Politics of hurt and betrayal: Why Lekota took aim at Ramaphosa

Lekota’s bitter outburst in Parliament last week, whether he’s being used to create division or not, stems from his torture under apartheid

The sad thing about comrade Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota’s outburst aimed at President Cyril Ramaphosa in Parliament last week is not that it has sullied the name of our president – for it has not – but that it will probably become the thing history will remember about Lekota, a man who gave so many years of his life to liberating his country, including spending six years on Robben Island.

Our president didn’t need to defend himself, but he chose to, and did so with the dignity and humility that is the mark of the man and leader we know and respect.

There are those, and I’m sure there are many, who will wonder why I still address the leader of the Congress of the People as “comrade”.

Well, despite the grave hurt he’s inflicted with his bitter remarks, Lekota himself is hurt, and his time in detention and prison undoubtedly has much to do with that.

This is not to say that I myself was not angered. My initial reaction was one of shock, which was followed by anger.

As I said to the president shortly after the incident: “I have never lifted a hand in anger against anyone in my life. However, I was sorely tempted to do so today.”

But, no, in the end, I am not angry with Terror.

He will, of course, answer to his own conscience, but, as someone commented to me on the day: “His life has fallen apart, and he cannot comprehend that someone he was in the trenches with is at the helm in South Africa.”

Wounded people wound others. What is the worst, most hurtful thing you can accuse a fellow comrade of? Obvious, isn’t it? Traitor. Sell-out. Askari. Impimpi. Collaborator. Coward. Any or all of the above.

So, Nelson Mandela was a sell-out. Thabo Mbeki is a sell-out. Ramaphosa is a sell-out.

Strangely, it’s only Jacob Zuma who is not a sell-out. But that’s a story for another day.

Let’s turn to what happened in Parliament last week and what happens to a human being during detention, imprisonment and solitary confinement.

One of the most disheartening and frightening things was not Terror’s outburst, but the reaction from the “young ones” on our parliamentary benches.

Julius Malema, born in 1981. Floyd Shivambu, born in 1983. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, born in 1985.

All these brash EFF youngsters in their red berets and quasi-military outfits are led by a man who can’t accept that he was born too late to join Umkhonto weSizwe (MK).

So, today, he calls himself a “commander-in-chief”.

What is forgotten when Julius, Floyd and Mbuyiseni stand up and applaud Terror in Parliament for turning on the president like a wounded animal is that they were also born too late to be affected by section 6 of the Terrorism Act.

Born too late for “the detention weapon”, the Internal Security Act, which allowed the apartheid police to hold anyone they wished for as long as they wanted in solitary confinement without access to lawyers, family or friends “until all questions are satisfactorily answered”.

One of the first people to reach out to me in deep concern after Terror’s outburst last week was a fellow former MK combatant, Ike Moroe.

Ike braved his fair share of solitary confinement and what can euphemistically be described as ill treatment at the hands of apartheid’s henchmen.

Like many others, Ike believes that Terror is very desperate and is most probably being used, wittingly or unwittingly, by sinister forces.

He also believes, as I do, that the only people who are really qualified to speak about what happens when you’re in the hands of the enemy are those who have actually been there.

Ike was one of those, like me again, who believed that the president shouldn’t have dignified Terror’s accusation with a response.

After the president spoke, Ike commented to me as follows: “It was brilliant. But also a very painful recollection I observed. People will never fully understand the damage the enemy has done.”

Ike has been brutally blunt of late and shared his experiences of his time in detention on Facebook.

Here’s one of the things he has to say: “My experiences from security police torture have made me feel that one cannot really recover from torture.

“I had to refuse to go mad. I had to at least refuse to go mad in their presence. This did not mean I did not go mad.”

To this day, Ike battles with his demons.

But, he says, “I do what I could not do when I was in section 6 of the Terrorism Act. I travel all alone. I write furiously, walk or run alone. I lock myself away alone. I save my family and others the pain of my insanity, whose origins are to be found in security police detention and torture.”

This is how Ike treats what he describes as his “bouts of insanity”.

However, he says that when he watched the pain as the president explained himself, he remembered that he made a decision a long time ago to never explain how he survived torture in detention.

But there are those who confront Ike on his Facebook page, demanding answers – just as there are those who confront the president and demand answers.

They ask Ike insensitive questions – does he know other comrades who were detained; who refused to be informers or refused to testify against fellow comrades; and who emerged alive?

The person who asked these questions went to school in 1994.

Would anyone demand that an abused woman stand up in public and explain what she endured, how she survived and why she survived?

What kind of world do we live in, in this new South Africa, that those who suffered unspeakable horrors and loss of human dignity at the hands of apartheid torturers are now required to speak of their pain by those who have no idea of what it entails, and who clearly possess not an ounce of humanity unless it is so deeply hidden one cannot detect it?

Terror quoted Steve Biko before he confronted the president. It was Biko’s murder in 1977 at the hands of the apartheid police when I was a first-year student at Rhodes University that propelled me into politics.

Here is one of the things he said and it remains my mantra to this day: “Black consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life; the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. In time, we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest possible gift – a more human face.”

If last week’s events are anything to go by, we are clearly some way from giving that most precious of gifts to our country.

• Sparg is a former MK soldier who was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. She counts herself lucky that she served only five years of this sentence and was released in April 1991. After her arrest in March 1986, she was kept in detention in John Vorster Square in solitary confinement for six months until she was charged in November 1986. She works in the presidency at Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters