On a snowy April day, Nelson Mandela was sipping tea in London, surrounded by his political entourage. This was minutes before he was to climb onto the stage for a concert to be broadcast to 600 million people in 67 countries: the biggest audience for a music concert. Just 54 days before, he had been a prisoner.
Mandela was still a marked man. British security forces feared a sniper would shoot him while he was on stage. Everywhere he went, police locked and unlocked behind him to make sure a gunman could not sneak a shot.
As Mandela climbed the narrow staircase to the stage, with the crowds chanting his name, alongside promoter Tony Hollingsworth, he asked to turn back to use the toilet. When Mandela and Hollingsworth had washed their hands, they found out, to their horror, that the police had, unwittingly, locked them in.
“They’ve taken all the entourage and Trevor [Huddleston] onto stage highly secured, and left me and Mandela, I thought ‘oh shit’. It’s a locked room and my bloody headset wasn’t on. So I couldn’t talk to anyone,” says Hollingsworth.
There was no time to waste. Hollingsworth went to bang on the glass.
“I could see into another room, which was where they were counting all the money. I patted in the door until somebody recognized me. They came and unlocked the door. We walked through the money room to a public area, down a public staircase in the stadium, into the backstage area, onto stage. And the security forces didn’t even know we had gone. They were all watching the audience,” he says.
Minutes later, Mandela strolled on stage as if nothing had happened.
“Thank you that you chose to care,” Mandela told the world.
“When Mandela came on stage, the audience erupted. What then ensued was this almost eight minute game, of this crowd cheering at him as he moved around waving his arms. The problem was that because he was unused to the power of the microphone. In his mind, he had to wait for people to be quiet before he spoke,” says Hollingsworth.
Mandela’s speech lasted 45 minutes, ridiculously long according to Hollingsworth. He paid an American consultant—to trail Mandela after his release—to teach him how to speak on television. The consultant didn’t get anywhere and gave up.
Hollingsworth sits across the table, in a Johannesburg hotel, lost in the memory of that day. The man sports a shock of grey hair. It was 25 years ago, to the day, that as a 30-year-old he produced the first of two concerts, both of which would go down in history.
Hollingsworth came from a musical family. He began his career building ejector-seats for jet airplanes, but quit after three months to study theories of ideology at the Open University. His cousin was the orgainzer of the world famous Glastonbury Festival and during a visit one summer Hollingsworth cut his teeth promoting a traveling Moroccan band.
He whet his appetite by staging concerts for the Greater London Council called ‘Jobs for Change’. His speciality became selling ‘issues’ on stage and when musician Jerry Dammers, the writer of the song Free Nelson Mandela, put forward the idea of an anti-apartheid concert, he was in.
Hollingsworth approached Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and Mike Terry, both anti-apartheid activists. It took some convincing.
“Fifty percent of the newspapers at that time reported Mandela as a black terrorist leader, that’s the label he had been given,” he says.
Hollingsworth went to conservative broadcasters with an idea of a concert for Mandela’s 70th birthday.
This was a time when Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain, was calling the African National Congress (ANC) terrorists. The atmosphere was so charged that many of the performing artists asked for a clause in the contract to ensure that the money raised would not be used to buy guns. At that time, the ANC was embroiled in an armed struggle.
“The broadcasters asked, ‘Is it for the ANC?’ and I would say, ‘No.’ ‘The anti-apartheid movement?’ ‘No. I am doing it for Nelson Mandela’s birthday.’ Half of those people winked back. I had given them the legal solution… the other half went along in innocence.”
The media lapped it up. Especially once Dire Straits, the largest selling act in the world in 1988, signed up. In just four months the word terrorist disappeared from the news, says Hollingsworth, once broadcasters accepted that they were to air an 11-hour show about Mandela.
Then, came the crossfire.
“The ANC were furious that I was putting this event on without calling for sanctions or resistance. There was an intense, difficult time running up to it. Because they weren’t to know,” he says.
It all led up to June 1988 and a packed Wembley Stadium, where Mark Knopfler took the stage with his band Dire Straits. South Africa had banned Knopfler in 1979, after he channeled his profits from South African sales to Amnesty International.
“He was a very shy man… Mark had played a few numbers, and said to the audience, ‘Our records were banned in 1979. I am very pleased to say, this is for the man in question, this is the best birthday party we have ever been to, thanks for having us. This is the guy who launched it all for us,” says Hollingsworth.
Among the musicians on the night, was a lone, unknown, American with a guitar—Tracy Chapman.
“The song that she sang for the event, that worked completely. She sang Talkin’ Bout A Revolution. That’s what the event was like. All of the run up to it, to this trojan horse policy, to a man, that was the whisper,” says Hollingsworth.
Chapman played two sets on the night, the second by sheer luck.
The production manager ran up to Hollingsworth and shouted in his ear: “Stevie Wonder cannot go on. The equipment is gone.”
Hollingsworth didn’t even know what he was talking about. Wonder walked off the stage into the parking lot in tears because his music harddrive was lost. Hollingsworth was left with 23 minutes to fill.
“The only person who could go on stage, with no equipment was Tracy Chapman. I grabbed her manager Elliot Roberts, who discovered artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and shouted in his ear, ‘Tracy must go back on.’ He was delighted.”
Roberts grabbed Chapman with one hand and her guitar in the other and walked her on stage without telling her what was going on. Chapman sold two million albums in the next two weeks.
“Tracy blew my mind. About 90% of people will remember her. When she came on and sang, it was like wow. She really captured the feeling in her songs. She was unforgettable,” recalls Nicholas Wolpe, who was 20 at the time.
Wolpe, the son of anti-apartheid activist Harold Wolpe, was given a ticket by the ANC.
Stevie Wonder did come back to play, without his harddrive, to a roaring crowd. He sang I Just Called To Say I Love You.
“I recall the people sitting next to me were not necessarily there for Nelson, but for the music. The principal was to highlight Nelson’s birthday, rather than imprisonment. But it achieved that. As more and more people came out on the stage to talk about Nelson, there was this gradual shift. I think people were swept up with the euphoria. It became an incredibly emotive day,” says Wolpe
Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Hollingsworth, the man with whom he was locked in a toilet, produced more concerts around the world, including the 850th anniversary of Moscow’s Red Square, in 1997.
You can argue that these were merely two among the millions of lives changed by June 11, 1988.

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution…  It Sounds Like A Whisper

