocks and consequently
faced mis-
educated and
mis-informed criticisms from their families and communities. Armed with a MA
History degree
in 1999 I went for I-don’t-know-how-many job interviews with my long dreadlocks
proudly and
neatly falling over my neck, and invariably, the panels’ attitude centred on my
locks and
what they
assumed (mis-education and mis-information) it meant. Some even were so ignorant
to tell
me to my face
that I would lose myself a
Job! [Sunday,
18 February 2001: 18h00 E-tv News bulletin reported on Rasta’s fight for
dreadlocks at
schools and use
of marijuna. I pressed the record button on my VHS! ☺ How Lucky Can Obe Get?]
And again,
because I am black, I believe that this is what Bob Marley, like Bantubonge Biko
and
Malcolm X, did
for the oppressed majority:
“Bob Marley
was the one man who raised black consciousness among the youth of our
generation.
He helped us understand a little better the problems that blacks around the
world
are faced
with.”
6
2
And just a less
than a year before he died, Marley performed at the Zimbabwe’s Independent Day
in
1980. He sang
for the first time a song titled Zimbabwe. In the lyrics of Zimbabwe
Marley’s
consciousness,
which is black and African is visible and clear:
5
7
Boot, A., and
Goldman, V., Bob Marley: Soul Rebel – Natural Mystic, Auckland:
Hutchinson Group, 1981, p.13.
5
8
Bob Marley:
Soul Rebel – Natural Mystic, p.14.
5
9
Ibid.
6
0
Ibid.
6
1
Ibid.
6
2
Bob Geldof. I
cannot find the source, but I am looking.
19
19
“Every man
is got the right to decide his destiny
And in this
judgement there’s no partiality
So arm and
arm we’ll fight this little struggle
‘Cause this
is the only way we can overcome our little trouble
Whether
you’re right or right so right
We go fight,
we’ll have to fight, fight for our rights
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
Africans are
liberated Zimbabwe
No more
internal for our struggle
We come
together for our struggle
Soon we’ll
find out who’s the real revolutionaries.
6
3
Then in the
last concert he performed in the US, Marley made his audience aware that the
mission and
purpose of his
life was all in his name, Nesta, which means, messenger - Messenger of a
people’s
consciousness.
In that concert he recorded the extraordinary acoustic song, Redemption
Song live,
which was to
conclude the “Uprising” album. “There was a feeling of a whole era
coming to a
climax.
Everyone felt he knew something was going to
happen.”
6
4
A universal
tune, another Marley song that has become a standard, Redemption Song is
like a final
statement in a
career, a summation of all the themes and thought that had created
it.
6
5
While it is
true that many things contributed to the formulation of Biko’s Black
Consciousness, it is
not a
far-fetched claim that the lyrics of Redemption Song was one of those
things that played a role.
Considering
just these two lines:
“Emancipate
yourself from mental slavery
None but
ourselves can free our minds.”
6
6
It is
definite that the period of this emancipate yourself was a time in which
young black men and
women asserted
their dignity, self-love and independence in a radical new way.
But it would be
erroneous and short-sighted if one is not going to look into the preceding
periods for
the rootedness
of this awareness.
Mandela:
In fact, more
than fifty year s ago, Mandela had summarized this consciousness during an
address that
was titled
‘Beyond Renaissance and Awakening: 1950s South Africa and Drum’:
“Our deepest
fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest
fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our
light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask
ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and
fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?”
6
7
A decade later,
Rolihlahla Mandela gave a speech during that famous Rivonia Trial in 1964 at his
defense. That
speech is, for me, epitome of not only his own conscience, but also an awakening
of a
generation of
that time as well as future generations. I mean here was a black man, who faced
an all-
6
3
I just listened
to Zimbabwe from my Songs of Freedom collection and copied the lyrics.
6
4
Rita Marley.
Wife of Bob Marley, in Bob Marley Foundation, p. 56.
6
5
Ibid.
6
6
In His Own
Words: Bob Marley, McCann, I.,London: Omnibus Press, 1993, p. 23.
