06 | Boycott! | Homecoming

After 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela is free and the anti-apartheid movement is full of hope. But as apartheid legislation is repealed and South Africa starts transitioning to democracy, not everyone is happy. Right-wing Afrikaner groups take to the streets with guns and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party inflicts terrible violence within the black community. There are mass killings and peace talks that keep falling apart; will the country make it across the finish line to free and fair elections? There's an entire system to dismantle and wounds to heal. There’s so much work to be done. What will the new South Africa look like?

• 0:00Speaker 00

  ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Just a warning that there are some graphic descriptions of violence in this episode, so take care listening.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  It's February 11, 1990, a week since South Africa's president FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the African National Congress. And the whole world is waiting for Nelson Mandela to be released from prison. South Africans call him by his clan name, a term of respect and affection, Madiba, our hero. Finally, word comes.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  The apartheid state had said they were releasing Mandela the next morning, and we were completely not organised.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Everyone caught off guard by the short notice, including Jane Idu. He's secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions at the time.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  And I arrived the next morning at the prison gate, and it's the first time I've voluntarily gone to a prison.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  And so we get taken to the house where Madiba is living. And I hear his voice like, hello, comrades, welcome.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Madiba's been in prison for 27 years. No one's seen his face in all this time, let alone heard his deep, booming voice.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Of course, we don't know what to expect. Never seen him.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  He was like incredibly tall, regal Mandela. It's like a grandfather walking up, you know? He embraces us, and then we sit and we have tea. And so, yeah, we sat for hours. The whole world was waiting for him to walk out of the prison, but there he was, making sure people had tea and biscuits.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  After a few hours, he's ready. The world's most famous political prisoner is about to walk free. But there's no plan, no security, it's ludicrous. Mandela is beloved by the movement, but he's enemy number one for many Afrikaners. This could turn dangerous really fast.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  The security police dropped him on our laps. And so I became the security person in the car in front.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  The world watches as Madiba drives away from the prison, Jay Naidoo leading the convoy.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Everywhere we went, there was thousands of people all along the highways. And we arrived in the centre of town and the car literally has been squashed by the pressure of people.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  There was complete joy. I've never seen joy like that, but it was dangerous.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Mandela's driver panics and he just takes off away from the crushing crowd.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  We lost Mandela for a while.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, you physically did not know where he was? That's very scary. He randomly drives through suburban streets, unsure what to do, and he stops outside a stranger's house.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  When the people came out to see him, it was an Afrikaner couple and he went in and had tea with them. And it was a set of twins, an appearance, until we found him again. And we brought him back so they could make his speech.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  And then he addressed the people.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  One of the most significant days in history, and Nelson Mandela is lost in the suburbs, having a cup of tea with an Afrikaner family.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  I'm Stesongem Simang and this is the final episode of our ABC Rewind series, Boycott: The Fight to End Apartheid. Episode six, Homecoming.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  We began this series with 16-year-old me, sitting in front of the TV on my auntie's couch in Nairobi, watching Nelson Mandela walk out of prison a free man, hand in hand with Winnie, oblivious to all that behind-the-scenes drama. I'm full to the brim with hopes and dreams, just so, so happy.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Who among us didn't watch it and weep, weep? I can barely talk about it without crying because it was, it was everything.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  There was only one song, only Nelson Mandela.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  What emotions. People all over were celebrating the level of hope.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  You know, it's difficult to describe the joy. Just sent all of us wild with excitement.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  Now is the time to intensify this struggle.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  My dad's name is Mavusom Siman, but we call him Baba. And when Mandela's released, he's still in exile. He's also watching from his home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  I mean, we kept our eyes glued on the television set. You couldn't help but hold back tears. I, I, I'm clipped by that now as I talk to you.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Same here, same here.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  So it, it was an amazing moment and it was victory.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  We're all on the phone to each other, rejoicing. And I picture telephone lines lighting up homes all around the world as South Africans everywhere connect through this great, big spider web of joy.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Baba left South Africa in 1963, and he's been waiting so long for this moment, longing for the day he can go home. He's been gone as long as Madiba has been locked up, 27 years.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  We just thought we are going to get back home, but the truth is that you didn't know when it would happen. Everybody wanted to go home almost immediately.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  But they don't. There's still too much doubt, too much uncertainty. So my parents hold back, waiting to see what will happen next.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  This strange limbo between Mandela's release in 1990 and the end of apartheid is incredibly violent. No one trusts anyone. There are mass killings and peace talks that keep falling apart. Moments when it seems South Africa will plunge into civil war. Terror hums just below the surface and the past hangs heavy in our bones as we hurtle towards an uncertain future. There's an entire system to dismantle. There are wounds to heal. There's so much work to be done. Where on earth do we begin? What will the new South Africa look like?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Zwelin Zima Vavi is... Well, he's Vavi. And is there a title, an official title you'd like us to use as well?

