Anton Krueger, the noted playwright, has just come out with a first, slim work of fiction called Sunnyside Sal - which also counts as a rare work of prose from poet Robert Berold’s publishing outfit, Deep South.
The work is “a jauntily narrated novella set in the tumultuous early 1990s, when a whole generation was discovering that everything they’d been taught to believe was wrong”.
In the following excerpt, two fifteen year olds find themselves at the centre, first of the SAPF’s attention, and then of BOSS’s:
* * * * * * * *
Church Square, 1987
Later in Form III, Sal began to cultivate an interest in politics. I was fifteen, and although I suspected that there was something not altogether right with Apartheid, I didn’t really have any idea what was happening in South Africa at the time. Sal wanted me to accompany him to protest against an AWB rally which was going to be held on Church Square. I’d never heard of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and Sal couldn’t tell me much about them, except that they were a fascist faction and that their emblem was a Nazi swastika with three spokes instead of four.
This was during the second State of Emergency of the year, the townships were in uproar and the border war was raging on. The AWB were opposed to the reform movements which had begun, claiming that the government was becoming too liberal. Conservative? Liberal? Who knew what these meant. But since we had missed out on the 60s (and there was absolutely nothing that we could do about that now) we would have to make up for lost time by accosting the most convenient symbol of the establishment to hand. After thinking the situation through carefully, I decided to go along with Sal, provided that we could find suitably hippy clothes to wear.
So we rifled through a bag of old clothes Tracy’s parents had left over from the 70s. Sal found a bedraggled black wig, and I wore a dirty blonde. He put on a huge Hawaiian shirt with out-sized lapels and was soon clattering with cowry shell necklaces. I squeezed into an asphyxiating red number and a pair of large bronze bell-bottoms. And so we set off on my golden ten-speeder for the city centre.
Sal didn’t have a bike, so he had to sit across my handlebars, effectively impairing my vision almost completely. Our progress from his parents’ flat in Arcadia was further hampered every fifty-odd metres by my bell-bottoms flapping into the bicycle chain. We stopped en route to make ourselves protest banners from an old cardboard box we found in Queen Street and by the time we eventually got there, the rally itself was over; but the noisy aftermath of the event had yet to be cleared up. We saw a few scared white kids from the UDF wearing End Conscription Campaign T-shirts being bullied into police vans. A number of black ANC supporters had also showed up. It was illegal to wear a shirt with UDF, ANC or Mandela’s face on it, and everybody was being rounded up by baton-wielding policemen who surrounded the perimeter of the square. The air was filled with shouts and screams and the squeal of sirens as the dissidents were carted off.
With deliberate resolve, Sal tightened a red bandanna around his black wig and loosened the last of the buttons on his unreasonably orange sunflower shirt. Without another word, we hauled out the makeshift posters we’d made. On mine, I’d written “Is there intelligent life on earth?” while Sal had come up with the rather more obscure “Plight of the Pimpled Peruvians.” I didn’t ask.
In the atmosphere of mayhem which now prevailed around the dour statue of the last president of the Transvaal Republic, we moved towards the Square, holding our appeals aloft. While crossing the street which circles the square, our path was blocked by a policeman wearing a bullet-proof jacket, wielding an R4 rifle.
“Vat daai fiets hier weg en gaan huis toe,” was what he said to us. Sal and I looked at each other blankly. I tried to raise one eyebrow in mock consternation (a trick I’d been practising in front of the mirror for just such an occasion). “Ek’s ernstig!” The policeman was becoming increasingly agitated. “Fokof!”
We didn’t really know what to do, so we just sort of stood there aimlessly in the middle of the street, our placards limp in our hands. We watched the police vans going by, as they rounded up the occasional unruly mob which had been converging on the Square. We didn’t have to stand around for long, however, because suddenly, we were surrounded by uniforms as we were swept up in a bustle of burly blue. A few moments of complete confusion followed – as if we were caught up in a wave and were tumbling blindly in white foam – as they pummelled us into a yellow van.
“Haal af daai fokken pruike julle moffies!” one of the police insisted, as others stripped us of wigs and wallets the while. “Wat de fok dink julle maak julle?” another wanted to know as he locked the door of the van.
The policemen seemed rather excitable. This was their time to shine. One of them barked boisterously as he ripped the film from Sal’s camera and the others gave exuberant encouragement as they looked on. They howled, they whooped, they were having an excellent time of it.
We had to do our best to dodge the fingers poked at us when we got too close to the grating. As soon as there was a lull in the jeering we tried to apologise. We tried to explain to them that we had no political affiliations, that we were just trying to be silly. Really.
“Ja, julle is fokken dom,” said one, “Dis State of Emergency. Ons kan julle opsluit vir ses maande sonder ‘n trial.”
“But we’re only fifteen,” Sal said.
“Maak nie saak nie…ons het boys daar binne van dertien. Ons sluit julle op net so. Julle knapies moenie moeilikheid soek met ons nie. Julle sal dit kry!”
At this point Sal began to grow noticeably nervous. He grimly buttoned up his shirt as he stared through the bars of the van at the genuine protestors who were being manhandled off the Square. When they saw what had happened to us, they raised clenched fists in our direction. “Amandla!” they called out to us, “Amandla awethu! Be strong!” Little did they know that we had no idea who they were, what they stood for, nor what they were saying to us.
“Please,” we pleaded with the police, adopting distinctly whiny tones. “If you don’t like our clothes we can change them. We haven’t done anything wrong. Please.”
Just then a plainclothesman was brought onto the scene. After consulting with the others in muffled whispers and secretive gestures, he took us to change our clothes. The man led us to the public toilets on the Square, next to the booth where they used to sell bus tickets and timetables when the depot was still on Church Square. Luckily we’d brought along a kit-bag with ordinary jeans and T-shirts. As we were changing, an AWB supporter came in, clad in khaki from top to toe. He was sporting a sort of weird vierkleur nurse’s cap on his forehead and Sal was visibly startled. “Look at that!” he said, furtively pointing the man out to our captor. “Why don’t you ask him to change his funny clothes as well?”
Our man sighed as he stood at the urinals. With a long-suffering shake of his head he zipped up and – delivering a casual blow to the back of Sal’s head, almost as an afterthought – he told us “Julle verstaan niks nie.” Sal rubbed his head. “Julle weet nie wat hier aangaan nie.”
The man then lead us to his car. He was still convinced that we must be in cahoots with the forces of resistance, and he wanted to see where we lived. He’d also discovered a video in Sal’s kitbag, which he cared to view. So we left my golden ten-speeder locked up near the Square and drove with the man to Sal’s flat. As we were driving down Church Street, the man explained to us that nobody wanted to hurt the black man. With an expansive gesture he included all the African workers on the streets who were painting buildings, sweeping driveways and washing cars. “Ons wil net vriende met almal wees,” he said. Ja right, I thought, otherwise who else are you going to get to do your painting, sweeping, washing.
Sal’s parents were living in Lisbon at the time, and over weekends he stayed in a flat his father owned in Sunnyside. It was straight opposite the vast gardens of the Union Buildings, and we imagined that we could see State President P.W. Botha glowering out at us from his office. Neither Sal, myself, and least of all die Groot Krokodil himself could possibly have imagined that Nelson Mandela was to be inaugurated in those selfsame gardens in seven years’ time.
Before Sal would let the man into his flat he insisted on seeing some ID. Sal’s stance – palms firmly planted on the hips and with a well-rehearsed Sid Vicious sneer – looked more comical than threatening, and the man smiled indulgently as he produced his card. He let us know that he was part of BOSS, and he covered half of his card in order to protect his personal details. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was sporting a bronze badge announcing his name as Mannie Meintjies. “Julle kan my maar Jan Spies noem,” said Mannie.
