In 1992 Achmat and Audrey headed to New York where Achmat was Writer in Residence at the City University of New York (CUNY), Harlem Campus for three months. He taught South African literature and creative writing. Achmat recalled being challenged on one occasion by an African-American “who got up and said: I expected a black man, who are you? And I had to explain to him our history and how black I thought I was.” Lessons in history became key in some of the classes. Achmat enjoyed telling the story about one student’s views on South Africa’s liberation:

“I was giving some courses in South African Literature and Creative Writing at City College at Harlem in New York. Part of it was an evening class of adult students who were simply there to further their degrees and get better jobs. They weren’t really lovers of literature. In one lecture I kept talking about the miracle unfolding at home in South Africa and one woman from Brazil stood up and said, ‘Excuse me professor, I find this very boring. Let me tell you something, we got rid of the Portuguese 300 years ago and it took us to the doorstep of how we changed our society. Your liberation has got you to the door. You’ve got to open that door and when you get in, don’t think you are going to reach your destination in 10, 20 or 30 years. It is 300 years later and we are still battling. Be prepared for that long, long, long walk’ … I remember going back home in the subway that night thinking how right that woman was. Here I am, in New York in a subway free of all the trauma at home, and realising that what we are starting now is going to be a long struggle.”

For a while, Audrey and Achmat stayed with a friend of Barbara Masekela, Dawn Zain, who at that time was the Executive Director of African Arts Fund (AAF) established in 1985 and affiliated with the United Nations Centre against Apartheid. Based in New York, it assisted South African artists to find training and educational opportunities in the United States. According to Dawn, the AAF was “the only scholarship fund in the USA for South African artists, who, because of apartheid, cannot fulfil their artistic; endeavours. All major areas of the arts, from drama to music, photography, film writing, poetry, dance and the fine arts are supported”. Visual artists could apply for bursaries for post graduate study at Tufts University in Boston. In 1991, the South Africa Now show featured the AAF, including interviews with patron Hugh Masekela, Dawn Zain and AAF grant recipients, Themba Mhambi, Wendy Newstadt and Rudzani Nemasetoni. Reference is made to the 1989 mural project by Dumile Feni and others made for the Pathfinder Building, the African American self-improvement headquarters on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. To watch this series of the South Africa Now, the AAF segment starts at 22:52, click here

Audrey said they loved the experience of working and living in New York. On their return to South Africa, Achmat refined Kafka’s Curse, published in 1997 by Kwela Books (established in 1994), and for which he won the Herman Charles Bosman Prize in 1998. He also worked on a film script “Soft Targets” with his friend filmmaker Oliver Schmitz about Robert McBride. Achmat continued as a special advisor for Staffrider and worked on Bitter Fruit.

On his return in 1993, Achmat took up an appointment as Head of the Secretariat of the National Rural Development Fund (NRDF), initially called the National Consultative Forum on Drought (NCF) or the Drought Forum, established in response to the severe 1992/1993 drought, which became a longer-term project. The worst drought in the southern African region up to that date in recorded history, saw many wells and some perennial rivers dry up. Over a million cattle died: 1.03 million in Zimbabwe alone, more than 23 per cent of the national herd. The drought in South Africa was particularly severe in the Eastern Cape and what were then the provinces of Natal, and the Orange Free State, leading to crop failures, water shortages, and, consequently increased food prices.. State debt relief at the time favoured white commercial farmers and neglected poor people in rural areas. Through the NRDF, inputs from civil society, trade unions, organised agriculture and other sectors were included and it began to focus on communities that were left out in previous drought relief measures  The NRDF was mandated to ensure that both government and private resources reached the neediest people and that a solid development foundation was laid. Achmat was responsible for the management of a coalition of government, non-government, private sector and community-based representatives to develop a strategy to help rural communities with drought relief.

The NRDF proposed a national drought management strategy to include an infrastructural as well as an emergency reaction programme. Advisor to AgriSA on Disaster Risks Management, Kosi van Zyl observed that: “The benefits of this forum (NCF were that) it did widen and begin to interrogate existing policies including those for a ‘sector’ that some would have argued had been ignored in previous drought policy, namely the rural poor.” A new perspective and policy-framing agenda for drought response was created for a more “proactive” drought resistance strategy. 

In 1996, the National Disaster Management Committee (NDMC) was established. Food insecurity remained extremely high in rural areas. Peter Delius and Stefan Schirmer note that by 1998 “‘relatively few” of the nearly 17 million people in the rural areas enjoy food security and the incidence of malnutrition amongst children in these areas is almost 60 per cent.”