“It’s time to let him go”, ran the front page headline of South Africa’s largest selling Sunday newspaper last month. This, a day after Nelson Mandela—struggle icon and South Africa’s first post-apartheid president—was re-admitted to hospital following a recurring lung infection. The Sunday Times was quoting Mandela’s long-time friend and comrade, Andrew Mokete Mlangeni, who had said: “The family must release him so that God may have his own way. They must release him spiritually and put their faith in the hands of God. Once the family releases him, the people of South Africa will follow.”
This from a man of few words. He is the least recognized of Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia Trial comrades. But, when 87-year-old Mlangeni does speak, he seldom minces his words; just like he didn’t mince his words more than a year ago, in our last interview. When asked to make assessment of the state of the African National Congress (ANC), specifically why South Africa’s governing party was so riddled with infighting, and was increasingly earning a reputation as being corrupt, Mlangeni retorted: “My heart bleeds when I see what is happening today. People are fighting to improve their own selves. The trouble is greed today. Everybody wants to be in the leadership. Everybody wants to be the president, the minister, earn more money, drive beautiful cars, have security around you. We are forgetting the people who have elected us into government.”
He continued: “Look at the corruption—everywhere corruption, corruption, corruption—is this what we were fighting for? Is this what people died for? We were accusing the Nationalist party government of corruption, and this is what we are doing today? My heart bleeds.”
Mlangeni’s candidness is nothing new. In court, 50 years ago, anticipating an adverse ruling by the presiding judge, Mlangeni would not cooperate with the court but instead read a terse statement: “The court can now see that some of the evidence given against me is true and some false. I have chosen not to give evidence, my Lord, because first of all, I do not want to be cross-examined about people I have worked with and places I have visited, in case I might give these people away. Also, my Lord, I have frankly admitted that I have assisted Umkhonto we Sizwe. I want to say that I joined the ANC in 1954. I did it because I want to work for my people. I did this because of the treatment my people have received from the rulers of this country. In the ANC, I found a political home, where I was free to talk against the government.”
“South Africa, my Lord, is a very rich country. The resources could be exploited for the benefit of all the people who live in it. This government and the previous governments have exploited not the earth but the people of various racial groups, whose color is not white. But the government, daily, makes suppressive laws in its white Parliament, [whose] laws are aimed at suppressing the political aspirations of the majority of the people, who have no say. I know that you, my Lord, have to administer the law, but when you do so, I ask you to remember what we, the Africans and non-white people, have had to suffer. That is all I have to say except, to add, that what I did was not for myself but for my people&#8230;”
No sooner had he said those words, Mlangeni was sentenced to life imprisonment alongside seven of his comrades—Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki, Denis Goldberg and Elias Motsoaledi. Two of their fellow trialists, Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein and James Kantor, were acquitted. The state withdrew charges against the eleventh accused, Bob Hepple, after he agreed to testify for the prosecution.
Mlangeni would serve 26 years, many of them in an isolated cell, on Robben Island and later at Pollsmoor Prison. In his mind, he replayed his upbringing as well as the events and circumstances that led to his incarceration—from his birth on May 6, 1926 in Prospect township, in Soweto, Johannesburg as the ninth of 14 children; to starting school at 10; having to drop out two years later to find work, after his father died; working as a golf caddy; and later becoming a factory worker and bus driver.
In 1951, young Mlangeni joined the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and, three years later, the ANC.
Following the ANC’s decision to move beyond passive resistance and embrace an armed struggle against the country’s colonial rulers, Mlangeni enlisted for Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)—the ANC’s armed wing. Between 1961 and 1963 he was among the first six guerillas to undergo military training in China.
Upon the completion of their initial training—by this time he was a member of the High Command, MK’s highest decision-making body—they returned from the land of Mao Tse-tung to begin their ambitious program of insurrection. The MK’s High Command and operatives would meet secretly, every Monday, at Liliesleaf Farm. It was at this small holding, north of Johannesburg, that they plotted their operations.
Little did Mlangeni know—on a chilly Monday evening on June 24, 1963, while returning from their meeting, with assignment in hand—that state security agents were looking for him. This encounter would change his life forever.
The following morning Mlangeni was due to go to Krugersdorp, less than an hour from Johannesburg, to collect weapons to take them to a safe house.
“I arrived home at about half past eleven in the evening. My wife was asleep,” he says.
A short while later, police stormed his house, in Duke, Soweto and he was arrested. In the police car, waiting for him outside, was one of his comrades, Motsoaledi. Upon their arrival at the Pretoria Central Prison they found more of their comrades, who had already been detained.
“I was hurt, the police said the ANC is finished,” says Mlangeni.
On November 26, 1963, South Africa’s most famous political trial would begin, ending on June 12, the following year. International pressure, Mlangeni reckons, is what saved them from the death penalty.
“Strangely, we didn’t think we would die in prison. I had read a bit about the struggles of other people… [I] had seen how the Chinese struggled for their freedom; how the China Communist Party fought against emperors, against foreign occupiers of China, and how they ultimately drove all of them out,” he says.
Indeed, the Rivonia trialists would not die in prison. Mlangeni used this time to study for his Bachelor of Arts and honors degrees.
One day in 1986, while at Pollsmoor Prison, the anti-apartheid prisoners got an offer from their captors, through Mandela, affectionately known as Madiba—his clan name.
Mlangeni recalls: “Madiba was taken to hospital, where he was approached by Kobie Coetzee, who was minister of prisons at the time. Coetzee said they wanted to release the rest of us first, but keep Mandela. But would keep Mandela in a place where it would be easy for his family to come in at any time. Winnie and the kids would come see him anytime. Madiba thought it was a good idea. The comrades could go join the [anti-apartheid] forces outside.”
Upon Mandela’s return from hospital, “the four of us [Mlangeni, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Kathrada] were taken to an office where Madiba told us of this offer from government. We didn’t accept. We said: ‘What will people say? They will think we are sell outs.’”
Mlangeni says Mandela didn’t mind staying behind and thought his comrades should agree to be released, so they could strengthen the forces of freedom. What made the decision difficult was the regime’s stated logic, that if they released Mandela the country would go up in flames. The state also insisted that the activists denounce violence.
“So we rejected the offer.”
A couple of months went by.
“One day on October 1989, on the 10th, a warder came and said: ‘Guys, I want you to put on your best clothes.’ We said: ‘Why?’ He said: ‘I don’t know, you are probably going to see a minister.’”
The four were taken to Victor Verster Prison, where Mandela was now staying.
“Madiba said things had changed. He said the government was no longer singing the song of renouncing violence. They are saying they can release you and months later me. We accepted the offer. We said: ‘Okay, go and tell them that we’re prepared to take up their offer.’”
When their meeting was over, Mandela’s comrades were told they could not go back to Pollsmoor, as there was a large media contingent camping outside Victor Verster Prison.
“They were telling a lie,” chuckles Mlangeni as he recalls the sequence of events. “At eight o’clock, it was news time on TV and they had organized a TV for us. First item, the government has decided to release so and so from prison… our names… and that Madiba would be released soon. After the news they said: ‘Well chaps, the media is gone now. We can take you back to your cells.’”
“We were no longer addressed by our first names, but as Mr Mlangeni, Mr Mandela… We said we were hungry. They asked us what we wanted to eat. We said steak and chips. We hadn’t had that in a while.”
On October 15, 1989 Mlangeni, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Kathrada walked out of jail. And on February 11, 1990, Mandela followed.
Four years later, Mandela would become post-apartheid South Africa’s first democratically-elected president. Mlangeni, together with Sisulu and Mbeki, would be members of Parliament. Mhlaba would be the premier of the Eastern Cape.
Nineteen years on, Mlangeni has retired from politics, yet he remains a veteran member of the ANC. He divides his time between playing golf, very competently—he learnt as a caddy—his foundation and advising the ANC. He was a member of the electoral commission, during the last elective conference. Now, he chairs the party’s recently established Integrity Committee; it investigates allegations of corruption against party members.
The ANC has a lot of battles, Mlangeni concedes, but is adamant about its resilience.
“I know the ANC can always regroup, when things go wrong. We can always come back together.”
As for the government the ANC leads, Mlangeni says they are doing their best.
“We can’t meet the demands of our people in the few years. [Nineteen years] is too little to meet the demands of our people. It took [colonialists] more than 300 years to do what they’ve done to suppress us, to exploit us.”
Does he have any regrets?
“None whatsoever.”
What he missed a great deal though was seeing his children grow up. His wife Johanna, who died in 2001, singlehandedly brought up their four children. Mlangeni’s children were teenagers when he was arrested in 1963; the youngest was 14.
“Other things were also important… but not seeing my kids…”
Twenty six years of imprisonment didn’t change Mlangeni’s unyielding support of the fight for freedom, but when he speaks of his children, his voice trembles.

Corruption.  Is This What We Fought For?

