kagablog

WINDS OF CHANGE

Negotiations were underway to release Nelson Mandela. By the time the negotiations were made public, deals had already been signed: what those deals REALLY were, were never made known to the South African public. The negotiations had begun as early as 1986. The first intimation that the possibility of change was probable came in 1988 when a Government delegation was sent to Dakar to meet the ANC. South Africa was blessed with a black leader without any sense of personal retribution. The Nationalist Party could no longer sustain the onslaught and had miraculously come to their senses. By 1990, from the impending blood bath, the country was headed for a multi-party democracy. Who could forget the day Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela walked in slow motion, hand in hand, into the New Country? Throngs of people in bewonderment? In one moment South Africa had a Hectic History, in the next, the birth of a New Nation. Yet the ongoing tensions between the ANC and the IFP did not auger well. Forces - the ‘third force’ - fermented violence. Murder sought murder, retaliation sought retaliation. An IRA mentality threatened. Buthelezi, leader of the IFP, was in the pocket of the Nationalist Party and had probably been hoping for some bigger slice once negotiations had been concluded. To Ampleby it seemed that he fermented violence, rather than trying to stem it. Every presumably sane word he uttered during those tense times of 1990 to 1994 were clouded in threat. Threat with a smile on its face. Violence was the negotiating tool. The right wing buffer. The Broederbond, that secret Afrikaner club, that ever watchful Afrikaner eyeball, had to disband. As if they actually did, could, or would. The unenlightened Afrikaner once more sought to ‘trek’, this time to Oranje. “If there is one thing that the 20th century has taught us,” said Ampleby one day to Canopy, “surely it is that prejudice/racism has no place in the modern world. That animal should be allowed to sink into extinction.” “Liberals” were being trashed in the press as having ‘sat on the fence’ - the implication being that it was far better to have been a racist! The Talking Heads track “Road to Nowhere” could now be heard frequently on SAFM. Yet the first real shock in the New South Africa came with the divorce of Nelson and Winnie. The first sign that something was awry. The press, the public, had to have a black scapegoat. Nelson had no choice. The fact that everybody was emerging from circumstantial insanity held no sway. A circumstantial insanity of which wars were all too familiar. But the changes that were to take place in the country had quite an unexpected outcome amongst whites: it created a conservative stasis - the country could change, but everything else had to stay the same! Change came at people faster than they could handle it. Held in abeyance for so long, it now flooded in. This lead to them clinging to whatever it was that they felt need not change: music and fashion was a prime reference point that could still that sense of intrusion. A surge for everything retro, anything to slow down the progressive wave predominated. Yet what was very curious, was that the ‘winds of change’ appeared to be a world wide phenomenon, not isolated to South Africa alone. The Impassable Berlin Wall came crashing down: Communism in tatters. The London Tories were swept out of office. The Democrats replaced the Republicans. Croatia, the Middle East…….
Stella Court was sold to make way for an Allenby Campus. It became impossible to find cheap accommodation. Black or Coloured people suddenly saw him as a threat:
“You’re white,” they said, “you can afford to pay higher rents. You earn higher salaries than we do. Don’t steal our cheap flats from us. Go and live where
you belong - with the Whites!”
He could hardly believe he was hearing this! Change obviously meant different things to different people. The cheapest flat he could find was a bachelor flat for R400 per month at a block in 6th Avenue, Morningside. It was all White.
But there was no other option. And that was how it came to pass that for the next few years, in the New South Africa, Ampleby lived exclusively amongst whites!
Yet he continued to pursue his performance images, performing excerpts from the “Parade’ section of BLOOD plus “I’m looking for my Country” to startled clubbers. Students who had video’d his performance went round interviewing people at Ampleby’s request:
“Hadn’t he taken the image of the Red Bull a bit too far?”
“We’re bored with this by now! He’s suffering from apathy!”
“Does he expect us to be embarrassed because we’re white?”
“Why doesn’t he do something new?”
These statements, coming in particular from two obvious-looking alternative youths, stunned him to such an extent that he wondered whether they were not working for the Security Branch! It made no sense.