Day One
The Jo’burg house we’ve just moved into is occupied by workmen — much banging and bashing, hammering and hoeing. Only the guy installing my telephone is South African. The others are from Zimbabwe and Malawi. Southern Africa’s finest continue to spill into this country — as they have for several centuries. I spend the day trying to remember Ingrid de Kok’s poignant poem, William Kamanga, about the migration of Southern African workers to the Witwatersrand. Her line, “Colonial circuits of care and demand”, remains the finest tight explanation of the region’s sociology.
Day Two
An addict’s nightmare: Cresta Centre and Exclusive Books Summer Sale! I rush past and admonish Louise, who tarries at the stacks for a second. On the way back, she stops. I avert my eyes and make for the coffee shop. My heart sinks as I see her reach into her purse.
After coffee — or in my case, tea — we move to Woolies. Its entrance, alas, is right next to the Exclusive tables. The books beckon silently — their pages whispering their usual sweet promises. I succumb and, like a true addict, plunge into immediate remorse.
Could go cure myself with a Kindle — surely, it doesn’t have book sales!
Day Three
In the Spar a rotund man asks another (in Afrikaans), “Did you see Fanus Rautenbach died?” “When?” “It is in the Rapport.” There’s reverence in these voices. Judging by their ages, they must have been young when Rautenbach, the famed Afrikaans announcer, was in his prime.
He was a genuinely funny guy, Rautenbach, and a Bob Dylan fan to boot. His early morning show, Vroeg Uit die Vere (literally, “Early out of the feathers”) was so popular that it drew listeners away from the English-speaking Springbok Radio in the late 1960s. I buy Rapport, with two other weeklies that don’t mention Fanus’s passing. But Rapport says that the inscription he purportedly wanted on his tombstone was “At last he is deadly serious”. It would be written in Afrikaans, of course.
At 5pm I hear the language, again — a language entwined in the country’s political and cultural DNA — but the circumstances are very different. In Crosby’s Suleiman Nana Memorial Hall I hear the sharpened and rounded vowels — “verskerpte”, as they say — of Cape Afrikaans, the late Johnny Issel’s taal. This is Jozi’s “Public Tribute” to this remarkable man, who died of heart failure. Though not close, I liked Issel. What really explains why I’m here, though, is that I greatly admired his courage, integrity and fidelity.
The hall fills mostly with émigré Cape United Democratic Front activists, the colours of the ANC and, yes, a smattering of UDF T-shirts. Issel’s engaging smile looks down from every wall. As the crowd arrives, individuals greet one another as though they were at a family event — a kiss here, a handshake there, a quiet joke. The talk is children, marriages and careers. Then, as numbers swell, I hear someone behind me say: “I wish our branch meetings were as well attended as this.”
There are 19 items on the programme. It is going to be a long event for my University of Johannesburg colleague, Farid Esack, who is dutifully called “programme director”.
Proceedings start with the playing of Issel’s anthem, Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier — its strong message of survival and black resistance rings out across the packed pews. As it ends, Trevor Manuel’s rich baritone begins the haunting Hamba Kahle Umkhonto with its desperately sad refrain — I’m back in the 1980s when it was sung at funeral after funeral.
Strong statements are made in the tributes — and mostly they search for those “struggle” words that seem long-emptied from the country’s political lexicon. One of Issel’s protégés, Trevor Osterwyk, catches the mood with this question: “What has happened to the energy and creativity of our movement?”
Firoz Cachalia, looking over his glasses, is analytical, almost professorial — is this his next career move? Paul Plaatjes, who was at school with Issel, tells how, in the latter’s determination to get into university, he returned, at age 25, in the mid-1960s to a conventional classroom. Unsurprisingly, Issel told the principal he wouldn’t wear short trousers and wasn’t prepared to stop smoking a pipe.
Cheryl Carolus recalls childhood encounters with Johnny and is the first to talk about Issel’s disaffection with the movement. She’s lost a yard or two on her speech-making skills but as I listen to her I can’t help wondering why she’s the only struggle icon who hasn’t lost her figure. Ahmed Kathrada follows with the ritual blessing from the Robben Island alumni.
Then it’s the turn of Johnny Issel’s son, Fidel. Yes, he is named for you-know-who. Tall and handsome, he first looks bewildered but tells two wonderful stories about how his father’s love for his children was intimately bound up with his revolutionary politics.
The finale is Trevor Manuel — who has lost no yards in his oratorical skills. The man who preached Marx in the 1980s and championed the Market in the 1990s is soon in full flight. No poignancy or funny stories, here: his sole purpose is to reinsert the ANC’s mission back into the centre of Issel’s life.
Disappointingly no one mentions the need for a biography of Johnny Issel and his strong stand. Then, on the drive home, I remember Manuel’s warning that no personality cult should be built around Issel and his defiance against neoliberalism, corruption and cronyism. A bit rich this, I think. After all, wasn’t Manuel’s own biography published a few years back and isn’t he (in some places) a cult figure?
The BBC reports on [Hosni] Mubarak’s new Cabinet — they seem either to be in the military or over 70. And there’s not a woman among them. This must be tickets!
Day Four
Big day, today, I must get an article off to a journal!
I dash out of the house and then return for a quick something. Halfway up the street, I hear keys rattling. Surely, my office keys (and staff card) on the back seat. Then, en route to UJ, I remember that I left my keys on the car roof when I dashed back.
Gingerly, I drive home in rush-hour traffic looking for them. That cause is lost, but the article gets off.
Day Five
Reading The Economist at OR Tambo, I see that Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life imprisonment for being a “postman” for the Naxalites, one of India’s “terror movements”. A few years back when he was in detention, I met his wife (also a medical doctor) and his daughter. At the time the wife seemed as disoriented as the families of those who were detained in apartheid’s successive emergencies. But the daughter was very strong — determined and resolute.
Travelling back on the highway, the exhaust falls apart. Just in case he’d missed the increased sound of the engine, I casually mention this to my friend, Geoff Hawker, who has just stepped off a plane from Sydney. The next problem is that fumes are coming into the car — so we open the windows to breathe and have to shout at each other.
Should we stop in afternoon traffic? If we did, what could we possibly do? A few unhelpful drivers hoot and point to the sparks that the broken exhaust is throwing up.
At the Smit Street offramp — closer to home and, understandably, more confident — the Aussie and I start joking. Like two World War II bomber pilots returning after a night raid over Germany in the 1940s, we’ll surely get this baby home safely.
Peter Vale is professor of humanities, University of Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics Emeritus, Rhodes University. His third “Black Arts” diary entry will appear in the next edition of Getting Ahead (March 25)