Mark Behr
‘I BOUGHT this huge tree to plant by the front wall,” a colleague says with a laugh: “I couldn’t get the hole deep enough so I walked across the road to where that white beggar always hangs around at the supermarket. I offered him R20 to dig the hole. He agreed and I left him to it while I went to my study. Half an hour later I come out and the tramp is sitting on one of the pool chairs, and bent across the hole with a shovel in his hands is a black guy. The tramp had found the black guy off the street to come and do the job for R5 so he could keep the rest.” The staff room cracks up.
In the veld around the campus a million cosmos sway in the autumn breeze. Cows wallow belly- deep in the water a mere 20 paces from the library. The summer rain has pushed the vlei up across the access road, threatening to flood the administration building. Workers in overalls are laying bricks on top of the cement footpaths where students tiptoe, balancing and shrieking between the two rows of classrooms.
Through the prefabricated office wall I tell Janine that I’m going off to teach. She responds by saying I should first don a snorkel and a pair of goggles. I choose an intact piece of white chalk from my drawer and pick up the blackboard eraser. I leave, locking the door behind me.
But for the line of framed headmasters augmented by two, the foyer remains as I have remembered. While mingling with the VIPs, MPs and former teachers I decide to include the thing about the headmaster in my speech.
The invitation to address the province’s matric prefect corps — the staking of a claim — had angered me, but I knew I wouldn’t decline. At the organiser’s mention of the proposed topic, I had laughed into the receiver: “Julle wil hê ek moet met 200 prefekte praat oor vryheid. Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Well, you attended this symposium yourself in 1980, and we realise we must give the pupils new input. New input for the new South Africa.” A chuckle from his end.
The guests have taken their seats on an elevated platform at the back of the huge hall. It looks the same, still feels familiar: stage with shiny blue velvet drapes; cathedra with logo — Light and Leadership; the tinge of awe.
But now I cannot muster even a suggestion of pride. A march tune from the grand piano: the various prefect corps walk in, neatly behind emblemed school banners (of these, a number in English) to sit down behind tables arranged in a wide horseshoe. Waiting for the prayer to be concluded, I inexplicably recall an earlier event at my family home: as my parents chatted to me and my lover, I felt rising excitement at the proximity of the leg beside me, and for a moment contemplated reminding my father of how he used to say: “I won’t ever allow a kaffir, a communist or a queer into my house.”
Had I spoken my mind, they would have feigned good-natured embarrassment. The trinity was home free.
Without the advantages of a slanted floor or a microphone, I walk up and down the rows to make myself audible and establish some form of eye contact. Most of the students are quite formally dressed, though walking back to the front of the classroom I spot slogans printed on the backs of some T-shirts: Transformation is a student-driven process and I will vote only in a Free Azania. For the past weeks we have been studying texts by black writers: Modisane, Serote, Soyinka, Ousmane, Tlali.
Today I move to white South African writing. Does the class notice that the diffidence of the previous weeks has today been transformed into an almost arrogant confidence? A student I know by name has changed her hairstyle. To the delight of her friends I offer a compliment, winking at the same time.
Unable to trace a single black face amongst guests or pupils, I say that I find the group’s composition bizarre, in this, the Year of Our Lord 1995. I ask whether it is acceptable for me to speak in Afrikaans; I stress a desire for the prefects to dispute my opinions, to feel free to air their own on the topic: “Besides, I’m accustomed to it as I teach a class of 400 black students every day who tell me I’m talking crap half the time.” A murmur of laughter; discomfort, perhaps at the use of the word stront.
I quote Rousseau: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” To this I then add from my Religious Instruction class: “In the beginning was the Word.” Reading the two quotes together, how may we challenge Rousseau’s maxim? I inquire into the problematic relationship between words, history, freedom and power. The nodding of heads, the complete silence and the eyes locked on me have me believe I’m taking most along.
Gordimer. I hear myself, didactic, complete: “The novel was published shortly before the formalisation of the extended democratic movement; in the wake of the Soweto uprisings, the murder of Biko, and the ascension of the black consciousness movement. A time in which Serote said: ‘Blacks must learn to talk; whites must learn to listen.’