6
7
In/sight
African Photographers, 1840 to the Present, Guggenheim Museum (1996).
20
20
white justice
system, and looked them straight in the eyes without blinking, and told them
boldly and
with pride that
“… if needs be it’s an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” He
concluded his
defense,
“The struggle is my life.”
6
8
I still have to
meet a person who would dispute the fact that it was as a consequence of this
consciousness
that Biko died so unnecessarily in September 1977. That brilliant minds of men
like
Mandela,
Sobukwe
6
9
, and the
hundreds of other men were imprisoned and wasted in that hell-hole and
the Island
of the Damned,
7
0
Robben Island
between the decades of the sixties and early nineties.
Thabo Mbeki
Presidency:
I Am an
African
7
1
This speech, I
argue, is the brainchild of this consciousness. Thabo Mbeki, it is important
that we
remind
ourselves, that he’s a generation of Biko. That’s why we are not surprised when
the focus of
his presidency
is the eradication of racism. That was what Biko preached and that’s what he
died for.
This
consciousness runs so deeply and visibly in his speeches. One very good example
was in his
Opening
Parliament Address at the beginning of this year, President Mbeki told us:
“We have
entered the twenty-first century having resolved and declared, to ourselves
as
Africans, and
to the rest of the world, that primarily, none but ourselves can extricate us
and
our continent
from the scars of poverty, underdevelopment and
marginalization.”
7
2
Winning
Chelsea the FA Cup
I see clearly a
connection between this history of Black Consciousness thinking with Ruud
Gullit’s
“pride” when he
led his team out on the field in Wembley Stadium in London in May 16 1997:
“It was
certainly a proud moment as I walked out of the Wembley tunnel at the head of my
Chelsea
team. It is
a long and interesting walk to the centre touchline, and I enjoyed it very much.
I was told a
week before the final that I was the first foreign coach to lead out a team at
Wembley for
a domestic
cup final.”
7
3
6
8
Rivonia Trial
Speech, 1964.
6
9
The scarcity of
literature on Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe is frightening. But this is changing,
though still at a snail pace.
Our Department,
Heritage on Robben Island Museum is conceptualizing projects around the hundreds
of sites that are on the
island. One
important site is the Sobukwe House where Sobukwe lived separated from other Ex
-Political Prisoners (EPPs)
during his
incarceration on Robben Island.
7
0
Tokyo Sexwale,
former 1970s generation of EPPs who were incarcerated on Robben Island. Visit us
at: http:www.robben-
island.org.za/island
7
1
Mbeki, T.,
Africa ~ The Time Has Come, Johannesburg: Mafube Publishing , 1998.
Presented in Parliament during the
adoption of
South African Constitution, Cape Town, May 8 1996. See pp.31-36.
7
2
Opening of
Parliament Address By President Thabo Mbeki, South African Broadcasting
Corporation (SABC) 2. A Live
Broadcast,
February 9 2001.
7
3
Ruud Gullit:
My Autobiography. Updated and revised, London: Arrow Books, 1999, p.170. I
am grateful to Deidre
Prins,
Education Department Programs Coordinator, Robben Island Museum, for remembering
to look out for this
much needed
autobiography on her recent London trip. Bookstores in South Africa are still
continuing to purchase and
sell
literatures as if we are still in those banning-of-books decades of apartheid
rules! I looked for this book in all
bookstores,
including the elitist ones such as Exclusive Books and all of them in the V
& A Waterfront Mall. Some of
21
21
That Saturday
afternoon, Ruud won Chelsea the FA Cup and commented
that “lots
of people told me I did not realise what it meant for Chelsea fans to win a
trophy after 26
years---they
are right---but I am very happy for the fans
now.”
