Aggrey Klaaste: the Relentless Community-Builder
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Aggrey Klaaste: The Relentless Community-Builder A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing of Rhodes University by Phakama Mbonambi February 2014 ii ABSTRACT This thesis looks at the life and times of Aggrey Klaaste, the larger-than-life late editor of Sowetan who shot to fame by championing a novel idea of nation building. His initiative started in 1988 as flames of violence engulfed South Africa and it seemed as if an apocalypse was on the cards. Sickened by what the frustrated black community was doing to itself, for example the use of the dreadful practice of necklacing against the so-called collaborators, he called for moral regeneration. He wanted his compatriots to look into the future and take their destiny in their own hands. Through nation building he tirelessly launched into crusading journalism that sought to heal the scars of the black community after decades of apartheid. It was grassroots community building. He rewarded ordinary men and women who made a difference in their communities. He actively sought peace to end the violence of the 1980s and 1990s. He spoke his mind without wearing any ideological blinkers, even as some thought his initiative would disturb the march to freedom. He was the ultimate newspaperman. This thesis argues that by calling for reconciliation and rebuilding of battered black communities even before freedom came, Klaaste was ahead of his time and even predated Nelson Mandela. Klaaste preferred to do what was right and not be shackled to any ideology. In doing so, he angered many people who felt his thinking was derailing the struggle for freedom. But Klaaste stressed that nation building was ideologically neutral and was meant for everyone. By contradicting prevailing political orthodoxy, he very likely risked his own life. But, like a true leader, he stuck to his convictions. Klaaste was exemplary in calling for reconciliation and building when others called for breaking. Ten years after he died, as the country still grapples with issues he raised in his popular weekly column On The Line, it is worth appraising his thinking and actions. The thesis also looks at the environment that influenced his thinking. His life is interwoven with South African history. That he began his adult life shakily, spending his days in a drunken stupor at Johannesburg shebeens to being awarded the Order for Meritorious Service for his outstanding community work, makes him an interesting subject to look at. It’s a story of a man who vanquished his demons and, through his compassionate community engagement, became an asset to the country. It’s a story of redemption. As his private life attests, he was man with flaws – like anyone else. But Aggrey Klaaste strived to do what was right for his community at all times. He was a restless community builder. iii iv CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 – THE EARLY YEARS 5 CHAPTER 2 – THE MAGIC OF SOPHIATOWN 15 CHAPTER 3 – A NEW HOME, AGAIN 25 CHAPTER 4 – THE HAPPY BOOZERS 38 CHAPTER 5 – THE SILENT DECADE 46 CHAPTER 6 – ONE DAY IN JUNE 65 CHAPTER 7 – END OF THE WORLD 71 CHAPTER 8 – PICKING UP THE PIECES 78 CHAPTER 9 – BUILDING THE NATION 93 CHAPTER 10 – CHANGING TIMES 110 CHAPTER 11 – A NEW DAWN 119 CHAPTER 12 – FAMILY AND LEGACY 138 EPILOGUE 148 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 152 REFERENCES 154 v INTRODUCTION Early on the morning of October 19, 1977, as South Africa struggled to recover from a round of student uprisings and brutal repression, police came for Aggrey Klaaste at his home in Meadowlands, Soweto. He was with his mother, about to go to work. They bundled him into one of the two waiting cars and took him to jail where he spent about half a year. It was a traumatic experience for a man who had never been arrested before. His sin? Being part of the Committee of Ten, a civic body that had been formed to fill the vacuum that came into being after the total collapse of apartheid structures in the anarchic township. Klaaste’s arrest was part of a larger crackdown that included the arrest of thousands of anti-government activists and the banning of the newspaper Klaaste worked for, The World. Among the “crimes” that led to The World’s demise was reporting loudly and angrily on the murder of Steve Biko, beaten to death in police detention a month earlier. The arrest frightened Klaaste, who was never overtly political but abhorred of any form of oppression. It marked him for life, giving him a taste of what the minority regime in Pretoria was capable of and shaping the thinking that helped him formulate a concept of nation building that eventually became his great contribution to South Africa. Launched in l988, nation building was informed