By Danie Jacobs
Lentswe, Klerksdorp - It was April 1994 and the country was getting ready for the first democratic election in its history. At the time I was a sub-editor at Western Transvaal Record as the newspaper was called then, and remember clearly the high hopes everybody in the news office had, but also the threats of right-wingers who predicted the apocalypse. South Africa was on a high as the Rainbow Nation was just around the corner. Or so we all thought…
Klerksdorp was supposed to be the capital city of the then Western Transvaal and then everything changed before the election when Bophuthatswana integrated into SA and the North West Province was born. I also remember the AWB’s visit to Mafikeng where members were shot by the police. We reported on that as the newspaper had a much wider reach of the province then.
I was lucky to work for the IEC as a counting officer during the election. I visited some of the voting stations in the area and the IEC main centre for the area was situated in West End. I remember the hysteria when the AWB planned to bomb the building. Members of the AWB tried to park a bakkie laden with explosives in the basement of the building and blow it up. They were stopped by the police. I was told that story as I worked at a voting station in Wollies.
I remember the big day so well – April 27. It started with reports of the bomb exploding at OR Tambo airport, or Jan Smuts Airport as it was still called then. We expected the country to go up in flames as not everybody was happy with this new election.
I also remember visiting the voting station at the Hervormde Kerk Declerqville with my parents. There was a huge queue which stretched into the open field next to the church and down Wessels Street and buses bringing voters, black voters, to the polling station. I remember talking to our domestic worker as she was standing in the line with us and her excitement was palpable. The white people were completely outnumbered and that was worrying; as if we expected anything but an ANC win.
The next day people were still queueing and I remember it took a couple of days to vote and a couple of days to count. I supervised some of the counting and I was also stationed in Jouberton and it was a whitewash for the ANC. The ANC had just over 12 million votes and the NP became the official opposition with just under 4 million votes.
I also met members of foreign media who were in SA, waiting for the apocalypse. That, didn’t happen.
Nelson Mandela became president, as expected. Now, thirty years later, that initial excitement is back again.
This time it is for a possible change of government. Maybe the Rainbow nation can reunite on April 27?
