---
title: The summer of '99
description: "I remember what it was like being a student after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, the release of Nelson Mandela, and the ignominious end of Apartheid."
author: Gavin Chait
publishedAt: 2017-02-03
categories: hope, equality, liberty
---

# The summer of ‘99

I remember what it was like being a student after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, the release of Nelson Mandela, and the ignominious end of Apartheid.

I remember the blue clarity of its summer skies. The way, driving from the university into the city, the green slopes of Table Mountain would open to the vast bright glare of the ocean. The smell of fynbos and roar of cicadas and of hope so tangible it felt as if everyone was bouncing as they walked.

An entire generation raised on the notion that evil could be vanquished, that the brutalised could be made whole again, and that anything was possible.

Some of us dedicated our lives to building Nelson Mandela’s vision of a ‘new South Africa’, working in the townships building houses, bringing healthcare and education, or creating jobs. Others, like Elon Musk and Mark Shuttleworth, headed to the US and became billionaires.

It is symbolic of the time that social confidence – belief in the possible – was so high that some of the largest companies founded in recent years were all immigrants to the US.

eBay founded by Frenchman Pierre Omidyar. Google founded by Russian Sergey Brin. Yahoo founded by Taiwanese Jerry Yang. And there are countless others, less well known but equally as dynamic and exciting.

So confident was the period that Francis Fukuyama could pronounce the ‘end of history’, with an important caveat. He worried we would forget what it had cost us to achieve our freedom, and we would chafe with resentment as the established pecking order was disrupted. And then the despots would return.

I remember when that darkness began to loom. It was 9 July 2000 when Nkosi Johnson rose to address the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban.

"Care for us and accept us - we are all human beings. We are normal. We have hands. We have feet. We can walk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else - don't be afraid of us - we are all the same!"

Powerful words. Thabo Mbeki scowled in disgust and walked out.

If you had to pick a moment when the forces of truth and science and knowledge were cast aside in favour of lies, ‘fake news’, bigotry and superstition, it was that moment. Thabo Mbeki deserves nothing but scorn and contempt.

And I remember the sense of our world being utterly destroyed on 11 September 2001 when hatred and scorn emerged from the sixteenth century, and liberalism gave way to mutual suspicion.

There was a brief window when being young was not about crisis and rebellion, but about hope and building.

It would be nice to say, well, that’s just white racism. It isn’t only. There are violent suppressions of liberal values in almost every country. From Rodrigo Duterte’s massacre of alleged drug-dealers and users in the Philippines, to Recep Erdoğan’s arrest of tens of thousands of ordinary people in the aftermath of a coup attempt in Turkey. The African Union has backed mass withdrawal of all African countries from the International Criminal Court.

This is the return of politics and history with a vengeance.

But the summer of ’99 existed. It could exist again.

The first lesson of the fall of the Berlin Wall is that sustained mass protest works (with the important proviso that – with a nod to Egypt of 2013, China of 1989, and South Africa of 1960 – any government willing to massacre its own protesting citizens can impose anything it likes).

The second is that you should never stop building and believing. It is easy to run away, more difficult and dangerous to run towards.

We need people who dream, who build and are willing to share those dreams and ambitions. Start businesses anyway. Organise protests anyway. Work together across the things that divide us anyway.

Because everyone should get to have that summer.

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_&copy; Gavin Chait 2017. All rights reserved._