Once President de Klerk had indicated the government’s intention to participate in negotiations for a democratic transition in 1990, the key challenge became to create the conditions under which they could take place. Achmat recalled “the period of consolidation” between 1990 and 1994, which was still also a time of “uprising and suppression”:

“Let us recall with pride the transition from the old to the new order, but let us pause and think about how it happened…If we want to be honest with each other, it was one elite talking to another elite that brought about this necessary change. The leadership of the liberation movement, and the government of the day and its supporters; it was the elite groups that took the steps of bringing together the warring parties… they were driven by the reality that if they did not come to an accommodation, this country could collapse in an ever‑widening spiral of uprising and suppression. We saw it everywhere in the days leading up to 1994, right into the 1990s that spiral continued – uprising and oppression … Then came the period of consolidation. We created new institutions, the Constitutional Court, very necessary things. We restructured the provincial government; all of those things were necessary.”

After nearly two years of ‘talks about talks’, in late November 1991, an All-Party Preparatory Meeting agreed on a permanent negotiating forum to be named the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). CODESA talks began in December 1991, but they were beset by multiple breakdowns caused by the intensification of deadly clashes between different groups in the country, as well as disagreements around the constitution-making process. The talks collapsed after 30 protesters were killed and many more injured by Ciskeian armed forces during a mass ANC-led march on Bisho (capital of the Ciskei) against the ‘Homeland’ government in the Ciskei in September 1992. 

Audrey said of that period: “I’ve never felt so frightened as I did at that time in South Africa. You could be walking down the street in town and a bomb was going off in the next street. There was so much apparently random violence”. She continued:

“Achmat and I, and I guess everybody at the time, had these feelings of near-death experiences. We were still living in Bertrams and we used to walk up to Hillbrow and that was the time that the Inkatha ‘impimpis’ [collaborators] used to be running amok and they came running through the streets of Hillbrow with pangas, chasing people and we just so happened to get caught up in this crowd of people running and it was absolutely terrifying. Another time we were down-town and we heard this massive explosion, this was nearer the elections I think, and in the street next to us, this car had got blown up. It felt very much like a campaign to destabilise negotiations and a peaceful transition.”

On 1 April 1993, 26 political groupings, as well as the ‘homeland’ governments gathered under the auspices of the new Multi-Party Negotiating Process (MPNP). Then on 10 April, chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe and general secretary of the South African Communist Party, Chris Hani was murdered in his driveway by an assassin who had planned the murder with a Conservative Party MP. Many people in the country were terrified there was going to be a civil war. About 80 000 mourners gathered at the soccer stadium near Soweto for Hani’s funeral and the atmosphere was very tense. In a stirring speech, Mandela paid tribute to Hani and chastised the government for creating conditions that led to ongoing violence. Archbishop Tutu’s sermon also paid tribute to Hani, and stressed that Hani had been dedicated to “reconciliation” and negotiation.

The Archbishop quoted Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:31): “If God be for us, who can be against us?” He led the crowd in a series of call and responses starting with: “We demand freedom. When? (Crowd: ‘Now’) and urged them to shout several times: ‘We will be free!’ ‘All of us’ ‘Black and white together!’” Thousands of people took to the streets in protest and demanded a date for the elections be set. 

Negotiations continued and after seven and a half months, an Interim Constitution was adopted.  There were still serious obstacles to be overcome. The right-wing threatened war, the generals demanded amnesty, there was a coup in Bophuthatswana and the IFP refused to participate in the elections until the eleventh hour. A month before the country’s first democratic election, in March 1994, after many clashes between ANC and IFP groups, 20 000 IFP supporters armed with ‘traditional’ Zulu weapons marched on the ANC headquarters at Shell House in Joburg’s city centre. ANC security guards believing that the IFP marchers were about to storm Shell House opened fire. Nineteen IFP marchers lost their lives. In the end, sufficient peace prevailed for democratic elections to go ahead and the IFP was included on the ballot papers at the last minute.

On 27 April 1994 an estimated 20 million South Africans voted in the country’s first democratic elections. For Achmat and Audrey, though it was quite a different day. Audrey recalled:

“On the day of the elections, at that point Achmat was working for the Drought Forum, Achmat had been asked by French TV to be their person on camera on the day and so we flew, with a small film crew to Limpopo which had experienced some of the worst effects of the recent drought. Achmat was not able to vote, as a result, because he was busy filming. We left from that little terminal in the airport. It was terminal C, I think, at Johannesburg International Airport. We were taking a small plane up to Limpopo, and about half an hour after taking off, the terminal got bombed … We had left just after 6 in the morning and the bomb went off at 6.30am and the pilot announced … “I don’t mean to alarm you, but just to let you know that a bomb’s just gone off in terminal C”. It was a scary time.”

Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first democratic president.

