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Alex Boraine pays tribute to his dear friend, Frederik van Zyl Slabbertfirst met Van Zyl Slabbert in April 1974, but his reputation had gone ahead of him. Word had filtered up from Grahamstown to Johannesburg, where I was, concerning the young, attractive, charismatic, pipe-smoking Afrikaner who had become a guru to many students at Rhodes University. I had also watched with interest and admiration his political campaign, which led to his securing the Rondebosch constituency for the Progressive Party in May 1974.
The reason for our face-to-face meeting was my nomination to contest the by-election in the Pinelands constituency, which was to be held on 12 June 1974. At the time, I was working at Anglo American in Johannesburg. Van Zyl and his vivacious wife, Mana, visited us for dinner to discuss strategy for the by-election. Jenny and I immediately fell under his spell. He is warm, very bright and has a quirky sense of humour. We talked politics, ate good food, drank wine, and a friendship was born.
We saw a lot of each other in the run-up to the election, and when I managed to very narrowly win the election, he lifted me off the ground and exclaimed: “Now we are in the
shit together.”
We went into Parliament together and sat alongside each other on the back benches. The National Party members could not understand how we could be friends. Slabbert was a ware Afrikaner, graduated from Stellenbosch University, which had produced so many of South Africa’s National Party prime ministers. I was the English-speaking “boere-hater” who went to Rhodes University and was described as a liberal ex-priest.
But Van Zyl and I had more things in common than most people realised. Both of us were from working-class families who had known what it was to be poor. Van Zyl began his university studies in preparation for the Dutch Reformed Church (he very soon switched to Sociology). I was studying to become a minister in the Methodist Church. Both of us, separately, taught Sunday school in dusty black townships! More importantly, neither of us had worked our way up the ranks from city or provincial councils. We were not professional politicians. Further, we were impatient with the formality and the procedures of Parliament and never, like so many others, fell in love with the place. Both of us were embarrassed by the Progressive Party’s policy on the qualified franchise and worked quickly to change that policy to universal franchise.
Van Zyl is rock-solid in his commitment to an open society, and I share this vision. Although Van Zyl admired and even loved Helen Suzman, he felt that she and some other ‘old progs’ really despised the Afrikaner, and some of their opposition to apartheid was confused with their antipathy towards Afrikaners. He felt that he was accepted almost as a token because he was the handsome golden boy, bright, articulate and civilised. I sympathised with him in this and it brought us closer in friendship, but also into an alliance to shift from politics ‘as usual’. This inevitably led to Van Zyl being promoted as the future leader of the Progressive Party. Despite his great admiration for Colin Eglin as a man of absolute integrity, he was keen to succeed him. Van Zyl has always been a leader and is most comfortable when he is in a leadership position.
It’s important to distinguish between Van Zyl as a parliamentarian and Van Zyl as the leader of the opposition. Before he became leader, he was polite and civil and overly academic in his speeches.
His analytical prowess was without equal, but often wasted on the stubborn, arrogant government members. Reading his speeches today clearly reveals a brilliance and foresight that deserve a much wider readership. Van Zyl was at his best in the debates we had in our own parliamentary caucus. He was in his element, and although many good contributions were made by other members, it was almost as if we were waiting for him to give the final word and the direction – and he never disappointed his colleagues. His style was fairly laid-back and relaxed, but on occasion he could be very tough, and he never suffered fools gladly.
When he became leader of the opposition, he seemed to grow in stature. He became bolder in his speeches, and dealt with spurious interjections with fiery eloquence. I sometimes felt quite sorry for the National Party members opposite because deep down they admired him and felt that he was one of their own who had lost his way.
His press was not always positive. I recall being sent by our caucus to talk to Ken Owen, the then editor of the Sunday Times and a wordsmith of some note. We couldn’t understand why he was constantly critical of Van Zyl’s performance in the House. Owen was as irascible as ever and told me bluntly that Van Zyl’s problem was that he was too understanding, too civil and too academic.
