Hain A Pretoria Boy

The Story of South Africa's 'Public Enemy Number 1'
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77619-123-9
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

'A tour de force of an extraordinary half-century of campaigning for justice' - Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and United Nations Development Chief Peter Hain - famous for his commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle - has had a dramatic 50-year political career, both in Britain and in his childhood home of South Africa, in an extraordinary journey from Pretoria to the House of Lords. Hain vividly describes the arrest and harassment of his activist parents and their friends in the early 1960s, the hanging of a close family friend, and the Hains' enforced London exile in 1966. After organising militant campaigns in the UK against touring South African rugby and cricket sides, he was dubbed 'Public Enemy Number One' by the South African media. Narrowly escaping jail for disrupting all-white South African sports tours, he was maliciously framed for bank robbery and nearly assassinated by a letter bomb. In 2017-2018 he used British parliamentary privilege to expose looting and money laundering in then President Jacob Zuma's administration, informed by a 'Deep Throat' source. While acknowledging that the ANC government has lost its way, Hain exhorts South Africans to re-embrace Nelson Mandela's vision.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hain, Peter

Leseproben

Introduction

‘SO who do you want to win, Peter? The Springboks or England?’

The land of my childhood or the land of my adoption?

‘Wales,’ is my invariable reply. Wales is the land that ended up as my home for over three decades, longer than anywhere else in my life, and where, reflecting intense rugby rivalry, a local wag once quipped: ‘You may not be Welsh, Peter, but at least you’re not bloody English!’

That was in May 1990 when I was, against all predictions, overwhelmingly chosen by the local constituency Labour Party to become Member of Parliament (MP) for the rugby stronghold of Neath, outside Swansea. The Welsh Rugby Union was founded at the town’s Castle Hotel in 1881.

The journey from boyhood in Pretoria, South Africa’s seat of government, to MP for Neath and on to several of the highest roles in Britain’s government, was a long one, with many ups and downs, twists and turns, triumphs and disappointments, and much danger and joy.

A happy childhood became increasingly fraught as my anti-apartheid parents, members of the non-racial Liberal Party of South Africa – Mom the secretary and Dad the chair of the Pretoria branch – were finally forced, with their four children, into exile in 1966.

Arriving in London aged 16, I had no comprehension that a little over three years later I would find myself leading an anti-apartheid campaign using the unprecedented tactic of pitch invasion against the 1969–1970 touring Springbok rugby team. That campaign also forced the cancellation of the 1970 South African cricket tour, a seismic event that helped propel South Africa into global sporting isolation for more than 20 years, and turned me into a bête noire for white South Africans: ‘Public Enemy Number One’ they labelled me.

Nearly 50 years later, some even sent bittersweet emails when I used parliamentary privilege in the House of Lords to expose allegations of looting and money laundering by President Jacob Zuma and his business acolytes, the Gupta brothers: ‘Congratulations and thank you, though we still hate you for stopping the Springboks,’ said one; another, Marius Nieuwoudt, was typical: ‘I hated you with a passion.’

‘But,’ I replied politely, ‘the values behind fighting state corruption today are the same as fighting apartheid sports tours 50 years ago.’

FOR the majority of South Africans not aware of my anti-apartheid backstory, a British ‘Lord’ using parliamentary privilege to suddenly expose evidence of state capture and money laundering in 2017 might have seemed quixotic.

In September 2017 I attacked Bell Pottinger, the British-based global public-relations company, and followed this with further and much more detailed revelations in the House of Lords about corruption. The outraged supporters of Jacob Zuma and the Guptas, along with some in the populist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), acidly remarked that I was a ‘white’, almost caricature ‘colonial’ figure.

So why me? The answer is straightforward. I was asked by prominent members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to help them combat the rampant corruption and cronyism that was destroying the country. This corruption was seemingly orchestrated by their own president, whom they were seeking to oust. Their request originated from an informal discussion over dinner organised by a mutual friend, Nick Binedell, the highly respected founder-director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria. This was in late July 2017 when I was in Johannesburg teaching as a visiting professor at Wits Business School.

One of those present at this private meeting was former finance minister Pravin Gordhan. He had bravely spoken out against the cancer that had spread from the Zuma presidency right down through all levels of the government. Others present, members of the ANC’s national executive, were then in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle to elect a new leader of the party. The candidacy of Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was pitted against the powerful Zuma machine, which had dispensed patronage for more than a decade.

