Past and Present
by Edward Power
One of the most extraordinary acts of forgiveness and reconciliation of this
or indeed any other age, must be that of Nelson Mandela for his gaoler, James
Gregory. The story is recounted in Gregory?s book, ?Goodbye Bafana?, which was
published in 1995. The rapprochement that grew to friendship, respect and
affection between Mandela and Gregory, spread out it seemed through the whole
of South Africa as, first, Mandela was released and, then, was elected President
of the new ?Rainbow? nation. Gregory was invited as a special guest at Mandela?s
inauguration as President . On Robben Island, one was the world?s most famous
prisoner; the other, the world?s loneliest gaoler. But, in truth, it had been
long since the relationship had been one of gaoler and prisoner. That had ended
after many years and, even long before his release, Mandela wasn?t really a prisoner
in the strict sense of the word, nor Gregory his gaoler.
It was 1994, and Nelson Mandela had swept to power on a tide of popular support.
There was a rainbow over the world, coloured and bowed by dreams and emotions.
There was an extraordinary sense of hope and new beginning for goodness. The
world?s most famous prisoner was to claim his kingdom, and the world?s loneliest
gaoler was to be his guest of honour. Gregory received a special invitation by
phone from Mandela?s office the previous week, because a ticker sent by post
might not have arrived on time. It was a day and a moment in history that the
President-elect?s former gaoler would not have missed. "I would have crawled
every inch of the way , through the Great Karoo Desert and over the Drakensberg
Mountains on bare hands, to see this day in person," he said. But he didn?t
have to do any of that, though his sincerity was such that it wasn?t beyond the
bounds of possibility that he might well have attempted it. A special flight
was laid on for him and, attired in his old grey mohair suit, he
arrived at an airport thick with enough security and armament ?to invade a nation?.
There were enough private jets lining up to be parked there that it looked like
a crowded supermarket car-park. But even on such a day ? especially on such a
day - a certain pecking order applied, and each guest?s importance
was gauged on how close the aircraft was allowed to park to the main terminal.
Yasser Arafat?s plane, for instance, was parked much further from the main
doors than that of Fidel Castro. There were, as James Gregory observed wryly,
many bruised egos that took weeks to mend after the extravaganza.
Gregory recalls his thoughts and feelings as he awaited the great event. There
were choirs giving full vent to the rhythm of voice and body, as only African
singers can (think of the voices on Paul Simon?s ?Graceland? album). It
was, indeed, merry mayhem. The attendance at the Inauguration ceremony reads
like a Who?s Who of the World, with dignitaries from one hundred and sixty-seven
countries. There were kings and princes, sheikhs and dukes, rulers and
dictators, the great and the good (and, perhaps, the not so good). All were there
to pay homage to the tall man with the ramrod back and the smiling forgiveness,
and to bask in the reflected glory.
He couldn?t help thinking of, and contrasting, the old history: five hundred
Boers defeating ten thousand Zulus at the Battle of Blood River. The Sharpeville
massacre. The long dark night of the townships. Brutal police wielding their
bullwhips. Bloody explosions primed and set off by the more hardened terrorists
within the ANC (Mandela had been one of the hardliners in the beginning). It
seemed scarcely possible that it could all have ended in this happy, proud moment,
when nearly all South Africans of whatever hue and creed gathered to salute the
new dawn, and a new President.
There were hopes that this great momentum might somehow translate itself to other
areas in the world. The famous and innovative ?Truth Commission? that largely
allowed reconciliation without recrimination. It was harrowing, it was painful,
but it worked, most of the time. It could, and should, work elsewhere. But things
are never that simple. The process, to work elsewhere, calls for another Mandela,
and there hasn?t been another such. That is the world?s great tragedy. One more
Mandela, one less Mugabe, and how infinitely better our world would be.
The world?s most famous prisoner. The world?s loneliest gaoler. Descriptions
of two men whose fates were intertwined for twenty-seven years, and whose ultimate
friendship became a model for goodwill and reconciliation. Twenty-seven years
on Robben Island, while the world railed against the Apartheid regime and songs
for his release rode high in the pop music charts. The story of both men, and
the effect their friendship had on political events in South Africa and indeed
upon the world stage, is a familiar one by now.
We all know the Mandela story - or think we do ? while yet knowing little of
James Gregory. Gregory spent his boyhood on a farm called Ongemak. The
name meant ?discomfort?, but it was anything but that. Indeed, it seemed the
setting for an idyllic childhood. It was here that young James learnt to hunt
and fish and become virtually self-sufficient living off the land. In a way,
Ongemak was a kind of shangri-la sequestered from the turmoil and bigotry that
was beginning to tear his country apart.
Ongemak was the home given to the Gregory family by the great Zulu chief, Shaka (whose
life was dramatised in ?Shaka Zulu?, a gritty British television drama series
some years ago,). The Zulus were a proud and imperious people, known and feared
as mighty warriors, and their tribal name means ?People Of Heaven? (There must
be a fascinating story in there and someday I hope to come back to it).
According to family lore, James Gregory?s ancestors came from Scotland, and were
descended from Robert (Rob Roy) MacGregor, the famous outlaw. Robert and his
brother, James, loved the same woman, Stella Jenkins. The brothers agreed that
whichever of them won Stella, would forfeit the MacGregor lands to the other.