By this time Achmat and Audrey were settled in Parkview, one of the oldest suburbs in Johannesburg north of the city centre. Together they purchased what would be their ‘forever home’ in 1993. Achmat explained: “I miss the township, the colour, but it is a hard life, difficult, there is a lot of crime. It is easier to live in Parkview than in Newclare. I don’t want to romanticise the township.” Achmat’s daughter, now a young adult, also moved in for a while. Achmat thought that the change to democracy and the end of official racial segregation “gave people hope”. Looking back in 2010 Achmat explained:

“We have been fairly lucky these last sixteen years. By and large the generation that was patient and willing to wait, that still retained 1994 hopes for change, has remained rooted in optimism. I am one of the people who believe in the change – look at the difference. I was able to move out of the Johannesburg flats into the northern suburbs. It may not be dramatic, but it gave people hope. That generation is now ageing and we are becoming irrelevant. What worries me is the emergence of a new generation, young people whose knowledge of our valiant history is tenuous. Many are just old enough to have dim memories of how we all endured and persevered, how under apartheid their parents contended with deprivation imposed on them by finding alternatives all the time. These were often communal solutions to compensate for what the state would not do then, but it was there.”

A plethora of working groups was appointed to co-design and write the new constitution and amend existing legislation for a wide variety of sectors, one of which was Arts and Culture.  It was the first time that there would be a ministerial department with “arts and culture” in its name. This was testimony to the success of the National Arts Initiative (NAI) and the National Arts Coalition’s (NAC) campaigns for arts and culture to be recognised in new democratic government structures.

In November 1994, the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Dr Ben Ngubane, with Winnie Mandela as his deputy, appointed a 23-person Arts and Culture Task Group (AGTAG) to research and make recommendations on an arts and culture policy consistent with the democratic constitution.Andries Oliphant, who headed the NAC, was elected as the chairperson. The new constitution was signed into law on 10 December 1996. Several sections mention the arts, culture and heritage sector and  the “right to culture” became a “fundamental right”.

Informed by the Constitution and the ACTAG Report, the 1996 White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage was the product of substantial engagement with practitioners, educators, academics and administrators. Cultural activist and curator Emile Maurice remembered there being “a strong expectation that the state would revive arts education for communities through the development of new community arts centres, particularly as the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage of 1996 acknowledged cultural expression as a human right.” 

Mike van Graan, COSAW’s National Project Officer, recalled:

“It was a euphoric time for the arts, when artists felt that they were heard, when their voices and ideas mattered. We disbanded the National Arts Coalition because, on the one hand, our policies were in place, some of our comrades were in the new Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, and because there were now nine provinces that had concurrent powers with the national government for arts and culture, so that many creatives began to organise themselves at provincial levels to access provincial funding – the need for a national structure dissipated.”

Many cultural practitioners, Paul Weinberg observed that those, “who were included in the journey before, got left behind and had placed their faith in the state which did not deliver in many ways.” 

As for COSAW itself, judging from a letter referred to by the Mail & Guardian in September 2000, which was signed by Achmat and a number of close colleagues and other prominent writers, the organisation had been struggling to deliver on its promises to funders for some time. The signatories of the 2000 letter were consequently opposed to efforts being made to ‘revive’ COSAW. They no longer believed it was acting in the interests of the “welfare” of South African writers who had played such an important role in “cultural development” in the past.

In 1994 Achmat joined the Independent Development Trust (IDT) as director for rural development, and later served as its acting CEO during the crucial transformation period. Achmat’s sister Jessie recalled at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s memorial that for Achmat:

“development was a must and if you were going to make a change in this country, then you had to look at infrastructure, that was valuable infrastructure to the poor. Not infrastructure that helped only the wealthy to move around from one castle to the other, but to make sure that the poor were able to have mobility that they could afford, housing that they could afford and hopefully the creation of jobs, through using development as a tool, to help the economy to run.”

In this period, Achmat commuted between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Initially he stayed with actor Tertius Mentjies and his partner, who also worked at the IDT, in Kalk Bay. Later Achmat stayed with Ivan Toms a well-known leader of the end the End the Conscription Campaign (ECC established in 1983), an advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights and an HIV/AIDS activist. Ivan was then the national coordinator for the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network (NPPHCN) which was responsible for developing a national HIV/AIDS programme. He became Director of the Student’s Health and Welfare Organisation (SHAWCO), a nongovernmental organisation linked to UCT, and through his local government work was appointed as the City of Cape Town’s Director of Health.

A year after Achmat joined, the IDT shifted to a more “people-centred philosophy”. CEO Prof Merlyn Mehl explained:

“The essential idea is that those for whom development is intended as beneficiaries are the persons who must determine the priorities, how these will influence their lives and then decide on the means to implement any development programmes. At the same time, as an organisation the IDT has developed a mechanism to operationalise this. This mechanism is encapsulated in the notion of development facilitation and every attempt is made to ensure community control of the process rather than simply some presence on an organising committee. …This is seen, for example, in the use of local builders in constructing schools and other structures.”

