Cape Town – Our country was not liberated by magic, but by the bravery of millions. Many gave their lives. Some gave their lives, but are still living. Mzunani Roseberry Sonto is one of them.
Rose, as he was affectionately known, was one of the leaders of the UDF, who led the popular resistance that ultimately made apartheid South Africa ungovernable. His battle name was Nontyatyambo Ndikho.
He was part of an underground unit working with the late Mountain Qumbela and Christmas Tinto. In Lesotho, he worked with Tony Yengeni and Vusi Pikoli. He belonged to the cell that recruited Bongani Jonas (now a general in the SANDF) in 1976.
Millions of people throughout the world would know Rose as the member of the reception committee who drove Nelson Mandela when he was released from prison in 1990, an honour given to him as a stalwart and veteran of the Struggle.
Rose suffered bravely and for many years that we might be free. And now he is old.
Our interim Constitution required an act of Parliament to pay special pensions to those who made great sacrifices in the establishment of our democracy.
The Special Pensions Act was meant to fulfil this obligation and look after heroes like Rose once they reached an advanced age, recognising that they had earned a pension through their service and sacrifice to our formerly oppressed people.
But the Special Pensions Appeal Board has worked tirelessly to avoid recognising Rose for what he was.
They treat him as a freeloader seeking a pension he does not deserve. The appeal board has concluded that it was improbable that Rose was ever restricted or banned, detained or imprisoned. To come to this conclusion, they have chosen to somehow ignore press photographs and articles from the time describing him as a UDF leader and detainee.
They have chosen to decline offers of testimony from those imprisoned with him. These include Trevor Manuel. Though they have a legal duty to do so, they have failed to question witnesses who would confirm the facts of Rose’s service.
They have ignored affidavits from fellow operatives in Umkhonto we Sizwe, as well as the testimony of myriad others who served time with him, represented him, wrote about him and witnessed his activities during the Struggle.
It is not easy to ignore this much evidence. And it is sickening to do so purely in order to avoid allowing a hero of the Struggle to grow old with dignity.
While Rose’s service is exceptional, his story is all too common. He is one of many suffering humiliation in seeking a pension that is rightfully his, rebuffed at every juncture.
This humiliation is performed tirelessly by faceless bureaucrats who choose to remember neither Rose nor his comrades, enabled by a poorly drafted act riddled with loopholes that are used ever more inventively to avoid giving a basic state pension to Struggle heroes.
The victims of this bureaucracy include ANC and MK members, Apla veterans and UDF stalwarts. Nothing that I have written here should be news, and it is terrible that I should have to write it. In the year before the last general election the Parliamentary Committee on Defence identified the failures of policy and bureaucracy that I have described.
The co-chairperson stated then that the problems should be addressed before Parliament rose. Nothing has changed. There is no indication that anything is going to change. This has gone on long enough.
Many of us do have memories. We remember our heroes, and value them. And we remember the unfulfilled promises made to them. We have an election next year, and we will continue to remember our heroes as we walk to the polls. Our elected leaders would be wise to regain their memories.
Donen SC is an advocate at the Cape Bar and a listed counsel of the International Criminal Court