Mannie was disappointed to discover that Sal’s video turned out to be of the Pink Floyd concert, Delicate Sound of Thunder, and not the illicit pornography he’d clearly been hoping it might be. “As dit blou was sou ek dit vir myself gehou het,” he explained, although he did make use of the opportunity to remark that he understood how we might have been led astray. “Ja,” he said, “nou verstaan ek hoekom julle so skeef is – as julle vir hierdie rubbish sit en luister.”
“Maar hou jy dan nie van musiek nie, Mannie?” asked Sal.
Mnr Meintjies’ eyes widened when Sal called him by his real name. Disconcerted, he asked for a glass of water. When Sal brought it, Mannie regarded it suspiciously. He sniffed at the glass warily, as if the water might be poisoned, which confirmed that he was probably paranoid enough to be working for the secret services after all.
After having searched the room for drugs or incriminating literature, Mannie was soon satisfied that we were not an immanent danger to the Republic. Nevertheless, I think he suspected that we might have been harbouring slightly leftist tendencies, so he made himself comfortable and began to hold forth. He told us that he could have left us with the police. They would have locked us up for a while just to give us a fright, but he’d taken pity on us because we were young, because we were white, and because he felt that there might be hope for us yet. Mannie wanted us to “see the light” and so he set about methodically explaining to us why we were superior to all the other races on God’s green earth. He said that this was purely a matter of genetics, and that we were, in fact, a completely different species to any other race. Mannie told us that the African was destined to always be a follower, and never a leader.
“What about Jesse Jackson?” Sal asked. (Jackson had run for U.S. president on the Democratic ticket in 1984, and he would run again in 1988.) Mannie Meintjies thought long and hard about Sal’s question as he made ready to leave. We could see the cogs turning over as he ruminated over this pressing dilemma. Finally, he paused and – turning at the door – fired off a final retort: “Ja, you boys listen probably also to his music as well.” Sadly shaking his head, Mannie closed the door behind him as we clapped hands to our mouths and collapsed with laughter.
We went over the episode again and again, savouring every detail of the escapade. Sal told me that he’d panicked when Mannie suspected there might have been something in the water. As it turned out, my friend had carefully spat in the glass and mixed in the spittle with his finger, before serving it up to Mannie Meintjies from the Bureau of State Security.
* * * * * * * *
Sunnyside Sal is published by Deep South and distributed by UKZN Press
Today being the evening of Monday, I am joined at Les Deux Magots by Serge, a much younger man than Yves who has confused me tremendously by being introduced as a Mauritian, only to tell me he is part Russian and, I think, part West African. I gave up on trying to understand. He is dressed like a real young corporate executive with the tie off. He has on a wonderfully cut suit with a shirt that you know would fetch about R2 500 in South Africa. He has brought his white Parisian girlfriend. She has on a beautiful gold watch with a leather strap. The watch seems to have come down at least one generation before reaching her. The two of them look like a couple on the rise, with her looking and sounding like she might even have a trust fund waiting already.
Perhaps it is fitting that I should have this debate with this couple here. We are in Les Deux Magots and across the road is Brasserie Lipp, after all.
She is arguing that there is something very wrong in what Sarkozy is doing with regard to foreigners in France. He is listening to both of us and hedging his bets a little. After all he is not a French native from what I gather and I seem to agree with what Sarkozy is doing.
The discussion started with me talking about all the lovely places I had seen and how I think Paris is so beautiful and wondering if many Parisians even care about the historical places I have seen.
She said that I should move more to the outskirts of Paris, then I would see a different side of the city that is not so nice. I would see the ‘real’ Paris, she said. What’s ‘unreal’ about central Paris I wondered in my head? Out loud I asked why I should do that, go to the ‘real’ Paris. She said only a short while ago there were some foreigners living in France sleeping in tents, protesting their lack of French citizenship. I asked if these people did not have their own countries. She said these protests were by people who had lived in Paris for over five years and had children here in France. I asked her if she knew what had brought them to France in the first place.
She said it’s partly because of the heavy French taxes. People here in France, she added, were trying to avoid the heavy taxes by hiring illegal immigrants. I added that it must also be because the countries where these people come from are not functioning properly, which is\ why they want to escape in the first place to come here.
She says that’s true.
He says that Sarkozy is also trying to pass a law that says if you claim to be a naturalised French person and want to bring your family over to France you and that family member must undergo DNA testing to check if you are truly related. I say that’s good. He says but a lot of French people don’t like this because it reminds them of that German fascist thing that they fought so hard against.
He tells me that about a week ago there was an anti-racism concert and some socialist French politician stepped on to the podium and condemned this Sarkozy DNA move. I say everybody must relax here in France because DNA testing is very advanced, it doesn’t lie and it is the best way to establish family ties. I say to him that it seems to me that history is blinding those against this Sarkozy move to what could prove to be a very good system to stop the fraudulent importation of illegal immigrants into France, or any country with similar problems for that matter.
I think I have shocked this lovely couple. Surely this kind of talk from a thoroughbred French woman should get praise, not opposition, from a black African.
I argue that fighting to be allowed into a country that is not yours does not change the fact that your country is a mess. I say that France and all the other ‘western’ countries cannot absorb every one of the poor of the world and that immigration squabbles are at the superficial level of solving the real problem. France, I say, should concentrate on helping the countries where these people flock from to get back on their economic feet so that they can support their own citizens. France, I say, together with all the other ex-colonisers that can afford to do this, if they really want to correct their immigration problems, should follow South Africa’s lead of refusing to be a rich nation floating in a sea of poverty.
I don’t want to come to Paris, I say to this lovely couple, and not want to leave because I have nothing to go to back in my country. I want to visit this place or any other place on the planet and be happy to be going home thereafter. I want a world where we can all visit each other and only move because we are needed wherever we are moving to and are glad to go and help, not because where we are is so bad that we have no option but to run. Making the rest of the world better or as functional and rich as France or wherever poor people are sneaking into is a deeper way of solving the problem of immigration, I say. Not this plaster cast of DNA laws to screen people and whatever other strict laws to limit the number of illegal immigrants. Make immigration and the need for these laws disappear by truly engaging in helping the whole world to function better.
The English have their pubs. South Africans have their shebeens. The French have restaurants they call cafés or brasseries. I like Parisian cafés. My overall impression of these is of history and good food. But it is also of women clutching their bags and moving them to the other side whenever I sit at a table nearby. This first happened when I went into Salon de The, a little corner café opposite Le Lutetia, a hotel that the Germans once used as their headquarters during the Second World War, up the road from my hotel on Boulevard Raspail. This French woman grabbed her bag from the chair between us as I sat down in the chair next to it. I quickly put my own bag in the very space vacated by hers as a subtle up yours, and acted like nothing had happened. Then it happened again at Les Deux Magots when another French woman grabbed her umbrella as I slid into a chair at the table next to where she sat. What the hell does she think I’ll do, I wondered – grab the umbrella and eat it?
The French, like most other whites I know, are still scared of black people, even when relaxing in their French cafés. This is a bit sad. I am sure it is partly because the only blacks they see are in need of one thing or the other and never just travelling. After all, aren’t they the ones who triggered the tent-sleeping protests? But then again, the woman could be grabbing her umbrella simply out of politeness, just making room for me, which would mean I have brought my prejudice here. Who knows? I choose to go with my prejudice for now. I’m alone at Les Deux Magots today, sitting in the exact spot where Simone de Beauvoir sat when Robert Doisneau took that famous picture of her. It took some time, but I have finally worked out how to set the time delay on my camera to take a self-portrait sitting in this exact spot, next to which is where Jean-Paul Sartre liked to sit as the plaque says on the wall. I like that I’m finishing the writing of this letter from Paris sitting right here. I think about my argument here the evening before over French immigration laws and wonder if having more and more Africans travelling for fun as opposed to the hunt-for-greener-pastures wouldn’t help change what now appears, at least on the surface, to be pure racism borne of fear. The bag-grabbing habit that I seem to provoke in French women here really disturbs me.