The Community Employment Programme (CEP), which was in Achmat’s portfolio as director of rural development grew from the IDT’s Relief Development Programme. Instead of handouts, the programme created assets in rural communities. The CEP allowed communities to decide what public assets were needed and to manage projects themselves. Community structures emerged in about 1500 rural communities and many rural people were equipped with the necessary technical skills. 

In 1994/95, the new Ministry of Public Works worked with the IDT on the CEP programme after the Ministry under Jeff Radebe, allocated it a R70 million grant with the IDT contributing R15 million for facilitation. According to the Sunday Times’s Chiara Carter, there was a lot of scepticism about the approach taken: 

“sceptics said communities lacked the skills. They said the country’s history of conflict meant the project would become bogged down in internecine strife. Some argued that communities needed to be taken through a capacity building exercise before becoming involved in such a programme. Others said that it would be better for local government, the private sector or NGOs to build the assets for the community.” 

The programme went ahead. Carter, quoting Achmat, indicated that delicate negotiations were often necessary because members of the communities had different priorities and projects had to be aligned with national development plans: “The men tended to identify roads, bridges, sports fields and community halls while the women were more long term in their thinking, opting for water schemes and creches … We also needed to take into account national planning. It would be pointless to approve a water scheme, for example, which would conflict with Water Affairs plans.”

By 1995, 489 projects were approved and 617 public assets built including: crèches and preschools, classrooms, water schemes and sanitation. The projects created more than 20 000 jobs in the rural areas and between one quarter and three fifths of these jobs were occupied by women. Achmat explained “that the low wage rate (of R7.00 a day at the time) was a ‘natural selector’ since only the very poor were willing to work for (it)…. Poverty relief reached those who need it most and that the programme did not disrupt the economy by drawing people away from other jobs.”

Carter reported: 

“Achmat Dangor said ‘Minister Radebe took an astonishing political risk in believing that communities could deliver.’ The support we have received from both Minister Radebe and his task team has been unbelievable. It extends to the personal. When Minister Radebe visits the projects, he does not engage only in red ribbon cutting. Instead, he talks to members of the community and gives us feedback on his impressions. ‘The CEP has built a relationship between national and provincial government and NGOs, as well as people on the ground. ‘The idea that impoverished communities can deliver their own development no longer seems so far-fetched.’” 

In a 2013 interview, Achmat identified poverty as the “biggest injustice” inherited by the apartheid state, but called for people to stop the futile “blaming” of the old government and to “take responsibility”:

“The biggest injustice in this country is poverty and inequality…the continuous suffering of people without water, without sanitation, often without food or shelter, that for me is one thing that we must focus on now and address … the massive poverty that we inherited – how do you overcome that?  It’s pointless blaming the apartheid government or the colonialists. Yes, they’ve created in many ways the macro mess that we are in, but we are here now. We must take responsibility.”

The IDT and nongovernmental development organisations like Kagiso Trust (KT) had to redefine themselves in terms of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) introduced by the new Government of National Unity in 1994. The RDP aimed to fulfil “President Mandela’s vision and message ‘to roll up our sleeves and get South Africa working’… and build a non-racial and non-sexist democracy.” The government also announced its intention to form a national development agency that would become the major national funding agency.

In the next year, the government announced its intention to create the Transitional National Development Trust (TNDT). The government turned to the IDT and KT to facilitate the drafting of a framework. The TNDT was envisioned as a “vehicle for channelling development funding and institutional capacity building amongst organs of civil society.” It would be the direct link to the RDP office. Achmat was a member of task groups set up by the office of Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, to create the TNDT and its successor, the National Development Agency (NDA). 

Between 1990 and 1997, the IDT disbursed R2.7 billion to 8,800 projects. In 1997, Seán Morrow and Badiri Moila, note it was “brought more fully under the control of the state and became a vehicle for government development projects rather than a grant making body.” Legislation for the creation of the NDA was passed in November 1998, but in fact it was instituted only in March 2000. 

Throughout Achmat’s time at the IDT (1994-1998) he worked closely with Mamphela Ramphele. Later, when Achmat was CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation they would be colleagues again. Mamphele described Achmat as a: 

“a gentle giant. He was a slim, trim gentleman, always with a smile and always compassionate, always able to engage and listen very attentively to everybody, however important or however insignificant individuals might look to the outsider. He was a true leader and a true brother too he was younger than me, but we became very close with mutual respect, because we shared a dream of the country that could be built out of the ashes of the apartheid era, the South Africa that we inherit.”