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Comrade, comrade.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Vavi is such a character, a joker. But he grew up in poverty, politicized by the injustice he saw as a kid. He starts working in the mines as a young man, becomes a union leader. He's jailed many, many times. And he remembers living in Sharpville, where that awful massacre took place in 1960, dreaming about the houses he might live in one day.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  I used to point to the house that I'm going to confiscate.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  So when we defeat these guys, that's going to be my house. So we had all of those type of dreams. And the reality of the fact that we didn't defeat them meant that you need to find a settlement and that you need to explain the settlement to the rest of the membership and to the people as a whole. It was not an easy thing, very, very difficult. And it was the moment of very, very painful confrontation.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  By now, Vavi is not a fresh-faced kid who thinks he can just move into a white person's house. He's in the leadership team of one of the most powerful unions in the country. The boycotts and sanctions have gotten us this far, but black people haven't won yet. A peaceful transition still has to be negotiated, and not everyone likes that.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  In May 1990, the ANC and the De Klerk government meet for the first time and agree to start Talks About Talks. Afrikaner nationalists are livid.

• 9:23Speaker 07

  Responding to the latest reforms, an extreme right-wing group has warned that boers will take up arms before allowing apartheid to be scrapped. Kon Stukie is the senior commandant and financial secretary of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, a group which displays a stylized schwastika emblem and wears brown shirt uniforms. Mr. Stukie told Jane Rowe that Mr. De Klerk and his government are traitors to their race.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  What they're doing here now is taking away everything that belongs to the white and what we've worked for and established by our own intellect and just hand over to a black government. We are going to resist, that is for sure.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Is the Afrikaner Resistance Movement armed?

• 10:04Speaker 05

  No response, no comment.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  The Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the AWB, is a paramilitary ultra-right-wing group, formed in 1973. The AWB wants a white-only state. Even apartheid wasn't racist enough for them. So it comes out fighting against the negotiations, marching in Nazi uniforms with those horrible dogs trained to attack black people. And it's terrifying.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  What's wrong with the idea of allowing blacks and whites to live alongside each other?

• 10:39Speaker 05

  I'm trying to explain to you people that these people aren't fully civilised.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  It's not just white violence that's flaring. There's also increasing violence in black communities.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  In the last episode, we talked a lot about the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu group that's very anti-Mandela and the ANC, and not so secretly funded by the apartheid regime.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  People are dying like flies. I happen to have been one of the first people to witness the death of an old-aged lady in the streets of Sibukane, when the marauding gangs of IFP marched into the township and attacked and killed a woman. That was to be the start of violence. And we saw these people were killed in the trains, in the funerals, in the hostels. Wow.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  So, the country is tense, and you'll hear much more about that later. But I often think about what it must have been like for Nelson Mandela to step out of prison and into this vortex. It would have been hard enough simply adjusting to life on the outside, let alone having to deal with all of this. It's a lot.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  But just eight days after he's released, Mandela's issued his first South African passport, and he heads off on a thank-you tour of African nations. It's epic. Madiba and Winnie stop in Nairobi, where I'm at school, and this is my moment. A small group of exiles is invited to meet them, and 16-year-old me is one of them. I bring flowers for Winnie, and, oh my God, I am beaming. A child of the struggle, finally meeting the mother and father of our revolution.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Next up, it's a whistle-stop tour of Europe, including Ireland, where he meets the grapefruit ladies who refuse to sell South African produce. Then, America, where Mandela is greeted like a rock star. Barbara Masaquela is there.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  It was just crazy, the way he was able, in the United States of all countries, to speak about Cuba, to speak about Libya, to speak about Palestine. It was just amazing. You know, he was enjoying his role.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  And he was enjoying his freedom.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, when I think of the old man, that's how I think of him. As somebody who is having so much fun.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  I love this.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  You know, finally being able to say the things he had been thinking, that he had been prevented from saying. You just realize you were in the presence of a noble and rare human being.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  After this trip, Barbara Masaquela becomes Mandela's chief of staff, helping him navigate the tricky transition from prisoner to president. Finally, it's Australia's turn, and Nelson Mandela thanks an awestruck crowd of 40,000 people from the iconic steps of the Opera House.