7
4
This
long-awaited victory meant the name of Gullit was written in the annals of
history by becoming
the first black
manager to achieve that milestone, not just in England, but in the entire
Europe. Gullit
has fully shown
his commitment to campaigns against racism, not only in football, but in South
Africa's
struggle against apartheid. It is as a result of his own personal experience
that he is so
conscious of
the pain that racism can bring and do to people. Thus, it did not come as a
surprise to
those who had
been following his campaigns when, in 1996, the Dutch Sports Ministry honoured
Gullit with the
role of “European Ambassador” for the campaigns against R acism and
Violence in
Football.
7
5
Others
Sports Personalities Tortured by Racism
Ruud Gullit is
not the only sports star who experienced racism. There are other sports
superstars
whose lives
have been made miserable by racism. A few examples here would not be a
digression, but
rather
supportive of the theme under discussion.
One is former
Arsenal F.C. and England International, Ian Wright, who wrote:
"The first
time I pulled on an England shirt should have been one of the proudest days of
my
life.
Instead it was spoilt for me in a terrible way by racism. The great memories I
have of that night
are
overshadowed by the fact that I was targeted for abuse just because I was black,
and the most
sickening
thing for me was that it happened virtually in my own back yard at
Millwall."
7
6
Another
important figure is Arthur Ashe. The first black tennis player to win a
Wimbledon
Championship.
Prior to his death, a white reporter from People magazine interviewed him
regarding
his Aids
disease, which was caused by Aids (as a result of a blood transfusion).
She asked him
these questions:
“Mr Ashe, I
guess this must be the greatest burden you have ever had to bear, isn’t
it?”
Ashe responded:
“No, it
isn’t. It is a burden all right. But AIDS isn’t the heaviest burden I have had
to bear.”
Reporter:
“Is there
something worse? Your heart attack?”
Ashe:
them would be
so arrogant to tell me that they do not sell those kinds of books. But when an
English Premier League
soccer player,
like Bergam, publishes an autobiography, it is all over the stores.
7
4
Quoted from
chelsea@cogs.susx.ac.uk (Chelsea
Mailinglist), May 18 [Sunday], 1997.
7
5
Portrait, p.
109.
7
6
Wright, I.,
Mr Wright: The Explosive Autobiography of Ian Wright, London, 1996,
p.104.
22
22
“…You are
not going to believe this, but being black is the greatest burden I have had
to bear.”
7
7
President
Mandela Honoured Gullit
It
amazes me that in June 1997, when Gullit was here in South Africa on a
Presidential State visit,
none of our
newspapers carried an extensive interview with him. Mind you, it was just a
month after
Chelsea won the
FA Cup, so the argument that he was known does carry weight. Was it because
Gullit, like
his idol, Mandela, is radically outspoken on the matters that attempt to
“solve the problem
of the
colour line, moving beyond merely identifying racism as a persisting challenge
to unite in
action
completely to eradicate it together with sexism, xenophobia, ethnicity and all
other forms of
discrimination”?
7
8
Although I am
not condoning it, I can understand why national newspapers that are mainly
targeting
white
readership might ignore Gullit. But in the case of leading Black newspapers,
such as the daily
Sowetan
and the Sunday’s City Press, both of which have a predominantly black
readership. I still do
not understand
it.
Manchester
United and Arsenal Football Clubs visited South Africa in 1993 and all
the
newspapers
both nationally and provincially
lined up for these giants of English Premier Soccer
League. Still
dreaming to play for Manchester United, it was a dream to see them performing in
your
own country.
And it felt good to be pay all that costly ticket to watch them
play.
7
9
The most
comical aspect, I think, is that on March 9th 1997, City Press ran an
article which reported
that:
"renowned Dutch soccer superstar Ruud Gullit has been invited to visit South
Africa in June
1997 - to
receive a special award from President Mandela." It went on t o say,
"[t]his tribute will be
for his
outstanding contribution to football development world-wide as well as his
selfless dedication
to the
struggle against apartheid." And the title of that article was:
"Get Ready,
For Gullit...!
But after all
this media anticipation and advertisement, City Press itself did not
bother to ‘get ready
for Gullit!’
