Chapter 1

Johannesburg, 1993

THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE ageing Unified Bank Building vibrated with the footfalls. Since Unified’s executives had moved their offices to the white suburbs, the old headquarters had turned into a hothouse of political activity. Rissik Street’s Sunday window-shoppers were used to the rhythms. Freedom songs provided musical background as people admired the latest Toshiba boom boxes and knock-off running shoes on their way home from church. Today dozens of shop stewards were taking their turn in forging a new nation, a South Africa for the working class.

Monwabisi Radebe’s feet flew above his head in this well-practised routine. Limber hotel waiters and plump, middle-aged female street sweepers handled the steps and sways with equal grace. The Movement was preparing to take a decision. They’d honed the process for more than two decades. Toyi-toyi and song provided the comforts of home, firing joyous bullets of inspiration to the heart of the enemy. A hand-lettered banner across the front wall reaffirmed the basic message of solidarity: ‘An Injury to One is an Injury to All.’

The singing gradually wound down. Like thousands of South Africans, these shop stewards from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) were examining the draft of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, or RDP, a 147-page bible for a new nation. This was their third session. Only one crucial topic remained – nationalisation.

Though his headache was getting worse, Monwabisi had to bring the house to consensus. This was democracy in action: discuss an issue for hours, sometimes days, until everyone agreed. They called it ‘workers’ control’.

‘Nationalisation without compensation is the only answer,’ argued the thick-chested Nathaniel Mda of the mineworkers’ union. ‘More than 69 000 miners have died in disasters over the years. It’s time to reverse history, to claim the gold and diamonds on behalf of the working class.’

A cohort of several dozen showed their support for Mda with a song in Sesotho. ‘The land of South Africa belongs to all the people,’ their voices proclaimed, ‘not just a greedy few.’ Once the quiet had returned, Monwabisi sought responses from the meeting.

‘Nationalisation is premature,’ said Tshepo Jiyane. The long-time shop steward for the food workers wore his usual attire – a black cap bearing the hammer and sickle of the South African Communist Party and a T-shirt with the smiling face of Madiba. ‘We are in the democratic phase of our revolution,’ he added, ‘leading a broad front of all progressive classes, including the national bourgeoisie.’

‘The comrade is proposing we jump in bed with the bosses!’ shouted Mda as he leaped to his feet. ‘The workers must speak with one voice. Sifuna inationalisation kuphela.’

Monwabisi’s fist slammed down on the metal table at the front of the hall.

‘Comrade Mda, we need order, not personal attacks,’ said Monwabisi. ‘Take a seat.’

Monwabisi’s vision was starting to blur. The headaches did that sometimes. He got one almost every day now, and Panado didn’t help. Plus those small lumps in his neck weren’t going away. He just wanted to find somewhere to lie down in the darkness. That brought a little relief.

As Mda apologised for his outburst, suddenly the hall shook. The deep-level gold mines under Joburg had made tremors a way of life. Then came the blast. The workers went silent for a second, waiting to see if the twelve storeys above them were going to collapse on their heads. A few of them dove under their chairs.

‘That was no earthquake,’ said Mda.

‘Sounded like a thunderclap,’ said Monwabisi, ‘but there’s not a cloud in the sky.’ He sent Jiyane and two shop stewards outside to survey the street.

Members of POPCRU, the police union, took up positions at the door to the hall, guns drawn.

‘No one must leave until we know what happened,’ said Monwabisi.

‘Bloody Boers,’ said Mda.

Jiyane came running back inside.

‘They bombed the ANC office up the road,’ he said. ‘Fire trucks are already there. It’s serious.’

‘We must find them where they sleep,’ said Mda, holding a massive panga in the air.

‘The POPCRU delegation will guard the building,’ said Monwabisi.

‘We must strike back,’ said Johannes Mtsilo, regional secretary of the railway workers and a former boxer. He began the musical plea for machine guns: ‘Awuleth’umshini wami, awuleth’umshini wami.’ This time the lyrics weren’t ceremonial. The song continued for fifteen minutes. As Monwabisi joined in the toyi-toyi he remembered that his cousin Mthetho, who had just returned to South Africa for the first time in fifteen years, was attending that ANC meeting. The joyous image of him kissing the tarmac at the Joburg airport when he arrived was vanishing from Monwabisi’s mind. Instead, he saw his cousin’s corpse lying under a pile of building rubble. The killing just never seemed to stop.

The singing wound down but the house was divided on the next step. Mtsilo and others wanted to rush to the ANC office. ‘We need to defend our comrades!’ Mtsilo shouted, daring anyone to shy away from their duty.

‘Rushing there will do no good,’ said Jiyane. ‘There are already hundreds of people in the streets.’ He proposed an adjournment, arguing that the venue was no longer safe for their deliberations. ‘We may be the next target,’ Jiyane added.

The delegation shouted him down.

‘The Boers can’t halt the mission of the working class,’ said Mda. ‘We are COSATU. We don’t run away.’

‘POPCRU comrades to the front!’ Monwabisi called out.

‘Yizani phambili.’

Monwabisi ordered the six POPCRU delegates to set up a team of lookouts on Bree and Rissik streets to make sure no one who wasn’t part of COSATU entered the building. At least it was a Sunday. The streets were quiet. Boers in their Land Rovers and Voortrekker gear would stick out like Gerrie Coetzee in a shebeen.

Before the POPCRU guards could take up their positions, twenty more black policemen arrived and closed the streets for two blocks in all directions. Meanwhile Police Sergeant Pheto dashed into the hall and assured the shop stewards the authorities had cut off the Boers at each and every point. He said that at least two comrades had perished in the explosion. ‘But the workers will be protected,’ he promised. Pheto rushed out of the room before Monwabisi even had a chance to ask him the names of the deceased. He’d catch them on the radio later. He had a meeting to chair.

‘We’ve waited too long for this moment to be derailed by a few Boers,’ Monwabisi told the crowd. ‘We, the shop stewards of the Witwatersrand, must be heard.’

‘No one needs to worry,’ Mtsilo said, glaring at Jiyane. ‘I will protect you.’

The railway worker swung his knobkerrie in a circle as the delegates rose to their feet with applause.

‘We stand for the nationalisation of South Africa’s mines, commercial farms and major industries,’ read the meeting’s final resolution. ‘We stand for justice and workers’ control.’

The delegates added a supplement that wasn’t on the day’s agenda: ‘We stand for the prosecution of all apartheid war criminals and murderers.’

The result satisfied Monwabisi, though it wasn’t enough to rid him of his headache. The pain was worse than ever. When he’d spoken on the phone to his wife Constantia, the previous week, she’d advised him to see a doctor. Maybe she was right.

After the workers closed the gathering with a moment of silence and the singing of ‘Hamba Kahle’ to commemorate those who died in the bomb blast, Monwabisi dashed up the road to look for his cousin. He found him standing next to one of the fire trucks wearing his usual grey suit. At least the Boers had spared Monwabisi’s family this time around.

Though the shop stewards were convinced that nationalisation was the correct path, their resolution ultimately lost out. The Consultative Business Movement and the leading black commercial associations backed ‘socially responsible entrepreneurship’. The final draft of the RDP advocated a ‘thorough democratisation of South Africa’, but made no promises about nationalisation.

Monwabisi and the other shop stewards were disappointed, but they accepted the decisions of the democratic movement. What was more important than the result was the process. People had given their lives for this democracy. In the new South Africa everyone, including workers, would have their say before government took decisions on vital issues. The process of developing the RDP would be the model for the future government led by the ANC. For once the workers could say: ‘The future is now.’