The updated edition of From Joburg to Jozi contains over 50 pieces of writing on Johannesburg, selected and edited by Dinner with Mugabe’s Heidi Holland and The Wonga Coup’s Adam Roberts. All royalties from the sale of the book go to Cotlands, for the benefit of children with HIV and AIDS.
Here’s a take on Jozi - or is that Joburg? - from Christopher Hope:
* * * * * * * *
On the airport road into town two BMW convertibles neck and neck, hoods down, came barrelling past and I swear one driver had a cellphone in his ear. The Jo’burg earring. The boys were having fun. Dark and often fatal fun. Jo’burg fun. The word is ‘dicing’. It catches that curious blend of cockiness, aggression and fatalism one might call Jo’burg noir. So you get wiped out on the motorway – or playing the slots. But if you’re going to go – may as well stay in the fast lane. It’s all dicing, anyway. Isn’t it, hey? So fuck you – arsehole! Suck my exhaust.
Welcome to Jo’burg – have a nice day.
On the side of the airport road is the familiar, fearsome clutter. Some child-giant got tired of his toys and has thrown them out of his cot. Low-browed office parks, pompous warehouses, and a clenched fist of houses sphincter-tight behind beautiful walls, Jo’burg’s trademark, the anal-retentive suburb. And then the brand new architecture of liberation – the Romano-kitsch casino, a thousand slot machines wrapped around a shopping mall.
But then what do you expect? This is a town that thought mine dumps were pretty, that had a soft spot for slimes dams, and thanked God he had given it a reef of gold beneath its feet. The mine dumps are shrinking. Years ago they hung around town like drunks on day release from the detox clinic. The sandy equivalents of meths drinkers in Joubert Park. Scrubby grass like fierce unshaven stubble grew over their yellow faces. Thing was – you liked them, you blushed a bit when visitors said ‘what do you do with them?’
Some bright spark took one of these sandcastles, sheered off its head and planted a drive-in movie on the crest. Great stuff. Someone had an even better idea. What about tearing down the dumps and taking them to the cleaners all over again, for the pinpoints of gold they didn’t give up first time round?
Very Jo’burg.
I dropped down the off-ramp into a place called Motortown, into the grid of streets adorned with the names of this city’s singular rip-off merchants, its energetic scoundrels, its gold-diggers who built a brothel and a bourse, and never could tell the difference. Not then, not now, not ever – Loveday, Harrison, Rissik and Jeppe . . . Once-upon-a-time Jo’burg preserved in the poetry of their names.
The headlines roped to the lamp-posts sing the old dark songs – golden city blues –
Ten Shot Dead in Bed
Pregnant Housewife’s Poisoned Present
School Hall Stolen
Here is the Carlton Centre. To build it they had to excavate a hole, and not just any hole, the hole was the biggest, best urban hole anywhere in Africa. Nowhere in the southern hemisphere was there a hole to touch it – and people came from all over the place just to look at the hole. No one anywhere, said the people of Jo’burg, dug better holes or dug them faster, or deeper, or sunk more money into them. The Carlton hole was big enough to swallow the Empire State Building (if melted down). It did no good wondering aloud how you’d melt down the Empire State. Or why? The Carlton sneered at such questions; fifteen acres of hole was going to contain shops, restaurants, pavement cafés, movie houses and an ice-rink. On top of the hole was the tower – it was going to be fifty storeys high, it was going to be the tallest tower in Africa. And next to the tower, its rich twin would be the best luxury hotel in creation. And on top of the tower there would be an observation room that would allow you to look thirty miles into the distance. On a really clear day you might see as far as Pretoria.
The accomplices of the mining house tycoons were the New York architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who seemed to have risen to the challenge of designing – even by the record standards of the 1960s – one of the most brutally ugly buildings on the planet. And how we loved it! We had the deepest hole, tallest tower, richest hotel in the country – it was very, very Jo’burg. Soon we were talking in awe of its room prices, its silver cutlery. Its sheer hulking brutal Jo’burg pizzazz, its gold-plated nerve. And the skating was fine.
We boasted about the Carlton – it was said to be the greatest concrete erection in the world – another triumph attributed to those razzle-dazzle boys who ran the town. Their collective names were spoken in that peculiar reverent drawl that is Jo’burg at prayer, whenever money, gold, big bucks, moolah is mentioned – creators of all that was good and profitable, they turned bare veld into bullion, the Godlings of Hollard Street who were collectively worshipped as the Mahninghowzez . . . See how the knee bends, the head bows at the magical invocation of true, ingot-dripping, bullion-loaded dazzle. And why not? Since buying shares or salting a gold mine is as close as most Jo’burgers ever came to a truly religious experience.
In The Rebel Tours, Peter May and Tristan Holme tell the story of disgraced English cricketer Mike Gatting, who accepted a salary of £200000 from the apartheid government.
Read an extract from the book below:
For Mike Gatting, the justification was apparently quite simple. “I do not see myself as a traitor, because I am going off to earn a living by playing cricket in South Africa,” he said.
“I think I’ve been a loyal person. I’ve given a lot of my life to cricket. It’s time for me to put my family first.”
It was an explanation the cricket world had heard before. Except that this time, ahead of the seventh rebel tour to South Africa, the English captain’s words rang particularly hollow.
Mixed Blood author Roger Smith is back with a new thriller that’s set to have readers riveted to their seats: Wake Up Dead. Here’s the blurb for the forthcoming US edition (the book will appear this Feb):
On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a choice that changes her life forever.
Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joe’s convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, won’t let her out of his sight because Joe owed him a chunk of money. And hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse “wife,” Disco.
As these desperate lives collide and old debts are settled in blood, Roxy is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport.
The author has released an excerpt from the book on his website. Enjoy, but beware: it’s quite a ride.
The night they were hijacked, Roxy Palmer and her husband, Joe, ate dinner with an African cannibal and his Ukrainian whore.
The African, languidly elegant in a hand- tailored silk suit, was blue- black with tribal scars on his cheeks. He spoke beautiful French-accented English, and he could have recited the Cape Town phone book and made it sound poetic. The whore had yellow braids, the dark roots cross- hatching her skull like sutures on a cadaver. She didn’t say much, spent most of the meal hating Roxy for her naturally blonde hair and perfect American teeth.
When the cannibal paused his monologue to eat or drink, Joe Palmer tried to fill in. After the francophone eloquence, South African Joe sounded like a truck driven without a clutch. They were at Blues in Camps Bay, overlooking the ocean, and even though they sat down to eat at nearly nine, the last of the golden light still washed the beach and the slopes of Table Mountain. Cape Town is twinned with Nice on the French Riviera, and on a night like this Roxy could see why.
“An intricate Robert Altman–like narrative that, when the pieces finally connect, forms a terrifying portrait of the Cape Flats. [A] searing vision of characters trapped in a fetid purgatory.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[A] stellar thriller. Bad choices, not bad luck, drive human depravity in this brutal fable. One fundamental irony unforgettably lingers: that these characters, trapped in poverty, ignorance, and prejudice, have really had no choice at all.” — Publishers Weekly
Let’s face it: the books are funny. They’re crass, to be sure, and they respect very few boundaries - cross-reference the first entry below with the third for a taste of just how catholic the offense-giving can be - but they also elicit sniggers, chortles and smiles of recognition.
In short, you can blow off steam with the Kak books. This one boasts “50% more material and 500% more exclamation marks” and will be launched on Friday. (It also has a strapline: bow-chikka-wowow! - which is code, I think, for “put on your kak-porn goggles before proceeding”.) Here are the first five entries:
* * * * * * * *
AA
Something new and interesting to kick off Complete Kak!, you ask? Throw in a banana kick and start with those badly dressed Automobile Association technicians or the party poopers at Alcoholics Anonymous? Of course not. How could we not start with Affirmative Action? It’s big, it’s bad and it’s not budging. Complete kak? You betcha.
