Doing all you can for the struggle

The first time I voted was not 1994.

The first time I voted was at the behest of FW de Klerk. It was the 1992 Yes-No referendum asking should we, white South Africa, continue down the path of dismantling apartheid? I remember going to vote at my old school.

Political parties massed under the bluegum trees, braai smoke filled the air, and the AWB were handing out boerie rolls. “I don’t eat meat,” I snapped when they waved a sausage in my face, and it felt like a powerful political statement.

I proudly voted YES, and how big it seemed, how magnanimous. I was taking action for my black brothers, don’t you know? And that’s it – my great and personal battle against apartheid.

I can give you my excuses: I was only 20; I had a baby; I was liberal; as a teenager I even had an “Unban the ANC” poster; my stint at university included “political studies”; my family regularly made sandwiches for hungry black people knocking on our door; we paid our gardener more than anyone; we didn’t keep an enamel coffee cup under the sink just for him.

See? So liberal…

Could I have done more? Definitely.

But back then it felt like I was doing all I could. Such was the sleight of hand of growing up under the apartheid regime.

ALSO READ: FW de Klerk is reflection of a country he loved

The thing is, people aren’t so much born as built. We are the multi-layered products of what we witness, of what we are taught, of who we know, of what we are fed both literally and metaphorically.

We were fed poo sandwiches. And FW de Klerk ate a giant poo sandwich. He was reared in the certainty that he – a white Afrikaans man – was the apotheosis of God’s creation. Everyone and everything told him as much, from his mother’s lap to his conservative education, to his entrenchment in the old bastions of Afrikanerdom.

Then he became president of South Africa – and ensured he was the last white president of South Africa.

Now he’s gone. Call him a traitor, call him a peacemaker, call him pragmatic, call him an accessory to murder who died without naming names.

FW de Klerk was all of these things.

Could he have done more? Definitely. But back then it felt like he was doing all he could.

NOW READ: De Klerk didn’t embrace democracy. He surrendered to its inevitability