“In some revolutionary future South Africa, a liberal white woman and her family are forced to flee their city home and take refuge in the homeland village of their male servant. As they become his guests, all power relations are irrevocably altered: the whites are forced to confront the contingency of their former privilege, and their limited ability to free themselves from a system which they have, in principle, opposed. By the end of the novel, when the black man refuses to speak to the white woman in her language, she, like the white reader, is radically disempowered. She, like the white reader generally, is unable even to identify the vernacular. Her authority, like her ability to interpret, is lost.”
I ask if someone in class can translate the passage from the unnamed language. A few hands go up. It is clear that most of the people in class are themselves at somewhat of a loss. I am told by a student that it is Shangaan, and someone offers a translation. Another disputes the first’s reading, and proposes a variation. A third intervenes to say that despite the nuanced differences the gist of both translations is acceptable: You will hear how good it is, travelling through the air. The rhythm of these days, hey!
The SRC president rises to question my use of this particular text. One sleeve of his red T- shirt is coming away from the shoulder. He rejects what he understands as my insinuation that this is what white South Africans are currently experiencing: “There has been no violent revolution; you still have all your power and your servants in the suburbs. There are millions of us still stuck exactly where we were when this novel was written 15 years ago. So, what are you on about?”
“Similarly,” I say, “I’m still in front of this class, trying to teach you English literature.
‘The vocabulary and policy of my secondary education was Christian Nationalism, with a foundation in St Paul’s epistemology of divine authority and its earthly emissaries. And so, when a headmaster of this school said that women, just like kaffirs and the poor, will always be with us, few challenged it. None I knew of.
“When 13-year-old boys went to the school’s shooting range on Friday afternoons to fire rifles at targets in preparation for killing communist kaffirs on some imagined border, few resisted. We were, after all, responding to the representatives of God, protecting our world. When we played rugby to make sure we wouldn’t turn out queer, few resisted. I half- heartedly played — to no avail.”
Nervous laughter. Grimaces from teachers come to share their protégés’ shine; confronted instead with his tatty revenge. I suppress what is either fleeting nostalgia or a twang of pity. “And by keeping quiet we tacitly contributed to the abuse of power, unwilling to pay the price for dissidence, or embrace the rewards of liberty.”
Janine and Zanele come to my office with a memo from Admin. They close the door. In a hushed voice Janine reads from the letter. A thousand new students will be admitted onto campus this year. I look at them in disbelief: For God’s sake, we consulted all structures about numbers last year. Everyone agreed that there are facilities for a maximum of four hundred.”
“We’ve been informed: it’s either a thousand new students or rolling mass action.”
“This is crazy; impossible! What are other staff members saying?”
“The usual. No one prepared to stick out their necks — risk being toyi-toyied off campus. Indifference.”
I ignore Janine, and look instead to Zanele for guidance. She contorts her face, raises her shoulders and the three of us capitulate into helpless laughter. Zanele sees the problem arising from too few women on student structures. The absence of democratic involvement is evident already from that. She adds: “It’s not the same as when we were students.”
Either that, I think, or that we ourselves are no longer students. Together we try to recall the politics of the decade before: the alliances between academics and students, workers and students, white student organisations and “our black comrades”, the tiny black elite and the black working class, the press and the MDM, trade unions and civics. Histories temporarily overcome through the demand for a united front against the white political system; a tongue born from and understood only in a now disappearing political epoch.
“How do we handle 145 students per lecturer in this department? Let alone offer a decent education without adequate venues. It’s the principle of it … the process that fucks me over. How does one teach without authority?” This I ponder, twirling a pen between my fingers. It remains with me for days.
The confident assertions from the floor are frequently tempered by gemoedelikheid. the typical disarming heartiness: Why are you so negative about everything? What about the beautiful things in our history? How can you promote deviant sex? I liked what you had to say about the oppression of women, and I respect your opinions, but I don’t agree with anything else you said. You’ve criticised everyone and everything — Afrikaners and English, what are you, a communist?
There is now a series of smirks emanating from a table to my left. I try to ignore it. The questions go on for an eternity: genial onslaughts from white English and Afrikaans kids, aged 17. Then, standing up from the table of smirkers, there is a boy in a green blazer with thick golden braid around the seams.
