In Black Townships, Time for Rejoicing, Not Sleeping

The sun rose hot on this black township Sunday morning, but its people did not. After a night of joyous celebrations following the news of Nelson R. Mandela’s impending release, no one, it seems, had even gone to sleep.

By early morning, this suburban Cape Town settlement was teeming with activity on a day usually reserved for quiet rest and church-going. The scene here and in the neighboring Nyanga township was anything but tranquil. Cars sped through the dirt streets, horns blaring, raised fists jutting from car windows.

Shouts of “Viva! Viva Mandela!” rang out. Residents of this squatter’s camp spent a hot summer’s day dancing, singing and rejoicing over the release of the world’s best-known prisoner. Mandela was released, after 27 years in prison, Sunday afternoon from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl and traveled by motorcade to Cape Town.

It was all happening miles away, but Crossroads somehow seemed the hub of the universe. This is an area of tin shanties and cardboard huts. It is a place where electricity is a costly luxury and the electronic media hardly penetrate. Nevertheless, the news of Mandela’s release traveled quite efficiently--township style.

“Oh yes, we ran from place to place, telling everyone,” said two schoolboys, who had been debating whether to go to school the next day or stay home and celebrate.

Those who had heard the news via television or radio Saturday evening became carriers of the message as they ran shouting through the streets.

“I was sitting in my home watching TV,” said one middle-aged woman in Nyanga. “Then they came on with the news. I began to shout and went out in front of my house where people were already singing with joy. Everyone was in the streets.”

Saturday night was the biggest of block parties, with singing and dancing through the night. Many residents opened their homes, serving food and beer to all comers.

“I’m so happy, happy, happy,” said Buxton Landzela, a taxi driver in Crossroads.

“I have not gone to bed. Nobody slept last night, with happiness and excitement. We were enjoying, not hurting each other.”

Sunday the streets were alive with a kind of jubilant chaos. Cars were bedecked with the black, green and yellow flag of the African National Congress, an outlawed organization only two weeks ago. Others, lacking flags, had spray-painted ANC slogans on the sides of their cars. Horns honked. Sound trucks slowly trundled through the narrow, dusty streets with children chasing them, loudspeakers blaring the news and telling where to go for transport into Cape Town.

Any gathering of people would generate spontaneous toy-toying, a stamping, bouncing freedom dance accompanied by a mass chorus of freedom songs. Emotions were close to the surface for many. People hugged, shook hands and cried when they greeted friends and family members.

Entrepreneurs had not missed their opportunity--overnight “Welcome Back Mandela” T-shirts had been printed, sold, and were on the backs of thousands in the crowds.

Others, however, got into the spirit of the day in a different way. Shebeen owners, wily businessmen who run the township’s open-air bars, had declared drinks would be free all day in honor of Mandela’s release. The day before in the bars, the usual discussions of sports, unemployment and community gossip had given way to talk only of Mandela.

“We made it a rule, and everyone obeyed,” said one shebeen owner.

Taxi-van drivers ferried passengers into Cape Town free of charge for an afternoon rally.

Getting to the rally, at which Mandela was to speak, was the focus of much activity. Throughout Saturday night, ANC leaders had made arrangements to transport thousands from Crossroads and Nyanga into town for the rally. Throngs of people assembled at the central taxi-stand, many waiting in the summer sun for hours for rides.

Despite the celebrations and much jostling, there was no violence, only crushing crowds. Just as organizers had herded people into orderly lines, the ranks would break as a minibus or flat-bed truck arrived. After each vehicle had been packed, still others hung off the back of buses or sat on the roofs of cars, all joining the traffic jam that snaked from the townships eastward into Cape Town.

To see and hear Mandela for the first time in almost three decades was a moment of history few seemed willing to forgo. Many said they would walk the 10 miles into the city. For the people of the townships, Mandela is as much a symbol of their plight as he is their immense pride.

“He is our father, even if he has been in jail all these years,” one woman said. “He is the father of the black nation. He means everything to us. It is difficult to say what is in our hearts today. We must go to him.”

The normal and the usual were suspended for the day. Churches that on any other Sunday would have been packed, were empty. But this was a very special Sunday.

“I was getting dressed to go to church this morning, but then I said to myself, ‘God, you must forgive me. I must go see Mandela,’ ” Gloria Mguga said, still in her church finery.

“So now I am going. I must see for myself. I don’t want to hear from others how it was. Even if I don’t see him, there is something about him that touches you. Even to speak about Mandela.”

One man told of waking his daughter early Sunday morning so she could see the “sunrise of a new day in South Africa.”

The 6-year-old protested and asked why she must get up.

“A great man is about to be freed,” Hamilton Gxabela told his child. “With his freedom comes our freedom.”