On a winter’s afternoon in July two men—born in the same country and infused with the same revolutionary fervor—will shake hands at the spot that changed their lives, to bury a 50-year-old grudge.
The men were among those arrested in the raid on Rivonia on July 11, 1963. Armed police with dogs used a delivery van, as a Trojan horse, to sneak into Liliesleaf Farm, in Rivonia; they arrested the entire leadership of the underground movement. The raid dealt a body blow to the South African liberation movement, not long after it had launched an armed struggle. In the resultant Rivonia Trial, Nelson Mandela, who had been in prison since his arrest in August 1962, was sentenced to life, along with his comrades.
The arrest at Liliesleaf was to send the lives of comrades Bob Hepple and Denis Goldberg spinning in opposite directions.
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Eighty-year-old Denis Goldberg—the bomb maker—who had returned from a trip to procure hand grenades, was arrested as he sat reading in the lounge. All were chained in a circle outside the thatched cottage, while the police encouraged their dogs to snap at them. He spent 22 years in prison after the judge handed him four life sentences.
“They gave me a 75% discount and I served only one,” laughs Goldberg, who often salves pain with humor.
It was a hard time in prison for Goldberg, who nursed the leader of his defense counsel, Bram Fischer, through his final days as he died of cancer. After the Rivonia Trial, Fischer had been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the state and sentenced to nine years.
In the other direction: Hepple suffered under interrogation; agreed to turn state witness; had charges withdrawn; skipped South Africa, via Botswana and Tanzania, for London; enrolled at Cambridge University, where he became a professor and a knight of the British realm.
Back in 1963, Hepple, the son of a former Johannesburg member of Parliament who was a meat wholesaler, Alex Hepple, was an underground activist, who had the misfortune of being at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. Police had also caught the entire leadership of the underground as they held a meeting in a thatched cottage at the back of Liliesleaf: Govan Mbeki; Ahmed Kathrada; Andrew Mlangeni and Walter Sisulu. Behind bars, all were interrogated. The severity of the situation dawned on Hepple.
“The prosecutor told me all of us could expect to be sentenced to death,” says Hepple.
“This was not the reason for my decision. I never intended to give evidence for the state, but saw the prosecution’s offer to release me as an opportunity to escape. I discussed this possibility beforehand with Mandela, who said I had to take a personal decision, but if I could get the prosecution to release me: ‘That would be excellent.’ Had they not released me, I would have refused to testify against the other defendants, when called to the witness box.”
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In the cells, the other defendants were not so comfortable, especially Goldberg.
“At the time it was very distressing, because he might give information about us. His father told him that the minister of police, B.J. Vorster, had said they have enough evidence to hang Bob. And that if he wanted to get out he had to give evidence. I’m very relieved that he left the country and did not give evidence. At the time, it was hard to swallow. Now that I look back over the years, it’s a long time ago and I know, from my own experience, that people can be broken under pressure. And I had to draw the distinction between those who were broken and gave evidence and those who simply stopped and did not give evidence. Bob didn’t give evidence in court anyway.”
Nearly half a century on, Hepple, accused number 11, recalls the moment he walked free from the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.
“As I left the dock, Mlangeni said: ‘I am glad you are getting out of this,’” he says.
A sour taste lingered. Years later, Goldberg says that Hepple sent him a birthday card to the Pretoria prison. Goldberg remembers this with a smile.
“I told my wife that I never want to hear from him ever again,” he says.
Goldberg, who is now retired in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, was released in 1985 and escorted onto a plane to Israel, where his daughter was living. He spent the rest of his struggle days organizing for the ANC in London.
In the early days of freedom, Goldberg went to a party in London where Hepple was also a guest. The host said he didn’t want any trouble and Goldberg assured him there would be none.
“I saw Bob at the party, I held out my hand, but he walked straight past me,” says Goldberg.
Hepple remembers it differently.
“I admire and respect Denis and the other trialists and am always happy to meet them. Denis may have forgotten that we shook hands at a party in London, sometime after his release.”
Hepple thrived in the United Kingdom and enjoyed a distinguished legal career culminating in becoming a Professor of Law at Cambridge University between 1995 and 2001. He was knighted by Prince Charles, who was deputizing for the Queen, in 2004. The irony of a former wild-eyed terrorist being knighted by one of the heads of the British establishment, surely could not have escaped him as he knelt with the sword on his shoulder.
“I honestly can’t remember what was going through my mind. I may have been remembering Mandela’s parting words to me that I will not be judged by the past, but rather how I conduct myself in the future,” says Hepple.
Goldberg could have heeded the same words. He travels the world speaking and raising money for health and education and is at peace with the past.
“It is fifty years ago, I don’t have any anger about it anymore and too many people did too many worse things of betraying us, killing our own people and yet they were accepted back into society. So I have no bitterness against Bob at all. I believe he says we did shake hands, but I don’t remember,” he says.
When the two men shake hands on July 8, at Liliesleaf, near the spot where they were arrested, at a ceremony to commemorate 50 years since the raid; it will be a fitting place to close a circle born of struggle and strife.

The Healing Of Handshakes

Steadily, slowly, step by careful step, the three greying legal heads made their way to the reunion at Rivonia. Their progress was as deliberate and methodical as the defense they led with razor sharp precision in their finest hour, in court half a century ago.
Joel Joffe, George Bizos and Denis Kuny are the survivors of the legal team that defended accused number one, Nelson Mandela, and his comrades in facing the death penalty over 221 charges of sabotage. They are all in their 80s, two of them are still working; Bizos and Kuny, who both live in Johannesburg, tackle human rights cases. Multi-millionaire Joffe is retired in the English countryside of Wiltshire after a lifetime of legal work in London and the setting up of Hambro Life Insurance.
Joffe, who wanted to get out of apartheid South Africa, was about to emigrate to Australia when he was asked to be the instructing attorney for the defense in the Rivonia Trial at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. The trial cost £29,000 pounds, in 1964, but the defense team chose not to take the money they had earned.
“He slept on a mattress on the floor with his wife; his furniture had gone to Australia. He was persuaded to stay. They lived on as little as possible so the defense fund could go as far as possible… What Joel showed is that courage takes many different forms, here was a lawyer who wanted out of apartheid and yet stayed to uphold the principles of justice for people who had no hope of surviving, at a time when no other lawyer would take it on. That is courage,” says accused number three Denis Goldberg.
Kuny defended fellow lawyer Jimmy Kantor, accused number 12 in the trial, who had nothing to do with the case but was scarred by it. Ludicrous evidence against Kantor, thrown out by the judge, included that he was seen feeding the chickens at Liliesleaf; therefore he must have known about the sabotage plotted there. Kantor was acquitted but his legal practice was destroyed and he went to an early grave.
The reunion was to launch the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the police raid in Rivonia, which sparked the world-famous trial. It was a winter’s afternoon on July 11, 1963 that a delivery van pulled up outside a thatched cottage at the back of Liliesleaf—a safe house used by underground activists. The van was a Trojan horse. Inside were 14 policemen and a dog. Inside the cottage was almost the entire leadership of the South African underground movement holding a meeting, including Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and Govan Mbeki. The police jumped out of the van, surrounded the building and rushed the door. Mbeki and Kathrada tried to escape through the window but were hounded down. The police handcuffed the activists in a circle outside the cottage and let the dog snap at them. They couldn’t believe they had caught so many activists in one place.
“We have hit the jackpot!” said an excited officer-in-charge over the police radio.
Joffe, Bizos and Kuny stood at around the same spot where that triumphant statement was made, as they posed for photographs on a warm February evening. They recalled memories of the trial of the century that proved the turning point for South Africa. The trial saw the words of Mandela and his fellow accused fly around the world changing millions of minds. Overnight, the saboteur criminals were seen more as freedom fighters; the Benjamin Franklins of Africa—in the words of Bizos.
Three of these words that winged their way drew smiles on the night. Bizos, the strategist in the legal team, says he made a slight change to the famous speech on behalf of all the accused that went down in history.
“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,” Mandela concluded from the dock to a dramatic silence in court, according to eyewitnesses, in which you could hear a pin drop.
“I felt the speech was too strong as it was. It was an invitation to the judge to hang everyone and make them martyrs, so I recommended we put in the words ‘If needs be,’” says Bizos.
Joffe—a former chairman of Oxfam, was made Lord Joffe by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair—remembered Mandela’s reaction to the change.
“I read my speech and there seems to be an error, he said. It is my sentence and I want it back!” chuckled Joffe.
On a more serious note, Joffe recalled the handwritten note by Mandela, now in a museum, in which he wrote out his last words, if he were to hang.
“This handwritten note said: ‘I apologize for nothing, I was fighting for justice and there’s no sacrifice I am not prepared to make in the cause of justice,’ that was Mandela, faced with hanging, no fear,” says Joffe.
The lawyers have 150 years legal experience between them. They say they would do it all again and support the new South Africa, with reservations.
“In South Africa today, sadly the majority of the population is living in poverty and unemployment and one believes there is much more that government could do about that and then these problems with corruption, incompetence and efficiency would disappear,” says Joffe.
“I know that there are people, including me, who are disappointed with some of the failures of the government, some of which were very serious and unnecessary, but I don’t go along with the idea that nothing has changed. Things have changed in relation to education, health and the professions,” says Bizos.
All three are as unassuming as they are sage. You would not blink if you saw them in your corner shop buying a loaf of bread.
When I double checked with Joffe, whether his title was Lord or Baron, he smiled.
“Ag, just call me Joel.”

