Loved and Lost: Omaruddin “Don” Mattera (1935 – 2022)
Don Mattera was a storyteller.
The stories he told – whether through his poetry, his plays, his memoirs or his spirited everyday conversations – were about the extraordinary life he lived and the violent yet beautiful country whose dramatic changes he was able to witness.
Don was the grandchild of Italian immigrant Paolo Mattera who married a Xhosa woman from the Eastern Cape – and his natty dress sense and flamboyant style reflected that inheritance.
He was born in what was then known as Western Native Township, later the “coloured” group area of Westbury, in Johannesburg. But he grew up in Sophiatown, the boisterous township that became the centre of black cultural life in South Africa before it was brutally bulldozed by the National Party government in the 1950s.
In his late teens he became a tsotsi, joining and leading a gang called the Vultures, and several times barely surviving with his life as he was stabbed and shot at in gang fights. All of this is recounted in his internationally acclaimed autobiography Memory is the Weapon.
He recounted how he was jailed and charged with murdering a member of a rival gang, experiencing the rough end of the South African prison system at the height of apartheid, before being acquitted.
Mattera’s conversion to political activism came during the multiracial movement to stop the government’s destruction of Sophiatown. He joined the African National Congress Youth League and got to fight alongside Nelson Mandela and other resistance figures in a campaign that was to define the resistance to apartheid.
After they demolished Sophiatown, the apartheid regime called the new white suburb that replaced it “Triomf” (“Triumph”).
Don later broke with the ANC, getting involved in the politics of the black consciousness movement, but always opposed factionalism.
The apartheid government banned him between 1973 and 1982, and he spent three years under house arrest.
Apart from his work in founding organisations such as the Union of Black Journalists, Don loved to teach and to share his wisdom.
Irwin Manoim, the co-founder of the Weekly Mail, described what it was like to work with such a legend.
“Twice the age of most of the staff, Don was treated with a certain awe, a struggle veteran with a thrilling past, a juvenile gangster turned activist, all the more mysterious because a gentle demeanour cloaked his street-fighter reputation,” said Manoim.
“He was the resident elder citizen of the journalism training project, youth empowerment being one of his passions. At a time of bitter political factionalism, he stood above the fray, open-minded, non-judgemental, making his points slowly in a voice that was never raised, the elder citizen in both years and maturity.”
Even though Don had been ill for a while, his passing came as a shock, as by all accounts he remained full of spirit until the end.
His eldest son, Greg Mattera, said his father died peacefully at his house in Protea Glen a few weeks after being discharged from One Military Hospital in Pretoria.
Don passed away on Mandela Day, which is appropriate given that he was a close comrade of the former president before – and after – he was imprisoned in the 1960s.
Mattera received many literary awards and various honours for his humanitarian work and a long life of accomplishments.
But one of his greatest moments was in 2006 seeing the name Sophiatown resurrected and Triomf removed as one of the most powerful statements of the new democratic order.
