Exposed as a FRAUD!

Now, you know that feeling - Oh Bliss, oh Joy! - when you hand in your boarding pass and they scan it and then, instead of going "Ding" and you walk through to the misery of a middle seat in the economy section, it goes "Boing" and a red light shows? The uniformed cabin attendant pauses, looks at a screen and then - (Choirs of angels sing overhead) she writes a new seat on your boarding card in the Business Class section? Do you know that feeling? If you have never had it, it is hard to explain. The world instantly seems alright. Clouds part. Music plays. Your step is light.

But the real Business Class people are all a bit suspicious. They can spot you a mile off. At the sound of the "Boing", their eyes find you. They stare disdainfully at you. You are an imposter in their ranks! You show your boarding pass at the entrance of the aircraft, like everyone else. But the cabin crew see the changed seat number. They try to act suitably deferential, but they have seen the red writing. So they know you are not really a Business Class flyer.

Be that as it may, you are now counted amongst the favoured few. You settle down in your extra wide, extra comfy seat. You try to behave as nonchalantly as you possibly can as expensive bottles of wine are proffered in your general direction. You are asked to taste the contents before pouring a full glass in a real wineglass. Ah! What a wonderful life it is.

Then you hear the menu being offered to the Business Class seats in front of you. Glazed Greek leg of lamb with a vegetable side and a Greek salad? Or perhaps a succulent creamy Chicken dish served on brown rice? You think, maybe the lamb. Maybe you will settle for the lamb. And what a joy it will be to eat off white china, with real knives and forks and a cloth table napkin.

She gets to you - and suddenly, there you are, staring at a red plastic tray, with a plastic knife and fork set! There must be some mistake! Why has this happened? And then you remember. You had pre-ordered a "special" low fat meal, with your economy class ticket. And there it is! It had found you, even in the Business Class! The businessman in the next seat in the grey suit glances over at your red plastic tray with a sneer of disapproval. You are unmasked as the fraud and and imposter that you are. And how sad you feel about missing the lamb!

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes
Alfred a Knopf, 2011


Julian Barnes’ fourteenth book, The Sense of an Ending, is the recent winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize. It has been described as a novel for grown-ups. The simplest and most straightforward of stories on the surface, but of a kind which turns back on itself and forces you to reflect on your own behaviour and your own life.

The writing is light, often funny and always graceful and observant. And this latter point is the real issue. While acute observation of others is the essence of the story, the narrator (Tony Wheeler) spectacularly fails to notice his own lack of insight.

And it is not that he is dishonest about himself. Part of the real charm of the narrator is that he can be intensely insightful about his own failings and flaws - and especially about his own insecurities. But he has missed the key point about his first and most serious relationship, with the enigmatic and tempestuous Veronica Ford. He cannot understand, (Veronica says to him on more than one occasion). He never did, she tells him, and he never will. Tony and Veronica break up eventually – however, as he observes: “the first experience of love, even if it doesn’t work out - perhaps especially when it doesn’t work out - promises that here is the thing that validates, that vindicates life.”

Tony is now 60 years old, and circumstances mean that he has needed to reflect deeply on his life. As a bright teenager, with bright friends, he was happy enough. The friends become students - “book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic”. They were “pretentious - what else is youth for?” One amongst them, the deepest thinker and perhaps the most troubled, Adrian Finn, is the one who is, in a shadowy way, the friend who remains most connected to him and intertwined with his life. Tony often recalls the depths and complexity of Adrian’s responses to both situations and questions. Adrian kills himself, and this is the catalysts for the serious introspection in the narrator.

Tony wants (and has achieved) a quiet, and fairly untroubled life. While he might admire from a distance the tortured philosophical path of his friend, he did not covet it. He ends up marrying Margaret, a stable, ordinary, caring woman. They had a child and eventually separated, not because of any particular conflict, but because the relationship just became unnecessary.