One wonders what they meant by that. They must have known how much the
footballing
community,
especially those who felt that Ruud was a representative of their struggle and a
role
7
7
Ashe, A.,
Days of Grace, New York, 1993. This interview appears in the chapter
titled “The Burden of Race”, pp133-78.
Bold is my
emphasis.
7
8
A quotation
extracted from President Mbeki’s Speech on the 25 Commemoration of June 16 1976.
7
9
At the time I
was studying in Durban, UND, and I traveled all the way to Ellis Park,
Johannesburg, just to see their
first game,
which unfortunately we/they lost. My “Captain Marvel” hero, Bryan Robson was
red-carded! And as he
walked
disgusted off the field, I also marched out of the stadium, with the hope of
meeting him down the tunnel for a
chat or
autograph. Securities stopped me.
23
23
model, was
anticipating his arrival in South Africa.
8
0
Gullit had made
a promise that he would never
dare to visit,
or play football in South Africa, until apartheid was dismantled. He is a man of
his word.
He kept that
promise.
Black
newspapers ignored Ruud Gullit. My question is why?
Is it because
we were about to clinch the negotiated settlement and consequently we required
no
“troubleshooter
[because] Ruud Gullit is no ordinary footballer. He has a mind of his own
– and for a
start that
puts him apart from most of his fellow
professionals!”
8
1
Is it because
Black Consciousness is still a controversial issue in contemporary South
Africa?
8
2
In closing
Ruud Gullit: Soccer, Racism and Apartheid, I find critical to quote
Gullit himself in his
Colour of
Skin chapter:
“Maybe I never
had any role models in football, or even in sport generally, but I did have one
hero in
my life –
Nelson Mandela. When I lived in Holland I used to contribute to a programme on a
station
called Radio
Vara which supported the work in South Africa of the African National Congress
(ANC),
particularly its Free Mandela campaign. I did guest spots on radio show with a
whole lot of
other
celebrities who were committed to the cause.
What I couldn’t
really understand was why Nelson Mandela had been in prison for so long – around
the same number
of years as I had been alive. I felt the obvious injustice of it, and when I won
the
World and
European Footballer of the Year awards in 1987 I dedicated those honours to his
name.
Considering I’d
been associated publicly with the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, I
never
imagined the
impact such a gesture would have around the
world.”
8
3
The impact for
me was so profound that I used Ruud’s picture and his quote about “STOP
APARTHIED” to
cover Nelson Mandela’s book, No Easy Walk to Freedom. I had purchased this
book in 1987,
which is the year that began unconsciously my own long walk to
Robben Island
Museum for the
documentation of this anti-apartheid history.
8
0
City Press is
our black community bulletin. I still purchase my weekend edition every Sunday,
even from such an
isolated place
as Robben Island, because they know the interests of their readership.
But the non-follow up to the Get
Ready, For
Gullit …! Affair is inexcusable.
8
1
Portrait, p.
108. This chapter seven in Ruud Gullit’s biography is actually titled The
Troubleshooter, pp. 108-124. It is
interesting
that in both books, Portrait and My Autobiography, chapter seven discusses his
awareness with racism and
discriminations.
8
2
Mac Maharaj,
Reflections in Prison, Cape Town: Robben Island Museum, 2001. Mandela’s chapter
on Black
Consciousness
is a fascinating, titled Whither the Black Consciousness Movement: An
Assessment, pp. 21-64. Written
while in prison
and smuggled out when Maharaj was released.
83
Ruud Gullit: My
Autobiography, p.116.
24
24
The second
quote relates to Gullit visit to South Africa in 1997. It was a State Visit, and
Mandela
bestowed upon
Ruud the highest accolade in South Africa by making him a Commander of the Order
of Good Hope at
First ational Bank (FNB) Stadium, outside Soweto, where Bafana-Bafana was
playing against
Holland.
“When I went on
stage to be presented with this prize, I’ve never felt so proud in all my life.
