Mandla Seleoane's No Holy Cows

Ngcuka probe brings back memories of spy hunts

I SUPPOSE it would be in place to congratulate Bulelani Ngcuka for being cleared of spy allegations by the Hefer Commission.

For current purposes the legal arguments about the meaning of “he was probably never a spy”, do not interest me a great deal.

When the spy allegations against Bulelani were first made, a cold sweat ran down my spine, but only for a little while.

I experienced instant fear, because my mind raced back to the 1980s, quite automatically.

Then I thanked heavens that it did not occur to Mac Maharaj and Mo Shaik to start the rumour in the 1980s.

If they had started the rumour then, the prospects are that Bulelani might be a dead man today. And this on a suspicion, which Justice Hefer says was based on “ill-founded inferences and groundless assumptions”.

And yet that is precisely the point.

Many comrades and others were killed by ANC operatives in the 1980s on the basis precisely of such suspicions.

Unlike Bulelani, they did not have the luxury or fortune of a commission of inquiry to test the veracity of the allegations made against them.

Then, as we might recall, the ANC was either totally mum on the elimination of people accused of spying for the apartheid regime or, through the voice of Winnie Mandela, proclaimed that our liberation would come through the tyre, gasoline and the little boxes of matches that were used to kill those it suspected of being spies.

True, Oliver Tambo, may his soul rest in peace, eventually spoke against the “necklace”, but that was too late to save the lives of many good comrades and others who were “probably never spies”.

It is interesting that many of those the ANC operatives eliminated, or tried to eliminate, in this manner had impeccable struggle records.

The Sipho Mngomezulus of this world come too readily to mind.

The humiliating high-speed car chase of Khehla Mthembu by “the young lions” through the streets of Soweto is unforgettable. And so are the midnight visits to the house of Ishmael Mkhabela. How could we forget the stoning of Lybon Mabasa at the University of the North, where he was left for dead by our erstwhile liberators?

What of Maki Skhosana who was burnt to death in Nigel, although her killers subsequently conceded they’d “made a mistake”?

The sin committed by many of these people was simply that they did not agree with the dominant political view espoused by the ANC and its allies.

Their sin was that they held a different opinion and said so.

Because their view was not obviously wrong and therefore could not be dismissed too easily, it was always easier and convenient to label them as spies.

Of course, underlying all of this was the infamous fundamentalism called “sole and authentic voice of the voiceless”, in terms of which alternative voices in the black community were not to be heard.

The mistake some made was that they never thought they might become victims of their own beliefs, so long as they were in the dominant party. But fundamentalism does not drive itself.

The people who drive it tend to privilege their own views above others even in the same organisation. When there are no longer external threats to the way they see the world, they must needs look inside!

And so, when leaders from within the party start asking embarrassing questions of the ideologues, of the think tanks of the movement, they, too, fall foul of the authoritative opinion-givers and they run the risk that all of us are exposed to.

So, as we rejoice that Bulelani has been cleared, although he did not face the risk others before him did, we have to hope that he will never again keep silent when an injustice is done to others.

We have to hope that he and others who were touched by this episode will never again keep their peace when people around them seek to gain political advantage through means that expose the lives of other people to mortal risk.

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