Three Men You Can  Bet Your Life On

When tourists walk through Liliesleaf; big, small, young, old, they all want to see the tiny brick room at the back. This is the room where thinker, revolutionary and idealist, Nelson Mandela, laid his head on a hard bed in the zenith of his political activism. His body sheltering, amid drudgery; his mind in the stars.
“He stayed for so long in such a tiny room? He must have been a hero!” a few of them say.
Liliesleaf is now an historical site, managed by a trust, dedicated to the memory of the activists who hid out, talked, worked and debated as they dreamed of a new South Africa. These were the dark days of apartheid, where political dissent met with brutal opposition; where secret police tailed and tormented anyone who dared to be different.
<div id="attachment_859" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-859" class="size-large wp-image-859" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_6076-1024x609.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="282" />Nelson Mandela&#8217;s living quarters</div>
In the early 1960s, Liliesleaf was a poke in the eye for the apartheid authorities. The farm, bought by the South African Communist Party, was set up in the so called ‘white’ suburb of Rivonia in Johannesburg, as a front for the underground movement. The idea was that white activists, Arthur and Hazel Goldreich, would play the role of flamboyant, horse-riding, landed gentry. Behind the front, disguised as workers in blue overalls, were the leaders of the underground including: Govan Mbeki; Ray Mhlaba; Walter Sisulu and Andew Mlangeni.
Among them was qualified lawyer and son of a chief, Mandela, who pretended to be a domestic servant called David Motsamayi—a name he had borrowed from one of his legal clients. Translated, from Setswana, it means a person who comes and goes. Mandela’s wry wit rarely failed him.
It was a humble existence for a leader on the run from the police. Mandela had to serve tea to his fellow workers and look after the Goldreich children to keep up the pretence and protect his identity.
Paul Goldreich, who was six years old, when Mandela worked at Liliesleaf, said: “I remember walks with him; going down to the river to shoot snakes with him&#8230; We did a lot of shooting. You think about it, what is this guy who is not supposed to be Madiba doing walking around with these kids shooting things—it is a bizarre idea!”
The farm sold vegetables as part of the pretence. Their biggest customer was the nearby Rivonia Police Station.
Every Monday, in the tiny thatched cottage behind the main house, the finest minds of the liberation movement debated policy and drew up plans for guerrilla warfare. In this room was born Operation Mayibuye: a grandiose, but unworkable, plan to overthrow South Africa by parachuting in small groups of guerrilla fighters. The leadership also planned the armed struggle here, which began with a string of explosions across the country on December 16, 1961. The attacks were planned to disrupt what was then known as Dingaan’s Day—a celebration of the Afrikaner victory over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River.
<div id="attachment_860" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-860" class="size-large wp-image-860" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Room-1-The-Thatched-Cottage-1024x675.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="312" />The Thatched Cottage</div>
Mandela, who was no soldier, ran from Liliesleaf, Umkhonto We Sizwe—the spear of the nation—the military wing of the ANC. His days on the run ended when police caught him at a roadblock in Howick, in KwaZulu-Natal, at the end of 1962; after which he was sentenced to five years in prison for inciting strikes and leaving the country illegally.
His comrades continued with the Monday meetings, which, along with lax security and a twist of fate, was to prove the downfall of the underground movement of the 1960s.
For months many of the activists at Liliesleaf were concerned about the casual comings-and-goings by family and friends. The informers had taken note. Because of these security concerns, the underground movement had secured a new farm called Trevallyn, in nearby Krugersdorp. They agreed on a final meeting at Liliesleaf and that proved fatal.
The swoop came on a cold winter’s afternoon on July 11, 1963—a week before Mandela spent his 45th birthday doing hard labor on Robben Island—as the meeting was in full swing. Activist Ahmed Kathrada looked out of the window and saw a white delivery van pull up outside. This was not unusual, but Kathrada’s eyes widened in horror as uniformed policemen with dogs jumped out with batons drawn.
“It was a feeling of shock in one word,” he says.
“Sisulu and I, instinctively, without thinking much—we didn’t have time to think—jumped out of the window and we couldn’t go a few meters and the police were there armed with dogs, there was no point in our running forward and we were arrested.”
The high command of the underground movement was shackled in a circle outside the thatched cottage where the police taunted them by encouraging their dogs to snap at them. They were then loaded into the back of a police van on their way to the prison in the Johannesburg Fort.
“It is high treason chaps!” quipped Mbeki as the van doors closed.
In 1964, the activists were sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in one of the trials of the century. The judge decided the accused were merely planning to overthrow the country, not engaged in it.
It saw Mandela and his co-accused painted by the world’s press as the freedom fighting Benjamin Franklins of Africa. Mandela made a six hour speech in which he uttered the immortal line that he was prepared to die for his ideals of freedom.
Denis Goldberg, now nearly 80, who was arrested at Liliesleaf on the fateful day, happened to be there by accident. He was supposed to be out procuring equipment to make hand grenades.
“If I had gone maybe I wouldn’t have been arrested. I know with my luck I would have come back with all of the equipment and the judge would have said you weren’t just planning you were doing and so off with your head,” he chuckles nearly half a century on.
“It is true that history turned at Liliesleaf. Before the raid Nelson phoned Arthur to hide away a huge pile of his papers. Arthur hid them in the coal bunker and that is the first place the police looked. If it hadn’t been for that evidence, Nelson may not have made that speech in court and been imprisoned for life&#8230; history could have been very different.”

The Leafy Shadows Where Mandela Hid

June 12, 1964 was a cold and miserable day for Denis Goldberg and his comrades. They shuffled out of the cells and up the wooden steps to the courtroom at the Palace of Justice, in Pretoria, expecting to be told they were going to die.
Goldberg had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other activists facing charges of sabotage. Mandela and his comrades spent months in the cells contemplating how large the death penalty loomed.
<div id="attachment_855" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855" class="size-large wp-image-855" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par3053826-1024x685.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="317" />Former South African president and Nobel peace prize laureate Nelson Mandela (L) greets former political prisoner Dennis Goldberg (R) during a Lunch for Apartherid former political prisoners at Genadendal, the official residence of the president, in Cape Town, South Africa on February 12, 2010. AFP PHOTO/GCIS/HO/Elmond Jiyane &#8211;RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE&#8212;</div>
“One day he says to me ‘Denis, I want you to know that when you teach poor people about Marxism, don’t talk about slavery and feudalism and mercantile capitalism, that’s European stuff our people don’t know or understand it, it’s meaningless. You have to talk about Southern African society, how we get to be where we are, the working class and this and that.’ And I said to him, ‘I understand that but why are you telling me?’ He said ‘Oh, I just want you to know what I think’, we didn’t take it further but I was quite sure he was confident, no, certain, that he was going to be hanged,” says Goldberg at Liliesleaf, in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, where he was arrested nearly half a century ago ahead of the trial of the century.
Tension was high in the packed courtroom on that fateful June day, where the judge surprised many by handing down life imprisonment, instead of the death penalty.
“And it dawned on us that we weren’t going to die, not then anyway, and we laughed, my memory is we laughed. Two great moments in that trial, the other one is Nelson daring the judge to hang him, hang Walter, hang Dennis, hang them all and then, that not happening. What a moment,” says Goldberg.
“About a year ago, I asked him why they didn’t hang us, he said: ‘I dared them to and they didn’t dare.’” He has always had this simple psychology; you stand up to people and dare them to the limit. I think it’s more complex, than he’s saying, but that challenge was a very important challenge. Here, were thoughtful leaders.”
Imprisonment, on that cold June day, was the end of a short but memorable association with Mandela. Goldberg was incarcerated in a whites-only prison in Pretoria, while Mandela was sent back to Robben Island and the two didn’t meet again for nearly 30 years.
The two met through activism. Goldberg grew up in a family of activists in Cape Town and was drawn to the underground movement. Because he was a road engineer, everyone assumed he could make bombs and it became his job. Mandela had worked his way up to be a lawyer and head of the ANC Youth League. The two men, who were like chalk and cheese, stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the dock in Pretoria.
“They brought Nelson to the court in leg-irons and handcuffs and this humiliating prison house-boy’s uniform. When I bought my first suit I paid 12 guineas for it. Nelson wore tailored suites that cost 75 guineas—I’m trying to say, that this is a very elegant dresser. And he stood there in his prison uniform. Legally, he should not be handcuffed and in leg-irons before the judge because it’s prejudicial, but he was looking so elegant and very hungry. He’d been in prison on Robben Island and this very strongly built man of 45 had sunken cheeks, eyes staring a bit, but holding himself… he was not going to be brow-beaten. Impressive, very impressive. I had a slab of chocolate with me, I showed it to him… I was standing right next to him and indicating if he wanted some. I broke off a square and gave it to him, he took it in his handcuffed hands, right over his face, and there was a little sharp corner near his sunken cheeks and he sucked it, as only a prisoner who has no sweet things can enjoy. As soon as it was gone, then he asked for a bit more,” says Goldberg.
Goldberg served 22 years in prison and was escorted by police out of his own country to spend even more years in exile in London. He returned to South Africa, around 10 years ago , to advise the new government and now lives in tranquil retirement in Hout Bay, near Cape Town. Goldberg believes this retirement would not have been so peaceful if it had not been for the great man himself.
“There’s enough bitterness, there’s enough anger and resentment, had there been a real civil war in the streets we wouldn’t be where we are today, we wouldn’t be sitting at Liliesleaf. We’d be sitting in the smoking ruins of destroyed country, so Nelson Mandela with this whole background, he, Nelson Mandela taking office with this whole background of four years of negotiation and putting out the fires of the violence of the apartheid,” he says.