• 14:17Speaker 06

  Comrades, our visit here

• 14:22Speaker 06

  is a fulfillment of a longstanding wish to come and thank you personally for the marvelous contribution you have made to our freedom struggle. Even within the thick prison walls of Robben Island, this steadfastness of your solidarity is very true.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  For all those Australians who fought the good fight, who protested the Springbok rugby tour in 1971, who picketed businesses supporting South Africa, who put their blood, sweat and tears into helping bring down apartheid, it's a moment.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  And then, while Mandela's in Sydney, he makes a special visit. This is unionist Joe Deacon, who helped initiate the oil embargo.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, we come here and he was greeted by the union. And in fact, I think the photo of Pat Garrity with Nelson Mandela, I think it was taken in the rooms here. They're shaking hands with one another and they're laughing. And it's a pride and joy in this union rooms here. Because Nelson Mandela made a special mention after being in prison. He personally thanked the Sumo Union of Australia and the Waterside Workers' Federation for the great contribution in dismantling apartheid through the oil embargo.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  But after this euphoric world tour, it's back down to earth as Nelson Mandela heads home to deal with escalating tensions. Pressure is building within the ANC about how much to compromise. Not everyone trusts the De Klerk government to negotiate in good faith, including Mandela's beloved wife Winnie. It's Winnie who's been on the street fighting injustice while her husband was in jail. And it's radicalized her. Which means, things have turned a little frosty between her and Nelson since that beautiful day they walked out of prison holding hands. Their differences are both personal and political.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  There are salacious rumours about Winnie's infidelity. And then, there's this.

• 16:56Speaker 07

  The South African government is to charge Winnie Mandela with kidnapping and assault.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  The affair involves a so-called Mandela United Football Club, who operated as bodyguards for Mrs. Mandela in the volatile township while her husband was still in jail. They exercised an awesome power. 14-year-old Stompe Moaketsi, who'd been accused of being a police informer and three other youths were abducted by members of the club and taken to Mrs. Mandela's former home.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  I welcome the decision in the sense that at last I will be able to stand a proper trial and clear my name properly. Up to now, I have been tried and found guilty by the media in South Africa.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  The government's decision to formally charge here will heighten already strained relations with the ANC.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  As a gesture of good faith, President De Klerk says he'll grant indemnity to ANC comrades in exile if MK, Mukonto Wessizwe, stops its armed struggle. Mandela agrees. But the head of MK, the dynamic Chris Hani, isn't consulted, and he's not happy. He reluctantly follows the party line, though, and gets on board, suspending all military activities. And before long, former MK fighters start flooding back to South Africa. Walanga Kosa is one of them. He's one of the student activists you heard from earlier in the series