About the only thing that’s changed about Affirmative Action in South Africa in the last few years is that we now have black people complaining about it. And an Mbeki, no less – albeit the one that white people approve of. In his book Architects Of Poverty Moeletsi Mbeki argues that AA and BEE are in their current forms not practical solutions to growing the economy, creating a black middle class or trickling wealth down to the poor. Not quite the same line of thinking as your average white guy being told “Pale male, bottom of the scale”, but another opinion to add to the list. Because everyone’s got one. And they all end up tweaking someone else’s nipples.
“AA policies are necessary to uplift underprivileged ‘previously disadvantaged’ black South Africans from generations of repression and lack of opportunity…” Tweak.
“Affirmative action is even applied to university entrance requirements these days – to teenagers who weren’t yet born when Nelson Mandela was let out of prison…” Tweak.
“South African business hierarchy resembles a cappuccino: black on the bottom, white above, with a sprinkling of black right at the top. Without employment equity nothing will change…” Tweak tweak.
“Affirmative action is hypocritically based on the colour of a person’s skin – it’s as racist as any apartheid policy…” Tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak…
Maybe it’s the cynical application of AA legislation by window-dressing big-money corporations that rubs you up the wrong way. Or it could be the huffy white boys fresh out of varsity complaining that jobs aren’t just landing in their laps; or the way affirmative action has been implemented with far more enthusiasm and good intention than common sense and forethought. For many, it’s the great, big irony that those who suffer the most due to the failure of basic service delivery are the poorest of the poor – that is, the previously disadvantaged who are supposed to be benefiting the most.
For me, it’s the four months I’ve been waiting for my new ID. That’s AA’s fault, right? Or is it corruption? Or just incompetence? Speaking of which…
Actions without consequences
Corruption and incompetence may be universal, but the notion of having to suffer the consequences if you’re caught apparently isn’t. Certainly that idea doesn’t seem to fly much in SA these days.
In the UK you can’t be speaker of parliament any more if you’re deemed to have abused your expense account. In China they execute you for getting the lead content of the baby formula wrong. And in Japan you’re expected to disembowel yourself, or at least jump to your death, if you dishonour your family and country.
But shame and contrition are far down the list of reactions when our local bigwigs screw the pooch. Lie to parliament and no-one bats an eyelid. Grossly mismanage your ministerial portfolio and all’s well. Run a state-owned enterprise into the ground and you don’t even have to say sorry. Hell, if you head up Armscor they’ll bail you out to the tune of half a billion rand the one year and give you an 89 percent pay raise the next; if you’re CEO of the Road Accident Fund you’ll get a R2.1-million “performance bonus” despite the fund being R40 billion in debt; and if you effectively commit HIV-related genocide while Minister of Health you’ll get off with the odd newspaper caricature, a new liver and a smattering of international ridicule.
Then there’s the genuinely illegal stuff: corruption, cronyism, fraud, kidnapping of teenagers, that kind of thing. Get caught with your hand in the till and you can feel hard done by for being the fall guy while everyone else gets away with it. Don’t fret, Tony Yengeni, your prison sentence will be slashed to a couple of months in minimum security and you’ll have a decent supply of Armani suits while you’re in there. Back on the ANC’s National Executive Committee in no time!*
And if your name’s Schabir Shaik, well, the nation owes you an apology for the undue stress and discomfort you’ve endured while sleeping on a hospital bed and eating takeout before your comrades organised you a medical parole. Luckily you had a spot of high blood pressure rather than Aids-induced pneumonia! Enjoy the Struggle-like kudos you’ll no doubt have thrown your way until your dying day. And do let us know when that is. We wouldn’t want to miss it.
Here’s a parting truism for you and your cronies from PJ O’Rourke (which you may think is way past its sell-by date): “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
* Less than a year after getting out of jail! And more than three years before he was due to be released according to his original sentence.
Afrikaans music
On more careful consideration of that last entry right there, perhaps, in a more abstract or ethereal sense, it’s not always such a bad thing that actions do not always lead to deserving consequences. Because if there were genuinely such a thing as karma it is hard to see how the universe would not conspire to send a giant asteroid to the earth to eliminate all the creators and listeners of Afrikaans music. Being as they are dispersed across our entire country, this would necessitate a particularly large lump of extraterrestrial rock striking somewhere in the Free State, which in all probability would be the end of the rest of us. But sometimes, when I consider the extraordinary popularity of Afrikaans music, it occurs to me that the asteroid, despite its obvious drawbacks, may actually be the best solution.
The world is indeed a vexatious place that it lets bonehead beats rule the South African music market as they do. I’m not talking about boeremusiek here. You know, okes on accordions singing liedjies and having a jol. They’re fine. Well no, they’re not fine. They’re horrendous, and choosing between listening to them or listening to a Celine Dion/Barbra Streisand duet* would be like choosing which arm you’d like sawn off. But because you never hear them unless you physically venture out beyond the Boerewors Curtain, they’re not much of a bother. Unlike Afrikaans music, which is huge! And it finds you! At the rugby, in shopping malls, during commercial breaks…
Someone please enlighten me as to how albums like Langarm Sokkie Dansklub Treffers and that annual Bokjol Somerpartie monstrosity can afford so much prime-time advertising space. And why Steve Hofmeyr is such a god in this country. And how Bok van Blerk can fill Loftus Versveld to the brim with demented fans by singing about a Boer general with a rhyme-able name. And how the gelled-hair, open-shirt, kak-music, cheeseball-male-singer formula works. Van Blerk, Kurt Darren, Nicholis Louw, Jaco, Robbie Wessels, Robbie Klay – are these guys the same person in disguise? Or are they Steve Hofmeyr’s illegitimate kids, genetically modified by Wouter Basson to send out subliminal messages that hypnotise unsuspecting young Afrikaners?
Probably Wouter’s fault. Daai kabouter.
* Which exists, by the way. It’s called Tell Him. The Americans used it as part of their torture repertoire at Guantanamo Bay. I imagine.
Agents
Few people know this, but the term “agent” is actually an abbreviation of the phrase “agent of the devil”. Yes, this is true. And it’s quite logical if you think about it. Estate agents, recruitment agents, celebrity agents – they have no soul, morals or conscience, hence they are clearly minions of the Prince of Darkness. The least evil of all agents are secret agents; as in the people who spend years learning the dark arts of espionage in order to assassinate, murder and maim without conscience. Those other agents: far worse.
Note that travel agents are not necessarily pure evil, as such, but they make up for this through sheer incompetence.
Airline weight allowances
Of the many factors that can contribute to making air travel a thoroughly unpleasant experience – the queues, the delays, the body-search violations, SAA – the two worst must surely be excess-baggage costs and sitting next to fat people.
Having to pay extra because your bag is over the permissible weight might be understandable if the fuel-to-weight ratios were as critical as when, say, a rocket ship is sent into lunar orbit. But they are not – as is clearly evident when you see the inevitable selection of gargantuan passengers gravitating towards your airline counter. Here I am paying a R48,000 fine for being a couple of kilograms overweight, and there’s Larry Lardass checking in his titanic butt without any penalties. It’s an outrage! Given the current ludicrous arrangement that sees a one-ton wideload with 20kg of luggage in the clear, while a svelte lady carrying 30kg has to take out a second mortgage just so she can bring her makeup kit on holiday, it defies logic that passengers aren’t weighed together with their bags like they were in the good old days. If this gets me steaming, I can’t imagine how the anorexic chicks must be feeling.
Oh the cruel irony of those fateful flights when you’re pinged for an overweight suitcase and then get seated between a couple of heffalumps for 11 hours. Naturally, they both fall into catatonic sleep seconds after nomnomnomming their way through dinner, leaving you trapped and cowering while your TV screen malfunctions and a teething baby wails away in front of you. With flabby arm-rolls invading your miniscule territory, engine failure is just a heartbeat away.