Slaves To Survival

Facing Death With The Man Who Dared The Judge To Hang

A bunch of archivists set out to capture the life of one of the world’s most famous people when they launched the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive in March 2012.
The archive took 18 months from conceptualization to launch. It is a joint venture between the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) and Google’s cultural institute, which supplied a $1.25 million grant in 2011. The archive includes 12,000 documents, photographs and sound and video clips of Mandela. These were from Mandela himself, who would constantly go to Verne Harris saying: “I think I’ve got something for you”; as well as through donations from his former lawyers and comrades. Harris refers to these as “the cherries”, offering us a taste of what’s in store. He hopes to get more content from the National Archives, the ANC archives, Fort Hare and Mayibuye archives.
<div id="attachment_849" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-849" class="size-large wp-image-849" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Obama_002_reduced-747x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="650" />US President Barack Obama greets Madiba</div>
&nbsp;
A recent acquisition is a diary by Mandela’s former warder at Victor Verster Prison in South Africa’s Western Cape, where he was kept in a private house for three years before his release. Days were spent alone and the diary notes every visitor, meal and notes left to him by Mandela.
Verne Harris is the head of memory programing at the NMCM. His biggest fear is that there are pieces of history rotting away in boxes, sitting in dark dingy rooms. His toughest job is telling the fish from fowl.
Lifting up boots, Harris says: “Now these boots are supposedly his [Mandela’s] boots and they were brought in by a family who claimed that their father, who’s dead now, trained Madiba to be a guerrilla and these are the boots Madiba wore during the training. We showed these boots to Madiba and he said, ‘wrong size’.”
There are a great many chancers, one of whom claimed to have Mandela’s phone from when he was on Robben Island. This, despite the fact that Mandela had no phone
on Robben Island.
There is a white, long-term prisoner in Johannesburg who sends a gift every year. He once made a papier mâché bust that he painted gold and wrote Mandela’s name on it, despite the fact that it looked nothing like the icon.
One of Mandela’s most treasured gifts is a photograph with US president, then senator, Barack Obama that sits behind the desk in his old office. Mandela was visiting the country and the moment was captured using a cellphone after Obama rushed over to meet Mandela. It is a beautiful image of Obama’s silhouette as he stood over Mandela, shaking his hand.
<div id="attachment_848" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-848" class="size-large wp-image-848" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Madiba-1024x640.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="296" />Mandela&#8217;s first legal passport, issues on February 19, 1990</div>
Also in the office is a large picture of Walter Sisulu. Harris explains how Mandela once looked over to him and said: “I want Walter in the office.” They ran around and found a Peter Magubane photo and had it framed. Mandela didn’t know and so one day he walked into the office, saw it and said: “Huh, I see Walter is here today.”
The digital archive houses a warrant of committal from when Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison, noting his release date as November 1967. He was then whisked off to the Rivonia Trial and a red pen crossed out “1967” and wrote “life” in its place.
There is a room at the NMCM filled with small treasures, like his first legal passport, issued on February 19, 1990—a week after his release. He filled it up in four months. There are desk calendars with detailed notes about his blood pressure, staff issues and every movie he saw—including six reels of a film called Reds. This is all written in a handwriting that seems neat from a distance but is hard to read close up. The same handwriting wrote long notes on miniature slips of paper, which were smuggled out of Robben Island.
The earliest photograph of Mandela is a class shot at Healdtown. Harris recalls how they enlarged it and showed it to Mandela, who said: “This young man improved with age.”
In a packed room in the NMCM there are piles of souvenirs and gifts from all over the world—from a soccer shirt signed by Maradona to a Nobel Peace Prize to bottles of wine and homemade cards from children.
Setting up the NMCM was no easy task and necessity proved the mother of invention. When Mandela’s term in office ended in 1999, it did not mean retirement for him. He is said to have kept calling his old staff to give them instructions. Eventually, fellow activist Professor Jakes Gerwel reminded him gently that there was a new sheriff in town and that the staff no longer worked for him.
No one had thought ahead to what Mandela would need once he stopped running the country. A foundation was set up as a trust to allow him to continue with his work.
By 2002, the foundation outgrew Mandela’s old 13th Avenue house in Houghton, in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. Two years later, the veteran called a memorable ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ press conference announcing that he would be “retiring from retirement”, something that took five years to actually happen. It raised more questions about life after Mandela, leading to the idea of a centre of memory in 2004. The plan is to turn the NMCM into a public facility and create a permanent exhibition that includes a reading room for researchers.
“The legacy belongs to everyone,” says Harris.
The preservation of the legacy is overseen by the eight members on the board of trustees, chosen by the man himself. Mandela had initially appointed 27 members to sit on the board, but unfortunately, hardly ever attended any meetings. So when the transition and restructuring process came about, it was time to clean house and choose members based on their level of commitment. The board includes some old friends, struggle veterans and former colleagues such as Ahmed Kathrada, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and Professor Gerwel.
The Centre of Memory aims to make an integrated information resource available to ensure that Mandela’s legacy is a living one and accessible to everyone, and to use dialogue as a way of finding solutions to social problems.
Harris says the Dialogue for Justice “uses Madiba’s legacy’s capability to create a space for people to talk to each other that don’t want to and for that space to be safe enough for them to say the unsayable”.
This is in line with Mandela’s work during the critical negotiations between the National Party (NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) for a transitional government.
Mandela’s living legacy is the internationally celebrated Nelson Mandela Day, his birthday, on July 18. It’s a day the center feels people should feel free to interpret any way they like, whether it is helping someone cross the street, painting a school or donating food.
The legacy lives on and the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory invites you to discover the man behind the legend.

From The Wrong Boots  To Barack Obama

I consider it an opportunity of a lifetime, having met and taken pictures of our very first democratic South African president, Nelson Mandela. He has always left me with a sense of wonder; at the same time, he inspired me to believe that it is up to us to choose what we do with our circumstances.
The first time I came into close contact with Tata was in 1990—the day after he was released from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town. My colleagues and I rented a house in Vilakazi Street, Soweto, to keep watch as Mandela was expected to tour his former neighborhood for the first time in more than 27 years.
It was amazing; he was so much at ease and he spoke to people as though he had last seen them yesterday. He visited some families in their homes and asked about their health; how were the children? Were they doing well at school? He would stop and make time to talk to small children. I was in awe of this man, thinking that someone with his kind of history, would display arrogance and pride.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-842" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Juda-Nelson-Mandela-1-1024x760.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="352" />
The highlight of the day for us was that he even let the journalists take pictures with him! Did he really notice us? Journalists are so used to being pushed around and today here was a man, who was the talk of the whole world, letting us into his world—what a man! I will forever cherish that picture. I enlarged it, framed it and hung it in our living room.
Mandela is a brave man. He had few reasons to want to pay a courtesy call on the family of Hendrik Verwoerd—the architect of apartheid whose government vilified and locked Mandela away—but he did. Mandela went to in Orania, the Afrikaner-only community in South Africa, to sip tea with Betsie Verwoerd, the late prime minister’s widow.
Ahmed Kathrada—one of the men who faced the death penalty with Mandela—said everyone talks of reconciliation, Mandela gave it content. This is a man who went to the conservative Free State to address farmers. He even went to the steel-making blue-collar community of Vanderbijlpark, near Johannesburg, to address a group of right-wingers; each time, leaving me with a sense of wonder.
In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections. Mandela was to cast his vote in Ohlange High School, Durban. I was all set to capture this historic moment.
I had 10 packets of film and I started loading my two cameras. Having done that, some silly thought crossed my mind; what if the films have a factory fault? I took them out and loaded new ones. I went to take a shower, coming out of the shower I wondered what if someone tampered with my camera while I was in the shower. Eish! The door was not locked, then surely someone must have tampered with my cameras. I had better be safe than sorry; I discarded the films and loaded my cameras again. Now I was panicking, I was nervous, I tried to sleep, but my mind was racing thinking about the worst that could happen the next day.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-844" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RZ8F1314cc.jpg" alt="" width="951" height="768" />
I do not know when I went to sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night thinking what if the room service guy had come in while I was sleeping and exposed my films. I took them out and replaced them, again. Suddenly I was left with only four packets of film. Now my worry was that the four packets would not last; where would I buy film at this time? Maybe I should try in the morning? No, that would be too risky, I thought. I would definitely miss the story.
Needless to say the long awaited moment arrived. When I clicked my camera non-stop as Mandela cast his vote, it was the most beautiful feeling I have ever had in my life of taking pictures. It was a glorious moment and I was filled with peace and hope. This was no picture of violence, this was no picture of gruesome murder, this was no picture of strife, this was a picture of triumph and jubilation.
The ensuing presidential life never changed him. Protocol was never an issue, his bodyguards needed to be on the lookout at all times, because he would stop anywhere to chat to people—a true people’s president.
In 1996, Mandela received his Honorary Doctorate from Oxford University. The crowds were waiting eagerly for his arrival and as he came out of the car, he waved to the crowds in Madiba style. I was taking pictures when I noticed that he was coming towards me. I followed him with my eyes preparing to take a shot at any moment, he stopped right in front of me, extended his hand and greeted me and said: “How are you? Are you fine? Good to see you again.” My knees went weak. I do not know what I said, I mumbled something, I was just nodding my head, I was stiff, I tried to smile at the same time, I was close to tears.
I did not want to share this with anyone, after some thought I was convinced that, no, the old man must be mistaking me for someone else. I could not believe he had singled me out of the whole crowd. Phew! This man had the memory of an elephant.
<div id="attachment_841" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-841" class="size-large wp-image-841" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/mandela-mbeki-de-klerk-33-1024x757.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="350" />Former President Nelson Mandela, (C) waves next South African President Thabo Mbeki (L),Former South Africa President F.W de Klerk ,(R) behind Johana Rupert Chairman of Sunshine golf circurt of South Africa and Dr Hasso Plattner (R-T) founder of Hasso Plattner Foundation at the opening ceremony of The Presidents Cup Tournament held at Fancourt in George South Africa November 20,2003.REUTERS/ Juda Ngwenya.</div>
In 1997, Mandela was on a state visit to Libya and as he was escorted to the hall where they were going to have dinner he saw me and a colleague who worked for SABC, he greeted us and asked if we were being are taken care of in Tripoli, furthermore, were our families fine at home. He even suggested that we sit with him at the table, but as soon as he stopped and greeted some dignitaries, we disappeared in the crowd.
I met him again in Lusaka when I was covering a SADC meeting. Mandela personally introduced me to the president of Burundi. I also noticed that before I took any pictures he would always greet and chat—I think it is his way of making people feel at ease and comfortable with him. He has a way with people, while you feel honored to know him; he honors you and has a way of making you feel important.
Mandela is a man of integrity; as I look back from the time he was released, his pre-election campaign, his time of office, his retirement, through it all it, he did not change.
One other thing I love about Mandela is that he makes for good pictures, easy and comfortable pictures. Reuters presented him with the picture I took of him casting his vote in 1994. He was pleased and appreciated the gesture. I have nothing else but the deepest respect and honor for him.
Today I am one of the best known South African photojournalists and I attribute the best years of my career to this man who directly and indirectly encouraged me to be the best that I can be.
I thank God for his life.

