Zuma and Mbeki, although both longtime ANC activists, could not be more unalike. Mbeki is a Xhosa from the Eastern Cape, highly educated and emotionally remote. Zuma is a Zulu from KwaZulu-Natal with no formal education who served a decade-long sentence on Robben Island for opposing apartheid. A charismatic man of action, he has three wives and a rape allegation to his name.
He was acquitted in In Mbeki announced to both houses of parliament that he had authorized a special dispensation for pardon applications for politically motivated crimes that had taken place between and Mbeki's official explanation was that he wished to finish the business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Unofficially the move was seen by some as an effort to gain much needed support for the flagging president. The next year a group with a representative from each of the 15 official political parties recommended prisoners for presidential pardon. But the process ignored something that had been at the moral, emotional, and political heart of the TRC—the victims would not be consulted before prisoners were granted amnesty. To human rights groups, this special dispensation was not about reconciliation; it was about political expediency, about closing the door and moving on. Eight organizations, including the Khulumani Support Group, filed a lawsuit, which eventually found itself at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the highest court in the land, on November 10, By then Mbeki had resigned, and Zuma—JZ as he is popularly known—was president.
On the list of political prisoners identified for possible pardon, one name jumped out at Marjorie Jobson: the man Eugene de Kock had telephoned her about from prison, Stefaans Coetzee. Meanwhile, Khulumani had reached out to the victims, including Olga Macingwane, of those on the list. A glance through Jobson's modest home in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape reveals books everywhere, piled on furniture in the sitting room, in stacks on the floor, across the dining room table.
Not surprisingly, the victims of the Worcester bombing were skeptical. They had questions. Why does he want to meet us now? How is it going to benefit us? Is he feeling guilty now? Has he really had a change of heart? In her distraction, she fails to eat at all.
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It was a conundrum. On the day I meet him in his law faculty office, Madlingozi is wearing black jeans, a long-sleeved, blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and casual leather sneakers. Our conversation is accompanied by the customary cup of tea. Now he blows into his cup and looks at me over the rim. I was very nervous, very skeptical. I didn't know how I was going to react. A day in mid-April was set for a meeting between Madlingozi and Coetzee in the social worker's office at Pretoria Central.
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I see a boy the same age as me. He's somehow handsome, very diffident. He was surprised too. He was expecting to see an old, radical, militant ANC activist. Madlingozi shook hands with Coetzee and introduced himself. Coetzee shook Madlingozi's hand and thanked him for coming. The two men sat for a couple of hours and talked.
How did I become a lawyer? How did he become a prisoner? What do we hope for ourselves? What do we hope for our country? Madlingozi is a few months younger than Coetzee.
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He was born in Mangaung township, the area set aside for blacks outside Bloemfontein in the former Orange Free State—geographically not far from where Coetzee was born but a world away in terms of culture. Madlingozi's father was a migrant worker in the gold mines. It destroyed communities. It was a way for the apartheid government to get capitalization, but it emasculated men who couldn't be at home to provide for their families.
The fathers couldn't pass on folklore, culture, values. For the families left behind, it meant the father came back after three months and didn't know his place in the family. A lot of men asserted their position through violence. Madlingozi's father died of a heart attack when his son was We were just becoming friends again.
He had a voracious appetite for reading novels, and we read together a lot. The mines in and around the town are very deep. Each morning, brackish water is pumped from them into pans on the surface. Flocks of flamingos, Egyptian geese, and sacred ibises congregate on the pans. The air is stung with the scents of salt and bird droppings.
Madlingozi leans forward. But it has made me appreciate that even the most ardent racists—even murderers—can change and be humble.
PASSENGER TYRES
Yes, Stefaans's intelligence, humility, acute appreciation of the consequences of his actions and the system of apartheid, as well as his appreciation that reconciliation is not merely about showing goodwill, have greatly inspired me. How can I visit this man? How can I have empathy? But this isn't just about winning. It can't be about winning.
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If we only want to win, then there will always be losers, and how is that so different from the way things were? This has always been about the big picture, about moving on together. But that's where reality is. That's where we are.
That's what we have to work with. From Worcester to Pretoria is a two-day drive—16 hours, more or less. The four of them agree to meet Stefaans Coetzee the day before the hearing, but only on the condition that they are not doing so to forgive him. I want to hear what he has to say for himself. But no, I am not there to forgive him. Life became difficult for Olga Macingwane after the bombing, and not only for all the obvious reasons.
Cadres of the ANC used the funerals for political posturing, racing disabled survivors of the attack through the streets in their wheelchairs, all the while chanting songs made popular during the struggle. Then in Macingwane's husband died, and without his support, she could no longer afford to raise their three children.
They were sent away to live with relatives. He stands before a s polished yellow Datsun in a three-piece suit exuding an aura of conservative reserve.
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The yellow car is still parked outside Macingwane's house, dormant under a thick gray blanket. November 9 is a hot day.
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Macingwane and the other three residents of Zwelethemba—including Harris Sibeko, husband of the deputy mayor at the time of the attack—walk into the social worker's office at Pretoria Central and see Coetzee standing in the corner in his orange jumpsuit stamped with the word "prisoner. Not the man I have had in my mind all these years, but a boy.
What is this boy doing here? How did it happen? That is what is inside my head all of a sudden. Macingwane asks to begin with a prayer. In the ensuing silence she gets to her knees—laboriously, because two days in a rental car have done nothing to help the pain in her legs—and begins to pray in Xhosa. She praises God for his hallowedness. She thanks God for bringing South Africa another day.