Event: Chris Hani

Chris Hani and the unfinished meaning of freedom. Freedom Day should make us beware of selective memory. Beware the stories that are told too softly. Beware the speeches that turn struggle into sentiment. Beware the version of our history that makes it sound as if freedom arrived because everyone suddenly agreed to hold hands, forgive one another, sing together and build a rainbow nation. That was never the whole truth. It is a comforting story, but it is not an honest one. I remember 27 April 1994. I remember the celebration. I remember driving near Cato Manor in Durban and seeing people dancing in the streets and joining them. Even the police joined in on that day. It was beautiful. It was sacred. Something had shifted in the air. Nelson Mandela was becoming president. A Black president. In a country where, for most of my childhood, I had heard white people speak of him as a terrorist. In my all-white boarding school, Mandela was not a smiling statue on a T-shirt. He was spoken about with fear, suspicion and contempt. And yet, even in that moment of joy, we were not suddenly free. In the build-up to the election, I had been involved in political violence monitoring. I remember KwaMashu, Inanda and Ndwedwe. I remember funerals. I remember communities torn apart by violence. I remember the rumours and allegations of a third force. I remember how hard it was to know who to trust. I was studying social work at the time, and even then our university was working in places of deep conflict, where the promise of democracy was arriving alongside death, grief and fear. So yes, 1994 mattered. It mattered profoundly. It still matters. But it did not magically undo South Africa. It did not undo landlessness. It…