On 29 October 1998, the five-volume Report of the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) was presented to President Mandela. Achmat followed the TRC’s hearings closely. His novel Bitter Fruit was set in Johannesburg in 1998, towards the end of Mandela’s presidency as the TRC was preparing to issue its report. In Bitter Fruit, Achmat describes it as: “a twilight period, an interregnum between the old century and the new, between the first period of political hope and the new period of ‘managing the miracle’” For Achmat, the “TRC was another one of those strategic things that achieved one key goal which was to prevent this country from erupting into a civil war that could have torn it apart.”

The TRC had to follow provisions laid down in the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, including regarding amnesty. It was not, however a blanket amnesty. The Act stipulated that amnesty would be granted only to persons who made a “full disclosure of all the relevant facts’ relating to an act ‘associated with a political objective” as a member of a state body or a liberation movement and who believed they were carrying out orders or acting in the interests of the political objectives of their organisation. Chair of the TRC Archbishop Tutu explained in the Chairperson’s Foreword of the Final Report that perpetrators would have to apply for amnesty. Out of 7 000 applications, only about 150 amnesties were granted. 

Achmat reflected on some of the flaws in the TRC process, while recognising its overall achievement:

“While the outcomes of the TRC aren’t perfect, the one redeeming feature is that at that time it saved the country from a possible civil war. You had a huge number of disaffected people from the old security forces who felt betrayed by their government. They were well armed with hidden stocks of weapons. They were bitter because they didn’t know just how in the end they would become, in a sense, the scapegoats. The one flaw in the TRC is that it didn’t hold enough of the political leadership accountable. And many of the security people asked; ‘Why me? Why am I in prison? And why not the person who gave me the instructions? Or the person who set the policy or the person who gave me the arms? And said to me in order for us to preserve our peace, our heritage, our culture you have to go and stop those people’. So, I think we have to accept that it was flawed and that reconciliation simply doesn’t mean that not only is injustice forgotten but that it is not overcome.”

After eight years together Audrey and Achmat headed to Glasgow and were married on October 3rd 1998. They were married in Glasgow University Chapel among a small group of family and friends from South Africa and around the world. They honeymooned in Mexico, Mexico City and Oaxaca, where Audrey had studied and worked for 3 years in the late 80s. On their return to Johannesburg they had another wedding party at the home of Jean de la Harpe for all their South African friends who couldn’t make it to Scotland. At the Nelson Mandela memorial for Achmat Coco Cachalia described them as the “perfect match”. “The beautiful and vivacious Audrey came into our lives with her delightful Scottish accent, her long tresses and her gentle and loving demeanour. She was the perfect match for Achmat, the gentleman.”

The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF) was officially launched in1995. It operated as a grant-making organisation to promote “a humanitarian response to the plight of South Africa ‘s children and youth.” Nelson Mandela’s speech at the launch can be viewed below:

President Mandela, fondly called Madiba (his Xhosa clan name) established the NMCF by donating a third of his salary throughout his presidency. To learn more about its establishment as told by Nelson Mandela see below:

Between 1995 and 1999, there was no programmatic basis for funding. Ad hoc funding strategies were applied in an attempt to meet the immediate needs of children and families and there was one-time support for overhead and salary costs for organisations committed to children’s issues.

Maeline Engelbrecht remembers that Achmat was “head-hunted by Madiba for CEO of the Children’s Fund” and started work in October 1998:

“I recall Achmat being at the Children’s Fund in October 1998 working alongside Jeremy Ratcliffe for a handover. Jeremy’s retirement party was on the eve of 31 March 1999, so although Achmat officially became CEO from 1 April 1999 he was at the Fund from mid-October 1998 already. In fact, he travelled with Jeremy Ratcliffe to meet the major donors in the USA and UK, but I recall him doing the Canada and Netherlands trips after Jeremy’s departure. He was the CEO of the Children’s Fund until August 2001.  We had on file a contract he signed from the Children’s Fund UK affiliate in August 2001.”

Achmat’s appointment as the second CEO was officially announced in February 1999. Four months later Mandela stepped down as South Africa’s first democratically elected President. Together, according to Maeline, they “shaped the direction of where the Children’s Fund is today.” Madiba and Achmat had a very special relationship. Maeline recalled:

“Madiba always had this great respect for Achmat, because he would see him at events and he would go, ‘Ah Achmat, you’re here!’ you know and he would always point [that] out, that comfort always to know [he was there] ‘Ah Achmat, you’re here’, so that was always a standard you would hear in Madiba’s voice when he came into the room and Achmat would be the first person that he would go to and then he would greet the rest of the staff.”

