ANC death opens risky void

In a long career as a journalist, one moment stands out for me. A little black girl, about three, standing in the warm winter sunshine of Tanzania, her little fist balled up into a Black Power salute, trying her best to sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.

- Brendan Seery

Every day in the ANC's exile community at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, just outside Morogoro, would begin with the national anthem.

I remember that child's innocence - we often see hope in the faces of the young.

That hope was also on the faces of the ANC exiles, a mix of black, white, Indian and coloured, long before the Rainbow Nation myth took root.

When I arrived, I was almost mobbed by South Africans who had been out of the country for months, or even decades, and who were all eager for news of "home".

They were disappointed when they found out I was actually a Zimbabwean journo, working for a South African newspaper group's Harare bureau.

The ANC had deliberately invited me to record what I saw because I had no connection with either side in their liberation struggle and was, therefore, the proverbial "blank page".