Remembering Professor Jakes Gerwel
Red River Walk is in Manenberg, a township on the Cape Flats. It is one I knew well as a much younger person, a time when it was an area where one could wander around without any trepidation in one’s bones. Dangerous then, it was far from the viciously violent area it is today.
My mother’s only sister, Auntie Katie, full name Catherine Louise, lived in Red River Walk. Sharing her flat, which had a giant blue gum tree growing next to it, was her childhood friend Auntie Ollie, whose lover, Uncle Whitey, came visiting at weekends, as he did when these two wonderful women were neighbours in Vernon Terrace, District Six.
He was white. He and Auntie Ollie were courting arrest and being charged with breaking the Immorality Act each time they were in bed together. Their love endured. Many witnessed it. Among them were one of the greatest, unsung South Africans who fought for freedom for all, Jakes Gerwel, and his fearless and supportive wife, Phoebe, who was related to Auntie Ollie.
On some Saturday afternoons, Jakes when he was rector of the University of the Western Cape, which he quite rightly called the intellectual home of the left, would drive Phoebe to Red River Walk. The purpose of their drive from Belhar to Manenberg was to visit Auntie Katie and Auntie Ollie for a natter. My mother, Marie, would walk from nearby Heideveld to be part of the afternoon’s discussions.
My thoughts dwelled on Jakes on Monday, 28 November,which was the 10th anniversary of his death at the age of 66. Jakes was an unassuming, down-to-earth freedom fighter, who passionately loved and spoke his native language, Afrikaans, and was a fervent believer in non-racialism.
Whenever we spoke to one another, it was in Afrikaans, the number one language used on the Cape Flats, and also one of the languages in which the battle for liberation from apartheid was fought.
It was in Afrikaans that Jakes advised me in the 1980s after I had sounded him out, to apply for a Thomson Foundation Fellowship, to study in London and to take it if it came my way. In his blunt way, Jakes reminded me that there were few opportunities for black journalists to hone their skills. I heeded his words.
As an extra-parliamentary reporter on Cape Argus during the 1980s, I reported on the insurrection in the Western Cape, particularly in Cape Town and its environs. My reporting often took me to the campus of the University of the Western Cape, where student resistance against apartheid would lead to clashes with brutal security forces. In these encounters, stones were no match against the weapons brandished by the enforcers of unjust laws who, confident that they were above the law, had no qualms about invading the campus to punish.
Jakes was not a big man. But he was a giant when it came to moral courage. How courageous he was when, often with his vice-rector Professor Jaap Durand walking alongside him, he would resolutely confront the riot police. It is a picture that one will always remember: Jakes leading, putting himself between the students and physical danger, followed by a throng of students singing freedom songs.
After Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, Jakes, who was never shy to show and live out his political convictions, sometimes made his official vehicle, a big burgundy BMW, at his disposal. Of course, Jake’s driver drove the vehicle.
Since both men were from the Eastern Cape, and because of the trust, deep respect and appreciation that they had for one another, it did not surprise that Jakes left his beloved UWC to become Director-General of the office of the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, after the country’s inaugural democratic elections. He also served as Secretary of the first Cabinet of the democratic dispensation.
His DG’s office was in Tuynhuys, the seat of the President’s official office in the parliamentary precinct. At that time I was a political reporter on the SABC, and Jakes and I would sometimes bump into one another and stop for a brief chat.
Years later, as we had coffee in St George’s Mall, which in the infant years of democracy was teeming with popular coffee joints, Jakes, who at that time was heading the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Mandela Rhodes Foundation, surprised me by how much he knew about the media profession.
He shared his insights in a humble and endearing way. In fact, in a manner, which was a trait of an academic, activist, and family man whose values and integrity inspired many, including me.
His legacy is immense. Part of it was in persuading President Mandela to change the name of the President’s official residence in Cape Town from the colonial Westbrooke to Genadendal (Valley of Grace), a name change that honours the contribution of the indigenous people to democracy in South Africa. Another part is his selfless dedication to be part of establishing a new, non-racial and more equal social order.
Saluting you, Jakes. You belonged to a generation of nation-builders. We desperately need leaders of your calibre.
Veteran journalist and political commentator Dennis Cruywagen is the author of The Spiritual Mandela: Faith and religion in the life of South Africa’s great statesman and Brothers in War and Peace: Constand and Abraham Viljoen and the Birth of the New South Africa.
