Writing about the period, Johannes Rantete, in his account of the ANC and the negotiated settlement, observes that the election campaign was personalised ‘with much attention being focused on party leaders. De Klerk was eloquent and sharp but could not match Mandela’s heroic attributes which saw thousands of people flocking and stampeding to most of the gatherings he attended. Young and old wanted to see with their own eyes a man whose reputation in contemporary world history could be compared to none.’8
Knowing that there was a problem regarding voter literacy among the black majority, another legacy of apartheid, Mandela sought strategies to redress this problem, which might otherwise have posed a setback for the ANC.
‘We also engaged the masses in an active voter education campaign,’ he writes. ‘[I] organised some skilful personalities to help in this regard. One of them was Leepile Taunyane, then president of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa [NAPTOSA]. He replied that [I] was late, he and his colleagues in NAPTOSA had already started the voter-education campaign. We were tremendously inspired because he led a strong and disciplined movement, which had enough resources to wage a powerful campaign. We had made the same appeal to the South African Democratic Teachers Union, who had already taken the initiative also before we appealed to them to join. The ANC sought not to speak to the people, but to speak with the people.
‘I conducted the campaign as a member and as president of the ANC, having been elected to the latter position by the first national conference of the organisation after it was unbanned, which was held in Durban in 1991. We conducted mock elections as part of the voter-education campaign. Ten million people took part. This was very important, as in the actual election there were less than one per cent spoilt papers. This spoilt-paper percentage is in line with the performance in elections in democracies with developed economies with a high level of literacy.
‘The ANC conducted a positive campaign, focused on rebuilding, reconstruction and a better life for all without forgetting the past. We avoided negative campaigning, avoided attacking opposition parties. To the best of my memory, we never placed a single negative advert in the media.* The opposition, on the other hand, were primarily negative and kept attacking the ANC and its alliance partners.
‘As always,’ Mandela wrote, ‘we were mindful of the minorities in our questions about the future, at such times of great transition. Our movement had always been one concerned for all of the people of our country and we sent that message to the country during our campaign. People responded with enthusiasm.
‘We remember, for example, how a young woman from the coloured community, Amy Kleynhans, then the reigning Miss South Africa, joined us on stage during our campaign in Cape Town. She had earlier angered the then state president, F. W. de Klerk, because of her refusal to carry the national flag of apartheid during an international beauty pageant, confirming her allegiance to the new South Africa about to be born.
‘There were other such demonstrations of enthusiastic support. One young teacher from the community left his post to sing songs composed by himself for the campaign. This young man, John Pretorius, later recorded the song “Sekunjalo”, which he sang at so many rallies in the Cape during the election campaign.’
Energetic and danceable, this song has an urban beat with gospel traditions woven into the music. The refrain ‘free at last’ and its attendant lyrics are a joyful celebration of the end of tyranny and the dawn of freedom. Years later, during Mandela’s eightieth birthday celebrations, John Pretorius sang a duet of this song with Jermaine Jackson to ecstatic reception at a concert at Ellis Park Stadium.
‘As we have mentioned,’ Mandela writes, ‘everything was not of that positive and joyous scale. In KwaZulu-Natal we had to cope with the continuing political violence that cast a spell of gloom and doubt over the otherwise exciting prospects of democracy. We concentrated a lot of our time on the political situation in that province. On the one hand, we had to campaign for the election victory of our organisation, while at the same time it was our duty to address in a non-partisan way the fate of all of the people in the province. The political violence, no matter by whom it was being committed, was to the great damage of all South Africans. And as always in such circumstances, the innocent carried the brunt of suffering, hence our special attention to the then province of Natal.
‘Our election campaign did not always proceed smoothly. As pointed out above, the National Party of De Klerk was extremely negative, and at times plainly immoral in its campaign.
‘When I visited Los Angeles in the early nineties, I took a photograph flanked by two internationally famous artists, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson. In the run-up to the April 1994 election, the National Party published a scurrilous pamphlet entitled Winds of Change in which they cut out Michael Jackson; and Elizabeth Taylor and I now appeared all alone. They aggravated that deceitful exercise by making defamatory remarks against both of us. The Independent Electoral Commission forced them to withdraw the pamphlet.
‘The National Party campaign was not only immoral, but also racist. They exploited the fears of the racial minorities, especially those of the coloured and Indian communities, by arguing that a victory of the ANC would result in their repression by Africans. They criticised Dr Allan Boesak, a prominent cleric from the coloured community, for campaigning for all sections of the South African population, instead of confining himself exclusively to coloureds.
‘Another example of this racism was again directed at me personally. Heidi Dennis, a young coloured teacher from the Beacon Valley Senior Secondary School in the coloured community in Mitchell’s Plain, asked me to help them to raise funds to paint their school. I then requested Syd Muller of Woolworths not only to provide funds, as asked by Heidi, but [also] to upgrade the school by building more classrooms and a laboratory.