Before he speaks, I’m already aware of the thumping in my chest. I barely register the question, seeing only the disdainful mouth and cocky simper of the playground bully, the strutting menace of my own history mirrored.
Although his feet don’t move while he talks, it is as though he is shouldering his way past a series of obstacles: “All you talk about is the past! As a Christian I abhor what you have to say. [Loud applause.] No one in this country wants to hear about the past any more, everyone just wants to start afresh.”
For the first time tonight I hear my own voice alter in tone. I maintain control only by addressing my response to the whole audience, refusing or unable to look at the swaggerer.
Late in the afternoon, with much of the campus deserted, I meet the five honours students in my office. Titus Andronicus. Under discussion: Aaron the Moor, in chains, to face Rome’s interrogation.
“Rome taught, protected and perpetuated its dominance with the aid of a specific material and cultural discourse: Roman vs Moor, man vs woman, good vs evil, civilised vs barbarian, strong vs weak. Nothing dented the categorical certitude, the justificatory platitudes. It is within this context that the Moor, by the end of the play, refuses to confess. Instead he says he should have murdered another 10 000 of his oppressors. His refusal to confess completely undermines Rome’s moral hegemony.”
Heads bowed forward, the group furtively takes down notes. I’m satisfied — both that the parallels have been drawn and that my own bona fides remain intact. It is then that the most articulate, April Nkosi, smiles across the desk and says: “Refuse to confess? But confess what? Even if he kills another 10 000, Aaron has nothing to confess.”
At the close she leaves last. She packs her books into a maroon leather briefcase. She reminds me of two testimonials she has requested. One is for an HSRC post. The other, more important, for an executive trainee position with Anglo American. She cautions me in apparent jest to adapt the two letters according to the separately specified job requirements.
Putting on my sunglasses for the drive into the setting sun, comfortably girded by my car, I acknowledge the waves from students awaiting minibus taxis. I turn on the radio. I think about April’s interpretation of Aaron’s confession. His silence has nothing to do with vengeance. It is an assertion of a different moral entitlement. I console myself by hearing it as nothing more than the analysis of a single black student. There are, after all, thousands who would not have agreed with her reading.
I stretch my sweaty back against the seat and glimpse the city skyline to my right. Swooping above the road right in front of me is a traffic helicopter. Its racket of blows is just apparent above the roar of passing vehicles and the voice from the radio: Mi ta twa ku nandziha ngopfu, swi famba a moyeni. Ncino wa maguva lawa, hey — i. Glancing off windows of buildings to the east is the last of the sun’s orange from behind the smoke of Soweto, Industria and the vast dust of the North West Province. I take in the lights shining with such temporal brightness. I breathe deeply as I approach home in this terrible time, this wonderful time no one escapes until it has left its mark.Last weekend Mark Behr won the M-Net Book Prize for his novel The Smell of Apples, published by Abacus and already a considerable success. © Mark Behr. All rights reserved
WATCH THE M&G IN COMING WEEKS FOR PIECES IN THIS SERIES BY MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, CHRIS VAN WYK AND ANTJIE KROG
LETTERS
Save the truth commission’s credibility
FOLLOWING the Mail Guardian lead story of April 26 to May 2, the Children and Violence Kagiso Network wishes to request that President Nelson Mandela and Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Archbishop Desmond Tutu take the allegations in a serious light.
The credibility of truth commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize is highly questionable, and the image of the commission will be tainted by her involvement in it.
What kind of reparation and reconciliation is she going to provide to the victims of the past atrocities when she has perpetrated violence by denying traumatised children counselling services she purported to provide in her funding agreements?
Overseas and local funders provided funds for these services, but the supposed beneficiaries were not reached. Who are the 450 children the National Children and Violence Trust (NCVT) psychologists provided trauma counselling to? (This is an extract from the report submitted to the Children’s Christian Fund).
It is high time that funders demanded names, addresses and other vital statistics of people who are alleged to have been provided with services by the NCVT. This is but a tip of the iceberg.