Also on stage
that day was Miss South Africa, and the real compliment Mandela paid me was when
he turned to
her and, pointing at people like me, said, ‘These are the real warriors who have
worked
so hard and
relentlessly against apartheid, and they are the ones who have succeeded. Now
that it’s
gone there are
so many people who want to join the fight, when it’s too late.’ And he looked at
me
when he added,
‘These guys dedicated themselves to the real struggle.’ Well no one could have
paid
me greater
praise, and that includes my European and World Footballer of the Year
awards.”
8
4
The third
quote, and which I am convinced is directly linked to this burden of colour -
blackness and
whiteness
conception:
“I
admired Nelson Mandela for many reasons, but not necessarily just because I’m
black. My mother
is white, I am
her son, and I’ve met a whole lot of white people I ’ve admired too. And I would
have
the same
feelings towards Mandela whatever our colour – because it’s just as much
injustice, which
can take many
different forms, as it is about race. Nelson Mandela is an easy man to admire
because
he just has
lots of natural charisma, and few people in this world have such qualities.
Princess Diana
was one, and
she is a person I admired greatly too. People who possess those qualities are
always
greatly
loved.”
8
5
I remember
Princess Di’s Wedding in the early 1980s, I was still in high school, when my
entire
family members
glued at the television set to view it live in apartheid-designed township
match-box
house. It was
so admirable and loveable. It was never about colour.
Also I remember
when Lady Di died in that terrible car accident in Paris in August
1997.
8
6
Most of us
were deeply
hurt by her passing because she was such a humane and charismatic person,
despite all
the negatives
that were attached to her name. Again it was never about colour.
But it’s for
us
alwaysæabout
fighting injustices. That is why I agree with Khwezi ka Mpumlwana
that “the
story of the struggle and the story of the anti-apartheid struggle is
already not being told. It
84
Ruud Gullit: My
Autobiography, p.116.
85
Ruud Gullit: My
Autobiography, pp.116-17.
86
Date of Lady
Di’s car crush was in the early hours of Sunday morning, August 29 1997. I would
never forgot
that weekend
because it was the very weekend I was dumped by my girlfriend.
25
25
would be a
shame if we do not tell those stories.”
8
7
I believe that
I can use soccer (not to massacre
people
8
8
) as a vehicle
to narrate those stories. And the truth is that President Mbeki is right that
“our
own blessing
is our capacity to think and act, to understand our reality and to change
it.”
8
9
Just telling
those stories would not be enough; writing them with our backgrounds, our own
perspectives
and our personal experiences, and presenting them as papers in forums like this
Burden
of Race:
Blackness and Whiteness Conference one is where, I think, the challenge(s)
for my
generation
lies. From here, we can gain the strength and courage to want to publish these
papers for
the future
generations that will not have had the fortune or misfortune of being born under
apartheid.
Living to
bearing witness to its dismantling, and the collections and documentation of the
painful and
educational
memories of the graduates of our University: Robben Island.
Comments and
criticisms are welcomed: Ke A Leboga/Thank You:
“Until we can
criticize ourselves, and feel safe doing so, there is no hope of molding better
values in
our children,
or of increasing the respect we feel for ourselves.” (Alice Walker)
NB:
Opinions expressed in this paper are mine and do not represent views of any
organization,
including
Robben Island Museum.
By Neo
Lekgotla laga Ramoupi: ramoupin@robben-island.org.za , Robben Island Museum,
Heritage
Department,
Research Unit, Robben Island, 7400, Cape Town, South Africa
“None but
ourselves can free our minds…” Bob Marley (Redemption Song)
8
7
Khwezi ka
Mpumlwana is the Manager of Education Department, Robben Island Museum. He was
speaking to the
History
Teachers in Cape Town on Women’s Day at University of Western Cape, August 9,
2000.
88
The recent
Ellis Park Tragedy which caused the lives of 43 soccer loving people, including
an eleven year old
boy, Rosslyn
Andre’ Nation, during the Soweto derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer
Chiefs.
8
9
President Thabo
Mbeki, speaking at the second Oliver Tambo Memorial Lecture at
Bramfontein Civic Centre,
Johannesburg,
August 11, 2000. City Press, August 13, 2000.
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