Abstract
A former political prisoner turned South African national treasure who helped to draft the constitution, parliamentarian Ben Turok worries about the future as he steps down after four terms in parliament. He talks to
Like many South Africans, corruption worries Turok. “It is eating the soul out of the country,” he tells me. But it’s not his biggest concern as he prepares to leave parliament and concentrate instead on editing New Agenda, the policy journal he founded nearly 11 years ago. Instead, he wants to see real economic growth driven by expansionary economic policies. He’s tired of conservatism and a country that worries more about what ratings agencies say than what needs to be done to “get the economy moving”.
“This must be done with rigour, discipline, foresight and boldness.” There’s nothing stopping us, as far as he’s concerned – he disagrees with his colleague, Trevor Manuel of the Planning Commission, who worries about South Africa’s skills shortage. “I think we have enormous manpower resources and brains but they’re not being properly utilised. We must crack the problem of growth and we must grow in an inclusive, developmental manner.”
Education, too, needs more work. He spent some time in Mozambique and was struck by the fact that every school stayed open late, until about midnight, to accommodate adult learners. In the United Kingdom, universities open their doors to adults who want to learn after a long day at work. “Why not in South Africa? We don’t take education seriously. There’s a far more rigorous attitude needed for training, teaching and learning. We’ve got to get serious. We need radical, strong solutions.”
Turok has been discussing history recently, looking back to the 1940s and 50s to track the emergence of ANC policy. There is probably no one in the world who’s better placed to comment on this subject: Turok is a policy wonk of the highest order; the man behind the socio-economic rights contained in South Africa’s widely lauded constitution, and an ANC stalwart, he has no qualms about openly and eloquently criticising the party that’s been his political home for decades. One of the most high-profile examples of this was his decision to speak out against the controversial secrecy bill, despite an ANC three-line whip. As Turok leaves parliament, there’s little doubt that there’s plenty more work to be done in strengthening and improving South Africa’s very young democracy, but he is ready to focus his attentions elsewhere.
Above: Veteran politician Ben Turok worries that not enough is being done to fight corruption in South Africa
Credit: Denvor De Wee/City Press
The son of Jewish immigrants from Latvia, Turok grew up in a fiercely political home. He and his parents moved to South Africa when he was about seven years old and his father, in particular, grew increasingly involved in anti-fascism after the end of the World War II in 1945. But, says Turok, his parents were “conventional” in terms of race, certainly in South African terms. “My parents,” he says wryly, “were not revolutionaries at all.” As an engineering student at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Turok started reading Marx and got involved with the Student Socialist Party. Eventually, he became the “broadly left-wing” organisation’s chairperson. On the weekends, he would visit townships around Cape Town to sell copies of The Guardian. Still, he didn’t consider himself truly politicised until he completed his studies at UCT and travelled to neighbouring Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to produce articles as a land surveyor.
“I had to live with farmers. On Sundays they would have neighbours round to chat and drink beer. I had African workers, from Nyasaland, and occasionally I had problems with the chief. The farmers were very clear about what they thought I should do – take [the workers] into the bush and beat the hell out of them.”
He would listen, horrified, as the farmers boasted about “shooting Africans”. They would even discuss the merits of different bullet calibres, suggesting to each other that it was better to use “a.22, not a.303, because then you wound, not kill”. The experience hardened and, in many ways, defined the young Turok. “I was very angry.”
He returned to South Africa and got involved in local politics. He was approached to help set up the Africa Club, a discussion and debate forum, and found premises for the organisation in Loop Street in Cape Town’s city centre. Immediately, he says, the notorious and feared police Special Branch moved in, setting up outside the premises and jotting down the numberplates of those who were attending Africa Club sessions. “They didn’t hide themselves.”
It was amazing under Madiba, there was a high quality of debate. There was so much change on the agenda and so many battles to be fought
In December 1952 (he thinks; for a man so well-versed in policy, able to home in on crucial details about complex economic issues, Turok admits he’s “not very good with the dates”), Turok went to the UK for a year of post-graduate studies at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). During his time there, he organised a festival for radical youth that drew people from around the world, among them 30 South Africans, including ANC leader Oliver Tambo. He also kept in touch with the woman who had succeeded him as the secretary for the Modern Youth Society in Cape Town, Mary Butcher. She would later become his wife. He chuckles as he recalls how their relationship grew from attending political meetings together. “You know how that goes,” he says – and cites other famous South African political couples, including Joe Slovo and Ruth First, Ahmed Kathrada and Barbara Hogan, and President Jacob Zuma and his former wife, the African Union commission chairperson Nkosana Dlamini-Zuma, to illustrate his point.