* * * * * * * *
Complete Kak is published by SchreiberFord/Two Dogs
Toring se baai is die eerste vollengteroman deur die befaamde kortverhaalskrywer, E Kotzé. Lees die volgende uittreksel:
* * * * * * * *
Die toringklip was van altyd af ’n landmerk vir skuite wat bo uit die Onderwêreld uit af Bobaai toe kom met vragte kreef. Op ’n stil dag, wanneer die see vol is, lyk die klipperige baai soos ’n versonke stad, trillend onder die water, met net die hoogste nokke wat bo uitsteek en die spits toring van ’n tempel.
Dis geen vriendelike hawe nie, daarvoor is die klein baaitjie wat met sy bek oop na die noord lê te onstuimig en onherbergsaam. As die see ’n skop in hom het, kan dit rof word.
Stormsee het deur die jare walle bloumosselskulp teen die duine opgehoop en mettertyd die klippe op die strand glad gerol. Tog is dit die plek waar Colbert sy fabriek kom staanmaak het: aan die verste punt van die witstrandjie, deur ’n skuins rotsplaat teen die aanslag van die westewind verskans. Soos ’n groot gaar kreef met sy voorlyf op die wal, die stert uitgeflap oor die jettie, staan die bousel van sink en plank. COLBERT CANNING COMPANY is in duidelike swart letters op die rooi dak geverf.
Van die fabriek en die paar buitegeboue lei ’n reguit swart steenkoolpad teen die steilte uit na ’n groep riffelsinkhuise omhein met doringdraad. Dis die sogenaamde Kamp, waar die fabriekswerkers ’n eenvoudige lewe lei.
Smal stoepies voor en agter hou die sand wat die oostewind oor die vlaktes aanwaai van die drumpels weg. Die skuifraamvensters is voorsien van houtluike, waarsonder die somers onhoudbaar sou wees. Voetpaadjies lei van die Kamp af tussen soutslaai en doringbosse deur in verskeie rigtings: na die skool en winkel en slaghuis op die hoogte bokant die baai. En links, meer na die suide, die vierkantige platdakhuise van die Bobaaiers, en mister Paulsen se bruinskool, en die Gaat waar die kreefvangers bly in hutte van sink. Op ’n bufferstrook tussen wit en bruin staan die enkele tweevertrek-sinkhok van Marija, die wasvrou.
Soos die derm van ’n huidjiehu kom ’n plaaspad veld se kant van die gehuggie verby, tot by die winkel waar dit wegdraai na die soutpanne aan die mond van die Rivier, vyf myl verder. Daarvandaan volg dit die oewer tot by die grootdorp en spoorwegstasie veel verder aan. Die plek is afgesonder en onbelangrik, nêrens aangeteken nie, skaars ’n kolletjie vliegmis op die landkaart. Die fabriek is die middelpunt van sy bestaan, kreef die lewensbron.
Sterftes kom voor wanneer ’n skuit vergaan en die bemanning verdrink. Of as maagkoors uitbreek en soos vuur deur die Gaat trek. Dan sterf hele families uit en lang begrafnisstoete beweeg soos miere agterom die bruinskool. ’n Gat word gegrawe, ’n lyk laat sak, die kis toegegooi, die vars hoop gelykgemaak met die aarde as die oostewind daaroor waai.
Dis die oostewind se nes daardie: ’n wind so reg uit ’n vuuroond, warm en droog en ongenadig. In die middel van die nag staan hy op uit die bossies, stoot sy asem ’n paar maal uit voor hy die vlak vat, stof opskep en saamvat, by oop deure en vensters inwaai en anderkant uit, dwarsdeur die fabriek tot op die skuite. Tot die water bleekgroen op die middag lê en smag na die lafenis van ’n koel kenter as die weer op noord draai.
Ongeag die weer, werk die fabriek. In sy klam buik pols ’n enkele dieselmasjien wat ’n ingewikkelde stelsel van dryfasse en kruis-en-dwars-bande trek. ’n Stoomenjin maak gas vir die koelkamers. In die boilerkamer word die ketels gestook. Koekepanne ratel oor die smal spoortjies op die jettie.
Die skoorsteen rook en die fluitjie blaas. Vroue in wit oorjasse en waterstewels, geslypte mes in die hand, tou in die voetpad af en kom val by die paktafels in.
Soos gewoonlik hou Ockert Blankenberg, die voorman, dié dag toesig – van die aflaaiery op die punt van die jettie tot in die kreefhuis by die pakkers.
Slof met swaar houtsool-kalosies aan sy voete enkeldiep deur die water. “Toe, toe, opskud vir die Mariebiskit!” jaag hy die vroue aan en tik hulle speels op die boud met ’n hand soos ’n tennisspaan.
Hulle lag hiér uit. Dié mister Ockert darem! Hulle ken hom van destyds toe hulle saam in Stefan se fabriek gewerk het. En verder terug, van sy vulletjiedae op Langbaan se strand waar hulle in die vlak lagune watertjies gespeel en steentjies gebraai het. Agtermekaar jongkêrel gewees toe hy nog al sy hare en tande gehad het. ’n Reus van by die ses-voet-ses in sy sokkies, en sterk. Dra ’n bakkie manalleen op die strand uit. Mag nie slaan nie: die juts het gewaarsku. Hoewel hy wel sal slaan, as dit moet.
Onder die plankvloer van die kreefhuis spoel die gety op en trek met ’n grom van growwe sand en skulp terug, wat losgekarring is onder uit die seebodem. Dis volmaanspring. Die see is aan die kwaai word.
Die skuite het kort duskant Honneklip gevang toe die kreef se bekke begin skuim – ’n teken van onweer. Eietyd is die bakkies op dek gelaai en het hulle gemaak vir die huis, met die wind van agter. Een van die skuite het masjienmoeilikheid gekry en moes ingesleep word. Dis met moeite tot teenaan die jettie gebring, waar die aflaaiers nou halflyf in die ruim staan en die kreef met vurke in kiste gooi.
’n Gejaagdheid maak almal senuweeagtig. Sieber, die fabriekbestuurder, jaart die jettie met ongeduldige treë af. “Die skuite moet wegkom!” Hulle moes al weg gewees het as dit van hom afhang, om in die Bobaai te gaan skuil!
Almal blaas in Ockert se nek.
“Ja!” bulder hy harder as wat hy bedoel het, bo-oor die geraas van mense en koekepanne en die see. Hy is sommer die moer in. Sieber kon liewer in sy kantoor gebly het, of tee gaan drink by die huis. En die verdomde skippers moes hul verstand gebruik en by Honneklip gaan aflaai het. Hoewel dit daar ook maar goed gevaarlik kan wees in sulke weer. Maar dan het hy nie nou met die klomp kreef gesit nie.
Dit gee ’n gewerskaf af terwyl die skuite olie en water vat, kos en brood laai. Terwyl almal fletter om klaar te kry, is Smittie Steyn, algemene tegnikus en enjineer van Toring, teen die steil trapleertjie af na die masjienkamer van die stukkende skuit.
Hy spuug oorboord toe hy weer op dek kom. “Dis so vuil daar onder, jy wil naar word. Om te dink iemand slaap daar.”
Hy is geen seeman soos Ockert wat op die water grootgeword het nie. Hy stam uit ’n geslag van Agterbaaise boere, maar het vroeg reeds ’n aanleg vir meganika getoon en dit sy loopbaan gemaak. ’n Skraal, seningrige man met ’n smal gesig, hoë voorkop en mooi hande. “Daar’s niks verkeerd met die oliepomp nie,” sê hy vir Ockert. “Die filter was net geblok.”
Dit kon sommer op see vervang gewees het, maar al het die drywer ook geweet hoe, dra hulle nie onderdele saam nie. Voorraad is min en die gereedskap primitief, en die firma traag om aan te koop. ’n Geldtekort, is die verskoning. Tye is swaar; die kreefbedryf het nog altyd gewurg. Die afgelope tyd word die oorlog en die onverkrygbaarheid van materiaal ook voorgehou.
