1989

1989, the number, another summer (get down)
Sound of a funky drummer…
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We gotta fight the powers that be.

- Public Enemy

I’ve been thinking a lot about 1989 recently. It is the picture of the lone protester in Tiananmen Square that started it, brought up in conversation with a friend of mine. The Unknown Rebel, unmoving in front of a column of angry tanks, sidestepping into their path each time they tried to go around him. A single man representative of a huge fight that was happening around the world at that time.



1989 was a year of struggle, as evidenced in the lyrics of Fight the Power by Public Enemy. While Public Enemy continued to document and sustain the struggle for black equality started in 1960s, a decade synonymous with mass social change, elsewhere around the world was seeing tremendous change in human rights and freedoms.

The 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, a revolution based on basic human freedoms - Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort! (Freedom, equality, brotherhood, or death!) - saw the fall of several repressive regimes in eastern Europe. Poland saw its first free parliamentary elections since the war; Ceausescu’s dictatorship was ended in Romania (he was later executed); the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia saw the overthrow of the Marxist/Leninist government; the Republic of Hungary was declared; and in August, 2 million people across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands across 600 km to demand freedom and independence from the Soviet Union.

1989 was also the year that the Berlin Wall came down – physically and symbolically. I can remember watching the event on television – hundreds of people climbing over the wall, yelling and celebrating, and battering it down with decades’ worth of suppressed anger and frustration at their lack of freedom, fractured families and silenced voices.

The silenced voices of South Africa experienced an administrative shift in 1989 (and this is not to say that black South Africans allowed their voices to be silenced: many raged against apartheid since its inception after the National Party’s win in the 1948 elections). Newly elected president F.W. de Klerk scrapped the Separate Amenities Act (an act which segregated the races in all areas of life – from white beaches to black universities) and in early 1990, released Nelson Mandela from his 27 years in prison for his determined refusal to allow his voice to be silenced. I am still amazed to this day at the winds of change that persisted so, allowing a political prisoner to become South Africa’s first black president just 4 years later.

South America also experienced its share of newfound freedoms: Chile held its first free elections in 16 years, ultimately ousting Augusto Pinochet who was later tried for human rights abuses, from his protracted presidency. Brazil also saw its first free elections after 25 years of a ruling military regime.

1989 witnessed the end of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan; the release of the Guilford Four (a group of people wrongfully convicted of blowing up an English pub during the Troubles – their case was one of police manipulation and disinformation – see the film In The Name Of The Father); the Exxon Valdez spill (perhaps a key event in the raising of our environmental awareness); and of course, the series of protests from April to June in Tiananmen Square.

There is no real answer as to what happened to the Unknown Rebel, the man that stood alone in front of the tanks bearing down on him and his country’s freedom. There are some claims he was executed – a brutal ending to such an inspirational action. I prefer to believe what Jan Wong writes in her book Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now: he is still alive and in hiding in China. And I have to believe that if I am to still hold onto the hope that the winds of change in 1989 have not died. We came a long way that year, but the fact that the man in front of the tanks has to be in hiding (or indeed, was executed) tells us that we have a long way to go still.

Epilogue

Perhaps at some point I will further explore the fact that Seinfeld and The Simpsons, two popular, long-running and highly-acclaimed comedy shows, made their debuts in 1989. Interesting that these two shows broke away from the happy family comedies of the 80s, so content with the status quo.