Hartford: The struggle generation that built non-racial SA — and the movement that betrayed it

A quiet commemoration at Wits University last month marked the life of Fink Haysom — lawyer, activist, constitution-builder, and one of the great non-racial voices of the 1980s democratic struggle. Opened by President Ramaphosa, the event was as much a eulogy for a lost political era as it was for the man himself. The values that defined that generation — sacrifice, solidarity across racial lines, and a genuine belief in a non-racial South Africa — feel distant from the patronage politics and racial engineering of today's ANC. The question the commemoration quietly posed: will those who remember step forward again?.By Dirk Hartford.KEY TAKEOUTSThe values of non-racialism, sacrifice and democratic unity that defined the 1980s struggle have largely disappeared from contemporary politics.Many heroes of the mass democratic movement became absorbed into government and BEE networks, leaving the ANC increasingly dominated by different political traditions.South Africa's future may depend on whether veterans of the democratic struggle are willing to challenge the country's racialised and patronage-driven politics..Last month there was a poignant commemoration at Wits University of the life of the late Fink Haysom — a giant of the non-racial, national democratic struggle for freedom in South Africa. It barely found an echo in the media.The times Fink's memory evoked — the mass democratic movement of the 1980s — we now know were the apogee of non-racialism in South Africa. Activists of all races fought together, and died together, for democracy.The commemoration was presided over by acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, an ex-colleague and comrade of Haysom, and opened by President Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a close friend of Fink's from that era.In a pre-recorded message, Ramaphosa painted Fink — and how he knew him then — in generous brushstrokes, saying twice that "even I" benefited from the relationship.Fink was Mandela's chosen presidential legal adviser in the first democratic government.Fink was many things. He was a privileged white boy from a liberal KwaZulu-Natal family who schooled at Michaelhouse and was mentored by Rick Turner in his early student days. Later at UCT, besides excelling in rugby, adventurous sports and dramatic and poetic performances, Fink became NUSAS president in the late 1970s and led it firmly in the direction of a non-racial democratic South Africa.He would object to being singled out, but he was detained numerous times, banned, held in solitary confinement and put on trial — in his student days alone..He went on to co-found Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom — a legal firm synonymous with labour and human rights in apartheid South Africa — which acted as an embedded law firm within the mass democratic movement of the 1980s. CTH played a pivotal role in so many victories in the labour and human rights field that it is little wonder they ended up central to the drafting of our Constitution.Fink Haysom went on from his Mandela years to become one of the great peacemakers on the planet, working for the United Nations in some of the world's most volatile regions. Colleagues gave eloquent testimony to this at the commemoration.It is Fink as a symbol of the political imagination that existed in the mass democratic movement of the 1980s that made his brilliantly curated commemoration so pregnant with meaning. It harked back to a time when Black, Coloured, Indian and white activists worked together to confront the white apartheid regime. The energy that propelled the struggle then was very different from what prevails now.Playing the race card then was so obviously counterproductive to the struggle against racism. Now it is the calling card of those controlling the same movement in power.To hear Ramaphosa — an 1980s struggle hero and genuine inheritor of the mantle of national leadership — call people who question the current form of BEE "shameless" is itself shameless.The mass democratic generation of the 1980s is, by and large, deeply ashamed of where things stand today. They find themselves, for many different reasons, caught between a rock and a hard place with the ANC, and are generally lying low.Many of the best leaders of the internal mass struggle ended up at the front of the queue when the early big BEE deals were being concluded — Ramaphosa not least among them.Those deals, combined with those who entered government at all levels, effectively muffled these voices within the exile-dominated ANC leadership of the 1990s..The majority of the so-called 100 black beneficiaries claimed by Professor Gumede to hold a trillion rand between them from BEE deals were not exiles. They were "inziles" from the mass democratic movement — many of them outstanding leaders of the 1980s generation, from all races.That generation never imagined that black economic empowerment would mean some of their best leaders becoming super-wealthy while the poverty-stricken masses languished in the disastrous socio-economic conditions that prevail today. Nor did they imagine that rectifying apartheid injustices would involve even more obsessive race-based tinkering than the apartheid apparatchiks had conjured up.Switching support from the ANC to, say, the DA remains a bridge too far for many of them, even now. It feels like switching sides to the erstwhile enemy.Ironically, in its actual membership composition, the DA is today a far more non-racial organisation than any other in South Africa, including the ANC.The role of Coloured, Indian and white South Africans has always been disproportionately significant in the African national liberation struggle. In the 1980s, hundreds of race-based organisations united under the UDF as equals. COSATU incorporated formerly race-based unions into non-racial structures.The Coloured and Indian communities were generally united behind the UDF/COSATU internal leadership of the 1980s. Now we have the PA mobilising Coloured voters, MK mobilising Zulus, and African nationalisms of the ANC, EFF and Mayibuye fragmenting what was once a unified movement.It feels like a tragedy for the 1976 generation, fifty years on. The vision, values and voice of that generation are absent from the ANC — and from the country's politics — today.Fink Haysom's commemoration was a reminder of all this, and a window into what could still be possible if those stalwarts were willing to step up to the political plate once more..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Hartford: The struggle generation that built non-racial SA — and the movement that betrayed it

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