‘When Woolworths completed the project,’ Mandela continues, ‘we went to launch it. A large group of coloured women staged a protest demonstration against me. One of them screamed and said in Afrikaans, “Kaffer, gaan huis toe” (“Kaffir, go home”), a derogatory jibe. All these racist and deceitful manoeuvres were committed by De Klerk’s party, a leader I had repeatedly praised inside and outside the country as a man of integrity with whom we could do business.
‘The ANC tried to the best of its ability to avoid descending to the level of the National Party. We remained focused and constructive. We strongly urged all South Africans, irrespective of colour or creed, to join the fight for a democratic, united, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa. In that campaign we also experienced difficulties from some of our members who made rash statements contrary to our basic policy. We immediately condemned publicly such behaviour.’9
It should have been expected, given the high stakes, that the election campaigns would test the mettle of the major contenders. The National Party, which had so much to lose, could only overstate its record as a vehicle that had brought about change, while the ANC, still untested, had to promise to bring about a new dispensation for all. In the cut and thrust of contention it was inevitable that the election campaign would, according to a Western Cape newspaper report, turn into ‘a torrid war of words between the African National Congress and the National Party. Each party accused the other of “dirty tricks” and “underhand electioneering”.Each has lodged complaints with the Independent Electoral Commission over the other’s campaign conduct, posters and pamphlets.’10
In the opening salvo of mud-slinging, the ANC had published a pamphlet depicting the National Party’s regional premiership candidate, Hernus Kriel, leading a trio of candidates, two black and one coloured, as dogs on leashes, with fifty-rand notes dropping out from Mr Kriel’s pocket. Not to be outdone, the National Party had gone for the jugular. ‘Later today,’ continues the newspaper report, ‘the IEC is due to give a final ruling on a National Party comic book which the ANC alleges is racist and which relies on “swart gevaar” [“black danger”] tactics to woo col
oured voters. It is entitled “Winds of Change Blow Through South Africa – Will You Make It Through the Storm?”’11
The National Party’s deployment of swart gevaar – the notional devastation that would follow the advent of a black government – went against the grain of Mandela’s cherished cause of reconciliation. Despite this, Mandela recognised that whites – especially Afrikaners – had to be made part of the evolving new South Africa. Thabo Mbeki echoed this crucial point in an interview with Joel Netshitenzhe and Tony Trew in Johannesburg in 2014:*
[The] reconciliation business had to do with [Madiba’s wish to say] ‘Let’s protect the democratic gains from this potential threat,’ and therefore this became a preoccupation not so much because he was a worshipper of reconciliation in itself but it served a purpose in terms of protecting what we had gained … He had to attend to this issue of Afrikaners and showing that he was not a monster, he was not a threat and so on, in order to solve a problem. Because … there is no Mandela with regard to this matter about reconciliation who is different from the rest of the leadership of the ANC – this reconciliation, addressing the issue of white fears, was connected to his concern about this possibility of counter-revolution.12
‘The white right wing,’ Mandela writes, ‘was another potentially destabilising factor that affected the general mood during the period leading up to the elections … Stories were abounding about whites who were adopting a siege mentality, stocking up their houses with food and other emergency supplies.’13
Representatives of local and international media houses and agencies and independent journalists and photographers went all around the country, the majority primed to cover a war zone. They had been promised a war. Media spokespeople from the ANC’s numerous foreign missions gave on-the-spot briefings about what visitors should expect in South Africa, downplaying the rumours of mayhem. The citizens, armed only with their green identity documents, waited for the polling stations to open.
Mandela was greatly encouraged by the preparations. ‘On the organisational and logistical level, just as much public interest was generated. The Independent Electoral Commission set about preparing for the elections, establishing offices in different parts of the country. Amongst their tasks was to monitor the general atmosphere that could affect the measure to which the elections would be free and fair.
‘It filled one with pride,’ he continues, ‘to observe how many South Africans were warming up to the mechanics of democratic elections. It was said by some commentators that the system of voting for that day would be too complex and complicated for the supposedly unsophisticated voters. We had decided on a system of proportional representation: the electorate had to vote for the national legislature and the provincial one on the same day. All of these were thought to hold complexities that might be confusing to voters.
‘In the end, it turned out that South African voters had an almost natural affinity to the process of voting.
‘There were scores of foreign observers who also travelled the country, including my future wife, Graça Machel, either assisting in voter education or monitoring the situation during the campaign period, ensuring that the conditions for free and fair elections existed.* Almost without exception they afterwards commented about the positive spirit that existed in the country.
‘There were other mechanisms operating to assist South Africans to operate in the spirit of open democracy in the run-up to the elections. Amongst these was the Independent Media Commission to ensure that all parties were fairly treated by the media, both in reporting and coverage.’14
There are as many impressions of the days of voting as there are people who were compos mentis during the elections, the days themselves a focal point from which to think about the reality of democracy. For South Africans, this is a long moment etched into their brains the way Americans remember John F. Kennedy’s assassination or – for older, diminishing generations throughout the world – the end of either one of the world wars. It was, to use a hackneyed phrase, for most South Africans, an experience to remember for the rest of their lives. Given its import, the election would be spread over two days.
