Almost every culture has a version of the story of a group of stuck-up youngsters who confront the village sage with a trick. It is the stuff of many a funeral night vigil speech. It also pops up in motivational talks and sometimes in serious lectures. The sage is wrinkled, old and female. Sometimes he is presented in the form of a blind, toothless old man with a chieskop tomato bald head. The aim of the boys is simple: to demonstrate that the sage is a fake. One of boys has a bird in his hands and the test is for the sage to tell whether the bird is alive or dead. The trick was foolproof, or so thought the boys. Should the old man say the bird is dead, they would release it into his face. If he says it is alive, they will squeeze it dead immediately and then shove its lifeless body into the hands of the old man. We all know the famous answer of the blind old man, don’t we? “The bird is in your hands, you have both the opportunity and the power to kill it or to release it and let it live.”
Let us suppose our generation of South Africans were the youngsters in the story. Let us imagine that the wise old man was either Nelson Mandela or FW de Klerk. And let us imagine that the bird in our hands was this country and its present and prospects. Twenty years after the evening meeting of the February 9 1990 between De Klerk and Mandela — the last meeting they had as jailor and jailed — we approach these two founders of the country we call our own.
Imagine us, this current generation: arrogant as we are about our “achievements”; presumptuous in our eagerness to show that and how we know; unbridled in our urge to flaunt and display what we have; proud of our ignorance of the salient lessons of our total history. Imagine us; pot bellies pushed forward, resplendent in our colourful and expensive high-neck shirts and imported blouses; with faces Botoxed-up to hide wrinkles and eye-bags; clad with the famous South African long-nose shoes, wielding our cell phones menacingly. From Thembuland, Vendaland, Zululand, Orania, Ka-Myexe, Sandton, Daveyton, Bishopscourt, Ivory Park and Vryburg, we shall descend on to the homesteads of Mandela and De Klerk. Among us will be the grateful, the fearful, the disappointed, the hopeful and the angry. As the discussions continue we will realise that the grateful are also fearful, the fearful can also be angry and the hopeful are also disappointed.
Upon arrival at De Klerk’s home, we will wish to know where on earth De Klerk got the courage to cross the Rubicon which PW Botha had approached several times only for courage to abandon him. What was it, in the December 13 1989 night meeting with the prisoner named Mandela at Tuynhuys — his first meeting ever with the man — that assured him that he could do business with that prisoner? You meet for the first time, a notorious prisoner — one who has been more than a source of irritation for previous National Party governments — and sixty days later, you unleash him into the country and into the world? The more sceptical among us would wish to know what De Klerk and his cabinet really smoked at the December 3-5 1989, cabinet bosberaad held at D’Nyala Nature Reserve in the then North-Western Transvaal where the deal on the unbanning of political parties and the release of Mandela was clinched.
For some, the bird bequeathed us by De Klerk was dead on delivery. And they will point this out to De Klerk in no uncertain terms. To illustrate, they will quote the crime statistics. They will speak of Orania and what it represents — a sense of betrayal for not only the few resident there, but of millions others who are disappointed enough they would move there immediately if they could. Some will ask De Klerk if has noticed the increasing number of young white beggars. They will tell him about affirmative action and how it daily extinguishes the dreams of millions of young white South Africans. They will speak about corruption and point out the failures of present government and ruling party leaders. They will lament the death — allegedly initiated by Mr De Klerk himself — of the most powerful political formation in white South Africa ever — the National Party. They will touch on one of his own favourite topics — the future of Afrikaans as a language. Sorry Mr former state president, but your recent protestations about Afrikaans being under siege are too little too late, they would say. You put the last nail in the coffin of our beloved language on February 2 1990. Mr De Klerk, what did you expect? You gave us a dead duck right from the beginning. This bird will never fly so say sorry.
I can almost hear FW in that rich and full voice of his. He will acknowledge the problems but he will insist that he would do it all over again for he is convinced that, despite our challenges, we are in a far better place — all of us — than we would have been had he chosen to continue on the apartheid path of destruction. Nor would he think any of the problems cited to be intractable.
