Dedicated to my uncle Johann. Thank you for making my teens and beyond bearable.
Thousands of supporters lined the route from Paarl, where Mandela had spent his final years in a small house within Victor Verster Prison, to Cape Town, where thousands more gathered at the Grand Parade before City Hall. The city was a flurry of colour: people from every walk of life, of every race and creed, draped in T-shirts, flags worn as capes, banners held high with slogans of peace, power, and goodwill. Fists and doves rose into the air — a strange contrast, power and peace — yet for that moment we were all united.
I joined my uncle at the parade, and we agreed it best to position ourselves near the back of the vast crowd, as reports filtered through of people being crushed against the wall at the front. Making our way through the throng beneath the beating sun, we smiled and shook hands, raised fists in greeting, and shouted Amandla! with strangers who felt like comrades. Not knowing the ANC anthem, I mouthed along as best I could. It was one thing to be swept up in a concert crowd, quite another to stand in the heart of a political rally. We all knew why we were there — some more than others — but the longer I stood amidst that sea of voices, the more I began to grasp the immensity of the moment. When you are young, your world often narrows to your own concerns. It takes something extraordinary to shake you awake.
Mandela was late. The road from Paarl was long, and every township along the way had claimed its moment, slowing his progress. The crowd grew restless. Journalists threaded through, provoking cheers and chants for the international cameras as they were swallowed by the surging waves of people, faces shining with sweat, fists raised, bodies toyi-toying in the sunlight. A PA system lashed to scaffolding boomed in vain, urging calm, while supporters clambered up its frame for a better view of the balcony above.
The clock on the town hall tower seemed to wave its hand over the crowd; the hour struck two. A fresh ripple of chanting broke out, punctuated by the PA’s calls for order. Flags, fists, doves, balloons — all drifted skyward as the anticipation tightened. And then, without warning, gunfire cracked across the square, ricocheting off the buildings. Silence fell, then more shots. Sniper fire? Panic surged. I spun about, unable to tell where the sound was coming from. A wall of black youths suddenly poured around the corner of a side street, charging toward us. Time slowed — seconds stretching into long, incomprehensible minutes. My legs froze. My mind screamed run, but my body would not obey.
A journalist grabbed my arm, hauling me sideways, shouting for cover. His voice was lost in the roar, but his meaning was clear: the crowd itself was as dangerous as any bullet. I stumbled behind a small yellowwood tree, gasping for air, as youths streamed past, folding themselves into the mass of demonstrators for protection. Police opened fire with rubber bullets and buckshot. The chaos became its own fuel: frustration gave way to looting, and soon youths dashed back through the crowd, arms laden with clothes, stereos, anything they could carry.
Amidst the turmoil, I saw a young man staggering, his back peppered with buckshot, blood seeping through a shirt that clung in shreds. A paramedic appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and with the help of others eased him onto the step of an ambulance. The youth sat calmly, wincing only occasionally as the shirt was peeled away, riddled with holes, and as shot was plucked from his flesh with a pair of tweezers, blood erupting with each fragment removed. All around, the pandemonium raged on.
A man stumbled past clutching a television set, the weight slowing him, making him a perfect target. A policeman’s truncheon struck him square between the shoulders. He fell to his knees, skidded face-first into the ground, but even then clung desperately to his prize.
I had no sense of time — minutes stretched into hours — and somewhere in the frenzy I lost sight of my uncle. I stood still, absorbing the smoke, the sweat, the acrid sting of fear, until the air itself seemed heavy with it. When at last I caught the eye of the journalist again, he looked back over his shoulder, grinned, and raised a thumb as if to say: We survived this one.
When I think back on that day, what lingers is not only the gunfire or the chaos, but the strange duality of it all. Unity and fracture, hope and fear, peace and power — they existed side by side in the square, just as they did within me. Mandela’s freedom marked the beginning of a nation’s rebirth, yet in the same breath it revealed how fragile that birth could be, how easily joy could tilt into violence. I carried that duality with me long after the crowd dispersed, as if the day itself had carved a reminder into my memory: that history is never one thing, and neither is a life.