Past to present

SOURCE: PUBLISHED BY TAFELBERG

Clare Stewart was born in South Africa but grew up, and lived for different lengths of time, in Lesotho, Malawi and Kenya, the US, UK and Ireland before returning to SA in the 70s. A single white mother of two mixed-race children living in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) during the height of apartheid faction fighting, she was recruited by Ronnie Kasrils into the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Aware of the dangers she faced as an ANC activist, she’d asked her sister Rachel to take care of her children should the worst happen. Soon after, on 10 November 1993, Clare went missing …

What made you want to write Clare’s story and what did you feel you had in common with the storyline?

Clare’s story came to me, and then stuck with me, through a combination and coalescence of different factors, including a certain amount of coincidence.

I first heard about Clare and her murder about a decade ago from my ex-wife’s parents Steve Hulbert and Vanda van Speyk, who had lived in Manguzi with Clare among a small set of progressive whites in the late 80s and early 90s. I was immediately fascinated by Steve and Vanda’s rich, colourful tales of what was, to me, a far-off yet pivotal time and place in South Africa’s history.

In subsequent years, I went on to do a lot of journalistic work about more contemporary political violence in KwaZulu-Natal and began to feel that there was a clear link between what was happening now and the province’s long history of violence, of which Clare was of course but one of thousands of victims. I also came to feel that Clare’s death had a particular symbolism in that it occurred so close to the end of apartheid, effectively straddling these two different eras and their respective iterations of political violence.

Equally, as I learnt more about Clare, I found a number of parallels between her history and worldview, and my own. We’d lived in many of the same countries and cities, and both came (or in her case, returned) to South Africa at similar junctures in our lives.

Furthermore, at a time when I was beginning to re-interrogate my own purpose in life, I was increasingly drawn to her seemingly irrepressible sense of determination and conviction as she sought to actively live out her admirable principles, even in the face of great risk and uncertainty.

When I then met Clare’s children Themba and Puleng, who it transpired both lived within walking distance of my home in Cape Town, I felt a strong and almost immediate affinity with them. From then on, I was hooked in completely. And I soon developed a strong conviction that a place should finally be carved out for Clare’s story, and that of her family,in South Africa’s complex narrative. To me, there were clear links between her story, and her murder, and various other aspects of the wider South African context, both historical and contemporary.

Although the book at first seems focused on Clare, it’s also a richly recorded historical timeline of political events in SA, bringing to life stories and situations that millions of South Africans are not aware of. It lifts a veil of ignorance beyond the media censorship and racial agendas of both then and now, and is partly educational. What was your process for this research?

As I write in the book, in my career as a journalist, I have mostly been drawn to stories and places that are largely neglected or misrepresented by the media but which in some way, poignantly illustrate the tension between South Africa’s dark past and its increasingly fissured present. So, I had already done a significant amount of research in that regard from which to draw for the book, including effectively collecting countless oral histories from South Africans of all ages and walks of life across the country.

I also spent a significant amount of time digging into the SABC’s trove of transcripts from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, a hugely valuable resource. When names and events described therein piqued my interest, I would go in search of further information from old news reports, books and so on. I wanted to bring that past era to life as much as possible in my book, to fill in colour and detail around the bare historical facts, to make it feel more present and imbue it with a certain sense of urgency. I sought to achieve that through combining and connecting all the archival material with the intricate personal testimonies.

What did you want to achieve with the book and who was it written for from the outset?

To be honest, these are still not easy questions for me to answer. As much as I would be indescribably proud if my book was to bring about belated justice, or even closure, for Clare’s family, I have been incredibly wary of creating any sense of false hope, either for myself or others, or setting myself up to fail in any way. Ultimately, of greater importance to me was to be as true as possible to a person and a life that I felt had mostly been neglected despite all that Clare’s story still has to offer.

In terms of who it was written for, probably the most obvious answer is for Clare’s family. While that is certainly true (I write in the book about the pressure I felt to not disappoint them, especially after I had earned their trust and they had shared so much of themselves with me), in a way, I was also writing it for myself. As I became increasingly obsessed with Clare’s story, I wanted to see where it took me, and what I would learn along the way. By the same token, I hoped that anyone else who would eventually read the book might also take something from that personal journey and its connection to Clare’s story.