• 18:25Speaker 01

  who left after the Soweto uprisings in 1976 to join MK. I said to my sister, "When we get to Nkowankwa, can you please don't let anyone know that I'm back? I just want to see my family. I want to see my mother alone. I want to keep it quiet." But it's not to be. As soon as we pull into Nkowankwa Township, I see cars everywhere, beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, and we arrive at my mother's house. There were hundreds of people. To greet you. To come and welcome me. And I'm looking everywhere. I'm overwhelmed, I'm in tears. Some of them come, "Walanga, don't you remember me?" And I realize that "son of the soil" is back and all that.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  That's exactly the word that was on my mouth, "son of the soil." Yeah, and then you realize that, hey, you belong to yourself, you belong to your mother, but you belong to the people.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Belong to everyone, you know, the struggle is for everyone. So forget about wishing for that private moment. Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  And suddenly I look and I see my mother, whom I hadn't seen for a very, very long time. And she's walking towards me.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  There are emotional scenes like this all across South Africa. So many long overdue reunions. And also, on those first visits home, many of us get our hands on something really special.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I managed for the first time in my life to get an identification, a passport with my name, with my own photo.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Wow, I remember doing the same thing at Shell House as well. And then we came back a few days later and we had this green passport.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  It didn't have your race.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, suddenly the race thing is gone.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Not long after Valanga, it's my turn to go home. When I step off that plane in Johannesburg and touch South African soil for the first time, it's surreal. I've imagined this day my whole life. I head into Joburg with its glittering lights and fast cars and check into the Holiday Inn. Then I go up to dinner with my cousins and a white waitress serves us. Ha, imagine that. As we sit on the pavement on this beautiful summer's evening, a homeless black man is singing Nat King Cole, and he's good. But the waitress shews him away with an unmistakable ode racism.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  She is not ready for us. We are on our feet in a flash, in her face, telling her not to talk to black people like that. We aim our long pent-up rage squarely at her. This is our country too, and we're back, baby.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Then finally, it's Baba's turn to come home. He was only 21 when he left South Africa. And now, at 51, he heads straight to his mother's house in KwaZulu.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  When I got into that house, I just broke down completely, completely.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that, that, that. Then I said to myself, I'm home now.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Wow, that's, that's making me emotional.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, it was tough. And, uh, yeah, things had changed a fair bit. But I mean, it was really nice to meet my mother again.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  But yes, as Baba says, things have changed a fair bit. South Africa is a battleground. Right-wing racists are marching up and down the streets in full Nazi regalia. And Inkatas ramping up its killing of ANC supporters. So of course, when you guys come back, South Africa was in blood and flames. I mean, you guys were in Natal. There was so much violence and conflict.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  And the hostels in Johannesburg, where mostly Zulu people work, was just places of serious and indescribable cruel conflict, where the government was still, you know, behind the scenes, encouraging these hostel dwellers, who were mostly affiliated to Buthelezi's party, the Inkatha Freedom Party, who saw himself really being upstaged by the ANC. The ANC was being invited to the negotiating tables. That unleashed so much conflict in KwaZulu-Natal.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  And when it is said that there was a smooth transition democracy, it's true only to the extent that white people and black people did not fight. But within the black community, there was serious loss of life. I haven't looked at the figures. It can't have been less than 60,000 or so people were killed in those conflicts.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  In June 1991, the government formally repeals apartheid legislation. And that brings South Africa one step closer to its first official talks about the transition to democracy.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  But then, another setback. Security forces raid the home of an ANC member and find evidence of a top-secret military operation. Remember MK leader Chris Hany's pledge to put the guns down? Well, the movement hasn't quite done that. It's kept a mission called Operation Vula alive, smuggling in guns as an insurance policy against the violence. The government's livid and accuses the ANC of bad-faith negotiations. The ANC accuses them of the same. After all, it's pretty widely known that the government's funding the Inkatha Freedom Party.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It started doing this in the 1980s to destabilize the black community, to keep us divided. And now, it's doing it to weaken the ANC's negotiating power and to convince the world that black people are too violent to be trusted to run the country. So, if the government's going to talk peace by day and attack the ANC through Inkatha by night, then the ANC can play that game too. And this is just how it will be over the next few years of this transition period, walking this tightrope, always playing this precarious game of brinkmanship, one step forward, three steps back.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  As this violence within the black community continues, Winnie faces trial for her part in the kidnapping and beating of young black men in Soweto.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  And she's found guilty.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Guilty but still defiant, Winnie Mandela, buoyed up by the cheers of supporters, as she and Nelson Mandela left court tonight to face the waiting before she's sentenced. But Nelson Mandela knows well the damage to his family name. He'd pressed for this trial, hoping his wife would be cleared.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Mandela's navigating these complex negotiations with the regime and responding to endless carnage on the streets. But he sits in court, stoic, in a suit, supporting his wife to the end. It's heartbreaking to watch, and the media laps it up.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  As the Mandelas push through the crowds to get home tonight, Nelson Mandela faces all the new strains of his wife's conviction, to add to the real anguish he feels at the township's slaughter and the damage to negotiations with President de Klerk.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Winnie's sentenced to six years in jail, but she appeals. And a year later, her kidnapping charge is overturned, and her punishment is reduced to a two-year suspended sentence. But for now, confidence are telling Madiba to leave her, that this is a moment for cool heads, that Winnie's too fiery. She's a liability, the shadow to his light. But Madiba stands by his woman, for now. In December 1991, official talks finally begin. The goal is a new constitution, to nut out what the core values of a new South Africa should be.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  The stakes are high for everyone. Black people really want their land back, but white people are worried they'll lose their farms and their homes. Big business worries that mines, farms, and factories will be nationalized. And even within the movement, this chatter about those ANC leaders back from exile. They sure like their suits and their whiskey. Can they be trusted? It's precarious. But at the end of those first talks, everyone agrees the goal is a non-racial democratic state. Sounds so simple now, but it's a huge step forward.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  But, and of course, there's always a but. Those far-right racist groups like the AWB, they keep insisting that President de Klerk has no right to make these changes, that he has no mandate. And I hate to say this, but they're kind of right. De Klerk will never be able to say he represents the will of white people unless he tests the idea. So in March 1992, with Mandela's support, he holds a referendum. There's a catch, though. Only white people can vote. Fiery teenage me is appalled that we're asking white people's permission to end apartheid.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  But thankfully, I'm not in charge. Because what Mandela's doing here is taking a well-calculated risk. He knows that any future ANC government will need this mandate too. And he's betting on most white South Africans knowing they can't turn back. But tension explodes on referendum day.

