Nadine Gordimer’s controversial and now unauthorised biographer, Ronald Suresh Roberts, on Monday took aim at South Africa’s “colonial media”, saying contrasting views had been suppressed after the Sunday Times ran a critical profile on him.
Roberts was speaking at the Johannesburg Central Library, at a reading of his biography on Gordimer, No Cold Kitchen.
Referring to the profile, by Chris Barron and headlined “The unlikeable Mr Roberts”, he said Barron misquoted his sources — Ken Owen, a previous editor of the Sunday Times, and his wife, Kate — and the paper never published the Owens’ letters of complaint that were written in response.
“You would think that in a competitive media environment somebody would tell the real truth and in some way [that truth] will get out,” Roberts said, adding that “what masquerades as public opinion is often white public opinion”.
Earlier this year, Roberts lost his case of defamation against Sunday Times publisher Johncom Media Investments after he sued the newspaper for defamation. Acting Judge Leslie Weinkove dismissed Roberts’s defamation claim with costs, including the cost of two counsel — a severe legal sanction. It is believed Roberts’s legal costs could exceed R1-million.
Weinkove’s judgement found Roberts had been “vindictive and venomous” in attacks on public figures and that his conduct as a lawyer “in certain respects” had been “improper”.
Roberts, originally from Trinidad, fell out with Nobel Prize-winner Gordimer when she withdrew authorisation for the biography.
At this week’s book reading, he spoke about subsequent negative media comment on the Gordimer book. “I find it odd and escapist to discredit a piece of work because of a person they [the media] don’t even know … they should stop playing the man [referring to himself] and play the ball,” he said.
Disloyal
Roberts said the media had applied double standards to their judgement of his book, and some had called him “disloyal” for presenting a more real picture of Gordimer. Calling her a “committed African”, he praised the vital role she played as an “unsilenceable voice” in South Africa’s liberation struggle.
He said the bulk of No Cold Kitchen is about Gordimer being “a talented critic about the problems of the white liberal position”, but added that it contains “certain details that perhaps she didn’t like represented”.
Roberts said Gordimer and her writing are often perceived to be “cold”, something with which he does not agree, and that is the point of the book’s title. “Her warmth expresses itself in a critical manner.”
“[Gordimer’s] particular way of writing comes across as distant … her certain withholding comes across as cold, but that just reflects other things,” Roberts said. “This [book] is very much a real picture of Nadine.”
Talking about “Gordimer’s desire to place herself in a pantheon”, Roberts said she “likes that impression of herself”. Although some of No Cold Kitchen‘s portrayal of the author subverts this view of her, “it is in my mind contextualised and justified”, he said.
“Nadine was always the author of her own story, of the story of her country; she was never on the receiving end,” Roberts said, adding that the reason for their disagreement was “her unwillingness to accept that the writer writes the book”.
Imperialism
At Monday’s gathering, Roberts went on to challenge the journalism of fellow author and Sunday Times journalist Fred Khumalo, who was present at the event to read from his autobiography, Touch My Blood.
Roberts criticised the South African media for having an “imperialist” ideology. Mentioning University of the Witwatersrand professor of media studies Tawana Kupe, who said that the press can sometimes be an enemy to press freedom, Roberts said there are incentives in the media to report things in a particular way.
Derisively calling the relationship between himself and Khumalo “wonderfully robust”, Roberts implied that Khumalo had also bought into this media mindset. He said that just because a person is black, it doesn’t mean the perspective he or she represents is not imperialist. “We know that there are things we can and cannot say in the media.”
Roberts also confronted Khumalo on his words in the Sunday Times earlier this month. In a piece that followed the newspaper’s court victory over Roberts, titled “Would he sue me for ululating?”, Khumalo wrote: “Somebody told me the other day that you [Roberts] were on the other side of the Atlantic. Maybe you should stay there!”
Speaking to the crowd, Khumalo said Roberts had “stolen my thunder and shot [at] my sails … [through his] very benign words on my evolution as a writer”. He said he would not entertain Roberts’s “observations” about him and the Sunday Times, and instead turned his attention to his own book.
Reading a chapter describing an altercation he had in a bar in Canada, Khumalo said: “I’ve grown up; I don’t pick fights.”