Sibongile Mkhabela, who would become the next NMCF’s CEO, spoke at the memorial for Achmat and elaborated on his appointment: 

“The man under whose leadership I was able to learn and to lead, Achmat led the fund for a short, but a very significant period, a time of great change in the country and great challenges. He had taken over after Jeremy Ratcliffe, who had built the first institutional framework and had done a sterling job. Achmat had to come and bring with him his strategic development focus. If you know Achmat, nothing is what it seems. If one of the first things he did that I celebrate to date. He used the phrase: ‘It’s not who we are, but the work we do.’ This was important in building Mandela’s legacy, taking away our dependence on Mandela, the man and rather focusing on a transformative agenda.

One of the first things that Achmat did after his appointment was to get to know the staff and conduct a skills audit. As Achmat’s PA at the time Maeline Engelbrecht recalled:

“When Achmat came to the Children’s Fund, after Jeremy Ratcliffe had announced his retirement, he did a full skills audit on all the staff and we were a very small staff at the time… It was very interesting working at the Children’s Fund in those early years and particularly, when Achmat took over, because he just had that kind of leadership style, where he believed in the staff. It was a very small staff. He encouraged us to really grow ourselves and grow our skills and if we didn’t know something, he was always available to the staff and he would point you in the right direction”

Then Achmat conducted “an extensive review of national and regional policies on children and youth; identified several significant policy gaps; evaluated its portfolio of projects and internal procedures; and carefully defined programme intervention areas it would pursue.” This review culminated in the launching of the ‘Sakha Ikusasa strategy’ in 2000. 

The NMCF repositioned itself as a “development-cum advocacy agency” that would intervene in the HIV and AIDS arena. Partnering with the Department of Social Development and civil society organisations a “comprehensive response that brought the centrality of family and community in the fight of the epidemic through its ground-breaking programme named, Goelama” was developed. The impact of the HI virus had on the lives of children and their families was devastating and Achmat’s leadership role was vital. The NMCF’s “A tribute to a salient leader” acknowledged that he led the NMCF’s transformation process “from charity to development in order to promote more sustainable community level responses to challenges faced by children and youth.” The tribute described his “jovial spirit” (complementing) that of Mr Nelson Mandela.” Maeline said, “When Achmat came there was a monumental shift … he had more of a development and long-term view for the Children’s Fund. He really re-shaped it into a development agency that helped with the strategizing, that helped with national plan of action for the children that really look at the longevity and perpetuating the legacy of Madiba through the Children’s Fund and his humanitarian work with children.”

Sibongile Mkhabela elaborated on Achmat’s leadership and the context in which the NMCF changed its focus:

“This was not an easy time. It was a time of HIV and AIDS. It was ravaging our communities and we were seeing detested terms, or terms that we both grew to detest, such as ‘AIDS Orphans, AIDS Homes, AIDS villages.’… . It was clear that at that time, the battle for the soul of the African child was real and it was tough. … those who were in fund-raising wanted us to use the usual image of the African Child. The begging bowl, the standard humped stomach, snotty-noses. They wanted us to use the same language of monitoring and evaluation, even when we didn’t know what we were monitoring, even though we didn’t know how HIV and AIDS was going to affect us, not only in one generation, but in generations to come. In a short space of time, Achmat created a culture of learning and questioning within the organisation.

We were comfortable being asked difficult questions and we were also comfortable asking difficult questions. He forced us to reflect. He forced us to reflect on all the jargon, the development jargon, that we all seek comfort in and he questioned us every time we sought comfort in those words that many of us might have lost meaning. He literally out-lawed all jargon from our speak, so that we could speak simply and purposefully. Under Achmat’s leadership, we changed the language. We moved away from grantees and beneficiaries, to development partners. These were not semantics, but part of a culture of questioning, changing the language, also changed relationships. We were able to see our role and expertise and the community’s role and expertise as well as knowledge.

Maeline Engebrecht spoke of how supportive Achmat was: “He would never allow anyone to go above our heads … he engendered in a lot of the staff, the confidence … he was a humble, but confident person and very respectful of the staff, no matter what position you held within the organisation.” Sibongile Mkhabela extended her gratitude to Achmat:

“Personally, Achmat, I want to thank you for the privilege of being led by you, mentored by you. Thank you very much for all the times, you took the blame, when we flew too close to the sun and we did upset many powerful interests, but you stood by us, because you really believed we needed to change some things very radically. You’re a man of integrity and deep thought. There were no easy answers ever for you, even when we tried to give you easy answers. You still wanted to know more and wanted to dig deeper.”

Achmat introduced several new projects, some of which continue today, for example, “The Red Ribbon Project”, which became the “The First One Thousand Days of a Child’s Life” and “Youth Leadership and Excellence”. The latter came about, Marlene explained, “because of the large unemployment of young people in South Africa and the desire for young people to envision a future for themselves, by creating their own jobs, by creating their own start-ups. Achmat had a very determined strategy to fund fewer organisations and grant more meaningful funding so that they could do [something more long term].” 