Owen loathed the cruel policies of the National Party, but I don’t think he understood the atmosphere of Parliament and the need to convince and to persuade. Owen may have had a point, which all of us needed to hear, but I have no doubt that Van Zyl’s words were amongst those that sowed the seeds which led to De Klerk’s famous speech on 2 February 1990 and ultimately to the new democracy in South Africa.
Van Zyl and I often talked about how long it would be possible for us to stay in an all-white Parliament. With PW Botha as a militaristic prime minister, it got more and more difficult to justify our place in Parliament while the whole country seemed to be controlled by the security forces.
Matters came to a head in 1983, when Parliament approved a new constitution, in terms of which a tricameral assembly would be established. This would include a place for coloured and Indian South Africans, but would continue to exclude the vast majority of South Africans who happened to be black. Our party opposed this constitution very powerfully, but we lost the election hands down. Van Zyl and I began to talk more seriously about the possibility of leaving Parliament. Towards the end of 1985, we agreed that unless the President used his state of the nation address to introduce some major reforms, we would have to reconsider our continued presence in Parliament.
In January 1986, before the no-confidence debate, Eglin as chairman of the caucus, Van Zyl as party leader, and I as Federal Council Chairman met to discuss our strategy. That night, Van Zyl called me on the phone and asked me to come and see him. We met, and he told me that he had made up his mind to leave Parliament the end of the following week and would announce it in his speech at the conclusion of the no-confidence debate. I was thrilled and said I would do the same.
However, Van Zyl said he would prefer to make the announcement on his own as leader of the party and that I should hold the party together and leave a week or so later. Van Zyl shocked the caucus by revealing immediately before going into the House that he was going to resign. He delivered his speech as leader of the opposition, then made his announcement, and all hell broke loose. The National Party was furious because he was effectively impugning Parliament – their Parliament – the media were all over the story, our own party was stunned and extremely depressed and most of my colleagues very angry at Van Zyl’s move.
A week later, I announced my own decision to resign from Parliament. Despite my writing in two books about Van Zyl’s and my agreement to leave Parliament in this way, RW Johnson, in a recent book, states categorically that because I didn’t think I would get the leadership of the party, I decided to leave Parliament in a pique. Johnson, of course, could easily have picked up the telephone and asked Van Zyl Slabbert for an accurate account of events, but his antipathy to certain people and his habit of playing the man rather than the ball means that his personal prejudices trump his ability as a writer.
Strong though our convictions were, I don’t think that Van Zyl and I fully anticipated the fallout. The consequences of walking out of Parliament were really quite severe. Firstly, the National Party and its press did everything possible to play down our decision, which called into question the very institution of Parliament, not so much as a place of policy-making, but rather as something illegitimate and unrepresentative. This was anathema to a government that was trying to portray South Africa to the outside world as a democracy, in which provision was made for representation of all sections of the population. The National Party and its media supporters were quite vicious in their sustained attacks on us.
Secondly, we hadn’t realised just how strong the criticism was going to be from our own colleagues. It meant that we hardly ever saw them again. While the criticism of me was strong, the loss of Van Zyl as party leader meant that the vitriol was far greater towards him than towards me. Suzman herself was vehemently opposed to our departure, but fortunately, some months later, we made peace with her and remained good friends until her death in 2009.
I should stress that our friendship was not only about politics.
There were also marvellous opportunities for socialising in each other’s homes. Van Zyl loves his friends, and is never happier than when surrounded by good, trusted friends. I recall so many boisterous evenings at his home – yards of boerewors, dozens of lamb chops and he and I preparing our own witch’s brew known as a smoortjie, in fierce competition with each other, and, of course, gallons of red wine! He was ever the expansive and generous host.
There were so many special moments – camping overnight in the caves of Gansbaai, grilling fish on the beach, a trip to the Cederberg after a hectic campaign, lying on our backs gazing at the stars and hours of conversation about the wonder of the universe on the one hand and of agnosticism and atheism on the other, and always the dream of a truly open society in South Africa. Van Zyl always cherished the fantasy that one day when we were all old, his close friends would each build a house in Swaziland, and talk and dine as the runway got shorter and shorter for all of us.