The matter was settled, it?s said, on the toss of a coin. Robert won the hand
of Stella, and James inherited the lands and estates. But James couldn?t bear
the thought of losing the woman he loved . He gave the estate to Robert and decided
to leave Scotland forever. That first James Gregory found his way to Natal Province
in southern Africa, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and changed his
name to Gregory. The story was told and re-told to generations of young
Gregory children around the hearthstones of their Natal home. No one is sure
as to the truth or otherwise of the legend. What is true is that the Gregorys
have lived for five generations in Natal, and that the present James Gregory?s
middle name is Jenkins.
As a schoolboy, young James was often in trouble with other boys at Afrikaner
schools, where he came into contact with ?all-white? racism. They referred to
him as a ?rooinek?, or as an Englishman. "As any person with a drop of Scots
blood in their veins will readily admit," James recalled, "it was one thing to
be called red-neck, a name given to the red tunicked British soldiers who
fought the Boers, but an altogether different matter to labelled an Englishman."
During the 1940?s and 1950?s, Apartheid was a practically unknown concept in
and around Ongemak in Natal, and James grew up living as a Zulu child, learning
to hunt and fish, to live and celebrate as a Zulu. His main language was
Zulu, and he also spoke Afrikaans and English. His best friend was a Zulu boy
named Bafana, who became closer to him than a brother. He remembered the first
time they met. Bafana just turned up at the farmhouse one morning and said, "Would
you like to go hunting?" Ongemak was a huge farm and a boy could walk all day
and not reach its boundaries. Even on horseback, or one of the farm?s old Massey
Ferguson tractors, it was a long day?s trek. James and Bafana were best
friends. The question of race or skin-colour never even entered their heads.
How did that boy become the man who was only too happy to be an instrument of
the Apartheid regime? That transition began when, at the age of six, James
was sent away to boarding school. By the time he emerged from the other end of
the education system, he was only too willing to be gaoler, torturer, or executioner.
Yet that would all change again.
If the name Ongemak, meaning ?discomfort?, was a malapropism for that idyllic
setting of his early, childhood years, how much more so was ?Vryheid?, the name
of his new boarding school. It translated as ?freedom?, but, as Gregory was later
to write, it meant anything but freedom to him. "Freedom had been about my life
with Bafana on the farm, but this school was worse than a prison."
In the midst of all this, he had to say farewell to his friend, Bafana. His father
had decided to sell Ongemak and the Gregory family moved away to a new, even
bigger farm, near the border near Swaziland. It was three times bigger than Ongemak
and probably three times lonelier as well, without Bafana. As he grew to youth
and young manhood, Vryheid had more and more influence over him. It had ceased
to feel like a ?prison? to him, but it was now a place that taught him
to hate. So much so that, by the time he left the education system, he was more
than willing to carry out the bitterest wishes, and defend the worst excesses,
of the Apartheid regime.
There was a lot of hate and bitterness and bigotry in his heart on the day he
set foot on Robben Island to begin his tenure as the gaoler of Nelson Mandela,
the man whom he blamed above all else for the woes and troubles of his country.
Their first meeting was, perhaps, a strange foreshadowing of the momentous events
to come. There were three prisoners in the prison yard. He recognised Mandela
from his ramrod back and broad shoulders. Mandela turned around and fixed his
new gaoler with a look of detached aloofness that Gregory found disconcerting.
"Good morning," Mandela said. "Welcome to Robben Island."
"Good morning", Gregory replied. "I see you." The phrase had slipped out.
It was a Zulu greeting of friendship he?d learned as a child, and it was the
first time he?d used it since those distant, idyllic days at Ongemak. It
was a strange beginning to a relationship between gaoler and prisoner that was
to have national and international ramifications, and perhaps it was the
first tiny seed that would grow to blossom into their great friendship. Both
men were setting out on a long journey of discovery. The popular misconception
is that Mandela slowly ?converted? his gaoler to his way of thinking: the good
leading the wayward to righteousness.
It was, on the contrary, very much a two-way process. Each, in his
own way, had been a violent man, giving expression to a hatred neither was born
with, but which had been inculcated into them. This was epitomised in a meeting
decades later. As Gregory left following the Inauguration of his friend,
and prisoner, Nelson Mandela, as President of South Africa, the Minster for Justice
introduced him to an eminent judge. "You will have heard a lot about him," the
minister said, as the judge shook his hand. "This is the man who took the hatred
for the white man out of Nelson Mandela."
And it was true. They had each embarked upon a long personal
journey that led to the heart and soul of South Africa.. And there they found
friendship and their common humanity ? Mandela leaving his hatred to wither away
in the abandoned prison on Robben Island, and Gregory perhaps finding his way
back to the idyll of his childhood days with Bafana.
When the moment of Mandela?s release finally came, after twenty-seven years behind
one prison door or another, there was potential disaster waiting when he stepped
outside. The Intelligence Services had been tipped-off by Britain?s M15 that
an assassinate attempt would be made on him by one of the armed guards outside
the prison. Gregory had to act fast. He got the authority of the Minister
to disarm all the guards, and this was eventually achieved. Nelson Mandela could
have been gunned down while the world watched on television sets, and the heart-warming,
inspirational, even fairy-tale ending to his story, could have a had a terrible
epilogue. But it didn?t. And James Gregory led the drive to
freedom in his car. But he had to pull over and stop. His eyes were blinded by
tears. He stood there as Mandela?s car went by, and said two words: Goodbye Bafana.