Republican News · Thursday 9 January 2003

inspiring visit

BY MARTIN SPAIN

Martin Ferris is pictured outside Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island

The week before Christmas, Kerry TD Martin Ferris and I had the honour of representing Sinn Féin at the 51st national conference of the African National Congress, held on the campus of Stellenbosch University just outside Cape Town.

The location of the conference was highly significant. Stellenbosch is regarded as the intellectual and spiritual home of apartheid and the main work of the conference was conducted in a centre dedicated to the architect of racial segregation in South Africa, the first National Party prime minister, DF Malan.

For the ANC to choose to gather here sent out a clear signal that there is no going back to the bad old days, that the new national democracy extends even to these leafy mansioned neighbourhoods, but this was also a unifying gesture. As one media commentator wrote: "For many it was a moment of truth. The moment at which a divided past becomes part of a common South African history."

We travelled to South Africa to express solidarity with our ANC comrades but also, against a backdrop of crisis in the Irish peace process, for a series of meetings with representatives of the ANC leadership. We were there to ask them to use their influence to put pressure on the British government to honour its commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.

During the course of the five-day conference, Martin Ferris and I had meetings with the party's Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe; with Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini, ANC International Affairs head, and a group of members of the ANC National Executive's foreign affairs subcommittee; and finally with Cyril Ramaphosa, who has played an active role in the Irish peace process in his role as one of the two independent arms inspectors.

At each of these meetings, we updated the ANC comrades on the current difficulties in the Irish peace process and the dangers of a prolonged political vacuum. They in turn assured us of the ANC's ongoing support for the peace process and said that they would do everything in their power to see the Agreement implemented in full.

That is a good tight summing up of the political work of the trip, but if this display of solidarity was most welcome, the hospitality and comradeship shown to us from the moment of our arrival said more again.

Our ANC hosts had the serious business of conference to organise, but they also made sure that their international visitors had every opportunity to experience Cape Town and its environs. With hand on heart I can honestly say that I have never been anywhere as beautiful. Cape Town itself is a clean and compact city nestling on the coast in the shadow of the world famous Table Mountain, a most spectacular backdrop.

Twelve kilometres from Cape Town is Robben Island, a place of banishment, exile, isolation and imprisonment. During the apartheid years Robben Island became internationally known for its institutional brutality. Its role was to isolate opponents of apartheid and to crush their morale. Some freedom fighters spent more than a quarter of a century in prison for their beliefs.

Those imprisoned there succeeded on a psychological and political level in turning their gaol into a symbol of freedom and personal liberation. Robben Island came to symbolise the triumph of the human spirit over enormous hardship and adversity.

On our visit, we sat in a communal cell and heard from a former political prisoner about the realities of prison life, of the absurd and arbitrary obsession of the authorities in classifying prisoners as 'coloured' or 'black'. We were told how the consequences of such classification stretched from whether a prisoner received boots or sandals (coloured prisoners got the boots) to how much bread he would receive each day.

We visited the cell where Mandela was once held and the exercise yard where prisoners were forced to break rocks, but perhaps the most moving part of the tour for me was a simple pile of stones at the quarry from which those rocks were hacked. Nelson Mandela, whose eyesight suffers to this day from the dust of that pointless prison work, made a poignant gesture on his return to the island to mark its inauguration as a museum, when he picked up a rock and dropped it at the entrance to the quarry. Some 2,000 former political prisoners, also in attendance, followed suit, and the resulting mound is now an integral part of the Robben Island experience.

Nelson Mandela at the ANC Conference

We were also brought up Table Mountain itself, not one for those with vertigo, as a feature of the cable car that takes visitors to 4,000 feet above sea level is its glass walls and revolving floor, offering a panoramic view of Table Mountain above and Cape Town below. Once aloft, there are more spectacular views and plenty of space for walking along the raised plateau.

The Cape Town coastline is peppered with beautiful beaches, rocky inlets and spectacular cliffs, stretching for miles on end. Another day we were taken to the Cape of Good Hope, where the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and the cold waters of the Atlantic are said to meet. As we stood on the edge of the world, in another area of incredible natural beauty, it was easy to understand what Alexander Sparks meant in his book on the South African peace process, Tomorrow is Another Country, when he stressed the strength of attachment to their country felt by those involved on all sides.

For all this natural beauty, however, Cape Town is also a city of tremendous and alarming economic disparities. We were taken to townships and shanty towns, where the poverty levels and lack of housing for South Africa's legions of poor, show just how far the ruling ANC still has to go to achieve equality for all its citizens.

There was much media speculation around the conference about splits in the ANC, of dissatisfaction on the left about the pace of change, but what we encountered was an organisation still united and still wedded to its fundamental principles and objectives. True, the nature of the South African peace settlement has left a nation still fundamentally divided in terms of wealth and dispossession, but the ANC are working hard to redress that balance.

We met dedicated leaders, activists and community representatives who are still living their struggle, still committed to achieving true equality in their country and to playing a leading role in achieving peace and progress across the African continent.

Before we left, Sinn Féin members who had been attended previous ANC conferences had tried to prepare us for the electric atmosphere, but it wasn't until we walked into the hall that we realised what all the excitement had been about.

The hall was seated according to regions and affiliated organisations, some 6,000 in all, and before every session there was an outpouring of celebration, marked by the famous toi toi. Sections of the crowd would start a chant, others would join in with harmonies, feet were stomped, hands were clapped and whistles were blown. As the already deafening sound levels increased, delegates would start dancing and whole groups would move back and forward in front of the main podium. This would continue until the chair took the podium, raised a fist and delivered the chant of liberation, Amandla! Whereupon the crowd would reply with Ngawethu! And the hall quickly settled down to the business at hand.

Try as I might, I could not picture such scenes at a Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, but I couldn't help feeling that we are the poorer for our lack of exuberance.

During the course of the week, we talked with delegations from across Africa and beyond, sharing experieces and learning along the way. We also passed on solidarity greetings to President Thabo Mbeki and to former President Nelson Mandela.

We left for home, reluctantly, after an all too brief time, impressed by the generosity and comradeship of our hosts and, having basked in the inspiration of another struggle, refreshed for our own return to the fray.

Martin Ferris is pictured with South African President Thabo Mbeki at a rally to mark the end of the ANC conference