At home with Carl Niehaus

The man in the grey pinstripe suit doesn’t look like a firebrand revolutionary who has so disturbed the ruling party that it has given him the boot.

He looks like a businessman or, possibly, even the dominee he once wanted to be. Ironically – and though he would probably be most offended at the suggestion – the older Carl Niehaus gets, and the more he wears conservative suits, the more he looks like he could be an Afrikaner politician from the “old days”.

Perhaps it’s the thick glasses…

At his Rosebank apartment, art pieces and photos of his children, himself, and the ANC struggle icons of his 42- year career at the party decorate the walls.

“I love family. Family is very important to me,” he says.

Niehaus was born in Zeerust in North West and relocated to Witpoortjie in Roodepoort with his family at the age of 13.

“I joined the ANC at the age of 19 in Botswana with the hope of full liberation,” he says.

Niehaus says his political views were formed at the age of 16 when he didn’t like what he saw on church mission trips into Soweto.

“You can’t separate my politics from me,” he argues. “It’s been my whole life, I went to prison at the age of 23 for over nine years.”

Niehaus says in prison, the guard would drag the master key along the steel bars every morning at 4am to wake them up.

“That’s something Tata Madiba and I shared, we were always up by 4am. He would phone and say, my boy, I think we must issue a press release. That’s just after he listened to the first news on the radio,” Niehaus says.

Niehaus still wakes up that early every day to enjoy coffee.

“I am addicted to coffee. When I stumble out of bed, I run to that machine,” he says.

Niehaus says it became worse when he went to the Netherlands as an ambassador for South Africa.

“The Dutch love coffee and they drink it strong. They don’t add milk or sugar,” he says.

Another thing that keeps him on his feet is his young partner Noluthando’s toddler in the house.

“The moment Nkanyezi comes through the door, the whole place changes,” he says.

Niehaus admits that he has started watching cartoons with the toddler.

“I have to negotiate because, come late afternoon, I want to watch the news,” he says.

Earlier in the week, Nkanyezi saw Niehaus on television.

“He shouted, ‘Carl, Carl!’ Then he complained, ‘Mama, Carl is not speaking to me; why is Carl not speaking to me?’” Niehaus says.

His serious face turns soft when he brags by showing his eldest daughter Helen’s cartoon illustration of him, her, and her son.

His second daughter, Khanya, 11, recently asked him to toyi toyi in front of her school over the school’s reopening.

“You are not radical enough, Dada,” she said when he didn’t take on the case.

Niehaus says people might think he is too radical.

“I think I’m just okay. I’m exactly where I want to be. I believe in the things I do. I don’t do things I don’t believe in. It’s that simple.”

Niehaus says his regrets are more personal than political.

“I neglected my first daughter because I was too busy with politics. It also cost me my two marriages because I also neglected the women in my life. It was politics day and night,” he says.

Niehaus says he takes on life differently now.

“There’s an attitude that everything must be sacrificed for the struggle, your family, personal life, but I’m not making the same mistakes again,” he says.

Niehaus says he doesn’t feel cast out by the party and adds he had a lot of support from his comrades.

“I can’t be banned from the ANC. I have been in the ANC long before many of them were thoughts in their mamas’ heads. I’m not leaving the ANC, it’s in my blood, it’s my family,” Niehaus says.

He adds he is not fighting with the ANC but rather with some among its leadership who have allegedly betrayed the ideals of the party.

“They have the right to engage with me. But they don’t have the right to silence me. If they do try, they’ll find I can be very ‘obstropalous’. I will not be silenced,” he says.

He says he will never quit politics or retire. “Never.”

– marizkac@citizen.co.za