I had met Pravin Gordhan some years before in London, when he was on an official government visit, but the others present were new to me, and I to them. At the start of our meal, under Nick’s genial but firm chairing, our exchanges were tentative. They were feeling me out, each of us anxious about the ubiquity of the state intelligence network, which Zuma had commandeered in his own nefarious interests. Mobile phones were switched off and things gradually loosened up.

I had become increasingly aware of the scale of corruption during successive visits to South Africa, especially after I retired as an MP in 2015. But not being intimately involved in South African public life, I hadn’t quite realised how deep-seated and prodigious was the reported looting by Zuma’s family and the Gupta brothers – Ajay, Atul and Rajesh (Tony) – whose vast multi-billion-rand business empire spanned media, mining and computing, and had grown exponentially under Zuma’s patronage.

In his dry, clinical way, Pravin spelt it out. His favoured phrase was ‘join the dots’: in other words, connect all the diverse components of state capture in the Zuma regime. Every government department had been penetrated by Zuma-appointed ministers and civil servants. Virtually every state agency had been similarly ‘captured’. Perhaps the only exception was the Office of the Public Protector (a kind of ombudsman mandated by the Constitution), then under the direction of the formidably independent Advocate Thuli Madonsela. All of the Zuma/Gupta appointees were no doubt placed to do their masters’ bidding rather than because they had the ability or expertise to perform the task in hand. And of course to clamber aboard the gravy train.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ I asked, more out of solidarity than expectation.

‘Well, actually, there might be,’ Pravin mused, thinking aloud. Others chipped in, one or two of them highly placed inside the state system and present because of their integrity and deep sense of betrayal at what was happening to the ‘rainbow nation’ that had beamed so brightly under Nelson Mandela.

Inside the country, brave journalists with the upstart online newspaper Daily Maverick and investigative units such as Scorpio and amaBhungane were increasingly exposing the sheer extent of state capture. But a lot of the looted money had been laundered abroad, Pravin explained, estimating as much as R7 billion (or £350 million). Although the opposition to Zuma inside the ANC was growing, support for Cyril Ramaphosa building, and civil society groups (so important in securing the demise of apartheid) agitating again, the international dimension of state capture was something they hadn’t managed to get a grip on. Maybe I could assist with that, Pravin and the others suggested.

During half a century in politics – from stopping whites-only South African sports tours under apartheid to 12 years as a Labour government minister – I had always been forensically focused on trying to make a difference. I was also impatient with big rhetorical flourishes, instead preferring specific practical achievements. Could this be just such an instance?

OVER the years, I had enjoyed returning regularly to South Africa, mostly on holiday. These trips included being driven four hours from East London deep into the rural former Transkei to Hobeni, home of the Donald Woods Foundation (which I chair), not that far from Nelson Mandela’s birthplace at Mvezo.

In December 2015, my wife, Elizabeth, and I found ourselves back again. I had unexpectedly been given a national honour, the Grand Companion of OR Tambo in silver, for an ‘excellent contribution to the liberation struggle’. It was a privilege to be present at the Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria for the national awards ceremony – charming, dignified and moving, without any pretentiousness or pageantry, and intended to symbolise ‘the new culture that informs a South African rebirth’. Presiding was the Chancellor of Orders, Dr Cassius Lubisi, a former anti-apartheid activist prominent in protests against the 1990 ‘rebel’ English cricket tour led by Mike Gatting. Old veterans of the resistance – some of whom had suffered solitary confinement or torture – walked with difficulty on sticks to receive their awards; several awards were accepted posthumously by surviving relatives.

Like other recipients of the OR Tambo award, I was given a beautiful walking stick carved out of dark indigenous wood as ‘a symbol of appreciation for the support and solidarity shown’. Entwined around it is a copper majola (mole snake), said in African mythology to visit babies when they are born to prepare them for successful and safe adult lives – as a friend and protector. I was also given a beautiful scroll with my name inscribed, a neck badge and a lapel rosette. Bob Hughes, former chair of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), had been a recipient in 2004, and others in the international campaign had been similarly honoured.

As the highest honour the country can bestow, the OR Tambo awards were, as always, given by the sitting president. At the time this was Jacob Zuma, and neither of us imagined then that our paths would cross again. ‘I’m so pleased, so very pleased it’s you,’ he whispered to me on stage; at a personal level he could be quite charming. Returning to my seat, I raised...