Van and I got together immediately after we walked out of Parliament. We agreed that we would aim to focus on promoting dialogue, which would hopefully lead to formal negotiations in our country. But first we would consult with as many people as possible, and in particular leaders in the black community. This we did, and the almost unanimous view was that Van and I should start up a new organisation to encourage dialogue from the far left to the far right.
Both of us were thinking about an institute for democracy, but it was Van Zyl who came up with the name, Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa. “Idasa has a certain African ring to it,” Van Zyl commented wryly.
Van Zyl suggested that he should be chairman of Idasa and that I should be the full-time executive director. So we began another adventure together. No money, no organisation! But this soon changed. The response to the new organisation was astonishing.
We received grants, mainly from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, through their foreign ministries. Van was accomplished in so many ways, but he was not very good at fund-raising.
He was decidedly embarrassed, gazing at his shoes, looking out of the window; on more than one occasion, when I was at the point of mentioning the amount we were asking for, he would ask directions to the men’s room. The Scandinavian funding enabled us to hold the founding conference in Port Elizabeth, open offices and appoint staff. We produced a magazine, arranged conferences and workshops throughout South Africa and managed to attract parties from the left, the right and indeed from the middle. Soon we had branches all over South Africa with more than one hundred staff members.
However, the event that really put Idasa on the map was our decision to meet a group of exiled leaders from the banned ANC.
This was precipitated by a meeting between Van Zyl and Breyten Breytenbach on Gorée Island, which is a short boat ride from Dakar, Senegal. They were there for a conference and discussed the possibility of Idasa taking a large group of South Africans to meet with the ANC. Gorée is a place full of sinister memories of slaves being transported to the New World and would be a secure meeting place full of symbolism.
Our challenge was to persuade the ANC that it would be worthwhile for them to meet with a group of mainly white Afrikaners. In order to do this, Van Zyl and I met with leading members of the ANC in Lusaka, Zambia; several meetings followed with Thabo Mbeki in different parts of the world. The ANC reaction was fairly lukewarm to begin with because they probably thought it would be totally impossible for us to pull it off. But eventually, after yet another visit to Lusaka in 1986, we persuaded them that this meeting would have enormous benefits for a future democratic South Africa.
During our various pre-Dakar meetings, Van explained to the ANC that our major concern was to put negotiation politics firmly on the agenda. We made it clear that we had no power or authority, no mandate, although the proposed conference could be a precursor to genuine negotiations with those who had both the authority and the mandate to find a peaceful solution to South Africa’s ills.
It was not an easy conference to organise. Through the assistance of Breyten Breytenbach and his association with Danielle Mitterrand, the French president’s wife, we managed to persuade President Abdou Diouf of Senegal to host our meeting.
We travelled the world raising money to cover the costs of the event. The emphasis was very strongly on bringing a group of white Afrikaners who had influence in their own circles, and we hoped that this would in turn have a great impact on the wider Afrikaner political world. Because our proposed meeting with the ANC was illegal – it was a banned organisation – and even dangerous, we had to be absolutely confidential in all our planning. We never telephoned or wrote to any of the prospective delegates who would accompany us, but spoke to them personally. When we realised we had finally raised sufficient funds to cover the costs, we informed the delegates that a date had been set and the meetings were definitely going to happen.
Van Zyl went ahead to meet with Mbeki and Aziz Pahad in London to make absolutely sure that the ANC was still on board and to finalise the last bit of preparations with Madame Mitterrand. I brought the delegates from South Africa the following day, and we met up in a hotel in London with Van Zyl, Thabo and Aziz and made final preparations. We then flew to Paris to complete the necessary diplomatic arrangements, and then travelled on to Dakar. It was a long journey and the tension was palpable.
Van was extremely nervous; so much hinged on whether or not the ANC delegation would actually turn up in Dakar.