• 29:16Speaker 07

  The maelstrom of politics reached boiling point on this judgment day. The country's defense forces are virtually on a war footing as they try to keep a lid on the violence. Terrorists, black and white, are making the most of this country's confusion. In Soweto, a black woman is shot. Her neighbors accuse the army. Police move in, ordering this army unit to back off. This is the tension of South Africa this week.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  But Mandela's gamble pays off. 68% of white people vote yes.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  The month after the referendum, the mother and father of our nation sit the kids down for a talk.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  In view of the tensions that have arisen owing to differences between ourselves, we have mutually agreed that a separation would be best for each one of us.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  After 34 years of marriage, Winnie and Nelson Mandela are separating. It's all just become too much.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Thankfully, my own parents are still very much in love, and they move back to South Africa for good. My middle sister's at school in Ethiopia, and I'm at uni in America. After years of moving around in exile, Zambia, Kenya, Canada, Ethiopia, finally, we have a family home in South Africa. But for Baba, everything's different now. Parks and pools and beaches and cinemas and shops, they're no longer segregated, and there's a jostling for power on the streets. People don't know how to just be.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  The government had persuaded the majority of the white people that have no fear, you make sure that your interests are protected. And a lot of white people were coming on side, were accepting that fact. There was nevertheless quite a number of white people who walked about carrying guns. That was quite ugly, frightening, but really, more than anything, it said, there isn't peace here. I think there was been so much said about how bad black people were, and there'd been so much cruelty meted out to them. There were fears that there would be revenge. ANC, the Council of Churches, Desmond Tutu, priding peace

• 31:53Speaker 05

  and the banishment of revenge, really guided that transition. But the tensions were there.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  I worry so much about my family during this time, like a lot, a lot. And I call them every week from a phone box near my dorm. And it's strange, we expected the threats from the right-wing Afrikaners, but it's the Inkatha attacks that feel like a punch in the gut. Especially this one. In June 1992, Inkatha kills 45 people in one night in a township called Boybatong.

• 32:34Speaker 07

  Even the most hardened veterans of township violence were horrified as the dimensions of last night's massacre became known. Peoples slaughtered in their homes, hacked to death in their beds, shot as they tried to escape. Among the victims, a nine-month-old baby.

• 32:53Speaker 07

  It was the worst incident of its kind in two years. There were men in police vehicles directing the attackers, he says.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  After Boybatong, the ANC's fed up with the government playing nice at the talks by day, but supplying Inkatha with weapons to kill by night. It's tired of them sowing all this clandestine chaos to force concessions. Furious, the ANC pulls out of the latest round of talks.

