Johannesburg - A cadet at the police college at 18, forming a guard of honour to welcome apartheid architect HF Verwoerd to a 50th anniversary celebration of the National Party in 1964 and a member of the Broederbond, Leon Wessels could easily have risen to be the blue-eyed boy of the Afrikaner establishment.
But instead he chose to be an advocate of human rights and later in life, as an MP of the dying NP, he shared the stage with Nelson Mandela in Oslo, Norway to make the admission that apartheid was wrong, a mistake.
“Apartheid was a policy that didn’t work. That is not an argument in my mind.”
Wessels ruffled feathers with this statement and invited the ire of the hard conservatives in the NP and was labelled a traitor.
In fact, this label stayed with him from early on in his political career when he stared down right-wing fanatics of the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (AWB) who dared him to commit to a public debate with Clive Derby-Lewis, the brains behind the killing of Chris Hani.
This resistance against the bullies of the AWB attracted the attention of the free world and, chiefly, maverick Afrikaner poet Breyten Breytenbach, a pariah in Apartheid South Africa.
Breytenbach would later agree to a meeting with Wessels when the latter visited Paris, France, where the poet was based.
Now 76 and long retired from active politics, Wessels says he’d live the same life over and over again.
“I’m happy with the decisions I took but if I had an opportunity to relive that life, the only things I would have liked to do,” he says pondering the question, “I wish I would have come to the conclusions I came to much earlier in my life. And I wish I had been more energetic when I was advancing my arguments.”
But the overarching feeling I have is that I’m not shying away from the decisions I took, he stresses.
Wessels has had to cut off chaff from his circle of friends, people whose politics were not in line with his world view.
“It happens, you cut links with people and in many respects it is heart-rending.
“I cleaned up my telephone contacts.
“What is encouraging is that you always find new people who embrace the values you stand for.”
The parting of ways allows one to reflect on the “friendship”.
“Were you really friends with those you parted with?
“You realise you don’t have the same launching pad of values.
“And in many respects I don’t miss them, I do not miss those discussions.”
I’m of the view that Afrikaners don’t owe one another unity, they owe one another respect, he adds.
It is this respect he got from engaging the guys in Orania, bitter rivals. He recalls that Orania leader Professor Carel Boshoff was cordial.
“We often fall short when we venture into the terrain of giving each other respect,” Wessels has noted.
A part of the A-team led respectively by Roelf Meyer and Cyril Ramaphosa, Wessels says when they drafted the Constitution, they thought issues like racism would sort themselves out along the way.
“The bigger picture was the dominant feature – a Constitutional dispensation that would be fair and just to everyone.
“The question of inequality finds its way into the Constitution in the sense that we aspire to be a society where the issues of the past, like racism, are addressed.
“But we did not have that as a beacon.”
“Look at the Equality Act. We did not have the time to draft the Equality Act as we drafted the Constitution.
“The time was there but it wasn’t the dominant theme of the discussion as we built the architecture of the Constitution.”
An Advocate admitted to the Bar many years ago, he says he still misses the exchanges in court. We return to the subject of racism and he recalls that he helped universities, Stellenbosch included, with guidelines to tackle racism.
In the apartheid past, Wessels says, people were humiliated.
“It had dire consequences for those on the receiving end.
“It was a bad policy that tainted our land.
“Those who were to quarrel with me then, and those who do so now, simply did not care to understand what went wrong.
“I empathise with the previous generation that say we did not know.
“But I have no sympathy nor patience for people who still want to advance that argument because the atrocities of apartheid have been exposed in books, films, journals, etc.”
I wasn’t concerned about people who quarrelled with me then because I knew they didn’t care, he says.
He says something many of his contemporaries yearn for, as they go about washing the feet of their erstwhile enemies and victims: “I’m at peace with myself.”
Looking back, he thinks his doctorate at the then RAU, on International Human Rights Law, “gave me an opportunity, exposed me to a new world that was foreign to me as a student. It was an exciting new world”.
He’s never declined to go on speaking engagements, he says.
He was on Power FM just a week ago and he disagrees with those who say he is brave: “Each time, it’s a matter of dealing with South African issues. What can you be afraid of in speaking about these issues?”
He was National Party MP for Krugersdorp, now Mogale City, when the late Winnie Madikizela Mandela gave her fiery ‘boxes of matches’ speech.
He spoke out against the proposed forced removals in Munsieville, where he says his buddies live.
“You must aspire to accumulate wisdom,” he says about what keeps him occupied.
He also serves on the Constitutional Trust, chaired Cheryl Carolus, and Casac with Lawson Naidoo. A legal advisor to Thusang Morwalo, a paralegal advice office based in Extension 12, Kagiso.
Having worked for 10 years at the SA Human Rights Commission where he formed a close relationship with Barney Pityana, he is free to do what seniors do, go to gym, play golf and take long walks.
“I’ve earned the right to sign my own leave forms,” he says about his retirement.
He’s been married to Tersia for more than 50 years.