By Lindsey Kin

“It is surprising how little of substance has been written about the 1994 election, given its significance as a decisive moment in our country’s history,” said Newman. He went on to say, “What springs to mind are images of South Africans from all walks of life coming together to vote in a spontaneous demonstration of national goodwill, waiting patiently and peacefully in kilometre-long queues under the burning sun and talking to one another for the first time as equals – these are vivid features of the 1994 election.”

“The election was a triumph of the human spirit, but tells little of the real story. However, Birth does. It conveys a different truth and speaks of what actually happened at that time and how close we came to a rigged election, result and national catastrophe. Birth is an epic account of that election – a thriller, if you will,” said Newman. He adds, “There is some humour, too, like the ballot crisis in KZN on the first voting day. With the help of Durban businessman, Terry Rosenberg, we penetrated the city’s entrepreneurial network and pulled some printers off Durban’s South Beach. Bare-chested and bronzed with their gold chains, they got their printing presses rolling, juggling metal printing plates with Castle Lager through a ten-hour printing marathon, with the printers continuing to remind us that it was a ‘bloody’ public holiday - a scene hardly invested with the kind of solemnity and concern for security. That day, we got a million ballot papers from those guys, and that is what saved the election in KwaZulu Natal.”

“In Birth we view the unfolding drama through Harris’ eyes. His position at the time, as head of the monitoring division at the IEC, called for him to stand back from the election and monitor and evaluate it. But when the crisis came, Harris and his team deployed in their hundreds all over the country, rolled up their sleeves and entered the frame. The fact of the matter is that without that decisive intervention we would not have come close to a credible election result.”

“There are a number of narrative threads to this book,” said Harris. “Firstly the election and the immense logistical challenges that the IEC face with puyting together an election of huge proportions from scratch in just over three months, without a voters’ law – one must understand that a voters law is one of the critical components of any electoral process, as voters are assigned to particular voting stations, such as a school to vote, which determines how many voting papers are needed at each station - the logistical difficulties at that time in terms of getting the election materials to particular places was a nightmare.”

“Secondly, the book examines in detail the considerable forces that conspired to stop the elections. There was huge conflict. No-one knew whether the key elements in the army and the police would stay loyal or whether they would defect to the Right Wing. At that time, this was not a bizarre perception, it was fact. Many of the generals in the SAPF were sympathetic to the Right Wing, and for the retired generals like young General Breytenbach, their allegiance had already been declared. This was a time of trepidation, and for this reason, a number of people, both black and white, stocked up on essential food stuffs in the run-up to the election, even certain European governments mentioned in the book drafted emergency plans to evacuate citizens out of the country, following the incidents of violence that were already occurring on a daily basis, which would light a racial fire that could not be extinguished, explained Harris. He added, “And the third narrative thread is that of the most critical of components in an electoral process, the electronic tallying and counting of votes.”

These three threads are interwoven throughout the book, as well as Harris’s story of the period leading up to the election. “It is not necessarily a document or record, rather, it is a personal story that I hope fills the gaps of our past, a past that is rich in history in terms of its product and heroism. We often hear the words ‘miracle’ and ‘rainbow nation’, and there are truths in both of those terms, but let us not forget that the birth of this fragile democracy was a traumatic, bloody and difficult one and many people lost their lives in that process,” said Harris.

“Despite the great odds at that point in our history, we pulled together to make it happen in a kind of FIFA 2010 type moment, and I hope that it reminds us of what this country is capable of,” concluded Harris.