And now, at this age, the death of his friend and the bequest of his diary to him, by Veronica’s mother, has meant that he has needed to re-examine the things that he remembers and match them to the things that actually happened. “[W]hat you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed,” he concludes. Such are the vagaries of age and the passage of time.

He meets up with Veronica again. It takes the form of something quite close to a courtship, but all the old fixtures of their failed relationship are present, standing in the wings. He tells Veronica about his life. She tells him nothing of hers. He makes conclusions - many conclusions about her, which are all hopelessly short of the mark. When, finally, the truth becomes clear to him, he realizes his own manipulation of circumstance, history and memory.

The book is good reading. You need to understand the culture of British male reserve coupled with a concomitant sense of assumption. But if you do, it is a book that will really entrance you. And indeed, it may make you seriously consider yourself and your own re-making of history. We all do it, after all.

When Mandela Goes

Cavendish Mall is one of the key meeting places of complacent, white, southern suburb Capetonians. They have Lattes there, skinny and otherwise, topped with the lightest hint of chocolate powder. They can wander around shops sporting expensive jewellery, overpriced nik naks and the latest fashion accessories. They can meander through the bookshop and shop at a leisurely pace for their necessities at a Woolworths, where even the next available till announcements are delivered in slightly hushed tones.

It is a wealthy environment. But you would not know that if you were not awake to the signs, because they are not entirely obvious. At any restaurant in the complex, you will battle to find a black patron. It is a safe haven for white people. They can see their art movies there on a Saturday evening. They can be at home with each other and relaxed. As they look around them, it is as if democracy never arrived with all its uncomfortable side effects, like taxis on the roads, and riff-raff being given too much freedom, and black people being allowed to do what they want. Cavendish Mall is a safe and pleasant environment. It is tasteful, without being loud. In it you can be assured that standards will be aggressively maintained and everyone will have the same expectations.

You will notice that most people have an attitude. It comes with a particular angle of the nose on the face – as though it has only recently sniffed the unpleasantness of lower forms of life. As I have said, you will notice that wealth is not flashy, nor brash, nor worn on the sleeve. No. The cars are usually ordinary, sun-blasted and with dents that have never been attended to. Even the clothes are not flashy, or loud. Hairstyles are usually the simplest. Makeup is not much in evidence. Things are tasteful and understated.

But it is an environment where like recognises and affirms like. This crowd of people have a set of rules which they all know from birth and follow rigourously until they die. Nothing changes. This is Cairp Tahn. This is the Southern Suburbs.

So I was interested to see some graffiti on one of the walls on a toilet in Cavendish Mall. It read this, in an unsteady hand – “I AM WAITING MANDELA DIE.” I am sure it is already attended to and has been removed – because graffiti is a very rare thing in Cavendish Mall, you underestand – (and we don’t want any of that, do we?)

But it made me think. Something about the sentence made me think, immediately (maybe it was the lack of correct English grammar), that it had been written by someone who was black. Not because I think blacks can’t write correct English, nor because I think only a black would write on a toilet wall – no. It was because I am white and I grew up under apartheid and because those are the kind of assumptions I am bound to make. But let us assume, just for the sake of argument, that my prejudices and my instinct are correct in this instance, and that it was written by a black person – what could it possibly mean?
Is it simply a statement of fact? Does it mean nothing more than what is being said? Someone was sitting on the toilet in Cavendish Mall and decided to write those words on the wall, because that is what he was thinking. He is waiting for Mandela to die. It would be odd indeed. Of the same ilk as “The sky is blue”, “I am bored” and “John loves Mary”. Except it isn’t.

The context of Cavendish Mall inevitably makes this some kind of a political statement. It is intended to be read in that context. It has a meaning more like “Troops out of Iran” or “Nationalise the mines”. It is not a bland or a neutral statement. And it is meant to feed into the deepest fears of the majority of the patrons of the Cavendish Mall. When Mandela dies, all hell will break loose. The black hoards are sitting around waiting for the day. It is only out of respect for the old man that they have kept their pangas under their beds, but when he dies! Then we will all be braaivleis.

