We will resist.’15

Three months after the referendum, on Thursday, 17 June 1992, in Boipatong, south of Johannesburg, Zulu-speaking men from a nearby hostel killed forty-five, and seriously injured twenty-seven, men, women and children in a cowardly massacre, using AK47s and their assegais (throwing spear). There was something especially chilling about the murders: twenty-four of the victims were women, one of them pregnant, and a nine-month-old baby was also killed. In the aftermath the police made few arrests. As happened in many such cases where the victims were ANC supporters, the investigation was botched, spluttering to an inconclusive end that yielded no significant arrests. Responding to writer John Carlin’s question about the massacre, Jessie Duarte, Mandela’s former personal assistant and now an ANC politician, recounted Mandela’s reaction: ‘I will never forget his face … He was a man who was deeply shocked by the fact that people will do this to each other … I had the view that Madiba hadn’t actually ever confronted the cold face of the violence during the twenty-seven years of his incarceration.’†16

Following a muted response from President F. W. de Klerk about steps taken to curb violence and bring the perpetrators to book, Mandela announced the ANC’s decision to suspend the talks. The violence was leading to a growing sense of mass disillusionment with the ANC’s stance on negotiations. At a rally in Boipatong to mourn the deaths, angry people sang, ‘Mandela, you are leading us like lambs to the slaughter’.

At Mandela’s insistence, the ANC took the issue to the United Nations in spite of a previous position that there would be no international involvement in the negotiations.

Nonetheless, negotiations were resumed a few months later, mediated by a Record of Understanding fleshed out by a backchannel – a low-profile line of communication to avoid crises established between Cyril Ramaphosa and his counterpart from the National Party, Roelf Meyer – and encouraged by Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. When Mandela explained that the ANC’s withdrawal from the talks was due to the orchestration of violence by the apartheid state, Nyerere reminded him that the South African freedom fighters had always contended that the apartheid state was inherently violent. How, he asked, could it be cogently argued that violence would be totally eliminated before the apartheid state itself was abolished?

The quibbling, wrangling, horse-trading and compromises among the negotiating parties came to an abrupt stop with the assassination of Chris Hani, undoubtedly one of South Africa’s most popular leaders,* on 10 April 1993, by a right-wing Polish immigrant, Janusz Waluś, at the behest of a Conservative Party member of Parliament, Clive Derby-Lewis.†

Mandela writes that the killing of Hani, a man ‘who could have easily risen to the highest position in government’, almost precipitated a calamitous crisis.17 Hani’s popular following was outraged. Tens of thousands spontaneously poured out into streets throughout the country. Wide ranges of other South Africans were numbed with shock.

‘As the country teetered, [I] was given airtime on SATV [South African TV] to broadcast to the nation, appealing for discipline, and to avoid giving way to provocation. Many commentators of our negotiated transition were later to observe that the effective transfer of power from the National Party of De Klerk to the ANC occurred not with the elections in April 1994, but in this critical week one year earlier.’18

South Africa does not lack for examples when it has had to pull back from the brink of self-destruction. Among them would be Sharpeville on 21 March 1960; Soweto, Nyanga, Langa and Gugulethu after June 1976; and, of course, the countless instances of insanity under the cloak of a succession of States of Emergency. At no time, however, had the collective rage – and despair – been so concentrated that all it needed was a spark for the powder keg to blow up as in the aftermath of the fateful Easter weekend of Hani’s assassination.

The spark was dampened by Mandela’s timely intervention on television on 13 April 1993. His tone carrying exactly the right mixture of indignation and moral strength, he addressed the South African people:

‘Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being.

‘A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster.

‘A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin.*

‘The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves through-out the country and the world. Our grief and anger is tearing us apart.

‘What has happened is a national tragedy that has touched millions of people, across the political and colour divide.

‘Our shared grief and legitimate anger will find expression in nationwide commemorations that coincide with the funeral service.

‘Tomorrow, in many towns and villages, there will be memorial services to pay homage to one of the greatest revolutionaries this country has ever known. Every service will open a Memorial Book for Freedom, in which all who want peace and democracy pledge their commitment.

‘Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for – the freedom of all of us.

‘Now is the time for our white compatriots, from whom messages of condolence continue to pour in, to reach out with an understanding of the grievous loss to our nation, to join in the memorial services and the funeral commemorations.

‘Now is the time for the police to act with sensitivity and restraint, to be real community policemen and women who serve the population as a whole. There must be no further loss of life at this tragic time.

‘This is a watershed moment for all of us. Our decisions and actions will determine whether we use our pain, our grief and our outrage to move forward to what is the only lasting solution for our country – an elected government of the people, by the people and for the people.

‘We must not let the men who worship war, and who lust after blood, precipitate actions that will plunge our country into another Angola.

‘Chris Hani was a soldier. He believed in iron discipline. He carried out instructions to the letter. He practised what he preached.

‘Any lack of discipline is trampling on the values that Chris Hani stood for. Those who commit such acts serve only the interests of the assassins, and desecrate his memory.

‘When we, as one people, act together decisively, with discipline and determination, nothing can stop us.

‘Let us honour this soldier for peace in a fitting manner. Let us rededicate ourselves to bringing about the democracy he fought for all his life; democracy that will bring real, tangible changes in the lives of the working people, the poor, the jobless, the landless.

‘Chris Hani is irreplaceable in the heart of our nation and people. When he first returned to South Africa after three decades in exile, he said: “I have lived with death most of my life. I want to live in a free South Africa even if I have to lay down my life for it.” The body of Chris Hani will lie in State at the FNB Stadium, Soweto, from twelve noon on Sunday 18 April until the start of the vigil at 6 p.m. The funeral service will commence at 9 a.m. on Monday, 19th April.