• 33:19Speaker 07

  The ANC's break with the government means that the process of political reform that promised power sharing by the year's end has now been halted.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  This dramatic decision of the ANC to cancel bilateral discussions is based on a fundamental untruth, namely that the government is involved in the killing of people. But months later, another massacre. This time in Bisho, the capital of the Sisgai homeland. 28 protesters are shot dead.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  The country is a tinderbox, brittle, flammable. We fear it might explode into civil war at any moment. But every time talks fall apart, there's a reprieve. And so it is again. Two weeks after the Bisho massacre, Mandela and De Klerk sign a record of understanding. Basically, it's a roadmap to democracy. But within the movement, people are worried. Is the ANC making too many compromises? Either way, the agreement catapults us forward. And once again, hope and dread walk hand in hand.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  One of the voices calming the frustration of young comrades is Chris Hani. Once the leader of Mkhonto Esisewe, he's now the head of the Communist Party. And Mandela likes him a lot. Comrade Chris has spent decades in exile, dodging bullets and surviving bomb attacks. The stories of the regime's failed attempts to kill him are legendary. Chris leaves a building and 30 minutes later, it's bombed. Chris decides at the last minute not to go to a camp and narrowly evades an ambush. Now, he's back from exile and he's one of those special people bridging the gap between moderates and radicals within the ANC.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  He's got that magic touch and a massive following. But on Easter weekend, 1993, the movement's heart is broken.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  This is AM. I'm Hamish Robertson. Good morning. And we begin this morning in South Africa with the weekend assassination of top African national congress official, Chris Hani. He was also the secretary general of the South African Communist Party.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Chris Hani has just pulled into his driveway and stepped out of his car when he's shot by a right-wing extremist. His teenage daughter, Kwezi, is standing at the front door and sees everything.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  He was a hero to many of the young in The black townships. The killing is likely to have as big an impact on black consciousness as the death of Steve Biko in the late 1970s.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  The country is in shock. Baba is devastated. We all are.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  I knew Chris personally. We were actually friends and we had worked together for quite some time. But when he was killed, I am telling you, people were angry. People were angry. You were not certain what was going to to happen.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Chris Honey, at 50 years of age, was a man many saw as the natural successor to Nelson Mandela. Barbara Masagela is Nelson Mandela's chief of staff. When she gets the call and has to break the news to Madiba.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  It was unbelievable. You know, that at a time when we were discussing negotiations and things were so, so, so delicate that suddenly there was the news that Chris had been killed. And so I called him.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  So you phoned him to tell him about Chris Honey's assassination?

• 37:25Speaker 03

  He couldn't believe it. He just said, Barbara, can you, are you sure you, are you sure about this? Have you checked? It was just a moment when you, your mind is empty completely. It can't be. It can't be that the freedom that we've waited for, because we all knew that the thing that we must stop is violence.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  But violence is the thing that in this moment feels as if it will never stop. The news spreads like wildfire to where union leader Zwelin Zamavavi is working in the Eastern Cape.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  I remember I cried like a baby that day.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  The instinct was that we must go there and stone white cars. The civil war in our view had started. This was the last straw.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  I am not exaggerating when I say that after Chris Hany's murder, the future of South Africa hangs in the balance.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Calls for revenge reach a crescendo. It's not clear if we'll make it across the finish line, if we will ever vote ourselves into a new peaceful order. How many more lives will this revolution take?

• 38:51Speaker 04

  It took Nelson Mandela to calm the waters that night. Had he not arranged a live broadcast interview, the country would have got into flames. I can tell you now, amen. We were all ready to die.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela stand before the nation and address us.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Nelson Mandela announced that the person who killed Chris Hany has been arrested and he says thanks to a white woman who saw this happening. People say Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa that day.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  It's genius. In a moment of unspeakable racial tension, Mandela thanks the white woman to remind his people not to lose sight of their humanity, not to exact revenge. Then he calls for calm. And it works.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  A date for South Africa's first free and fair democratic elections is set for the following year, the 27th of April, 1994.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  The date for elections, 27 April 1994, was written in Chris Hany's blood. That's what we normally say. Oh, the excitement. Then we put up his posters everywhere. Nelson Mandela for president. ANC logo. Wow.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Oh, it was like a wake me up as Bishop Tutu will say, I'm dreaming.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  It's worth jumping online and having a look at those election posters with Mandela's beaming face and the words "The People's Choice." After decades of his image being banned, it's now plastered all over the country for everyone to see.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  The first rally was in Niangga, a black township area on the Cape Flats. And here Nelson Mandela was preaching to the converted, and he was preaching mainly in his native tongue of Kosa.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  There are times when the campaign is as joyous as Madiba's now familiar smile, but it never erases the anxiety.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  After Chris Hone's assassination, those right-wing Afrikaners are emboldened, even more aggressive, making threats, detonating bombs, showing up everywhere in full military gear, kind of like toy soldiers.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Just six weeks out from the election, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the AWB, sends men to Baputotwana to support a black puppet leader of the government who's trying to stave off an uprising. Black protesters are marching when suddenly the right-wingers start firing.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  But they aren't expecting what comes next. A black police officer takes out his rifle and shoots, picking off three white supremacists one at a time.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Journalists are covering the protest live on TV, and the killings are broadcast in real time across the nation. It's horrendous. And once again, we wonder, will this violence ever end? Will we make it to the election without a civil war? But miraculously, we do.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  On the 27th of April 1994, I'm still at college in the US, but I am not missing my chance to vote.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  A bunch of us South African students jump in a van and drive 10 hours across two state lines to the closest polling station in Chicago. We have no money, so we sleep like sardines packed in the van and take turns driving. And when we get there, the office is open. And these Afrikaner officials, who yesterday were our enemies, are smiling at us and they're ushering us in. And then we're stuffing our ballot papers into the boxes and everyone is beaming and crying. And oh my goodness, we did it. We got there.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  I call home and my family passes the phone around. And I talk to my mom and my sister and all the aunties and uncles and friends, and we are all giddy with joy.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And then Baba gets on the line and we are both in pieces. My wonderful, wonderful Baba, this is his day.