Archbishop Tutu, do you think Mkhize knows the truth from lies? Her responses in the M&G article are contradictory. For example, she claims to have stopped running the NCVT in August 1995, but a letter dated September 2 1995 bears her name. In any event, the irregularities that need to be investigated date way back in 1992, when the project was founded.The director of fund-raising also needs to investigate this organisation. How did it raise funds without fund-raising authority? The master of the supreme court has a role to play in investigating the trust deed, which seems to be fraudulent.
Archbishop Tutu and Dr Alex Boraine, the ball is in your court; act now or risk losing the credibility of the truth commission.
Dr Nkosazana Zuma has to investigate Paul Ntsooa’s engagement as Mkhize’s consultant after she and her NCVT board of trustees had fired him. At what stage did he become efficient and trustworthy? Surely after the blackmail threats?
Mkhize should not say “people on the ground” are bitter and suggest that they are being vindictive. This is not a personal thing, the network only wants to see justice done. The monies donated to help them should not be used for personal enrichment and gain. Traumatised children were deprived of services entitled to them.An investigation needs to be conducted into the finances of the NCVT as a matter of urgency. — Chair of the Children and Violence Kagiso NetworkBRIEFLYIT’S hardly surprising that well-heeled “analysts” and various wealthy groups throw around their standard slander and lies over the right to strike in the Bill of Rights.
Apparently, we are told, labour prefers threats over nicer means, and apparently the government must choose between growth (the owners’ policies) and stagnation (the unions’).
It should be clear to every child that the biggest threat-mongers are wealthy industrialists who offer choices like destitution versus sustainable misery.
The most serious stagnation facing the country is in the quality of life of the poor, which must presumably be blamed on the people who are in fact making the economic decisions — and there are no prizes for figuring out who that is. — Alex Welte, Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania
I WRITE as a performer and participant in the Splashy Fen music festival and as a parent of two teenage children, one of whom was at the festival and who I suspect indulged in the type of thing that teenagers throughout the world indulge in at this type of function, tut tut.
I am not a member of the drug culture, nor do I condone their use, but the action of the police in setting roadblocks aimed at “busting” those heading for the festival was churlish and inappropriate. The local police chief tells us that they netted a little over half a kilogram of dagga and other drugs, none of them falling into the dangerous category.
Including traders and performers, 9 000 people attended the festival and the police’s big and no doubt costly effort netted half a kilogram of dagga. I ask you!
The bitter irony is that even as they wielded their heavy hand on a bunch of harmless red- eyed hippies, running gun battles were being fought in the streets of Durban, and the political violence and crime that has become the signature of KwaZulu-Natal continued to march steadily towards the road of darkness.
Meanwhile, back at Splashy Fen the festival carried on in an atmosphere of peace and tolerance, a remarkable occurence in these times. There were those who got stoned on dagga, there were those who got drunk on booze, and there were those who were high on life and fresh air, and still there was not one incident of violence.
The police need to be more judicious in these times and ask themselves the crucial question: is their action part of the problem, or part of the solution? — Roger Lucey, Mowbray, Cape TownAddress letters to: The Letters Page, The Mail & Guardian, PO Box 32362, Braamfontein, 2017; or to our Internet address: [email protected] The editor reserves the right to edit for clarity and space. To be considered, letters must be received by Tuesday noonAnti-Semites would be proud of Qwelane
Anti-Semintes would be proud of Qwelane
WHEN I read of “a Jewish con-spiracy” behind the “Makgoba affair” in Krisjan Lemmer’s column (May 3 to 9), I was sure Jon Qwelane’s comments had been taken out of context. A respected journalist and talk-show host would not resort to such discredited and abhorrent tactics.Alas, I was wrong. Lemmer reported correctly. Qwelane’s crass and invidious message in “The lynching of William Makgoba” (Living in Africa, May 1996) is quite explicit: a cabal of Jews, angered by the former deputy vice-chancellor’s pro-Arab sentiments, masterminded his removal. Vice- chancellor Robert Charlton, Professor Charles van Onselen and the other “villains” were mere lackeys in the hands of Jewish conspirators.