“He Left Me With  A Sense Of Wonder”

The stadium was chanting his name. People were everywhere—in the aisles, hanging on the railings—all pushing for a glimpse of the game. The match was sold out and the crowd was moving constantly. Every person was shouting out one name. 
“Madiba! Madiba!” 
Nelson Mandela was out on the field wearing the captain’s jersey of Neil Tovey—a carbon copy of his appearance at the South African rugby triumph the year before. 
It was the Africa Cup of Nations final at FNB stadium, in Johannesburg, on February 2, 1996. 
Bafana Bafana or ‘Boys Boys’ were playing Tunisia. En route to the final, South Africa had beaten giants Cameroon in the group stages and Ghana in the semi-final.
<div id="attachment_506" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-506" class="size-large wp-image-506" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Par6857705-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Zambia national football team players celebrate their victory at the end of the African Cup of Nations final football match between Ivory Coast and Zambia at the Stade de l&#8217;Amitie in Libreville, on February 12, 2012. AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI</div>
The nation was behind them and 80,000 people crammed into the stadium as Bafana Bafana lifted the cup as the undisputed kings of African football; confirmation that South Africa—after years of exile because of apartheid—was the vibrant and emerging power in African football. 
Sixteen years later and the national team is an embarrassment. As small nations from Botswana to Gabon vied for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations in recent weeks, the South African team could only watch on TV. It was even more embarrassing because one of the reasons South Africa failed to qualify is that no-one had bothered to read the rule book. 
Playing the final game of the qualifiers, Bafana played at home against Sierra Leone in Nelspruit. The team and the coaches believed they only needed a draw to progress to the continental tournament on goal difference. They played to a 0-0 draw, and at the final whistle the crowd erupted as the home team danced on the pitch in celebration. 
Minutes later, the team was informed that they had better stop celebrating because they had not made it. Rule 14.1 clearly states the team with the “greater number of points obtained in the matches between the concerned teams” will go through. 
In short, only an outright win by Bafana in Nelspruit would have guaranteed them qualification. 
The South African Football Association (SAFA), in a knee-jerk reaction, launched an appeal to the Confederation of African Football (CAF). 
SAFA president, Kirsten Nematandani, infamously told TV news station eNews: “Those rules are wrong.” 
When it became abundantly clear that the rules were not wrong and South Africa had not, in fact, been victimized and cheated, SAFA admitted to misreading the rule book. 
Many were quick to call for the head of national coach Pitso Mosimane, and while he should share some of the responsibility, his job is on the pitch. 
The coach always has to fight to get players released from the local clubs when they are called up for national duty and SAFA does not always help. It’s quite simple; to get players released, international fixtures have to be scheduled on FIFA-sanctioned dates as clubs are then required to allow players the national call-up. 
But this is seldom the case, and clubs then have the right to refuse players. It means Mosimane will rarely have the luxury of calling on a first choice team. Then, when the team underperforms, he is the one to feel the criticism. 
Matters came to a head in January, when Mosimane was forced to pick what was effectively classed a ‘third team’, for matches against big guns Zambia and Ghana. 
SAFA downgraded the fixtures from international friendlies to ‘practice matches’, fearing South Africa would plummet down the rankings with this side. As it turned out, Mosimane’s charges were able to draw both matches, which was particularly impressive against Ghana—one of the favorites for the Africa Cup of Nations. 
After the Ghana match, Mosimane—with the pressure seemingly getting to him—launched a verbal tirade against the media. 
“How many times have you written my obituary?” were his first words in the post-match press conference. 
The rift between Mosimane and SAFA is clear for all to see, but the mighty association of football in the rainbow nation does not seem overly concerned. 
Another problem the national team has, and it is not a new one, is that the best South African players head overseas and do not see the honor in representing their national team. 
A prime example is Benni McCarthy. He is South Africa’s all-time leading top goal scorer and in his prime snubbed Bafana. 
After making his debut for the team in 1997 as a 19-year-old, he soon rose to superstar status and was the joint top scorer at the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations. 
Then, after his second FIFA World Cup in 2002 where the team failed to make it through to the knockout stages, he announced his retirement from international football at the age of 25, when he would have been just reaching his prime. 
He came out of retirement after two years, but South Africa did not qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup and effectively ended his world cup career. 
The reason, one can only surmise, is that a national contract would not be able to offer him anything close to what he would get at his club side, where he was just starting out at Portuguese side Porto. 
His story is typical of the situation in which South Africa finds itself: players who are world-class leave, never to return. The national side is made up of a collection of decent club performers, but will never be a team that can compete with the best in the world. 
SAFA needs to start being proactive—year after year, they make the same promises and the media and the public are tiring. 
Bafana Bafana should not be seen as the ugly step-child that nobody wants, and SAFA needs to stop making simple problems complicated. The national team have to be allowed the best possible team whenever they play and SAFA must realize that in a football-mad country, the beautiful game can help unify a nation as it did all those years ago.