by a lifetime of trauma. Klaaste lived through the convulsive events of Sharpeville in 1960. He reported on the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and the Vaal Uprising of l984-1987. By 1988, he was convinced that another cataclysmic outbreak of violence was inevitable, and that this time, it might be unstoppable. White politics seemed to be drifting further and further to the right, and black communities had been torn to pieces by years of internecine and anti-apartheid violence. It was time, he thought, to start working on a society that would be created once freedom came. That meant rebuilding collapsed structures in the black community, instilling values of self-pride and striving for racial cooperation. He exhorted his black community to rediscover ubuntu. In an atmosphere where the young lions exerted power through a box of matches, Klaaste’s thinking was totally unconventional – perhaps even dangerous, given that it deviated from received wisdom of waging the struggle right down to the last man standing. Klaaste knew that such an approach was foolhardy. The state was too powerful. A fight to the finish would turn the country into a wasteland. And black communities were already torn and broken, and in desperate need of healing. 1 His life story is remarkable on many levels. His thinking predated the new order beginning in 1994. By resolutely championing nation building and writing copiously about it in his famous On the Line column, Klaaste forced his compatriots to think differently about the future towards which South Africa was hurtling. His activism was based on faith in ordinary people, and sought change that moved upwards through society. When violence raged, Aggrey Klaaste preached peace. When education floundered, he joined efforts to shore it up. When ordinary men and women sacrificed to make their townships better places, Klaaste honoured them with community builder awards. When crime engulfed the area where he lived, he joined forces with men in his area to form street patrols. Klaaste preached moderation, reconciliation and social justice long before it was fashionable. He was a public intellectual. When Nelson Mandela came out of jail, his thinking and way of doing things was eerily similar to Klaaste’s. Incidentally, in terms of his Xhosa ancestry, Klaaste was also a Madiba. On another level, Klaaste’s story is compelling human saga of triumph over addiction. This man spent a great deal of his early life in a drunken stupor. This is what journalists did. They were proud of their drinking, and their supposed toughness. Nothing could touch them save the booze, which often killed them in the end. Not Aggrey. He escaped. Once he had cleaned up his act, he shone to become the Aggrey Klaaste the world knows. He not only turned his newspaper – Sowetan – into the largest-circulating paper in the country, but he injected it with a social mission of uplifting and inspiring others. When Klaaste died in 2004, Mandela joined millions who paid him tribute: “Klaaste will not be easily forgotten because he loved this country. He was an inspiring man and extremely gifted.” * * * When I decided to take closer look at Klaaste’s life, I had little idea what I would find. When he was blazing his trail with nation building, I was too young to understand. It was only later, after I became a journalist myself, that I began to know more about him and his legend. At that point, I delved into the archives, and started reading his columns. I liked his mind and his word play, although it could be esoteric at times. I liked the outspokenness so extreme that Klaaste himself admitted that his column was sometimes “bombastic”. I tried to sample his mind as much as I could. The fog of ignorance started to clear. But I still did not have the full measure of the man. 2 It is a quarter-century since Klaaste started his nation-building campaign, and 10 years since his death. The problems about which he agonized – education, crime, HIV/Aids, reconciliation, black empowerment, and South Africa’s links with the rest of the continent – are still with us today. For that very reason, Klaaste remains an important figure in a society undergoing change. His story illustrates that contrarian views work – even they go against orthodoxy. While he may have softened his critical gaze in the new order, perhaps out of deference to new leaders whose tentacles reached into his newspaper through commercial interests, his observations of life in South Africa were prescient. For research, I relied heavily on the archives. From them I sifted his thoughts on a variety of issues. Luckily, Klaaste sneaked a lot of his personal history into them. So, it was always a relief to keep on stumbling on a nugget of information that contributed to the painting of a picture of who he was.