A lesson from the past  -  Tom Sebina, the Americans and The Red Peril

By Stef Terblanche

This whole cat-among-the-Sparrows  race commotion, Big Leaders clinging to banners on the side of tall buildings, the ANC’s 104^th birthday and an unexpected email recently received, reminded me of an incident some years ago. At the height of the apartheid fires burning across South African townships in the late eighties  I travelled to a very hostile – for white South Africans – Zambia to cover the then still banned and exiled ANC’s 75^th birthday bash in Lusaka.

This was made possible through my contacts with one Tom Sebina, then ANC spokesman in Zambia and since sadly deceased. Tom was a skinny man with a huge afro and a devilish face, kind of a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Snoop Dogg.

In those days the ANC, SACP etc. were banned “terrorist” and “communist” organisations and the media was not allowed to quote them by law. As I reported on issues of political and security significance, I was regularly summoned to Pretoria for “confidential” but quotable briefings by the military and the security police – little “battle of ideas” propaganda sessions not unlike what we have today once more. Back at the office I would call Tom in Lusaka for their unquotable side of the story. Nonetheless, to get past the law, I would use Tom’s inputs in my article but attribute them to “sources close to the ANC said….” – perfectly legal.  

So a rapport built up between myself and Tom making possible several trips to Zambia courtesy of the ANC and Tom. Except on one occasion Tom forgot to meet me at Lusaka airport with the necessary entry papers, resulting in my being put under armed guard as a “South African spy” by the Zambian army for several very uncomfortable hours, until Tom remembered and pitched up, out of breath, with the necessary papers.  But that’s another story.

On this occasion I was in a larger group of SA and international journalists and all went well. As was my habit I had brought along a bottle of Tom’s favourite Klipdrif brandy  and a bottle of whisky and Borkum Riff tobacco for one Thabo Mbeki. Tom knew that bottle was waiting for him in my luggage.

After two hours of fielding questions mainly from American and German journalists in the foyer of the Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka, Tom suddenly grew very thirsty and tired of the foreign journalists. I was sitting with Tom and Max du Preez – who had brought along his own present for Tom – in the foyer, when Tom suddenly jumped up, gestured wildly at the foreign journalists and shouted in his awkward Soweto Afrikaans: “Julle Amerikaners kan nou almal f…of; nou gaan ek eers ‘n dop drink saam met my wit broers van Suid-Afrika!”  (You Americans should all f… off now; I am going to have a drink now with my white South African brothers.)  And then repeated the message in somewhat more polite English.

Upstairs to the rooms we went and out came the bottles. At one point Thabo Mbeki joined us and received his tobacco etc. Joe Slovo came for a while and attacked a hamburger like I had never seen before. Had his underground military machine attacked South Africa with the same ferociousness, I doubt it FW de Klerk would ever have made it to his milestone speech and the release of Nelson Mandela. Slovo must have been quite hungry that day.

At the end of that trip, having missed my taxi and late for the weekly plane back to South Africa, a helpful Thabo Mbeki acted as my taxi driver for the day and rushed me to the airport in his battered little white Toyota Corolla. On the way there the future president gave me an economics lecture while thoughtfully sucking on his pipe. I, on the other hand, was nervously keeping an eye on the clock and Zambia’s rather chaotic traffic.

But back to the point. Here we sat, two white journalists from apartheid South Africa in a room full of “murderous ANC terrorists” who, according to PW Botha’s propaganda, would, with the help of the Russians, murder us in our beds…and that in a very hostile Zambia. Not a pleasant thought. Given the jokes, the stories, the reminiscences of “back home” and laughter as the bottles were being passed around, I could be forgiven for having thought I was in the wrong place and time.

Was it the alcohol talking and doing the trick? Not really. It may have loosened us all up a bit. But what was really happening was that here were South Africans from (perceived) divergent ends and perspectives  - enemies given the times, yet brothers as Tom put it  - sitting in a room far from home, finding commonalities, sharing ordinary human traits, and bonded by a shared love of a country some distance to the south.

I asked Joe Slovo when he expected to ever set foot in South Africa again. His answer: by the end of the decade. Clairvoyant Joe Slovo, for by the end of the decade FW de Klerk made his famous speech and the ANC came home.  Mandela stepped out of prison, all smiles, made his reconciliatory speeches and defused a bloodbath on the eve of the 1994 elections.

What went wrong? How I long for those days: give me a room full of ANC terrorists in a hostile Zambia any day rather than racist Sparrows, 6-story banners, hate speech towards whites, and all the other things now fomenting at the bottom of an almost empty bucket.

Footnote:  Tom returned to South Africa shortly afterwards but sadly passed away. The other day, out of the blue, I received an email from his grandchild who wanted to know more about her (in)famous grandfather. Bless your lovely soul, Tom.  And on my return from Zambia, at the old Jan Smuts Airport, the customs guys rummaged through my bags. It turned out they were not looking for banned ANC and SACP literature as I thought – and which I had plenty of in my bags. No, they asked me, “Do you have any Playboy magazines Sir?”, of course, also still banned literature in South Africa at the time. So much for Die Rooi Gevaar.