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South Africa's transition pangs

by Frances Bulathsinghala in South Africa

It was still light when we were led on deck and we saw the island for the first time. Green and beautiful, it looked at first more like a resort than a prison.



Voices ofthe future - South Africa’s children

These two lines by Nelson Mandela in his book 'Long Walk to Freedom', the testimony of a man and a nation who had endured what would normally be beyond human capacity, summarise the impression of a place which played a significant large part in that endurance, Robben Island. All a visitor could do at first is to echo Mandela's words. Robben island, confined to the cries of the gulls, the solitary sound of the waves crashing against each other and the picturesque scenery creates a solitude that one could link more, like Mandela says, to a resort than to a place of torture and imprisonment.

For journalists and communicators of twenty four countries affiliated to the Global Communicators Network, the visit to Robben Island last month as part of the global meeting under the theme Justice and Reconciliation, in South Africa, was an experience which was indeed an eye opener.

Tulani Mobasso is forty years old. From the age of nineteen years his life has been whetted by the struggle of the ANC for a South Africa that belongs to those it rightfully should belong. Now speaking to visitors to Robben Island is a routine job for him but one wonders the agony that he must continue to endure repeating the harrowing experiences of the days that he spent in the confines of this prison. Listening to his testimony one is conscious of his voice which gives way at certain points to emotion and the agony that hovers at the edge of each word.

"I was put in here at the age of nineteen after I blew up a high intelligence unit of the apartheid regime in 1982 which I managed to destroy without taking a single life," says Mobasso after he accessed the building with the help of a black official there and issued a warning minutes ahead to those working there. His stay in Robben Island had been from 1986 to 1991.

It was difficult to say at one point in the throes of his reminiscences whether it were the journalists present there or himself who was agonised most because however much one is an adroit at covering human agonies, the absorbing of testimonials such as Mobasso's is difficult.

The most difficult to absorb were his recalling of sexual torture and the inhuman methods of 'instilling order' that makes one question the entire question of humanity and the power of such governments who could act the devil within so-called democratic structures.

In a narration that took nearly an hour, Mobasso recalled the agonies his parents and many others were made to undergo. However in a larger picture one is powered by a sense of victory of the human spirit when actually standing in the cell of the man who spent 27 years in prison for a freedom that was an illusion for generations. Entering the Robben Island prison after the half-hour sea journey from Cape Town one passes through the corridor - passing on the right the room which Nelson Mandela had persuaded with much difficulty the prison authorities during the latter part of his stay there to transform into a study for prisoners who were sitting for exams.

Yet the 'real' study of the present Black ANC parliamentarians who had served their sentences in Robben Island had been the bathroom of the prison, the only place in the grim building where lights could be switched on after ten in the night.

"One person used to keep watch. When the prison guards were spotted arriving on their night rounds those studying inside the bathroom were alerted.

The task of the watcher was made easier as the guard had to open the main gate which made a huge noise," recalls Mobasso.

The 'new' South Africa, however, after ten years of the new ANC regime is still finding that the road is a very long one. With the country's main city Cape Town proving to be an extreme paradox with opulence taking a centre place framed by poverty which one does not have to travel far to witness, there are many in the country who voice the fact that 'nothing has changed' and that the wealth gap between the whites and the blacks is still wide.

"There have been significant changes. There is just much more to be done," says a young black policeman who very courteously helps me and my Nepali colleague to find our way around the town.

"We were taken from the bush, or from the underground inside the country, or from prisons to come and take charge. We were suddenly thrown into this immense responsibility of running a highly developed country." These are the words of Nelson Mandela as quoted in the book by South African journalist Allister Sparks, titled 'Beyond the Miracle'.

One visit to the country and one does see the immense task faced by ANC and made more arduous by disasters such as the AIDS epidemic which has resulted in millions of the country's budget, including foreign aid, being transferred for the prevention and control of the disease.

According to estimates, the budget allocation per year for AIDS is 200 million of which around 75 million contribute foreign donations.

"It is difficult in ten years to change mistakes of decades", says Thapelo Mokashane, South African radio journalist and core group member of the Global Communicators Network. Mokashane who had actively covered the hearings of the Truth Commission and witnessed the intriguing appeals for amnesty from these involved in the tortures and murders of the apartheid regime, says that much is yet to be done for a realistic integration.

"There are still incidents of racism. Black townships are avoided by the whites believing that they will be either robbed or harassed," he says.

According to Mac Maharaj, Minister of Transport of the first government, again as quoted by Allister Sparks, "There was simply no money to do what we planned. We had to dump our blueprints and start from scratch," with the explanation that the ANC which had imagined South Africa to be an economic cornucopia, had been in for a shock to find the coffers empty.

However all does not seem to be lost. Despite the heavy differences still existing between the economic structures of the blacks and the whites hope still lingers on.

"We believe that our children can face the future with determination. With the struggle behind us we cannot afford to give up now," says Tshukia the Deputy Principal of the Nolungile Public Primary School which houses 1,400 students, speaking to us after a brilliant performance of dance and recitals by the students staged for the visiting GCN members.

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