Breaking our bonds

Chapter eighteen

April 1990

Millions of people swarmed the streets of Johannesburg today. It was the day of truth, of peace and of prosperity.

They say people have ceased to read. Everyone thinks that humans these days just sit in front of their televisions until their eyes water.

Well, they are wrong. I never have seen so many newspapers snatched away from stall owners.

It an extremely funny picture when you think about it, yet humour often comes along with happiness.

The happiness here is so contagious, that journalist from news companies all over the world, descend over our tiny little neighbourhood.

Those that weren't busy outside the president's house and the streets gathered around the house that I share with my family.

"Why do we have to be plagued with all these crowds?" Caroline said as she twisted my unruly hair into a French braid. 

"A journalist wants a good story, " I said to her as I gazed outside my window.

A vast ocean of reporters surrounded my house, dropping cigarettes and half-empty cups of tea on our lawn. I sighed. We would have to do a lot of cleaning up.

Yet, that didn't bother me for a moment. What could distract me from the giant headlines on the front of every newspaper in South Africa, and maybe even the world?

The words 'Apartheid has ended' has been highlighted, capitalised and translate to more languages than I could ever hope to learn.

Today was also the day in which the first black family; the Mabote's, moved into Northcliff. I think mum baked a rhubarb pie to welcome them.

My dad is in parliament. After introducing the issue of how violent groups such as the 'Wit is wonderlik' are free to strut around to the parliament, he then supported so many in addressing the monster that haunted our nation for decades; the apartheid.

The Land Acts, which were so revered by some was a tyrant to many. And on the twenty-seventh of April, the government finally took a stand. Apartheid had died.

So why were all these reporters coming here? My dad wasn't home.

I was brooding on that matter too when I heard a chant of voices below. They were chanting 'Elizabeth'.

I was fourteen years old and a meagre ninth-grader, but today I became a journalist.

When Joan Maredi was buried in the same ditch that she died in, I vowed that it was not the end. Her breath had stopped. Yet, her story did not.

As soon as the tears refused to flow from my eyes, I spotted a glimmer hidden deep in my room. No, it wasn't Joan's spirit coming to visit me. It was my diary.

All my memories were words now. Words that existed on pieces of paper. Words that would someday be shared.

The diary was soon sent to a magazine in London that saw that my dream of being a journalist came true.

As I looked into the distant crowds, I knew that it wasn't only my dream that had come true.

Joan wanted peace. She told me that Apartheid would die. She believed in this future.

And now the world believed in her.