My Father Died for This. Lukhanyo Calata
and not those from other races in the fight against the SABC. I impressed upon her the fact that eight of us were dismissed and that if she or the ANC was offering us help, they would have to help all eight of us, not just some of us. I was very pleased when she eventually agreed with me.
With this now settled and out of the way, we invited my mom and sister into the meeting. I’ve always known that my mother is a mighty soldier of a woman. I thank God every day that He chose her to give birth to me, raise, and guide me on this earth. In the meeting with Duarte, my mother once again proved just what a powerful force she is. She began by telling the DSG how she had read my letter in the newspapers and how she couldn’t understand why I had been dismissed based on what I had written in that letter.
For her, the parallels between my ordeal and that of my father were too much to bear. She then compared the circumstances between my father’s dismissal and mine, pointing out some uncanny similarities. She said that, at the time of my father’s murder, he had been waiting to be reinstated after being fired from his job as a school teacher in Cradock. Like him, I too had been charged, allocated a date upon which I would appear before a disciplinary hearing, and – once again like my father – I had been dismissed without my employer ever hearing my side of the story. To make matters worse, she said, on the day my father left our home never to return from a meeting in Port Elizabeth, I was just three years old and sick with the mumps. My three-year-old son, Kwezi, was sick with tonsillitis on the day I was dismissed. ‘Where is this all going to end?’ she asked, adding that she was praying not to have to relive the searing pain of death and loss again as she had done with my father.
After an emotionally charged two hours for all four of us around that table, the meeting ended with Duarte promising to do all she could to assist the eight of us fired by the SABC.
While in Johannesburg, I also wanted to meet with the lawyers who would represent Thandeka, Busi, and me in our Labour Court challenge. I had been a little annoyed with my union, Bemawu. In the hours and days after our dismissal, I had spoken to Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, whom I wanted to represent me in the case. Bra D, as he was commonly known, had had a long-standing relationship with my family and the other families of the Cradock Four. He and his brother, Lungisile, were arrested alongside Matthew Goniwe in 1976 for having been part of a ‘terrorist’ cell group. Bra D also later worked with my mother and the other widows when he served as a commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). I had specifically requested my union’s president, Hannes du Buisson, to brief Bra D for my defence. The union, in its infinite wisdom, had never done so, and this had pissed me right off. Instead, Busi, Thandeka, and I would be represented by a gravelly voiced attorney called Nick Robb from Webber Wentzel. I wanted to at least meet the man who would help determine whether or not I could return to my job at the SABC.
Nick turned out to be a really cool guy, excellent lawyer, and was best friends with Judge Clive Plasket, who had represented my mother and the other widows at the second inquest into the murders of the Cradock Four in the early Nineties. Nick opted to brief Advocate Steven Budlender, who was already representing Suna, Jacques, Krivani, and Foeta. After my meeting with him, I called Bra D to inform him of everything that had happened, and to express my sincere apologies to him as the union in this case hadn’t assented to my request. Bra D was very understanding and supportive, particularly when I told him that my case would be argued by Budlender. ‘You’re in very good hands with Steven,’ I recall him saying.
The case of the first four rebels, Suna, Jacques, Krivani, and Foeta, would be heard the following Tuesday with our case – Busi, Thandeka, and myself – scheduled for two days later. Vuyo Mvoko’s case was slightly different to ours – he would challenge his dismissal in the High Court, as he was on a fixed freelance contract at the time of his dismissal.
On Tuesday, 26 July 2016, four days after my meeting with Duarte, the Labour Court ruled that four of the SABC 8, Foeta Krige, Suna Venter, Krivani Pillay, and Jacques Steenkamp, be reinstated. This was obviously good news for all of us. The court ruling meant Busi, Thandeka, and I could also return to our posts at the SABC. Our case was due in court that Thursday, but our lawyers assured us that the ruling meant we probably wouldn’t appear in court, and that they would seek to have the first judgment made an order of the court. I was very happy not to have to go to court, particularly as this would’ve involved another flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg and back.
The SABC management, however, cut our celebrations and congratulatory messages short. Barely an hour after the court ruling, management announced they would appeal the Labour Court’s decision that we be reinstated.
Just like that, our jubilation turned to despair. We asked ourselves how the SABC with its depleting cash reserves could waste taxpayers’ money on a trivial matter like this. Did most of those ‘crazy baldheads’ on the 27th floor of the SABC offices in Auckland Park not know they were merely delaying the inevitable? Did they not know that we were on the right side of the law and history, and that it was just a matter of time before we would get our jobs back despite their obstinacy? Did they not know – or did they just not care? Well, I was ready to fight. Thandeka, Busi, and I were due in court for our case on Thursday, 28 July. We instructed Nick, our lawyer, to prepare to give the SABC a bloody nose. I was baying for it. On Wednesday, 27 July, the SABC suddenly backed down from its threats, announced it would not appeal the Labour Court ruling, and that we were free to return to our posts the very next day. This was such welcome news for all of us.
I suspected that this sudden about-turn may have had something to do with my meeting with Duarte, but I wasn’t sure how much of it did, and I never called to confirm if Duarte or the ANC had anything to do with the SABC’s decision to let us return to work. I was just so happy to return to my job. It had been an awfully tough few weeks. I wanted to put it all behind me. So on Thursday, 28 July 2016, I woke up, got ready, and went to the office instead of the Labour Court. Seven of us – Suna Venter, Krivani Pillay, Thandeka Gqubule, Busisiwe Ntuli, Jacques Steenkamp, Foeta Krige and I – went back to work that day. Sadly, Vuyo Mvoko did not. The SABC had found a loophole in his contract as a freelancer, which they could exploit to block his reinstatement at the broadcaster. Vuyo would eventually be vindicated when, over a year later, on 29 September 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the SABC was wrong in terminating his contract, which was valid until 2019, and ordered the public broadcaster to pay his legal costs.
Our first day back at work was just five or so days before the local government elections on 3 August. I remember being quite happy to walk back into the Marks Building in the parliamentary precinct, where the SABC’s offices are located. A few colleagues, Zalene Merrington, Pam Zokufa, Joseph Mosia and Abongwe Kobokana, were there when I walked in. The reception and their genuine happiness to see me back in the office made me feel so welcome. I spent most of the day catching up with colleagues and combing through hundreds of emails. I don’t recall doing much else that day. On the bus home later that evening, I thought back on everything that had happened over the past few weeks, what I had managed to pull off and how – to my own astonishment – I had actually accomplished some of the things I had done. I wondered if my father had been watching, guiding, and helping me along the way. I wondered too if he would’ve been proud of me.
Chapter Two
‘He Was the Gentlest of Them All’
– Sarie Smith, childhood friend
LUKHANYO
This question is something I have often wondered about at great length. What kind of relationship would my father and I have, if he were alive today? My mother has told me about how happy he was when I was born, and that he always referred to me as his best friend. Would we still be best friends? Would we be almost like brothers? Would we get along at all? Or would we have a more conventional father-and-son relationship built upon well-defined boundaries of communication, personal interactions, and relating to each other?
Pondering these questions inevitably leads me to ask a number of other questions, such as: What course would our lives, specifically mine, have taken were my father still alive? Would I be the man I have turned out to be today? Would my dreams, aspirations, fears, beliefs, successes, failures be what they are? Would I have become a journalist? Would I have met