Daarom het Smittie Steyn sy eie gereedskap gekoop. Made in Sheffield. Hy werk nie met prulle nie. Hou sy goed by die huis, waarvandaan hy dit laat haal as hy iets nodig het. As dit ’n oponthoud veroorsaak soos nou weer, moet hulle maar wag.
Toe die laaste skuit weg is – ’n vloot seevoëls wat voor die noordewind uit dobber – staan die rook uit die onbewerkte kreef. Afgegaan. Maar dit kan nie weggegooi word nie. Eers vinnig deur die stoompotte, dan na die vroue wat skoonmaak, sterte afbreek, oopsny, dermpie uithaal. Na die baddens waar al die bederf afgewas word totdat die vleis spierwit is, waarna dit geblik word en deur die inmaakproses gaan.
Ockert beweeg tussen die pakkers en die stoompotte. Sy stem klim bo die stoomwalms uit; die spoeg spat.
Voor donker bring die kinders Ockert en Smittie se aandkos: brood toegedraai in kardoespapier en iets warms in ’n skotteltjie, ’n bottel tee wat vinnig afkoel. Gewoonlik kan hulle nog ’n bietjie vertoef, maar vanaand mag hulle nie. Dis onweer en die see is aan die kwaai word. Daar word dwarsdeur gewerk, die hele nag tot die volgende middag, voor die laaste kreef weg is.
Smittie se voete is nat. Hy dra nie stewels nie, maar velskoene met dun sole wat hy van Ebersohn af bestel. Al wat hom red, is die wolkouse wat Kittie, sy vrou, vir hom brei.
Almal is kapot toe die laaste blikkie deur die stoompotte is en stoor toe gevat word om af te koel. Die masjiene het tot stilstand gekom. Dis net die Tandy wat loop om ys te maak sodat die aas koud kan bly. Die stoomketels is afgesluit; die mure en tafels en vloer van die kreefhuis word skoon gespuit.
Ockert en Smittie wag buite op die jettie dat die skoonmakers klaarmaak.
Die weer bou op. Op die horison lê ’n massa blouswart wolke wat inme-kaar krul. Die wind is sterker.
“Hier kom ’n man aan, ou Smittie.”
Ockert trek sy kop tussen sy skouers in. Die donkerblou seemanstrui wat hy oor sy ketelpak dra, sit knap. In die was gekrimp. Die dungeslyte moue is ingestop, ’n sweer saamgetrek op elke elmboog. Hy vee met die agterkant van sy hand oor sy mond. “Jee-zus,” blaas hy soos ’n walvis, “wat ’n weer!”
Die see is skuimbek met ontblote haaitande wanneer die branders oor die rotse breek en in die skietgat onder die Toringklip opspat met ’n knal. Dit laat Ockert verlang na die kalm waters van die lagune waarop hy en sy broers in ’n seilbootjie uitgevaar en weer ingedryf het tot by die ankerplek vlak voor hulle huis.
* * * * * * * *
Toring se baai is uitgegee deur Kwela, ‘n druknaam van NB Uitgewers
A whole host of launches for The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers will take place this week, including tonight’s launch at the Book Lounge in Cape Town. Start the festivities at home with the following excerpt:
* * * * * * * *
I was eight thousand kilometres away, drunk and happily unaware at a friend’s birthday party in Berlin, when I learned that the first white farmer had been murdered. Someone had left a television on in the corner of the apartment. I knew, even with the sound off, that it was a news report on Zimbabwe.
There’s something about rich red earth the colour of blood that you can never wash away, no matter how far you’ve travelled, or how long you’ve been running. It was a Sunday afternoon, 16 April 2000.
For the previous month back in Zimbabwe the government of President Robert Mugabe had been threatening to take away land from the country’s forty-five hundred white farmers. Gangs of armed men – said to be veterans of the liberation war that had ended white rule twenty years earlier – had begun invading white-owned land, assaulting black farmworkers, looting homes, burning tobacco barns and stoning dogs, pigs and cattle to death. Still, it was a shock to discover that a farmer had now been murdered. His name was David Stevens. He had been savagely beaten, and then shot in the face and back at point-blank range with a shotgun, after a mob abducted him from his farm in the district of Macheke.
I had been out of Zimbabwe for seven years, travelling, writing, drinking away my late twenties and early thirties in the rootlessness of London, but I knew that Macheke was only an hour’s drive from my parents’ game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains of the country, and that they were in terrible danger. If they didn’t leave fast, they would surely be murdered as well, and it would be a brutal, bloody, all-too-African end. They would die like this man Stevens.
I frantically dialled their number and waited for what seemed like hours to get a connection. My mother finally answered.
She sounded on edge, her voice high-pitched through the static.
‘Hello, yes, who’s this?’
‘Mom, it’s me, Douglas. Jesus, what’s happening? Are you guys all right?’
‘It’s terrible,’ she said.
I pictured her and my father barricaded in the house, a mob rattling their gates.
‘What’s happening? Mom, what’s happening?’
‘We’ve already lost four wickets.’
‘Four what?’
‘Four wickets, darling. Not going very well at all. It’s ninety-one for four …’
Christ. She and my father were watching a cricket match. I could hear the crackle of the commentary on the TV in the background. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified.
‘Jeez, Ma. Not the cricket. The farm. Have you any idea what’s going on? This guy has been murdered up the road from you. Are you sure you’re okay?’
There was a long pause, as if I had sucked the air out of a balloon. I heard her take a drag of her cigarette. She would have a drink nearby. Bols brandy on the rocks. She’d switched from Gordon’s gin years ago. Said it gave her headaches.
I could picture my father clearly now, too, down the passageway, around the corner in the living room, feet up in his leather recliner. The remote would be in one hand, a mug of Coke in the other, and he would be cursing at the new batsman for playing a loose shot: ‘Move your bloody feet! Get into line! Ag, hit the ball, for Chrissake!’ Dappled late-afternoon sunlight would be streaming through the arches of the veranda, illuminating the purple crests of the mountains behind and setting on the wheat fields of the farms in the valley below.
Those farms could have been on fire for all my parents knew.
‘Oh, that,’ my mother finally said, her voice fading through the static.
‘Yes, well, it doesn’t look very good, does it? I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see.’
Wait and see didn’t seem a wise option to me.
I told her I thought it best they pack up fast and lie low, whether in Mutare, the closest town, in another valley over the mountain pass nineteen kilometres away, or, even better, across the border in Mozambique. Mozambique. It sounded absurd just suggesting it. Mozambique had been at war for most of my childhood. People fled Mozambique for our side of the border. But like the seasons, in Africa the state of nations turns and occasionally comes full circle. Yes, Mozambique. Anywhere would be safer than Zimbabwe.
But my parents, I discovered on that phone call, were not going anywhere.
‘Darling,’ my mother said, ‘don’t be ridiculous. We are Zimbabweans. This is our land.’
And then I heard steel in her voice, fury rise in her throat.
‘Over my dead body will they take this place. Over my dead body.’
By the time I put down the phone my mother was asking me how I was, and when I was going to come and visit again. She had the stoic, breezy air of someone who had lived through a lot and expected to live through this, too. She had seen worse.
‘How are they?’ my friend asked when I returned to the party.
‘They’re watching cricket,’ I said. ‘They have no idea what’s going on.’
Hello, what’s this? I asked myself when, while perusing a recent Book Lounge newsletter, a work with the novel title The Ayahuasca Diaries caught my eye.
Ayahuasca, of course, is a well-known psychedlic herb - but references to it are far and few between in this corner of the world.
