Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert

A personal memoire, by Michael Whisson.

With the rugged looks of Harrison Ford, the former First XV No 8 and Hall Warden, Van Zyl looked to be the perfect Stellenbosch product when we met about 1973. He was teaching Sociology at U.S. I was teaching Anthropology at UCT and H.W van der Merwe, a newcomer from Rhodes to UCT, was trying to bring the social scientists in the Western Cape together. Discussions were robust - the Maties suggesting that they could turn the government round from within, the Ikeys that opposition had to be principled and open. Van Zyl, having spent time at Rhodes, seemed open to both views - and became active in SPROCAS, an initiative of the Christian Institute to plan for a society after apartheid, which included some more open-minded Nationalists and intellectual revolutionaries like Ric Turner, whom the state was to assassinate.
I was visited by one of the Maties who explained to me that he was not an Afrikaner, but German (implying a mediatory role). "They feel you are a boerehater," he confided.
"No," I replied, "Not a boerehater but a papbroekehater, perhaps. They all kowtow to the old prof. even when they know he's lying. The only one who doesn't is Slabbert."
"Ah," said the mediator, "Slabbert. You know, he is an orphan. He was not brought up by his own parents."
We next met when, following ex-Rhodian Ben Dekker's pompous pricking campaign against "Div" Graaf in Rondesbosch in 1971, Van Zyl captured the seat for the seat for the Progressive Party, bringing support to end Helen Suzman's lonely vigil as the only principled opponent of the Nationalists in parliament. He recruited, among others, Errol Moorcroft - farmer, Rhodian, Rhodes scholar, and rugby star - who became the first Progressive to win a rural seat, in Albany. They were not like other politicians - they only spoke the truth, even when not to their electoral advantage. Like Helen Suzman, they were not for sale, regardless of the size of the bid. Moorcroft spent most of his time working for people who could not vote for him - jeopardising his support from among those who could.
Slabbert's departure, with Alex Boraine, from formal politics, to establish IDASA and to work quietly with H.W.van der Merwe and the exiles to build channels of communication, was a cruel blow to his party, but it freed him to make a special contribution to our astonishingly peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. He remained, as my German colleague had told me, "an orphan" - not tied to the traditions and prejudices of his ancestors, but wholly, remarkably and honorably, his own man.
M.W.