When we arrive at the Mandela homestead, he is dosing off in his chair. But the raucous noise we will make in all our twelve official languages (tsotsi taal included) will rouse him. He will typically smile warmly, asking the names of each of us and courteously gesture us to please be seated. In the awkward moment after arrival, after the formalities of exchanging greetings, in order to break the ice, one of us will ask whether he still likes WE Henley’s poem which is said to have sustained him all those years on the island. In his familiar but aging voice, he will recite it to us: “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
Some of us will be impressed, not only with his memory but with the powerful words of the Victorian poem. But not all of us would be. It will be pointed out to Mr Mandela that as young South Africans we are not so sure that we are the co-captains of this ship called South Africa. He would be told of our deep-seated fears that the bird he has bequeathed us is not in good health and our worry that it might not survive. We will compete for time and space to speak to him. Some would talk of lack of leadership — in politics and everywhere. It will be pointed out to him that for all the hype about our emerging economy, it has not produced the requisite jobs and now, there is a jobs bloodbath. Others would talk of policies gathering dust but not implemented. We shall speak of the education system, which seems to be failing us all. He will hear of the toll that the HIV/Aids pandemic is taking — the fear it breeds, the distrust, the deaths and the orphans. Mandela will be blamed for not giving enough attention to the HIV/Aids pandemic during his presidency. Others will allege that his policy of reconciliation has spoiled whites rotten and made blacks self-destructively bitter. While some will bare their backs to show Mr Mandela the bullet wounds after being shot at by criminals, others will bare their wounded souls after being raped and after losing their loved ones. Do you, Mr Mandela, still believe that this bird will live?
Mr Mandela, like Mr De Klerk, would acknowledge all these challenges. He too would be steadfast in his belief that the right path has been followed and that solid foundations have been laid. Above all, he would assert his unshakeable belief in the future of this beautiful country. For him, the best is yet to come, he would say. But he would be humble in his estimation of his role in it. Instead he would shift both the glory and the responsibility from him and his generation to us and our generation. He will quiz us on what we are doing, where we are, with what we have, with who we are, to build a better country. Like the old man in the fable he would say to us: “The bird is in your hands, you have both the opportunity and the power to kill it or to release it and let it live.”
Nice post, and …Spring is so close !I was hardly able to contain myself thru winter weeks, and now I am checking out all of the good garden blogs and getting seedlings started…I’ll be back. Have a great morning!
There are many fables that can apply to our young South Africa. The goose that lays the golden egg is one of them and then there is the one about the scorpion who wishes to cross the river on the back of a frog.
What if the bird in the hand is not a bird, but a venemous snake, docile while left alone, but vicious when disturbed with the beginnings of a death squeeze?
Thank you for a moving article and a true call to each one of us to be accountable in making this country work, you have placed the responsibility firmly in the hands of those who can perform and create the future. Each man and woman has that responsibility and none of us has the right to shirk it.
A truely nice read but unfortunatly neither gentleman has stood up to be counted when the world could see the obvious faults. Mandela in particular has put ANC party loyalty above the people. Grudingly I admit that De klerk put the country before all.
So does it really matter if the bird is dead or alive. Both with their inaction after the fact have left a cesspool.
Who in all honesty wants to battle the BS put in our way to save the country when deep down we know that no matter how hard we work there are plans afoot in some room that divise ways to take your achievments away.
Nice one TSM.If we stop the blame game and only focus on the problems that we face, we will have working solutions for OUR country.Jafta “A Friend Indeed”.
inspiring piece yet again. I thank you for keeping my mind in check:-)
Beautifully said, an almost lyric burst of expression of what I believe so many of us that love this country and its people are feeling right now. I am printing it so my teenage children can read it. Thanks!
Vary good; a true Thought Leader. Mandela & De Klerk did lay a pretty solid foundation. Sadly Thabo was a jerry builder, squandering resources on pals and madness like the arms deal, ignoring the fact tha the builders were sickening. JZ initially offered some hope but I fear that he made so many deals to oust Thabo that building is like the Tower of Babel, each doing their own as payback for their support. So we have Julius and friends who can’t lay one brick top tother as master builder, blaming the resulting crooked walls on others of a different skin colour. Lots of the cash to buy building materials has been squandered on the SWC. No new builders are being trained, foreign builders are taking over, skilled SA builders are leaving. Cadres entrusted to buy building material are stealing the money and not being brought to book. The building site is robbed every night.
Is anyone going to turn this around?
Good article. The bird is on its way out, it looks to us.
My view is that the biggest challenge my generation faces, after 100’s of years of misrule, is to instil a culture of accountability and respect for human rights and the rule of law in Southern Africa. Including fulfilling the social and economic rights of South Africans by the state, as required by our Constitution. The rape and pillage of our mineral wealth and our people by the rich, the ruling elites and their corporations much stop.
Can we achieve this goal without holding the National Party elite accountable for 40 odd years of oppression, misrule, racism, tribalism, corruption, and gross violations of human rights? I doubt it.