Turns out, Sunday Times journo Caspar Greeff went off to South America in search of the kind of consoling that ayahuasca can purportedly give - and he took his father along with him. The result is a memoir unique on the SA Lit scene, which is being launched at the BL tonight, and from which we are pleased to bring you this excerpt:
* * * * * * * *
This morning Scott brought his .22 rifle to the Internet room at the heart of his magical jungle empire. He strode up the stairs, posed like Buffalo Bill onstage at his Wild West show and aimed the rifle at the ceiling.
POW!
A bat tumbled down, blood trickling out of its little mouth. The creature flapped its wings feebly and died. ‘That bat’s had better days than this one,’ Scott observed.
I don’t want to give the impression that Scott Petersen was a trigger-happy cowboy who enjoyed killing: the shaman shot the bat because it shat on his computer.
Another pilgrim – as Scott calls his clients – had joined us. Ralph, a 58-year-old, bearded, bespectacled builder and Buddhist, lives in Crestone, Colorado. Crestone, on the western shoulder of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, has a population of 82, but is one of the centres of spiritualism in the United States. The village is home to seven Buddhist temples, two Hindu ashrams, a Zen retreat, a Carmelite monastery, a Tibetan Peace Park, a Cretan labyrinth, and an Assyrian ziggurat.
‘And five brothels,’ added Scott irreverently.
‘And one crystal meth lab and one opium den,’ laughed Ralph, a gentle soul who looked not unlike Jerry Garcia in his Blues for Allah days.
A large turquoise insect was trapped on the green mosquito netting of a window and, experiencing a moment of compassion, an instant of Buddha-mind, I picked it up to free it to the outside world. The insect buzzed furiously and fire shot through my system. My right index finger was aflame, my heart accelerated dramatically. The flamboyantly coloured creature was a wasp, and it had done what wasps do in these situations: stung me.
‘Fuego! Fuego! (Fire! Fire!),’ I yelled in my makeshift Spanish. ‘Jesus, this thing’s got a hell of sting.’
Dad grinned. ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished,’ he said. He believed that.
‘No, that was great,’ I muttered through tears of pain. ‘Exhilarating. I could get addicted to this feeling, keep one of these wasps as a pet and let it sting me whenever I feel less than alive.’
But today I feel alive. So very alive, even before the wasp injected its venom into my system. Maybe it has something to do with last night’s ayahuasca ceremony. Dad, having decided that the potion is poison, stayed in the bungalow, reading, when Scott came to fetch me at 8pm. I heard the shaman’s gumboots squelching through the mud and felt my pulse quicken.
‘Hope I don’t get stuck in Hell,’ I remarked to Dad as I walked out.
‘I’m sure you won’t. I think you’re going to have a breakthrough tonight. Good luck.’
‘Thanks Dad. Good night,’ I replied and joined the shaman on the path to his temple/ceremony room. The ayahuasca had been freshly heated to remove fermentation, and was still warm when I put the cup to my lips. It was a dark russet colour; the colour of rich soil, a hue of autumn.
I looked into the cup and said a short prayer to the goddess of ayahuasca. (‘Please don’t make me go mad.’) Then held the cup up. Toasted the universe. ‘Salud! (Health).’ I downed the potion in two sips. As usual it tasted vile. Horrid, bitter medicine. I ignored the shrieks of protest from my taste buds, went to my place on the wooden bench and waited.
Scott said his customary prayer in Spanish, and extinguished the candles. The moon was full and silver light danced in the room. I waited for the jungle juice to take effect. The waiting was scary – then I saw legions of eyes. The moonbeams stopped dancing and the darkness doubled. I felt as if I was in somebody else’s mind. I was trapped between two realms. The air was charged with magic. A lattice fell from my eyes, and I saw the fine filaments that connect everything. Honeycomb fractals flashed across my vision.
Then the fear. That feeling of mega déjà vu. Mega vu. Mega-view. The knowledge that I had done exactly this millions of times before and would be in this same room in this same ceremony feeling the same emotions and thinking the same thoughts countless numbers of times again. I travelled back to the beginning of time, when a disembodied consciousness created the universe out of loneliness and all history unfolded, then I arrived at Scott’s ceremony room and drank ayahuasca and travelled back to the beginning of time where a disembodied consciousness created the universe out of loneliness, and all history unfolded … and I was looping, over-compensating again.
I reached for my notebook. My hands looked far away and were elongated as if they were underwater: they glowed like they’d been picking beetroots in Chernobyl. I scribbled down two sentences: ‘This has never happened before. And this will never happen again.’
That seemed to help. I felt flooded with compassion and love. I stopped thinking about myself, brought friends to mind, and it felt as if we were communicating on a plane far removed from the physical world.
Walter started singing icaros, and he sang all of creation into existence. My spirit soared. I was filled with awe and gratitude. I had an inkling of what is called ‘shamanic ecstasy’.
According to the late Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade, the shaman:
… commands the techniques of ecstasy – that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography.
I may have been unsanctified by my initiation, I may have been unfurnished with a guardian spirit, but I was certainly venturing into a mystical geography. Vivid pictures flashed through my mind. Scenes transformed and metamorphosed. I saw Moses schlepping up Mount Sinai to fetch commandments inscribed in stone by the wrathful storm deity Yahweh, back in the days when men still heard the voice of God as clear as a tune through an iPod earpiece. I went to a village on a planet in another galaxy where I have another life which I live concurrently with my Earth-life. I had committed a crime there and was imprisoned inside a colossal tree which was called the Axis Mundi – the Centre of the World. I felt my blood turn to sap as the tree absorbed me. Then I was on a bridge over a river which I knew was the Ganges, facing a trio of monkey-faced demons who brayed like donkeys and brandished massive clubs. A blow from one of those clubs would knock my head off. I walked up to the monkey-demons and surrendered completely and they vanished.
I became aware that all life is sacred, that all beings are fragments of one mind.
Someone walked over to me. He had the head of a fish and the body of a man. He wore Scott’s white robe. I looked at him curiously. He blew perfume on me, and gave me a word of advice.
Rian Malan’s collection of journalism, Resident Alien, was launched last night in Johannesburg, at one of the biggest book events of the year.
As a physical object, the volume is an impressive specimen: it runs to a bulky 336 pages; it’s got a cover shout from the London Times that marks the author out as “South Africa’s Hunter S Thompson”. The back cover, meanwhile, carries quotes from the closer-to-home Lin Sampson and Koos Kombuis.
Despite this, at first, I thought it was going to be a book I wasn’t going to get too excited about. But then I read Malan’s introduction, and I knew I’d have to carry on all the way to page 336. Sampson calls it correctly in her blurb: Malan is a dangerously good writer.
BOOK SA is pleased to be in a position to remind you why; here’s the dangerously good introduction in full, an exclusive excerpt that we’re proud to feature:
* * * * * * * *
Once upon a time in America, I worked for a semi-underground newspaper that had offices on a seedy stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and at least one great writer on its masthead. Michael Ventura was a New Yorker who’d somehow reinvented himself as a straight-shootin’, hard-drinkin’ cowboy from the lonesome plains of Texas. I guess that was the Larry McMurtry part of his complex persona. He also had a Kerouac aspect and broad streaks of Mailer and Hemingway, but on the page, the spirit he most often channelled was Thomas Wolfe, whose incantatory rhythms he could mimic with uncanny accuracy.
Ventura started out as a reporter, but he’d decided that ‘nobody can write fast enough to tell a true story’ and moved on to movie reviews.
If we were lucky, he’d pitch up on a Tuesday morning with black rings around his eyes and two days’ stubble on his chin, bearing a searing 5 000-word essay on whatever Hollywood blockbuster had irritated him that week. The best of those reviews began, ‘This is a chickenshit movie.’
So then – let’s get on with it. This is a chickenshit collection, and the best I can offer is some lame excuses as to why. Let’s begin with Ventura’s aphorism about the alleged impossibility of writing a true story. This is of little consequence to news reporters who glance at the charge sheet and produce a dry recitation of the basic facts, but some of us had other dreams. I suppose the ideal was a piece of non-fiction so carefully observed and exhaustively reported that reading it was as good as being there.
