One of my favourite films was Being There, starring Peter Sellers. For those who have not shared in the privilege of seeing it (it was banned in the old South Africa), the story – based on a book of the same name by Jerzy Kosinski – is of a gardener who was adopted by a rich man as a child.
Chauncy Gardiner has spent his entire life behind the walls of a mansion where television (specifically soap operas) bring him his only “knowledge” of the outside world. The rich man dies and Gardiner is cast out into the street. Stumbling through life with the help of enigmatic utterances – based on his experience of gardening and soap operas – he is mistaken for a man of great profundity and the story ends with Gardiner heading for the United States presidency.
It is a story which has come to mind many times over the last few years in the course of writing the Dear Walter column which – under the new title Insincerely yours – came to an end in the Mail & Guardian last week.
The column started in the week of Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration. A number of friends earnestly pleaded with me not to go ahead with it, fearing I would make a fool of myself. The most common argument was: “Mandela’s a saint; you can’t make him a figure of fun”.
Rationalising that it was not Mandela I would be parodying, but those around him, I pressed ahead with the encouragement of Anton Harber and Irwin Manoim – the two editors of the M&G who had already made a vocation out of wrong-footing prophets of doom.
Judging by protests when I tried to stop the column on previous occasions, and the brief appearance of an anthology on the bestseller lists (non-fiction in the Sunday Times!) before it sold out, it did not offend sensibilities in the way which had been predicted.
Inevitably, after spending so much time writing about a man’s life – even by way of parody – one puzzles over his character. What makes him the “great man” that he is?
The question was brought home at a lunch I attended with Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman, author of the famous Death and the Maiden.
At one point Dorfman talked of his plans to visit Mandela’s cell on Robben Island with Andr Brink. From the shining look of exultation on his face he might have been a Christian acolyte anticipating a hike down the Via Dolorosa. What brought this politically sophisticated man to his (metaphorical) knees in front of another human being?
Before being deluged with letters accusing me of political blasphemy let me hurry to say that I identify with Dorfman’s adulation, even if I have no great interest in Mandela shrines.
My most treasured memory as a journalist was watching Mandela standing behind Betsy Verwoerd at Orania, glancing over her shoulder at a statement she was battling to read – having misplaced her glasses – and quietly prompting her in Afrikaans. It is as an unashamed worshipper, therefore, that I question the hero.
So what are the seeds of his greatness; where do his talents lie? His conduct of his family life – even leaving aside Winnie – seems to have been fairly disastrous. He trained as a lawyer, but gossip at the Bar has it he was no great shakes at lawyering. He was the “Black Pimpernel”, but got caught, which is a no-no for pimpernels. He was commander of Umkhonto weSizwe, but that was, after all, one of the world’s less successful guerrilla armies and it certainly had not achieved much by the time of Rivonia.
There was, of course, his glorious statement from the dock at the Rivonia trial, but it remains unclear to what extent it was a collaborative effort.Certainly his prepared speeches in later life have tended to be insufferably boring. His ad-lib speeches have been more fun, but hardly memorable. It is inescapable that the period which saw the greatest flowering of Mandela’s reputation was his time in prison when he was hidden from the public gaze – and judgment.
But his reputation has continued to grow since his release, without any evidence of political talent other than a dogged pursuit of reconciliation. For a “great democrat” he does not show much regard for the popular will – remember the Pallo Jordan fracas, his treatment of Bantu Holomisa and Patrick “Terror” Lekota. His loyalty to Cabinet colleagues in the face of incompetence and scandal raises questions about his political judgment.
And certainly there have been other occasions when his judgment has been nothing less than wacky – his plan to extend the franchise to 14-year-olds and, a more recent example, his decision to present South Africa’s highest award to Colonel Moammar Gadaffi.
Which brings me to Gardiner. Being There is a work of comic genius. But Gardiner, it should be said, is not himself a comic figure. He is the hero of the book and one does not laugh at him. The humour of the work lies in the reactions to Gardiner by those around him. They long for a leader and, with the help of his enigmatic observations, he becomes the focus in an exercise in wish-fulfilment.
And that is, I suspect, the Mandela I have “discovered” for myself through Dear Walter. He is, of course, not the empty vessel that was Gardiner. He is an experienced and intelligent man. But he is no philosopher king.
He is an endearing man, but there are many of that ilk. He is a courageous man, but there are others who have been put to a far greater test of it. He is, in the final analysis, a great man. Not because of his innate qualities (admirable though some may be), but as a creation of the collective imagination, an expression of national identity deeply desired in a bitterly divided country.
In fact, it goes further than that because the adulation he draws from the world reflects the wish shared internationally to overcome the racism and ethnicity which has been the great blight on history – to hurry down the road to the dream of a community of mankind.
And there is surely nothing greater than that.