And I expect, if it hasn’t happened yet, that there is going to be much buying of tinned sardines, stockpiling of water and matches – just as was the case during the first democratic elections. Why? Because it is a real possibility? No. It won’t happen.

Then why? Why the subliminal fear? Why the mounting hysteria? Why the bewailing of certain doom and racial misfortune? I will tell you why. Because deep down, in the recesses of their consciousness, white people in this country know just how big a compromise was made in the interests of peace. When they lie in their beds at night, they know that the poor cannot be fooled forever and the lid has got to blow on the sham at some point. That is why, this simple, ungrammatically correct sentence, written on a toilet wall in Cavendish Mall, has profound resonance.

Thirty Three out of One Hundred

I joined the ANC in 1979. It was in Lesotho. I had left South Africa as a War Resistor. That was all I had done. Soweto 1976 came and went. I read the headlines with rising alarm. I was a student at a very rightwing university, at the time - Rhodes University. We were all white students. There were a couple amongst us mad enough (or brave enough) to join Nusas. But not me.

Steve Biko got killed. The news was told me by a black stranger on the streets of Grahamstown. He was in shock – that was clear. He said what I thought was “Steve Peacock is dead!” I tried to look sympathetic, but had no idea what he might be talking about. I only later found out that it was Steve Biko as all the headlines screamed at me – and still I was none the wiser. Who was Steve Biko? I had never heard of him.

I remember that some of us got captured by the thing. It was horrific – that was clear. We were students. Students protest. So we protested. The Minister of police at the time tried to tell everyone that he had killed himself by not eating for 8 days. So we fasted. We would meet once a day at lunch time in the office of the Philosophy Professor, an enigmatic ex-Methodist Minister by the name of James Moulder. We fasted for eight days. And that was it. There was the occasional student protest about stuff I knew nothing about. But that was it. That was my entire experience of the struggle.

Well, not entirely. Up the road from me had lived Eli and Violet Weinberg – Communists under house arrest. The Security Police would sit all night long in a car across from our house – watching the Weinberg house. My mother used to chat sometimes with Eli, over the garden fence. She found it odd that a Communist would, on a yearly basis, send us a Christmas card.

Just up the road from us in Fanny Avenue, lived a woman called Helen Joseph. My mother had a strange fear and fascination for her. She was clearly bad news, because she consorted with the natives – but at the same time, my mother admired her principles and the fact that she stood up for them.

It was only when I was a student in Cambridge that I read some of the speeches from the Treason Trial. I read the Freedom Charter. They were a revelation. They determined for me that, no matter what, I would not allow myself to be conscripted. I was lucky enough to have a wife then, who agreed with me and supported me. Together, we decided to leave the country. It was a big thing for us. But that is all it was.

So we encountered a very suspicious ANC in Lesotho. Our first contact was with someone whose name we had been given while inside the country. The reception was chilly. We decided not to push the issue. And so we were watched. Background checks, presumably, were done on us. And eventually, it became clear that we were to be regarded as comrades, rather than spies. That realisation does not give any sense of the dramatic and dynamic change which was happening inside us.

For the first time, in our lives, we were living amongst black people as equals. For the first time in our lives, we were interacting with black people at an eyeball to eyeball level. For the first time in our lives, we were not the “baas”. Lesotho provided all of us with a foretaste of what liberation might be like. What it might be like to live side by equal side. Cheek by equal jowl.

For many of us, when we found ourselves elsewhere in the world down the years, it was Lesotho that we pined for. Because it was there that we experienced what we could never experience inside South Africa itself. We experienced a unity of purpose. We experienced and we started to live a progressive, revolutionary and life-changing ideal. And once you have crossed over that bridge, you can never go back.