However, when we landed in Senegal, we found the ANC delegation, led by Mbeki, waiting to greet us on the apron of the airport at about 01h30 in the morning. There were also a number of people from the Senegalese government, journalists and some curious onlookers. Van Zyl was enormously relieved, heaved a deep sigh of relief and decided that all the effort that had been made was worthwhile.
While it is true that there were many able people at this historic conference, coming both from South Africa and from around the world as exiles to represent the ANC, there is no doubt that two major figures were Thabo Mbeki, later the President of South Africa, and Van Zyl Slabbert. Whether it was meeting with diplomats to resolve quite serious differences, engaging the media, giving direction or summing up long, interminable discussions, Van Zyl was an absolute master. He was very anxious to portray the visit to Dakar as a visit by Afrikaners. And this he did as an Afrikaner himself. Once again, Van Zyl had shown himself to be a leader par excellence.
Both Van Zyl and I have written elsewhere in some detail concerning the Dakar visit. Suffice to say that it is difficult to assess how influential the Dakar meetings were in the greater scheme of things, which led to negotiations between the ANC and the government of South Africa in 1990. But there can be no doubt that, as a result of the enormous press coverage in South Africa and around the world, these meetings gave the ANC a human face.
White people in particular inside South Africa began to realise that these so-called terrorists and communists were, first and foremost, South Africans who were struggling to bring about a new democracy in South Africa. And this helped to prepare both the ANC and the government to begin the remarkable shift to the negotiation table.
Our relationship with Mbeki had begun on a very deep level and he and Van Zyl forged a very strong friendship. When FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC and Mbeki returned to South Africa, it was Van Zyl who organised accommodation for him. They had a number of meetings together, but Van Zyl soon realised that all the initiative was coming from his side and, for some unknown reason, Thabo was playing it very cool. I think Van Zyl had hoped that he would play a major role in the development of South Africa in the consolidation of democracy and a human rights culture.
But it was not to be. Mbeki probably felt that because of Van Zyl’s strong convictions he would not be an ANC lackey; he would not be a loyalist; he would be true to his principles and convictions and would probably cause a lot of consternation within the ANC leadership. But I think Van Zyl still regrets the fact that he was not given the opportunity to share his political analysis, his savvy and his wisdom with the leadership of the ANC. I think this cost that leadership dearly. Van Zyl is a giant in the South African context, and could have – and would have – played a major role in avoiding some of the many real and grave errors of judgment made by the ANC.
As a result of the shortsightedness of Mbeki, Van Zyl’s role was reduced to that of a commentator rather than an active participant.
After four long and often tortuous years of negotiation, and the historic and successful, first-ever democratic election in 1994, Idasa continued its work, but Van Zyl became more and more involved in business.
He was as successful in this sphere as he was in all the other areas of his life. He started his own company and became a board chair of at least two other successful companies.
However, he remains very much in demand as a political analyst and is often seen on television and heard on radio.
Van Zyl is a born leader and has exercised this expertise at school, at university, in politics and in business. But he was much more than a natural and gifted leader.
He is a warm, caring father to his children, Tania and Riko. My youngest son, Nick, spent a lot of time playing with Riko when they were much younger, and I saw at first hand the strong relation between Van Zyl and his two children.
And this has deepened over the years as Tania and Riko have become adults. And now he is not only a devoted father, but also a devoted grandfather. It’s wonderful to see this strong, powerful man so caring and gentle with his children and grandchildren.
Van Zyl’s life would count for a lot less without his wife, Jane. Jane, with her expertise in fabrics, and mohair in particular, her wonderful eye for colour, her laughter and her generosity of spirit, is loved by all. But it is she who is Van’s anchor.
His life is often tempestuous; he feels deeply about his country and its peoples; everyone wants a piece of him.
And it is Jane who keeps him grounded; who creates around him a warm, delightful, open home and brings an air of serenity into the life of a man often disturbed and troubled by the shortcomings of government, the lack of delivery of essential services to the poor and the fragility of the independence of the judiciary and the threat to the rule of law.
