Holy Cows. Gareth van Onselen
children, presented with the unthinkable, were at pains to restrain themselves and had to be held back by security from diving into the pile and gorging themselves on toys and trinkets.
‘There was no Christmas at home,’ said ten-year-old Nopasika Matikinca to one newspaper, ‘but now we find Christmas at this place.’ She had walked six kilometres, unaccompanied by any adult, to be there, bringing only her three-year-old sister with her.
The meal too had been transformed – mutton stew and samp. And to round it off, a two-metre-long Christmas cake decorated in the colours of the South African flag.
Mandela wore a red hat and played the role of Father Christmas. But his speech, for the first time, had a more generic, political quality to it: ‘The country’s children are our most important asset,’ he said, ‘because out of them will come future members of the legislature and the premiers, the national parliament, the deputy president and even the president.’
So, politics and patriotism, which had also quickly found their way into the Qunu Christmas party, would come to help define the event too, and both boast an insatiable hunger of their own.
Some of the presents under the tree were toy guns – something the newspaper, The Daily News, doing its bit to ensure good will adhered to those parameters that orthodoxy demands, wasted no time moralising about in an editorial the following Monday: ‘With the spirit of joy and peace so evident at the Qunu festivities, it struck a sour note that someone in the backroom slipped in choosing some of the gifts handed out by the President. Toy guns are contentious items at the best of times, and, with the television cameras rolling, this was certainly the worst of times to put them into young hands.’
Mandela learnt his lesson well. His party was no longer a private gesture, but a public symbol. When you are in the public eye, authenticity has to be quickly diluted down to its blandest, most palatable form. The guns would never make another appearance.
But the media, it appears, was not quick to forget. Two years later, after the 1998 party had come and gone, The Herald took to its editorial pages to bask in the triumph that it had been a ‘gun-free’ Christmas party: ‘We don’t want our children to grow up like those in Liberia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have found themselves fighting in adult wars without even knowing who they are killing and why.’ No doubt the press had saved many lives when first it decided to campaign on this issue.
As time passed, Mandela’s Christmas party grew … and grew. It had now become a phenomenon. ‘Word has spread over the years,’ said Mandela’s private aide, Zelda la Grange, ahead of the 1999 festivities. ‘The number of children attending annually has grown.’
Grown they certainly had: some 5 000 people would attend that year, and the next year it would grow again. It was reported that some children travelled for two days so that they would arrive in Qunu for Christmas Day, only to travel two days back home after the event had drawn to a close.
But as South Africa more generally grew accustomed to freedom over the years, poverty did not relinquish its grip on the Eastern Cape. If anything, in the 364 days between each party, it had tightened its hold. La Grange would later write in her memoir, ‘I saw children infected with diseases without names. Underfed, deformed, mistreated, neglected.’ The party might have grown, but the hunger it sought to feed was becoming insatiable.
By 2002 the party prepared to welcome 15 000 people. And as it had expanded, so had its reputation – and not just in Qunu but across the entire Eastern Cape, among those valleys and beyond the hills, into the rest of South Africa, across the sea and all the way to the United States of America. Oprah Winfrey would even make an appearance that year. Mandela was Oprah’s adopted father figure, and she, like so many others, adored him and was captivated by the occasion. An occasion that, as coincidence would have it, also made for great television.
The event was brought forward a few days, to 22 December, specifically to allow Oprah to attend (no doubt because she had Christmas plans of her own in the States). But, even though the Christmas party was now no longer on Christmas Day, this did nothing to dampen its popularity. Banners reading ‘Christmas Kindness’, the name of Oprah’s international Christmas campaign, were installed all around Mandela’s residence.
The ghost of Christmas present roamed Qunu that day and, with it, an infatuation with the moment – and with framing the event perfectly on celluloid, so that the unselfishness of spirit could be projected to a global audience.
The children arrived on foot, in makeshift ox carts, on squeaking bicycles, in taxis and buses, some in wheelchairs, others even on horseback. ‘We can’t seem to keep up with the demand,’ said La Grange. ‘Every year, by word of mouth, the children learn of the party and the numbers have been multiplying year after year. You can’t believe your eyes when you look out at the sea of excited faces. The queues go all the way into the hills.’
Some had queued since 2 a.m.
No longer would Mandela be serving the food; he was now more an observer than a participant. The South African Chefs Association had committed a team of 40 people, who worked for 20 hours packing meals. Each lunchbox would contain two pieces of roast chicken, some cheese, chicken sausages, peanuts, yogurt, a boiled potato and coleslaw. The association’s vice president, Martin Kobald, described it as a ‘logistical nightmare’.
Mandela would make a grand entrance in a defence-force helicopter, and later he would mingle with politicians such as Bantu Holomisa and Makhenkesi Stofile. Ladysmith Black Mambazo were booked to provide the entertainment.
This was a turning point in the life of Mandela’s Christmas party. The numbers were so large now that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain order. It is one thing having 1 000 children swarming around a Christmas tree, quite another managing 20 000. As Ladysmith Black Mambazo played their hit song ‘Diamonds on the souls of her shoes’, the crowd, already a pulsing mass of enthusiasm, began to squash up against the railings. The show was promptly stopped as security guards had to push the crowd back. A number of children were squeezed up against the fence, emerging later, after the music had stopped and the crowd dispersed, bruised and cut. A decision was made to dismantle the fence to avert widespread injury. Two children were less fortunate, though. They were crushed and had to be evacuated to a local hospital, although they were discharged soon afterwards with minor injuries. It was reported that a worried-looking Mandela stared out over the crowd as chaos began to embrace his guests, before he retreated to the safety of his house.
The Sunday Times described the event as follows: ‘The officers, armed with batons and sjamboks struggled to control the horde. Some people fought their way through openings in the fence, while some adults threw their children over the fence onto a rocky piece of ground alongside the N2. The sounds of crying children and the occasional scream from a parent whose child was hurt or battling to breathe could be heard above the noise.’
It emerged later that in excess of 20 000 people had arrived at Mandela’s house that day. The organisers were simply overwhelmed. The defence force had to be called in, as well as local police. Likewise, a medical-assistance helicopter was dispatched following the mayhem and a small fleet of ambulances was seen lined up outside the residence late into the afternoon. In the aftermath, children’s shoes, long since separated from their owners, were seen scattered across the grounds.
Later, a secondary disruption saw children and adults swarm the stash of presents as they fought and jostled for a prize.
Oprah Winfrey’s website has a two-minute video of her 2002 visit, which portrays the event in a rather different light. Titled ‘From the Oprah Show vault: Nelson Mandela’s Christmas surprise’, it shows what appears to be an unprecedented triumph of compassion and generosity, all framed with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for the Oscars. Curiously, it makes no mention of the chaos. It tells of how Oprah’s team measured each kid’s feet on arrival, so that, later in the day, they could receive a custom-fitted pair of Nike sneakers. ‘In fact, most of the children didn’t know there would be gifts at all,’ Winfrey claims in her narration, an assessment somewhat at odds with the accounts in the local media. Her website also makes the exaggerated claim that there had been 50 000 children in