Tuesday, 26 April 1994, a trial run for the election the following day, was reserved for the elderly, people living with disabilities, and South Africans outside the country. For many such people, especially some expatriates in foreign climes, the act of voting clarified their minds about their origins – and allegiances. For the religious, if Mandela’s release epitomised liberation from bondage, the first democratic elections marked the reality of the existence of the Promised Land. It was a poignant moment for a frail Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the president of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and a lifelong campaigner for Mandela’s release, when he entered South Africa House in London’s Trafalgar Square in order to cast his vote in South Africa’s first democratic election. Hobbling on crutches, he spoke to the assembled supporters ‘in the reading room heavy with colonial history, [thanking] God for being able to participate in “something unspeakably wonderful”’.15
People from all walks of life trickled like water from everywhere and formed queues that snaked for miles as they took steps to the centres where they could place their vote. If there was nervousness about right-wing attacks, people didn’t show it. It was all about resolve, which was broadcast far and wide.
‘At some polling stations in black areas,’ according to Paul Taylor of the Washington Post, ‘lines began forming at 4 a.m. At others, disabled voters were carried to the ballot boxes in wheelbarrows or litters. Countrywide, the prevailing mood seemed less one of exuberance than of quiet resolve. “I’m tired; my back is sore; I haven’t eaten all day,” a stoical Susan Ndhlovu, sixty-seven, told a South African reporter as she waited in a long line under a hot sun in Bloemfontein. “But I’m staying until I’ve voted.”’16
On the morning of Wednesday, 27 April, Mandela ‘voted at Ohlange High School in Inanda, a green and hilly township just north of Durban, for it was there that John [Langalibalele] Dube, the first president of the ANC, was buried.* This African patriot had helped found the organisation in 1912, and casting my vote near his graveside brought history full circle, for the mission he began eighty-two years before was about to be achieved.’17
Mandela observes that on the dawn of that day, which symbolised a new beginning, ‘the South Africans queued in their millions to cast their first democratic vote, the foundations had been laid during preceding months. That memorable day fittingly capped the positive spirit of hope and expectation that reigned predominant in spite of the tears and trepidations.
‘The smooth and orderly manner in which the elections occurred, and the violence-free transformation that followed, completely shattered the depressing predictions of the prophets of doom, who included some of the well-known and respected political analysts. They had predicted that the history of South Africa, especially during the four decades of the apartheid regime, clearly showed that the white minority was determined to cling to power for centuries to come. A wide variety of commentators underestimated our determination and capacity successfully to persuade opinion makers on both sides of the colour line to realise that this country is their beloved fatherland, with primary responsibility to turn April 1994 into a memorable landmark in our turbulent history.
‘This was the day for which a long line of celebrated legends had fought since 1652 when the foreigner Jan van Riebeeck landed on our shores.† They laboured tirelessly for the liberation of our country: the Khoi leader Autshumao, Abdullah Abdurahman, Cissie Gool and Hettie September, Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker, Bram Fischer and Michael Harmel, Khosi Tshivhase, Alpheus Madiba, Queen Manthatisi, Selope Thema, Moses Kotane, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Robert Sobukwe, Zeph Mothopeng and Steve Biko, and a multitude of others.’*18
Later, reflecting on the aftermath of the historic national poll to legitimise democracy, Mandela couldn’t help adopting a sardonic tone towards the naysayers and the timorous who had prep
ared for a catastrophe.
‘After the elections, when all was over and matters turned out so differently to what the prophets of doom had predicted, there was great mirth and levity about those who stockpiled in such fashion. But at the time, it was a matter of great seriousness and it did affect the overall mood.’19
The ANC won a landslide victory, taking 62.6 per cent of the popular vote, which Mandela attributed to his party’s hard work and its adherence to discipline. Notwithstanding difficulties caused by the late participation of the IFP and the violence that imperilled free political activity in rural areas of Natal, or the hacking of the vote-counting system to boost the National Party, Freedom Front and IFP, which was foiled by the IEC, no one contested the legitimacy of the elections, nor that they had been ‘substantially free and fair’.20
But, as with all elections – or any contest where there are winners and losers – it was inevitable that some, including elements within the ANC itself, would complain about irregularities. For instance, when a delegation of ANC provincial leaders from Natal came with evidence of irregularities that favoured the IFP, Mandela insisted on accepting the ANC’s narrow loss of the province rather than mounting a challenge that might have cost the legitimacy of the election and have serious implications for stability and peace. For his part, De Klerk was also not immune to internal rumblings, with some National Party leaders calling for a legal challenge to the results. He took the view, he says in his memoirs, that ‘despite all the irregularities, we had little choice but to accept the outcome of the election in the interest of South Africa and all its people’.21
Although elated, Mandela still worried over some of the results. The ANC had failed to win the provinces of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and the Northern Cape had been won with under 50 per cent of the vote. The ANC had to address concerns of various constituencies, specifically the white working class, traditionalists in Natal, and the Indian and coloured communities. These issues would be a strong focus for Mandela’s leadership of the transition in the coming years.
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