Cry, The  Beloved Country

The old man would be proud. David Phume has grabbed, with both hands, the chances proffered by a democratic South Africa.
Walking around his Johannesburg offices, Phume shows pride in his work—the fruit of years of slog and training.
They call him South Africa’s first black animator and he’s been doing it since the tender age of 17. Phume is a down-to-earth, charismatic creative who is not afraid to dream big.
“It all started when I was 12 years old. I was tinkering and was fortunate enough to be exposed to high-end animation software.”
Phume studied 3-D animation at Boston Media House in Johannesburg, then went to San Francisco and trained under professionals from international studios like Pixar, Reel FX and Sony Pictures Imageworks.
<div id="attachment_346" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-346" class="size-large wp-image-346" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/6-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />David Phume</div>
It would have been easier for Phume to slide into a career in the United States, but instead he chose to bring his skills home. He founded Penthouse Motion Pictures, a broadcast design and animation studio, in 2005.
These 3-D films are incredibly complicated and expensive, especially on the scale Phume wants to create. The two-hour, 34-minute Spirit of Mandela pilot took him three years to complete, while holding down a day job. He hopes to turn it into a full-length blockbuster to be shown in more than 100 countries.
“I have always wanted to animate an African story and this [Nelson Mandela’s life in prison] is one that resonated with my soul,” he says.
Phume may have to find another story to tell on the big screen. You cannot simply take the story of a world icon, like Mandela, and do with it as you please. Phume went to ask permission from the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The Foundation was established on August 19, 1999 to protect and develop the former president’s legacy.
Phume found out the rights are not the Foundation’s to give. The Foundation spends close to R2 million ($240,377) a year to protect Madiba’s intellectual property and says various bodies are entrusted with rights pertaining to him. Some lie with his lawyer, others are guarded by the state, the Foundation, his family, or the man himself.
But the only person who has the rights to his life story
is film producer, Anant Singh, a man Phume has yet to speak to.
Even if the rights were there, making an animated film is expensive. Movies like Megamind, Wall-E and Smurfs came together on budgets of between $110 million and $180 million, taking 4.1-35.7 million man hours. Interestingly enough, it is said that the more detailed, reflective and silent the film, the higher the budget.
In the South African animation industry, strides are being made with films like Jock of the Bushveld, released in July 2011, and the impending release of Zambezia, as well as the production of Khumba, from the Cape Town-based Triggerfish Animation. Zambezia was screened at the American Film Market on November 6 and the company is in talks with the Americans for distribution. If the trailer is anything to go by, there is a lot of talent and potential in Africa.
Gustavo Corrêa, the training centre director and 3D Max instructor at Learn 3D Computer Animation Training Centre in Johannesburg, says: “To put together a complete 3D animation production you need a talented and relatively big team of people, working full-time for five to six years; you need money for salaries and infrastructure way before reaping any return from the end product. In that way, you need serious investment from either government and/or the private sector to sustain the business while in production.”
While Phume works out his next move for a film and funding, he is in production with an animated television series for Tshwane TV, a community television channel broadcasting in Pretoria. Phume is the executive creative director and has won a Promax BDA Africa Gold Award for the channel’s promo.
Who would have thought more than 20 years ago that a young black child in South Africa would grow up to become a creative director of two companies, an executive board member of a multimedia body and chairman of the Miss Tshwane pageant? Twenty-nine-year-old David Phume is living the life that Nelson Mandela sacrificed 27 years for—and loving it.
<h3>A Handshake For Your Thoughts</h3>
One man owns the rights to one of the world’s greatest stories. Anant Singh is a world renowned South African film producer and the proud owner of Nelson Mandela’s life story. Since 1984, he has notched up more than 75 films, including Sarafina! and Cry, the Beloved Country. Mandela has referred to him as “a producer I respect very much&#8230;a man of tremendous ability”.
<div id="attachment_347" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-347" class="size-large wp-image-347" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/113941062-678x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="716" />Anant Singh</div>
FORBES AFRICA (FA): How is it that you hold the rights to Nelson Mandela’s life story? Anant Singh (AS): I started writing to Mr Mandela, while he was still in prison, about making a big-screen film about his life. I felt then, as I do now, that the journey he had been through was compelling. 
FA: What does it mean to you? AS: It is indeed an honor and privilege to become the custodian of the Mandela legacy and his amazing journey. It is also a very daunting challenge which I am up to. His life story is complex and vast, and the adaptation to a motion picture has many challenges. However, I feel confident that we will be able to tell Mr Mandela’s story in an effective and powerful way. The benchmarks are the epic films, Lawrence of Arabia and Gandhi. 
FA: Is there a formal written agreement or was it all settled with a gentleman’s handshake? AS: It was a combination of the two. He initially granted me the rights verbally with a gentleman’s handshake, and thereafter a formal, written agreement was concluded as is necessary for the legal aspects of the rights for a film adaptation of an autobiography. 
FA: What are you planning to do with the rights? AS: As you may know, I have been developing the film, Long Walk To Freedom, which is based on Mr Mandela’s life. We are currently in pre-production on the film. 
FA: Do the rights cover film and animation? AS: The Mandela story lends itself to multi-faceted components of the various mediums of film, animation and stage. We feel that there is potential to integrate all of these. We have all of these rights. 
FA: A young animator hopes to create a 3-D animation film on Mandela’s imprisonment. Are you open to sharing the rights or selling them? AS: As with film, animation requires an extremely intricate storytelling technique. It is also very expensive to produce; in fact, more so than a regular film, if done well. We are very happy to look at initiatives that would be able to complement the motion picture and which are able to do justice to this powerful and epic story. Animation, however, has to compete with the big Hollywood studios of Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks. World-class animated films are produced on budgets of over $200 million.

Viva Virtual Mandela!

For someone who has been a bona fide superstar on the African continent for well over two decades, Yvonne Chaka Chaka is strangely the most approachable person I have ever met, with few airs and graces.
She is the opposite of a spoilt superstar; instead, she has this quality of mothering everyone around her. A couple of times during my one-on-one interview with her, she picks the most inopportune moment to ask whether I’m hungry and proceeds to offer me some pasta and mince.
<div id="attachment_337" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-337" class="size-large wp-image-337" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/chaka2_1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Yvonne Chaka Chaka at her home, Bryanston, north of Johannesburg</div>
We meet Chaka Chaka at her home in the wealthy suburb of Bryanston in the north of Johannesburg. We are not the only crew here; there is a team from a popular showbiz magazine wrapping up a shoot with her. One of her many assistants tells us that she has another two more interviews later. So how is it that this 46-year-old mother of four boys has managed to remain relevant, in demand and adored in this very fickle entertainment industry?
“I have just never bought into this notion that the music and entertainment industry are all ‘sex, drugs and rock-’n-roll’. I was raised to always maintain a sense of pride and to be responsible at all times. From the first moment after I was discovered, all I ever wanted to do was to make it big so I could uproot my family out of poverty. My mother, who was a domestic worker at that point, wanted me to get a law degree and be very successful. She didn’t approve of me being a singer. She had higher expectations,” she says.
Chaka Chaka’s debut album, I’m in Love with a DJ, sold more than 35,000 copies in two weeks back in 1985. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Chaka Chaka was to belt out iconic hits such as Umqombothi (African beer), Burning Up, Thank You, Mister DJ and Who’s the Boss?, among many other hits. Her songs are a soundtrack to many an African childhood, and she has performed in all corners of the African continent.
“I knew I was becoming really successful when everyone started comparing me to Brenda Fassie, who had started singing in 1981 and was the epitome of success at that time. Everybody started noticing me. My gig calendar went crazy and I could finally build my mother the three-bedroom house she wanted. I also started singing for serious company like former President Nelson Mandela, kings, queens and the world’s most important people,” she says proudly.
On the walls of her home, there are countless gongs, awards, trophies, certificates and picture portraits of her flanked by people straight from a name-dropper’s fantasy. Alongside them are many magazine covers and framed platinum-certified discs. The most refreshing aspect about Chaka Chaka’s career, though, is that it has been far from one-dimensional. She has managed to balance performing with getting an impressive higher education, being an entrepreneur and doing high-level philanthropy. It is her entrepreneurship that I am interested in, mainly because we have all heard the painful tale of beloved musicians dying as paupers.
“I started my first business in 1987. It was a hair salon based at the Carlton Centre shopping mall in the CBD of Johannesburg. It was called Le Classique and it was ahead of its time in the way it offered services. The salon had a separate wing where our VIP and celebrity clientele could come in and have private consultations, be pampered without the glare of the public, without delay or having to wait in queues. Le Classique was also one of the few salons at that time that had a multiracial client base,” she explains. The success of Le Classique led to Chaka Chaka opening another beauty salon on Kruis Street—just down the road from the Carlton Centre. “I opened my second salon in 1989. It was called Vonny’s 7th Heaven and it too was wildly successful. The two salons had a very good run until the steep escalation of crime in the CBD forced us to close shop,” she says.
These mishaps may have pushed Chaka Chaka away from the hair and beauty industry, but the business bug had bitten. In 1992, Chaka Chaka opened a limousine business.
“My husband and I bought a few limos and a couple of luxury American cars and started Byandlani Limousine Services. We realised that there was an influx of tourists coming to our shores as the political climate changed, so we jumped on the bandwagon. We hired drivers who would be based at the airport ready to pick up tourists and take them sightseeing, on tours or to wherever their destinations were,” she says.
Chaka Chaka also used her industry connections to boost her limo business’ image and they were chosen to transport Michael Jackson during his South African tour.
A few years later, legislation around how public transportation entities operate was changed, so Chaka Chaka decided to sell the cars and cut her losses.
“The cars were American, so they were a left-hand drive and we were always given grief about that. The business had also started doing badly at that point, so it made sense to just move on to something else,” she says.
Soon after the dissolution of Byandlani Limousine Services, Chaka Chaka then bought a house in Berea, downtown Johannesburg that she converted into offices for hire and a rehearsal venue for herself and other musicians.
“The house was a very popular rehearsal venue. You name any artist that was big during that period, and they were most likely also rehearsing with us. Bands like Sankomota and Stimela, as well as solo artists like Tshepo Tshola, Sibongile Khumalo and Hugh Masekela were among our clients,” she says.
Once again, crime became the thorn in her side and forced Chaka Chaka to think twice about the location of her business. “We got burgled way too many times. Our clients’ cars got hijacked and it quite simply became unpleasant. So we donated the house to a local church and once again shifted focus,” she says. This is the point where Chaka Chaka set her sights on the corporate world.
Her first major move was to buy into Gestetner—a company that produces printing machines.
“Buying into Gestetner surprised a lot of people. It was during the period where BEE (black economic empowerment) was the buzzword, so some even thought I was brought in to be ‘the token black’. People just didn’t understand why or how a singer could also feature in the corporate space,” she says.
Her move into corporate South Africa has flourished. Right now, she owns shares and sits on the board of JSE-listed Morvest Business Group, an IT company, as well as on the boards of many Section 21 companies like the African Women’s Development Board, Shalamuka Board, Sonke Skills Development and Women in Energy. Chaka Chaka also owns shares in major companies such as Media 24, Sasol and Telkom.
Even with such an impressive business portfolio, it is practically impossible to sit with Chaka Chaka and not notice that the thing that’s closest to her heart is her charity work. “I have just come back from Vietnam and Kenya, where I have been involved in a campaign started by the World Health Organization (WHO) along with The Global Fund and (international police agency) Interpol. The campaign aims to create awareness around fake medication, counterfeit ARVs and other drugs meant to treat dreaded diseases such as tuberculosis. I am the face of that campaign alongside fellow musician Youssou N’dour,” she says.
Chaka Chaka is also a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, and hints at the fact that unlike her other UN ambassador colleagues, such as movie star Angelina Jolie, she goes further than attending a UN press conference to just smile and wave.
“I have a passion for going to the grassroots and helping people who literally have nothing. I recently travelled to the most remote villages of Africa and shot a documentary highlighting the extreme plight of the people who live there in the hope that once it gets flighted on television, someone somewhere will do something to help these people who are so extremely disadvantaged.”
Chaka Chaka has also adopted Lethare High School in Jabulani Township in Soweto, where she has a program that supports the needy and sponsors a number of them through university.
“Lethare is the same school that I attended growing up. So knowing that community as intimately as I do, I knew that I had to do something to help, something to give back as they are behind my musical success. There are a few kids there whom we have taken to university, and in the next five years, I am making plans with Lethare’s principal to broaden this program so that there isn’t a child we cannot help,” she says.
With so much on Chaka Chaka’s plate, it is amazing that she finds time for everyone else in her life. But as I sit in her home, I realize that somehow it has been possible for this remarkable woman to raise great kids, keep her music career afloat and go from strength to strength in her business life. She is not about to slow down—she is currently shooting a musical with Leleti Khumalo (of Sarafina! fame) and Luthuli Dlamini, and going into studio to record a new album that will be released in 2012 through her own company, Chaka Chaka Promotions.
As I drive out of her home, I see a Lifebuoy soap billboard with her face on it—she is there too.

