The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Modise was buried with military honours in a semi‐state funeral. At the funeral, the
ongoing biographic disputes surrounding Modise could not be ignored. Thabo Mbeki rose
to Modise’s defence against critics, who “opposed Modise while he lived [and] who
continued to oppose him as he lay in his grave”. In his biographic defence of Modise,
Mbeki showed his awareness of the fallibility of political and moral greatness. Modise’s
critics, he suggested, were people who worked “to ferret beneath the mounds of the
graves to find the negative things with which they infuse to evil spirits of the night they
will strive to conjure”. In contrast to these “macabre” depictions, Mbeki insisted that those
“who had the privilege to experience the comradeship of Joe Modise” would “tell the
story of a man of courage”. This would be a story of “ a thinker … a person of loyalty to
his cause, his principles, his fellow fighters, his comrades”. 159
Biographic turmoil continued to erupt in the public domain, and not only in biographical
assessments at times of death. The conviction and imprisonment of former UDF and ANC
Western Cape leader Alan Boesak in the late 1990s on charges of the theft of donor funds
intended for social causes constituted a biographic interruption, with his biographical
path coming unstuck. In a narrative switch, garlanding and celebration had turned to
ostracism and pity. 160 The moral elements of political biography’s narration were also
contested during the 2003 Hefer Commission of Enquiry into accusations that Director of
Public Prosecutions and former UDF leader, Bulelani Ngcuka had been an apartheid era
spy. The forum of the Commission constituted a theatre of all‐out biographic war, as the
159 Cape Argus, 10 December 2001. In 2003, Thabo Mbeki flew to the eastern Cape in 2003 to attend the
funeral of Kaiser Matanzima, who had been buried “as a hero”. Matanzima had been regarded by
CONTRALESA as “one of the heroes of the liberation struggle”. Mbeki was taken to task for praising a
Bantustan “stooge” and “quisling chief”, who had “dispensed patronage to his cronies while he grew
fat from colluding with an oppressive regime”. See Fikile‐Ntsikelelo Moya, ‘Kaiser Matanzima: Saint
or Sinner?’, Mail and Guardian, 20‐26 June 2003; Alie Fataar, ‘Not worthy of a hero’s burial’, Cape Argus,
27 June 2003; Mathatha Tsedu, ‘Bizarrely, Mbeki snubs his old comrades and praises a stooge’, Sunday
Times, 29 June 2003.
160 Boesak had argued that he had taken the fall for the ANC, which had abandoned him and refused
“to accept collective responsibility” for money which had been used “for struggle activities”. On his
release from prison, Boesak made an unsuccessful plea to Thabo Mbeki to “consider his past
contribution” and pardon him. At the same time, Boesak refused to accept an award from the ANC for
“his contribution to the anti‐apartheid struggle” during the 20 th anniversary UDF celebrations (Cape
Times, 25 March 1999; Cape Argus, 21 August 2003). Other political leaders who experienced a moral
switch in their biographic narratives through accusations of having spied or having become corrupt
were Peter Mokaba and Tony Yengeni.
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