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A man of principle

Of all his colleagues, Dr Alex Boraine probably spent the most time with Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. Here are his thoughts:
I first became friends with Van Zyl Slabbert in April 1974 when he became the Progressive Party’s successful candidate for Rondebosch.
His reputation, however, ­preceded him.
When he was employed by Anglo American in Johannesburg we had got to know the young, handsome, charismatic, pipe-smoking Afrikaner who became a guru to many ­students.
In a recently published homage to Slabbert, The Passion for Reason, I wrote: After I won in Pinelands, Van Zyl called out: “Now we’re in the kak together!”
We were backbenchers in Parliament together and NP MPs could not understand our friendship. Van Zyl was a true Afrikaner from Stellenbosch. I, so they said, was a liberal former priest and Boer-hater.
Van Zyl and I, however, had more in common than they could imagine. Both of us had working class backgrounds and knew about poverty.
Van Zyl initially studied to become a dominee in the Dutch Reformed Church (before he switched to sociology) and I followed a similar mission in the Methodist Church.
Both of us worked our way through municipal and provincial councils to Parliament. We were not professional politicians and we never became fond of Paliament.
We were both in favour of an open society and extremely uncomfortable with the Prog’s policy of qualified franchise.
It strengthened our friendship as well as our belief that time had run out for “politics as usual”. Van Zyl did not hesitate to take over the leadership from Colin Eglin when the opportunity arose.
He was a born leader. It is important to distinguish between Van Zyl the parliamentarian and Van Zyl the leader of the opposition. As an MP he was probably too academic and decent and his arguments were wasted on short-sighted, stubborn government supporters. But within the opposition caucus his leadership was ­inspiring and considered.
Our friendship was about more than politics.
We camped in the caves at Gansbaai, fished and watched the stars in the Cederberg Mountains – always with the ideal of an open society for South African underdiscussion.
Van Zyl was complex and had no patience with stupidity. He was often impatient and introspective, with an underlying sadness to his character revealing unfulfilled dreams and aims not achieved.
He was saved from melancholy by his warm humour, which left no room for morbidity. He was an Afrikaner with a deep love for his language. He was an African who rose above ethnicity, race and language, an internationalist who embraced the world, but above all a person who tried to make things more human.
Shortly after leaving Parliament we launched the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa (Idasa) with him as chairperson and me as executive director.
Van Zyl and the later President Thabo Mbeki forged a friendship and when Mbeki ­returned to South Africa in 1990 it was Van Zyl who found him accommodation. They met a few times after that – until Van Zyl realised that the initiative and warmth came mostly from him. Van Zyl wanted to play a leading role in unfolding a South Africa based on human rights, but Mbeki knew Van Zyl’s strong principles would not allow him to become an ANC lackey.
He was a wonderful father and grandfather and a happy husband to Jane, who enriched his life. I salute Van Zyl Slabbert as a great son of Africa and I love him as a very ­special friend.
) Dr Alex Boraine was an MP, Idasa director and deputy chairperson of the TRC. He is a visiting professor at the University of New York
|| illustration: hanlie malan