/ 19 May 2017

Karel Schoeman: A literary giant who walked among us

The 2006 forensic report prepared for Zuma's trial that never saw the light of day ... now made available in the public interest.
The outcome of the ANC’s long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

TRIBUTE

On May Day, when angry South Africans heckled President Jacob Zuma in a stadium in Bloemfontein, an hour’s drive away, in the small town of Trompsburg, news of the death of one of the country’s most prolific Afrikaans writers, Karel Schoeman, emerged. His passing didn’t make headlines, but the chaos at the stadium did.

Very little about this great author of the masterpiece novel Promised Land and later film is known, owing to his aversion to public attention.

As an African boy growing up in Trompsburg, I often saw Schoeman going unassumingly about town on his errands along the only high street. For many years he was, to me, a nameless character; a lanky figure clad in brown corduroy trousers, a long winter jacket and a long scarf with a shopping basket in one hand and a walking cane in other, a lonesome man with a quiet dignity.

It was only in 1998 that my curiosity about him was piqued. In the small agricultural town’s library, some of his 19 novels and portraits had been displayed in a glass cabinet. His image as an accomplished writer suddenly formed in the repositories of my mind but it was muted as nothing was ever said about him. One goes unnoticed in a town where millions of stars seemingly hang from a lowered canvas at night and the distant treeless hills taper into savannah horizons during the day.

I developed a fascination and concluded that he was an eccentric of sorts. On the corner of the dusty Van As and Kerk streets he lived in solitude in a cosy, modest house, without much social interaction or involvement in the affairs of the town.

It was only when I was a student at the University of Stellenbosch that I took an interest in some of his works and would occasionally discuss his writings with a handful of scholars. I remember having some informal conversations about him with peers in Cape Town and also in the Nertherlands, where he spent some of the years of his illustrious career.

Unlike many intellectuals who left South Africa because of their opposition to apartheid, Schoeman’s name was not flaunted. He did not wear his prior convictions as a medal of honour for the sake of relevance in the capricious political landscape of a democratic South Africa.

Schoeman defied Gaetano Mosca’s theory that man has advanced from survival of the fittest and is now in the midst of a battle for pre-eminence, social standing, status and influence. Modesty was a hallmark of his character, his life devoid of opulent indulgence and decadence.

In the note he left behind explaining the reason and the modus operandi of his choice to depart, he stated that he did not wish to experience the debilitating condition that aging never fails to subject a human being to. He said he wished not to burden himself and others with dependence — a grievous choice that must have been difficult but nonetheless arrived at with physical and spiritual clarity.

Schoeman stated his hope that his suicide could influence the debate on euthanasia and its illegality in South Africa. I think it fair to interpret this as a statement that is consistent with his life; a journey that undoubtedly represented self-determination and a philosophy that goes against societal conventions.

In a rare interview with the French literary magazine Transfuge he points out that: “What happens in an existence needs to be integrated into the personality.” His exit is in line with what might have been his mission to conquer himself rather than impose his will and influence on others or holding lofty ideas of himself in relation to his fellows.

Many were unaware that there was a silent, unassuming literary giant walking among us, one who shied away from acclaim and applause. One thing is for sure; his contribution to literature remains. He will be remembered across the world as a man of letters, gifted historian, translator and cunning linguist.

I wish to remember Karel Schoeman as a man who reserved the right to be the man he was.

Itumeleng Makgetla is an independent political analyst and researcher