Can we achieve this goal without holding the ANC elite accountable for the plundering of public funds, the gross enrichment of a few at the expense of the many, gross negligence concerning HIV – AIDS and the respective ARMS DEALS gone wrong? I doubt it.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th of Novemer 1989 De Klerk and his merry gang had there backs against the wall. They were forced to face up to the new global reality and to negotiate. Hence the December bosberaad alluded to less than a month later.
Our economony was in tatters, townships were ungovernable and with the demise of the Cold War the Nationalist Party could no longer rely on being propped up by western, imperialist, capitalist sponsors. The only realistic option left to them was to negotiate and secure pensions and Nobel prizes.
Thanks for a very insightful and moving reflection. It triggers many thoughts and feelings — too numerous to bore anyone else with. Power to your pen.
@Carl Wille Question : After holding the old ruling elite accountable, what then? How does that solve the problems we have now and the future?
The economy may have been in tatters but how come money was found to protect the political expediency objestives such as RDP housing, now gone wrong?
Why was it necessary then and now to put political expediency above the rebuilding of the country when the ANC had effectivly destroyed the country using liberation tactics.
The country remains largely ungovernable because there is no one left to make that objective workable. We are a country based on crisis solutions.
prove that the there has bee pillaging of the mineral wealth. If anything that mineral and industrial wealth is the saviour of our country when all else falls apart.
Why cannot anyone see that by using those tactics the ANC ensured that the Fixed capital investment would be lost for ever.
Have we attracted the investment in the country that we were promised / needed? Short term flight capital yes, but fixed long term, only from those rich pillagers [ as you call them ] have invested in the hope that all will come right.
That is the Mandella and De Klerk legacy.
Great piece. Thanks, TSM.
Wow! Great blog. I never quite understood why both Mandela and De Klerk received the Nobel Piece Prize. I always thought it was political, coupled to a guilt reaction by Europe. Your observations puts this nicely in perspective.
the bird is dead – JZ and Juju killed it.
thought provoking, for the generation without a cause.
Nicely put. Perhaps it was because of the bird but it reminded me of one of my favorite books “The Conference of the Birds” by Farid ud-Din Attar. Like the birds in the story, South Africans need to get up and go and find the answers to our problems, even if they find the answer was with them all along. De Klerk and Mandela opened the door, the rest of us need to leave our comfort zones, whether they be feelings of hatred, superiority or helpless feelings of inferiority and step through the door. No-one can free another’s spirit. I see people with fine minds and bodies around me who sit passively helplessly holding out their hands for mana from heaven and complain when it isn’t forthcoming, as if it is their due. De Klerk, Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma are not to blame for the mess we are in, we are.
Great Piece Prof!
Inspiring!
I liked this thoughtflood very much. It has picked me up from my stupid inner squabbles – those brought on by fear of lack, my ambitions and aspirations, my vanity – and instead has fixed my young eyes on the prospects of a budding flower, wherein all parts soak up the sunrays of purpose and burst lifecolour into the charcoals of past failures, forming new corollas of wisdom; and beautiful petals that are this land we love so much; and sweetening the nectars of the future for us all. Surely.
Thank you so much for this much needed inspiration. One Love
The role of Mr Mandela and De Klerk was to deliver the liberation government, a government only sufficient for not more than 10 years. Many African countries reversed because they thought they have arrived post colonial rulership.
We need to seek a means to ascend to the Freedom configure democracy, only then can we say we have reached a promise land.
Nice one Prof Tinyiko, awesome article indeed
Prof,the Nationalist Party had no business in the first place to introduce apartheid.The same can be said about European settlers who colonised us before that era.If all these events did not take place we would not be having this discussion.
Now FW is seen as this messiah who brought us freedom.Freedom from what?It seems people suffer from selective amnesia.Liberation movements outside the country had put pressure on the racist government.The Intenational community had a campaign to isolate, and successfuly so,the racist Nationalist government.The other pressure came from us who were in the country during those years.
So FW was pressurised to make that announcement on 2 Feb 1990,it was not out of his own volution.For that the Nobel committee felt it wise to insult the name of Madiba and award both the peace prize.We will never forget even if we have forgiven.
The next step is to interrogate some of the concessions we made that culminated in the 1996 Constitution.We need to seek solutions to the horrors of the NATION STATE which in essence has given Blacks (Africans,Indians and Coloureds) the vote yet economy remains in White hands.If we do not correct this malady the consequences are just too hard to contemplate.