Sibongile Mkhabela recalled how Achmat’s leadership and programmes encouraged new partnerships, empowered communities and fostered activism within the organisation:

“We today boast, that some of our best partners on the ground, are ordinary grassroots people, semi-illiterate women, who however, have the most sophisticated data-bases, depending on how the questions were asked. If we asked and we gave them the usual frameworks, that Achmat outlawed, of monitoring and evaluation, we would say they need capacity, they need to be built, they need to be trained, but through Achmat’s eyes, we could see capacity and we were able to work with that. It is that culture of interrogation, of seeking and for change of being real, that led to the establishment of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital. Civil Society led initiative with no money, but a vision. It is part of his belief in the need for radical change, that moved us from bystanders and commentators on development, to being activists and action activists and taking responsibility.”

After Achmat left, he continued to support the organisation. According to Maeline, he was involved in its flagship project, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital:

“Achmat was involved with that from a fund-raising perspective, really just in terms of guidance and advice, because he wasn’t CEO then, he was retired, he was now writing, you know, but the organisations have always circled back to Achmat for advice especially the sitting CEO’s you know, because he had such a stamp on all the three Mandela Legacy organisations. He was really a good point of call for when you needed some advice.”

During his time as CEO, Achmat travelled extensively with Nelson Mandela and the team. Maeline recalled that the first trip abroad was days after Achmat started: 

“Within days that Achmat started as the CEO, we got on a plane, because we were going to launch Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in the Netherlands. We went on a midnight flight and we used to fly economy class, because we are a charity and the next morning arrived at Schiphol, took a train through to “The Hague” and went straight into a board meeting of all the affiliates. It was gruelling, but it was exciting stuff and I think the adrenalin kept us going, because we often had a lot of meetings to go to and work to do, once you arrive there. You really knew you were not there on holiday.”

Audrey remembers, “Mandela was still quite fit at the time and active and it was just post his Presidential period. He was much in demand, so they just travelled all the time, you know, they met the President of France, they had dinner at the Elysée Palace. They were in London, they were in Australia, they were everywhere.”

By the end of 1999, about 26 million adults and children – two thirds of whom were in Africa – were living with HIV. More than 9 000 new infections occurred every day, or over six infections every minute. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security Council that the impact of AIDS in Africa was “no less destructive than that of warfare itself”.

About 4.3 million South Africans were living with HIV – the highest number in any country in the world. President Thabo Mbeki called on South Africans to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In January 2000, the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) was set up coordinated by Dr Mantu Tshabalala-Msimang who had replaced Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as Minister of Health. Two programmes were launched, namely the National Integrated Plan (NIP) and the HIV/AIDS/STD National Strategic Plan for South Africa 2000-2005. However, there was no provision for the roll out of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs on a mass scale.

At the same time, Mbeki was consulting with AIDS dissident researchers who did not believe HIV caused AIDS, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence. On 3 April 2000, Mbeki wrote to the UN Secretary-General, copied to United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton, questioning the effectiveness of drugs such as AZT (Zidovudine), and asking why pharmaceutical companies were pouring millions into drugs while failing to address factors such as poverty and lack of education.

Elhadj As Sy, team leader of The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Eastern and Southern Africa Inter-Country Team arranged an emergency private meeting between Mbeki and Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS who would later recruit Achmat to UNAIDS. Piot reported that he and Mbeki “had a very long meeting that went on well into the night. I tried to make a case that HIV causes AIDS…and I obviously failed”.

In early May, the South African Government organized a presidential AIDS panel of scientists, which divided into two camps on the issue of whether HIV caused AIDS. There was no resolution. Mbeki’s own position meant that the government was reluctant to provide antiretroviral therapy. (ART).

Over 5000 international scientists signed what came to be known as the Durban Declaration on 6 July confirming that AIDS was caused by HIV, which was published in Science and ended with a call for action. Pat Sidley, writing for the British Medical Journal reported that Mbeki’s spokesman Parks Mankahlana said the Durban Declaration “belonged in a dustbin”.

A little later, Achmat and Nelson Mandela attended the 13^th International AIDS Conference (also referred to as AIDS2000) in Durban, which ran from 9-14 July 2000, managed by the International AIDS Society (IAS), formed in 1988). The conference theme was “Break the silence”.

At the start of the conference the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), established in 1988, led a rally and march demanding access to ART. In his opening speech, however Mbeki repeated his view that extreme poverty was the leading killer in Africa and said it “seemed to (him) that we could not blame everything on a single virus”.