• 43:50Speaker 05

  I always tell people that it's the most important day on the South African calendar ever. It was really the happiest day in my life. I mean, we had spent all our lives in exile, waiting for this day, and then it came.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Baba tells me he was in line to vote at 6:00 AM, that he waited four hours to vote.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  You must know, this was the first time in our lives that we were going to put our name cross against the name. What made us take this, what did it say about your finger?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Fingerprint. The fingerprint, yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Baba makes his mark in the box next to Nelson Mandela's face. He's voting for the African National Congress after all this time.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  You know, we're celebrating as if we'd already won the election. But the fact that we had gone to vote was sufficient for us to say, we've won. This is victory.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  And I think by the time the final announcement came, maybe in day three or day two, everybody knew that we had won, what they say, hands down. Resoundingly. Resoundingly.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  South Africa elects more women to parliament than many other countries, thirty percent.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And it's a progressive parliament. Abortion is legalized, the death penalty is abolished, and the interim constitution enshrines gay rights, including marriage equality, long before Australia.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Our new constitution is a constitution for everyone. It's for white women who've lived in a super macho society, unable to push back against their husbands. It's for young people whose love across color lines was criminalized. We free ourselves as black people. But as Winnie Mandela says time and time again, through democracy, we free white people too. They are finally free to embrace their own humanity. So I'm proud, just so, so proud.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  On the 10th of May, 1994, Nelson Rolilala Mandela is sworn into office as the first president of a democratic South Africa. Words simply cannot describe that day.

• 46:43Speaker 07

  In the shadow of a building that once housed white minority governments, the former prisoner took the highest oath of office.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  I, Nelson Rolilala Mandela, do hereby swear

• 46:58Speaker 06

  to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa. I look forward to this day for many times, many a year.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  I was born in this apartheid era. And to shake it off, to me, is the greatest.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Nelson Mandela uttered those words, "Never, never, and never again." The singing. You know Africans, when they are very happy, they sing. And the eulalation.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, our kids will never, ever experience that, never. They won't, but we did, we did. What a time to be alive.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Now, the story I've been telling you ends here. But South Africa's story continues. And it's complicated.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  The road since that day has been both wonderful and rocky. Apartheid might officially be over, but its legacy will take decades to defeat. We're still working on it. I'm sure you hear lots of things about crime and violence and corruption in South Africa. But what you don't often hear about is our vibrant media, our heroic courts, and our enduring constitution, about how robust our democracy has proven to be. Oh, and if you don't know it, let me tell you. Our music, it's still giving so much joy to the world.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  At the next election in 1999, the old man steps down, and we let him. It's time for Nelson Mandela to finally put up his feet.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Madiba's long walk to freedom is over. But ours, it's only just begun.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Boycott is produced on the lands of the Naluma, Gadigal, Darug, the Jarrawarung and the lands of the Wajuk people of the Ngunnaw nation. Our series producer is Claudia Taranto, the script editor is Kirsty Melville, and our producers are Cathy Peters and Sarah Alley. Our sound engineer is Matthew Sigley and our editor is Michelle Rayner. Original music by Musa Diakate, performed by Musa and Patricia Alvarez. Thank you to Michael Nayland from ABC Archives, Ally Edwards, and Alison Wall from ABC writes, Craig Tilworth and Tim Jenkins.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  I'm Sisong Kim Simong and this has been a Rewind production for Radio National. And listen out soon for a bonus episode. How the apartheid sports boycott almost tore apart an Australian First Nations family. See you then.

• 50:52Speaker 00

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