Myth and Reality in South Africa’s History: A Conflicted Past

History matters. Some wish to bury it; others to use it selectively for their own purposes. But in the case of any nation it must be confronted honestly. Just as the Freedom Charter proclaims that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, so does its history. And the country was liberated by its people, not one specific group. Myth and Reality in South Africa’s History is a collection of eighty newspaper opinion pieces and feature articles published over a span of thirty years. Their purpose was to examine significant past lives, movements and events, and interpret their contemporary significance for a general readership. Emphasis was placed on individuals and organisations that had tended to be neglected by post-liberation discourse, which was prone to exaggerate the role of certain movements. The intention was to challenge a monochrome version of national history by emphasising pluralism and diversity. Underlying themes are continuity of faith in universal human rights, individual empowerment and psychological liberation in the face of power, both under and after apartheid. The chapters of this book are arranged by broad chronology regardless of date of publication to produce a historical narrative; pulled together by a short introduction to modern South African history.

Preface

Introduction

South Africa’s modern history: a brief overview

PART ONE: BEFORE APARTHEID

1. John William Colenso: human rights activist?
2. Edendale: kholwa identity and survival (with Nalini Naidoo)
3. Natives’ Land Act: pariahs in their own land

PART TWO: THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES

4. A charter for freedom
5. New Age: two newspapers, same name, different times
6. State of Emergency, 1960: the onset of a police state
7. Robert Sobukwe: intellectual and charismatic leader
8. Ruth First: martyr for a free South Africa
9. Tsafendas, Verwoerd and a tapeworm
10. Dennis Brutus: beacon of the sports boycott
11. Basil d’Oliveira: South Africa’s first genuine cricket captain and the politics of sport
12. Gary Player and Helen Suzman: dealing with illegitimate power
13. The Liberal Party: the persistence of principle

PART THREE: THE SEVENTIES

14. The Durban strikes: changing the face of industrial action
15. Soweto: a grassroots uprising
16. Steve Biko, Black Consciousness and individual empowerment
17. Unity Movement: puritans of the anti-apartheid struggle
18. Aurora: defying apartheid on the cricket field
19. Richard Turner: philosopher activist

PART FOUR: THE EIGHTIES

20. Neil Aggett: medicine, trade unionism and altruism
21. United Democratic Front: making history and leaving a mixed legacy
22. The Weekly Mail and the struggle for press freedom
23. State of Emergency, 1986: arbitrary arrest and detention
24. Mpophomeni: seeds of the Natal Midlands conflict (with Nalini Naidoo)
25. Detention without trial: abuse of human rights as state strategy
26. Detainees’ hunger strike: the power of the powerless
27. The Black Sash Advice Office: witness to racism and apartheid bureaucracy
28. BESG: working and building with and for the people
29. David Webster and the death squads: victim of his own research
30. Trust Feed massacre: securocrats and mistaken identity (with Nalini Naidoo)

PART FIVE: THE NINETIES

31. Seven Day War: a series of unanswered questions and closing a painful chapter (with Nalini Naidoo)32. Buhelezi, Inkatha and the persistence of censorship
33. Luthuli and Buthelezi: a tale of two books
34. Umkhonto we Sizwe: guns, pens and the rewriting of history
35. Cricket boycott betrayed
36. Chris Hani: enigma of the struggle
37. Stoking the myth of revolution
38. Liberals, liberalism and the exercise of power
39. Crimes against humanity and white amnesia
40. The denigration of history
41. Tony Leon, the Democratic Alliance and capital punishment
42. Pietermaritzburg’s dirty war and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
43. The Truth Commission: unfinished business
44. Mandela, secular sainthood and rugby matches
45. Mandela: the long walk ends

PART SIX: THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

46. It’s all in the label
47. Political opposition: chihuahua or watchdog?
48. Undermining the prospect of the rainbow nation
49. The re-racialisation of South African society
50. Fear and self-censorship: enemies of academic freedom
51. Street renaming and the airbrushing of history
52. Legalism, bureaucracy and poor governance
53. Corruption: a betrayal of trust
54. Leaders, national institutions and moral decline
55. Sport, political agendas and racial quotas
56. Athletics South Africa: tragedy and farce
57. Orwell’s Animal Farm in South Africa
58. Party, state and public institutions
59. Laugh It Off: taking on the corporates
60. Globalisation: re-engineered capitalism and the South African response
61. Targeting the press in a democratic South Africa
62. Democracy under threat in the new South Africa
63. Revolt in the townships
64. Caster Semenya: real and imagined victim
65. ‘What is to be done?’: the rise of ethnic nationalism and the stalling of the two-stage revolution66. FIFA World Cup, 2010: colonialism returns to South Africa
67. Sport, community and the betrayal of the anti-apartheid movement
68. Standing up for the Constitution in the face of anarchy
69. Anger in the workplace and a widening wage gap
70. Public service and individual conscience: Wouter Basson and Sheryl Cwele
71. Heroism and a partisan history
72. A nation in mourning
73. COSATU and the revival of workerism
74. From the Reichstag to Cape Town: a tale of two fires, 1933 and 2022
75. Racism and Cricket South Africa
76. South Africa and Russia: looking in a mirror called Moscow
77. South Africa captured: the Zondo Commission
78. Martyrs for freedom: Navalny and Biko
79. The (satirical) tale of a transforming university: Jabulani University in

Christopher Merrett worked for thirty years as an academic librarian and then as a campus administrator at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg. He completed his formal working life as a journalist at theWitness and is now a freelance writer. He also manages the publications programme of the Natal SocietyFoundation and is the editor of Natalia. He has degrees in Geography, Information Studies and History from the universities of Oxford, Sheffield, Natal and Cape Town. His publications mainly relate to the history and politics of sport; human rights issues, especially freedom of expression and information; and the history of Pietermaritzburg.