I have known Van Zyl for more than 35 years, and have admired him as an academic, teacher, politician, analyst, writer, businessman, husband and father. But above all, I cherish our warm friendship, which I’ve enjoyed and found so stimulating and challenging. I salute Van Zyl as a great son of Africa, but I love him as a very special friend. ▲
Alex Boraine
Extracts from “The Passion for Reason
– Essays in Honour of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert”, published by Jonathan Ball Publishers
Hours of conversation about the wonder of the universe on the one hand and of agnosticism and atheism on the other, and always the dream of a truly open society in South Africa
Dear Dad,
We wanted to be a part of what is essentially a tribute to your extraordinary achievements in public life, but also to the remarkable qualities that make you an exceptional human being, friend and, in our case, father.
To the outside world, you will always be known as a free thinker, one who refuses to be fenced in by doctrine, dogma and ‘ologies’ of any kind.
You are driven constantly to question your own assumptions and ideals, always refusing complacency. And you expect nothing less from those who spar with you intellectually (we were not spared either!).
These are some of the characteristics that you will always be remembered for in the South African landscape, and your friends and colleagues expound on these in more detail in the pages that follow.
On the home front, these are the very same attributes that have helped to shape us.
No, you were never very good at packing school lunches. You were even worse in your attempts at DIY around the house.
We wonder whether your makeshift postbox in Rouwkoop Road is still standing; if so, it outlived the bookshelf you built above your daughter’s bed, and which fell on her head in the middle of the night when the cat jumped on it.
You were not good at attending school PTA meetings or any of the normal, boring domestic stuff that parents are expected to do.
But you let us have splash nights in the bath, where we could run down the passage and dive-bomb water all over the bathroom.
And you let us drive while sitting on your lap, without seat belts, racing toward the tree in the middle of the driveway.
And you took us camping and then out bodysurfing in the rough waters of Betty’s Bay.
And when your son turned blue from food poisoning, you rushed him 25 kilometres to the hospital in the middle of the night.
And when your daughter cracked open her head on the iron railings, you held her hand while they did the stitches, and then gave her a box of Smarties.
And when you taught us to play chess, you were uncompromising; you won game after game until we learnt how to win; and even when you let us win, we never knew you had.
While Mom was the one who kissed away most of our cuts and bruises, you were the one, as we got older, who sat us down when life had knocked us and explained that the world owed us nothing, but that we could own it if we wanted it badly enough.
You told us that no matter how much we achieved in the world, if we couldn’t see ourselves in the eyes of a beggar on a street corner, then we had achieved nothing.
You said that the only things that mattered were being honest to yourself and to others, and that friendships had to be carefully and constantly nurtured. The contributions in these pages by Rocky, Breyten, Mike, Alex and so many others speak for themselves in this regard.
These were all the things you did just as our Dad.
Back to the public domain: all the times that we would see you on billboards, on stages and public platforms, in newspapers and on television, we would wonder at this towering presence, with his formidable intellect and flowing speeches which, at first, we understood little of.
We were very proud of you, but also somewhat intimidated by this powerful man with all his adoring followers. Was this really the same guy who carried us from the car to bed after nights out with friends, tickling us on the way?
Then we grew up and knew it was all you.
As teenagers, how we moaned and groaned when, after a late night, you would haul us out of our slumbers for a walk in the forest, exclaiming, “We cannot waste such a glorious day.”
How we now miss the days that we slept in. Now we have our own children, jobs and responsibilities.
We walk into your home, with our kids rushing toward you, screaming “Oupa!”, waiting to receive their peppermints and one of your great big bear hugs… you look at each other with endless love and adoration.
Time to finish what could be a book in its own right. Pa, we are both often asked: “What was it like growing up in the shadow of your father?” To this we can only reply that we have never stood in your shadow; we have always stood beside you at midday and basked in your light.
Ons het jou baie lief Pa,
Tania & Riko