Besides what I have gleaned in the press, I know little about the “Makgoba affair”. However, I do know something about anti- Semitism. Qwelane has done himself a disservice. In suggesting a sinister plot by Jewish academics, administrators, benefactors and students (the latter, Qwelane reminds us, actually have a union), he joins a long list of paranoid and obsessive anti-Semites.
Heinrich von Treitschke, the 19th century ultra-conservative German nationalist historian who coined the slogan “the Jews are our misfortune”, would have been proud of Qwelane. Von Treitschke represented the ancien régime, opposed to liberal forces of change.
A former minister of police and the interior, Lourens Muller, would also have applauded Qwelane. I remember well the day Muller publicly produced a list of students involved in protest against apartheid policies, to demonstrate the disproportionate representation of students with Jewish- sounding names. He appealed to Jewish leaders to influence their youth “to respect authority and not disrupt it”.To whom is Qwelane appealing? Why bring Jews into the equation? Surely the Makgoba issue went well beyond alleged pro-Arabism. In any event, Jews don’t act in sinister concert — except of course in the minds of anti-Semites. Qwelane acknowledges the role of Dennis Davis as a mediator in the dispute. Lucky the “elders of Zion” didn’t get at this learned law professor — or perhaps Qwelane thinks they did?
If one pursues this line of argument, pressure will have to be brought on Judge Richard Goldstone to withdraw as chancellor at Wits. Our high-flying internationally respected jurist will presumably focus on sectional interests at the expense of individuals like Makgoba.Indeed, the conclusion to be drawn from Qwelane’s exposé is to make Wits Judenrein. And while he is at it, Qwelane had better keep an eye on Constitutional Court judges Arthur Chaskalson and Albie Sachs, not to mention Gill Marcus, Raymond Suttner, Ronnie Kasrils, Ruth Rabinowitz, Leon Markowitz, Max Coleman, Tony Leon et al. They all stick together, don’t they? — Professor Milton Shain, University of Cape TownWhy silence on floor-crossing?
A GREAT deal is being reported in the media about the negotiations for the resolution of outstanding issues required to finalise the Constitution.
But not a word about the provision in the present Constitution which prohibits a representative of a political party from “crossing the floor” to represent a different party. The right to do so is patently indispensable to the promotion of multi-party democracy.In the context of the overwhelming parliamentary majority of the ANC-Communist Party-Cosatu alliance, with its ideology of the masses and our present poor opposition, the preclusion of the right for a representative to resign from a party so as to represent another party is the shortcut to entrenching what we already effectively have – – the one-party state.
Not a single party in Parliament is presently pursuing this vital issue. Nothing whatsoever in the media. Nothing anywhere.
A good deal of attention is given in the constitutional talks to the death sentence in relation to crime. The grim reality is that what is a potential death sentence to creative survival for our entire society gets no attention at all.
The considerable attention to what are in themselves important issues is being used as a smokescreen to exclude attention to the central issue of permitting party members to switch their support in legislative bodies to other parties. — S Schkolne, Merit Party* THE silence over the new electoral system for the 1999 elections is rather deafening.It appears that under the new Constitution to be adopted some time next week, we will have a repetition of the 1994 electoral system, where all MPs were elected on a proportional representatation basis. While this was understandable for our very first election, I cannot understand why this should also be the case for our next election.Most disturbing is the fact that there appears to be little debate in the media about these proposals. I have as yet seen no convincing argument as to why we cannot have a dual system of voting for our future elections. For example, it should be possible for us to have 60% of MPs on a constituency system, with the remaining 40% on a proportional representatation system in order to correct any imbalances. — I MomoniatHey, that’s show businessIN case any of the readers of the Mail & Guardian are swayed by the ridiculous arguments of EV Rapiti that only South Africans should play the leads in films about South Africa (Letters, May 3 to 9), may I ask the following to obtain more clarity?
Should a film about the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela only be sponsored or funded by cigarette companies because they produce more stompies than any other industry or corporation?
Rapiti should realise that the makers of the film that he refers to are in the business of entertainment and the box office. Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine are in the business of acting. The only business South Africans have in this issue is to ensure that local arts labour is not exploited on the set.
The only other business South Africans could have is to dictate the terms if we put our money where our mouths are. — Ismail Mahomed, Lenasia
ENDS