Peter Piot spoke immediately after Mbeki and called for billions rather than millions of dollars for measures to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. South African High Court judge, openly gay and HIV-positive Edwin Cameron gave a keynote address in which he said: “My presence here embodies the injustices of AIDS in Africa because, on a continent in which 290 million Africans survive on less than one dollar a day, I can afford monthly medication costs of about US$ 400 per month … I am here because I can afford to pay for life itself”. Cameron also criticised “governmental ineptitude” and Mbeki’s association with AIDS dissidents. Richard Horton for Lancet Journal noted that Tshabalala-Msimang rejected Cameron’s argument about the centrality of ARV to the treatment of AIDS. In his closing speech, Mandela urged politicians to put their differences aside and to “proceed to address the needs and concerns of those suffering and dying”

At the end of the conference, the TAC announced a ‘defiance campaign’ to smuggle in Fluconazole, a drug for the treatment of severe fungal opportunistic infections, from India where a generic version cost about one seventh of what Pfizer charged in South Africa.

Gregg Gonsalves, of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York said that: “People came back transformed by that experience (of the conference) and by the calls from the Treatment Action Campaign and Edwin Cameron and others for treatment. It changed the landscape”.

Before the conference, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) established in November 3, 1961 and the NMCF had been finalising a partnership to help South African children infected with HIV/AIDS and those whose parents had been infected. According to email exchanges between Achmat and Caroline F Connolly (USAID), the only time available in Mandela’s diary for making an announcement about the partnership was during the AIDS Conference. The grant ceremony took place on the last day.

Sandra Thurman, director of the White House Office on National AIDS Policy, citing a USAID report, observed that almost 1.3 million South African children were orphans, 62 percent of whom had lost their parents to AIDS. Thurman said:

“AIDS is leaving an entire generation in jeopardy shattering the dreams and stealing the futures of our most precious resource, our children… What South Africa needs is real partners willing to fiercely pursue a shared vision. It is for this reason that I am so proud that the US government is joining forces with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund …”

She announced a $5 million USAID grant to the NMCF to “develop new ideas on how to support children affected by the epidemic, bringing greater community support systems to bear on that effort”. Mandela, speaking at the ceremony stressed that it is “children (who) bear the brunt of nature’s anger and man’s misfortunes.” Mandela’s speech can be viewed on YouTube. Achmat is seated on the far right and can be seen from 14min:43sec onwards.

Looking back, Achmat said in a 2002 interview conducted by Elaine Young:

“I am very disturbed emotionally and artistically by the kind of things I see, for example people dying from HIV/AIDS. My work in that area has exposed me to a side of South African society that I never thought I would see. Here is a literal plague that’s killing people. Yet right from our own president down to traditional leaders are people who deny that this plague exists … the sheer human dimension of this tragedy, the way it is not being dealt with, and its consequences, are something that I can’t ignore as a writer …”

At the end of 2000, Audrey was appointed to manage, what was at that time, the largest-ever privately funded HIV/AIDS programme targeting youth, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The programme was called the African Youth Alliance and was implemented by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and two United States-based international non-governmental organizations, PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and Pathfinder International. Dr Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA, said of Audrey: “Ms. Elster would bring great skill and experience to her new position. Her understanding of Africa, and the tremendous challenges of the HIV/AIDS pandemic there, would be vital in the successful execution of the programme.” The position was in New York and so the couple decided that they would relocate together and Achmat would focus on his writing. 

When his colleagues at the NMCF tried to persuade him not to resign, Achmat said: “No, this is Audrey’s time. This is the position, because she was going into quite a high-profile position in New York” and he said, “No, this is her time to shine”. Maeline remembered the affiliate in the UK said, “Ooh, I’m going to miss that voice of Achmat, because he had such a distinguished, soft, but very commanding kind of voice.” Maeline described some of Achmat’s qualities: “humility, but confidence, you know, respectfulness, just the respectfulness of all different kinds of peoples, you know, inclusivity is something that I greatly respected about Achmat’.

Achmat himself recalled his departure:

“I remember that at the end of 2000 Audrey my wife, got a job with the United Nations Population Fund that dealt with African youth. She had had to follow me all over, from Scotland to South Africa and then to New York. So, I thought it’s time that I followed her. So, I went to tell him that I am leaving the Children’s Fund and I had mentored a successor. 

I remember that he (Mandela) said, ‘Oh, so who is this woman leading you by your nose?’ And I tried to explain to him, ‘Madiba it’s my wife and she’s done so much.’ ‘Yes, yes, yes’. Then they had this farewell dinner and when they gave me a gift, he got up to present it to me from the stage. He said, ‘We want to say farewell to a friend here but I first want to point out the woman who is leading him by his nose.’”

Although Achmat headed to New York, he had established a very special relationship with Mandela which he reprised on his return to South Africa six years later.