This was a fiendishly difficult thing to pull off, even in America, where people speak the same language, share most values and understand with a reasonable degree of certainty the boundaries of the matrix they inhabit. The laws of cause and effect are known. The narrative may twist and turn, but the forces that drive it are quantified. Even so, your chances were slender. You could set the words down and polish them until your fingers bled, but Ventura was generally right: the ideal was beyond attainment Nobody can write fast enough to tell a true story.
In America, this was an artsy verdict on the limitations of the form. In South Africa, it’s like a law of nature: there’s no such thing as a true story here. The facts might be correct, but the truth they embody is always a lie to someone else. My truths strike some people as racist heresies. Nadine Gordimer’s strike me as distortions calculated to appeal to gormless liberals on the far side of the planet. A lot of South Africans can’t read either of us, so their truth is something else entirely. Atop all this, we live in a country where mutually annihilating truths coexist entirely amicably. We are a light unto nations. We are an abject failure. We are progressing even as we hurtle backward. The blessing of living here is that every day presents you with material whose richness beggars the imagination of those who live in saner places. The curse is that you can never, ever get it quite right, and if you come close, the results are usually unpublishable.
I would say, looking back, that the only worthwhile writing I’ve done over the past two decades appeared in letters to friends in whose company I could ignore the crushing racial taboos that govern public discourse and just call it as I saw it. Beyond that, I don’t know. I think it was TS Eliot who said the end of all exploring is to return to where you began and see it as if for the first time. When I came home from America, everything seemed different to me; I saw that I was in Africa, and that changed everything. Those I’d left behind remained obsessed with apartheid. I became obsessed with what replaced it. They thought apartheid was the source of all SA’s pain. I thought we were doomed unless we figured out what had gone wrong elsewhere in Africa, and how to avoid a similar fate. I was an atheist in the great revival tent of the New South Africa; the faith on offer was too simple and sentimental, the answers too easy.
We’ll probably disagree here, but if you ask me, the most telling creation of apartheid was not the dompas, or the veiligheidspolisie, or the mines and factories that generated the taxes that paid for repressive measures. It was not the sjambok, or the whites-only signs that once hung on everything from toilet doors to the portals of higher education. Apartheid’s great triumph was the creation of a generically Western moonbase on Africa, where whites lived exactly like whites in the capitals of the great white empire.
It follows that apartheid’s greatest glories were actually suburbs like Parktown, where English-speaking liberals lived in a bubble that resembled nothing so much as the more civilised parts of Boston or London. Parktown had it all. It had Nadine Gordimer, who won a Nobel for her fashionable literary critique of the empire that largely tolerated and sustained her. It had the Linder Auditorium, where civilised whites gathered to hear other whites playing the music of Dead White Men. And finally it had that great university on the far side of Empire Road, where white professors faithfully propagated doctrines laid down on the far side of the planet by the High Priests of white civilisation.
By the time Mandela came out of prison, those doctrines were gen- erally of the variety called ‘progressive,’ which rejoiced in the downfall of white males. Practitioners of this doctrine saw themselves as part of, sometimes even heroes of, the uprising of the natives. They thought the wrath of the masses would fall on the bad white males who controlled the land and the mines, while ‘good’ whites merged into a smiley-face culture of interracial harmony and soft socialism. I said, bullshit, dudes, the laws of poetic symmetry call for another outcome entirely. The wind of change will eventually sweep everything away – your job, your illusions, your university as presently constituted, the wires that bring light at the flick of a switch, the pipes that discreetly remove your turds, the freeways on which you drive, the high-tech chemical farms that put food on your table, the investments intended to sustain your comfortable old age, and the clean, efficient hospitals in which you plan to expire. All these things are creations of the empire, and when it fades, they will too.
That was more than two decades ago. Every day since has brought thunderous confirmation of the rectitude of my prognostications. Every day also brought irrefutable proof of the fact that I was mistaken. I cursed Mandela when he refused to shake De Klerk’s hand during some televised debate during the peace talks era. A few months later I was fighting back tears at his inauguration. I claimed vindication when the rand began its great collapse, ate my words when it bounced back again. Every farm murder seemed to herald the onset of generalised ethnic cleansing. Every visit to Soweto left me believing in the brotherhood of man again. And so on.
There was a time when I thought these howling ambiguities could only be resolved by a great cleansing apocalypse, but the apocalypse never came. Instead, we had the delirious triumph of the 1995 rugby world cup, where dik Boers wept and said, ‘That is my president,’ as Mandela raised the golden trophy into the blue heavens celebrated in Die Stem. The resulting goodwill was obliterated by the one-sided maunderings of the Truth Commission, but it made a comeback when the economy started growing under Mbeki. Five years later, Zimbabwe put catastrophe back on the agenda, and by the time the lights went out in 2008, the end seemed nigh. Everything seemed to be disintegrating: Eskom, the parastatals, the sewerage system, the highways, the hospitals, the putative moral integrity of the Rainbow Nation. But even as the rot deepened, we saw the rise of the only force that could check it – black people who said, fuck racial solidarity, this cannot be tolerated.
Which brings us back to Michael Ventura. I imagine him shaking his head in disbelief as he reads this. ‘Chickenshit,’ he says. ‘Malan can’t make up his mind. He’s been sitting on the fence so long the wire is cutting into his pompous and cowardly arsehole.’ I agree entirely, but if there is an overarching truth here, I can’t see it. The only true line I’ve ever written about South Africa is this one: ‘We yaw between terror and ecstasy. Sometimes we complete the round trip in just fif- teen minutes.’ If you share the feeling, thanks, but there’s a significant difference between us: I am a journalist, which means that I leave a trail of prophecies and judgements, several of which are mortally embarrassing in retrospect. There is no excuse for such failings, but if this was a trial, I’d waltz my way to an acquittal.
In the past two decades, South Africa has been stricken almost weekly by scandals that would have toppled governments in the West but seem almost meaningless here. Who stole the funds donated to help resettle ANC exiles? Who asked the Zambian government to throw Katiza Cebekhulu into a dungeon so that he couldn’t testify against Winnie Mandela? Did Thabo Mbeki really negotiate the arms deal on a ‘government to government’ basis and pocket the resulting commissions? Did he really tell Bulelani Ngcuka to bring him the head of Jacob Zuma, even if that entailed fabricating evidence and setting honey traps? When these stories break, you think they’re going to tear the country apart and alter everything forever. But they don’t. They linger for a week or two and then fade into oblivion, blown off the front pages by the next dumbfounding scandal. The ordinary laws of cause and effect don’t seem to apply here. The boundaries of the matrix we inhabit remain unknown.
But what the heck, there’s something to be said for practising journalism on the edge of an abyss, trying to follow your targets into the murk that surrounds. In the pieces that follow, I often miss, but there are a few passages that come close to disproving Michael Ventura’s dictum. For the rest, I tried my best, and provoked reactions as richly varied as the reality we inhabit. A few people said nice things, of course – ‘a born story-teller,’ according to the judges on some American awards jury – but the reactions that lodge in my memory are mostly the angry ones. Some said racist, but that’s so commonplace it’s barely worth mentioning; any South African journalist who hasn’t been called a racist or self-hating black is a kak one whose lips are chapped from sucking the unmentionable appendages of those in power. The more interesting accusations were incest, homosexual tendencies, heterosexual debauchery, incompetence, deceit, murder, sissiness, ‘carbuncular’ practices, a secret alliance with the diabolical President Mbeki, spying for Inkatha, drinking too much, taking drugs and smelling bad.
What can I say? My name is Rian Malan and I called it as I saw it.
Anton Krueger, the noted playwright, has just come out with a first, slim work of fiction called Sunnyside Sal - which also counts as a rare work of prose from poet Robert Berold’s publishing outfit, Deep South.
In 
