The hour of the victim had come. And then, on 11 February 1990, almost 120 days later, Mandela stepped out and it all became real. At last, it was happening. All the songs that people had sung in churches, at the lips of open graves and in the camps thousands of miles from home, all transmuted into an affirmation: ‘We are going to cast our vote.’ Seven simple words whose import had eluded the architects of apartheid for decades.

The Afrikaner right wing had failed.

 

CHAPTER THREE

A Free and Fair Election

With the immediate roadblocks removed, the way was open for an election that would be the final step in the establishment of a democratically elected government. The Transitional Executive Council (TEC) to promote the preparation for and transition to a democratic order was now well established and ready to promote the conditions for unrestricted political activity in the run-up to the elections.* Between 15 April and 15 May 1994, the country saw South Africa’s most comprehensive peacetime mobilisation of the security forces to ensure a free election.1 The main political parties, even the Inkatha Freedom Party, which had only agreed to participate at the eleventh hour, had strong campaign machines. Widespread voter education campaigns among the disenfranchised had started two years earlier, when the ANC had started preparing for an elected constituent assembly. In place, too, since December 1993, was the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). When the IEC was established, Mandela had phoned its head, Judge Johann Kriegler, a tough and energetic jurist, saying that he and the ANC realised there were difficulties, but Kriegler should know that he had the support and confidence of the party.†2

What struck Judge Kriegler was Mandela’s ability to connect with people from widely different constituencies. Kriegler observed that when he had an issue to raise, ‘Mandela would call personally, unlike the usual CEO whose PA calls you to say the CEO would like to speak to you and then you wait for the CEO.’3 In mid-April, in a meeting of the TEC at which Mandela was present, Kriegler reported on a meeting with the IFP:

There was at one point talk of a boycott of the elections by the ZCC [Zion Christian Church]. At that time there were several threats of boycott: IFP, North West, Ciskei and the right wing. I went to meet with Bishop Lekganyane to persuade him to support the process, before Easter.* He said that he had invited the leaders of all parties to attend the Easter celebration to set the right tone for the election, which seemed to imply that he would be encouraging participation. At the Easter meeting I sat in the hall next to Mandela for two hours. It was the first time I talked to him as a person. He was like a grandfather. He recognised people as they came in, explaining that this one was married to that one’s sister; he was able to identify them from all over the country by family connections – he really knew his natural constituents.’4

It was the Kenyan professor John S. Mbiti who observed in his seminal work, African Religions and Philosophy, that Africans are notoriously religious; this is borne out to a very large extent in the sizeable adherents of the ZCC with its syncretic mix of Christian and traditional African religious beliefs.5 It therefore made sense for Mandela, or any political leader for that matter, to woo its bishop, whose influence extended well beyond the borders of South Africa, with hundreds of thousands of the faithful trekking from all points of southern Africa to the pilgrimage in Moria, in what was then the northern Transvaal. They might have come to worship, but for Mandela they constituted a voting public. First and foremost, Mandela wanted to ensure the integrity of the founding election, an essential condition for a peaceful transition to democracy.

Mandela writes that ‘the formation of the first democratically elected government of South Africa was preceded by a countrywide election campaign during which ANC leaders in all levels of the organisation systematically combed the entire country, visited rural and urban areas and spoke to all sections of the population.

‘It is this team of men and women that made 27 April 1994 unforgettable in the collective memory of the South African nation as a day in which our people came together and united in symbolic action.

‘That day concluded months of excitement, expectations and fears following the conclusion of negotiations in November of the previous year.

‘The election date was agreed at the negotiations so that for five months the nation waited with bated breath for the arrival of that historic day in the life of South Africa.

‘To the black majority, it meant the birth of a dream that had inspired generations, namely, that one day the people will govern.

‘For decades, after the conclusion of the colonial wars of dispossession, they had to sit on the sidelines of political life, watching their compatriots voting to rule over them. Now the day was nearing when they would, together with all their compatriots, decide on the politics of their country.

‘To many of the white population, the prospect of that day obviously held cause for trepidation, fear and insecurity. To them it would signal the end of minority control and privilege, opening up the frightening prospect of having to share with those whom they subjected for so long and in many respects so cruelly.

‘The atmosphere in those months leading up to election day was therefore understandably a mixture of all those different and competing emotions and expectations. As we went around the country campaigning and canvassing our people to come out to vote for the liberation movement, we encountered those various moods.

‘It was clear that the hard work done by the liberation movement over so many decades had left an indelible mark on the voting patterns to be expected. All over the country and in all communities, we were greeted with enthusiasm and overwhelming signs of support.

‘[In my capacity as] the ANC president, [I] travelled to virtually every corner of the country. In the run-up to the elections in the last six months, [I] personally addressed at least two and a half million people through rallies and meetings across the length and breadth of South Africa. It was moving to observe how the name and reputation of our movement lived in even the remotest rural areas.

‘In the long-established tradition of our organisation and of Congress politics, we drew into our campaign the widest possible array of people. As we had done during negotiations, when we managed to win over to our side different parties who originally were thought to be allies of the apartheid regime, we now again adopted that broad approach to unite people even in campaigning. We used modern research techniques and methodologies including polling opinion. Our polling adviser was Stan Greenberg who was adviser to [President] Clinton in his 1992 campaign.

‘In the campaign we held People’s Forums, focus groups and inserted media adverts seeking inputs from the people. These yielded enormous responses. We engaged with the people face-to-face.’6

Mandela and the ANC had long realised that they didn’t have the campaign resources to match the National Party’s formidable election machinery, which enjoyed the advantage of incumbency. Although credited to Greenberg, the ANC, through an activist such as Ketso Gordhan, had actually reformatted the Nicaraguan strategy of the people’s forums to suit local conditions.

In a chapter on the election in the Western Cape, as part of a well-researched study, Launching Democracy in South Africa, co-edited by the journalist and political scientist R.