It was black ANC members and the people of Lesotho who gave us back the humanity that apartheid had robbed us of. And this is something I, for one, cannot ever forget. Jacob Zuma held underground meetings in our back bedroom. Tito Mboweni learned to drive in our Volkswagen Beetle. Ngoako Ramahlodi ironed his shirts in our living room. Others, with equally big names bathed in our bath; made tea from our kettle; spent the night on the lounge sofa. And then there were those people, whose real names one never knew – until they were killed in one of the two raids which the Boers (and I use that term knowingly) executed with such extraordinary cruelty in Lesotho.

I wish, passionately – I wish with every fibre of my being – that every white person in the country could have experienced what we experienced. I wish they could have learned, as we did, that white people could not lead the struggle. I wish they could have eaten from that same pot. I wish they could have drunk from that same river. Alas, it is impossible.

But you ask me today why I am still a member of the ANC and I will say this to you: I will say that it is the ANC which has led this country to a peaceful and successful democratic reality. It has done so with the utmost generosity and grace to the former oppressors. It has done so in a way which has ensured that – against all odds – the country still functions and the economy continues to grow. It has done so without violence. It has done so in a way which has been respectful of culture and heritage and origin. It has never faltered from its commitment to non-racialism and non-sexism.

You and I may criticise the ANC. That, in itself, is an amazing achievement. You and I may stare in disbelief at some of the antics of some of its members – but you cannot suggest, if you are in any way honest, that the ANC has failed. That would be not only churlish, it would be fantastically ill-informed.

The ANC has gone through some difficult times of late, but when I compare policy for policy, position for position, principle for principle, I have no doubt where my loyalties lie. And I would suggest that everyone who has come to love and honour that former “terrorist”, who made the difficult decision to opt for armed struggle – Nelson Mandela – should look beyond him to the Movement which gave him life and breath and to which he still owes allegiance. Look to the principles of the Freedom Charter. And once you have done that, take courage in the Constitution of the country, which is our joint crowning achievement.

I have been a member of the ANC for 33 of its 100 years. I have had my doubts. I have had my worries. I have had my moments of anger and even rage. But I look back on the 100 years of struggle which this movement has led and I know, beyond any doubt, that I made the right decision way back then. I look at where we are now, and where we could have been - and I know it. I look at the tremendous achievements we have made - and I know it. I look at the peace we enjoy - and I know it. I look at the greed and the gluttony and the shenanigans and the unsupportable nonsense - and I know, beyond any moment of doubt, that the spirit of the Charter and the will of the people will survive it all. We just need to make it so. Aluta Continua!

Ringing with lost songs

Eli Weinberg

This poem is dedicated to Eli Weinberg. He and his wife, Violet, lived two houses from us, when I was growing up in Plantation Road, Gardens, Johannesburg. I remember the Special Branch sitting all night, every night long, in a car, parked opposite our house, watching their house. I remember how Violet needed to go to report to the police station every morning (and maybe every evening as well - I don't remember). Eli used to "chat" to my mother across the fence. She found it strange that a communist would give us a Christmas card every year. I remember their son, Mark, who eventually killed himself, having to read the newspaper under the streetlamp, because the regime had turned off the electricity in their house.

WAGON WHEELS

By Hugh Lewin

After evening lock-up at the Fort
the bandiete would shout "Wagon -wheels, Mr Weinberg!"
and Eli, communist and kantor, would pause
between the Internationale and Nkosi
to sing, schul like,
Wagon-wheels, wagon-wheels
Wagon-wheels carry me home
Wagon-wheels carry me home

And if you stopped a moment
on your way up Hospital Hill
into the rising hum of Hillbrow
you'd have heard it -
only an echo perhaps
behind the walls and the double doors
hiding the nation's underbelly

Waggon-wheels, Mr Weinberg

You won't hear it now.
Forty years on the Fort still squat on Hospital Hill
where I'm propelled past by the evening traffic
passed the door which spewed me into unimprisonment

and I can't help thinking of symbols
and the perpetuation of walls which stand still
ringing
with lost songs.

(Printed in The Big Issue 2011 collector's edition)