By the time Turok returned from the UK, the formalised apartheid system was about five years old. He and Mary could not join the ANC, as it was a blacks-only organisation. Instead, he became a member of the Congress of Democrats and, in 1955, became its secretary in the then Cape western region. He was a full-time organiser for the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown in Soweto in 1955. Here, the Freedom Charter was declared and adopted – a crucial document for the opponents of apartheid and, in some ways, a precursor to the country’s constitution adopted in 1996.
Turok’s political activites put him on a collision course with the apartheid government. Things, as he puts it, “got rougher and rougher”. He was arrested and charged with treason in 1956 alongside Nelson Mandela, Tambo, First, Kathrada, Helen Joseph, Walter Sisulu, Duma Nokwe and others. Initially, 156 people were charged. Charges against Turok were withdrawn in 1958 and the entire treason trial, as it became known, ended in 1961 with “not guilty” verdicts for the remaining defendants. Both Turok and his wife were issued with banning orders by the apartheid government restricting their movement, but this didn’t stop their political activities: in 1957 he started his first stint as a politician, representing black Africans in the Western Cape on the Cape Provincial Council.
In 1962, Turok was convicted under the Explosives Act and spent three years in prison. He eluded house arrest after serving his sentence, fled to Tanzania via Botswana and eventually moved his family – he and Mary had three sons – to Britain where he served on the faculty of the Open University.
But in 1990, it was time to come home. Turok tuned into the BBC and listened to South Africa’s then President FW de Klerk announcing to parliament that the ANC and other political organisations were being unbanned. When Mary came home that afternoon, he announced that they were returning to South Africa. “She said OK,” he reports, and two days later the couple flew into Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts International Airport. Their sons, he says, “thought we were crazy”. So did the security police who met them in Johannesburg and demanded to know why they were in the country. “Because De Klerk says we can come back,” Turok declared. Eventually, the Turoks were allowed a week in Cape Town to visit Ben’s brother.
Turok has served under four presidents as an ANC MP. He is a long-standing member of parliament’s committees on finance, trade and industry, putting his policy nous to good work. The first parliament, assembled under Mandela after his inauguration in 1994, was “quite a shock to the system”.
“It was amazing under Madiba, there was a high quality of debate and a mature, competent group of ministers. There was so much change on the agenda and so many battles to be fought.”
Above: South Africa’s parliament in Cape Town
Credit: Goddard/iStock
For a man who’s done so much in different guises over nearly an entire lifetime, it’s hard to pinpoint his greatest success. But Turok is proudest of his contribution to the constitution, which started while he was still in exile and read a document compiled by the ANC called “constitutional guidelines”. It included a bill of rights, but Turok noticed that there were no economic or even socio-economic rights contained in it. There was a similar absence in the first draft of what was to become the constitution of the Republic of South Africa. “I thought it was inadequate,” says Turok, who had studied constitutional trends in the UK and Europe and knew there was a serious debate under way there to build a second level of socio-economic rights into the country’s constitutions. He took his concerns to Mandela’s legal advisor, Fink Haysom, during a meeting at the presidential guesthouse in Cape Town, Tuynhuys. Haysom was willing to listen – but Turok decided that he needed more evidence to bolster his case. He had a friend in London courier through 17 different documents that related to these rights and their place in constitutions, which he passed on to Haysom. After a couple of weeks, the lawyer came back to him and said “We’ll do something about it.” The government did, indeed, enshrining such values as the right to access to housing in the constitution – but it also built in limitation clauses that compelled the government to provide housing and other necessities only within its available resources. The rather liberal application of these clauses, Turok argues today, is behind such problems as South Africa’s vast housing backlog. In late 2013, then Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale placed the backlog at around 2.1 million units – that’s an estimated 12 million people without formal housing.
Turok is proudest of his contribution to the constitution, which started while he was still in exile
Turok says this involvement in the constitution is something he has no qualms boasting about: “And now I’m boasting to you!” On the eve of Turok’s retirement from parliament, South Africa’s political waters are turbulent. The country’s public protector, Thuli Madonsela, has released a report into government spending on President Zuma’s private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal. The ANC had recently faced harsh criticism for some of the names on its election candidate list. Among those on the list – although she later withdrew her candidature – was former Communications Minister Dina Pule, who was fired after parliament’s ethics committee, led by Turok, found her guilty of gross misconduct. When her name appeared on the list, Turok was quoted as saying that he was disappointed by her inclusion. “I think that the ANC must uphold the best standards of ethical conduct,” he told journalists.
Turok has plans for life after politics. From parliament, he may head over the road to his New Agenda offices or spend some time writing – “I love writing”. He’s already produced 21 books and his latest, With My Head Above The Parapet: An Insider Account Of The ANC In Power, was due out just days after our conversation. Retirement? That’s for other people. Ben Turok still has far too much to do.