Doing Business To The Chaka Chaka Beat

Sixty years ago South Africa was no country for budding black entrepreneurs, but Richard Maponya managed to defy the odds and opened a backstreet store that grew into a massive retail empire on the back of which he became a legendary black businessman.
<div id="attachment_277" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-277" class="size-medium wp-image-277" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTX7445-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Richard Maponya at the Maponya Mall, Soweto</div>
That grocery shop in the township of Soweto, opened in the early 1950s, led to several in the years that followed. From there he ventured into car dealerships, petrol stations, butcheries, supermarkets, bus services and funeral parlors. He later joined a consortium that acquired Coca-Cola’s bottling plant, when the soft drink giant decided to disinvest in apartheid South Africa. He also became a cell phone provider and his name was linked to many deals and ventures.
To be big, Maponya had to risk big, but his achievements were many, not least his own economic freedom, which he had won long before political freedom came in 1994.
Canny and shrewd, he continued to move with the times and pushed his pile of chips into property development and four years ago unveiled his biggest lifetime achievement: the Maponya Mall in Soweto.
“I wanted the people of the township to be able to spend their money in the township and create employment for themselves.”
This year he opened Maponya Motor City not far away from Maponya Mall. And there’s more to follow. The 90-year-old still has a few more ventures up his sleeve.
You have to admire Maponya. If it was a desire to make a go of his life that drove him all these years, he could have chosen an easier option than betting on business in an all-white, male world. Easier still would have been to stick to what he had been trained to do—high school teaching. But Maponya has no regrets and if he could roll back the clock he would do it the same all over again.
“The only thing that would be different this time is that I would be an even bigger entrepreneur,” he says without a hint of humility in his voice. “The playing field is leveled now and things are so much easier today than they were when I started out.”
He was born in 1920 in the small village of Lenyene, in Limpopo, and later moved to Polokwane, where missionaries trained him as a teacher. With his qualification under his belt, he headed to Johannesburg in 1948 in search of his first teaching post. But as fate would have it, the dapper-looking 28-year-old was snapped up by a drapery store in the city center before he had a chance to sit the other side of a school desk.
Maponya hadn’t envisaged a working life in retail.
“But they were offering me five times more than the teaching post would have paid. And I said to myself, ‘these may be the greener pastures I was looking for after all.’”
Little did he know how green those pastures were to be.
Yet those were dreadful times for black South Africans. That year—1948—also marked the dawn of apartheid that would result in a half a century of inhumanity for non-whites. Maponya ought not have been an exception. He was living in the township of Alexandria, renting some space in the home of members of his extended family and subjected to the same harsh reality that every other black person endured.
“We were like foreigners in our own country,” he remembers. “The native was treated in the worst possible way.”
But Maponya had struck lucky though he didn’t realize it at the time. At the drapery store he reported to a man by the name of Mr Bolton—“we did not call the white man by his first name then”—and the pair worked well together.
Bolton was hard-working and enterprising. Maponya was equally so. Bolton was also a good businessman and he coached his employee in the trade.
He taught him about fabrics, quality and design. He mentored him in customer care. He encouraged him to select clothing and designs that would appeal “to my people” as Maponya put it.
Before long, he began to recognize the budding businessman in himself.
The pair worked hand-in-hand for three years, during which time Bolton was scaling the corporate ladder until he was promoted to CEO of the company in 1951. But before he closed his executive door on the drapery floor, he asked to meet with Maponya.
“Son, I am being promoted because of our joint efforts and I don’t know how to thank you,” Bolton told his junior.
Maponya nodded his head and muttered a courteous response, expecting little else to follow, but Bolton continued speaking.
“You have a ceiling over your head because you are black so there is nothing I can do,” he said, stating a glaring fact. “All I can offer you is a job as a foreman.”
“But I would like to give you the chance to buy samples and soiled clothing that you can sell after work or on the weekends to make some extra money for yourself,” the new CEO told him.
“And that is what gave me my start in life,” Maponya remembers, all these years later. “Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
He started selling the garments on a ‘pay while you wear’ basis. Folks had little cash to spare then so he indulged them with credit. Trust went a long way in the early 1950s.
“‘Take it and wear it’ I would tell them and I would collect the money at the end of the week. They never let me down. I never lost a penny in those days.”
And it was from those humble beginnings that the empire began to emerge.
At this hour of his life, Maponya has a lot to be proud of, yet he refuses to step down. To this day he still works a five-day week, six if his children allow him. On the eve of his 91st birthday, I tell him he is a poor advertisement for a pension plan.
“I don’t even know what the word retirement means,” he chuckles in response.
These days his time is taken with his latest project, the Richard Maponya Institute for Skills Training and Entrepreneurship.
“This is the big one,” he says. “This is my legacy project. This is what I want to leave behind, a place where young people are not only given a skill but the know-how to go out and create work for themselves.”
The legacy idea began to take shape a couple of years ago as Maponya began to take stock of the challenges facing South Africa. Idle youth stared him in the face.
“If only I could tell you that it is thousands and thousands of youth that are unemployed, it might not be so bad. But it is not. We are talking about millions and millions of our young people who have no jobs. That’s a lot of people and I don’t think we fully realize how awful it is for them or how dangerous it is for society to have so many idle youth falling into the trap of poverty. They deserve more and so does South Africa.”
For guidance, he turned to Brazil, a country that made some clever moves many years ago when it began to train its youth to become the kind of entrepreneurs that would start the small and medium-sized enterprises that now form the backbone of the South American country’s economy.
“South Africa is no different. We need young men and women who will go out and create their own jobs and not depend on the economy to create work for them. It will never happen that way. This is a society that is becoming too dependent on the state. The state can only do so much and it certainly cannot solve the challenge of unemployment.”
Maponya’s plan is a commendable one, but how difficult is it to become an entrepreneur? Is it something that everyone can do? Or is it a character-driven thing?
“If you have discipline you can become an entrepreneur,” he tells me. “That’s the core requirement: discipline. I wasn’t born an entrepreneur. No one is. You learn to become on. But you learn it through discipline.”
What about a vision, or a plan?
“You might have the best plan in the world, but if you don’t have the discipline to pull it off, it will never happen. Discipline is everything.”
Can discipline be taught?
“It’s not only about teaching it, but learning it. The will has to come from the person, not the teacher. What can be taught is how to develop discipline. The rest is over to you.”
As simple as that?
“It can be,” he says. “If not, we have to decide to live in poverty and with poverty. But if we want to change it, then we must join hands as South Africans and begin to turn this ship around. We need strong, social leaders. We need mentors. We need willing youth. If we have all of those, and I believe we have, then many things are possible.”
The training institute—on Brazilian lines—is still work in progress, but he hopes he can open its doors to the youth of Soweto at some stage next year.
“And if it works, and I know it will, then I would like to see it replicated all over South Africa. But I just want to get this one right. This is my legacy. My way of giving back. This really is my big one.”
And will he then hang up his boots?
“No,” he says, without a flicker of hesitation. “For as long as the Lord gives me my health, I think I will work until the last day. I think I will die with my boots on. That is how I think it is going to happen.”
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Tag: Nelson Mandela

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